Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (849 page)

^*
Oecumen. ad Act. i.

^†
Vid. sup.

^‡
In Münter’s Fragm. Patr. 1, p. 27 ff. For the rest the passage is of very similar tenor with that of Œcumenius, and is partly an exaggeration of it:
Papias, the disciple of John, gives a clearer account of this (in the fourth section of his exegesis of our Lord’s words) as follows: Judas moved about in this world a terrible example of impiety, being swollen in body to such a degree that where a chariot could easily pass he was not able to find a passage, even for the bulk of his head. His eyelids, they say, were so swelled out that he could not see the light, nor could his eyes be made visible even by the physician’s dioptra,
etc.
After suffering many torments and Judgments, dying, as they say, in his own field,
etc.v. 23 in the other psalm applied to Judas, where, among the curses this is enumerated:
Let their eyes be darkened that they see not
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a hindrance to sight, which when once the swollen body of Judas was presupposed, must necessarily assume the form of a swelling up of the eyelids. If then the tradition which is allied to the account in Acts i. developed its idea of the end of Judas chiefly in correspondence with the ideas presented in these two psalms; and if in that passage of the Acts itself the account of the connexion of Judas with the piece of ground is derived from the same source: it is no farfetched conjecture that what is said in the Acts concerning the end of the betrayer may have had a similar origin. That he died an early death may be historical; but even if not so, in Psalm cix. in the very same verse (v. 8), which contains the transfer of the office,
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to another, an early death is predicted for the betrayer in the words:
Let his days be few,
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and it might also be believed that the death by falling headlong also was gathered from Ps. lxix. 22, where it is said:
Let their table became a snare before them,
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Thus we scarcely know with certainty concerning Judas even so much as that he came to a violent and untimely death, for if, as was natural, after his departure from the community of Jesus, he retired, so far as the knowledge of its members was concerned, into an obscurity in which all historical information as to his further fate was extinguished: the primitive Christian legend might without hindrance represent as being fulfilled in him all that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament threatened to the false friend of the Son of David, and might even associate the memory of his crime with a well-known desecrated place in the vicinity of Jerusalem.*

§ 131. JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD.

According to all the Evangelists it was in the morning when the Jewish magistrates, after having declared Jesus worthy of death,
^†
caused him to be led away to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate (Matt. xxvii. 1 ff
.
parall.; John xviii. 28). According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was bound preparatory to his being conducted before Pilate, according to John xviii. I2, immediately on his arrest in the garden; Luke says nothing of his being bound. To this measure of sending him to Pilate they were compelled, according to John xviii. 31, by the circumstance that the Sanhedrim was deprived of the authority to execute the punishment of death (without the concurrence of the Roman government) :
^‡
but at all events the Jewish rulers must in this instance have been anxious to call in the agency of the Romans, since only their power could afford security against an
uproar among the people
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which the former feared as a result of the execution of Jesus during the feast time (Matt. xxvi. 5 parall.).

Arrived at the Prætorium, the Jews, according to the representation of the fourth gospel, remained without, from fear of Levitical defilement, but Jesus was led into the interior of the building: so that Pilate must alternately have come out when he would speak to the Jews, and have gone in again when he proceeded to question Jesus (xviii. 28
ff.). The synoptists in the sequel represent Jesus as in the same locality with Pilate and the Jews, for in them Jesus immediately hears the accusations of the Jews, and answers them in the presence of Pilate. Since they, as well as John, make the condemnation take place in the open air (after the condemnation they represent Jesus as being led into the Prætorium, Matt. xxvii. 27
,
and Matthew, like John, xix. 13, describes Pilate ascending the
judgment seat
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which according to Josephus
^§
stood in the open air), without mentioning any change of place in connexion with the trial: they apparently conceived the whole transaction to have passed on the outer place, and supposed, in divergency from John, that Jesus himself was there.

The first question of Pilate to Jesus is according to all the gospels:
Art thou the king of the Jews?
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, i.e. the Messiah? In the two first Evangelists this question is not introduced by any accusation on the part of the Jews (Matt. v. 11 ; Mark v.
2);
in John, Pilate, stepping out of the Prætorium, asks the Jews what accusation they have to bring against Jesus (xviii. 29), on which they insolently reply:
If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee:
an answer by which they could not expect to facilitate their obtaining from the Roman a ratification of their sentence,|| but only to embitter him. After Pilate, with surprising mildness, has rejoined that they may take him and judge him according to their law — apparently not supposing a crime involving death — and the Jews have opposed to this permission their inability to administer the punishment of death: the procurator re-enters and addresses to Jesus the definite question:

^*
Comp. De Wette, exeg. Handb. 1, 1, s. 231 f.; 1, 4, s. 10 f.

^†
According to Babl. Sanhedrin, ap. Lightfoot, p. 486, this mode of procedure would have been illegal. It is there said
:Judicia de capitalibus finiunt eodem die si sint ad absolutionem; si vero sint ad damnationem, finiuntur die sequente.

^‡
Besides this passage of John: ,
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, it is not lawful for us to put any man to death,
there is no other authority for the existence of this state of things than an obscure and variously interpreted tradition, Avoda Zara f. viii. 2 (Lightfoot, p. 1123 f
.): Rabh Cahna dicit, curn aegrotaret R. Isinael bar Jose, miserunt ad eum, dicentes: dic nobi, o Domine, duo aut tria, quæ aliquando dixisti nobis nomine patris tui. Dicit iis — quadraginta annis ante excidium templi migravit Synedrium et sedit in tabernis. Quid sibi vult haec traditio? Rabh Isaac, bar Abdimi dicit: non judicarunt judicia mulctativa.
Dixit R. Nathman bar Isaac: ne dicat, quod non judicarunt judicia mulctativa, sed quod non judicarunt judicia capitalia.
With this may be compared moreover the information given by Josephus, Antiq. xx. ix. 1, that it
was not lawful for Ananus
(the high priest)
to assemble the Sanhedrim without the consent of the procurator.
On the other hand the execution of Stephen (Acts vii.) without the sanction of the Romans might seem to speak to the contrary; but this was a tumultuary act, undertaken perhaps in the confidence that Pilate was absent. Compare on this point Lücke, 2, s. 631 ff.

^§
De bell. Jud. II. ix. 3.

^||
As Lücke supposes, s. 631.
Art thou the king of the Jews?
which thus here likewise has no suitable introduction. This is the case only in Luke, who first adduces the accusations of the Sanhedrists against Jesus, that he stirred up the people and encouraged them to refuse tribute to Cæsar, giving himself out to be
Christ a king;
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(xxiii.
2).