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One of those who were drawn to him, however, gave Jesus opportunity to lay aside his reserve and speak clearly of the truth lie came to publish. He was a member of the Jewish sanhedrin, a rabbi apparently held in high regard in Jerusalem.
Within a few hours after the receipt of news that Lazarus had walked from the tomb, the Sanhedrin, the great Jewish ecclesiastical council, was in session, called hastily by its officers to take vigorous action concerning this impious, heretical imposter who had been allowed to mock at established order and religion for too long a time. He must be quieted ere he arouse the people once more.
But though he saw through Hanan's designs, he was still the dupe of Hanan, who was a clever man and a learned man; his importance loomed up very large, and Joseph could not be without a hero, true or false; so it could not be otherwise than that Hanan and Kaiaphas and the Sadducees, whom Joseph met in the Sanhedrin and whose houses he frequented, commanded his admiration for several months and would have held it for many months more, had it not been that he happened to be a genuinely religious man, concerned much more with an intimate sense of God than with the slaying of bullocks and rams.
But it also displayed a conception, wholly new, that of maintaining at any cost the truth. The novelty must have charmed. When Peter and the apostles were arraigned before the Sanhedrin, their defence consisted in the very words that Socrates had used: "We should obey God rather than man." Socrates wrote nothing. The Buddha did not either. Neither did the Christ. These had their evangelists.
No doubt it was 'like people, like priest. The strange dominion of the Pharisees rested entirely on popular consent, and their temper accurately indexed that of the nation. The Sanhedrin was the chief object at which Christ aimed the parable.
Such steadfastness pleaded with God to pardon the king for his sins, and the heavenly Sanhedrin absolved God from His oath, to crush Jehoiachin and deprive his house of sovereignty. By way of reward for his continence he was blessed with distinguished posterity.
"You will thereby merit the greatest gratitude from the council," said Annas, and Caiaphas chimed in, "Openly will ye then be honored before all the people as you have been today put to shame before them by this presumptuous man." "Our life for the law of Moses and the holy Sanhedrin," then cried the traders.
It included all that Matthew records between verse 20 of this chapter and the end of the twenty-fifth chapter the answer to the deputation from the Sanhedrin; the three parables occasioned by it, namely, those of the two sons, this one, and that of the marriage of the king's son; the three answers to the traps of the Pharisees and Herodians about the tribute, of the Sadducees about the resurrection, and of the ruler about the chief commandment; Christ's question to His questioners about the Son and Lord of David; the stern woes hurled at the unmasked hypocrites; to which must be added, from other gospels, the sweet eulogium on the widow's mite, and the deep saying to the Greeks about the corn of wheat, with, possibly, the incident of the woman taken in adultery; and then, following all these, the solemn prophecies of the end contained in Matthew xxiv. and xxv., spoken on the way to Bethany, as the evening shadows were falling.
He was not an ignorant youth, who could be easily deluded. He had all the advantages of education which that enlightened age afforded. He was born indeed at Tarsus, a city of Cilicia; but sent to Jerusalem for an education, and "brought up at the feet of Gamaliel," a famous Jewish Rabbi, who is said to have been many years president of the Sanhedrin; and renowned for wisdom and erudition.
"Are there many in the Sanhedrin who harken to the teachings of this Jesus?" Joel asked. "Beside myself none, save Nicodemus who did go to him by night. Aye, and it was a hard saying the ears of Nicodemus did hear, for when the Ruler asked what he should do to be saved, the Galilean told him, 'Thou must be born again." "Born again? A man be born again and thou dost call such speaking wisdom?"
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