The Trial of Jesus by the High Council of the Jews : A True Narration from A Non-Biblical Source !

It was about half past three o’clock this Friday morning when the chief priest, Caiaphas, called the Sanhedrist court (the Supreme Judicial Council of the Jews during the ancient Roman Empire period) of inquiry to order and asked that Jesus be brought before them for his formal trial. On three previous occasions the Sanhedrin, by a large majority vote, had decreed the death of Jesus, had decided that he was worthy of death on informal charges of lawbreaking, blasphemy, and flouting the traditions of the fathers of Israel.

Ordinarily, the Jews, when trying a man on a capital charge, proceeded with great caution and provided every safeguard of fairness in the selection of witnesses and the entire conduct of the trial. But on this occasion, Caiaphas was more of a prosecutor than an unbiased judge.

Jesus appeared before this court clothed in his usual garments and with his hands bound together behind his back. The entire court was startled and somewhat confused by his majestic appearance. Never had they gazed upon such a prisoner nor witnessed such composure in a man on trial for his life.

The Jewish law required that at least two witnesses must agree upon any point before a charge could be laid against the prisoner. Judas could not be used as a witness against Jesus because the Jewish law specifically forbade the testimony of a traitor. More than a score of false witnesses were on hand to testify against Jesus, but their testimony was so contradictory and so evidently trumped up that the Sanhedrists themselves were very much ashamed of the performance. Jesus stood there, looking down benignly upon these perjurers, and his very countenance disconcerted the lying witnesses.

Throughout all this false testimony the Master never said a word; he made no reply to their many false accusations.

The first time any two of their witnesses approached even the semblance of an agreement was when two men testified that they had heard Jesus say in the course of one of his temple discourses that he would “destroy this temple made with hands and in three days make another temple without hands.”

That was not exactly what Jesus said, regardless of the fact that he pointed to his own body when he made the remark referred to.

Although the high priest shouted at Jesus,

“Do you not answer any of these charges?” Jesus opened not his mouth.

He stood there in silence while all of these false witnesses gave their testimony. Hatred, fanaticism, and unscrupulous exaggeration so characterized the words of these perjurers that their testimony fell in its own entanglements. The very best refutation of their false accusations was the Master’s (Jesus') calm and majestic silence.

Shortly after the beginning of the testimony of the false witnesses, Annas (High Priest and Father-in-law of Caiaphas) arrived and took his seat beside Caiaphas.

Annas now arose and argued that this threat of Jesus to destroy the temple was sufficient to warrant three charges against him:

1. That he was a dangerous traducer of the people. That he taught them impossible things and otherwise deceived them.
2. That he was a fanatical revolutionist in that he advocated laying violent hands on the sacred temple, else how could he destroy it?
3. That he taught magic inasmuch as he promised to build a new temple, and that without hands.

Already had the full Sanhedrin agreed that Jesus was guilty of death-deserving transgressions of the Jewish laws, but they were now more concerned with developing charges regarding his conduct and teachings which would justify Pilate (the then Roman Governor of the Jewish province) in pronouncing the death sentence upon their prisoner.

They knew that they must secure the consent of the Roman governor before Jesus could legally be put to death. And Annas was minded to proceed along the line of making it appear that Jesus was a dangerous teacher to be abroad among the people.

But Caiaphas could not longer endure the sight of the Master standing there in perfect composure and unbroken silence.

He thought he knew at least one way in which the prisoner might be induced to speak.

Accordingly, he rushed over to the side of Jesus and, shaking his accusing finger in the Master’s face, said:

“I adjure you, in the name of the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Deliverer, the Son of God.”

Jesus answered Caiaphas:

“I am. Soon I go to the Father, and presently shall the Son of Man be clothed with power and once more reign over the hosts of heaven.”

When the high priest heard Jesus utter these words, he was exceedingly angry, and rending his outer garments, he exclaimed:

“What further need have we of witnesses? Behold, now have you all heard this man’s blasphemy. What do you now think should be done with this lawbreaker and blasphemer?”

And they all answered in unison, “He is worthy of death; let him be crucified.”

Jesus manifested no interest in any question asked him when before Annas or the Sanhedrists except the one question relative to his bestowal mission.

When asked if he were the Son of God, he instantly and unequivocally answered in the affirmative.

Annas desired that the trial proceed further, and that charges of a definite nature regarding Jesus’ relation to the Roman law and Roman institutions be formulated for subsequent presentation to Pilate.

The councilors were anxious to carry these matters to a speedy termination, not only because it was the preparation day for the Passover and no secular work should be done after noon, but also because they feared Pilate might any time return to the Roman capital of Judea, Caesarea, since he was in Jerusalem only for the Passover celebration.

But Annas did not succeed in keeping control of the court. After Jesus had so unexpectedly answered Caiaphas, the high priest stepped forward and smote him in the face with his hand. Annas was truly shocked as the other members of the court, in passing out of the room, spit in Jesus’ face, and many of them mockingly slapped him with the palms of their hands.

And thus in disorder and with such unheard-of confusion this first session of the Sanhedrist trial of Jesus ended at half past four o’clock.

Thirty prejudiced and tradition-blinded false judges, with their false witnesses, are presuming to sit in judgment on the righteous Creator of a universe.

And these impassioned accusers are exasperated by the majestic silence and superb bearing of this God-man.

His silence is terrible to endure; his speech is fearlessly defiant.

He is unmoved by their threats and undaunted by their assaults.

Man sits in judgment on God, but even then he loves them and would save them if he could.

The Jewish law required that, in the matter of passing the death sentence, there should be two sessions of the court. This second session was to be held on the day following the first, and the intervening time was to be spent in fasting and mourning by the members of the court.

But these men could not await the next day for the confirmation of their decision that Jesus must die.

They waited only one hour.

In the meantime Jesus was left in the audience chamber in the custody of the temple guards, who, with the servants of the high priest, amused themselves by heaping every sort of indignity upon the Son of Man.

They mocked him, spit upon him, and cruelly buffeted him.

They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say,

“Prophesy to us, you the Deliverer, who it was that struck you.”

And thus they went on for one full hour, reviling and mistreating this unresisting man of Galilee.

During this tragic hour of suffering and mock trials before the ignorant and unfeeling guards and servants, John Zebedee waited in lonely terror in an adjoining room. When these abuses first started, Jesus indicated to John, by a nod of his head, that he should retire. The Master well knew that, if he permitted his apostle to remain in the room to witness these indignities, John’s resentment would be so aroused as to produce such an outbreak of protesting indignation as would probably result in his death.

Throughout this awful hour Jesus uttered no word.

To this gentle and sensitive soul of humankind, joined in personality relationship with the God of all this universe, there was no more bitter portion of his cup of humiliation than this terrible hour at the mercy of these ignorant and cruel guards and servants, who had been stimulated to abuse him by the example of the members of this so-called Sanhedrist court.

The human heart cannot possibly conceive of the shudder of indignation that swept out over a vast universe as the celestial intelligences witnessed this sight of their beloved Sovereign submitting himself to the will of his ignorant and misguided creatures on the sin-darkened sphere of unfortunate Urantia (earth).

What is this trait of the animal in man which leads him to want to insult and physically assault that which he cannot spiritually attain or intellectually achieve?

In the half-civilized man there still lurks an evil brutality which seeks to vent itself upon those who are superior in wisdom and spiritual attainment.

Witness the evil coarseness and the brutal ferocity of these supposedly civilized men as they derived a certain form of animal pleasure from this physical attack upon the unresisting Son of Man.

As these insults, taunts, and blows fell upon Jesus, he was undefending but not defenseless. Jesus was not vanquished, merely uncontending in the material sense.

These are the moments of the Master’s greatest victories in all his long and eventful career as maker, upholder, and savior of a vast and far-flung universe.

Having lived to the full a life of revealing God to man, Jesus is now engaged in making a new and unprecedented revelation of man to God.

Jesus is now revealing to the worlds the final triumph over all fears of creature personality isolation.

The Son of Man has finally achieved the realization of identity as the Son of God.

Jesus does not hesitate to assert that he and the Father are one; and on the basis of the fact and truth of that supreme and supernal experience, he admonishes every kingdom believer to become one with him even as he and his Father are one.

The living experience in the religion of Jesus thus becomes the sure and certain technique whereby the spiritually isolated and cosmically lonely mortals of earth are enabled to escape personality isolation, with all its consequences of fear and associated feelings of helplessness.

In the fraternal realities of the kingdom of heaven the faith sons of God find final deliverance from the isolation of the self, both personal and planetary.

The God-knowing believer increasingly experiences the ecstasy and grandeur of spiritual socialization on a universe scale—citizenship on high in association with the eternal realization of the divine destiny of perfection attainment.

[True narration as told by the invisible authors of the Urantia Book and quoted from it. To know more about it visit urantia-India website. Reproduced for those interested in knowing the details and meaning of the passion of Jesus Christ while the Christians observe the lent season of fasting and prayers in this year, 2013]

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