Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/220

 simply repeating, to the best of their ability, words which had actually fallen from the prisoner. The evidence for the prosecution being concluded, the high priest appealed to Jesus to know whether he had nothing to reply. Jesus being silent, the high priest proceeded to ask him directly whether he was "Christ, the Son of the Blessed One." Jesus answered that he was, and that they would hereafter see him "sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Such an answer was an explicit confession of the very worst that had been alleged against him. After it, there was no option but to convict him, and we read accordingly that they all condemned him as worthy of death. But capital punishment could not be inflicted except by Roman authority. He was accordingly taken before the procurator, Pontius Pilate, charged with the civil crime of claiming to be king of the Jews. Pontius appears to have regarded him as a harmless fanatic, and to have been anxious to discharge him, in accordance with a custom by which one prisoner was released at the festival which fell at this time. But the Jews clamored for the release of a man named Barabbas, who was in prison on account of his participation in an insurrectionary movement in which blood had been shed. Barabbas accordingly was set at liberty, and Jesus, though with some reluctance on the part of the procurator, was sentenced to crucifixion. The sentence was carried into effect immediately. Unable, probably from exhaustion through his recent sufferings, to carry his own cross, Jesus was relieved of the burden by one Simon, on whom the soldiery imposed the duty of bearing it. He was crucified along with two thieves, and an inscription in which he was entitled "King of the Jews" was placed upon his cross, apparently in mockery of the Jewish nation much more than of him. His ordinary disciples had fled in terror from his melancholy end, but he was followed to the cross by some affectionate women, who had previously attended him in Galilee. And after he was dead, his body was honorably interred by a well-to-do adherent, named Joseph of Arimathæa.

—The Mythical Jesus.

The life of the mythical Jesus is found in the synoptical Gospels, but more especially in the first and third. It is by no