The Last Week of Jesus's LifeSýnishorn

Friday, April 3, 33 AD

Annas must be proud of his son-in-law for another hit job well executed. His boy is the high priest, the only individual in the nation who can enter the Holy of Holies once each year on the Day of Atonement and offer a sacrifice to God for his own sins and the sins of the people. Sure, killing this Galilean rabbi isn’t ideal, but it’s nothing that the blood of a spotless lamb can’t wash away.

The guards lead Jesus out of Caiaphas’s chambers and through the courtyard on their way to the Roman governor’s headquarters. In the same courtyard, one of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of earless Malchus who was there for the arrest, asks Simon Peter if he wasn’t just in the garden with Jesus. For the third time, Simon Peter denies his association with Jesus, and is within earshot of his rabbi, no less. “Man, I do not know what you are talking about” (Luke 22:60). Before he can finish speaking, the morning rooster crows. Jesus turns and looks straight at Simon (Luke 22:61). It hits the lead disciple like a ton of bricks. Simon Peter rushes outside and weeps.

The courtyard mob wants their pound of flesh before handing Jesus over to the Romans. As they take him away, they spit on him, blindfold him, slap his face, and punch him. While Annas’s temple guards abuse Jesus, the chief priests, and their synedrion put together their plan for how to see this man successfully executed by the Romans as quickly as possible (Matthew 27:1). While Jesus is pummeled with hands and fists, the high priests settle on a charge that all but guarantees the death penalty. It will go down as one of the most brilliant legal moves in history.

It is early morning (John 18:28). The religionist mob (with John likely on the edges) heads for the gates of the Praetorium, a former Herodian palace now occupied by the governor and his soldiers. The Passover crowd is mostly still slumbering, sleeping off a heavy Passover supper and at least four cups of wine. Little does the Roman governor know that this morning’s verdict will make him world famous, or rather, eternally infamous. The man in question is Prefect Pontius Pilatus, who is likely unhappy at being awoken so early on the busiest and most nuisance-filled weekend of his year. He normally lives in the cushy seaside town of Caesarea Maritima, but political necessity requires him to keep the peace in Jerusalem—the Pax Romana—during these tinderbox festivals. In his Legatio ad Gaium, Philo of Alexandria calls Pilate “a man of inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition,” and on this dark day, he will declare a man innocent and then sentence him to death.