Betrayal & Arrest

Betrayal and Arrest

The arrest of Jesus is carried out by an armed ‘crowd’, not specifically described as either soldiers or police, but sent out with the authority of ‘the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders’. Mark has used this full listing of the component groups of the Sanhedrin before when he wishes to emphasize the official nature of the opposition to Jesus (8:31; 11:27; see also 14:53). This is not a Roman action, but the Sanhedrin exercising its delegated power to control the internal affairs of the Jewish community, and so it will be to the Sanhedrin, not to the Roman governor, that Jesus will be taken…