The Sanhedrin handed over Jesus. - Mark 15:1
The
entire council (the Sanhedrin) reconvened early the next morning. Mark's word
whole may indicate that the entire Sanhedrin was not involved in the late night session that had ended only a few hours earlier. The Sanhedrin
handed over Jesus to
Pilate and tried to convince him to execute Jesus. Pilate was the Roman governor of Judea from A.D. 26-36. He was known for his cruelty and his dislike for the Jews. Normally he ruled Judea from Caesarea, but appears to have been in Jerusalem for the feasts to control any potential rebellion among the crowds. The Sanhedrin had already condemned Jesus for blasphemy. Blasphemy was punishable by death, but the Sanhedrin did not actually have the authority to execute anyone. The Romans reserved that power for themselves.
Before Pilate - Mark 15:2-15
Mark's account of Jesus' trial before Pilate provides fewer details than those in the other gospels (Matt. 27:3-26 // Luke 23:1-25 // John 18:28-40). Those other accounts (especially John's) make it clear that Jesus did respond to some of Pilate's questions. The statements in Mark's account that Jesus was silent do not mean that he said nothing to Pilate, but merely that he refused to defend himself at certain points in the interrogation.
King of the Jews - Mark 15:2
The Sanhedrin had condemned Jesus for blasphemy. Pilate would never execute Jesus because of a religious charge like blasphemy. The Jewish leaders brought the civil charge of treason against him. (See Luke 23:2.) Pilate asked Jesus if he was usurping Caesar's authority, claiming to be the
King,
of the Jews. Mark stressed that Jesus was condemned as the Messianic King. He was condemned by the Jews because they thought he claimed to be the Messiah in a blasphemous way. He was condemned by the Romans as a king in opposition to Caesar. For Mark, Jesus was the Christ, the Messianic King, from the first verse of the gospel all the way through to the end.
You say so - Mark 15:3
Jesus' words,
You say so are an affirmative answer to Pilate's question, but they are not a straight forward,
Yes. They have a puzzling character to them that is best explained by reference to John's report of the same interrogation (John 18:35-37). Jesus admitted that he was a king, but insisted that he was not a king in the same way that the Jewish leadership and Pilate were imaging. His kingdom was not of this world.
Jesus did not defend himself. - Mark 15:5
Pilate was
amazed that Jesus did not defend himself because Jesus still had the opportunity to be set free. (See Isa. 53:7.)
Pilate offered to free Jesus. - Mark 15:6-15
Pilate disliked the Jewish leaders and suspected they were using him to get rid of Jesus. He offered to free Jesus, but the crowd surprised Pilate and chose
Barabbas who had been convicted of leading a rebellion against Rome. It seems that Barabbas wanted to be the kind of Messiah that Jesus refused to be.
Manipulated the crowd - Mark 15:11
The
chief priests, manipulated the
crowd when he
stirred up a riot.
To pacify the shouting crowd - Mark 15:14-15
Pilate had Jesus crucified not because Jesus was guilty, but because he wanted to pacify the shouting
crowd. In this way Jesus' Roman trial was just as much a miscarriage of justice as his trial before the Sanhedrin had been. Before Jesus was crucified he was
scourged. The soldiers beat Jesus with a leather whip that was imbedded with pieces of bone or metal designed to rip open the flesh. Such scourging often preceded a Roman crucifixion.
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