Answering Skeptics: Who Arrested Jesus?
I recently posted a video ad on Facebook that asked the question “What’s All the Fuss About Jesus?” that spawned quite a few discussions. I had no idea there was actually some kind of controversy over the question of who arrested Jesus, but I thought it’d be fun to share with you the answer.
I start with my interlocutor’s question:
Who arrested Jesus? Was it roman soldiers, temple guards or temple guards, elders and roman soldiers?
All four gospel writers give an account of the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Their accounts can be found in Matthew 26:47, Mark 14:43a; Luke 22:47a, and John 18:2,3. When we assemble their testimony, without leaving anything out or adding anything, we get this:
"A large crowd approached while He was still speaking. The man named Judas, one of the twelve, was leading them. Judas also knew the place because Jesus had often gone there with His disciples. So Judas came there, accompanied by a cohort of [Roman] soldiers, officers from the chief priests, Pharisees, teachers of the law, and the elders of the people, all bearing torches and lanterns and swords and clubs." (Cheney and Ellison, p. 238)
In your query, you listed two options:
- Roman soldiers and temple guards; or
- Temple guards, elders, and Roman soldiers
I'm not sure if you intended this to be a trick question, but while both answers are partially correct, neither of them is complete. The correct answer would be:
- A large crowd consisting of: Judas, Roman soldiers, officers from the chief priests (temple guards, if you will), Pharisees, teachers of the law (scribes), and the elders of the people.
Now, if you're asking who actually physically bound Jesus, I think you'll find the answer in John 18:12, which says "So the Roman cohort and the commander and the officers of the Jews, arrested Jesus and bound Him."
So you take “all of the above” in Jesus’ arrest. Mark, the 1st Gospel was written about 40 years after Jesus death. Matthew and Luke about 15-20 years after Mark and John about 65 years after Jesus’ death. Each arrest story different and you have to add them all together to get the right answer? I’m in the crowd that says if Roman soldiers (and I doubt a full cohort of some 450 to 480 soldiers) had arrested Jesus, He would have been taken straight to the fortress and would not have been turned over to the Jews for questioning. The only way He gets to the chief priest and members of the Sanhedrin is if temple guards do the arresting. How do you ‘Prove” which is the correct answer?
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.”
I do not agree with the dates you have cited, but that’s a completely different discussion that is tangential to the question of Jesus’ arrest. Perhaps you should have started with that fundamental question before diving into what the text says?
Whenever you have multiple eyewitnesses to an event—whether it be a vehicular accident, a mugging, an arrest, or what-have-you—you are of course going to see variances in the recounting of the event because every person sees the event from a slightly different perspective. One person may say “He was hit by a minivan.” Another witness might say “He was hit by a light-brown automobile” and yet another witness might say “He was hit by a tan Honda Odyssey.” Is that a problem? It shouldn’t be—because while the stories vary in their wording, they are in agreement in their essential details, and there is no violation of the Law of Noncontradiction—the stories are thus easily reconciled.
If I had left out one or more gospel writers, I can imagine that you would have likely accused me of cherry-picking my sources to suit a prejudice. But when I use all four gospel accounts and demonstrate how they fit together without removing or adding anything to their words, you complain that I have to combine the stories to get the “right answer.” If all the stories were identical in the details that they noted, you would have leveled accusations of collusion, or editorial revision to make the stories match. “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.” (Luke 7:32)
There are quite a few details that were not recorded for us that maybe we’d like to know about, but if they’re not recorded, then they’re not recorded—and all you or I can do is speculate. But when we’re speculating about an event that took place over 2,000 years ago, it’s unwise to make arguments from silence like, “The only way that happens is if *this* takes place.”
You ask a valid question: How do we know which is the correct view? I think the answer is straightforward: Which view is based upon eyewitness testimony, and which is based upon philosophical biases, unsubstantiated guesses and arguments from silence? If the eyewitness testimony cannot be invalidated then the reasonable thing to do would be to accept it.