The death of Jesus is universally regarded among Christians as a cruel murder, perpetrated under the pretence of a legal sentence, after a trial, in which the forms of law were essentially and grossly violated. The Jews to this day maintain, that, whatever were the merits of the case, the trial was at least regular, and the sentence legally just; that he was accused of blasphemy, and convicted of that offence by legal evidence. The question between them involves two distinct points of inquiry, namely, first, whether he was guilty of blasphemy; and, secondly, whether the arraignment and trial were conducted in the ordinary forms of law. But there will still remain a third question, namely, whether, admitting that, as a mere man, he had violated the law against blasphemy, he could legally be put to death for that cause; and if not, then whether he was justly condemned upon the new and supplemental accusation of treason or of sedition, which was vehemently urged against him. The first and last of these inquiries it is proposed briefly to pursue; but it will be necessary previously to understand the light in which he was regarded by the Jewish rulers and people, the state of their criminal jurisprudence and course of proceeding, and especially the nature and extent of the law concerning blasphemy, upon which he was indicted.
In the early period of the ministry of Jesus, he does not appear to have excited among the Pharisees any emotion but wonder and astonishment, and an intense interest respecting the nature of his mission. But the people heard him with increasing avidity, and followed him in countless throngs. He taught a purer religion than the Scribes and Pharisees, whose pride and corruption he boldly denounced. He preached charity [pg 508] and humility, and perfect holiness of heart and life, as essential to the favour of God, whose laws he expounded in all the depth of their spirituality, in opposition to the traditions of the elders, and the false glosses of the Scribes and Pharisees. These sects he boldly charged with making void and rejecting the law of God, and enslaving men by their traditions; he accused them of hypocrisy, covetousness, oppression, and lust of power and popularity; and denounced them as hinderers of the salvation of others, as a generation of serpents and vipers, doomed to final perdition. It was natural that these terrific denunciations, from such a personage, supported by his growing power and the increasing acclamations of the people, should alarm the partisans of the ancient theocracy, and lead them to desire his destruction. This alarm evidently increased with the progress of his ministry; and was greatly heightened by the raising of Lazarus from the dead, on which occasion the death of Jesus was definitively resolved on;[324] but no active measures against him seem to have been attempted, until the time when, under the parable of the wicked husbandmen who cast the heir out of the vineyard and slew him, he declared that the kingdom of God should be taken from them, and given to others more worthy. Perceiving that he spake this parable against them, from that hour they sought to lay hands on him, and were restrained only by fear of the popular indignation.[325]
Having thus determined to destroy Jesus at all events, as a person whose very existence was fatal to their own power, and perhaps, in their view, to the safety of their nation, the first step was to render him odious to the people; without which the design would undoubtedly recoil on the heads of its contrivers, his popularity being unbounded. Countless numbers had received the benefit of his miraculous gifts; and it was therefore deemed a vain attempt to found an accusation, at that time, on any past transaction of his life. A new occasion was accordingly sought, by endeavouring to “entangle him in his talk;” a measure, planned and conducted with consummate cunning and skill. The Jews were divided into two political parties. [pg 509] One of these consisted of the Pharisees, who held it unlawful to acknowledge or pay tribute to the Roman emperor, because they were forbidden, by the law of Moses,[326] to set a king over them who was a stranger, and not one of their own countrymen. The other party was composed of the partisans of Herod, who understood this law to forbid only the voluntary election of a stranger, and therefore esteemed it not unlawful to submit and pay tribute to a conqueror. These two parties, though bitterly opposed to each other, united in the attempt to entrap Jesus, by the question,—“Is it lawful to give tribute to Cæsar, or not?”[327] If he answered in the negative, the Herodians were to accuse him to Pilate, for treason; if in the affirmative, the Pharisees would denounce him to the people, as an enemy to their liberties.[328] This insidious design was signally frustrated by the wisdom of his reply, when, referring to Cæsar's image and legend, on the coins which they all received as legally current, he showed the inconsistency of withholding the honour due to one thus implicitly acknowledged by both parties to be their lawful sovereign.
Defeated in this attempt to commit him politically, their next endeavour was to render him obnoxious to one or the other of the two great religious sects, which were divided upon the doctrine of the resurrection, the Pharisees affirming, and the Sadducees denying, that the dead would rise again. The latter he easily silenced, by a striking exposition of their own law. They asked him which, of several husbands, would be entitled in the next world to the wife whom they successively had married in this; and in reply, he showed them that in heaven the relation of husband and wife was unknown.[329]
Their last trial was made by a lawyer, who sought to entrap him into an assertion that one commandment in the law was greater than another; a design rendered abortive by his reply that they were all of equal obligation.[330]
It being apparent, from these successive defeats, that any [pg 510] farther attempt to find new matter of accusation would result only in disgrace to themselves, the enemies of Jesus seem to have come to the determination to secure his person secretly, and afterwards to put him to death, in any manner that would not render them odious to the people. In execution of this design, they first bribed Judas to betray him by night into their hands. This object being attained, the next step was to destroy his reputation, and if possible to render him so vile in the public estimation, as that his destruction would be regarded with complacency. Now no charge could so surely produce this effect, and none could so plausibly be preferred against him, as that of blasphemy; a crime which the Jews regarded with peculiar horror. Even their veneration of Jesus, and the awe which his presence inspired, had not been sufficient to restrain their rising indignation on several occasions, when they regarded his language as the blasphemous arrogation of a divine character and power to himself; and could they now be brought to believe him a blasphemer, and see him legally convicted of this atrocious crime, his destruction might easily be brought about, without any very scrupulous regard to the form, and even with honour to those by whom it might be accomplished.
It will now be necessary to consider more particularly the nature of the crime of blasphemy, in its larger signification, as it may be deduced from the law of God. That the spirit of this law requires from all men, everywhere, and at all times, the profoundest veneration of the Supreme Being, and the most submissive acknowledgment of Him as their rightful Sovereign, is too plain to require argument. If proof were wanted, it is abundantly furnished in the Decalogue,[331] which is admitted [pg 511] among Christians to be of universal obligation. At the time when the Jewish Theocracy was established, idolatry had become generally prevalent, and men had nearly lost all just notions of the nature and attributes of their Creator. It is therefore supposed that the design of Jehovah, in forming the Jewish constitution and code of laws, was to preserve the knowledge of himself as the true God, and to retain that people in the strictest possible allegiance to him alone; totally excluding every acknowledgment of any other being, either as an object of worship or a source of power. Hence the severity with which he required that sorceries, divinations, witchcrafts and false prophecies, as well as open idolatries, should be punished, they being alike acts of treason, or, as we might say, of præmunire, amounting to the open acknowledgment of a power independent of Jehovah. Hence, too, the great veneration in which he commanded that his name and attributes should be held, even in ordinary conversation. It is the breach of this last law, to which the term blasphemy, in its more restricted sense, has usually been applied;[332] but originally the command evidently extended to every word or act, directly in derogation of the sovereignty of Jehovah, such as speaking in the name of another god,[333] or omitting, on any occasion that required it, to give to [pg 512] Jehovah the honour due to his own name.[334] Thus, when Moses and Aaron, at the command of God, smote the rock in Kadesh, that from it waters might flow to refresh the famishing multitude, but neglected to honour him as the source of the miraculous energy, and arrogated it to themselves, saying, “Hear now, ye rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?”[335] this omission drew on them his severe displeasure. “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.” Accordingly, both Moses and Aaron died before the Israelites entered into the promised land.[336] No other deity was permitted to be invoked; no miracle must be wrought, but in the name of God alone. “I am Jehovah; that is my name; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.”[337] This was ever a cardinal principle of his law, neither newly announced by Isaiah, nor by Moses. Its promulgation on Mount Sinai was merely declaratory of what had been well understood at the beginning, namely, that God alone was the Lord of all power and might, and would be expressly acknowledged as such, in every exertion of superhuman energy or wisdom. Thus Joseph, when required to interpret the dream of Pharaoh, replied, “It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.”[338] And Moses, in all the miracles previously [pg 513] wrought by him in Egypt, expressly denounced them as the judgments of God, by whose hand alone they were inflicted.[339] After the solemn re-enactment of this law on Mount Sinai, its signal violation by Moses and Aaron deserved to be made as signal an example of warning; and this judgment of Jehovah may be said to constitute the leading case under this article of the law; forming a rule of action and of judgment for all cases of miracles which might be wrought in all coming time. The same principle was afterwards expressly extended to prophesying. “The prophet—that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.”[340] His character of prophet, and even his inspiration, shall not authorize him to prophesy but in the name of the Lord. He shall not exercise his office in his own name, nor in any name but that of Jehovah, from whom his power was derived.
That such was understood to be the true meaning of this law of God, is further evident from the practice of the prophets, in later times, to whom was given the power of working miracles. These they always wrought in his name, expressly acknowledged at the time. Thus, the miracle of thunder and rain in the season of the wheat-harvest, called for by Samuel, he expressly attributed to the Lord.[341] So did Elijah, when he called fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice, in refutation of the claims of Baal.[342] So did Elisha, when he divided the waters of Jordan, by smiting them with the mantle of Elijah;[343] and again, when he miraculously multiplied the loaves of bread, for the people that were with him;[344] and again, when he caused the young man's eyes to be opened, that he might behold the hosts of the Lord around him, and smote his enemies with blindness.[345] [pg 514] And even the angel Gabriel, when sent to interpret to Daniel the things which should befall his people in the latter days, explicitly announced himself as speaking in Jehovah's name.[346]
The same view of the sinfulness of exercising superhuman power without an express acknowledgment of God as its author, and of any usurpation of his authority, continued to prevail, down to the time of our Saviour. Thus, when he said to the sick of the palsy, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee,” certain of the Scribes said within themselves, “This man blasphemeth. Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”[347] And again, when the Jews, on another occasion, took up stones to stone him, and Jesus, appealing to his good works done among them, asked for which of them he was to be stoned; they replied, “For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.”[348] Yet Jesus had on no occasion mentioned the name of Jehovah, but with profound reverence.
Thus it appears that the law of blasphemy, as it was understood among the Jews, extended not only to the offence of impiously using the name of the Supreme Being, but to every usurpation of his authority, or arrogation, by a created being, of the honour and power belonging to him alone.[349] Like the crime of treason among men, its essence consisted in acknowledging or setting up the authority of another sovereign than [pg 515] one's own, or invading the powers pertaining exclusively to him; an offence, of which the case of Moses, before cited, is a prominent instance, both in its circumstances and in its punishment. Whether a false god was acknowledged or the true one denied, and whether the denial was in express terms, or by implication, in assuming to do, by underived power, and in one's own name, that which God only could perform, the offence was essentially the same. And in such horror was it held by the Israelites, that in token of it every one was obliged, by an early and universal custom, to rend his garments, whenever it was committed or related in his presence.[350] This sentiment was deeply felt by the whole people, as a part of their religion.