Part 4 (1/2)

[2] An eloquent account in Keim (vi., p. 80, English tr.), who gives the authorities: ”in part a tyrant's stronghold, and in part a fairy pleasure-house.”

[3] Acts xviii. 14-16.

[4] _ethnos_, not _laos_: they were speaking to a heathen.

[5] Keim calls it ”a very flagrant lie.”

[6] ”Socrates, quum omnium sapientissime sanctissimeque vixisset, ita in judicio capitis pro se dixit, ut non supplex aut reus, sed magister aut dominus videretur judic.u.m.”--CICERO.

CHAPTER V.

JESUS AND HEROD

Pilate had tried Jesus and found Him innocent; and so he frankly told the members of the Sanhedrim, thereby reversing their sentence. What ought to have followed? Of course Jesus ought to have been released and, if necessary, protected from the feeling of the Jews.

Why was this not what happened? An incident in the life of Pilate, narrated by a secular historian, may best explain. Some years before the trial of Jesus, Pilate, newly settled in the position of governor of Judaea, resolved to remove the headquarters of the Roman army from Caesarea to Jerusalem; and the soldiers entered the Holy City with their standards, each of which bore the image of the emperor. To the Jewish mind these images were idolatrous, and their presence in Jerusalem was looked upon as a gross insult and desecration. The foremost men of the city poured down to Caesarea, where Pilate was staying, and besought him to remove them. He refused, and for five days the discussion went on. At length he was so irritated that he ordered them to be surrounded by soldiers, and threatened to have them put to death unless they became silent and dispersed. They, however, in no way dismayed, threw themselves on the ground and laid bare their necks, crying that they would rather die than have their city defiled.

And the upshot was that Pilate had to yield, and the army was withdrawn from Jerusalem.[1]

Such was the governor, and such were the people with whom he had to deal. He was no match for them, when their hearts were set on anything and their religious prejudices roused. In the present case they did with him exactly as they had done on that early occasion. He declared Jesus innocent, and thereupon the trial ought to have been at an end.

But they raised an angry clamour--”they were the more fierce,” says St.

Luke--and began to pour out new accusations against the Prisoner.

Pilate had not nerve enough to resist. He weakly turned to Jesus Himself, asking, ”Hearest Thou not what these witness against Thee?”

But Jesus ”answered to him never a word.” He would not, by a single syllable, give sanction to any prolongation of the proceedings: ”insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.” Fl.u.s.tered and irresolute himself, he could not comprehend this majestic composure.

The stake of Jesus in the proceedings was nothing less than His life; yet He was the only calm person in the whole a.s.semblage.

Suddenly, however, amidst the confusion a way of escape from his embarra.s.sing situation seemed to open to Pilate. They were crying, ”He stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry, beginning from Galilee to this place.” The mention of Galilee was intended to excite prejudice against Jesus, because Galilee was noted as a hotbed of insurrection. But it set agoing a different train of thought in the mind of Pilate, who asked anxiously if He was a Galilean. It had flashed upon him that Herod, the ruler of Galilee, was in the city at the time, having come for the Pa.s.sover celebration; and, as it was not an unusual procedure in Roman law to transfer a prisoner from the territory where he had been arrested to his place of origin or of domicile, it seemed to him a happy inspiration to send Jesus to be tried by the ruler of the province to which He belonged, and so get rid altogether of the case.[2] He acted at once on this idea; and, under the escort of Pilate's soldiers, Jesus and His accusers were sent away to the ancient palace of the Maccabees, in which Herod used to reside on his visits to the Holy City.

Thus was Jesus, on this day of shame, tossed, like a ball, from hand to hand--from Annas to Caiaphas, from Caiaphas to Pilate, from Pilate to Herod, with more to follow; and these weary marches[3] in chains and in the custody of the officers of justice, with His persecutors about Him, are not to be forgotten in the catalogue of His sufferings.

I.

There are several Herods mentioned in the New Testament, and it must be made clear which of them this was.

The first of them was he who slew the babes of Bethlehem, when the infant Saviour was carried away to Egypt. He was called Herod the Great, and reigned over the whole country, though only by permission of the Romans. At his death his dominions were divided among his sons by the foreigner, who thus more effectually brought the country under control; for the smaller the size of subject states the more absolute is the power of the suzerain. Judaea was given to Archelaus; but it was soon taken from him, to be administered by the Romans themselves through their procurators, of whom Pilate was one. Galilee and Peraea were given to another son, Antipas; and a region more to the north to a third, Philip. Our present Herod is Antipas.

He was a man of some ability and at the outset of his career gave promise of ruling well. Like his father, he had a pa.s.sion for architecture, and among his achievements in this line was the building of the city of Tiberias, well known in connection with modern missions.

But he took a step which proved fatal when he entered into an intrigue with Herodias, the wife of his own brother Philip. She left her husband to come to him, and he sent away his own wife, the daughter of Aretas, the king of Arabia Petraea. Herodias was a much stronger character than he; and she remained at his side through life as his evil genius. Better aspirations were not, however, wholly extinguished in him even by this fall. When the Baptist began to fire the country, he took an interest in his preaching, and invited him to the palace, where he heard him gladly, till John said, ”It is not lawful for thee to have her.” For this the great preacher was cast into prison; but even then Herod frequently sent for him. Manifestly he was under religious impression. He admired the character and the teaching of John. It is said ”he did many things.” Only he could not and would not do the one thing needful: Herodias still retained her place.

Naturally she feared and hated the man of G.o.d, who was seeking to remove her; and she plotted against him with implacable malignity. She was only too successful, making use of her own daughter--not Antipas', but her first husband's--for her purpose. On the king's birthday Salome danced before Herod and so intoxicated him with her skill and beauty, that, heated and overcome, he promised--the promise showing the man--to give her whatever she might ask, even to the half of his kingdom; and when the young witch, well drilled by her mother in the craft of h.e.l.l, asked the head of the man of G.o.d, she was not refused.

This awful crime filled his subjects with horror, and when, soon afterwards, King Aretas, the father of his discarded wife, invaded the country, to revenge his daughter's wrong, and inflicted on him an ignominious defeat, this reverse was popularly regarded as a divine punishment for what he had done. His own mind was haunted by the spectres of remorse, as we learn from the fact that, when he heard of the preaching of Jesus, his first thought was that this was John the Baptist risen from the dead. Indeed, from this point he seems to have rapidly deteriorated. Feeling the aversion of the minds of his subjects, he turned more and more to foreign customs. His court became distinguished for Roman imitations and affectations. The purveyors of pleasure, who in that age hawked their wares from one petty court to another--singers, dancers, jugglers and the like--were welcome at Tiberias. The fibre of his character was more and more relaxed, till it became a mere ma.s.s of pulp, ready to receive every impression but able to retain none. His annual visits to Jerusalem even, at Pa.s.sover time, were inspired less by devotion than by the hope of amus.e.m.e.nt. In so large a concourse there would at any rate be acquaintances to see and news to hear; and who could tell what excitement might turn up?

II.