False Accusers Testify Against Jesus: His Trials

Killing Jesus Required False Witnesses

by Mike Robinson

During the time of Christ, there were three chief categories of testimony according to the Mishnah: irrelevant or useless testimony, a standing testimony, and a satisfactory testimony. The irrelevant testimony was rejected. The standing testimony was accepted if and when it was confirmed. The satisfactory testimony was based on the agreed testimony of two or three witnesses. The testimony collected in the trials of Jesus was inadmissible since it was irrelevant testimony (Mark 14:56).

Jesus had two primary trials (Jewish ecclesiastical and Roman criminal) and numerous legal proceedings within each. The ecclesiastical trial yielded a conviction of blasphemy. The Roman trial never produced a guilty verdict but ended with the death sentence for Christ. Pilate declared that Jesus was innocent (John 18:29-30). Jesus was initially brought to Pilate without formal charges since Rome would not accept a Jewish blasphemy charge for indictment. The elders and Pilate came together together, trying to come up with a charge that would stick—one that was within the jurisdiction of Roman law. They tried various accusations; finally they charged Christ with treason against Caesar and Rome. They misrepresented Christ’s view on taxes and kingship: “We have found this man subverting the nation… He opposes taxes to Caesar … and claims to be a king” (Luke 23:2). Jesus was a target of religious persecution and Roman injustice, but was completely innocent. (see book here). Pilate sentenced Christ to die by crucifixion (John 19:16), even though he declared Him guiltless (Luke 23:14-22).

Christ was executed without a Roman verdict of guilt; nonetheless He was crucified for religious reasons. The Jewish leaders insisted: “We have a law, and according to that law He must die, because He claimed to be the Son of God” (John 19:5-7). Jesus was killed because Temple authorities asserted that He was guilty of blasphemy.  Additional charges were raised because the Jewish leaders knew that Pilate would never approve an execution on a point of religious law. Other charges that fell short of indictment were: Jesus’ threat to destroy the Temple (a misunderstanding of His body metaphor); subverting Caesar; prohibiting the payment of taxes to Rome; inciting rebellion; and claiming to be a king. Perhaps Pilate allowed the unjust sentence to be carried out in fearful deference to Caesar, but, criminally, the chief reason for the crucifixion was not for tax prohibition (Bill O’Reilly) or revolutionary ideas (Reza Aslan). Christ was crucified for blasphemy (John 19:5-7).

Moreover, atonement for sins was the supreme reason for the execution of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53; John 3:15-19; Romans 3:20-26, 4:5; Titus 3:4-7). Jesus died to atone for the sins of men and to set them free.

He who was delivered up because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification (Romans 4:25).

Jesus is the vicarious substitution since He died for our sins on our behalf.  Christ was offered in place of us. Jesus accomplished that which we could simply not.  He vicariously stood in our place and bore our sins on the cross as He made propitiation for our sins.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).

Whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed (Romans 3:25).

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To see fresh insights into the arrest, trial, and killing of Jesus Christ see my new book Killing Christ HERE. It looks at the death of Christ using ancient Jewish and Roman sources. In it, the reader discovers how the story of the killing of Jesus is at once transcendent, historical, and religious, yet true truth.

God's Not Dead book video trailer

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Purchase the book God's Not Dead HERE

see God's Not Dead book video trailer HERE

Responding to Reza Aslan, Author of “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” John Warwick Montgomery

Dr. John Warwick Montgomery of Patrick Henry College

Hear the full audio HERE

also see the book that refutes Aslan: Killing Christ: Contesting Trendy Critics HERE

Book Review: 'Jesus: The Human Face of God,' by Jay Parini.

Book Review: 'Jesus,' by Jay Parini.

By BARTON SWAIM

One of the wonderful qualities of the New Testament's four Gospels is that they force you either to embrace or reject them. You can study the Gospels as "literature" if you like, but their logic subverts any attempt to treat them as you would treat other literary texts. "Hamlet" may reach dizzying heights of sublimity and repay a lifetime of study, but it doesn't ask for radical changes in your thought and behavior and has no power to compel them.

Three centuries of critical New Testament scholarship haven't changed this. The Quest for the Historical Jesus, an attempt to interpret the canonical Gospel texts without reference to supernatural explanations, began with German scholarship in the 18th century, gradually took hold of universities and divinity schools elsewhere in Europe and America during the 19th century, and exploded in popularity during the latter half of the 20th century. Hundreds, probably thousands, of books purporting to explain the identity and intentions of Jesus of Nazareth have been published since the "quest" began in the 1770s; and yet, despite scholars' confident pronouncements about how Jesus went from political revolutionary or peaceable philosopher to Eternal Son of God, the Gospels' claims about him are neither more nor less plausible than they were before [also see]

Skeptical or "critical" New Testament scholarship begins with the assumption that the Gospels' claims about Jesus' miracles and divinity must be false. The denial of the supernatural isn't a conclusion but a prior commitment. Fair enough, but it's not obvious how these accounts came about if they were fictions. Their authors certainly didn't believe they were fictions: Again and again they offer precise details, almost as if to encourage their original readers to verify the stories. In Mark 10, for example, Jesus didn't simply restore sight to a blind man. He restored the sight of " Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, " and it happened in Jericho.

Or take the matter of "Markan priority." If the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) are collections of widely circulated myths about Jesus rather than first- or second-hand accounts, Matthew and Luke must have used the far shorter Mark as the principal source for parallel stories found in all three Synoptic Gospels. But if that's true—and virtually all critical New Testament scholars hold that view—why do Luke and Matthew frequently use identical phrasing that Mark doesn't use?

The point here isn't that the Gospels must be true. It is that the Gospels offer no easy way to explain away their content. They therefore demand one of two choices. Either they relay things that Jesus actually said and did, in which case he really is who the New Testament claims he is, or they are haphazard collections of deliberately fabricated stories about a man who may have said some extraordinary things in first-century Judea but who has no more claim on your attention than Socrates.

C.S. Lewis, among others, made a similar argument about Jesus' self-descriptions: "Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse." And while that argument has often been dismissed on the grounds that it assumes all the Gospels' quotations of Jesus to be authentic, its logic applies with equal or greater force to the four Gospel texts themselves. Either they are true or they are collections of precious fables. There is no third option. They cannot be somehow factually false but metaphorically true—the human mind rightly rejects that kind of reasoning as highfalutin cant.

This point is powerfully made by Jay Parini's "Jesus," although Mr. Parini didn't intend to make that point at all.

Instead of "demythologizing" Jesus, to use the German scholar Rudolf Bultmann's term, Mr. Parini sets out to "remythologize" him by reviving the sense of sacredness and "mythos" stripped from the Gospel narratives by prior scholarship. "The work of reading here . . . ," explains Mr. Parini—a well-regarded critic and biographer—"is one of . . . finding its symbolic contours while not discounting the genuine heft of the literal tale." Perhaps sensing a lack of clarity, he continues the explanation in an endnote: "I'm not so much contradicting Bultmann's idea of demythologization as putting the emphasis more firmly on the balance between literal and figurative readings, while stressing the fictive aspect: the shaping spirit of the gospel narratives." ... read full post HERE
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Don't miss my book that defends the truth about Jesus from the Gospels - Killing Christ: Contesting Trendy Critics Regarding the Death & Resurrection of Jesus HERE