Chapter XI: Legal Analysis and Summary of the Roman Trial of Jesus (2)

But was Pilate alone guilty of the crime of the crucifixion? Were the Jews wholly blameless? This raises the question: Who were the real crucifiers of the Christ, the Jews or the Romans? That the Jews were the instigators and the Romans the consummators of the crucifixion is evident from the Gospel narratives. The Jews made the complaint, and the Romans ordered and effected the arrest of the prisoner in Gethsemane. Having tried Him before their own tribunal, the Jews then led Jesus away to the Roman governor, and in the Prætorium accused Him and furnished evidence against Him. But the final act of crucifying was a Roman act. It is true that Jewish elements were present in the crucifixion of Jesus. The death draught offered Him on the cross suggests a humane provision of Hebrew law. This drink was usury administered among the Hebrews "so that the delinquent might lose clear consciousness through the ensuing intoxication." Again, the body of Jesus was removed from the cross and buried before it was night. This was in deference to an ancient custom of the Jews to bury criminals before sunset who had first been executed by stoning for the crime of blasphemy and had then been subjected to the indignity of being hung upon a tree, in conformity with a Mosaic ordinance contained in Deut. xxi. 22. But these two incidents exhaust the Jewish features of the crucifixion; and, besides, these elements were merely physical. The spiritual or moral features, involving turpitude and crime, are entirely different considerations from those that are simply historical. The question still arises: Who were the morally guilty parties? Who were the directly responsible agents of the crucifixion, the Jews or the Romans? Upon whom should the greater blame rest, if both were guilty? A passage from St. John seems to indicate that the Jews were the bearers of the greater sin. Replying to a question of Pilate concerning the procurator's power to crucify Him, "Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above; therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin."[122] According to many commentators, Jesus referred to Caiaphas; according to others, He spoke of Judas as the person who had the greater sin. But in any case it is certain that He did not intend to involve the whole Jewish nation in the crime of His arrest and execution. The language of the scriptural context indicates a single person. Pilate, on the one hand, is made the silent instrument in the hands of God for the accomplishment of the designs of Heaven. Caiaphas, on the other hand, is probably referred to as the one having the greater sin, because, being the high priest of the Sanhedrin, he better understood the questions involved in the religious charge of blasphemy, and was, therefore, the greater sinner against the laws of God, in the matter of the injustice then being perpetrated.

Aside from the religious questions involved, and speaking in the light of history and law, our own judgment is that the real crucifiers of the Christ were the Romans, and that Pilate and his countrymen should bear the greater blame. It is true that the Jews were the instigators, the accusers. But Pilate was the judge whose authority was absolute. The Jews were powerless to inflict the death penalty. Pilate had the final disposition of all matters of life and death. In short, he could have prevented the crucifixion of Jesus. He did not do so; and upon him and his countrymen should rest the censure of Heaven and the execration of mankind.

But, admitting that the priests of the Sanhedrin were equally guilty with Pilate and the Romans, does it follow that all Jews of the days of Jesus who were not participants in the crime against him, should suffer for the folly and criminal conduct of a mere fragment of a Sadducean sect? Is it not true that the Jewish people, as a race, were not parties to the condemnation and execution of the Christ? Is it not reasonable to suppose that the masses in Palestine were friendly to the democratic Reformer who was the friend of the poor, the lame, and the blind? Did not the reception of his miracles and his triumphal entry into Jerusalem indicate His popularity with the plain people? Is it not historically true that the great body of the Jewish population in Judea, in Galilee, in Samaria, and in Perea, was unfriendly to the members of the Sanhedrin, and regarded them as political renegades and religious delinquents? Is it not reasonably certain that a large majority of the countrymen of Jesus were his ardent well-wishers and sincerely regretted his untimely end? Is it possible to conceive that these friends and well-wishers were the inheritors of the curse of Heaven because of the crime of Golgotha? If not, is it rational to suppose that their innocent descendants have been the victims of this curse?

The cruel and senseless notion of the implacable wrath of Deity has prevailed in all the ages as an explanation of the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion and persecution of the Jews. It is worse than nonsense to see in this event anything but the operation of vulgar physical forces of the most ordinary kind. The fall of Jerusalem was a most natural and consequential thing. It was not even an extraordinary historical occurrence, even in Jewish history. Titus did not so completely destroy Jerusalem as did Nebuchadnezzar before him. Razing cities to the ground was a customary Roman act, a form of pastime, a characteristic Roman proceeding in the case of stubborn and rebellious towns. Scipio razed Carthage and drove Carthaginians into the most remote corners of the earth. Was any Roman or Punic god interested in this event? Cæsar destroyed many Gallic cities and scattered Gauls throughout the world. Was any deity concerned about these things?

Roman admiration was at times enkindled, but Roman clemency was never gained by deeds of valor directed against the arms of Rome. Neither Hannibal nor Mithradates, Vercingetorix nor Jugurtha, the grandest of her enemies, received any mercy at her hands. To oppose her will, was to invite destruction; and the sequel was a mere question of "the survival of the fittest." The most turbulent, rebellious and determined of all the imperial dependencies was the province of Judea. The Jews regarded the Romans as idolaters; and, instead of obeying them as masters, despised and defied them as barbarians. When this spirit became manifest and promised to be perpetual, the dignity of the Roman name as well as the safety of the Roman State, demanded the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews. And destruction and dispersion followed as naturally as any profane effect follows any vulgar cause.

The Irish, another splendid race, are being dispersed throughout the earth by the English domination of Ireland. Is anybody so keenly discerning as to see in Irish dispersion a divine or superhuman agency? Is it not, after all, the simple operation of the same brutal, physical forces that destroyed Carthage and Jerusalem, and, in a latter century, dismembered Poland?

But the advocates of the divine wrath theory quote Scriptures and point to prophecy in support of their contention. Then Scriptures must be pitted against Scriptures. The last prayer of the Master on the cross must be made to repeal every earlier Scriptural prophecy or decree. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," is the sublimest utterance in the literature of the world. It is the epitome of every Christian virtue and of all religious truth. This proclamation from the cross repealed the Mosaic law of hereditary sin; placed upon a personal basis responsibility for offenses against God and man; and served notice upon future generations that those who "know not what they do" are entitled to be spared and forgiven. To believe that God ignored the prayer of Christ on the cross; and that the centuries of persecution of the Jews which followed, were but the fulfillment of prophecy and fate, is to assail the Messiahship of Jesus and to question the goodness and mercy of Jehovah. Jesus knew the full meaning of His prayer and was serious unto death. To believe that the Father rejected the petition of the Son is to destroy the equality of the persons of the Trinity by investing one with the authority and power to review, revise, and reject the judgments and petitions of the others. If the Christian doctrine be true that Christ was God "manifest in the flesh"; if the doctrine of the Trinity be true that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, are one and the same, eternal and inseparable, then the prayer of Jesus on the cross was not a petition, but a declaration that the malefactors of the crucifixion, who, in the blindness of ignorance, had helped to kill the Son of Man, would receive at the Last Day the benefits of the amnesty of the Father of mercy and forgiveness.

If the perpetrators of the great injustice of the Sanhedrin and of the Prætorium are to be forgiven because they knew not what they did, is there any justice, human or divine, in persecuting their innocent descendants of all lands and ages? "When Sir Moses Montefiore was taunted by a political opponent with the memory of Calvary and described by him as one who sprang from the murderers who crucified the world's Redeemer, the next morning the Jewish philanthropist, whom Christendom has learned to honor, called upon his assailant and showed him the record of his ancestors which had been kept for two thousand years, and which showed that their home had been in Spain for two hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth was born." This half-humorous anecdote illustrates the utter absurdity and supreme injustice of connecting the modern Jew with ancient tragic history. The elemental forces of reason, logic, courage and sympathy, wrapped up and interwoven in every impulse and fiber of the human mind and heart, will be forever in rebellion against the monstrous doctrine of centuries of shame, exile and persecution visited upon an entire race, because of the sins and crimes of a handful of their progenitors who lived more than a thousand years before.

But, if the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the sons is to be maintained, and perpetuated as a form of divine, if not of human justice, then, why not, at least, be consistent in the application of the principle? Many philosophers and critics have detected a striking kinship between the teachings of Socrates and those of Jesus. A celebrated historian closes a chapter of the history of Greece with this sentence: "Thus perished the greatest and most original of the Grecian philosophers (Socrates), whose uninspired wisdom made the nearest approach to the divine morality of the Gospel."[123] The indictments against the philosopher of Athens and the Prophet of Nazareth were strikingly similar. Socrates was charged with corrupting Athenian youth; Jesus, with perverting the nation. Socrates was charged with treason against Athens; Jesus, with treason against Rome. Both were charged with blasphemy; the Athenian, with blasphemy of the Olympic gods; the Nazarene, with blaspheming Jehovah. Both sealed with their blood the faith that was in them. If the descendants of the crucifiers of the Christ are to be persecuted, brutalized, and exiled for the sins of the fathers, why not apply the same pitiless law of hereditary punishment to the descendants of the Athenian dicasts who administered hemlock to the greatest sage of antiquity? Why not persecute all the Greeks of the earth, wherever found, because of the injustice of the Areopagus?

Coming back from antiquity and the Greeks to modern times in America, let us express the hope that all forms of race prejudice and persecution will soon cease forever. It is a truth well known of all intelligent men that racial prejudice against the Jew has not completely vanished from the minds and hearts of Gentiles; that political freedom in an enlightened age has not brought with it full religious tolerance and social recognition; that the Jew enjoys the freedom of the letter, but is still under the ban of the spirit. It is not necessary to go to Russia to prove this contention. In 1896, Adolf von Sonnenthal, the greatest of modern actors, who has covered the Austrian stage with glory, celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his entrance into theatrical life. The City Council of Vienna refused to extend him the freedom of the city, because he was a Jew. In 1906, Madame Bernhardt, the most marvelous living woman, while acting in Canada, was insulted by having spoiled eggs thrown upon the stage amidst shouts of "Down with the Jewess!" This outrage called forth a letter of apology, which appeared in public print, from Sir Wilfred Laurier, Prime Minister of the Dominion. In the summer of 1907, the sister of Senator Isidor Rayner, of Maryland, was refused admission to an Atlantic City hotel because she was a Jewess. Be it remembered that these several acts of prejudice and persecution did not happen in the Middle Ages, or under the government of the Romanoffs. Two of them occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century, beneath the flags of two of the freest and most civilized nations of the globe. What have Americans to say of the exclusion of a virtuous, refined, intelligent sister of a great American senator from an American hotel for no other reason than that she was a Jewess; that is, that she was of the same race with the Savior of mankind?

There is certainly no place for religious intolerance and race prejudice beneath our flag. Fake and hypocritical our religion, if while professing faith in Jesus we continue to persecute those for whom He prayed! In vain did Washington, marching in Liberty's vanguard, "lead Freedom's eaglets to their feast"; in vain the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution at Philadelphia, a hundred years ago; in vain the bonfires and orations of the nation's natal day, if our boasted liberties are to exist in theory, but not in practice, in fancy, but not in fact!

Let no persecutor of the Jew lay the unction to his soul that he is justified by the tragedy of Golgotha; for he who persecutes in the name of religion is a spiritual barbarian, an intellectual savage. Let this same persecutor not make the mistake of supposing that the Jews are wholly responsible for the persecution that has been heaped upon them. Before he falls into the foolish blunder of such a supposition, let him ponder the testimony of several Gentile experts upon the subject. Let him read "The Scattered Nation," a brilliant lecture on the Jew by the late Zebulon Vance, of North Carolina, in which occurs this sentence: "If the Jew is a bad job, in all honesty we should contemplate him as the handiwork of our own civilization." Let him find Shakespearean confirmation of this statement in "The Merchant of Venice," Act III, Scene i. If the Jew-baiter objects that this is the imagination of a poet, let us then point him to the testimony of a great historian and statesman to prove to him that the Gentile is in great measure responsible for the causes that have produced Jewish persecution.

In the British House of Commons, on April 17, 1873, a bill for the removal of the disabilities of the Jews was the subject of parliamentary discussion. Lord Macaulay took part in the debate and spoke as follows:

The honorable member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are
naturally a mean race, a money-getting race; that they are averse
to all honorable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that
they have neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit
for which they are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and
amiable sentiments.

Such, sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They
never fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which
persecution has engendered. England has been legally a home to the
Jews less than half a century, and we revile them because they do
not feel for England more than a half patriotism.

We treat them as slaves, and wonder that they do not regard us as
brethren. We drive them to mean occupations, and then reproach them
for not embracing honorable professions. We long forbade them to
possess land, and we complain that they chiefly occupy themselves
in trade. We shut them out from all the paths of ambition, and then
we despise them for taking refuge in avarice.

During many ages we have, in our dealings with them, abused our
immense superiority of force, and then we are disgusted because
they have recourse to that cunning which to the natural and
universal defence of the weak against the violence of the strong.
But were they always a mere money-changing, money-getting,
money-hoarding race? Nobody knows better than my honorable friend,
the member for the University of Oxford, that there is nothing in
their national character which unfits them for the highest duties
of citizens.

He knows that, in the infancy of civilization, when our island was
as savage as New Guinea, when letters and art were still unknown to
Athens, when scarcely a thatched hut stood on what was afterwards
the site of Rome, this contemned people had their fenced cities and
cedar palaces, their splendid Temple, their fleets of merchant
ships, their schools of sacred learning, their great statesmen and
soldiers, their natural philosophers, their historians and their
poets.

What nation ever contended more manfully against overwhelming odds
for its independence and religion? What nation ever, in its last
agonies, gave such signal proofs of what may be accomplished by a
brave despair? And if, in the course of many centuries, the
depressed descendants of warriors and sages have degenerated from
the qualities of their fathers; if, while excluded from the
blessings of law and bowed down under the yoke of slavery, they
have contracted some of the vices of outlaws and slaves, shall we
consider this is a matter of reproach to them? Shall we not rather
consider it as a matter of shame and remorse to ourselves? Let us
do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House of
Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability and
energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume
to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no
heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees.

If the persecutor of the Jew is not moved by the eloquence of Macaulay or by the satire and sarcasm of Shakespeare, then let him call the roll of Hebrew great names and watch the mighty procession as it moves. Abraham among patriarchs; Moses among lawgivers; Isaiah and Jeremiah among prophets; Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, and Mendelsohn among philosophers; Herschel, Sylvester, Jacobi, and Kronecker among mathematicians and astronomers; Josephus, Neander, Graetz, Palgrave, and Geiger among historians; Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Goldmark, Joachim, Rubinstein, and Strauss among musicians; Sonnenthal, Possart, Rachel, and Bernhardt among actors and actresses; Disraeli, Gambetta, Castelar, Lasker, Crémieux, and Benjamin among statesmen; Halevi and Heine among poets; Karl Marx and Samuel Gompers among labor leaders and political economists; the Rothschilds, Bleichrörders, Schiffs, and Seligmans among financiers; Auerbach and Nordau among novelists; Sir Moses Montefiore and Baron Hirsch among philanthropists!

But there are no Cæsars, no Napoleons, no Shakespeares, no Aristotles among them, you say? Maybe so; but what of that? Admitting that this is true, is anything proved by the fact? These characters represented mountain peaks of intellect, and were the isolated products of different races and different centuries. It may be justly observed that, of their kind, no others were comparable to them. But if the "mountain-peak" theory is to govern as to the intellectuality of races, will it be seriously contended that any one of the last-mentioned characters was equal in either spiritual or intellectual grandeur to the Galilean peasant, Jesus of Nazareth? If colossal forms of intellect and soul be invoked, does not the Jew still lead the universe?

Jesus was the most perfect product of Jewish spiritual creation, the most precious gem of human life. The most brilliant and civilized nations of the earth worship Him as God, "manifest in the flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory."[124]

Both skeptics and believers of all ages have alike pronounced His name with reverence and respect. Even the flippant, sarcastic soul of Voltaire was awed, softened and subdued by the sweetness of His life and the majesty of His character.[125]

"If the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage," said Rousseau, "the life and death of Jesus are those of a God."[126]

"Jesus of Nazareth," says Carlyle, "our divinest symbol! Higher has the human thought not yet reached. A symbol of quite perennial, infinite character, whose significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made manifest."[127]

"Jesus Christ," says Herder, "is in the noblest and most perfect sense, the realized ideal of humanity."[128]

"He is," says Strauss, "the highest object we can possibly imagine with respect to religion, the Being without whose presence in the mind perfect piety is impossible."[129]

"The Christ of the Gospels," says Renan, "is the most beautiful incarnation of God in the most beautiful of forms. His beauty is eternal; His reign will never end."[130]

Max Nordau betrays secret Jewish pride in Jesus when he says: "Jesus is soul of our soul, even as he is flesh of our flesh. Who, then, could think of excluding him from the people of Israel? St. Peter will remain the only Jew who has said of the Son of David, 'I know not the man.' Putting aside the Messianic mission, this man is ours. He honors our race, and we claim him as we claim the Gospels--flowers of Jewish literature and only Jewish."

"Is it a truth," asks Keim, "or is it nothing but words, when this virtuous God-allied human life is called the noblest blossom of a noble tree, the crown of the cedar of Israel? A full vigorous life in a barren time, a new building among ruins, an erect strong nature among broken ones, a Son of God among the godless and the God-forsaken, one who was joyous, hopeful, generous among those who were mourning and in despair, a freeman among slaves, a saint among sinners--by this contradiction to the facts of the time, by this gigantic exaltation above the depressed uniformity of the century, by this compensation for stagnation, retrogression, and the sickness of death in progress, health, force and color of eternal youth--finally, by the lofty uniqueness of what he achieved, of his purity, of his God-nearness--he produces, even with regard to endless new centuries that have _through him_ been saved from stagnation and retrogression, the impression of mysterious solitariness, superhuman miracle, divine creation."[131]

"Between Him and whoever else in the world," said Napoleon at St. Helena, "there is no possible term of comparison."[132]

Throughout Napoleonic literature two names constantly recur as exhibiting the Corsican's ideals of spiritual and intellectual perfection. These names are those of Jesus Christ and Julius Cæsar. Napoleon's stupendous genius and incomprehensible destiny formed the basis of a secret conviction within his soul that with Jesus and Cæsar displaced, he himself would be the grandest ornament of history. But in the mind of the emperor there was no element of equality or comparison between Jesus and Cæsar. The latter he regarded as the crown and consummation of Roman manhood, the most superb character of the ancient world. The former he believed to be divine.

It was the custom of Napoleon while in exile at St. Helena to converse almost daily about the illustrious men of antiquity and to compare them with himself. On one occasion while talking upon his favorite theme with an officer, one of the companions of his exile, he suddenly stopped and asked: "But can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" In reply, the officer candidly confessed that he had never thought much about the Nazarene. "Well, then," said Napoleon, "I will tell you." The illustrious captive then compared Jesus with the heroes of antiquity and finally with himself. The comparison demonstrated how paltry and contemptible was everything human when viewed in the light of the divine character and sublime achievements of the Man of Nazareth. "I think I understand somewhat of human nature," said Napoleon, "and I tell you all these were men, and I am a man, but not one is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, and myself founded great empires; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions would die for Him."[133]

We have every reason to believe that the homage paid the character of Jesus by Napoleon was not merely the product of his brain, but was also the humble tribute of his heart. When the disasters of the Russian campaign broke upon his fortunes, when "the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves," the iron-hearted, granite-featured man who had "conquered the Alps and had mingled the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags," only laughed and joked. But, while contemplating the life and death of Jesus, he became serious, meditative and humble. And when he came to write his last will and testament, he made this sentence the opening paragraph: "I die in the Roman Catholic Apostolical religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years ago."[134] The Christianity of Napoleon has been questioned. It is respectfully submitted that only an ungenerous criticism will attribute hypocrisy to this final testimony of his religious faith. The imperial courage, the grandeur of character, and the loftiness of life of the greatest of the emperors negative completely the thought of insincerity in a declaration made at a time when every earthly inducement to misrepresentation had passed forever.

But Jesus was not the Christ, the Savior of warrior-kings alone, in the hour of death. On the battlefield of Inkerman an humble soldier fell mortally wounded. He managed to crawl to his tent before he died. When found he was lying face downward with the open Bible beside him. His right hand was glued with his lifeblood to Chapter XI., Verse 25 of St. John. When the hand was lifted, these words, containing the ever-living promise of the Master, could be clearly traced: "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."