Hello Keith, thanks for taking the time to respond.

God is in the details, my friend.

The herald announced Jesus’ sentence of being stoned, yet Jesus was not executed by stoning. Jesus died by being “hung” — that is, hung on a Cross.

These two details fit the Gospels perfectly.

John records that Jesus was a wanted man in the months before His crucifixion. The Sanhedrin had arrest-on-sight orders out for Jesus. This fits with the herald’s announcement, as well as the sentence of death by stoning — the typical punishment for blasphemy, according to the Hebrew Law.

Yet when Jesus contrived to enter Jerusalem with the Triumphal Entry, such an execution was no longer possible. The entire city welcomed Jesus as Messiah. If the religious authorities took Jesus and stoned Him, there would be a city-wide riot, with themselves as the targets.

That’s why they had to get Rome involved, despite how much they hated Rome.

They needed Rome to execute Jesus, so that Rome would be the one the public hated. Rome had the soldiers and the means to keep the peace, should it be necessary. The Sanhedrin did not.

It’s details like these that we need to pay careful attention to, my friend. That’s where we find the Gospels firmly corroborated.

Note: later scribes added words to Sanhedrin 43a, seemingly to distance it from the Gospel accounts. Yet the earliest records agree with what I posted in the article. They do not record that Jesus was stoned to death and His corpse hung, but rather that Jesus was sentenced to death by stoning, yet actually died by being hung.