orbidding pagans to advance, the Romans themselves would have
delivered him to the Jews to be put to death.[2]

[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 1; Mark xv. 1; Luke xxii. 66, xxiii. 1; John
xviii 28.]

[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XV. xi. 5; _B.J._, VI. ii. 4.]

The agents of the priests therefore bound Jesus and led him to the
judgment-hall, which was the former palace of Herod,[1] adjoining the
Tower of Antonia.[2] It was the morning of the day on which the
Paschal lamb was to be eaten (Friday the 14th of Nisan, our 3d of
April). The Jews would have been defiled by entering the
judgment-hall, and would not have been able to share in the sacred
feast. They therefore remained without.[3] Pilate being informed of
their presence, ascended the _bima_[4] or tribunal, situated in the
open air,[5] at the place named _Gabbatha_, or in Greek,
_Lithostrotos_, on account of the pavement which covered the ground.

[Footnote 1: Philo, _Legatio ad Caium_, Sec. 38. Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv.
8.]

[Footnote 2: The exact place now occupied by the seraglio of the Pacha
of Jerusalem.]

[Footnote 3: John xviii. 28.]

[Footnote 4: The Greek word [Greek: Bema] had passed into the
Syro-Chaldaic.]

[Footnote 5: Jos., _B.J._, II. ix. 3, xiv. 8; Matt. xxvii. 27; John
xviii. 33.]

He had scarcely been informed of the accusation, before he displayed
his annoyance at being mixed up with this affair.[1] He then shut
himself up in the judgment-hall with Jesus. There a conversation took
place, the precise details of which are lost, no witness having been
able to repeat it to the disciples, but the tenor of which appears to
have been well divined by John. His narrative, in fact, perfectly
accords with what history teaches us of the mutual position of the two
interlocutors.

[Footnote 1: John xviii. 29.]

The procurator, Pontius, surnamed Pilate, doubtless on account of the
_pilum_ or javelin of honor with which he or one of his ancestors was
decorated,[1] had hitherto had no relation with the new sect.
Indifferent to the internal quarrels of the Jews, he only saw in all
these movements of sectaries, the results of intemperate imaginations
and disordered brains. In general, he did not like the Jews, but the
Jews detested him still more. They thought him hard, scornful, and
passionate, and accused him of improbable crimes.[2]

[Footnote 1: Virg., _AEn._, XII. 121; Martial, _Epigr._, I. xxxii., X.
xlviii.; Plutarch, _Life of Romulus_, 29. Compare the