Episode 135: Mark 65 The Kiss and the Falling Away

As the prophecies begin to come true, the disciples are shocked and scattered—and probably more than just a bit crushed to discover that Yeshua won’t be leading a Messianic uprising after all.

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⁴³ And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. ⁴⁴ Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him and lead him away under guard.” ⁴⁵ And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” And he kissed him. ⁴⁶ And they laid hands on him and seized him. ⁴⁷ But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. ⁴⁸ And Jesus said to them, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? ⁴⁹ Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the Scriptures be fulfilled.” ⁵⁰ And they all left him and fled. ⁵¹ And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, ⁵² but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

Last week we had Yeshua/Jesus praying three lamentation prayers, the disciples failing to keep vigil three times, and in a few weeks we will see Peter’s three denials. Last week we also saw the official end of “the way” discourse. Yeshua says, “let us be going—my betrayer is at hand” and although the word used is not hodos as it has been, the sense is clear enough. There will be no more teaching, no more preparation, no more anything until after the resurrection. We left off at a cliffhanger for the disciples last week on two things—who are the sinners, the hamartolos, the rasha in Hebrew, aka the wicked who do not get pardoned, and who is the betrayer, the paradidomi, the one who hands a man over to judgment and usually into the hands of Gentiles when that word is used in the prophets in the Septuagint. This week, we are going to find out the answer to both of those questions in the fist verse. So, we’re going to have to learn a bit about the Temple establishment and the Sanhedrin, and next week we’ll have to learn even more. We’ll also have a bit of review about the oil press cave of Gethsemane just in case you missed it, or forgot, or fell asleep while listening to me drone on. It happens. Hey, if those disciples can fall asleep with Yeshua nearby, then how am I going to stand a chance of keeping people awake?

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have six years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.

All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com. This week we are mostly in Mark 14.

We’re only going to read two names in this section—the names of Yeshua and Judas. Just a funny aside, there are folks who get really unhappy about the Name Jesus because “there is no J in Hebrew” which is true but they often won’t hesitate to say Judah but even if they say Yehudah instead they will still say Julius Caesar. There was no J in Latin either, just saying. Truth is, if we refused to pronounce the J ever, it would get super confusing. The J isn’t pagan, it’s just modern. Like indoor plumbling. And I am not ashamed to admit how fond I am of that. Especially since we had a foot of snow dumped on us in the last week in December and I might be tempted to hold it until spring if I had to go out in that.

Now, as I told you last week, there is ample scholarly and archaeological evidence to suggest that Yeshua and His disciples, up to this point in the Gethsemane narrative, were inside a very large cave that still exists on the Mount of Olives that was used as an olive press in the first century and was also used for oil storage. Nights this time of year in Jerusalem are cold and they can also be very damp. Sleeping in an orchard under the stars wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a good time, let me tell you, which was why they often stayed in Bethany for the night. An oil press cave would be relatively unused except in the fall months and so it would provide a dry, warm, shelter out of the wind. As we will see in the final verse this week, they couldn’t have been out exposed to the elements. So, I believe that this happens as Yeshua and the three are exiting the cave into the orchard—which is an acceptable translation of both chorion (place, in Mark) and kepos (garden, in John) and is in keeping with the locale and the description Gethsemane, which back translates contextually to oil press in Hebrew.

⁴³ And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. 

So, with one fell swoop, a lot of Yeshua’s predictions come to pass—He is betrayed, by one of the Twelve no less, and this betrayal also involves the leadership of Israel in the persons of the chief priests, who constitute the Temple elite establishment of the High priestly family and permanent Temple officials, the scribes who served as legal retainers to the elite, and the elders. These three together are often suggestive of the formal Sanhedrin council or, at the very least, the High Priest’s inner circle. The family of Annas, father in law of Caiaphas, and former High Priest himself along with a number of his sons also having served briefly in the position—they were very corrupt and collaborators with Rome. The High Priesthood was bought and paid for in exchange for rights to a piece of the Temple Mount business action and the power that came with it. But make no mistake, they were Roman collaborators getting rich off the backs of the Jews. Now, this wasn’t every elder in Israel or every scribe—but the group of them together is representative of the whole of Jewish leadership in the arrest of Yeshua.

And there are people who ask why Judas should be considered guilty when he was like destined to do this and it really is a complicated question. Judas had free will. There are no puppets in the Bible, okay? I don’t know how Yahweh knows all but He knows all, okay? Judas was going to do this but He also had the choice not to. Yahweh never makes anyone sin—but He does routinely use sinners throughout the Scriptures when His people need to be disciplined. Look at Joshua, Judges, Kings, Chronicles, and the Prophets. Yahweh uses the wicked to discipline the rebellious—however, that doesn’t mean that He endorses their actions or their excesses. Those whom Yahweh uses to punish His people always face wrath later on for how overboard they go in going after Israel. Not too different from James and John wanting to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans over a slight. Maybe the Samaritans deserved some discipline but not genocide. They didn’t understand what spirit they were of in wanting that kind of wrath on those people. Same with those who wish they could call down fire from heaven on people who do whatever it is nowadays that offends them. Had a guy this morning saying he wanted to call down fire from heaven on me for teaching lies because I was talking about our need for meekness, humility, and kindness. I personally thought that was a tad bit excessive for essentially agreeing with the Sermon on the Mount, but whatever…a lot of folks are really threatened by any curtailing of their wanting vengeance for themselves instead of leaving it for the Lord, as we are commanded.

We see an armed crowd, sent from the leadership and not necessarily made up of it, which bespeaks Yeshua being considered a revolutionary figure and he indeed was a political figure. He was threatening the status quo, the recognized authorities, the Temple elite, he’d disrespected Herod for divorcing his wife and marrying another woman—calling him an adulterer, in the various Temple Mount controversies of chapters eleven and twelve he just outright messed with everyone. And the Romans, you have to understand, prized order over just about anything. They didn’t like chaos. They didn’t like to be challenged. They didn’t like uncertainty. They bragged about the peace, justice, and order that Augustus Caesar brought to the empire. The fact that they sent so many armed men speaks to this idea that he is no longer simply considered an irritating miracle worker or teacher. Now He has become a real threat—and during the Passover season which often saw uprisings under messianic pretenders. What there is much speculation about is the makeup of this crowd and we will talk about that in this next verse.

⁴⁴ Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man. Seize him and lead him away under guard.” 

Although Judas is initially named, from this point forward he is merely described as a betrayer. As far as honor/shame dynamics goes, being stripped of your name and instead referred to as paradidomi is insulting and dehumanizing. Judas has ceased to be one of the Twelve and has become an actor in a larger scheme of injustice. Judas is now nothing but a pawn and barely worthy of further mention. He had given them a sign, which is the word syssemon, and this is the only time it shows up in the NT. However, it shows up in the Greek Isaiah three times and when it does, it refers to a banner being raised up for the purpose of being a signal to peoples and nations. In Greek Judges, is shows up twice and both with respect to an ambush. I find that really fascinating. So, what is the signal? Well, despite the full moon, it is dark and so Judas can’t just point, he is going to have to make physical contact in a big way. Judas decided on a kiss—but what manner of kiss?

We know from writings in the ancient world that one kissed their superior on the hand or foot. You would kiss an equal on the cheek. Intimates—family and friends—would kiss on the lips. And the text doesn’t say how Judas kissed him. Movies go for the cheek but it very well might have been on the hand, we just don’t know. I think we just like to assume the worst case possible because it is really impossible to make this any worse than it was so why the heck not? A kiss in the ancient world was a sign of respect and/or love. At the very least, you were honoring the other person—no one was going to kiss an inferior. But they would allow an inferior to kiss their hand or foot—depending on how inferior, I suppose. I mean, you didn’t touch another person’s feet lightly because they were just nasty. The roads were veritable cesspools in more ways than one, and that’s why you offered guests the opportunity to wash their feet. So, a kiss was an act of honoring someone else but Judas uses it in a hypocritical way, resulting in the complete shaming of Yeshua not only before the gathered crowd as a man who cannot command loyalty even from His known inner circle, but of course over the course of the night and the next day as He is subjected to almost every humiliation you could inflict on a man in the ancient world.

But we also have to recall that this was a betrayal of the ancient ethics of table fellowship which forbade betrayal. This wasn’t just a Jewish thing, it was part of the culture of the ancient world and that makes me want to bring up a point. Oftentimes, people reading the Bible outside of the historical context will call certain things “Hebraic thinking” and presume that we should emulate whatever it is. But very little of what we see in the Bible is intrinsically Hebraic and besides, customs also changed over time. What we see is more often properly designated ancient Near Eastern thinking or Greco-Roman thinking. But folks who haven’t adequately studied often miss that the Bible will describe things as they happened and not as ideals for our imitation. Mindsets about men and women and children and slaves and all that were more often just a product of the surrounding culture than what Yahweh intended in the beginning. Certainly, Yahweh didn’t intend for the subjugation and ownership of one human being by another, or divorce, or whatever—but as we talked about when we studied Mark chapter ten, Moses made allowances (Yeshua’s words) for their starting situation in order to make steps in the right direction based on the cultural reality. You can’t change everything overnight. So, although we never see any reference to the laws of table fellowship in the ancient world within the Bible, we do know of them from other sources and we see that played out in the Bible. And unlike things like slavery and other forms of oppression, this isn’t a bad system. It just isn’t Hebraic in nature but the way things were.

Judas tells them he is going to kiss “the man.” He is not referring to Yeshua by name either or by His status and that is our third act of disrespect in one night. He then says to seize Him and lead Him away under guard. Seize is the word krateo and is the same word, ironically, as the one used in Greek Isaiah to describe Yahweh taking the hand of the servant in Isaiah 42:6 in the first Servant Song. Yahweh speaks in this verse of taking the Servant by the hand and giving Him as a Covenant for the people of Israel as well as a light to the nations.

They are also told to lead Him away “under guard” which tells us a bit about the composition of at least part of the mob. The previous verse said that they were armed with clubs and sticks, which is how rioters were generally controlled by the Romans. John actually claims that there were members of a Roman cohort here—certainly not an entire cohort as that was 600 men but certainly members of the cohort stationed in Jerusalem at the festivals. But John also says that the Temple guard was present, to which we can likely add auxiliary forces and private retainers (bodyguards) of the elite. We do know that the servants of the High Priest carried clubs from various writings. Josephus mentions it in Ant 18.3.2 and Wars 2.9.4 and it is also recorded in the Babylonian Talmud Pesachim 57a, and Tosefta Menachot 8.21.

⁴⁵ And when he came, he went up to him at once and said, “Rabbi!” And he kissed him. 

Although Yeshua was repeatedly mocked and shamed over the course of the night and the next day, this was actually the first incident. Judas comes boldly toward Yeshua, greets Him with the title Rabbi, which we have seen before along with the title of Teacher.  Rabbi means “my master” and added to the kiss, it couldn’t possibly be any further from Judas’s actual motivations. At this point, in the eyes of the armed crowd, Yeshua became an object of scorn and disdain because even one close enough to call Him master and kiss Him was disloyal. Yeshua, therefore, would be seen as either being unworthy of honor based on His character or a fool who surrounded Himself with the disloyal. This sort of thing just rarely happened in the ancient world and especially within the context of Teacher/disciple relations which were more sacred than the father/son relationship even among the pagans. After all, a father only gave you life but a teacher gave you wisdom and learning which was considered far more important.

This scene is also reminiscent of the treacherous actions of Joab toward Amasa after Absalom passed over Joab for the job of commander over his short-lived army. Joab had a dagger hidden and clasped Amasa as if to greet him with a kiss and then killed him. Joab was generally a treacherous kind of guy.

⁴⁶ And they laid hands on him and seized him. 

Hands are really important in the Gospel of Mark and, in fact, you can tell a lot about people by what they do with their hands. Do they heal, or touch the unclean, or feed, or raise people up—or are they obsessed with traditional washings or violent or unwilling to help those in need? In any event, the laying on of hands is an important show of character in the Scriptures and we learn a lot about a person based on how and why they do it.

⁴⁷ But one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. 

I am going to introduce you guys to who I assume will be a new scholar to you as I have never mentioned her before—Paula Fredricksen from The Hebrew University in Israel. She wrote a really nice article entitled Arms and the Man, which I will link in the transcript so you can read it, where she makes a very interesting point and proposes an ingenious, biblical, and historical solution. Now, there is debate about this “sword” because the word machaira is also the translation of the Hebrew word ma’akhlet, which is what Abraham used for the akeida, the binding of Issac in Greek Genesis. So, although it can and usually does translate the word hereb, which does mean sword, we have to consider the Passover context and how the author of Mark was writing this out very deliberately as the Passover being completely redefined in a final fulfillment in Yeshua. The binding of Isaac and the substitution of the ram—which we talked about last week—is considered a foreshadowing of the first Passover because of the substitution of the ram for the firstborn son of Abraham. Yes, I know about Ishmael but for the purposes of inheritance rights, Isaac was credited as being Abraham’s only son. Fredricksen points all this out because of the oft-asked question—if they were carrying swords, if even a few of them were, why weren’t they either arrested along with Yeshua or hunted down later by Roman authorities?

Her premise is founded on a few historical knowns—one, although Rome was an occupying force, they really were as hands-off as possible and only ever in Jerusalem for uprisings or festivals as crowd control. Pilate was known to only be in town when he absolutely had to be—otherwise, he was in Caesarea Maritima (aka Caesarea by the Sea) where he was headquartered. It was the priests and the Temple establishment who really ran Jerusalem. Yeshua was more of a political threat to them than to Rome, as evidenced by the fact that the soldiers who were constantly on watch over the Temple grounds from above at the Fortress Antonia, which was joined to the northeastern corner by a stairway (as we see when the guards rush to end the riot to kill Paul in Acts 22:22–). But despite the brouhaha as Yeshua is challenging the establishment, they leave Him entirely alone because they didn’t see Him as a threat to their own interests. That will change and we will get to that in chapter 15. But, if Yeshua in any way seemed to be the leader of a genuine armed rebellion of a bunch of guys spending the night on the Mount of Olives during the Passover celebration, Rome would have been much more interested and we know from John that there were at least some Roman guards there. But Yeshua wasn’t that kind of Messiah even if His followers had their hearts set on it.

How about the sword—and here is where she makes her point and ties it to the akeida because as part of the Passover, for every group of ten people (male, female and child) there would be one lamb that needed to be slaughtered with a special sort of knife used for that purpose. And it wasn’t like there were lockers and so these valuable knives would be kept on the person of the traveler, sheathed. We know that Yeshua was there with the now eleven plus we don’t know how many other disciples. We know that two went to prepare the Passover, and so those two would have knives—like many offerings, the offeror would actually perform the slitting of the throat of the animal and as long as the priests caught the blood, it was a valid slaughter. In fact, there were so many slaughters being performed that it was a necessity that the priests be relieved of as much work as possible. And the Romans wouldn’t have thought twice about ten percent of the people at Passover walking around with such knives. They were only good for extremely close combat and even with that, you’d have to catch another armed man by surprise.

According to Fredricksen, the disconnect with the Passover theming occurred when the text was translated into Latin in the late fourth century and machaira became gladius—the classic gladiator sword and once people have that picture in their mind, it’s hard to even consider anything less formidable. Anyway, I thought that was interesting and I hope you will check out her article. Needless to say, if the Roman soldiers were alerted at this point to the possibility of Yeshua being an insurrectionist and not simply there to support the High Priest, I believe they would have gone after Yeshua’s followers as well or at least the guy who drew the knife. Rome was pretty brutal about crushing insurrections.

Back to the verse, “one of those who stood by” and the author of John says Peter many years after the fact once everyone involved has already died—and no one has any trouble believing it was Peter, no one, because, well, that’s just the sort of thing we have come to expect from his rashness pre-resurrection. He could have easily drawn a sacrificial knife and gotten close enough to the servant of the High Priest, identified as Malchus in John, to lop off his ear. Oh, Peter, Peter, Peter…and we have no account in Mark of the healing of that ear. Only Luke talks about Yeshua healing the ear. But this was an executable offense, cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest, so we can see why no one would use names at this time and it also gives us some insight into why Peter would be extra horrified to be identified as having been there at the arrest.

⁴⁸ And Jesus said to them, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? 

First thing of importance I want you to note—if Peter was hoping to draw Yeshua into a violent confrontation, then he failed miserably. Yeshua is not like a zealot, wanting insurrection against Rome. Yeshua didn’t come to judge but to preach the Kingdom of Heaven, to heal the sick, feed the poor, teach the Gospel of the Kingdom, do battle with the forces of Satan—but He didn’t come to wage war in the flesh or against flesh. Yeshua came to do battle with sin and death on their own turf and to empty them out. Mark has always portrayed Yeshua as a mighty warrior, the Yahweh warrior of Isaiah, but not the kind of warrior the Jews had been expecting or even wanting. Everyone prefers violence to peace. The crowd came ready for a fight but Yeshua adamantly refuses to engage. When He addresses the crowd, He is making a statement to everyone that there will be no violence sanctioned by Himself.

Yeshua flat out asks them why on earth they are coming after Him as though He is a lestes or a social bandit—it is debated if He could also be referring to an insurrectionist. He is most certainly unarmed as He sent others to prepare the Passover lambs for Himself and His disciples. His disciples were all in the cave sleeping and one was even in his undergarments. Likely, they were stumbling out of the cave as the crowd gathered, groggily wondering what on earth was happening and why Judas, who they trusted with the moneybag, was with the crowd and not with them. This group had obviously come ready to fight the lot of them. Josephus talks quite a bit about the social banditry of that time and later as men who had lost their lands due to heavy taxation and poverty were harassing the wealthy classes. When Josephus uses the word lestes, he is referring to these sorts of Robin Hood types. In essence, Yeshua is shaming them by pointing out that they have come after a bunny rabbit with a howitzer—He will not lift a finger against them and they never had reason to suspect otherwise.

⁴⁹ Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the Scriptures be fulfilled.” 

In other words, “If I was really being subversive, you would have taken me on the spot as I was teaching in the Temple courtyard. You would never have allowed me to defile holy ground through actual blasphemy or anything else that would have encroached upon the holiness of that space. But you didn’t, you waited until everyone was inebriated and sleepy from having eaten well.” And it is a harsh, shaming sort of rebuke. Yeshua knows that they are behaving in a dishonest and cowardly manner because they couldn’t act in the open. Yeshua was well thought of at this point by everyone except the elites whom He had condemned and shamed in the Temple controversies. Every single controversy was met with silence from the accused because they could not argue with Him—to even do so would be to validate the attack and they couldn’t afford the loss of honor that would entail.

Yeshua says, “But let the Scriptures be fulfilled.” That word translated fulfilled is pleroo and it has the sense of something being satisfied or filled up but it is also often used as a word in Scriptures about the ordination of priests. In other words, something being made whole and finding completeness in some way.

⁵⁰ And they all left him and fled.

And on cue, not only Scripture but Yeshua’s interpretation of it was fulfilled. We covered that last week but let’s take another look at Zech 13:7 “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me,” declares the Lord of hosts. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones.” If you recall the context, this was spoken earlier in the chapter “On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness.” And this will happen, of course, on this same day when Yeshua’s side is pierced and water and blood pour out, like the watered-down wine served at the seders. But also do not forget that in the very next chapter, there is vindication and victory. And they all ran, except one as we will see, but we shouldn’t scoff at them as cowards because we would have done the exact same thing, I imagine. As Yeshua told the three, the spirit (intention) is willing but the flesh is weak. None of us can control how we will respond in the moment of crisis. Our intentions are always admirable and brave but our follow-through is another story. I just don’t make grandiose predictions about my own behavior anymore. I have learned my lesson. I can be an absolute idiot.

And they had advantages that we don’t have—they were there with Him for a long time, day and night, and heard Him teach firsthand and saw the miracles and even worked miracles themselves. But this was pre-Cross and pre-resurrection and pre-Pentecost. There was no New Creation Kingdom existence, not yet. Yeshua knew that. Yes, they drank the wine of the New Covenant. Yes, they ate the broken bread of His Body. Yes, they swore oaths. But they were kids confronted by the highest authorities in their world and Yeshua was not taking up arms to defend Himself or them. Now, finally, they see the truth that He will not be the vengeful, violent, conquering Messiah they had been hoping for and I imagine that the moment was crushing in more ways than we can probably imagine. I mean, our generation gets upset if their presidential candidate doesn’t win. I actually saw people predicting a rapture (which I find absolutely no support of in Scripture taken in context) last January because they proclaimed that God would never allow Biden to be President over His people. Huh—strange. He doesn’t seem to care about people who are a whole lot more faithful than us being under the thumb of the Communist leaders in Asia and the Shiite Muslims and so many other groups who are actually torturing Christians. But yeah, Biden is cause for Rapture. Dang.

⁵¹ And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 

Now this young man is a bit different. He actually sticks around and follows after the group. That’s pretty brave, I have to say. Everyone else is gone and he came out of the oil press cave wearing only his undergarment, leaving the cloak he was sleeping on and in back in the cave. And him they actually grab and try to apprehend. I think it is obvious that he wasn’t armed like Peter was. And to his credit, he doesn’t bolt until he is actually physically in danger.

⁵² but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.

We talked about this last week. I haven’t seen this in a commentary anywhere and it just occurred to me but I find it interesting—this account of leaving behind a linen cloth, and especially if a cave is involved because that would seem to foreshadow Yeshua leaving behind his linen burial cloths (as recorded by John) and leaving behind an otherwise empty cave. Maybe it’s just me and this is some sort of fanciful bit of wishful thinking. I mean, after all, Yeshua didn’t run away, nor was He naked but it is a very Jewish thing to do with even less to go on. Yeshua leaves the cave clothed in dazzling white and triumphant, totally vindicated of the charges against Him, and His disciples leave the cave right before they confirm all that was said against them at the seder—that one would betray Him, namely one of the Twelve, and that they would all run away and abandon Him. You know what? I am actually liking this more and more the more I think about it. Because, again, it is contrasting the disciples as faithless Israel pre-resurrection with Yeshua, the faithful suffering Servant, the arm of the Lord, the Yahweh Warrior who is perfectly obedient and who fulfills the calling and mission of Israel in the world, to bring both Israel and the Nations to the worship of Yahweh. The Gospel of the Kingdom, the good news of the encroaching reign of Yahweh over the earth, will go out to the four corners through the inaugural work of Yeshua, the salvific work at the Cross. The Greater Exodus that will free not just one people but all nations from the Pharaoh of sin and death. Dang, I really like that.

Anyway, we have two or three teachings left in Mark 14 and I am not sure yet because I have a lot of background to cover next week, explaining about the Sanhedrin, and if the gathering at Annas’s house was a true Sanhedrin or just his cronies forming a Beit Din, which would have had Sanhedrin members sympathetic to the High Priestly family and the rest of the Temple establishment. People who owed their wealth and authority to Annas and to Rome. Scholars have some really interesting things to say and we’re going to debate whether or not it was as much of a Kangaroo Court, a fixed trial, as some have made it out to be or if they did actually follow some procedures correctly. Honestly, it’s going to be quite the mixed bag and there is a lot to cover. If you have a commentary on Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin, you might want to read that to get some ideas of what they believed were the standard courtroom procedures almost 200 years earlier when the trial took place.

Peter’s denial will come the week after that and I hope I have given you some food for thought as to why he might have been more eager to deny Yeshua, even after loving Him enough to show up.

https://www.academia.edu/56961740/Arms_and_The_Man_A_Response_to_Dale_Martins_Jesus_in_Jerusalem_Armed_and_Not_Dangerous