Question:

The midnight trial before the Jewish high council was a literary and theological invention by early Christian writers because the Gospels themselves state that when Jesus was arrested, all his disciples fled. Peter only watched from afar in the courtyard. Since no followers of Jesus were inside the high priest’s private palace during the dead of night, there were no Christian eyewitnesses present to record what actually happened or what was said. How do you respond to this?

Answer:

We do not know who was at this trial, but I assume that there were at least a few dozen men.  How many of them eventually became Christians, we do not know, but it is highly likely that one or more of the witnesses later became Christians. We know that thousands of Jews in Jerusalem converted, including a number of priests (Acts 6:7)  You seem to be assuming that this is not the case, but this is merely an assumption, and we have good evidence that a number of prominent Jews were converted to Christ.  Perhaps Nicodemus was there, or maybe Joseph of Arimathea.  We are not sure.  One thing we know is that Jesus was there.  Jesus met with the disciples several times over forty days.  He had plenty of time to relate what happened at his own trial!   So, whether it was Jesus who recounted the events of his trial, or whether it was one of the enemies of Jesus who was later converted to Christ, we are not sure.  But there is no reason to assume that the New Testament writers invented the incident out of whole cloth—that they were, essentially lying.  If you want to accuse someone of lying, you ought to have evidence that they are lying, but there is no evidence that this is a lie, and there is plenty of reason to think that one or more of those present were later able to relate what happened at this kangaroo trial of Jesus in Ananias’ house.  In fact, there is one eye-witness that we are certain was there–Jesus!

Put it this way, if the Christians were to have invented this story, then they would have opened themselves up to accusations from the Jews that it is an invented story, yet there is no evidence that anyone at the time objected to the truth of this account of the trial of Jesus.  Either way, we know that Jesus was accused and, eventually executed, so why would anyone try to claim that this trial never happened?  In the end, this is a spurious argument.

John Oakes