He was arrested and condemned on account of His Messianic claims. But how did the High Priest know that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah? And why does he put the accusation as a direct question without calling witnesses in support of it? Why was the attempt first made to bring up a saying about the Temple which could be interpreted as blasphemy in order to condemn Him on this ground (Mark xiv. 57-59)? Before that again, as is evident from Mark's account, they had brought up a whole crowd of witnesses in the hope of securing evidence sufficient to justify His condemnation; and the attempt had not succeeded.
It was only after all these attempts had failed that the High Priest brought his accusation concerning the Messianic claim, and he did so without citing the three necessary witnesses. Why so? Because he had not got them. The condemnation of Jesus depended on His own admission. That was why they had endeavoured to convict Him upon other charges. [1] should be secretly fulfilled.
The entry is therefore a Messianic act on the part of Jesus, an action in which His consciousness of His office breaks through, as it did at the sending forth of the disciples, in the explanation that
- ↑ As long ago as 1880, H. W. Bleby (The Trial of Jesus considered as a Judicial Act) had emphasised this circumstance as significant. The injustice in the trial of Jesus consisted, according to him, in the fact that He was condemned on His own admission without any witnesses being called. Dalman, it is true, will not admit that this technical error was very serious. This wholly unintelligible feature of the trial confirms what is evident also from the discourses and attitude of Jesus at Jerusalem, viz. that He had not been held by the multitude to be the Messiah, that the idea of His making such claims had not for a moment occurred to them-lay in fact for them quite beyond the range of possibility. Therefore He cannot have made a Messianic entry. According to Havet, Brandt, Wellhausen, Dalman, and Wrede the ovation at the entry had no Messianic character whatever. It is wholly mistaken, as Wrede quite rightly remarks, to represent matters as if the Messianic ovation was forced upon Jesus-that He accepted it with inner repugnance and in silent passivity. For that would involve the supposition that the people had for a moment regarded Him as Mes- But the really important point is not whether the condemnation was legal or not; it is the significant fact that the High Priest called no witnesses. Why did he not call any? This question was obscured by Bleby and Dalman by other problems. siah and then afterwards had shown themselves as completely without any suspicion of His Messiahship as though they had in the interval drunk of the waters of Lethe. The exact opposite is true: Jesus Himself made the preparations for the Messianic entry. Its Messianic features were due to His arrangements. He made a point of riding upon the ass, not because He was weary, but because He desired that the Messianic prophecy of Zech. ix. 9
