Sudeshna Bora

“was dismissing the Torah as irrelevant and insisting that, for the approaching Last Judgment, what was needed for salvation was not obedience to the Law but faith. If Jesus had stuck to the provinces no harm would have come to him. By arriving at Jerusalem with a following, and teaching openly, he invited arrest and trial, particularly in view of his attitude to the Temple – and it was on this that his enemies concentrated.90 False teachers were normally banished to a remote district. But Jesus, by his behaviour at his trial, made himself liable to far more serious punishment. Chapter 17 of Deuteronomy, especially verses 8 to 12, appears to state that, in matters of legal and religious controversy, a full inquiry should be conducted and a majority verdict reached, and if any of those involved refuses to accept the decision, he shall be put to death. In a people as argumentative and strong-minded as the Jews, living under the rule of law, this provision, known as the offence of the ‘rebellious elder’, was considered essential to hold society together. Jesus was a learned man; that was why Judas, just before his arrest, called him ‘rabbi’. Hence, when brought before the Sanhedrin – or whatever court it was – he appeared as a rebellious elder; and by refusing to plead, he put himself in contempt of court and so convicted himself of the crime by his silence. No doubt it was the Temple priests and the Shammaite Pharisees, as well as the Sadducees, who felt most menaced by Jesus’ doctrine and wanted him put to death in accordance with scripture. But Jesus could not have been guilty of the crime, at any rate as it was later defined by Maimonides in his Judaic code. In any case it was not clear that the Jews had the right to carry out the death sentence. To dispose of these doubts, Jesus was sent to the Roman procurator Pilate as a state criminal. There was no evidence against him at all on this charge, other than the supposition that men claiming to be the Messiah sooner or later rose in rebellion – Messiah-claimants were usually packed off to the Roman authorities if they became troublesome enough. So Pilate was reluctant to convict but did so for political reasons. Hence Jesus was not stoned to death under Jewish law, but crucified by Rome.91 The circumstances attending Jesus’ trial or trials appear to be irregular, as described in the New Testament gospels.92 But then we possess little information about other trials at this time, and all seem irregular.”
― Paul Johnson, History of the Jews