Ben C Smith

These two points line up, I think. If Mark is intent to portray Jesus as innocent, then it stands to reason that his narrative will not contain any good reasons for the crucifixion. (I think this is what you are driving at, but just want to clarify.) This does not mean that no reasons at all are presented, of course. I may think that Lincoln was assassinated for no good reason, but I can still identify the basic reasons it happened.

This chain of events you are highlighting is crucial to the Marcan narrative:

1. The Jewish leaders wish to arrest Jesus away from the crowds, so they need Judas to tell them where he hangs out when he is not in public.
2. They also wish to kill him, so they need to charge him with something (I will leave open for now whether what they charged him with and their reason for wanting him dead are the same thing or not).
3. They charge him with predicting the destruction of the temple, which in their minds makes him deserving of death (compare Jeremiah 26.7-9). I have little doubt that, if they could have proven he threatened the temple, they could have convinced the Romans to execute him without difficulty; any threat against the temple would be a threat to the delicate peace.
4. However, Mark makes clear that they could not make the temple charges stick. Instead, he says something that they perceive to be blasphemy. The problem lurking in the background is that the Romans are not going to care about blasphemy.
5. So a charge is trumped up (as GDon put it): Jesus is claiming kingship over the Jews. That is sedition. The Romans will care about that. Trouble is, there is no hard evidence of a play for kingship. So Pilate is inclined to let Jesus go, until the Jewish leaders pull strings and press for execution.

Here is my question: Is there anything implausible about the above chain of events, IYO? (I think there is; more on that below; but some parts seem eminently plausible.) Note that plausibility and historicity are compatible but not identical; fiction can be plausible too, right?

Nitpick: Pilate literally washes his hands only in Matthew; in Mark one could say he does so metaphorically.

I think this skips a step or two on the above list. Mark never directly claims that the Romans had any real reason to execute Jesus; he claims that the Jewish leaders pulled strings with Pilate.

Let me make the following observations about the two trials (or procedures, or hearings, or whatever):

• The hearing before Pilate I find implausible in multiple details. His sticking up for Jesus, his assertion of many charges when we are told only of one, his working of the title king of the Jews into the conversation at every turn, the whole Barabbas thing, maybe even the presence of a crowd that wants to crucify Jesus (though the Jewish leaders could have handpicked patsies for this)... none of this seems plausible to me. I would welcome being proven wrong on this. Any takers?
• The hearing before the Jewish leaders, OTOH, I find mostly plausible. They would need multiple agreeing witnesses; disagreement amongst these witnesses would disqualify their testimony. Rending clothes is what one does upon hearing blasphemy, which calls for the death sentence. The blasphemy itself has been explained in several ways. I have my preference, but the important thing is that blasphemy on the basis of what Jesus says in the trial is explicable. The stickiest objection to this procedure is the fact that Mark portrays it as taking place at night; yet Josephus reports Jewish leaders performing irregular or illegal actions at times.

Is there something to this plausibility gap (by which I mean that one procedure seems much more plausible than the other)?

Those are all worthy of exploration.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Sure, if you want. I just doubt that many here will follow you on that, and was just letting you know that you do not have to assume that Mark was correct across the board.

They may be, but they do not have to be.

Ben.

Analyst

Why not assume that the crucifixion story was just copied from one of the thousands that happened? But to some random troublemaker? And just "cut and pasted" into the Jesus myths?

Analyst

Another telling point. What is up with the 'name', Barabbas? What Jew would screw that up?

dog-on

I do not think that this possibility is the actual point of the thread.

I take it as, assuming that the crucifixion is historical, what, if anything, in Mark may give us a clue as to the actual reason for it.

bacht

yes, this would have been the false charge made by Judas after being bribed by Jewish officials (not sure if all these details were in Mark already) - thus Jesus is accused of sedition, of wanting to claim the kingship of the Jews, hence the sign on the cross

Ben C Smith

Spot on, dog-on. :thumbs:

Ben.

Toto

It seems plausible that someone could be railroaded in a kangaroo court and convicted of whatever popped up. The problem with blasphemy laws is that they are inherently subject to being used for ulterior motives (the recent case of Younis Sheikh in Pakistan comes to mind, as well as other trials for blasphemy.)

But it is not clear what Jesus did to set off the religious establishment, or why the Romans went along with it. There are still critical elements in the story that are missing.

John the Baptist, for example, seemed to be a threat at some level - because of his criticism of Herod's marriage, which reflected on Herod's legitimacy, and because he had a large following, and, according to Josephus, might have started a rebelllion. [If we are going to assume a historical Jesus, we can assume a historical John.] But Mark seems to portray Jesus as no direct thread to the establishment, civil or religious.

And we have no record of a trial for John the Baptist.

Is Mark's Jesus actually John the Baptist resurrected?

Ben C Smith

Could that be Marcan apologetic, much like Acts portrays the church as no direct threat to Rome?

I think Crossan is right when he says that our modern notion of a legal trial may be misplaced in a Roman province of antiquity.

I do not think so, though I do not doubt that Mark uses the comparison to say that John and Jesus were similar in some way.

Ben.

Petergdi

I think the washing of hands and the "I am innocent of this blood" in Matthew gets misunderstood quite often.

There is a very interesting passage from the Midrash Tehillim which I found in the Jewish encylopedia article on the Didascalia:

"Even the heathen judge, before passing the final decree of capital punishment, lifts his hand toward the sun and swears that he is innocent of the blood of the culprit; so much the more should your verdict be given only after careful investigation."

It seems to me that Pilate quite likely washed his hands and said "I am innocent of this blood" every time he passed a death sentence on anyone. To the original readers it may have been what "And may God have mercy on your soul" is to us.

Peter.