The accused is the son of God

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It is the most famous and mysterious trial in history. It took place about two thousand years ago, in Jerusalem. The defendant: Jesus Christ, a preacher in his early thirties who believed himself to be the son of God. We asked Carlo Nordio, Minister of Justice, to recount those moments and their surrounding events in five episodes, highlighting their oddities, inaccuracies, and certainties. This is the first episode.

Once again, after last year's series of articles on Churchill , the curious reader will wonder how an amateur would dare to tackle a subject so vast and complex that it has burdened hundreds of brilliant minds, whose writings have filled library aisles. I have no excuse other than having yielded to the editor's new and kind invitation to summarize in a popular manner the partial and controversial results of these efforts.

The search for the historical Jesus , known as High Criticism, began in the eighteenth century, when Hermann Reimarus wrote a nondenominational study of the life of the Nazarene. For a century, Germany held almost exclusive sway over this monumental undertaking, culminating in Albert Schweitzer's brilliant yet resigned conclusion that it was a virtually impossible task. From there, it spread to France, with Renan, Loisy, Goguel, and Guignebert, then to Great Britain, and finally to the United States, where the discussion is still lively today . Jews also participated, with Klausner, Montefiore, and more recently with Paul Winter. Since then, the most diverse theses, sometimes bold and even extravagant, have been advanced about Jesus. Bauer, Couchoud, Drews, and others even claimed that he never existed. This conclusion was ridiculed by almost all critics, and Bultmann declared it not even worth discussing. In this vast panorama, Italians are almost absent. Is the Church's dogmatism to blame? Perhaps. But I think it's more our fault. This topic isn't taboo here: it's indifference.

The whole world has wondered about the life of Christ, except Italy: here the topic is not a taboo, but only indifference.

Personally, I've never managed to remain indifferent to it. Despite limited time, I've always felt that a good portion of it should be devoted to this type of reading. My limitations are almost limiting: I don't know Hebrew, I barely get by with Greek and Latin, a little better with French and English, and I'm completely at a loss for German. Goodwill and excellent translations have allowed me to partially fill these gaps . But I remain, and I'm aware of it, an amateur. I must also warn the patient reader that, like all of us, I too am conditioned by my own prejudices: in this case, my sharing of Weiss and Schweitzer's thesis that Jesus had an exclusively eschatological conception of the Kingdom of God, and that he was completely indifferent to the events of this world. Having invoked indulgence, we can begin.

For the believer, Jesus is Christ the Savior, the Son of God. For the historian, he is an apocalyptic prophet who preached in Palestine in the first half of the first century and died on the cross. His disciples, some of whom dispersed, others began proselytizing. Less than a century after Jesus' death, a letter from Pliny to Trajan, and the emperor's response, inform us that Christians were already an organized "sect."

However, from a strictly historical perspective, there are few certainties about Jesus beyond his preaching and his end. Pagan and Jewish sources concerning his trial and crucifixion are dated late, their testimonies are secondary, their content fragmentary, and their narrative biased, making it very difficult to draw definitive conclusions. The evangelical sources, by the Church's own admission, are neither history books nor court records. Therefore, it is futile to ask them for an exact account of Jesus' trial. Not only do they contradict each other on various points, as we will see later, but they reflect the circumstances in which they were written and express the current belief of the communities: the life and death of Jesus are not narrated in a journalistic manner, but as interpretations of their theological significance. However, even from a mixture of faith and imagination, certain events can be reconstructed . And some of these were precisely the condemnation and death of Jesus, and the presence of Pontius Pilate as the emperor's representative in Palestine. We already knew something about this ambitious, cruel, and irascible man from Tacitus and Josephus. For centuries, he was believed to be the "procurator of Judea," a title used by Anatole France in his delightful short story of the same name. However, in 1961, a tombstone was discovered in Caesarea describing the high-ranking official as prefect. Since then, at least on this point, all authors have agreed, and many editions have been hastily amended.

Returning to the New Testament, we never find so many variations in the description of the same event as in the Passion and death of the Savior. This means that the formation of the tradition was based on different motives. No witnesses were present at the various preliminary examinations of the accused, nor at the session in which the verdict was pronounced: consequently, the oral and then written transmission of this proceeding generated different versions due to equally different cultic, apologetic, and polemical intentions. It is sufficient to read the scenes described by the Synoptics and by John to be convinced that their sequence could not have been exhausted in the six or seven hours between the arrest and the crucifixion .

Another problem that bedevils historians is the reconstruction of the Roman and Jewish legal systems in force at the time of Jesus. We have no absolute certainty about either, and many of the sources often cited concern later periods. The very legitimacy of the Sanhedrin to impose capital punishment, and the need for eventual ratification by the Roman prefect, have been the subject of extensive literature. However, on one circumstance (almost) everyone now agrees: Jesus was subjected to a Roman trial, for a Roman indictment ; he was sentenced by a Roman judge, to an exclusively Roman punishment, with a Roman "titulus" of condemnation (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum). These conclusions were reached after decades of study and centuries of suffering. The attribution of the guilt of "deicide" to the Jews was one of the most tragic consequences of ignorance, prejudice, and fanaticism. But this disastrous and incredible theory was elaborated at a later time, when the mistrust and subsequent persecutions of the Romans led the evangelical editors to transfer responsibility for the crucifixion from Pilate to the Sanhedrin. The progressive detachment of Christology from Jewish orthodoxy accentuated this inversion of judicial competences, and in the end the Roman prefect was depicted as a docile executor of a turbulent popular invective, to the point of being almost beatified, together with his wife. But at the beginning it was not exactly like this: Paul himself, who attributes the killing of the Lord to the Jews (1 Thess 2:14), affirms that He was crucified "by the princes of this world" (1 Cor 2:8) and in reality traces the sacrifice of Jesus to His self-giving (Gal 2:20) and to the gift that God made of Him (Rom 8:12) .

On one thing (almost) everyone agrees: Jesus was subjected to a Roman trial, for a Roman indictment.

In the following pages, we will attempt to reconstruct, to the best of our ability, the phases of this process and the reasons for its distortion. This is an undertaking that may intimidate the historian, but not disturb the Christian. What Paul calls the "Christ according to the flesh" has, as the apostle states, little importance for faith. If the "Search for the historical Jesus," as Albert Schweitzer wrote, results in a series of shadows, his figure as Redeemer emerges intact even from a procedural reconstruction different from the evangelical one. We will therefore examine in sequence the arrest, the role of Judas, the appearance before the Sanhedrin, the trial before Pilate, and the execution of the sentence . We can therefore venture into the labyrinth of reason without losing our bearings in faith.

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The reasons for the arrest help us understand the reasons for the trial and the sentencing. However, we have no idea what charges justified Jesus's arrest, and we must rely on the subsidiary criterion of the manner in which it occurred. But here too, the questions remain many, and in some respects insurmountable. We can only draw conclusions.

The uncertainty arises from the different versions given in the Gospels themselves. According to the Synoptics, after the Last Supper, Jesus and his disciples went to the Mount of Olives and reached a place called Gethsemane. And up to this point, the Gospel of John agrees. Then the versions diverge. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, albeit with some variations, describe the arrival of a crowd, with swords and clubs, sent by the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders (Mark 14:43). In short, a mob of hostile Jews. But the fourth Gospel introduces a different, and much more significant, element: the presence of a Roman cohort.

The cohort (speira) consisted of six centuries, roughly like a modern-day battalion, and was commanded by a tribune (kiliarkos). Sometimes it operated in reduced ranks, but never fewer than three or four hundred men. Most historians doubt that such an army was necessary to capture a single man; others believe it was an editorial interpolation. In reality, it can be admitted that John misunderstood the number, but not the reality of Roman participation. First, because the early morning translation before Pilate presupposed that the order came from him, or at least that his soldiers had informed him. Second, because a mob of Jews could encounter effective resistance from Jesus' companions, and therefore required armed support. And finally, why John, even more than the other evangelists, tends to attribute responsibility for Jesus' death to the Jews? Therefore, if he included the participation of a Roman detachment in the capture of the Master, the reason is simple: he could not do without it, given a fact so consolidated in tradition.

The remaining contradictions in the Gospels are minor, but significant, details. Mark recounts that one of those present, drawing his sword, cut off the ear of a member of the mob. This confirms that Jesus was accompanied by some sort of armed escort, as Luke recounts: "But now, he who has a money bag, let him take it, and likewise he who has a scrip; and he who has no sword, let him sell his cloak and buy one" (Luke 22:36). From this circumstance (and other less unequivocal ones), some historians have attributed revolutionary intent to Jesus. SGF Brandon has argued that he was even a member or sympathizer of the Zealot sect, which aimed to carry out armed resistance to the Roman occupation. This thesis, decidedly a minority one, is completely untenable. However, the exhortation to buy a sword, and the use of it during the arrest, demonstrate that the Master's followers were not at all defenseless, so much so as to justify the suspicions of the Roman governor, and his decision to proceed against a tribal chief considered dangerous .

But let's return to John. The fourth evangelist narrates that after recognizing Jesus, everyone "fell back and fell to the ground." Then Simon Peter, "having a sword (habens gladium), drew it and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his right ear; the servant's name was Malchus" (John 18:6-10). The other two synoptics describe the episode, adding interesting details. Luke attributes the question to the apostles—or at least to those who were with Jesus—"Lord, should we use the sword?" (Luke 22:49), thus confirming that he had accepted the invitation to go around armed; the evangelist does not mention the collective fainting, but specifies that Jesus healed the wounded servant. Mark is more concise, mentioning neither the fainting nor the healing, but concludes thus: "Then the disciples all abandoned him and fled" (Mark 14:50). Matthew, for his part, adds Jesus' warning to his overly impulsive disciple: "Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). This would contradict the exhortation, mentioned in Luke, to buy one.

One of those present cut off the ear of a member of the crowd, which confirms that Jesus was accompanied by an armed escort.

Liberal critics, even the less radical ones, have highlighted not only these contradictions, but also the improbability of certain events. For example, the idea that an entire Roman cohort, composed of trained and cynical legionaries, was so impressionable that it paralyzed without reacting. Even the detail of the reglued ear arouses the irony of skeptics. But once again, they forget that the Gospel narrative is not a chronicle but an apologetic one, and that the editor's intervention ignores verisimilitude and favors pedagogy. Finally, we must remember that the Synoptic Gospels were written at least forty years after Jesus' death, and that none of the authors were present at the events narrated. Nonetheless, faced with the indisputable fact that Jesus was arrested and judged by Pilate, the question remains: what role did Roman authority play in this phase of the procedure? The answer can only come from examining the subsequent development, that is, from the very phase of the judgment: since Jesus was tried by the Roman prefect, and sentenced to an exclusively Roman penalty, it is reasonable that the arrest was also carried out by Roman soldiers, according to the Johannine narrative.

Faced with the fact that Jesus was arrested and judged by Pilate, the question remains: what role did the Roman authority play?

However, the synoptic version, which fails to mention this presence, cannot be entirely rejected. It is indeed plausible that the soldiers charged with capturing the seditious preacher, unaware of his appearance, much less his movements, employed Jews hostile to the Master, or perhaps one of his own dissident disciples, to locate and arrest him. These are, we repeat, plausible conjectures: the only possibility to be ruled out is that a Jewish mob, albeit invested with an order from the priests, acted alone to capture a troublemaker wanted by the Roman authorities, who would have crucified him as a bandit within hours. Here we enter the most controversial phase of the Gospel narrative: what we might call the preliminary investigation, which precedes the appearance before the judge. But first we must turn our attention to the figure of the apostle who, betraying the Lord, handed him over to the Jewish mob and the Roman cohort who surprised him in the Garden of Gethsemane: that Judas who in theology, art, and even cinema has excited often conflicting fantasies and passions . In the next chapter we will see what his role was, if indeed he played one, in the arrest of Jesus. (1. continued)

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