The Civil Trial before Pilate
“But it was Rome, of whom Palestine was at that time a dependency, that had the sole power of life and death. It was necessary to refer a case of this kind to the Roman Procurator and our Lord was taken to the Judgment Hall of Pontius Pilate, in the fortress of Antonia. Here the Jews did not enter, since in the house of a pagan they would have contracted legal defilement, at this time of the Passover Feast. Our Lord’s civil trial was, in its turn, about to commence. But before this new tribunal a political charge was a necessity. In the Jewish view the Messias was to be an earthly monarch, so they accused Jesus, who said that He was the Messias, of being a rival king to Caesar.
“On this new ground was reproduced, point by point, the same procedure as that of the night before, the same silence of our Lord in the face of false witnesses, the same formal assertion of His spiritual kingship before the pagan world, represented this time by those who actually held the world power; the same ill-treatment by subordinates, in this case the Roman soldiery. Our Lord, who in reality guided the whole proceeding, would be condemned only as the Son of God and King of souls. He put the question again on religious ground, when He said : ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’
“This was to remove the matter from Pilate’s province, and he, up to the very end, declared our Lord perfectly innocent. The Jews then had recourse to intimidation, and Pilate who was too much of a coward to use his authority in the teeth of a mob who would avenge itself by accusing him in high places, looked round for means to safeguard his own interests without altogether ignoring the protests of some remnant of conscience, informed as it was by pagan superstition, which vaguely feared the chastisement of the gods.”
—- James Tissot, The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ
