In making this examination, let us bear in mind, the members of the court were not to look forward, but backward. They were to examine the past, not the future, in reference to the present. Furthermore, they were not to consider so much a Trinity as a Duality of gods; for it must be remembered that the Holy Ghost was not a feature of the trial. The Athanasian creed and the proceedings of the Nicene Council were not binding upon Caiaphas and his fellow-judges. Nor were the teachings of the New Testament scriptures published to the world more than a generation after the trial. They were to consider the divine pretensions of Jesus in the light of the teachings and revelations of the Law and the Prophets. They were to measure His claims by these standards in the light of the evidence adduced before them. With a view to a thorough and systematic examination of the merits of the defense of Jesus, Caiaphas, as presiding officer of the Sanhedrin, should have propounded to his fellow-judges the following initial questions: (1) Do the Law and the Prophets reveal the doctrine of a plurality of gods among the Israelites? That is, has Jehovah ever begotten, or has He ever promised to beget, a Son of equal divinity with Himself? Was this Son to be, or is He to be born of a woman; and to have, therefore, the form of a man and the attributes of a human being? Was this Son to be, or is He to be at any time identical with the Father? Do the Law and the Prophets tell us unmistakably that Jehovah ever appeared upon the earth in human form and exhibited human attributes? Do they contain a promise from the Father that He would send His Son to the earth to be the Redeemer of men and the Regenerator of the world? (2) Do the credentials of Jesus, the prisoner at the bar, in the light of the evidence before us, entitle Him to be considered this Son and Ambassador of God, sent from the Father to redeem mankind? It follows logically and necessarily that if affirmative answers were not given to the first set of questions an examination of the second would be useless. Let us conceive, then, that the judges of the Sanhedrin had employed this method. What answers, we may ask, would they have developed to these questions from the Sacred Books?