The Life of Jesus

However, the head cohanim and the Torah-teachers stood there, vehemently pressing their case against him.

Herod and his soldiers treated Yeshua with contempt and made fun of him. Then, dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate.

That day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; previously they had been enemies.

Pilate summoned the head cohanim, the leaders and the people,

and said to them, “You brought this man before me on a charge of subverting the people. I examined him in your presence and did not find the man guilty of the crime you are accusing him of.

And neither did Herod, because he sent him back to us. Clearly, he has not done anything that merits the death penalty.

Therefore, what I will do is have him flogged and release him.”

(For of necessity he must release one unto them at the feast.)

But with one voice they shouted, “Away with this man! Give us Bar-Abba!”

(He was a man who had been thrown in prison for causing a riot in the city and for murder.)

Pilate appealed to them again, because he wanted to release Yeshua.

But they yelled, “Put him to death on the stake! Put him to death on the stake!”

A third time he asked them, “But what has this man done wrong? I haven’t found any reason to put him to death. So I’m going to have him flogged and set free.”

But they went on yelling insistently, demanding that he be executed on the stake; and their shouting prevailed.

Pilate decided to grant their demand;

he released the man who had been thrown in prison for insurrection and murder, the one they had asked for; and Yeshua he surrendered to their will.

As the Roman soldiers led Yeshua away, they grabbed hold of a man from Cyrene named Shim‘on, who was on his way in from the country. They put the execution-stake on his back and made him carry it behind Yeshua.

Large numbers of people followed, including women crying and wailing over him.

Yeshua turned to them and said, “Daughters of Yerushalayim, don’t cry for me; cry for yourselves and your children!

For the time is coming when people will say, ‘The childless women are the lucky ones — those whose wombs have never borne a child, whose breasts have never nursed a baby!

Then They will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’

For if they do these things when the wood is green, what is going to happen when it’s dry?”

Two other men, both criminals, were led out to be executed with him.

When they came to the place called The Skull, they nailed him to a stake; and they nailed the criminals to stakes, one on the right and one on the left.

Yeshua said, “Father, forgive them; they don’t understand what they are doing.” They divided up his clothes by throwing dice.