A tradition referred to Papias appears to be allied to the narrative in the Acts rather than to that of Matthew. Œcumenius, quoting the above collector of traditions, says, that Judas, as an awful example of impiety, had his body distended to such a degree, that a space where a chariot could pass was no longer sufficiently wide for him, and that at last being crushed by a chariot, he burst asunder and all his bowels were pressed out.[97] The latter statement doubtless arose from a misconstruction of the ancient legend; for the chariot was not originally brought into immediate contact with the body of Judas, but was merely used as a measure of his size, and this was afterwards erroneously understood as if a chariot in passing had crushed the swollen body of Judas. Hence, not only in Theophylact and in an ancient Scholium,[98] without any distinct reference to Papias, but also in a Catena with an express citation of his εξηγήσεις, we actually find the fact narrated without that addition.[99] The monstrous swelling of Judas, spoken of in this passage, might, it [[668]]is supposed, originally be only an explanation of the displacing and protrusion of the viscera, and in like manner the dropsy into which Theophylact represents him as falling might be regarded as an explanation of this swelling: when, however, in [Ps. cix.], applied in the Acts to Judas, amongst other maledictions, we read: וַתָּבֹא (קְלָלָה) כַּמַּיִם בְּקִרְבּוֹ LXX: εἰσῆλθεν (ἡ κατάρα) ὡσεὶ ὕδωρ εἰς τὰ ἔνκατα αὐτοῦ, so let it (cursing) come into his bowels like water ([v. 18]): it appears possible that the dropsical disease, νόσος ὑδερικὴ, may have been also taken from this passage; as also one of the features in the monstrous description which Papias gives of the condition of Judas, namely, that from the enormous swelling of his eyelids he could no longer see the light of day, might remind us of [v. 23] in the other psalm applied to Judas, where, among the curses this is enumerated: Let their eyes be darkened that they see not, σκοτισθήτωσαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν τοῦ μὴ βλέπειν, a hindrance to sight, which when once the swollen body of Judas was presupposed, must necessarily assume the form of a swelling up of the eyelids. If then the tradition which is allied to the account in [Acts i.] developed its idea of the end of Judas chiefly in correspondence with the ideas presented in these two psalms; and if in that passage of the Acts itself the account of the connexion of Judas with the piece of ground is derived from the same source: it is no farfetched conjecture that what is said in the Acts concerning the end of the betrayer may have had a similar origin. That he died an early death may be historical; but even if not so, in [Psalm cix.] in the very same verse ([v. 8]), which contains the transfer of the office, ἐπισκοπὴ, to another, an early death is predicted for the betrayer in the words: Let his days be few, γενηθήτωσαν αἱ ἡμέραι αὐτοῦ ὀλίγαι, and it might also be believed that the death by falling headlong also was gathered from [Ps. lxix. 22], where it is said: Let their table become a snare before them, γενηθήτω ἡ τράπεζα αὐτῶν—εἰς σκάνδαλον (לִמוֹקֵשׁ).
Thus we scarcely know with certainty concerning Judas even so much as that he came to a violent and untimely death, for if, as was natural, after his departure from the community of Jesus, he retired, so far as the knowledge of its members was concerned, into an obscurity in which all historical information as to his further fate was extinguished: the primitive Christian legend might without hindrance represent as being fulfilled in him all that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament threatened to the false friend of the Son of David, and might even associate the memory of his crime with a well-known desecrated place in the vicinity of Jerusalem.[100] [[669]]
§ 131.
JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD.
According to all the Evangelists it was in the morning when the Jewish magistrates, after having declared Jesus worthy of death,[101] caused him to be led away to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate ([Matt. xxvii. 1 ff.] parall.; [John xviii. 28]). According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was bound preparatory to his being conducted before Pilate, according to [John xviii. 12], immediately on his arrest in the garden; Luke says nothing of his being bound. To this measure of sending him to Pilate they were compelled, according to [John xviii. 31], by the circumstance that the Sanhedrim was deprived of the authority to execute the punishment of death (without the concurrence of the Roman government):[102] but at all events the Jewish rulers must in this instance have been anxious to call in the agency of the Romans, since only their power could afford security against an uproar among the people θόρυβος ἐν τῷ λαῷ, which the former feared as a result of the execution of Jesus during the feast time ([Matt. xxvi. 5] parall.).
Arrived at the Prætorium, the Jews, according to the representation of the fourth gospel, remained without, from fear of Levitical defilement, but Jesus was led into the interior of the building: so that Pilate must alternately have come out when he would speak to the Jews, and have gone in again when he proceeded to question Jesus ([xviii. 28 ff.]). The synoptists in the sequel represent Jesus as in the same locality with Pilate and the Jews, for in them Jesus immediately hears the accusations of the Jews, and answers them in the presence of Pilate. Since they, as well as John, make the condemnation take place in the open air (after the condemnation they represent Jesus as being led into the Prætorium, [Matt. xxvii. 27], and Matthew, like John, [xix. 13], describes Pilate ascending the judgment seat βῆμα, which according to Josephus[103] stood in the open air), without mentioning any change of place in connexion with the trial: they apparently conceived the whole transaction to have passed on the outer place, and supposed, in divergency from John, that Jesus himself was there.
The first question of Pilate to Jesus is according to all the gospels: Art thou the king of the Jews? σὺ εἶ ὁ βασιλεύς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, i.e. the Messiah? In the two first Evangelists this question is not introduced by any accusation on the part of the Jews ([Matt. v. 11]; [Mark v. 2]); in John, Pilate, stepping out [[670]]of the Prætorium, asks the Jews what accusation they have to bring against Jesus ([xviii. 29]), on which they insolently reply: If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto thee: an answer by which they could not expect to facilitate their obtaining from the Roman a ratification of their sentence,[104] but only to embitter him. After Pilate, with surprising mildness, has rejoined that they may take him and judge him according to their law—apparently not supposing a crime involving death—and the Jews have opposed to this permission their inability to administer the punishment of death: the procurator re-enters and addresses to Jesus the definite question: Art thou the king of the Jews? which thus here likewise has no suitable introduction. This is the case only in Luke, who first adduces the accusations of the Sanhedrists against Jesus, that he stirred up the people and encouraged them to refuse tribute to Cæsar, giving himself out to be Christ a king, Χριστὸν βασιλέα ([xxiii. 2]).
If in this manner the narrative of Luke enables us to understand how Pilate could at once put to Jesus the question whether he were the king of the Jews; it leaves us in all the greater darkness as to how Pilate, immediately on the affirmative answer of Jesus, could without any further inquiries declare to the accusers that he found no fault in the accused. He must first have ascertained the grounds or the want of grounds for the charge of exciting the populace, and also have informed himself as to the sense in which Jesus claimed the title of king of the Jews, before he could pronounce the words: I find no fault in this man. In Matthew and Mark, it is true, to the affirmation of Jesus that he is the king of the Jews is added his silence, in opposition to the manifold accusations of the Sanhedrists—a silence which surprises Pilate: and this is not followed by a precise declaration that no fault is to be found in Jesus, but merely by the procurator’s attempt to set Jesus at liberty by coupling him with Barabbas; still what should move him even to this attempt does not appear from the above gospels. On the other hand, this point is sufficiently clear in the fourth gospel. It is certainly surprising that when Pilate asks whether he be really the King of the Jews, Jesus should reply by the counter-question, whether he say this of himself or at the suggestion of another. In an accused person, however conscious of innocence, such a question cannot be held warrantable, and hence it has been sought in every possible way to give the words of Jesus a sense more consonant with propriety: but the question of Jesus is too definite to be a mere repulse of the accusation as absurd,[105] and too indefinite to be regarded as an inquiry, whether the Procurator intended the title βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων in the Roman sense (ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ) or in the Jewish (ἄλλοι σοι εἶπον).[106] And Pilate does not so understand it, but as an unwarrantable question to which it is a mark of his indulgence that he replies;—in the first instance, it is true, with some impatience, by the second counter-question, whether he be a Jew, and thus able of himself to have information concerning a crime so specifically Jewish; but hereupon he good-naturedly adds that it is the Jews and their rulers by whom Jesus has been delivered to him, and that he is therefore at liberty to speak more particularly of the crime which these lay to his charge. Now on this Jesus gives Pilate an answer which, added to the impression of his whole appearance, might certainly induce in the Procurator a conviction of his innocence. He replies, namely, that his kingdom βασιλεία is not of this world ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, and adduces as a proof of this, the peaceful, passive conduct of his adherents on his arrest ([v. 36]). On the further question of Pilate, [[671]]whether, since Jesus has thus ascribed to himself a kingdom, although no earthly one, he then claims to be a king? he replies that certainly he is so, but only in so far as he is born to be a witness to the truth: whereupon follows the famous question of Pilate: What is truth? τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια; Although in this latter reply of Jesus we cannot but be struck by its presenting the peculiar hue of thought which characterizes the author of the fourth gospel, in the use of the idea of truth ἀλήθεια, as we were before surprised at the unwarrantable nature of the counter-question of Jesus; still this account in John renders it conceivable how Pilate could immediately step forth and declare to the Jews that he found no fault in Jesus. But another point might easily create suspicion against this narrative of John. According to him the trial of Jesus went forward in the interior of the Prætorium, which no Jew would venture to enter; who then are we to suppose heard the conversation of the Procurator with Jesus, and was the informant who communicated it to the author of the fourth gospel? The opinion of the older commentators that Jesus himself narrated these conversations to his disciples after the resurrection is renounced as extravagant; the more modern idea that perhaps Pilate himself was the source of the information concerning the trial, is scarcely less improbable, and rather than take refuge, with Lücke, in the supposition that Jesus remained at the entrance of the Prætorium, so that those standing immediately without might with some attention and stillness (?) have heard the conversation, I should prefer appealing to the attendants of the Procurator, who would scarcely be alone with Jesus. Meanwhile it is easily conceivable that we have here a conversation, which owes its origin solely to the Evangelist’s own combination, and in this case we need not bestow so much labour in ascertaining the precise sense of Pilate’s question: what is truth? since this would only be an example of the fourth Evangelist’s favourite form of dialogue, the contrast of profound communications on the part of Jesus, with questions either of misapprehension or of total unintelligence on the part of the hearers, as xii. 34, the Jews ask who is this Son of man? τίς ἐστιν οὗτος ὁ υἱὸς τ. α.? so here Pilate: what is truth? τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια?[107]
Before the introduction of Barabbas, which in all the other Evangelists comes next in order, Luke has an episode peculiar to himself. On the declaration of Pilate that he finds no guilt in the accused, the chief priests and their adherents among the multitude persist in asserting that Jesus stirred up the people by his agency as a teacher from Galilee to Jerusalem: Pilate notices the word Galilee, asks whether the accused be a Galilean, and when this is confirmed, he seizes it as a welcome pretext for ridding himself of the ungrateful business, and sends Jesus to the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, at that time in Jerusalem in observance of the feast; perhaps also designing as a secondary object, what at least was the result, to conciliate the petty prince by this show of respect for his jurisdiction. This measure, it is said, gave great satisfaction to Herod, because having heard much of Jesus, he had long been desirous to see him, in the hope that he would perhaps perform a miracle. The Tetrarch addressed various questions to him, the Sanhedrists urged vehement accusations against him, but Jesus gave no answer; whereupon Herod with his soldiers betook themselves to mockery, and at length, after arraying him in a gorgeous robe, sent him back to Pilate ([xxiii. 4 ff.]). This narrative of Luke’s, whether we consider it in itself or in its relation to the other gospels, has much to astonish us. If Jesus as a Galilean really belonged to the jurisdiction of Herod, as Pilate, by delivering the accused to him, appears to acknowledge: how came Jesus (and the question is equally [[672]]difficult whether we regard him as the sinless Jesus of the orthodox system, or as the one who in the history of the tribute-penny manifested his subjection to the existing authorities) to withhold from him the answer which was his due? and how was it that Herod, without any further procedures, sent him away again from his tribunal? To say, with Olshausen, that the interrogation before Herod had elicited the fact that Jesus was not born in Nazareth and Galilee, but in Bethlehem, and consequently in Judæa, is on the one hand an inadmissible appeal to the history of the birth of Jesus, of the statements in which there is no further trace in the whole subsequent course of Luke’s gospel; and on the other hand, a totally accidental birth in Judæa, such as that represented by Luke, the parents of Jesus, and even Jesus himself, being both before and after resident in Galilee, would not have constituted Jesus a Judæan; but above all we must ask, through whom was the Judæan origin of Jesus brought to light, since it is said of Jesus that he gave no answer, while according to all the information we possess, that origin was totally unknown to the Jews? It would be preferable to explain the silence of Jesus by the unbecoming manner of Herod’s interrogation, which manifested, not the seriousness of the judge, but mere curiosity; and to account for his being sent back to Pilate by the fact, that not only the arrest, but also a part of the ministry of Jesus had occurred within the jurisdiction of Pilate. But why do the rest of the Evangelists say nothing of the entire episode? Especially when the author of the fourth gospel is regarded as the Apostle John, it is not easy to see how this omission can be explained. The common plea, that he supposed the fact sufficiently known from the synoptists, will not serve here, since Luke is the sole Evangelist who narrates the incident, and thus it does not appear to have been very widely spread; the conjecture, that it may probably have appeared to him too unimportant,[108] loses all foundation when it is considered that John does not scorn to mention the leading away to Annas, which nevertheless was equally indecisive; and in general, the narrative of these events in John is, as Schleiermacher himself confesses, so consecutive that it nowhere presents a break in which such an episode could be inserted. Hence even Schleiermacher at last takes refuge in the conjecture that possibly the sending to Herod may have escaped the notice of John, because it happened on an opposite side to that on which the disciple stood, through a back door; and that it came to the knowledge of Luke because his informant had an acquaintance in the household of Herod, as John had in that of Annas: the former conjecture, however, is figuratively as well as literally nothing more than a back door; the latter, a fiction which is but the effort of despair. Certainly if we renounce the presupposition that the author of the fourth gospel was an apostle, we lose the ground of attack against the narrative of Luke, which in any case, since Justin knows of the consignment to Herod,[109] is of very early origin. Nevertheless, first, the silence of the other Evangelists in a portion of their common history, in which, with this exception, there prevails an agreement as to the principal stages in the development of the fate of Jesus; and secondly, the internal difficulties of the narrative, remain so suspicious, that it must still be open to us to conjecture, that the anecdote arose out of the effort to place Jesus before all the tribunals that could possibly be gathered together in Jerusalem; to make every authority not hierarchical, though treating him with ignominy, still either explicitly or tacitly acknowledge his innocence; and to represent him as maintaining his equable demeanour and dignity before all. If this be probable with respect [[673]]to the present narrative, in which the third Evangelist stands alone, a similar conjecture concerning the leading away to Annas, in which we have seen that the fourth Evangelist stands alone, would only be warded off by the circumstance that this scene is not described in detail, and hence presents no internal difficulties.