Let us now survey broadly the process of historical criticism thus far. 1. At an early stage the reconstructors gave up as pure fiction the third trial before Herod, which appears solely in Luke. They did not ask what historical knowledge, or what sense of history, can have existed in a community among which such an absolute invention found ready currency. 2. The next step was to reject as "unhistorical" the narrative of the fourth Gospel, in which Jesus (a) is examined by Annas the high priest, but in no sense tried; (b) is then sent bound to Caiaphas the high priest; (c) is immediately passed on from Caiaphas to Pilate, who examines him within doors while the priests remain outside, there being thus no Jewish witnesses; (d) tells Pilate "My kingdom is not of this world," and convinces him that he is not punishable. Rejecting this account, as they well might, the reconstructors failed to ask themselves what such an invention signifies. 3. Next disappears the so-called historical narrative of the trial before the high priest and chief priests in the synoptics. [165] That in turn, taken on its merits, is found flagrantly incredible; and now M. Loisy in effect puts it aside, reducing it to a fundamentally different form. Three of the trial stories are thus in turn rejected as hopelessly unhistorical. And now we are invited to regard as "incontestable" the fourth, the trial before Pilate as related in the synoptics; the Johannine version being dismissed as fiction. In the scientific sense of the word [166] the rejected stories have been classed as myths. And still we are told that the "myth-theory" is outside discussion. Yet, even in coming to the trial before Pilate, M. Loisy has to begin by noting the improbability that the entire sanhedrim should have attended it, as is alleged by the synoptics. "In the minds of the evangelists the sanhedrim represents the Jews, and it was the Jews who caused the death of Jesus. Hence the general expressions which the redactors used the more willingly because they were very incompletely informed on the facts." [167] Still, the trial must stand good. Judas goes the way of myth; but the unintelligible procedure of Pilate must be salved. With his general loyalty to the facts as he sees them M. Loisy notes, with Brandt, that in the synoptics as in John there is no Jesuist eye-witness or auditor to report for the faithful what took place. "Here begin the gaps in the Passion-history," remarks Brandt. [168] "Tradition could learn only by indirect ways the general features of the interrogation and the principal incidents which passed between the morning of Friday and the hour of the crucifixion," says Loisy. [169] The student really concerned to get at history is compelled to pronounce that the record thus avowed to be mainly guesswork is myth. Let us take the report as we have it in Mark:--