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None of these things is in the record of Jesus' examination. But recent research—including my own—shows that the Jewish leadership very likely did not view this hearing as a formal trial but more as something comparable to a grand jury inquiry. Since they would not be able to make the decision to put Jesus to death, Jewish rules concerning a capital trial did not apply to this case. All they were considering was whether Jesus could be brought before the Romans as a political subversive. Could he be viewed as such a public threat that Rome would wish to remove him?

A PUBLIC THREAT In an effort to find if Jesus could be tried for a political crime, the questioners began by reviewing Jesus' statements about the temple. Already in Jesus' day the temple had become the center of a "church-state" compromise in which the Romans treated the temple with an exceptional respect. History had taught them that anything less could lead to public chaos or worse.

The ancient Jewish historian Josephus notes several disturbances in Jerusalem during this era that had inflamed the Jewish crowds. One occurred shortly after Jesus' death when a Roman soldier "mooned" the Jewish crowd from a temple portico during a festival, creating a public riot that left the streets strewn with bodies. And both Jews and Romans were ever conscious of the Maccabean revolts, which began in 167 b.c. when a Gentile ruler marched into the temple and sacrificed a pig. The act, representing the enforced Hellenization of Palestinian Jewish culture, so inflamed the Jews that they waged a three-year war to free themselves from Syrian rule.

Even the Roman governor Pilate, who would sentence Jesus to death after he had been handed over to him by the high priest, had brought trouble upon himself by placing banners with eagles on them in Jerusalem to indicate Jewish subservience to Rome. Josephus writes that "when the Jews again petitioned him [to remove the standards], he gave a prearranged signal to his soldiers to surround them, and threatened to punish them with immediate death if they did not end their riot and return to their own homes. But they threw themselves on the ground and bared their throats, declaring that they would gladly welcome death rather than dare to transgress the wisdom of their laws." Pilate, astounded at the firmness of their guarding of the laws, immediately transferred the images from Jerusalem to Caesarea.

In the light of this history, Jesus' remarks about the temple and his actions would have been considered nothing less than explosive, and it is little surprise that the Sanhedrin focused on this potent issue. Yet Mark 14:53-60 tells us the presentation of witnesses got nowhere with this issue: "Some stood up and gave false testimony against him, saying, 'We heard him say, "I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands." ' But even on this point their testimony did not agree." The Sanhedrin needed to find another avenue of challenge.

A FATAL MISSTATEMENT At this point Caiaphas moved the inquiry toward another potential political charge. Urging Jesus to defend himself, Caiaphas asked, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?"

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April 6 1998, Vol. 42, No. 4