So I read in:
The four gospels as historical records Williams and Norgate 1895
The whole incident as related is impossible. It never took place, as it is said to have taken place ; and this is the last feature in the so-called trial before Pilate. Every one of these features, as given to us, has been shown to be imaginary; and hence it follows that we have no positive warrant for maintaining that the trial itself is an historical reality. Taking the stories as the evangelists relate them, we are driven to the conclusion that there was no betrayal, no arrest, no examination before Annas or Caiaphas, no judgement, and no condemnation, if we look merely to the historical evidence, for of such evidence there is none. The incidents in the trial before Pilate can only be taken one by one. They have been so taken, and each incident is shown to be fictitious. The trial cannot therefore be legitimately treated as an antecedent to any events which are said to have happened subsequently. [1] The examination of these later events is, therefore, in strictness of speech, superfluous.
(p. 426-427)
Note 1 reads:
This is a point on which I must not be misunderstood. The record of each incident taken separately has been shown to be untrustworthy and unhistorical. But it is possible that events may take place, the reports of which may be in every particular incorrect. It may be thus in the case of the trial before Pilate. I fully admit the possibility of a trial without any of these incidents and without such termination ; but I am bound not less clearly to say that we have no warrant of historical evidence for affrming the reality.
We enter now on an inquiry which, as we have seen, is, in strictness of speech, superfluous. If there was no formal trial and no formal sentence, there could be no carrying out of a judgement never given—in other words, no crucifixion carried out by Roman officers on the warrant of the governor. If in such case there was any execution, it could be nothing more than the result of mob violence acting in defiance of law, as the story of the Acts represents the Jews as acting in the matter of Stephen. There is, perhaps, little rashness in saying that we shall not find the inquiry more free from difiiculty as we go on.
(p. 429)
Justin, who clearly had another story before him in the ' Memorials of the Apostles,' directly charges the Jews with so slandering the Christians. ' When,' he says, ' you knew that he had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, as the prophets had foretold, not only did you not repent . . . but at that time you selected and sent forth from Jerusalem, throughout the land, chosen men, saying that " the atheistic heresy of the Christians had arisen . . . from a certain Jesus, a Galilean impostor, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb where he had been laid, when he was unloosed from the cross, and they now deceive men, saying that he has arisen from the dead and ascended into heaven."' Justin's reiterated quotation of the passage may be taken as showing that he received it from the 'Memorials of the Apostles' ; but it does not prove that the story originated with non-Christian Jews. The Jews had not the right of inflicting crucifixion in the days of Pilate. See further, Supernatural Religion, i. 339, 343.
(p. 449-450, my bold)
