Christian History Home > Issue 59 > Mistrial of the Millennium
Mistrial of the Millennium
How those in power bent the rules to ensure the outcome.
Craig S. Keener | posted 7/01/1998 12:00AM
Less than a generation after Jesus' trial, Joshua son of Hananiah began prophesying judgment against the temple, shouting, "A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!"
The priestly aristocracy, who controlled the temple establishment, angrily arrested him. They dragged him before the Roman governor, Albinus, who had Joshua scourged with a flagellum—a leather whip with pieces of bone or metal embedded in its ends—reportedly "till his bones were laid bare."
But there the similarity between Jesus' trial and Joshua's ends; Jesus went on to be crucified; Joshua was released. Why?
Joshua, unlike Jesus, seemed harmless: Josephus reports, "Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him," allowing Joshua to walk the streets for seven years shouting, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem" until he was killed in the siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Jesus, ...
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