The Life of Jesus

What is your verdict?" "Guilty," they answered. "He deserves death!"

Then they spit in his face and pounded him with their fists; and those who were beating him

said, "Now, you `Messiah,' `prophesy' to us: who hit you that time?"

Kefa was sitting outside in the courtyard when a servant girl came up to him. "You too were with Yeshua from the Galil," she said.

But he denied it in front of everyone -- "I don't know what you're talking about!"

He went out onto the porch, and another girl saw him and said to the people there, "This man was with Yeshua of Natzeret."

Again he denied it, swearing, "I don't know the man!"

After a little while, the bystanders approached Kefa and said, "You must be one of them -- your accent gives you away."

This time he began to invoke a curse on himself as he swore, "I do not know the man!" -- and immediately a rooster crowed.

Kefa remembered what Yeshua had said, "Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times"; and he went outside and cried bitterly.

Early in the morning, all the head cohanim and elders met to plan how to bring about Yeshua's death.

Then they put him in chains, led him away and handed him over to Pilate the governor.

When Y'hudah, who had betrayed him, saw that Yeshua had been condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the head cohanim and elders,

saying, "I sinned in betraying an innocent man to death." "What is that to us?" they answered. "That's your problem."

Hurling the pieces of silver into the sanctuary, he left; then he went off and hanged himself.

The head cohanim took the silver coins and said, "It is prohibited to put this into the Temple treasury, because it is blood money."

So they decided to use it to buy the potter's field as a cemetery for foreigners.

This is how it came to be called the Field of Blood, a name it still bears.

Then what Yirmeyahu the prophet spoke was fulfilled, "And they took the thirty silver coins, which was the price the people of Isra'el had agreed to pay for him,

and used them to buy the potter's field, just as the Lord directed me."

Meanwhile, Yeshua was brought before the governor, and the governor put this question to him: "Are you the King of the Jews?" Yeshua answered, "The words are yours."

But when he was accused by the head cohanim and elders, he gave no answer.

Then Pilate said to him, "Don't you hear all these charges they are making against you?"

But to the governor's great amazement, he did not say a single word in reply to the accusations.

It was the governor's custom during a festival to set free one prisoner, whom ever the crowd asked for.