Chapter XXXIV: Section VII: Subsequent Acts of Violence

Immediately after this kind of sacerdotal verdict rendered against Jesus, the acts of violence and insults recommenced with increased strength; the fury of the judge must have communicated itself to the bystanders. St. Matthew says: “Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ; who is he that smote thee?” Matt. xxvi. 67, 68.

Mr. Salvador does not contest the truth of this ill treatment. In page 88 he says, “It was contrary to the spirit of the Hebrew law, and that it was not according to the order of nature, that a senate composed of the most respectable men of a nation,—that a senate, which might perhaps be mistaken, but which thought it was acting mildly, should have permitted such outrages against him whose life it held in its own hands. The writers who have transmitted these details to us, not having been present themselves at the trial, were disposed to overcharge the picture, either on account of their own feelings, or to throw upon their judges a greater odium.”

I repeat; this ill treatment was entirely contrary to the spirit of the law. And what do I want more, since my object is to make prominent _all the violations of law_.

“It is not in nature to see a body, which respects itself, authorize such attempts.” But of what consequence is that, when the fact is established? “The historians, it is said, were not present at the trial.” But was Mr. Salvador there present himself, so that he could give a flat denial of their statements? And when even an able writer, who was not an eye-witness, relates the same events after the lapse of more than eighteen centuries, he ought at least to bring opposing evidence, if he would impeach that of contemporaries; who, if they were not in the very hall of the council, were certainly on the spot, in the vicinity, perhaps in the court yard, inquiring anxiously of every thing that was happening to the man whose disciples they were.(409) Besides, the learned author whom I am combating says, in the outset (p. 81), “it is from the Gospels themselves that he will take all his facts.” He must then take the whole together, as well those which go to condemn, as those which are in palliation or excuse.

Those gross insults, those inhuman acts of violence, even if they are to be cast upon the servants of the high priest and the persons in his train, do not excuse those individuals, who, when they took upon themselves the authority of judges, were bound at the same time to throw around him all the protection of the law. Caiaphas, too, was culpable as the master of the house (for every thing took place in his house), even if he should not be responsible as high priest and president of the council for having permitted excesses, which, indeed were but too much in accordance with the rage he had himself displayed upon the bench.

These outrages, which would be inexcusable even towards a man irrevocably condemned to punishment, were the more criminal towards Jesus, because, legally and judicially speaking, there had not yet been any sentence properly passed against him according to the public law of the country; as we shall see in the following section, which will deserve the undivided attention of the reader.