Who Actually Witnessed the Trial?

October 9, 2009, 5:38 pm by dc-agape.

John Chapter 19

This post will describe some of the issues with John’s account verse the Synoptic Gospels and the Traditions of Men.  My last post covered some issues with the events before the Sanhedrin.  In this post I want to introduce some questions about the events before Pilate and Herod.  I will have to leave the events of Jesus’ death and burial till the next post. 

Since only four Gospels have been canonized since 320 AD, we have four “eye-witnesses” to the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion. But as it turns out some issues do crop up with this Traditional view of events.  Some “eye-witness” accounts add things that the other “reports” leave out, others suggest unforgettable events that are eliminated from all the other reports.  In the events with Pilate and Herod just such things occur.

In the Gospel of John (the only eyewitness to the “trial”) there is not a single mention of Herod!  Without the non-eyewitness accounts of the trial we would not believe today that Herod was involved or that he was even in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ death.  In fact, only the Gospel of Luke (recorded by a follower of Paul) was Herod even mentioned at all.  Neither the Gospels of Matthew (another “actual” witness) or Mark (the most likely first gospel recorded) describe Herod’s involvement in the trial of Jesus.  Why would John, Mark, and Matthew leave out such an event?  Herod was the second most important person in the Roman occupation of Israel…leaving him out would be like leaving out the Ambassador to Iraq when describing the formation of the Iraqi constitution!  More importantly, why would Paul (through Luke) add something that Matthew, Mark, and John left out?  To believe that Paul was at the trial would again attempt to make the lifespan of the occupied Israeli longer than the average lifespan of a Roman Citizen (40 years).  For Paul to have died in ~60 AD he would have had to be less than 15 years old or have been much older than the average person when he died.  Since we are told that the Sanhedrin was made up of elders and chief priest, a young Paul would not have been in attendance.  So the Gospel of Luke is actually third-hand knowledge at best, not the most authoritative source! So actually for the events of the trial we have only one actual source…the Gospel of John.  The other three Gospels are merely Traditions of Men recorded as Authority.

So what does this mean for Christians?  It is actually very simple:

John 19:36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.  But my kingdom is from another place.”

The Kingdom of God (Jesus) is not of this world…Christian have no say in the governance of the world’s nations!  There cannot be a Christian Nation here on this planet, for Jesus himself, told Pilate that his kingdom did not exist on Earth.

There are two other troubling issues with the Gospel account of Jesus’ trial.  That would be of the “custom” to release a prisoner on the Passover holiday.  Two problems exist with this “custom”: first, no record of such a custom exists in Roman or Jewish histories of the time, and second, Barabbas (a known rebel) would not have had the option of parole!  Why is it that neither the Roman nor the Jewish histories tell us about this custom?  Were all the records from both nations destroyed or tampered with?  There aren’t any!  Not a single one records this custom.  The historical accuracy of the Gospels is questionable at best, but when they cannot be verified by outside sources, it certainly begins to look a lot like a mythology.  The concept that a known traitor to Rome would be released by a Roman overseer of Israel seems unlikely.  The Roman Empire looked very unfavorably on political enemies.  In fact, crucifixion was the choice way to eliminate the slaves, pirates, and the enemies of the State.  As a result of this information, Jesus would not have been crucified; he was not an enemy of the State as Pilate decreed.  But Barabbas would not have been freed, either, for he was an enemy of the State!

To the non-believer the accuracy of these Gospels is highly unlikely.  With John being the only source of information about these events, the missing verification, and the contradictory evidence John does provide, it was highly unlikely to have taken place the way it is recorded in the Gospels.  When you add the unlikely lifespan of these “authors” to the mix the tales become even bigger – they become Tall Tales from a superstitious group of religious hopefuls.  The only person who knew the truth about this part of Jesus’ life and recorded these events – died as an old man in Ephesus.  But even the events of the crucifixion are to be questioned.  I will do exactly that in the next post.

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