XIX. THE TRIAL BEFORE THE SANHEDRIN AND THE CONVICTION XX. THE HEARING AND ACQUITTAL BEFORE THE CONDEMNATION XXI. THE CRUCIFIXION 228 232 248 Jesus The Man INTRODUCTION Jesus of Nazareth is not merely the object of reverence of the greatest religion in the world; he is also a figure of universal history. His activities, it is true, were confined to a small area and involved in immediate contact only a comparatively limited number of people, but they were important enough to win for him a paragraph in the pages of the greatest of Roman historians. Tacitus in a passage the authenticity of which is beyond question, confirms the historicity and the importance of this great Jew. "Auctor nominis eius, Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat.' If there were no Christian records whatever, we should still be informed that a man called Christus lived in Judea in the days of Tiberius the Emperor; that he did something of sufficient importance to call him to the attention of the governor of that province; and that he was put to death at the order of that governor, Pontius Pilate. This in itself is real accomplishment; to rise out of the oblivion which enshrouds the millions of his contemporaries 'Annal. XV, 44. and achieve the immortality of these few lines makes him one of the few remarkable men of his time, even if the religion built about his personality and his life and death had not enshrined him in the souls of ten thousand millions since then. Hundreds of studies of the life of this man have been made, many of them by the greatest minds of our race. Such studies, for the most part,—it is perhaps justifiable to say almost exclusively,-have had for their dominant motive a religious interest. Considering the supreme place in the religious consciousness of our race which is occupied by the theology constructed around him, this is neither strange nor unjustified. Yet such studies do not exhaust the subject. As an historical personage he is also a strictly historical problem. It is entirely reasonable for the pure historian, starting from that statement of Tacitus, to inquire what manner of man was this, and what deeds did he perform which caused Pontius Pilate to inflict upon him the extreme penalty; and to make that inquiry entirely apart from any theological consideration whatever. Such inquiry, however, need not be contradictory to any sound theology. The day of the Docetists is past. Those who accept Jesus as very God also look upon him as very man, who lived a truly human life. Leaving the divine side to the theologians, it is proper and reasonable for the historian, out of such materials as are available, to attempt to construct as far as may be done, the actual human life of this great man; not merely a life such as will fit snugly |
