CSI Jerusalem...The Kangaroos Assemble

We continue our investigation into the crime scene of the murder of Jesus. We have seen his arrest in the garden. That is where our investigation continues....

Christ was taken from Gethsemane directly to Annas, the former high priest, who still wielded the power of the high priest’s office (John 18:13). Annas had Him bound and sent Him to the home of Caiaphas, his son-in-law, who was the official high priest at the time (v. 24). Caiaphas convened a hasty meeting of the Sanhedrin, and Christ was immediately put on trial in the middle of the night. The charges against Him were trumped up, and the witnesses against Him were bribed. The entire trial was a complete mockery of justice. By all the biblical standards that were supposed to govern the dispensation of justice in Israel, the trial was illegal and its verdict unjust.

The fundamental standards of justice in Israel were established by the divine law given to Moses. The system of justice God had established in Israel was designed to ensure maximum fairness and to encourage mercy. In fact, the standards of Moses’ law when instituted were a dramatic advancement in civil and criminal justice. Moses’ system was far and away superior to any of the Canaanite standards. It was also more advanced and more equitable than the Egyptian justice system. In fact, the standards established by the Mosaic law are the whole basis of our modern notions of justice.

Deuteronomy 16:18–20 set forth the basic principles of jurisprudence in Israel:

You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment. You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. You shall follow what is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

In the Old Testament era, local courts were managed by local authorities. Justice was both swift and fair, because it was administered within the community by both the leaders and the people of the community. Israel was a theocracy, with God as King mediating His rule through the revelation of His Word. Under that theocratic government, civil law and religious law were inextricably intertwined, so that those with the most expertise in Scripture were deemed legal experts.

When the New Testament uses the term “lawyers,” it is speaking of men who were Old Testament scholars, experts in Moses’ law. The civil justice system was therefore governed first of all by biblical principles.

Sometime after the Babylonian Captivity, probably during the Maccabean period (between the Old and New Testaments), the Great Sanhedrin was established in Jerusalem as the highest court in Israel. (There were smaller groups also called Sanhedrin that functioned as courts in many local communities, but the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem served as Israel’s Supreme Court.) The Great Sanhedrin was patterned after the council of elders Moses convened in Numbers 11:16: “The Lord said to Moses: “Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you.” Those seventy men, plus Moses, formed a council of seventy-one elders whose job it was to govern the Israelites in the wilderness.

Since Moses’ council of elders was the pattern for the Sanhedrin, that council also numbered seventy-one—comprised of twenty-four chief priests (the heads of the twenty-four priestly divisions) plus forty-six more elders chosen from among the scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. The high priest was both the overseer and a voting member of the Sanhedrin, bringing the number to seventy-one. (The odd number ensured that decisions could be reached by majority vote.)

By Jesus’ time, the Sanhedrin had become a corrupt and politically motivated body. Appointment to the council could be bought with political favors and sometimes even with money. Favoritism and partisanship were therefore rife, and political expediency often determined who rose to power or fell from it within the Sanhedrin. Rome exercised ultimate control over the high priesthood, because Rome could appoint or depose the high priest. Both the high priest and the ruling priests of the temple were all Sadducees, who openly denied the supernatural elements of the Old Testament. Constant political tensions seethed between the various factions of the Sanhedrin, the people of Israel, Rome, and Herod. Therefore the Sanhedrin often made decisions that were politically motivated. In fact, aside from their obvious religious animosity to the teaching of Christ, sheer political expediency was the motive for conspiring to carry out the arrest and crucifixion of Christ (John 11:47–53).