The agents of the priests therefore bound Jesus and led him to the judgment-hall, which was the former palace of Herod,[1] adjoining the Tower of Antonia.[2] It was the morning of the day on which the Paschal lamb was to be eaten (Friday the 14th of Nisan, our 3d of April). The Jews would have been defiled by entering the judgment-hall, and would not have been able to share in the sacred feast. They therefore remained without.[3] Pilate being informed of their presence, ascended the _bima_[4] or tribunal, situated in the open air,[5] at the place named _Gabbatha_, or in Greek, _Lithostrotos_, on account of the pavement which covered the ground. [Footnote 1: Philo, _Legatio ad Caium_, Sec. 38. Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 8.] [Footnote 2: The exact place now occupied by the seraglio of the Pacha of Jerusalem.] [Footnote 3: John xviii. 28.] [Footnote 4: The Greek word [Greek: Bema] had passed into the Syro-Chaldaic.] [Footnote 5: Jos., _B.J._, II. ix. 3, xiv. 8; Matt. xxvii. 27; John xviii. 33.] He had scarcely been informed of the accusation, before he displayed his annoyance at being mixed up with this affair.[1] He then shut himself up in the judgment-hall with Jesus. There a conversation took place, the precise details of which are lost, no witness having been able to repeat it to the disciples, but the tenor of which appears to have been well divined by John. His narrative, in fact, perfectly accords with what history teaches us of the mutual position of the two interlocutors. [Footnote 1: John xviii. 29.] The procurator, Pontius, surnamed Pilate, doubtless on account of the _pilum_ or javelin of honor with which he or one of his ancestors was decorated,[1] had hitherto had no relation with the new sect. Indifferent to the internal quarrels of the Jews, he only saw in all these movements of sectaries, the results of intemperate imaginations and disordered brains. In general, he did not like the Jews, but the Jews detested him still more. They thought him hard, scornful, and passionate, and accused him of improbable crimes.[2] [Footnote 1: Virg., _AEn._, XII. 121; Martial, _Epigr._, I. xxxii., X. xlviii.; Plutarch, _Life of Romulus_, 29. Compare the _hasta pura_, a military decoration. Orelli and Henzen, _Inscr. Lat._, Nos. 3574, 6852, etc. _Pilatus_ is, on this hypothesis, a word of the same form as _Torquatus_.] [Footnote 2: Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, Sec. 38.]