Our critic defies us to explain how such a trial came to be put in a drama. It is hard to see why he is puzzled. The general object of the whole tragedy is to show Jesus as the victim, first, of the priests, elders, and scribes--the Jewish ecclesiastical order, whose hostility to Jesus is a constant datum of the gospels. At this stage the mystery-play has become a Gentile-Christian performance, in which even the Jewish disciples play a poor part, while the official class are the mainspring of the tragedy. How could the priests be more effectively impeached than by exhibiting them as producing plainly suborned evidence to convict Jesus? Lord Tennyson, in our time, put a bad freethinker in a bad play to discredit freethinking. And he had non-canonical as well as canonical precedents. The apocryphal "Acts of Pilate" appears to follow a drama in which a great many gospel episodes were dramatized as well as the trial. [219] As for the critic's assertion that a midnight search for witnesses is not posited in the narrative, it is again impossible to follow his reasoning. If the ezêtoun ... martyrian of Mark means "sifted evidence," the ezêtoun pseudomartyrian of Matthew means "sifted false evidence." The theory of "sifting" is impossible. I have had the curiosity to examine ten translations--Latin, German, modern Greek, Italian, French, and English, without finding that one translator has ever dreamt of it. All agree with the current English rendering, which means sought [false] testimony, because no other rendering is possible. The record goes on, in Mark:-- ... and found it [i. e. the required evidence] not. For many bare false witness against him and their witness agreed not together. And there stood up certain, and bare false witness against him.... And not even so did their witness agree together. And the high priest stood up.... According to the new theory, the prosecution "sifted evidence" which "stood up," as did the high priest. Defending his thesis, the exegete argues [220] that the "evidence" was not written but oral; that is to say, the authorities had collected witnesses during the day and had then kept them till midnight or later without ascertaining what evidence they were able to give. The narratives neither say nor hint anything of the kind; whereas if such had been supposed to be the fact it would have been the natural thing to say so.