Rome and the East
‘‘Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your own law’’ to which
they reply ‘‘It is not permitted to us to execute anyone’’ (:). Their reply
has sometimes been read as an allusion to a fixed and universal ban on the
carrying out of executions (and capital trials?) by the local Jewish authori-
ties, in view of the equally established reservation of that right to the Roman
governor.^16 Indeed it has often been quoted as one of the conclusive items of
evidence for the existence of such a rule. If so, however, it must be regarded as
reading very strangely. For the narrative must represent the Romanpraefectus
as being unaware of this rule, and as being informed of it by the high-priestly
group before him. Such a reading, however strange, is not however impos-
sible,ifwe conceive of the exchange as a feature of John’s narrative style,
in which necessary explanations are sometimes given by speakers to respon-
dents who in the ‘‘real world’’ might be presumed not to have needed them.
An example already referred to, occurs a few lines later, when Pilate says,
‘‘You have a custom by which I should release one man to you at Passover’’
(:).
None the less, seeing the exchange as such an authorial device is not the
most natural way of reading the passage; and it does have to be emphasised
that what we are doingisreading a narrative; so how we understand what
we read ought to be determined in the first instance by the nature of the
information and interpretation which the author has already provided. In
that light the most significant guidance and explanation provided by John is
given only four lines before: that it was morning, and that they would not
enter thepraetoriumbecause they wanted to avoid pollution and be able to
eat thepascha. In that light the exchange reads quite naturally. Pilate tells
them tojudgehim (he does not here sayexecutehim) according to their own
law. And they reply that it is not allowed to them to execute anyone. Not
allowed by the Romans? Such an interpretation is possible, as we have seen,
but very strained. Or not allowed byJewishlaw? It immediately makes sense,
for we are in the morning before Passover and an execution was surely not
permitted. We hardly need the Mishnah (Sanhedrin:) to tell us, as we have
seen, that capital trials could not be conducted on the day before a Sabbath
or a festival, because a capital sentence could not be pronounced until the
day following the trial. It should be stressed that to emphasise the possibility
of reading the text in this way is not at this point to make any assertion about
‘‘what actually happened,’’ or about the rules of capital jurisdiction which
generally prevailed in the real world of first-century Judaea. It is to suggest a
way of understanding what story John is telling—one to whose entire logic,
. See, e.g., Sherwin-White (n. ), –.