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mode of death? A little thinking will enable any one to see that it was not a matter of any great difficulty.
In the days of Jesus, Judea was under the Roman rule, and Pontius Pilate was its governor. The following additional information from an authoritative source is highly relevant to the point under consideration:
"It was the custom for the procurators to reside at Jerusalemduring the great feasts to preserve order; accordingly, at the time of our lord's last passover Pilate was occupying his official residence in Herod's palace. As the power of life and death was in the hands of the Roman Governor, our Lord could not be crucified by the Jews without the sanction and command of Pilate (John, 18. 31; 19. 16)".The Westminster Bible Dictionary, by the Revd. T. J. Shepherd, D. D., page 411, under the heading 'Pilate.'
RESURRECTION.
Our next quotation from the same work at page 147, under the heading 'cross,' throws further light on the situation:---
:
"Cross, a gibbet made of two beams of wood placed transversely in the shape of a T or X or +, on which criminals were executed. This mode of punishment was not practised by the Jews; among the Romans it was reserved for slaves or the most atrocious criminals."
Jain Education International
The situation now becomes perfectly clear. Jesus chose that moment, for the practical demonstration of his doctrine, when Pilate's presence at Jerusalem would make it impossible for the Jews to take the law into their own hands, and, therefore, selected the time of the great feast of the Passover. Now, it was certain that the Jews would desire to inflict the most ignominious punishment, that is, crucifixion, on him whom they believed to be guilty of the worst possible form of blasphemy, and the report of such expressions as the 'Kingdom of God' was not unlikely to brand him as a most dangerous seditionist in the eyes of their Roman Rulers. Probably
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