Greek original · 139 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:12853–1:12991 (13790 verses in all)
For since those set in the rank of the pasture—that is, the common crowd—did not attain the leading of their rulers unto the acknowledging of Christ, they utterly perished and slid down into a destructive ill-counsel concerning Christ.
For theirs was the most unholy plan at the outset; they themselves, having bought the traitor with the sacred moneys, persuaded him to sell Him to them; they themselves, having joined the cohort to the officers, ordered Him to be bound like one of the most dishonourable robbers; they themselves led Him to Pilate; and now, seeing Him scourged and all but drunk with the dishonours from all, they stretch out their wrath still further, and give voice to the things that come from measureless envy.
for they supposed that they would hold His inheritance without danger, and that if perchance Christ were removed out of the way, they themselves would again take the leadership and revel in the honours from all.
But, as the psalmist says: 'He that dwells in the heavens shall laugh them to scorn, and the Lord shall mock them.' For nothing turned out according to their intent, but the nature of things shifted round to the very opposite by an inverted change.
Pilate is astounded whether the people of the Jews and the most inhuman multitude of the chief priests will indeed sink to such a pitch of audacity as not to refuse to inflict so dreadful a death upon Christ, even though the charge that would call Him to this had nowhere been found.
'Persuaded by your voices, shall I give up my own advantage, and, recklessly serving your demands, shall I not be in prospect of suffering dreadful things? For if you do not think you are doing anything unholy, if you do not reckon the deed to be grievous, you yourselves,' he says, 'who boast in the divine teachings, who hold your brow high in the knowledge of laws, set up the cross, dare the murder, commit the unholy act by yourselves, pouring down upon your own heads the charges arising from so great an impiety. Let the audacity be Jewish, and let the evil of the bloodshed be turned upon yourselves.'
'If there is among you a law which subjects to penalties so utterly dreadful one who has done no wrong, which punishes the guiltless, let this too be carried out by you; I will not endure to be a party to it.'
And one might be astounded in this too, again, at the shamelessness of the Jews, since they are not ashamed even before the just judgement of a man of another race, and that though the divine law had said concerning them: 'For the lips of a priest shall keep judgement, and they shall seek the law from his mouth.' 'The Jews answered him: We have a law, and according to our law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God.'
The slander which they had at first fabricated having been convicted as stale, and no innovation or revolt against Caesar's rule having been demonstrated—
if My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.' And Pilate, judging concerning these things fittingly and incorruptibly and not yet with a view to favour, and declaring outright that no pretext had been found in Him, these all-daring men shift entirely to something else;
for it is written in the book called Leviticus that certain men reckoned among the Jews quarrelled, according to what is written, in the camp, one of whom, having made mention of the divine Name, 'blessed'—instead of 'cursed' and blasphemed—and then he is ordered to be put to death and to pay bitter penalties for his unholy tongue, God saying plainly: 'A man who curses God shall bear his sin, but he that names the name of the Lord, let him be put to death;'
whether he be a sojourner or a native, when he names the name of the Lord let him die.' But perhaps someone, doubting concerning this, will say: What, then, does the law mean, and what does it intend to signify to me by this? For that one guilty of blasphemies against God should be put to death would not be carried outside what is reasonable, but he would suffer it, and very justly too.
But why then, if anyone insults even one of the falsely-named gods, does he not go without sin? For 'if anyone,' it says, 'curses God, he shall bear his sin.'
for the loving to revile even those that are not by nature gods is, I think, a kind of practice and beaten path urging us on toward railing against the God who is God by nature.
On this account He again, through other words, restrains it, saying: 'You shall not speak ill of gods.' For He thought it needful that the name of divinity, even if it exists falsely in some, should be honoured with the glories befitting it.
And the Law by no means commanded us to render any honour to the gods who have gone astray, but it teaches us to hold the very name of divinity as venerable, even if it be filched by certain persons.
Since therefore the Law appoints that he who in any way falls under charges of blasphemy be punished with death, they say that the Lord is subject to that penalty; for, they allege, He made Himself the Son of God.
But they, who ought rather to have marvelled at one who so wondrously worked, were on the contrary scandalized, imputing to Him a breaking of the Law solely on account of the Sabbath.
'do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, You blaspheme, because I said, I am the Son of God?' Yet the Jewish crowd, remembering none of these things, make an accusation of the truth against the Truth; and because Christ has said that which He is by nature, for this very cause they contend that He ought to die.
But indeed for this reason I will make use of the prophet's word: 'How do you say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us?' For ought they not first to have gone by careful inquiry into who and whence Christ is?
And if He were convicted of lying, then indeed most justly to chastise Him; but if He spoke the truth, to do Him reverence? Why then, forsaking the inquiry and the assurance drawn from the sacred writings, do you rush to mere denunciation, and make the truth a pretext for accusation? They ought, when telling Pilate that He made Himself the Son of God, to have laid to His charge also the works of divinity and His mighty working in things marvellous.
They ought after that to have cried aloud that a dead man, three days dead, came back to life, returning again to life by a single word of the Saviour.
They ought also to have recalled that most God-befitting utterance—over the widow's son, 'Young man, I say to you, arise,' and over the little maid, 'Child, arise.' They should upon these have taught that to the blind He gave sight and to the lepers cleansing, and besides these, that with a single rebuke He stilled both the raging sea's tumult and the violent onset of the winds, and whatever else besides Christ has wrought.
But those things they bury in thankless silences, and, passing over the deeds by which He was to be seen as God, they perversely proceed to mere sophistries alone.
And to a man of a foreign race, one wholly ignorant of the divine Scripture, one who saw in Jesus a mere man, these wretched men cry out, 'He made Himself the Son of God'—although the God-inspired Scripture proclaims that the Word of God would one day come to the world in human form.
'For behold,' it says, 'the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel'—which is, being interpreted, 'God with us.' And that which is born of a virgin, what else could it be but a man such as we are, so far as concerns the sight and nature of the body? For while being man He was also truly God.
'When therefore Pilate heard this saying, he was the more afraid, and entered into the praetorium again, and says to Jesus, Whence are you? But Jesus gave him no answer.'
But he makes the very greatness of the matter an addition to his reverent caution, and receives the threat that came from his fear as more oppressive still; he becomes more scrupulous concerning Him than he was before, and inquires more minutely who and whence He is—not disbelieving, as it seems to me, that even while being man He can be the Son of God.
The Romans again, doing such things in a somewhat more superstitious manner, were always bestowing the divine title upon the more illustrious of their own emperors.
For what did He say to him? 'Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.' But Pilate, being an idolater, how could he have heard the Saviour's voice, when He declared Himself to be the truth and a child of the truth? Or how could he at all have accepted and honoured the name of truth—he who at the beginning had spat upon it and said, 'What is truth?'—because he still served falsely-named gods and was buried in the darkness of deceit? Pilate then says to Him, 'You do not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to crucify you, and have authority to release you?' Pilate supposed that His silence was the work of madness.
For this reason he brandishes over Him, like a rod, his authority derived from his office, and thinks that even against His will he can bend Him by fear to a useless defence.
You will observe, moreover, that in this too there was rightly fulfilled that which was foretold through the prophet's voice: 'For as a sheep,' it says, 'He was led to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so He opens not His mouth; in His humiliation His judgement was taken away.' These things the blessed Isaiah spoke to us.
For it is the custom of the divine Scripture to speak of such matters in euphemistic terms, whenever the reference is borne toward the divine Person itself.
For thus to squander a mystic word upon the ears of a stranger He does not permit even to ourselves, saying, 'Give not what is holy to the dogs, neither cast your pearls before swine.' Yet to one who put forward his authority derived from his office, and who unintelligently professed that he could turn everything whatsoever to his will according to what seemed good to himself alone, and that the judgement over Him rested with himself, He most usefully sets over against him His own power and authority, and hinders him as one puffed up with a vain and senseless conceit, swelling even against the divine glory itself.
For indeed, in very truth, it would have inflicted no small harm upon some to think that Christ was dragged down to unwilling sufferings and not of His own will, and was overcome by the greed of the Jews, though He is by nature God and has been proclaimed King of all by the holy and God-inspired Scripture.
He therefore loosed for us the occasion of the stumbling-block, and overturns, as it were from the root, the error concerning this, saying, 'Unless it had been given you from above.'
And He says that the authority was given to Pilate from above, not as though God the Father brought the suffering of the cross upon His own Offspring against His will, but as the Only-Begotten Himself gave Himself up to suffer for us, while the Father permitted the mystery concerning Him to be fulfilled.
Clearly, then, in these words the consent and permission on the Father's part is a 'giving,' and the Son's own will too is both understood and spoken of.
And indeed they wished to seize Him, as the Evangelist says, 'but going out through the midst of them He went His way, and so passed by.' And the word 'so' means: not stealthily, not fearfully, not adopting the manner of those who flee, but rather at ease and with His accustomed gait, free from all tumult.
For He did not yet will to suffer, nor yet, having yielded up His power, did He as it were choose the danger unwillingly to the wraths of His persecutors.
By His own consent, therefore, and by the good pleasure of God the Father, He says that the authority was given to Pilate—the authority to be able at all to do anything against Him of the things he has already dared.
For utterly unconquerable, and by none of existing things capable of being taken, is the divine and supreme Nature, to which it belongs by nature also to be able to rule over all things.
Who then is the one who delivered Him up, and toward which of the offenders does the primary agency point? I think it points to the most easily-bought disciple—or rather now the traitor and destroyer of his own soul—or besides him, to those of the leaders of the crowd, and to the very people of the Jews, to whom, while assigning the greater share of the impiety, He has not placed Pilate's head entirely outside of it.
The fear is heightened for Pilate, and works in him a keener caution, and that which is proclaimed by the Jews instils in him a reluctance to put Him to death.
For they cried out, 'Because He made Himself the Son of God'—the very one whom above all he had been eager to set free from all danger and to deliver from every false accusation, having in his mind the dread terror concerning this.
Perceiving this, the men of Israel fall back upon their initial false fable, saying that Jesus stirred up the people, and offended against Caesar's very rule, and set himself in arms against the empire of the Romans, so far as lay within the power of the attempt.
But as they did not greatly prevail, since Christ declared that His kingdom was not earthly, they introduced against Him—before Pilate, who was vindicating the honours of the Romans—the sin against the Deity itself, saying, 'He made Himself the Son of God.' For the miserable men supposed that by this they would goad Pilate, even against his will, into an undiscerning wrath, and would render him most ready to determine the Saviour's death, making the impulse toward this a pretext of piety toward God.
But as their evil design was shown to be fruitless for them, again they run back to their original boldness, saying that the undertakings had been dared against Caesar's rule, and shamelessly crying out that the judge was arming himself against Caesar's glory, unless he should be willing to vindicate it and to subject to the fitting penalty the man who, according to them, had spoken against Caesar—by his enduring at all to receive the title of king; and this although Caesar was not vindicating the heavenly rule, of which indeed Christ above all was Lord, but the lower and earthly one, which too was dependent upon the authority of Christ.
'When therefore Pilate heard this saying, he brought Jesus out, and sat down upon the judgement seat in a place called the Pavement, but in Hebrew Gabbatha;'
For he says that Pilate has all but been vanquished, and against his own will, by the open insistence of these men, and that he has now set aside the plea of justice while taking exceedingly little thought for what was fitting and consistent.
And because of this he was dragged down to what pleased the bloodthirsty, even though he had many times spoken to them and had openly declared that Jesus was found guilty of nothing whatsoever—a fact which will subject Pilate himself to the ultimate penalties.
For having sacrificed the honour due to the just for the sake of what seemed good to certain men, and handing over to the madness of the Jews one who had been convicted of no impropriety, he will be caught as the self-witness of his own impiety.
And the inspired Evangelist notes both the hour and the day, usefully and necessarily, both because of the resurrection itself and because of the three days among those beneath the earth, so that once again the Lord may be shown to have spoken truly when He said to the Jews: 'For as Jonah was in the belly of the sea-monster three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man also be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.' And displaying Jesus upon the judgment seat itself, the Roman governor says: 'Behold your King.'
And what again does this mean? For either he is now mocking the crowds and, with derision, bestowing the innocent blood upon those who unjustly thirsted for it; or perhaps in some way he is even reproaching them, tearing the Jew apart as cruel, seeing that he could bear at all to look on while one fell into so many evils—one whom they themselves say and altogether name the King of Israel.
Pilate says to them: 'Shall I crucify your King?' Yet they cry out none the less the things they had from the beginning, not departing from their bloodlust, not turned toward gentleness on account of the mockery, not moving in any way toward mildness by the sufferings inflicted upon Him, but rather bellowing like bulls toward a still more savage resolve, they urge that He be crucified—He who among them had raised the dead and had been shown to be the worker of so many wonders for them. At this Pilate is indeed greatly grieved, that one who had held so brilliant a reputation among them as to be reckoned Son of God and King, must not only die but also die cruelly—so vehemently do they say it.
The one sitting in judgment therefore makes his outcry into a kind of rebuke and reproach: whether they wish to crucify one who had been altogether admired for such deeds as hold so great a preeminence as to be set above every earthly matter.
For these very things God long ago made accusation against them through the voice of Jeremiah, saying: 'For pass over to the isles of Chittim, and send to Kedar, and consider diligently, and see whether the nations will change their gods, though these are no gods;
but My people has changed its glory'; and again: 'The heaven was astonished at this, and shuddered exceedingly, says the Lord; for My people has done two things, and those evil:
they have forsaken Me, the fountain of the water of life, and have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that cannot hold water.' For while the other nations throughout the whole world clung tenaciously to their own error, and steadfastly loved those whom they supposed to be gods, and had a mind not readily inclined to apostasy, nor easily transferring to other forms of worship, Israel leaped away, assigning itself to the dominion of Caesar and stripping off the kingdom of God.
Therefore, and very justly, it was given over into the hands of Caesar; and having in the first place accepted his authority, it perished miserably, and endured the uprooting of its land, and the sufferings of war, and those irremediable calamities.
'For the chief priests cried out,' he says, showing everywhere that the subject people, following after their leaders, was carried over the rocks and slid down into the pit of destruction.
The chief priests, therefore, are called to account, as those who not only destroyed their own souls, but also became for the peoples under their hand the leaders and commanders and instigators of that deadly bloodshed—just as, indeed, the prophet also accused them, crying: 'For you have become a snare to the watchtower, and as a net spread out upon Tabor, which those who hunt for prey have fixed fast.' For by 'watchtower' he here calls the multitude of those under their hand, appointed, as it were, to survey the polity of their leaders, and thus to shape their own.
The chief priests themselves, then, became a snare and a net to the watchtower, both having begun the denial and having together persuaded all the others to say: 'We have no king but Caesar.'
And these wretched men dare to say this, although God the Father, through the voice of the prophet, had beforehand announced to them the coming of the Saviour, crying thus: 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; proclaim, O daughter of Jerusalem;
behold, your King comes to you, just and bringing salvation, He is meek and mounted upon a beast of burden and a young colt.' Yet they, though they had brought Jesus up to Jerusalem seated upon the colt of the donkey, and had all together, along with the infants, crowned Him with praises surpassing man—for they said, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord'—now cry out against Him, inscribing to themselves only the dominion of the Romans, and, as it were, casting off from their neck the yoke of the kingdom under God.
But we shall find again that at that time the praise came from the peoples upon the Saviour Christ, whereas we say that this outcry too, along with the others, was recklessly dared by the ill counsel of the chief priests.
Pilate at last, and against his will, yields to the unmixed wrath of the Jews the free rein toward every possible thing, even beyond the laws; and, stripping away the authority proper to those who sit in judgment, he permits their passions now to be borne along unchecked and unaccountable, granting them to crucify one who had been convicted of nothing base at all, but only because He had said—being judged contrary to all reason—that He was Himself the Son of God.
One might therefore rightly ascribe to the Jews the whole of the daring deed, and, I think, would fittingly and rightly assign to them the record of its first authorship;
We do not say [that Pilate] had no share in it, but that he was a co-culprit with those who did the deed, since, though it was possible to rescue and preserve Him from the madness of the murderers, he not only did not deliver Him, but even handed Him over—and not simply, but that they might crucify Him.
'They therefore took Jesus; and bearing the cross for Himself He went out to the place called The Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew Golgotha, where they crucified Him, and with Him two others, on this side and on that, and Jesus in the midst.'
They lead away the Author of life as one already destined to die; yet this too was being accomplished on our behalf, by divine power and by an art surpassing understanding, the Passion issuing in an unexpected and reversed outcome.
For the Passion of Christ was being contrived like a snare for the power of death, and the death of the Lord was the beginning of the renewal unto incorruption and to newness of life.
And bearing upon His shoulders the wood on which He was about to be crucified, He proceeds, already condemned and having endured the verdict of blood for no evil at all—and this for our sake.
For He became a curse on our behalf, according to what is written: 'For cursed,' it says, 'is everyone who hangs upon a tree.' And we are all accursed, being unable to fulfil the divine law; for we all stumble in many things, and human nature is exceedingly prone to slip toward this.
And since again the divine law somewhere said: 'Cursed is he who does not continue in all the things written in the book of this law, to do them'—the curse, then, is ours, and not another's.
For those whose accusation is transgression, and for whom to slip away from what has been ordained is very easy, to them it would be fitting also to be held to account.