So then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. 2 And the soldiers twisted together a crown out of thorns and put it on his head, and they threw a purple robe around him. 3 They kept coming up to him and saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.
4 Pilate went outside again and said to them, “Look, I’m bringing him out to you so that you’ll know I find no charge against him.” 5 So Jesus came outside, wearing the thorn crown and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, “Look — the man.”
6 When the chief priests and the temple guards saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!”
Pilate said to them, “You take him and crucify him. I find no charge against him.”
7 The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.”
8 When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. 9 He went back into the governor’s headquarters and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. 10 So Pilate said to him, “You won’t speak to me? Don’t you know I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?”
11 Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above. That’s why the one who handed me over to you has the greater sin.”
12 From that point on, Pilate tried to release him. But the Jews shouted, “If you release this man, you are no friend of Caesar’s. Anyone who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.”
13 When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place called the Stone Pavement — in Aramaic, Gabbatha.[1] 14 It was the day of Preparation for the Passover, about noon. And he said to the Jews, “Look — your king.”[2]
15 They shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your king?”
The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.”
16 So then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
So they took Jesus, 17 and carrying his own cross, he went out to the place called the Place of the Skull — in Aramaic, Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and two others with him, one on each side with Jesus in the middle.
19 Pilate also wrote a notice and put it on the cross. It read: “Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.”[3] 20 Many of the Jews read this notice, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city. And it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. 21 So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Don’t write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that he said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’”
22 Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
23 When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares — one share for each soldier — plus the tunic. The tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. 24 So they said to one another, “Let’s not tear it. Let’s cast lots for it to see whose it will be.” This happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, the one that says:
They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.
So that’s what the soldiers did.
25 Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, look — your son.” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Look — your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that everything had now been finished — so that the Scripture would be brought to completion — said, “I’m thirsty.” 29 A jar full of sour wine was sitting there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it up to his mouth.[4] 30 When Jesus had taken the sour wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he gave up his spirit.
31 Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath — because that Sabbath was a high holy day. So they asked Pilate to have the men’s legs broken and the bodies taken away. 32 The soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man, and of the other one who had been crucified with him. 33 But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. 34 Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. 35 The one who saw this has testified to it, and his testimony is true. He knows he is telling the truth, so that you too may believe. 36 These things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” 37 And another Scripture says: “They will look on the one they have pierced.”
38 After these things, Joseph from Arimathea — who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, because he feared the Jews — asked Pilate if he could take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave permission. So he came and took his body away. 39 Nicodemus also came — the one who had first come to Jesus at night — bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds.[5] 40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42 So because it was the Jews’ day of Preparation, and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Notes
Note 1. John gives two names for the spot where Pilate sat to judge: the Greek Lithostrotos, “stone pavement,” and the Aramaic Gabbatha, which points to a raised or high place. The two names describe different features rather than translating each other, and the exact location in Jerusalem is still disputed among archaeologists. ↩
Note 2. The “day of Preparation” is the day before the Sabbath or festival. John times the sentencing to midday on the Preparation for Passover — the hours when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the temple. Mark puts Jesus on the cross at the “third hour” (about 9 a.m.) and treats the previous night’s supper as the Passover meal itself. The two accounts run on different clocks. ↩
Note 3. A Roman execution normally carried a titulus, a placard naming the condemned and the charge, meant to publicly shame him and warn onlookers. It was written in three languages: the local Aramaic, the official Latin of Rome, and the common Greek of the eastern empire. ↩
Note 4. Hyssop is a small, bushy herb, an odd choice for lifting a soaked sponge to a man on a cross. The plant carried Passover overtones: in Exodus a bunch of hyssop was used to smear the lamb’s blood on the doorposts. Scholars still dispute exactly which plant the Greek word names. ↩
Note 5. A hundred Roman pounds comes to roughly 75 of our pounds, about 33 kilograms — a very large quantity of costly spice. ↩