the birth of Jesus with the reign of Herod, a Jewish note of time, Luke
also associates it with Caesar Augustus and the chronology of Rome; and
later, while Matthew does not say when John the Baptist began his work,
but notes the imprisonment of John as the occasion of the commencement
of our Lord's public ministry, Luke carefully records that it was "in
the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, _Pontius Pilate
being governor of Judaea_" (Luke iii. 1), that John the Baptist began
preaching and baptizing. It is this same evangelist only who refers to
Pilate's savage slaughter of the Galileans at Jerusalem. The author of
the Fourth Gospel does not mention Pilate before the time of our Lord's
trial, but he gives us a much fuller account of that trial than any of
his companion evangelists. Next to John, our fullest account is in
Luke. On these two authorities therefore we must mainly rely. But
John's is not only the most ample and fully detailed narrative; it also
furnishes us with by far the most vivid and convincing portrait of the
Roman governor. This is one of the numerous cases of life-like
character-drawing with which the Fourth Gospel abounds. Nicodemus, the
woman of Samaria, Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and now Pilate, are
all known to history from St John's portraits of them. Should not this
significant fact lead us to attach great weight to his portrait of
Jesus Christ, which soars above the Christ-pictures of the synoptics in
the most exalted Divine glory?

Jesus had been tried soon after His arrest before Caiaphas and the
Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews, and there He had been
condemned to death, not on the charge for which He had been
arrested--threatening to destroy the Temple--for the evidence against
Him had broken down, but for blasphemy during the course of His trial,
when adjured by the high priest to declare whether He was the Christ.
But the presence of Pilate prevented the council from executing their