Shalom everyone,
The two trials mentioned in the name of the book refer to the Jewish trial of Yeshua before the Sanhedrin, and the Roman one before Pilate. One of the purposes of the book is to contrast the justice of Torah law and the injustice of Roman law – such a theme could never have been expounded in anything written in that time period, let alone survived to the present day.
It is possible that the account of Yeshua’s final week was the very first account of Yeshua’s life to be put together, as a separate tradition from any account of his sayings (that’s why it’s separate in The Exhortations). While the Gospel of John shares nothing in common with the synoptics in terms of what Jesus says, curiously, John follows the same order of narrative as the synoptics when it comes to Jesus’s final week. It suggests that these details were important enough to Yeshua’s early followers for them to be remembered (and therefore, so well known that they couldn’t be changed by John).
In the mid 80s, I spent time in the British Library (the equivalent in the US would be the Library of Congress), studying the process of legal trials in both Roman law and rabbinic Jewish law; I read the entirety of the Tractate Sanhedrin of the Talmud, for example. At the end of it, I came to several conclusions.
First of all, that the writers of the gospels were all familiar with the Roman process of law, and that the accounts of Jesus’s trial before Pilate accurately replicate how a Roman trial is conducted. On the other hand, it is very telling that none of the gospel-writers replicated the process of a Jewish trial before a Sanhedrin; it all seems to be sparse guesswork, even Matthew’s version. I very much doubt that the accounts of either trial are eye-witness accounts, so anything supposedly said at them would merely be speculative or hearsay.
The second thing is the outcome of the two trials. In a Roman trial, the goal was to secure a conviction, especially of a man the Roman governor suspected of terrorism against Roman interests. The portrayal in the gospels of Pilate as a fair man is entirely false, given the known, historical personality of Pilate – he was a sociopath and hated Jews (so you have to ask, if the actions of Pilate portrayed in the gospels are inconsistent with what is known of him, what else in the accounts of the trials is false)?
In a Jewish trial, the overwhelming criterion was that justice should be done (‘Justice, and justice alone, shall you pursue’, Dt 16:20). The second concern was that an innocent person should not be convicted, because to convict an innocent person was a sin against the holiness of God – the innocent person is relying on God’s human-operated justice system to vindicate him/her.
The Israelite mindset was that, any trial conducted under God’s laws, where the judges are meant to be impartial, and the witnesses are under sacred oath not to desecrate God’s Name by lying, then the final verdict is a judgment from God – the rationale is that, if the judgment is just, then the judgment is from YHVH.
A person who is genuinely innocent is relying on God to acquit them, because if instead the human-operated justice system convicts them, and they know they are innocent, then their faith in God is crushed.
There are some supporters of the death penalty who say that it is better to put an innocent person to death, than let a guilty person go free. That is not the Jewish mindset – it would be truly shocking and sacrilegious to a Torah-observant Jew. The overwhelming concern was that innocent blood should not be shed by convicting and executing an innocent person. Ex 23:7 explicitly says, ‘you shall not execute the guiltless or the innocent’.
Why should this be a religious concern? Because the execution of an innocent person brings the stain of blood-guilt upon the holy Land of Israel (cf Dt 21:8-9, 19:10). To put an innocent person to death is therefore a heinous sin against God, who is meant to be the vindicator and liberator of the innocent.
My conclusion, looking at the two mindsets, was that a Jewish trial would have found Yeshua innocent, but a Roman trial would have had no problem finding him guilty, even on a false charge. This has repercussions for those who say that, ‘Jesus was executed for being the messiah, therefore he was the messiah’.
Many Christians think that the crime Yeshua was tried for before the Sanhedrin was for claiming to be the messiah. However, such a claim was not against Jewish law, and was definitely not a capital offence. Furthermore, the Jewish court had no remit, under the Roman Occupation, to put anyone to death. The only ‘crime’ the Sanhedrin could have tried Yeshua on would have been that of being a false prophet, and a Jewish court would have found him innocent. This is the outcome depicted in The Two Trials.
However, before the court of a Roman governor, the crime would have been that of being a messianic claimant against the interests of Rome, and of leading a terrorist insurrection against Roman power. Even though Yeshua was also innocent of this crime too, nevertheless Pilate would have found him guilty – after all, Yeshua was crucified. This is therefore the outcome depicted in the reconstructed account of Yeshua’s trial before Pilate (the whole ‘washing my hands’ thing is likely made up, to excuse Rome of any culpability).
With regard to Caiaphas’s complicity in Yeshua’s Sanhedrin trial, he was a Sadducee, and he did what his Roman masters told him to do. I have no doubt that Pilate pressured Caiaphas into securing a conviction, and I’m sure that’s what he tried to do, but Caiaphas would have been aware of how difficult it would be. It is possible that Caiaphas genuinely believed that Yeshua was a false prophet, but then the Sadducees didn’t believe in prophets at all, only in one final prophet like Moses at the end of time (the entire notion of a messiah was irrelevant to Sadducees).
With regards to what Yeshua might have said at the two trials, we have no eye-witness accounts of either. Some of his supposed words would be hearsay at best.
The execution of Yeshua was unjust, because he was innocent of the crime he was sentenced for. He was not a messiah, which makes the execution a double tragedy.
The Book of the Two Trials is available as a book separate from The Exhortations from Amazon US and Amazon UK.
blessings
Shmuliq