Biblion Bible Commentary
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We Found This Man Perverting the Nation
Luke 23:1-7
1 The whole company of them rose up and brought him before Pilate. · WEB
The charge is translated into something Rome will act on, and Pilate finds nothing in it.
The whole company of them rose up and brought him before Pilate Luke 23:1.
The council can condemn and cannot execute, so the prisoner goes to the governor at first light.
"We found this man perverting the nation, forbidding paying taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king" Luke 23:2.
This account gives the indictment in full, and it is worth reading against what actually happened. Blasphemy — the charge the council convicted him on — is not mentioned, because it means nothing in a Roman court. Three political charges are substituted: sedition, tax refusal, and a claim to kingship.
The middle one is a flat lie, and the reader has watched it being manufactured. Spies were sent precisely to get that sentence out of him, and what he said was give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's Luke 20:25. They failed to obtain the evidence and are presenting the charge anyway.
Pilate asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" He answered him, "So you say" Luke 23:3. Neither denial nor the confession Pilate needs. It hands the words back to the man who chose them.
"I find no basis for a charge against this man" Luke 23:4.
This is the first of three such declarations in this chapter Luke 23:14 Luke 23:22, and no other Gospel repeats it so insistently. The writer is establishing something on the record: the only official with the authority to decide the case examined it and found nothing, and said so publicly three times.
"He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee even to this place" Luke 23:5.
The prosecution presses, and in doing so hands Pilate an escape. The word Galilee is the one he seizes on.
When he found out that he was in Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who was also in Jerusalem during those days Luke 23:7. It is a jurisdictional transfer, and it is the move of a man who wants the file on somebody else's desk.
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