The course which the priests had resolved to take against Jesus was quite in conformity with the established law.  The procedure against the “corrupter” (mesith), who sought to injure the purity of religion, is explained in the Talmud, with details, the naive impudence of which provokes a smile.  A judicial ambush is there made an essential part of the examination of criminals.  When a man was accused of being a “corrupter,” two witnesses were suborned who were concealed behind a partition.  It was arranged to bring the accused into a contiguous room, where he could be heard by these two without his perceiving them.  Two candles were lighted near him, in order that it might be satisfactorily proved that the witnesses “saw him."[1] He was then made to repeat his blasphemy, and urged to retract it.  If he persisted, the witnesses who had heard him conducted him to the tribunal, and he was stoned to death.  The Talmud adds, that this was the manner in which they treated Jesus; that he was condemned on the faith of two witnesses who had been suborned, and that the crime of “corruption” is, moreover, the only one for which the witnesses are thus prepared.[2]

[Footnote 1:  In criminal matters, eye-witnesses alone were admitted.  Mishnah, Sanhedrim, iv. 5.]

[Footnote 2:  Talm. of Jerus., Sanhedrim, xiv. 16; Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 43 a, 67 a.  Cf. Shabbath, 104 b.]

We learn from the disciples of Jesus themselves that the crime with which their Master was charged was that of “corruption;"[1] and apart from some minutiae, the fruit of the rabbinical imagination, the narrative of the Gospels corresponds exactly with the procedure described by the Talmud.  The plan of the enemies of Jesus was to convict him, by the testimony of witnesses and by his own avowals, of blasphemy, and of outrage against the Mosaic religion, to condemn him to death according to law, and then to get the condemnation sanctioned by Pilate.  The priestly authority, as we have already seen, was in reality entirely in the hands of Hanan.  The order for the arrest probably came from him.  It was before this powerful personage that Jesus was first brought.[2] Hanan questioned him as to his doctrine and his disciples.  Jesus, with proper pride, refused to enter into long explanations.  He referred Hanan to his teachings, which had been public; he declared he had never held any secret doctrine; and desired the ex-high priest to interrogate those who had listened to him.  This answer was perfectly natural; but the exaggerated respect with which the old priest was surrounded made it appear audacious; and one of those present replied to it, it is said, by a blow.

[Footnote 1:  Matt. xxvii. 63; John vii. 12, 47.]

[Footnote 2:  John xviii. 13, and following.  This circumstance, which we only find in John, is the strongest proof of the historic value of the fourth Gospel.]