Words of Mark shared by the other evangelists are underlined. Square brackets [] indicate parallels found in another sequence in the New Testament.

1. Element A: The High Priest Tearing His Garments/Clothes
   • In ancient times, this gesture symbolically expressed great sorrow. This is what we see in Jacob when he learns of Joseph's death (Gen 37:34), or in David when he learns of the death of Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:11-12), or in Emperor Augustus when he learns of Varus' defeat in Germany (Dion Cassius, Roman History, 56.23.1).

   • The gesture of tearing one's clothes in the account of Mark and Luke is caused by an offence to God that causes a punishment as great as the death of a person. We have the example of the Jews who consider the assertion of the king of Assyria that Yahweh is unable to save his people blasphemous and therefore tear their clothes, just like King Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:37; 19:1).

   • Mark 14:63 use the Greek word: chitōn (tunic). Technically, the word refers to an undergarment. But it could also refer to a garment, and even to the liturgical vestments of the high priest (see Ex 28:4; Lev 16:4). The latter case raises the question: could the high priest wear this chitōn in a session of the Sanhedrin? On this point Ezekiel is very clear: the liturgical vestment must remain in the holy place and cannot be worn in the midst of the people (42:14). Moreover, the Romans kept absolute control over liturgical vestments for political reasons and their use required special permission. So why does Mark, instead of using himation, the usual word for vestment, use chitōn? Mark, speaking to an audience that was unfamiliar with Jewish customs, probably wanted to use a rarer, more colorful word, as he often does, to spice up his story.

   • Matthew, as a good Jew, corrects the mistake and replaces chitōn with himation.

2. Was Anything Alleged at the Trial Blasphemous?
   • With John, there are no witnesses, no testimony. Jesus is condemned in absentia.

   • In Mark, after the false witnesses, it is Jesus who incriminates himself by saying: "I am", and adds that we shall see him sitting as the Son of Man at the right hand of the Power as the heavenly Judge.

   • With Matthew, although the same sentence is there, the context is different: Jesus had previously invited his audience to take responsibility for his claim that Jesus would be the Messiah, the Son of God. But the claim remains, and to this is added the legal testimony of the two witnesses about his ability to destroy God's sanctuary.

   • Luke takes up Mark's expression almost as it is, except that he does not speak of witnesses, but of testimony. For there were no witnesses in him, only the testimony of Jesus Himself.

   • The scribes and the chief priests had sought beforehand to lay a snare for him, but in vain. Now they succeeded with direct questions.

3. Element C: The Charge of Blasphemy
   • This accusation is part of the tradition, as it is found in both John and Mark, two independent authors. Why then did Luke omit it at Jesus' trial? Perhaps he found it inappropriate to apply it to the Son of God. But there is above all the fact that he prefers to reshape it to make it a gesture of the adversaries who blaspheme against Jesus (22:63-65) on the one hand, and to shift the accusation of blasphemy to Stephen (Acts 6:11) under the pretext that he would have said that Jesus wanted to destroy the temple and change the laws handed down by Moses, on the other hand.

   • There has been much discussion in biblical circles about how to understand blasphemy. The law says: "Whoever blasphemes (nqb) blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall die, and the whole community shall stone him with stones" (Lev 24:16). But what does blasphemy mean? To insult God or to utter the name YHWH? Unfortunately, this passage from Leviticus is the only instance of the verb nqb and does not allow us to decide. The Septuagint removed the ambiguity by translating this verb by the expression: to pronounce the name of the Lord. But the problem is that such an interpretation has no connection with what we see in the trial of Jesus, and that one would look in vain in the Greek writings of Jewish authors of Jesus' time for examples where the different forms of the word "blasphēmia" carry such a meaning. The word itself means: to abuse, to insult. Of the 89 uses of the word in Flavius Josephus and Philo, 67 (75%) mean: to mistreat, to slander another human person. The other 25 uses (25%) concern the divinity. Abuse or insult can be in word or deed. In the Septuagint, 19 out of 22 uses refer to insult and abuse, especially with a tone of arrogance. For example, the king of Assyria is said to have insulted (blasphēmeō) the living God (2 Kings 19:4). Thus, there would be no reason for the four evangelicals to be any different. Jesus would be accused of arrogantly claiming what belongs to God and thereby insulting Him. Conversely, when the Gospels speak of people who blaspheme against Jesus, they accuse them of disrespecting him. In short, for the Jews of Jesus' time, one could deserve the death penalty for arrogantly insulting the God of Israel as much as for uttering his name.

   • In John 10:36 Jesus is accused of blasphemy because he claims to be a son of God. In the Acts of the Apostles they want to stone Stephen when he talks about the Son of Man at the right hand of God. In Mark, it is Jesus' statement that "I am" the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One, the son of the man seated at the right hand of the Power that leads to the accusation of blasphemy, as well as the forgiveness of sins during his ministry (2:7). Matthew is the one who insists the most on blasphemy by using it twice in the same verse: he insulted God by talking about the destruction of the temple and by claiming to be the Messiah, the Son of God.

   • The evangelists' vision could be summarized around three claims of Jesus.
     1. There is the Christological claim to be the son of God (John, Mark, Matthew), the Messiah (Mark, Matthew) and the exalted son of God (Mark, Matthew). The Christian reader saw all these titles as a reference to Jesus who enjoyed a unique relationship with God. For the evangelists, blasphemy is the opposite of the Jewish perception: it is mocking Jesus and attributing his power to that of evil spirits.

     2. There is the claim to be able to destroy the temple, the holy place (Matthew, Acts), linked to his Christological claim to be greater than the temple. Something similar is found in Jesus' gesture of authority in Mark who wants to cleanse the temple (11, 27-28). He reverses this image in the insult of the people around the cross who ridicule him for speaking of the destruction of the temple and its reconstruction in three days.

     3. There is the claim to be able to change the Mosaic Law (Acts). Throughout his ministry, Jesus distanced himself from this law ("You have learned" ... "But I say to you" in Matthew 5, or Jesus' attitude to the Sabbath in Luke 6 and John 5).

   • There is, therefore, a common perception among evangelists in the period 60 -100. They tell their readers that the Jews accused them of blasphemy because of their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, Son of God and Son of Man, who had a unique relationship with God. For him, Jesus was not a mere rabbi, but someone greater than Moses. It is understandable that the Jews could consider Christians guilty of blasphemy. Conversely, believers in Jesus regarded the Jews as blasphemers by mocking the Christian faith and not seeing the destruction of the temple as a judgment of God.

4. Element D: The Sanhedrin Judgment Involving Guilt and Death
   • Luke ends the session of the Sanhedrin with this v. 71, without explicitly declaring Jesus guilty and punishable by death. Why is that? It is likely that Luke assumes that the story of Mark, in which Jesus is found guilty and sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin, is known, and in order to continue his effort to have an orderly account, he reserves the outcome around the pronouncement of judgment and sentence for the trial before Pilate. It is clear from other passages that he acknowledges the role of the Sanhedrin in his condemnation to death: "how our chief priests and rulers handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him" (24:20); "Without finding any cause of death in him, they (the religious leaders) condemned him and asked Pilate to kill him" (Acts 13:28).

   • Mark, followed by Matthew, puts in the mouth of the high priest a request to the assembly to pass judgment. This is purely rhetorical. On the one hand, since the beginning of the session the high priest has made clear what he thinks about it. On the other hand, the reader certainly had in mind Old Testament passages about the righteous man condemned by the sinner (for example, "Let us condemn him to a shameful death, since, according to his words, he will be protected", Wisdom 2:20).

   • The verb katakrinō, used by Mark, means: to accuse in a hostile manner. Some biblical scholars have tried to reduce the scope of the verb by reducing it to a simple opinion. This ignores the whole context where the whole Sanhedrin is summoned, witnesses are called and the high priest tears his clothes with the word blasphemy. Matthew did not attenuate the scope of the Sanhedrin's judgment by not taking up this word from Mark; for he wanted to reserve this word for the scene that follows: Judas notes that Jesus has been condemned/ (katakrinō) and commits suicide (27: 3).

   • The sentence is pronounced with the expression: enochos thanatou, which is difficult to translate. For enochos followed by the genitive means both "to be guilty of" and "to be punishable of". Therefore, the proposed translation has kept both words. And the scope of the expression "liable" or "punishable" should not be reduced to a mere opinion. Deut 21: 22 makes it clear that a blasphemer deserves the death penalty. Above all, Mark puts this sentence in Jesus' mouth: the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes; they will condemn him to death (katakrinousin auton thanatō) and give him over to the Gentiles (Mk 10:33 | Mt 20:18). The evangelists, therefore, have no problem in speaking of a firm sentence of death followed by the handing over of the sentence to the Gentiles for execution.

   • In conclusion, in the last third of the first century, the evangelists were well aware that Jesus had received a death sentence and had been crucified by the Romans. Nevertheless, they insist that the Jewish Sanhedrin was also involved in this decision, even though the motive was different for the two groups. And for the evangelists, the religious motive of the Sanhedrin was more important than the political motive of the Romans.

Is it historically possible that around the year 30/33 the Jewish authorities came to the conclusion that Jesus was a blasphemer, and for this reason required that he be put to death? Let us recall that the blasphemy we are talking about does not concern the fact of pronouncing the name YHWH or even of directly insulting God, but the fact that Jesus arrogantly claimed for himself a status or privilege which properly belongs only to the God of Israel, and thereby denigrated God.

1. The Punishment for Blasphemy
   • The historicity of the accusation of blasphemy against Jesus has sometimes been refuted on the grounds that, if this had been the case, Jesus should have been stoned, as requested in Lev 24:16 and as was the case with Stephen (Acts 6:11,14). In this regard five observations are in order.
     1. Stephen was not handed over to the Roman authorities as was the case with Jesus.

     2. In the first century, stoning began to be replaced under the influence of the Pharisees and their belief in the resurrection of the dead, which required a certain physical integrity.

     3. Josephus (Jewish Antiquities, 4.8.6; #202) reports that the suspension to the wood of the cross or crucifixion is beginning to be combined with stoning; moreover, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Galatians 3:13 recognize that this crucifixion meets the requirements of the law.

     4. The Temple Scroll at Qumran (11Q Miqdaš 64, 7-13) shows that in their interpretation of Deut 21:22, crucifixion did not follow the killing, but preceded it, and this practice seems to have existed since time immemorial. Moreover, did not the high priest Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BC) have 800 Jews crucified?

     5. The Hebrew text of Deut 21:22-23 declares that he who is hanged from a tree is cursed before God, which the Septuagint translates as: cursed by God. But the Mishna, Sanhedrin 6:4 rather understands Deut 21 as meaning: one who curses/insults God, a tradition also found in the Targum Onquelos and the Syriac Peshitta. Therefore the crucifixion of Jesus as a blasphemer would be fully justified according to the law.

2. Was Anything Alleged at the Trial Blasphemous?
   1. The claim to be the Messiah and blasphemy

      It has already been shown that it is unlikely that Jesus proclaimed in private or in public that he was the Messiah. On the other hand, it is likely that some of his disciples considered him to be the Messiah, and Jesus does not seem to have made any effort to refute this perception. Could the acclamation as Messiah by the disciples have been considered blasphemous? No data is available on this subject. There is, of course, Shimon bar Kokhba (died about 135 CE), whom some considered to be the king messiah. But the documentation about him comes from later centuries and reactions vary about him (this claim is ridiculous according to the Jerusalem Talmud, he would have to pass a test of messiahship according to the Babylonian Talmud). There is never any talk of blasphemy.

   2. The claim to be the Son of God and blasphemy

      It has already been answered in the negative that Jesus or his disciples would have used the title Son of God during his ministry.

   3. The claim to be the Son of Man and blasphemy
      • Of the three titles mentioned in the trial, the title of Son of Man is the one most likely to have been truly used by Jesus. In Mark it appears in the mouth of Jesus when he is accused of blasphemy for forgiving sins (2, 7-10). But what meaning could it have had in the eyes of Jesus or his audience? During the trial Jesus refers to biblical texts to help people understand what he means.

      • One of these texts is Psalm 110 which speaks of a session at the right hand of God. It is also in Jesus' mouth during the discussion with the scribes about the Messiah (Mk 12:35-37). Jesus certainly thought a lot about this psalm. Would it therefore be blasphemous to apply this session at the right hand of God to oneself, i.e. would Jesus claim to be God's equal? It all depends on whether you read it literally or metaphorically. But even a literal application would not automatically lead to an accusation of blasphemy as we see in the discussion between Rabbi Aquiba and Rabbi Jose about the Messiah (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b).

      • Another text is the book of Daniel, especially chapter 7. If Jesus applied to himself this human figure of "someone like a son of man" who is led in the presence of the Elder and is entrusted with empire, honor and a kingdom that will never be destroyed, then he had an exalted perception of himself. But again, could the claim to be that son of man, who receives such a privilege from the Elder, be perceived as blasphemous arrogance? Let us not forget that the image for believers of being taken up in the clouds to heaven to meet the Lord is well known (see 1 Thess 4:17). In short, it would be very unwise to base the accusation of blasphemy solely on this argument.

   4. The destruction of the sanctuary and blasphemy
      • In Matthew the testimony against Jesus about his ability to destroy the temple (26: 61) seems to be included in the accusation of blasphemy, whereas in Mark the insults to Jesus on the cross (15: 29) seem to imply that Jesus did something blasphemous.

      • Historically, it is plausible that Jesus made prophetic announcements about the imminent destruction of the temple, especially in view of the hostility of the religious authorities to his preaching of the reign of God. History shows that attacking the temple triggers violent reactions. We need only think of the reaction of the priests and the whole people when the prophet Jeremiah announces the destruction of the temple: they want to put it to death (Jer 26:6-8). The historian Josephus reports a discussion in Egypt around 150 BC by supporters of the Samaritan temple attacking the temple in Jerusalem: these supporters were put to death. Several passages in Qumran mention attempts by the Hasmoneans of Jerusalem to kill the Master of Justice because he was critical of the Jerusalem temple. Finally, there is the case of Jesus son of Annanias, who was arrested and put on trial about the year 60 AD after he had shouted against the temple in the sanctuary itself (see Josephus, The Jewish War, 6.5.3; #300-9).

      • It seems that attacking the temple could also upset the Romans. John (11:48) suggests that the religious authorities feared that the disturbance caused by Jesus' preaching would cause the Roman troops to intervene and send troops into the temple precincts. This fear seems justified when we know of the bloodbath caused by Pilate, when an enlightened man claimed before a multitude to be able to show where the temple vase buried by Moses was located (see Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.4.1-2; #85-89). And the religious authorities feared the worst around 66 when the commander of the temple, the priest Eleazar, stopped the sacrifices for the emperor (see Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 20.8.5-6; #166-167).

      • We have many examples where fear of Roman intervention led to strong antipathy towards all those who in one way or another threatened the temple. And we can think that Jesus' attitude towards the temple offered the Sanhedrin arguments for a death sentence. But there is no parallel that could justify the idea that we would be faced with an act of blasphemy.

   5. The false prophet and blasphemy
      • In Mark, the mockery of Jesus that precedes the trial before the Sanhedrin challenges him to prophesy, just as those after the Roman trial focus on the title of king of the Jews; but there is too much theological flavor to this account of Jesus as prophet and king for it to be historically reliable. In John's accusations against Jesus, one would look in vain for a prophetic theme.

      • Nevertheless, some biblical scholars argue that the accusation of being a false prophet was the basis of his religious opponents, especially with regard to Deut 18:20-22: a false prophet, someone who announces things that do not happen, must die. In fact, according to certain passages in the Gospels, Jesus seemed to be considered a prophet (Mt 21:11; Lk 7:116; 9:8; 24:19; Jn 7:40). And even the Gospels show him doing things similar to the prophets Elijah and Elisha. On the other hand, no passage says that such a definition of his person is sufficient. But could it be that acting like a prophet has led some to see him as such, which would explain the reaction of the religious authorities who accuse him of being an impostor who deceives people (Jn 7:12.47; Mt 27:63-64). This is echoed in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, which speaks of Jesus as a false prophet who deceived people, and therefore liable to the death sentence recommended by Deut 18. The problem with all these arguments is that they come after the year 70. Thus, it cannot be clearly established that the accusation of blasphemy was related to the fact that he was perceived as a false prophet.

3. Were Implication of Jesus' Ministry Blasphemous?
   • Our study on blasphemy has so far focused on the titles of Messiah and Son of God put forward at the trial of Jesus. There is no doubt that the account is coloured by the Christian experience of the late first century when Jewish adversaries regarded their proclamation of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God as blasphemous, as much as their association of the destruction of the temple with a judgment of God. All this reading is done with Christian spectacles, in a period when the schism between Christians and Jews is clearly articulated.

   • To really do justice to this debate on the accusation of blasphemy, one would have to look at the whole ministry of Jesus, what he did or said that could have been perceived as religious arrogance, and therefore blasphemous. Let us look at some of them.
     1. Jesus speaks with authority, and there is something absolute about his "Amen".
     2. He claims to have the power to forgive sins
     3. He connects his healing actions to the presence of God's reign.
     4. Jesus dares to associate the attitude towards his preaching with the way they will be judged by God.
     5. Jesus takes certain liberties in his way of interpreting the Law, in contradiction with the positions of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes.
     6. Jesus, a layman, dares to criticize the customs surrounding the temple and indicated that rejection of him imperiled temple survival.
     7. Jesus addresses God with the familiar title of "Abba", a new practice.
     8. In many ways Jesus speaks of his relationship to God as that of a son.

     Thus, as a result of these words and gestures, there is no doubt that some of Jesus' opponents may have considered him a blasphemer.