Did Sanhedrin have power to kill?

[Expe]

Did Sanhedrin (the Jewish council led by high priest in New Testament) have power to impose death penalty?

In New Testament, it says they can’t.
However, remember that adulterous woman Jesus saved?

Who ordered her stoning then? Wouldn’t it mean that Jewish people do have the power to impose death?

[scm1001]

I am no expert but the rabbis ablished the death penalty about 30 AD. It was not very common anyway. This timing would probably have overlapped with Jesus’s teachings. The stoning could well have been a mob justice thing rather than something official

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

The story about the adulterous woman was not part of the original Gospel of John.

As to the OP, the question of exactly how much authority the Sanhedrin had to carry out Capital sentences seems to be somewhat unclear. The perception that they could not comes (as far as I can tell) only from the Gospels themselves. From Catholic Encyclopedia

…after the deposition of the Ethnarch and the annexation of Judea to the Roman province of Syria (A. D. 6), the Sanhedrin, under the control of the procurators, became the supreme authority of the Jewish people; only capital sentences pronounced by the assembly[ b]perhaps** needed confirmation from the Roman officer before they could be carried into execution. Such was the state of things during the public life of the Saviour and the following thirty years.

<snip>

Whether or not the Sanhedrin had been deprived, at the time of Jesus Christ, of the right to carry death-sentences into execution, is a much-disputed question. On the one hand, that such a curtailing of the Sanhedrin’s power did actually take place seems implied in the cry of the Jews: “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death” (John 18:31), in the statement of Josephus (Ant., XX, ix, 1) and in those of the Talmud of Jer. (Sanh., 18a, 24b). Still we see in Acts, vii, St. Stephen put to death by the Sanhedrin; we read likewise in Talm. Jer. (Sanh., 24, 25) of an adulteress burnt at the stake and a heretic stoned; and these three facts occurred precisely during the last forty years of the Temple’s existence, when the power of life and death is supposed to have been no longer in the Sanhedrin. Assuming the two facts recorded in Talm. Jer. to be historical, we might explain them away, just as the stoning of St. Stephen, and reconcile them with the curtailing of the Sanhedrin’s rights by attributing them to outbursts of popular passion. Some scholars, however, deny that the Romans ever deprived the Sanhedrin of any part of its power: the Sanhedrin, they say, owing to the frequency of cases half-religious and half-political in nature, in order not to alienate the feelings of the people and at the same time not to incur the displeasure of the Roman authorities, practically surrendered into the hands of the latter the right to approve capital sentences; the cry of the Jews: “it is not lawful for us to put any man to death”, was therefore rather a flattery to the procurator than the expression of truth.

It sounds like, at most, the Sanhedrin may have made a practice of getting the Romans to approve of executions but there doesn’t seem to be much, if any, evidence that that they could not carry out such sentences at all or that the Romans had any interest in doing it for them when it came to Jewish religious crimes.

[Expe]

@scm1001

I am no expert but the rabbis ablished the death penalty about 30 AD. It was not very common anyway. This timing would probably have overlapped with Jesus’s teachings. The stoning could well have been a mob justice thing rather than something official

Thank you scm1001!
Would you have the reference for the abolishment?
Thank you too, Diogenes the Cynic!
So, I guess the answer is noone really knows…
How about if the order for Jesus’ arrest was from the Romans?
Would the temple be forced to help the Romans?
I would assume that they would have to hand Jesus over to the Romans in that case?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Expe

How about if the order for Jesus’ arrest was from the Romans?
Would the temple be forced to help the Romans?
I would assume that they would have to hand Jesus over to the Romans in that case?

Well, the sentence of crucifixion could only have come from he Romans (and only for crimes against the Roman state). As for who made the initial arrest, John 18:3 indicates that it was Roman soldiers who were accompanied by some Temple authorities. Since the Romans did not do the bidding of Temple priests (it was quite the other way around), this would probably mean that if there really were any Temple authorities along (or any detatchment from the Jewish Temple Guard), they were there to help the Romans, perhaps with an identification.

[Expe]

Thank you again for your help, Diogenes!

@Diogenes the Cynic

(and only for crimes against the Roman state).

But, the 2 men crucified with Jesus; weren’t they thieves? (Maybe they stole from the Romans?)

Wikipedia said that slaves, rebels, pirates, despised enemies and criminals could be crucified? It did say also that Roman citizens were only crucified for major crimes against the state though.

[scm1001]

@Expe

Thank you scm1001!
Would you have the reference for the abolishment?

" Forty years before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the rabbis abolished capital punishment altogether (Soncino Talmud, Sanhedrin page 161) "
from http://www.nyadp.org/main/judaism.html

[Expe]

@scm1001

" Forty years before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., the rabbis abolished capital punishment altogether (Soncino Talmud, Sanhedrin page 161) "
from http://www.nyadp.org/main/judaism.html

Thanks a lot, scm1001.

But I have to say that I find this impossible to comprehend.

There were maybe 1 million people under the control of the temple. Wouldn’t there be at least several murders every year? Did the Sanhedrin only give out life imprisonments?

Considering how religious the people were at the time, maybe they mostly executed through mob justice like you suggested?

[zev_steinhardt]

Under normal circumstances, not only did the Sanhedrin have the power to mete out death sentences, but so did local courts as well.

In general, there were three levels of courts in ancient Isreal - a court of three who could try most non-capital cases, a court of twenty-three which was responsible for capital cases and the Sanhedrin of 71, which could adjudicate capital cases (and for some specific crimes was the court of first jurisdiction).

One important caveat was that no court had the power to issue a capital verdict if the Sanhedrin was not convened in the Chamber of Hewn Stone on the Temple Mount. By removing themselves from the Temple Mount, the rabbis at the time effetively abolished the death penalty.

In reality, however, capital verdicts were very rare - to the point where the Talmud states that a court that executed a person in seven years (or seventy, according to some versions) was considered a “murderous court.” There are several reasons for this, but one of the prime reasons was the rules of evidence in force at the time. Specifically, a capital crime would have to be witnessed by (at least) two male witnesses who are not related to each other, the victim or the perpetrator. The perpetrator would have to be warned beforehand that the crime he is about to commit is a capital crime and he would have to acknowledge the warning with words to the effect of “I understand but I’m going to commit the crime anyway”). As you can imagine, it is very tough, if not impossible, to carry out an execution under that kind of constraint.

In any event, crucifixion was not a valid Jewish method of execution.

Zev Steinhardt

[Captain_Amazing]

@zev_steinhardt

In any event, crucifixion was not a valid Jewish method of execution.

Which isn’t to say it didn’t occur. After Alexander the Great, the area became Hellenized enough so that, for example, Alexander Janneus was recorded as crucifing 800 Pharasees.