Religion: Motion for Rehearing

Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am . . . Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.

—Mark 14: 61-64

So went the most famous trial in history. For centuries, scholars have argued over the legality of Jesus’ trial. Some experts contend that the court’s midnight meeting and its casual rules of procedure indicate that Jesus was not brought before the Sanhedrin (i.e., the supreme tribunal of the Jews), but before a synedrion, a political court and advisory body at the disposal of Caiaphas, the high priest.

Last week the case was once again before the courts. The Supreme Court of the new state of Israel was officially considering a duly filed petition asking for a retrial of Jesus of Nazareth.

The petitioner was a sandy-haired Dutch Protestant named Henri A. Robbe Groskamp. No scholar, Groskamp first became interested in Christ’s trial through reading religious books in his mother’s library while he was hiding out from the Germans during the occupation. In the end he began to feel that he was divinely inspired to do something about it. Groskamp first appealed to the World Council of Churches meeting in Amsterdam last summer; then he lodged his carefully drawn legal brief with the Supreme Court of Israel.

Groskamp’s main points: 1) High Priest Caiaphas violated several Jewish legal procedures in his conduct of the trial; 2) the Jews rejected Jesus as messiah because he was no national liberator. Israel’s present rebirth without the help of a messiah proves that the messiah did not have to be a national liberator, Groskamp contends, hence Jesus’ rejection on those grounds was an error.

In Jerusalem last week, Supreme Court President Justice Moshe Smoira regarded the petition as having raised an interesting question. Said he: “The action we will take turns on the question of jurisdiction—on whether our court can be considered a successor court to the Sanhedrin or can go into a purely religious question.”

Legal and religious experts are sure Israel’s court will eventually drop the case for lack of jurisdiction. But first, Mijnheer Groskamp’s petition will be given careful consideration and an official reply.