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John 18.31 and the ‘Trial’ of Jesus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Extract
The statement of the Jewish authorities to Pontius Pilate in John 18. 31b, ‘It is not lawful for us to kill anyone’, is commonly regarded as a key to the historical reconstruction of the trial and execution of Jesus. If it means — as it is usually understood to mean — that Roman law did not permit the Jewish Sanhedrin to carry out the death penalty in capital cases, then it explains what is otherwise unexplained in the synoptic Gospels: i.e. why, if Jesus was convicted by the Sanhedrin, was he delivered to the Romans for another trial, and for death by crucifixion? Why was he not simply stoned to death at the command of the Sanhedrin, as the Jewish law required (cf. Lev 24. 16)? The narrator's parenthetical comment in John 18. 32 seems to bear out this interpretation: the fact that the Jews were not allowed by the Roman government to execute Jesus meant that he would die by being ‘lifted up’ on a cross - a distinctively Roman method of execution (cf. John 3. 14; 12. 32–33).
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References
1 See, e.g., Sherwin-White, A. N., Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1965) 24–47.Google Scholar
2 See, e.g., Juster, J., Les Juifs dans l'empire Romain (Paris, 1914) ii. 128–52.Google Scholar
3 Brown, Raymond E., The Gospel According to John (xiii–xxi). Anchor Bible 29A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970) 877.Google Scholar
4 Cf. Schnackenburg, R., The Gospel According to St John 3 (New York: Crossroad, 1982) 246.Google Scholar
5 Duke, Paul, in his Irony in the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta: John Knox, 1985), circles around such an interpretation without quite proposing it explicitly: ‘The truth is, since chapter 5, “the Jews” have been trying furiously to judge Jesus by their own law, with embarrassing results. The law of Moses simply will not condemn him’ (128); ‘“The Jews” respond with another self-indictment: “We have a law, and by that law he must die, because he made himself the Son of God.” The reader knows by now that their law has an entirely different word to say about Jesus’ (133). ‘“The Jews” have confessed that their law forbids them to kill, but the law is forsaken along with their faith’ (136). The last remark by Duke clearly presupposes the same interpretation of John 18.31 I am arguing here, but Duke does not address the verse specifically. Schnackenburg too, even while discussing at some length the issue of whether the Sanhedrin was allowed to carry out the death penalty, admits (245) that ‘in the mind of the evangelist, the exchange must certainly be a humiliation of the Jewish leaders … the members of the council are forced to speak out now for themselves … their intention to kill, known for a long time to the readers (cf. 5.18; 7.1,19, 25 etc.), on which they had finally decided in secret session (11.50, 53).’Google Scholar
6 Brooke, A. E., The Commentary of Origen on S. John's Gospel, 2 (Cambridge, 1896) 144–7.Google Scholar
7 The Fourth Gospel (ed. Davey, F. N.; 2nd ed.; London: Faber and Faber, 1947) 518.Google Scholar
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9 Cf., e.g., Harvey, A. E., Jesus on Trial: A Study in the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1976).Google Scholar