Rome and the East
Herodes examines him, and sends him back to Pilate (:–). There is no
inherent improbability in Herodes’s presence; Agrippa II, when ruling part
of Galilee, and other areas, but not Judaea, was to maintain a palace in Jeru-
salem, and came there frequently ( Josephus,Ant. , –). None the less,
Acts provides a very clear indication of how this episode came to be added
by Luke, and by him alone: for in Acts :– the early Christian commu-
nity is found quoting Psalm :–: ‘‘The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the magistrates were gathered against the Lord [Kyrios] and against his
anointed [Christos],’’ and applying this to the double examination of Jesus
before Herodes and Pilate. As is notorious, the fact that an episode in the
Gospels is explained or justified in terms of a biblical quotation does not nec-
essarily prove that the episode concerned is invented. But the presence of
this episode and its re-emphasis in Acts serves at any rate to underline the
freedom of Luke’s use of whatever material he had before him.
In the Gospel Luke returns to Pilate’s dialogue with the high priests and
magistrates of the people, whom he summons for a second meeting, and duly
refers to Herodes’s inability to find Jesus guilty. With that variation, the ex-
change leads on to another narrative of the dialogue involving the release
of Barabbas, brought in without any explanation of the custom or its rela-
tion to Passover, and ending with the delivery of Jesus for crucifixion. The
taunting of Jesus by the soldiers is omitted, but Luke chooses to explain that
Simon the Cyrenaican was ‘‘coming from the field’’ (:), a bit of narrative
colour which however sits unconvincingly with the idea that this is the first
morning of Passover. The action moves to ‘‘the place called Kranion’’; the
inscription on the cross is given almost as in Mark, ‘‘the king of the Jews,’’
again with no indication of the language used (:).
The scene before Herodes, unique to Luke, remains a puzzle, and its inau-
thenticity certainly cannot be demonstrated. But the crucial variation is the
representation of a formal council meeting in the morning, reinforced by a
very concrete later reference to Joseph of Arimathea: ‘‘he happened to be a
councilor [bouleutēs], a good man and just (he did not agree with their coun-
sel or deed)’’ (:). Mark had indeed referred to him as a counsellor (:
)—though Matthew only as a rich man (:)—but had necessarily not
deployed any allusion to his non-participation in the relevant deliberations.
All the endlessly debated questions as to whether ‘‘the Sanhedrin’’ had the
formal right to pass a sentence of death and, if so, whether it was compelled
to have that sentence carried out by the Roman governor can thus be rele-
vant to the Gospels only in relation to Luke’s Gospel; for it is only here that
something which is clearly a meeting of ‘‘the Sanhedrin’’ is represented as
taking place. Luke’s narrative might even gain some support from the pro-