Hank Smith: 00:00:03 Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith and I’m your host and I’m here with my dignified co-host, John Bytheway.

  00:00:14 John, as I was looking through this week’s lesson that describes The Savior going through this very difficult process as dignified and though I know you don’t like being compared to Jesus, I think you are a very dignified human being.

John Bytheway: 00:00:27 We don’t spend enough time together. My kids would never use that adjective, but thank you.

Jack Welch: 00:00:31 Actually, if I can jump in, the word dignity comes from the Latin word dignitas, which has more to do with honor and respectability. Dignitas is a worthy individual.

Hank Smith: 00:00:48 Yep. I think that fits very well, John.

John Bytheway: 00:00:50 This has been a good day already.

Hank Smith: 00:00:54 Hey John, people are probably wondering who is this third voice with us? We needed an expert to join us to go through these chapters. They are long, difficult chapters, a lot of difficult stories. Who’s joining us today?

John Bytheway: 00:01:06 Well, I am so excited to have Jack Welch with us. I’ve heard Jack Welch, John Welch, Professor Welch. I told him before we started recording that every semester in Book of Mormon, as I teach about Chiasmus, I show this little movie of Elder Welch being a missionary in Germany and we could go off on that whole thing for a while, but I’m just excited to have John W. Welch with us today.

  00:01:33 I wanted to mention, it’s not just a favorite book, it’s a beautiful book. It’s actually a book with art and commentary by John and his wife, Jeanie.

  00:01:43 And the Art is by Jorge Coco Santangelo, just this beautiful art book and the book is called The Parables of Jesus: Revealing the Plan of Salvation. You’ll look at the parables in another level that teaches the plan. John W. or Jack and Jeannie Welch live in Provo, Utah where they’ve raised their four children.

  00:02:06 He teaches at the BYU J. Reuben Clark Law School, served as editor of BYU studies for 27 years. Currently, chairman of bookofmormoncentral.org, one of the editors of the BYU New Testament Commentary series. Jeannie now retired, taught for many years in the BYU French department and worked as the director of its foreign language student residence. In talking beforehand, we discovered Brother Welch has been on a mission in Hawaii recently and even is here after being in Israel very recently.

  00:02:40 He’s been all over and we’re just thrilled to have you. We hope you’ll come back again.

Hank Smith: 00:02:46 Brother Welch, we have a lot to cover today. The manual has us in all four gospels. How do you want to go about this? Where do you want to start?

Jack Welch: 00:02:55 It really all begins in the preexistence, where as we know, thanks to Moses chapter four, and also thanks to a parable that Jesus gives about two sons, one wanted to do the will of the father and the other wanted the will of himself to be magnified.

  00:03:14 It was in that premortal counsel that our Savior promised that he would come and do the will of the Father and that he would voluntarily complete the necessary sacrifice to make the atonement perfect and only he could do that. But I think that’s an important perspective. We get all these details and we get kind of crosswise and tangled up in some of the terminology and who’s on first base and what’s going on and why are they doing these things and it is very complicated, especially when you begin looking at it from a Roman law perspective, a Jewish law perspective, psychological analyses, so many different ways to approach the trial of Jesus, which these chapters for this one lesson bring all together in four different ways.

  00:04:06 We’ve got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each one of them with their own personal interest and awareness at play here also. We know that for example, Matthew, one of the 12 apostles was there at least in the garden of Gethsemane, but we don’t know that Matthew and the other apostles went with Jesus when he was taken to Pilate.

  00:04:28 We know that John went into Caiaphas’ palace when Jesus was arrested and then taken there for further interrogation. Peter stands outside and warms his hands, but John is in there. And Mark may have been that young man who in the garden of Gethsemane runs off so quickly that his clothes fall off.

Hank Smith: 00:04:50 They grab him.

Jack Welch: 00:04:51 Yeah, they did wear in those days clothes that were loose like that. We don’t know for sure that that was Mark. It seems to work to think of him that way and if he’s looking at it from a perspective of a young man with these astonishing events going on. Well, Mark is going to be the one who’s going to tell us more about the action, the high drama of what’s happening.

  00:05:17 Matthew’s going to tell us more about the legality. Matthew was probably a Levite. He was a tax collector. He’s interested in money and so he’s the one who tells us about the 30 shekels of silver that Judas, he goes and asks, “What will you give me if I turn Jesus over to you or help you find him?”

  00:05:37 And they agree on that. John, I like to think of as a member of the first presidency. He outlives Matthew, Mark and Luke. Luke was one of Paul’s companions and when Luke writes, he has a Greek audience in mind. We have these different vantage points and I think from the perspective of a trial lawyer, having four witnesses that give independent firsthand knowledge that you can trace to why they are telling this particular part of the story, to me that only enhances the credibility of it, but it also, as you might imagine, involves a lot more complication and in some cases apparent inconsistencies.

  00:06:22 I think those inconsistencies can largely be reconciled. It takes a lot of work that goes far beyond what the normal reader of these chapters would not only be expected to know or do, but in their right mind would want to do. You’ve got to be a kind of crazy lawyer to worry about some of this stuff.

John Bytheway: 00:06:42 We don’t mind crazy lawyers here. The manual says, “In every word and deed, Jesus Christ exemplified pure love, what the Apostle Paul called charity. At no time was this more evident than during the final hours of The Savior’s mortal life. His dignified silence in the face of false accusations demonstrated that he ‘is not easily provoked’. His willingness to submit to scourging, mocking and crucifixion while restraining his power to end his torments showed He ‘suffereth long and beareth all things.’

  00:07:17 His compassion toward His mother and His mercy toward His crucifiers, even during his own incomparable suffering revealed that he ‘seeketh not his own’.

  00:07:26 In his final moments on earth, Jesus was doing what he had done throughout his mortal ministry, teaching us by showing us. Indeed, charity is the ‘pure love of Christ’.” I really loved that paragraph and thought it would help us move forward now into the actual events themselves.

Jack Welch: 00:07:44 Yeah, absolutely. I think that Jesus knows what’s happening. He knows what’s going to happen. He will tell parables such as the parable of the wicked tenants in such a way that even the chief priests get the point and they realize that he is speaking of them, but he doesn’t do it in an accusatory way.

  00:08:08 He doesn’t do it in an unkind way. He is warning, he is letting them know that he knows what’s happening, which makes us kind of ponder because in reality, what is happening has to happen. It’s supposed to happen and Jesus shows that he is well aware of this.

  00:08:29 He’s not panicking, he’s not frustrated over and over again when he talks about even telling Peter at a very early stage, “I’m going to die. Three days later, I will rise from the dead.” Jesus will more than five times tell the disciples, “This is going to happen and how do they respond?”

  00:08:50 What do they say? Peter at one point says, “Not you. Not you, Lord. Don’t let that happen.” But Jesus isn’t rattled by that. He knows what he is supposed to do, what he promised to do and why he is winning the cosmic battle over death, over Satan, over hate, over sin. You think of the infinite number of ways in which the atonement applies and works. And all of that is focused on Jesus’ ability to conquer everything including death and go and unlock the gates of hell while his body hung on the cross.

  00:09:35 We see such a small glimpse of the reality of what is really going on here, but Jesus saw it all and I think that can be a great point of reassurance. Yes, he loves us. Why is he doing this? He’s doing it for a lot of reasons, to do the father’s will, but also because it just comes perfectly natural to him to do what we need him to do for us and he’s willing to do that at all cost.

  00:10:07 Now, I love what you’ve read there. I think that’s a beautiful way to begin this lesson and I hope that people diving into this lesson will take the time to work through the questions that are asked here in the lesson manual. When you’re reading something here and you wonder, “Why are we being told this? Why has Luke put this point in?”

  00:10:29 We can make guesses, but I think more than that, if you ask the question, “Why does this show God’s love? Why does this help me to know how I can respond to that love?”

  00:10:45 I think then you’re on the road to figuring out the answer to why that detail has been given to us.

Hank Smith: 00:10:51 There’s another verse that’s mentioned in the manual and it’s just part of it. I want to read the whole thing because I remember Elder Neal A. Maxwell seemed to be fond of this verse. I can just remembering him using it more than once. 1 Nephi 19:9. What I love about it is it kind of gives the why that you’ve just expressed.

  00:11:13 1 Nephi 19:9, “And the world because of their iniquity shall judge him to be a thing of not. Wherefore they scourge him and he suffereth it and they smite him and he suffereth it. Yea, they spit upon him and he suffereth it. Because…” And I love that, that word because is there, because we’re asking the question, “Was it duty? Was it, ‘I said I would do this.'” But listen to the very core, “Because of his loving kindness and his long-suffering towards the children of men.”

  00:11:46 It was love, it was patience and oh, that’s a comforting verse to me that he loves us and he’s patient and it wasn’t mentioned a sense of duty. Maybe that was part of the mix but I think of Section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants, “I, God, have suffered these things for all that they might not suffer.” Which reminds me of this, his love and his long-suffering.

  00:12:13 We started by talking about the Premortal existence. I love that when the Book of Mormon talks about the Atonement, the word is often followed by, “Which was prepared from the foundation of the world.” That was always the plan, that this would happen in Jesus. He mentions it. As we said, he told the 12 this was going to happen. He set his face toward Jerusalem. Wow! The courage and determination knowing that was coming is always inspiring to me.

Jack Welch: 00:12:45 Absolutely. And that verse from 1 Nephi 19 comes in the beginning of Nephi’s quoting of Zenos and Zenock and other people, ancient prophets who had seen and known of what was going to happen. It’s not just in the Book of Mormon, although we do get clearer information from people like King Benjamin who was told by the angel what’s going to happen in great detail down to the point of what it is that they will actually be offended by, after he works all these mighty miracles.

  00:13:22 The angel told King Benjamin that they would then assume that he must have an evil spirit if he’s doing all of these miracles. It’s either being done by a really good spirit or by a really bad spirit. And the only conclusion that some people could come up with, well how is he working all of these miracles? If you don’t agree that he’s doing it by the power of God, you must think that he’s doing it by some other adverse supernatural power.

  00:13:51 That’s what the Book of Mormon tells us confirming what is exactly going on in this trial. For example, when the chief priests are finally asked by Pilate, what cause of action do you find against him? This is in John 18 and they say, “We would not have brought him to you, except he is…” And the word there is malefactor. It’s not just saying he’s a bad guy, Malus means evil, a maleficent guy.

  00:14:19 He is doing evil and working by the power of they don’t say Satan for example, when Jesus drives out the evil spirits, they’re on the east side of Galilee and they go into the bodies of the swine and then they even bring lawyers up from Jerusalem to figure out by what power are you doing this? That’s a question that they repeatedly ask him. And Jesus of course neutralizes that by saying, “Well, does the devil drive out devils? So I must not be working the wrong side of the street here.”

  00:14:56 Those kinds of questions really help us understand that Jesus knew what he was doing and he knew the power by which he was doing it, and then it just becomes a question, are you going to accept his powers? And that’s what John especially emphasizes. We do not have power of the world but the power of God.

John Bytheway: 00:15:17 So on our last episode, Jesus comes out of the garden of Gethsemane. He is betrayed and arrested taken to Caiaphas’s palace. We’ve talked about Peter outside of the building and it looks like Matthew jumps to these Jewish leaders taking Jesus to Pilate, the governor. Should we pick up there?

Jack Welch: 00:15:37 Yeah, I think that starting out by asking the question, where is the Jewish trial in this, especially from Matthew’s perspective. There’s very little mentioned in Matthew 27 about what happens there after Jesus is taken to Caiaphas’s palace. Now, we don’t know how much time they had.

  00:15:55 Personally, I believe that Caiaphas had already contacted Pilate maybe the day before, saying, “We plan to do the best we can to arrest Jesus and we will bring him to you. Can we have an appointment?” And I think Pilate would’ve said… Well, Romans usually get up pretty early. They did. They usually were at the office by about five in the morning. So maybe he said, “Why don’t you bring him about six o’clock or something like that?”

John Bytheway: 00:16:21 So he had to get it done, had to get this trial done.

Jack Welch: 00:16:24 Well, especially because it was Passover the day before Passover. But more than that, I don’t think Caiaphas would ever have dared to just imbarge on Pilate’s time and calendar, especially at a time like this when Pilate has come up to Jerusalem hopefully to maintain the peace and to make a showing of good Roman presence there in Jerusalem.

  00:16:49 Let’s assume that they do have an early appointment to bring Jesus. We don’t know how long it took them to finish the dinner the night before the last supper, but John tells us that Jesus gives five full chapters of instruction after he had already presented the beginning of the sacrament of the bread and the wine and then they’ve got to walk from wherever the upper room was, probably all the way from the west side of Jerusalem, somewhere over to the Mount of Olives. What time did they actually get to Gethsemane?

  00:17:22 I don’t know. Maybe midnight, maybe 11:00? How long does the Atonement take? Maybe it’s an instantaneous kind of thing as far as we’re concerned because it was an infinite thing, not bound by time, but it did take long enough for Jesus to separate, take Peter, James and John and ask them to just watch while he went to pray. And he comes back and they’ve fallen asleep and he wakes them up and asks them to keep watching and we often fall asleep too.

  00:17:55 He wants us to stay awake just as much as he wanted them to. My point is if he’s arrested, what would you think? 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and then it’s going to take half an hour for the soldiers to march from Garden of Gethsemane over to Caiaphas’s Palace. We know exactly where that is on the south side of Jerusalem.

  00:18:16 There isn’t time there for much of a trial and it would’ve been illegal to try to convene a Jewish court. He does, I think, ask some of the senior members and influential members of the Sanhedrin to come but there’s no way there’s a full Sanhedrin trial going on in Caiaphas’ home at that time of the night.

  00:18:39 The question is, where was the Jewish trial? What I’ve worked on in the last oh seven or eight years is looking at what happened after Jesus raised Lazarus. You remember, when Jesus raises Lazarus, there are many people there from Jerusalem. There are Sadducees, there are Pharisees, people from the Sanhedrin are there and what they see, they’re worried about because they see Jesus raising somebody from the dead and they run right back to Jerusalem and it’s Sadducees and Pharisees. So both parties are now talking to Caiaphas and they’re saying, “We need to hold some kind of a trial.”

  00:19:19 And Caiaphas does. They hold a trial there at the end of John 11, and it’s there that Caiaphas issues not just a casual opinion, but he issues a legal decision that it is better that one man be put to death than that we lose the place, meaning the temple, and that the Romans take away from us our capacity to rule. Well, why isn’t Jesus executed it if that’s a conviction? There are a couple of reasons. One is they don’t have Jesus.

John Bytheway: 00:19:53 Yeah, he’s not present for that trial.

Jack Welch: 00:19:55 And you didn’t have to be present in the ancient world. You could be convicted in absentia, but Jesus has taken off. He knows that there will be trouble and he goes to a village up in Samaria called Ephrem, and then the Sanhedrin responds by issuing an all points bulletin.

  00:20:13 “Anyone who knows where Jesus is, you must tell us so that we can arrest him.” What remains is they still must decide, number one, who will actually carry out this execution, and number two, what should the manner of that execution be? But before they can do anything, they have to get Jesus.

John Bytheway: 00:20:33 That’s something I’ve never noticed before is the trial had really already taken place. So anything they do the night they arrest him is maybe just for show.

Jack Welch: 00:20:42 It’s more than show. Like I’m saying, they have a serious question here. Who will actually carry out the execution? They’re hoping that maybe Pilate will absorb the heat on that one. Pilate will answer according to Matthew, “I don’t find any offenses against the Roman government here. I find no fault in him.” Meaning as a Roman, he hasn’t violated Roman law and he then says, “What do you want to do? I will let you do. You can go and do what you want with him.”

  00:21:13 That’s when the chief priests now have him and they then determine what shall happen. After the Barabbas incident where Pilate offers, “Who shall I let go? Will it be Barabbas or will it be Jesus?” So there’s a lot of jostling here for posture and responsibility. One last thing about the Lazarus affair, the role of Lazarus here is that if you read in the beginning of Chapter 12 of John, you’ll notice that they also send out an arrest warrant for Lazarus. They want him.

Hank Smith: 00:21:48 They want to kill him too.

Jack Welch: 00:21:50 The reason may be that if it is some kind of improper use of power or magic or incantation or whatever, the best witness you want to have is you want Lazarus to say what happened. How did he do this to you? And it’s at that point that some of Jesus’s disciples go and find him up in that village in Samaria and they tell him, “This is what’s happening back in Jerusalem.”

  00:22:19 It’s at that point that Jesus says, “I will come back.” I think it’s partly because you don’t know what they would’ve done to Lazarus.

Hank Smith: 00:22:27 Wow!

Jack Welch: 00:22:28 This is not a normal beginning for the analysis of the trial of Jesus. And you’re right when Raymond E. Brown writes his two volume history of the trial of Jesus, he starts at the last Supper.

  00:22:43 But I think you can’t just start there. There’s a lot more going on and has been going on that I think especially for Latter-day Saints, we can understand that this principle, that it’s better that one should die than the whole nation dwindle in unbelief. That in fact is a solid part of ancient Israelite law going back into the books of Samuel and Kings.

  00:23:11 How does that help our addressing this question of what’s happening here in Matthew 27?

Hank Smith: 00:23:18 I would love to get your opinion because the first five verses of Matthew 27, “When the morning was come, I put my margin, where was he all night?” As I visited Caiaphas Palace, they show you that dungeon and talk about maybe he was in there in that pit with the opening at the roof, but what you’re saying is if this could have been 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when they first came and then if they leave at five, maybe not as long as I’d imagined, I don’t know. What do you think about that as a sight? Do you think he could have been kept in there that dungeon?

Jack Welch: 00:23:53 They do have dungeons and perhaps they might have thought, “Well let’s just hold him here.” But the other gospel say that he was interrogated and he refuses to answer and that they do bring in witnesses who turn out to be false witnesses. They’re trying to collect a little bit more information that might be useful for them.

  00:24:14 Especially, they’re trying to gather some supplemental charges that they might be able to interest Pilate in, that Jesus is somehow disturbing the peace, that he is upsetting the money changers in the temple. He came into the city and there was the triumphal entry and there was an unruly mob, you might say. They might be trying to somehow interest Pilate in saying that what the Romans want is the pax romana, the Roman peace. She wants stability and Jesus is not a friend of that, they’re saying.

John Bytheway: 00:24:55 And then hopefully they’ll take care of the problem, right. That they’ll take the heat for it and it won’t be on us because they know Jesus is popular.

Jack Welch: 00:25:03 We know that John went in to whatever proceedings were going on there and I don’t think Jesus ever made any effort to escape. He’s not calling on all my friends, “come rescue me.” I’m in trouble. Even Peter outside is warming his hands and trying to distance himself from any association with the disciples and for good reasons. He’s in hostile territory, you might say. I think that there’s not any real evidence that Jesus was resisting his being there. It’s not consistent with what we’ve opened with here, Jesus’s loving kindness.

  00:25:41 I think he’s more likely overwhelmed them with his humility, with his concern and understanding. He’s not threatening, he’s not arguing or somehow trying to fight back. That’s not happening. No. No one suggests that ever when they take him and he stands there before Pilate or Pilate takes him in and says, come on, let’s talk about this. He is not a troublemaker, he is humble and he is kind of above the fray every step of the way.

John Bytheway: 00:26:14 Yeah, I’m noticing that in Matthew 27:13, Pilate says, “Hearest not thou how many things they witness against thee?” And he doesn’t answer a word. And the governor marveled greatly. He’s not fighting this.

Jack Welch: 00:26:29 Well, he’s never seen an accused person act this way. But you have to also realize that in all ancient law, if you didn’t defend yourself, that was taken as an admission of guilt. We have the Fifth Amendment in the United States that allows us to remain silent. We do not have to swear an oath against our own interest.

  00:26:55 The Fifth Amendment wasn’t even in existence in any legal system until the Cromwellian Revolution in British law back in the 1650s. Silence was an admission of guilt in their world. It’s still left open. So what do we do? What happens next?

Hank Smith: 00:27:13 Yeah. I like that in verse 18, Pilate, I think it’s referring to, “He knew that for envy, they had delivered him.” He can tell some of the backstory of why Jesus is there.

John Bytheway: 00:27:26 Yeah. He’s caught on to what the Jewish leaders are doing. It does seem that Pilate wants to get out of this if he can.

Hank Smith: 00:27:33 Yeah.

Jack Welch: 00:27:35 Pilate is not a high ranking official. He is what they call the pro-curator of Judea, but he is not a senator. He is of the equestrian class. We don’t know exactly how he was appointed or why. There’s some speculations and ancient suggestions. We don’t know. We know very little about Pilate, but most of all, I think Pilate is quite insecure.

  00:28:00 The year before, he had acted abruptly and he had killed some bandits, some revolutionaries, which he had perfect right to do. But it caused almost a revolution. There were riots and objections and this time, I think Pilate wants to play it very cool for a lot of reasons. But one of them, like you say, is he can tell that this is out of envy, you might say. Jesus has more popularity and power and Caiaphas admits that. “If we don’t do something, all the people are going to follow him and we’ll be left with nothing.” That’s John 11.

John Bytheway: 00:28:39 I have written by verse 19, “Listen to your wife.”

Hank Smith: 00:28:42 No kidding.

John Bytheway: 00:28:46 Because Pilate’s wife says, “Have thou nothing to do with this just man. I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him.” Listen to your wife. I’ve often said, if the Lord wants to talk to me, he’ll tell my wife.

Jack Welch: 00:28:57 Yeah, that’s right. In the Joseph Smith translation, if you check the footnote there, Joseph said that she had not just had a dream but had a vision. What that vision consisted of, we don’t know, but apparently this wife who will become a saint later on in Christian tradition, she was a very influential person.

  00:29:17 The women in these last hours of Jesus’s life are very prominent and significant. And after all, Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, the first person he appears to. And the women are there at the tomb and the women are well probably there on the way to the place of crucifixion. Certainly, Mary is there and Jesus will speak from the cross, “Behold thy son, behold thy mother.” Pointing to the role of Pilate’s wife is very consistent with what the New Testament writers want us to experience and learn here. Jesus is doing this for everyone. Men, women, children. It’s not just a small group of politicians and influential people. It’s for the whole world.

John Bytheway: 00:30:04 Pilate asked such a great question in verse 23. “The governor said, ‘Why? What evil has he done?’ But they cried out the more saying, let him be crucified.”

Jack Welch: 00:30:12 Yeah. So what evil? The other word of evil is cacon. What wickedness and even what magic to speak with evil spirits. People in the ancient world cast spells and did things that they hope would draw these forces.

  00:30:31 They believed that there were lots of spirits and forces and they hoped to mobilize those forces to help them in their causes in any way they could. And by the way, we talked about how that trial of Lazarus might have raised some red flags about the use of power and spirits. Deuteronomy 13:1, which I think is probably the concern that would’ve been raised throughout the trial of Jesus by the Jews. Deuteronomy 13:1 begins by saying, “If a person, a prophet, anyone comes working miracles or giving signs and wonders in order to get people to worship differently than they have been, that is a capital offense and he should be put to death.”

  00:31:21 That’s the first law in the Torah because it’s the way they understood, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind and strength and none other, you shall have no other gods before me.” And if someone comes along and even works miracles to try to get people to worship in another way, you’re violating Deuteronomy 13. You can see how that could have been a factor when they say, “What cacon? I find no cacon here. I find no evil going on here.”

John Bytheway: 00:31:49 With Pilate wanting to release Jesus, but they asked for Barabbas. Is this just the custom of the Romans to give back a popular prisoner?

Jack Welch: 00:32:00 Well, it certainly stated here in Matthew as if everyone knows that this is some kind of a Roman practice. It’s unheard of anywhere else in the Roman Empire. And if it had been a kind of political move that had been adopted, there’s a little bit of this that might have happened in Egypt, but it appears that this might just be a special case maybe once or twice before someone had done this on Passover saying, “I’ll be happy to give you one of these convicted people you choose.” As kind of a symbol of Passover where God allowed the Israelites to Passover and avoid death.

  00:32:45 But we know almost nothing about this and although there’s some very interesting articles written about this Barabbas incident, it still remains very vague on what’s happening and why.

John Bytheway: 00:32:56 Our friend, John Hilton III, has taught me that you can in a way see Barabbas as yourself, that you are being let free and Jesus is taking the punishment. Not sure that that’s what Matthew intended, but I think it can be an interesting, can be a heartfelt lesson to see yourself allowed to go free when someone else takes that punishment for you.

Jack Welch: 00:33:20 No, I agree with that though. I think anytime we can personalize any of these decisions or choices or actions or consequences, anytime we can see a personal benefit, that is certainly within the realm and the role of scripture to inspire us.

  00:33:38 Now, there is one little twist here that might be of interest as well and that is that the word Barabbas, Bar in Hebrew means son and Abba means father. So literally Barabbas’ name is the son of the father, or the son of his father, or the son of daddy. We don’t know why Barabbas is called Barabbas. But Jesus is called the Son of God and that’s what the centurion will say, “Surely this person was the Messiah, the Son of God.” That’s a little irony. The fact that Jesus as the Son of God helps us as children of God, I think can cement that.

Hank Smith: 00:34:18 I remember watching Ben-Hur growing up as a kid.

Jack Welch: 00:34:23 You can still watch it.

Hank Smith: 00:34:24 Yes. It takes about a week. It’s like a three-hour movie, three and a half hours. But I can still remember that scene of Pilate washing his hands. It’s all kind of from a distance and you don’t hear all the dialogue and remember asking, “Wait, what’s he doing?” And he is symbolically trying to say, “I have nothing to do with this type of a thing.” Is there anything in the law that relates to that sort of an action?

Jack Welch: 00:34:49 Let me just say that Romans were very interested in purification, in bodily washing. They washed every day. They had a bath. They were concerned about disease. They wanted to be sure that we’re kept clean. But I think in this case, when he is talking about I’m washing my hands, I have no responsibility for this. It’s hard to know exactly what that might mean. Certainly Pilate can’t be saying, I’ll have nothing more to do with this because he then will detail some centurions. There will be some Roman soldiers that he will send to go to Golgotha, go to the place of the crucifixion and I think mainly, to be sure that peace and order are kept there.

  00:35:32 He doesn’t want a riot to break out. So he can’t be turning his back completely on the situation. What he might be signaling though is I find nothing wrong from a Roman perspective and then he simply turns it over and says, “I will let you do what you want.”

  00:35:50 There’s always this delicate dance between Pilate and Caiaphas. We know this went on for many years. Most of Pilate’s time there. The question is how much Roman influence will there be in Judea? How much can the Jews have independence? It would make sense that what Pilate is saying is simply applicable to that one particular decision and not extending between the Jews and the Romans to any further extent.

Hank Smith: 00:36:16 I just look at verse 25. It’s as if they are helping it along when they say, “His blood be on us and on our children.” They’re backing up Pilate saying, “You see to it.” “Okay, yeah. It’ll be on us. It won’t be on you,” it kind of sounds like.

Jack Welch: 00:36:32 It sounds like they are saying, “We’ll take responsibility for this.” But you’re absolutely right that that verse which is not in Mark, Luke or John has been used improperly to then place the blame on all Jews for the death of Jesus. Now, there are a couple problems with that, especially if you view it from the perspective of God and Jesus who are willingly submitting to this because they know that it needs to happen. And so if there is any consequence, if there is any legal ramification, they’re saying, “We’ll take that.”

  00:37:10 And this upon us and our children is a legal formula that says, “It’s not just me but my heirs. I will bind my family to any consequences,” Usually money, “damages that would come from my action.” So it’s a way of invoking a surety or a guarantor to stand behind and back up more than just the one person who’s making the promise to take responsibility at whatever level that might be.

Hank Smith: 00:37:38 It’s such an interesting thing because this was a small group at the time, a relatively small group of Jewish leaders who were saying that. But in another way, we want his blood to cleanse us and our children. You could-

Jack Welch: 00:37:53 Exactly. And he’s offering his blood.

Hank Smith: 00:37:55 Yeah, and he tells it, “No man taketh my life from me.” He says in John, as you said, this was what he came to do to this end, he was born. Anytime we’re trying to look for, “Well, who is at fault here?” Well, this is what he voluntarily came to do and that changes the way we look at it, I think.

Jack Welch: 00:38:13 I think so and what you’re saying ties right back into where we began to say, when these problems come up in trying to understand what’s happening here, we have to take the more eternal perspective and step back and not just see it in some kind of technical legal manner.

Hank Smith: 00:38:30 Jack, it seems that Luke records something that the other gospel authors don’t, that about this point, Pilate sends Jesus away for a moment. He sends him to Herod. Is Luke the only one to tell us about this?

Jack Welch: 00:38:45 Luke is the one who’s interested in Galilee in Greek. Herod is not Greek, but he’s not Roman either. And so he’s more Gentile. There’s been a lot written on this subject, but it seems that Pilate might be concerned about jurisdiction. At this time in the development of Roman law generally in the provinces, law was shifting from giving the jurisdiction over a crime to the government of the residence, wherever that person had come from and shifting it to giving jurisdiction to the governor of the place where the wrong occurred.

  00:39:26 We call this in the law, in personum jurisdiction, jurisdiction over the person and in local jurisdiction, over the place. We still have this problem today. If you’re a citizen of California and you commit a crime in New Mexico, can you be tried in New Mexico or do you have to go back to California?

  00:39:45 Well, we have laws that sort out that. So it may simply be that the Pilate says, “Well, Jesus is a Galilean, shouldn’t at least since Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee happens to be in town, he’s just there in the Herodian palace, I don’t want to offend anyone here.” I think this is Pilate’s main, concern. He doesn’t want to create enemies here. And if he takes one of a very popular Galilean and puts him to death in Jerusalem or allows him to be put to death in Jerusalem, when Herod Antipas was right there, that would be a political misstep. Now, Herod Antipas, he doesn’t want to get in the middle of this. He’s had enough trouble with John the Baptist. He’s the one who chopped off John the Baptist’s head.

  00:40:31 He, of course, will mock Jesus and will have his soldiers put a crown of thorns on him and dress him up in a robe of royalty and beat him. The beating, the flogging was often used in Roman law and Jewish law. Not in Jewish law too much. There was a limit on 40 strikes under Jewish law. But in Roman law, particularly, you wanted to beat a person a little bit or maybe a lot in order to be sure that person was telling the truth.

  00:41:03 It’s kind of ironic that you think that that would happen that way, but that’s what they believed, that if someone is not put under some kind of duress, his words wouldn’t be as credible as if he has tried you. You whip him. And if he still stands by his story, that turns out to be a validation and a testimony a good thing if he withstands that. But if he caves in, obviously we’re talking about a very different world 2000 years ago, thank goodness than what we do. But that’s what Herod does and sends him back to Pilate.

  00:41:35 And then there’s one little statement that I’ve actually done quite a bit of research and speaking about in academic circles and that’s when Luke says, “On that day, Pilate and Antipas became friends.” Philos, they become friends. In a political context, that word friend, philos or amicus always refers to an ally. And so they become friends, not in the sense that they’re going to go play golf together or send wedding announcements for their children, but what they’re saying here is that they now have a political bond that they didn’t have before.

  00:42:12 Because Herod, what Herod is doing when he sends Jesus back to Pilate is he is recognizing Roman superiority when he says, “This case can be handled by Roman law, by Roman power.” He’s actually acknowledging the legitimacy of the Romans being there and Pilate likes that much. Now, this kind of dynamic between Romans and Greeks and Jews and so on, is very much the kind of thing that Luke is interested in. So he picks that up. I think it was an event that actually happened. Don’t know how long it took, there’s not a lot of time.

John Bytheway: 00:42:47 It seems now, I’m looking at Luke, maybe Mark mentions it as well. We can’t line these events up perfectly, but as Pilate is washing his hands of this, he is saying, “I’m going to scourge him and then let him go.” It says in Luke 23:16, Pilate says, “I will therefore chastise him and release him.” They don’t want him just tortured or hurt. They want him gone.

Jack Welch: 00:43:12 Well, but the chastising would be, “I will warn him.” In other words, I will tell him, “I’m going to let you go, but I don’t want to see you back here. So don’t cause trouble.”

John Bytheway: 00:43:22 It’s hard to get into Pilate’s head here. He’s a politician. He’s trying to save his own skin. But he does seem to not want to go through it. He seems to be finding avenues, looking for avenues to not do this.

Jack Welch: 00:43:36 I think you’re right.

Hank Smith: 00:43:36 Especially after his wife warned him. And as you said, Jesus wasn’t resisting. He was just right there.

Jack Welch: 00:43:44 And Jesus, he’s not carrying a weapon. He never did. And he’s not a revolutionary in the sense of a zealot or the kind of person that the Romans would’ve been concerned about.

John Bytheway: 00:43:57 Next comes this Roman scourging. From what I’ve read, this is a horrible… I don’t even know how to describe it.

Jack Welch: 00:44:05 That’s right. But the one thing we do know for sure is that what Jesus is going through, both spiritually in Gethsemane with the scourging, with the crucifixion, he is submitting to the most extreme forms of suffering, physical, mental, eternal, that we can even begin to even imagine or think about.

  00:44:29 The lesson wants us to focus first of all on the fact that Jesus’s willingness to suffer these things shows his love for His father and the father’s plan and all that the plan of salvation requires in order for the gospel and the administration of justice and mercy to work out eternally, for not only the father’s will, but also for all of us. We do put ourselves often in the position of regretting and of mourning, and suffer with Jesus.

  00:45:05 And of course, there in Jerusalem you walk the via Dola Rosa, the road or the way of sorrow. And it is sorrowful and people are weeping and they’re looking at what’s happening. The ironic thing here is that the way of sorrow turns out to be the way of happiness and the way of eternal victory. Jesus knows that every step of the way. And so with the scourging or any other part of this, the nails being driven into his hands and feet, the sword piercing his side, he is doing this without resistance and why?

  00:45:44 Yes, he’s overcome by love. He’s also saying, “They are driving these nails into my hands just as Psalm 22 said they would. They pierced my hands and my feet.” And who was it that told David to put that in his psalm? It was Jesus himself as Jehovah who would have given those words. And you can read in other places in the Psalms too, where the things that Jesus says from the cross are things that often were right there, that would have been a part of Jesus’s knowledge, his faith, his upbringing.

  00:46:22 I like to remember that according to the tradition, Mary, Jesus’ mother, was raised and kept in the temple when her parents, Anna and Joakim died at a very old age. Being raised in the temple. Mary danced and sang, and what did she sing? The 150 Psalms, that’s their hymn book. I think as Mary raised her son, knowing what his mission and role would be, can you imagine the poignancy of her singing? And Psalm 22, how does it begin? “My God, my God. Why hast thou forsaken me?”

  00:47:02 I don’t know what the tune was, but it’s there that he says, “They pierced my hands and my feet. They also mock me to scorn. They part my arraignment. They wag their tongues and saying, ‘If he had done these miracles for others, why doesn’t he take himself off the cross?'” That’s all in Psalm 22.

John Bytheway: 00:47:20 Yeah. So Jesus could, on the cross, could very well be quoting these psalms. And if you don’t know the Psalms, you don’t see it.

Jack Welch: 00:47:27 What we don’t often realize that I love to think about here, I think as Jesus is walking, he’s singing the Psalms. When you go through deep trouble, the things that can come to your mind is the wording of our Psalms.

  00:47:42 I Know That My Redeemer Lives, How Great Thou Art. So many of our Psalms are reassuring. Come, Come Ye Saints, no toil nor labor fear. That song brought the pioneers across the plain. And why? Because they knew the fourth verse, “All is well and should we die before our journeys through?” And it’s the same with Psalm 22. If Jesus is singing this song, if it’s going through his head because these things are happening, because he was the author in a way of the words. Whatever, how does it end? You’ve got to read all the way to the end of the psalm. It ends with success. All the nations will know. So with your question, why he is suffering and allowing these things, I think the lesson really invites a lot of many, many avenues of realizing these things.

John Bytheway: 00:48:35 Yeah. The crown of thorns, the scarlet robe, all forms of mockery to this person who a week before came riding into Jerusalem as the king of the Jews. Look at you now, type.

Jack Welch: 00:48:47 That’s right.

John Bytheway: 00:48:48 Type moments. Is there anything in the other gospels we’ve missed with Pilate before we talk about what’s happening on the cross itself?

Hank Smith: 00:48:57 Isn’t it true that he doesn’t say a thing to Herod?

John Bytheway: 00:49:01 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:49:01 I don’t know why. That’s always interesting to me, but he doesn’t even say a thing to him.

Jack Welch: 00:49:06 Well, that’s the Herod Antipas thing, and I’ve wondered about that when he doesn’t say anything. Jesus and John the Baptist were cousins and what would you say if all of a sudden you’re brought before the person who had killed your cousin? I think silence in that kind of a setting is painful. But you don’t cry out. Joseph Smith, is he crying out? Not so much. He does object to his treatment in Liberty jail. But he goes like a lamb to the slaughter, to Carthage, and he’s not railing against his captors or his situations.

  00:49:44 What does he do? He and Hyrum, they read the Book of Mormon, they testify to the guards of the Book of Mormon. And John Taylor also reports that they read something, we don’t know what it is, out of Josephus. Which may be there is a paragraph in Josephus that mentions Jesus. This might be a good time for me to just mention a resource that people who are asking the kinds of questions that you are and that we’re talking about here might be interested in.

  00:50:12 There is a book called Charting the New Testament, and it’s a long book. It has several hundred charts in it about all kinds of subjects dealing with the New Testament. It’s available for free on the Book of Mormon Central Archive. If you just go to that website and go to research and click on archive and put in Charting the New Testament, it comes up as a PDF. And there are charts, there are about a dozen of them that go through and give you the unique contributions of Matthew, the unique contributions of Mark, of Luke, of John, and help you to kind of formulate answers to these questions, what’s different and why in each one of these. And then there are a lot of other charts that go into this.

  00:51:00 For example, there’s one that I really have used a lot because you start asking, “Well, why are these people doing what they’re doing? It doesn’t make any sense.” And that’s exactly the point. When people get scared, they do not act rationally.

  00:51:16 What we find over and over again is the last days of Jesus is that people are afraid. Everyone here is afraid. Caiaphas is afraid. They’re described this way. I think Pilate is afraid that he’s going to make some big mistake. You go down the list and even at the very end, the disciples are afraid. A chart like that can help you to recognize that this is what I call a theater of fear, that everybody for their different reasons are really afraid of what’s going to happen next.

  00:51:47 I think that’s in our own lives. When we get afraid of something, when you’re afraid of taking a test or when you’re afraid of some challenge that you have in your life, fear is not your friend. Fear wants to drive out rationality, it wants to drive out faith and hope. It leads to people feeling incapable of dealing with things. I think the very strong emphasis here in the gospels about the presence of fear, I call it the fear factor, really does explain a lot of the problems that each party, everyone has with what’s happening here.

Hank Smith: 00:52:27 I’ve got the chart right in front of me. I went to Book of Mormon Central. I went up to research, went over to archive. One of these charts is called The Prevalent Factor of Fear. It’s chart 10- 12, and you’ve put together a great list here that people feared the miracles, that Herod Antipas feared John the Baptist, that Herod Antipas feared the people, Joseph of Arimathea feared the Jews. The apostles fled from Gethsemane.

  00:52:57 Peter denied Jesus outside of Caiaphas’ house. Chief priest feared the Romans. The chief priest feared the people. The chief priest feared Jesus. Pilate feared exceedingly. One robber on the cross feared God. Soldiers at Golgotha feared greatly. All the people left Golgotha fearful. Even the tomb guards, then fear the angel that comes for the resurrection. So you’re right, this is a theater of fear and people just are acting irrationally when they are scared.

Jack Welch: 00:53:27 Remember, how would you act if an angel appeared to you? Well, the shepherds in the field, what’s the first thing the angel has to say?

John Bytheway: 00:53:35 Fear not.

Jack Welch: 00:53:36 “Don’t be scared. We’re good guys.” Or something like that. And the word in Greek for fear, I fear, is phobeo. We get phobias from that. So it’s not just talking about worrying, it’s talking about deep psychological phobia that puts you into a paralyzed state in a way of depression or of anxiety or maybe just capitulation.

Hank Smith: 00:54:03 I’m also looking at chart 10-10. We’ve got these unresolved differences that in this account of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion, there are differences that you just can’t reconcile because one gospel author puts it one way and one puts it the other.

  00:54:20 It says, were there two meetings of the council of the Sanhedrin, one at night and one at day? Or was it just one meeting at daybreak or just one before the arrest of Jesus? It’s impossible to know. Did the assembly all condemn Jesus like in Mark or did some abstain like in Luke? Did Jesus remain silent before Pilate? That’s what Matthew says. Or did he speak much according to John? As we read these four accounts, we need to keep in mind that some of these differences are going to be left unresolved. There’s going to be a scriptural silence there.

Jack Welch: 00:54:53 That’s right. Although you can develop possible scenarios that would make sense of these. So for example, the first one, did Judas actually kiss Jesus or only try to? Luke says he just tried to.

  00:55:05 Well, maybe it was just a little peck on the cheek or something, but it was enough that that’s what Judas had said, I will do this and enough to identify Jesus. And I think Luke is saying, well, it wasn’t really a kiss, but it was somehow a point of identification. A lot of these differences, you can work them out in some cases. Not all of them though.

  00:55:28 Did Jesus remain silent before Pilate? That’s what Matthew says. Or did he speak much? And that’s what John says. Now, it may be that Jesus remains silent before Pilate sent Jesus off to see Herod Antipas, but we know that when he comes back, Jesus will actually go in and converse with Pilate extensively and John will report that no one else will tell that conversation between Jesus and Pilate. They both may be right, but just talking about different times in the development or unfolding of these facts.

Hank Smith: 00:56:02 We probably ought to look at that just briefly. This is the conversation in John 18. Pilate says, “Are you the king of the Jews?” And Jesus said, “Did someone tell you to ask me that or did you think of that question yourself?” And Pilate says, I think he says, “Well, of course someone told me. I’m not a Jew.”

  00:56:19 And then Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from hence.” Pilate says, “Oh, so you are a king then?” Jesus answered, “Thou sayest I’m a king.” And then this beautiful phrase, “To this end was I born and for this cause came I into the world. Everyone that is of the truth heareth with my voice.” So we’re grateful that John recorded that conversation.

Jack Welch: 00:56:48 We don’t know. But I think the assumption would be that just as John was allowed to go in with Caiaphas at Caiaphas’ Palace, that John would have also been allowed to go in with Jesus for the conversation with Pilate.

Hank Smith: 00:57:05 And then it’s fascinating. Pilate wants to have some sort of philosophical discussion. He says, “What is truth?” And almost like, “What? You want to talk about that right now?” Fascinating.

Jack Welch: 00:57:17 He may just be saying, “How can we know the truth?” And isn’t that the burning question for all of this? How do you know that Jesus is the Christ? There is a way that, it comes through the Spirit and you have to ask for it and you have to live in a way that will allow the spirit to manifest that to you. So Pilate I think is asking kind of Moroni’s question, “How can I know the truth?”

Hank Smith: 00:57:41 Yeah, what is the truth?

Jack Welch: 00:57:43 I don’t think he’s saying it in despair and especially like you’ve mentioned, his wife has come in with a warning for him. Remember that Romans were very concerned about auspices, about signs, omens. If Julius Caesar had only listened to his wife, his life would’ve ended differently. This is a Roman way of being concerned and recognizing that there are sources of truth that come through heavenly manifestations. I think Jesus welcomes that.

John Bytheway: 00:58:20 I’ve always wondered, I’m glad we’re talking about it. It was Pilate like, “Huh, what’s truth?” Because I’ve heard a million things or there’s a lot of philosophers around here. Or as you’re saying, maybe it was more of a, “Wish I knew what the truth is.”

  00:58:35 And I just love that we have such a nice little definition in, is it Section 93. Knowledge of things as they are, as they were, as they are to come. And then I love what Jacob does with that. In the Book of Mormon, he adds one word, “Things as they really are.” Which with so much in the world today-

Jack Welch: 00:58:55 Oh, that’s all very powerful.

John Bytheway: 00:58:58 Can I know how things… The spirit speak of the things as they really are, and thank heaven for that. We can actually know the way things really are when there’s so much out there.

Jack Welch: 00:59:08 From the New Testament perspective, and it’s particularly the Gospel of John. It’s there that you will find Jesus himself saying, “I am the truth, the way and the life. He that believeth in me will never perish, but have eternal life.”

  00:59:24 These statements, the I am statements echo what Jesus, what Jehovah told Moses. “You should say, when people ask, ‘Well, what’s the name of the God that’s given you these laws?’ I am that I am.”

  00:59:38 That is something that Jesus will use often. “Fear not, I am.” Is the way it actually reads. Not, “Fear not. It is.” Though the I am expression there for people who want to say and want to embrace the truth that Jesus is Jehovah, the God of this world. He’s giving people like Pilate an open invitation. “Are you a king?” “I am.”

John Bytheway: 01:00:05 We’ve walked through the arrest, the Jewish trial, his conversations with Pilate that sends him to Herod. Herod sends him back. Pilate seems to want to get out of this, but instead washes his hands of it and says, do what you want to do.

  01:00:20 They send Jesus to be scoured. Josephus, we mentioned him earlier. He wrote this. He said, “They put on his head a crown of thorns, a reed in his right hand. They put a robe on him,” a scarlet robe in one account, a purple robe in another, “and mock him saying, ‘Hail the king of the Jews.'” Now they lead him away to be crucified. Can you walk us through what happens next?

Jack Welch: 01:00:49 What happens after Jesus is then sent from Pilate, go out to the place of crucifixion, which is Golgatha. We don’t know how far that was. We don’t know where it actually began. If you go to Jerusalem, they will tell you, “This is station one of the cross, station two.” And you can go through all of the different stations, all of which have some scriptural basis. What they all amount to, the first 10 stations are mostly the suffering that he’s going through.

  01:01:20 One form or another, he is obviously very exhausted and it’s amazing that he can carry anything, let alone the cross beam that he will then be crucified on. I don’t know whether he is carrying the whole cross put together. Usually, it was just the cross beam that he would carry and then that’s then connected to the post out in the place of crucifixion.

  01:01:41 We don’t know that for sure, but can you imagine how weak anyone would be? Jesus was immortal. He had incredible powers, but still been a long time since he’s had any sleep and he has gone through the agony of the Atonement and in the Atonement, when he talks about the suffering that he bore there and Section 19 of the Doctrine and Covenants is especially poignant in having Jesus try to explain to Joseph Smith the intensity of the suffering that he bore on that occasion.

  01:02:17 At one place in Section 19, he breaks off mid-sentence. He can’t even keep describing it and there’s a dash there at the end of that sentence. And then he just says, “But I’ve done it so you don’t have to bear this kind of suffering.” But what did that involve? To absorb all of that pain and sorrow and agony and sin and rebelliousness and whatever kinds of worries and concerns and problems, everything that is being absorbed there by the Atonement.

  01:02:47 If we will come and call upon that as our resource, how exhausting would that have been? Hard to even contemplate. We know that Jesus in his infinite hour would overcome that. In Luke, when Luke talks about Jesus being in an agony, that’s the way the English reads, what the Greek says is a little different. It says, “He was in an agon.” What’s an agon? We get the word agony from it, but an agon is a battle or a struggle. What Jesus is doing there, I think he is fighting the powers of evil. He is overcoming all of the wickedness and the problems. He has an angel there.

  01:03:32 Not strengthening him, because that would be not be fair play. Jesus has to do this himself. But I think the angel and Elder McConkie said that was Michael, the Archangel, who was there to be sure that Lucifer didn’t try to play unfair either.

  01:03:49 Let Jesus do what he now needs to do. All of that is to say collapsing into that experience would’ve been so much pressure and so much agony and bleeding from every pore and whatever else you can imagine. That Jesus has the strength after that to walk from one of these places to another, to withstand the beating and the whipping and so on. It’s just hard to put one foot ahead of the other, even imagining that there’s any strength left there at all, except for the fact that we’re talking about not a mere mortal.

  01:04:26 They will say he was just a man, but he’s more than that. But as people stop and try to wipe his face and to bear the cross for him, “Let me take a turn carrying this for you.” There’s a model for us. There’s a lesson for us personally. It’s not that that’s going to make it any less of a load or less of an atoning sacrifice by Jesus. But it’s a way in which we can say, “We thank you, we love you.” And he will always be open to that kind of reciprocation, which we certainly would be delinquent if we didn’t return to him.

Hank Smith: 01:05:05 Please join us for part two of this podcast.