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Jesus suffered crucifixion by the Romans. Is this because he was a rebel against Rome? Not according to the evangelists, who claim that the Sanhedrin under Caiaphas initially arraigned Jesus on a capital charge of blasphemy. References to Jesus’ death in Jewish sources (notably Josephus and the Talmud) also claim primary responsibility for the Jerusalem authorities. Having condemned Jesus, the Sanhedrin referred the case to Pilate, as would be necessary, given Rome’s normal practice of reserving the death penalty to itself. For Pilate’s benefit, the charge was restated in terms of maiestas laesa—high treason. The gospels describe Pilate as initially unconvinced and prepared to deal with Jesus of Nazareth as Albinus would later deal with Jesus ben Hananiah. Then, perhaps because he fears a riot, Pilate is persuaded to apply the death penalty. There is no good reason to doubt the essential truth of this record.

This chapter shows how particular biblical laws such as blasphemy, false prophecy, and false teaching were understood at the time of the New Testament, and how they interfaced with other legal traditions, such as Roman law and custom. It shows how each of the main charges in the Jewish and Roman proceedings is introduced and developed in advance of Jesus' trials. They included charges of false prophecy, false teaching, leading Israel astray, blasphemy, forbidding payment of taxes, and threatening to destroy the Temple. The charges against Jesus were suitable because of their salience both for the religious establishment and for the Romans. The chapter shows that there are hitherto-unnoticed structural parallels between the proceedings before Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate, as well as parallels between the trials of Jesus and modern miscarriages of justice.

This chapter presents a brief plot summary for pouches one through six of the eighth circle of Hell, followed by explanations of “encounters” and “allusions”, significant verses (in Italian and English), and study questions to aid in comprehension and facilitate discussion of the poem. Circle eight, also called Malebolge (“evil pouches”), contains ten concentric ditches corresponding to different categories of fraud. The embankments separating the ditches are connected by stone bridges. Dante and Virgil view the shades by walking along the embankments and across the bridges, and at times by descending into a ditch. Punished in the first six ditches are (in order) pimps and seducers, flatterers, simonists (corrupt religious leaders), soothsayers, barrators (crooked public officials), and hypocrites. Jason, leader of the Argonauts, captures Dante's attention among the seducers being whipped by horned demons. In the next ditch, Dante recognizes a flatterer from Lucca wallowing in excrement. After verbally thrashing Pope Nicholas III, stuffed upside down in the ground for prostituting the church, Dante is himself rebuked by Virgil for weeping at the sight of the soothsayers, whose necks are twisted so that tears wet their buttocks. Barrators, immersed in a sea of boiling pitch, are tortured by a band of devils, whose malicious intentions force Virgil to grab Dante and slide down into the sixth pouch. There the travelers find Caiaphas; nailed to the ground, he is trampled by other hypocrites weighed down by gilded, lead-lined cloaks.