CHAPTER XI
LEGAL ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY OF THE ROMAN TRIAL OF JESUS
IN the preceding pages of this volume we have considered the elements of both Law and Fact as related to the Roman trial of Jesus. Involved in this consideration were the powers and duties of Pilate as procurator of Judea and as presiding judge at the trial; general principles of Roman provincial administration at the time of Christ; the legal and political status of the subject Jew in his relationship to the conquering Roman; the exact requirements of criminal procedure in Roman capital trials at Rome and in the provinces at the date of the crucifixion; the Roman law applicable to the trial of Jesus; and the facts of said trial before Pilate and Herod.
We are now in a position to analyze the case from the view point of the juristic agreement or nonagreement of Law and Fact; and to determine by a process of judicial dissection and re-formation, the presence or absence of essential legal elements in the proceedings. We have learned what should have been done by Pilate acting as a Roman judge in a criminal matter involving the life of a prisoner. We have also ascertained what he actually did. We are thus enabled to compare the requirements with the actualities of the case; and to ascertain the resemblances in the proceedings against Jesus to a legally conducted trial under Roman law.
But, in making this summary and analysis, a most important consideration must be constantly held in mind: that, in matters of review on appeal, errors will not be presumed; that is, errors will not be considered that do not appear affirmatively upon the record. The law will rather presume and the court will assume that what should have been done, was done. In conformity with this principle, the presumption must be indulged that Pilate acted in strict obedience to the requirements of Roman law in trying Jesus, unless the Gospels of the New Testament, which constitute the record in the case, either affirmatively or by reasonable inference, disclose the absence of such obedience. A failure to note this presumption and to keep this principle in mind, has caused many writers upon this subject to make erroneous statements concerning the merits and legal aspects of the trial of Christ.
Laymen frequently assert the essential principle of this presumption without seeming to be aware of it. Both Keim and Geikie declare that assessors or assistants were associated with Pilate in the trial of Jesus. The Gospel records nowhere even intimate such a thing; and no other original records are in existence to furnish such information. And yet one of the most celebrated of the biblical critics, Dr. Theodor Keim, writing on the trial of Christ by Pilate, says: "Beside him, upon benches, were the council or the assessors of the court, sub-officials, friends, Roman citizens, whose presence could not be dispensed with, and who were not wanting to the procurators of Judea, although our reports do not mention them."[109] To the same effect, Dr. Cunningham Geikie thus writes: "The assessors of the court—Roman citizens—who acted as nominal members of the judicial bench, sit beside Pilate—for Roman law required their presence."[110]
These statements of the renowned writers just quoted are justified not only on the ground of logical historical inference, but also on the principle of actual legal presumption. The closest scrutiny of the New Testament narratives nowhere discovers even an intimation that a bench of judges helped Pilate to conduct the trial of Jesus. And yet, as Geikie says, "Roman law required their presence," and the legal presumption is that they were in and about the Prætorium ready to lend assistance, and that they actually took part in the proceedings. This inference is strengthened by the fact that Pilate, after he had learned the nature of the accusation against Jesus, called Him into the palace to examine Him. Why did Pilate do this? Why did he not examine the prisoner in the presence of His accusers in the open air? Geikie tells us that there was a judgment hall in the palace in which trials were usually conducted.[111] Is it not possible, nay probable, that the assessors and Pilate were assembled at an early hour in this hall to hear the usual criminal charges of the day, or, perhaps, to try the accusation against Jesus, of whose appearance before them they had been previously notified; and that, when the governor heard that the religious scruples of the Jews would not permit them to enter the judgment hall during the Passover feast, he went out alone to hear the accusation against the prisoner; and that he then returned with the accused into the hall where the bench of judges were awaiting him, to lay before them the charges and to further examine the case? It is admitted that this theory and the statement of Geikie that there was a hall in the palace where trials were generally held, are seemingly refuted by the fact that Roman trials were almost always conducted in the open air. But this was not invariably true; and the case of Pilate and his court might have been an exception.
It has been sought to lay particular stress upon the doctrine of legal presumption that what should have been done, was done, unless the record affirmatively negatives the fact, because it is impossible to appreciate fully the legal aspects of the trial of Jesus, unless this doctrine is understood and kept constantly in view.