The Trial and Death of Jesus

by Haim Hermann Cohn

The recent release of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has provoked powerful responses from believing Christians and non-believers alike. The Publishers feel it appropriate to reissue at this time a probing work that examines from another perspective these events that can fairly be said to have changed the course of Western history. A justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, writing as an expert on Jewish legal history, who is proud of Jesus' here challenges the descriptions and interpretations of the trial and death of Jesus as presented by the Evangelists in the New Testament.

Subjecting the Gospel reports to close forensic examination, Justice Cohn scrutinizes the texts in the light of information we possess from other sources concerning the laws and procedures (both Jewish and Roman) then prevailing; the political, ideological and religious motivations which may have prompted the actors to act; and the causes and purposes for which the Evangelists may have given the accounts they did. By thus placing the trial of Jesus in the context of known legal, political and religious facts, he is able to reconstruct the events as they may really have happened. And in so doing, he makes the case that "perversion of justice" traditionally ascribed to the trial itself must more truthfully be attributed to the aftermath of the trial - namely, the prejudice and persecutions of centuries.

Whether we ultimately accept or reject Justice Cohn's conclusions, his incisive analysis and extraordinary command of historical evidence provides a context to deepen and challenge our interpretations of the Gospel narrative.

Genres: History, Judaism, Nonfiction, Religion

419 pages, Hardcover

First published December 31, 1971

About the author

Haim Herman Cohn (Hebrew: חיים הרמן כהן) was an Israeli jurist and politician.

Haim Cohn was born in Lübeck, Germany in 1911 to a religious family. His father was the author and philologist Leopold Cohn. Haim was chairman of a World Agudath Israel branch in Hamburg. At age 18 he came to the British Mandate of Palestine to study at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem, where he studied under rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. He was also a Hazzan in Mea Shearim. He returned to Germany to complete his law studies at Frankfurt University. He emigrated to Palestine 1933 due to the rise of Nazism in Germany. He had earned with a PhD in law. In 1936 he was certified as a lawyer and the following year he opened an office in Jerusalem.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, he was appointed manager of the legislation department of the Ministry of Justice, and later became State Attorney. In 1949 he was made CEO of the Ministry of Justice and Attorney General of Israel a year later.

In 1952 he was also Minister of Justice, without being an Member of Knesset. In 1960 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Israel, a position he held until his retirement in 1981.

In addition to his civil service, he was also a visiting lecturer in the Tel Aviv University (from 1956 to 1969) and Hebrew University of Jerusalem (from 1954 to 1976) law schools, a representative of Israel in the United Nations Human Rights Council and a member of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He was a member of the "T'hila" Movement for Israeli Jewish secularism.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy reading this book [once I found it and continued reading it]. The author at one time was a Supreme Court Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court. Because of his legal expertise, he takes a look at the trial of Jesus as described in the four Gospels using a legal perspective. He felt it was long past due as Jesus' trial and death has been studied by lay people, religious experts, and even historical experts but never once by a legal expert. It is somewhat surprising that not one legal expert has investigated the trial and its outcome, so in many respects it is a welcome addition to the study of Israeli society around the time that Jesus lived and died. It does get rather long and slow in some parts, but, overall, it was a very informative study into the trial and death of Jesus.

The author's conclusion is that it was the Roman occupiers who killed Jesus and not the Jewish people. That being the case, the Jewish people have been unfairly and unjustly accused and affiliated with Jesus' death over the intervening centuries, as Jews have been blamed for a multitude of disasters over the years. I think the author makes a great [yet sad] point at how hypocritical and stupid and ignorant Christians are who both blame Jews for Jesus' death and hold subsequent Jewish descendants accountable when [1] Jesus' death on the cross was God's plan for Jesus anyway, and [2] Jesus asked God to forgive the Jews, saying 'they did not know what they do.' If Jesus was willing to forgive Jews for what happened to Him [even if, as the author believes, it was a mistaken belief], then Christians had no right or place to judge Jews for centuries and hold them responsible for what was ultimately God's plan [according to Christian beliefs].

I felt there were two 'major' weaknesses in the book. The first weakness was how often the author inserts his opinion as fact about various events. He is interpreting events and behavior upon what he believes and he thinks is plausible and/or possible without any real way of knowing how somebody or a group really would react. He often said something could not have happened because he does not believe it could have happened, such as an individual or group behaving a particular way. He felt that some of the religious leaders had to have been basing their decisions and behavior upon "political decisions" as opposed to "hating Jesus" as some see implied in the Gospels. There was no 'factual data' from alternative sources to support his claims about why certain religious leaders or government officials may or may not have acted the way they did. Yet, he presented his opinion as 'fact' throughout the book as opposed to why he believed people behaved the way they did.

The second weakness had to do with his continual claims that legal officials, religious leaders, and government officials would never behave unethically or dishonestly, that they would never convict and condemn an innocent man to die. Most people would consider the American legal system to be superior to the Roman legal system, yet the American legal system is fraught with innocent men and women being accused, convicted, sentenced for various crimes. Yet, he has this idealistic view of the ancient Romans and Hebrews that they would never wrongfully convict an innocent man and sentence him to death. I felt that his idealistic views and claims about how leaders would have behaved to be too simplistic to be accepted as he presented them. False imprisonments might have been a rarity, but to say it never happened is nothing more than unrealistic expectations and naïve in the extreme.

A 'third weakness' of the book is that the author clearly does not seem to believe in the supernatural. Well, that is an assumption on my part, I guess. He does not discuss or consider the supernatural in his book. Which makes sense, as it is a book dealing with the legal aspects of the trial, and most legal cases do not deal with the supernatural. One could say there were supernatural forces at work that superseded what normal behavior so that the 'desired outcome' was brought about. In any case, the author does state he is only going go consider the physical records of the case and consider how it was handled in respect to how Roman cases were traditionally tried as well as how the Jewish legal system at the time worked; there is not really any room there for any kind of consideration of the supernatural and how the supernatural might have impacted or influenced things.

I think the 'hardest part(s)' of the book involve dealing with accusations made by "Christians" over the years, including obnoxious and absurd charges levied against Jews. I was really shocked and astounded to read the nonsense Jews have been accused of and how people who should be 'sympathetic' to the Jews behaved so monstrously. It was an eye-opening part of the book, that is for certain. I learned about how poorly Christians have behaved and how they have so dramatically failed in representing the Gospels to the Jews and the rest of the world. In addition, the author decried the refusal of Jews to study Christian literature and the New Testament in order to better be able to answer the charges levied against them by some Christians.

The 'best part' of the book had to do with the observation(s) that Jesus appears to have forgiven the Jews while on the Cross, yet Christians seemed to think this was not appropriate so they played God and have judged Jews across the past two millennia as a result. It was a great point made by the author, and he did keep coming back to this point, hammering it home, throughout the latter part of the book.

On a side note, I did find it interesting that the author was willing to accept the Gospel of John as being more authentic than most "experts" believe it to be today [2018]. Most of the classes I have taken recently discount John as being inauthentic or having been written too late [well into the second century AD] to be considered to have any relevance to the life and death of Jesus.

After reading this book, I cannot say that I remember ever 'blaming the Jews' for the death of Jesus on the cross. I knew the Romans were the ones who executed Him. I guess I always took it as some of the Jews being in collusion with the Romans in order for it to happen. In any case, it was a very interesting book with some interesting theories as to what may or may not have happened in conjunction with what was recorded in the four Gospels.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN ISRAELI JURIST ANALYZES THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF JESUS’ TRIAL AND DEATH

Author (and Israeli Supreme Court justice, and politician) Haim Herman Cohn (1911- 2002) wrote in the Introduction of this 1968 book, “Of the sixty thousand-odd books … written on the life of Jesus in the last century alone, not many paid particular attention to his trial… Nor were many books written on the trial itself, and of those… only a few were written by lawyers and legalistically… That all the reports… insinuate that the trial was but a travesty of justice and the crucifixion a judicial murder should have put conscientious legal observers on the alert, rather than dazzle them … into a belief that no legal argument could shake… to the lawyer working on this material, it soon become evident that what it provides is… raw stuff that must be sifted, analyzed, and appraised to arrive at valid conclusions.” (Pg. xi-xii)

He adds, “We shall start… from the premise that events described by all the evangelists … which, in the circumstances and under the prevailing conditions as we know them from independent and indubitable sources, could conceivably have taken place in the manner did, indeed, so happen. The framework thus fashioned will have to be engrossed with such further detail as the source material available to us may warrant.” (Pg. xxi) He notes, “It we start from the premise that the reports are biased and tendentious, it is only by testing every detail against the background of conditions of life at the time, including laws and customs as we know them from independent sources, that we may succeed winnowing the reliable from the uncertain…” (Pg. xxii-xxiii)

He points out, “all that we know of Pilate and his emperor attests the certainty that any Jew who dared to remind the governor of his duty toward the emperor, or to hint at more fervid patriotism and stouter loyalty to the emperor than of the governor himself, would not be let live another hour. Not only would the governor rightly regard such insolence as a gross contempt of himself and his court, but considering the notorious hostility of the Jews to Rome and its emperor, and their persistent flouting of Roman rule… for them to remind the governor of his duties as a Roman imperial officer and judge surely… meant the death penalty.” (Pg. 17)

He suggests of the “cleansing” of the Temple, “The burgesses were not likely to stomach a desecration of the temple, and the keeping of peace and order … was a police duty… And if Jesus’ followers had resisted his arrest, and their resistance had been successful, the authorities would then have had a perfectly lawful and reasonable cause to prosecute him whenever they could lay their hands on him; and it is just that, we are told, that they so badly wanted to do! The simple fact is that Jesus’ act of ‘cleansing’ was no offense at all… it must---at least tacitly---have had the approval of the temple authorities.” (Pg. 55)

He observes, “No Pharisee would ever count as blasphemous or otherwise improper an assertion of divine authority. Whoever aired an opinion, suggested a course of action, or propounded a norm of law or ethics would aver that he was divinely inspired or his the only true, ‘authorized,’ or authentic interpretation of God’s will and word… Express or implied ascriptions of divine ‘authority’ were inherent in any teacher’s qualification: if he himself did not… what could there be at all in what he taught?” (Pg. 61)

He notes, “the order for the arrest of Jesus was made by the Romans, and … a tribune with his cohort was sent to carry it out. No Jewish instigation behind that Roman order had been proved or can be reasonably assumed. The presence of Jewish temple police at the time and place of arrest cannot be explained by any Roman instruction or requirement. Only one possible explanation remains, and that is that they were permitted to be present at their own asking.” (Pg. 89)
He summarizes “the following well-established provisions of Jewish law… The Sanhedrin was not allowed to try criminal cases at night… No person would be tried on a criminal charge on festival days or on the eve of a festival… No person may be convicted on his own testimony…The capital offense of blasphemy consists in pronouncing the name of God, Yahweh, which may be uttered only once a year by the high priest in the innermost sanctuary of the temple; and it is irrelevant what ‘blasphemies’ are spoken so long as the divine name is not enunciated. The obvious inconsistencies … furnish … the all but conclusive argument that the whole trial, and the resulting sentence, were tainted with illegality.” (Pg. 98)

He notes of the trial before Pilate, “The incongruity of this story are so many that no historicity can be attributed to it… I may be allowed to stress these: …Pilate wanted to pardon Jesus… why, then, did he not pardon him?... why was the choice confined to either Jesus or Barabbas? What, for instance, or the two convicts who were crucified together with Jesus?... Pilate found no fault in Jesus: why did he not acquit him?... Barabbas was not only an insurgent and a zealot, but responsible also for a murder that had been committed in the course of the insurrection which he had led… We may well ask how Pilate would have justified his conduct both to his Roman officers and officials and… in his report to the emperor Tiberius… It is not reasonable that the people would let themselves be ‘persuaded’ by chief priests at all… there was not much sympathy in the hearts of the people for the ‘chief priests’ in power… Except only from Gospel reports, we have no record or knowledge of the existence of any such ‘privilegium paschale.’” (Pg. 164-166)

He summarizes that “It had been a Roman trial, resulting in a Roman sentence, carried out by Roman executioners. The story of it would have been simple and straightforward were it not for the fact that the evangelists, for their theological and political purposes, had to shift the guilt for the death of Jesus to the Jews.” (Pg. 189)

He states, “The Lucan and Pauline tradition of divine pardon of any Jewish sin involved in the crucifixion was to be rivaled, if not replaced, by the Matthean tradition of Jewish guilt and an eternal curse laid on the Jewish people, and it was the Jewish self-arraignment invented by Matthew that became the theological, or pseudo-theological, basis of never-ending persecution and tyranny. The fact that the Jews, whoever they were, could in no wise have spoken the words which the Gospel of Matthew imputes to them… lends one more tragic touch to the disastrous and total misconception of the Jewish role in the trial of Jesus. Not only did ‘the Jews’… solemnly undertake responsibility for what Pilate would do to Jesus, but they were not even present at the trial… But ‘history’ was to be that ‘the Jews’ had caused the death of Jesus and… had of intent assumed the full responsibility for it delivered themselves and their children, voluntarily and unconditionally, to everlasting affliction.” (Pg. 275)

He concludes, “Hundreds of generations of Jews… have been indiscriminately mulcted for a crime which neither they nor their ancestors committed. Worse still, they have… been made to suffer all manner of torment, persecution, and degradation for the alleged part of their forefathers in the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, when, in solemn truth, their forefathers took no part in them but did all that they possibly and humanly could to save Jesus, whom they dearly loved and cherished as one of their own.” (Pg. 331)

This book will be “must reading” for anyone studying the trial and death of Jesus.

[Hank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I think it pretty consistently fails to achieve its stated goal to demonstrate that the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion were actually on his side and defended him against the Romans, this book is still an interesting read.

It really is a Herculean task given that the author has only the Gospels themselves as a source and they quite consistently paint a portrait of a leadership, similar to that of the Catholic Church at the time of Luther’s redefinition of Christianity a millennium and a half down the road, utterly opposed to Jesus’ efforts to reform Judaism. On top of that, the author exhibits a number of poor habits that weaken his arguments; among them are 1) treatment of the Gospels as “traditions” when their text contradicts his purpose and historical descriptions when they support him, 2) failure to recognize that the entire New Testament was written by Jewish men so it would have been ridiculous for them to blame “Jews” for anything without pointing the finger at themselves in the process, 3) failure to see the basic point of incrimination of the Jewish leadership in the Gospels was to illustrate humanity’s failings on the whole, and ultimately 4) never really getting the ball in the net as to why his possible interpretations are more probable than the Gospel authors’ own clearly stated understanding.

Historically, of course, many Christians did make this author’s same mistake and persecute Jews on the premise that ”they” had murdered Jesus, however, this is not the modern day interpretation or teaching of the church and I believe it should be much easier for a Jewish person to simply accept that fact than to put themselves through this author’s contortions. Genuine Christians today love all people, but to the extent the Jewish people are singled out, it is in a special place in their hearts for God’s original chosen, for their relationship with and documentation of the beautiful glory of God. I hope that is much more apparent today than it may have been at the time this author was motivated to write this book.

[Andrew Ketel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very excited to read this book, expecting an nonbiased historical and legal examination of the narrative of Jesus' trial and death. The expectancy was heighted when the author is Jewish with an extensive legal background such as serving on the supreme court of Israel. Although I did enjoy the read, it was well laid out, I found the lack of a nonbiased perspective very distracting from the goal. All to often Justice Cohn would personally not agree or cast doubt on the Gospel's narrative without bringing objective data to the discussion that supported his doubts. This was the great disappointment I had with this book and that is why I gave it merely three stars.

[Richard Worden · Rating 5 out of 5]

An examination of the events at the end of Jesus' life by a justice with knowledge of ancient Jewish and Roman law.

[Mark Ortiz-Carrasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haim Cohn was a Supreme Court Justice of Israel. He surveyed the Gospels in light of Jewish and Roman law, in excruciating detail. Cohn goes through everything we think we know about the trial and death of Jesus in an attempt to detail how the Jewish leaders attempted to save him. He freely admits that the whole purpose of his book of to refute the misconception that the Jewish leaders killed Jesus. His purpose removes any objective look at the Gospel.
Cohn begins his analysis by declaring that not all the New Testament witnesses can be believed. This in itself violated Biblical Law regarding three or more witnesses in regard to the truth. Cohn freely ignores anything that does not fit his premise, like the fact Luke says that he himself compiled all available information regarding Jesus and checked it with the eyewitnesses.
I realize that if he found that that the trial of Jesus occurred just as chronicled in the gospels, Cohn would have become a social outcast. However, I find his last chapter to be a fascinating read. No, I will not tell you his conclusions. This book is necessary to read.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was well thought out and thought provoking but got to be rather long. The premise of the book was: could the events in the Gospels have happened as they were depicted according to what is known about ancient Roman and Jewish law? The answer is no. The events of the Gospels may have happened but the Gospels writer's took those events and put their own literary spin on them. They made the events fit their own world view, which doesn't square with what is known about Roman and Jewish law. It helped me to more clearly see the Gospels has great pieces of literature but as true history.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile read that includes a close reading of the gospels with a common sense approach to debunking the mythologies surrounding the trial. Judas Iscariot? Gone. Barabas? Gone. Pilate is treated like a Roman Governor rather than a simpering wimp, and the Jewish Sanhedrin is given a fair reading. The final 70 pages or so were a little long, but Jesus' execution was clearly well deserved within Roman law, and had nothing to do with Jewish opposition to his teachings. As Cohn rightyl points out, the Prophetic tradition and the talmudic approach to it was tolerance and trust in God. Rome was responsible for the death of Jesus, not Jerusalem.