¹ After that, Pilate had Jesus scourged.

² The soldiers made a crown with some thorns and put it on his head and threw a purple robe round him.

³ They kept coming up to him and saying: “Long live the King of the Jews!” and they gave him blow after blow with their hands.

⁴ Pilate again came outside, and said to the people: “Look! I am bringing him out to you, so that you may know that I find nothing with which he can be charged.”

⁵ Then Jesus came outside, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe; and Pilate said to them: “Here is the man!”

⁶ When the Chief Priests and the police-officers saw him, they shouted: “Crucify him! Crucify him!” “Take him yourselves and crucify him,” said Pilate. “For my part, I find nothing with which he can be charged.”

⁷ “But we,” replied the Jews, “have a Law, under which he deserves death for making himself out to be the Son of God.”

⁸ When Pilate heard what they said, he became still more alarmed;

⁹ and, going into the Government House again, he said to Jesus: “Where do you come from?”

¹⁰ But Jesus made no reply. So Pilate said to him: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do not you know that I have power to release you, and have power to crucify you?”

¹¹ “You would have no power over me at all,” answered Jesus, “if it had not been given you from above; and, therefore, the man who betrayed me to you is guilty of the greater sin.”

¹² This made Pilate anxious to release him; but the Jews shouted: “If you release that man, you are no friend of the Emperor! Any one who makes himself out to be a King is setting himself against the Emperor!”

¹³ On hearing what they said, Pilate brought Jesus out, and took his seat upon the Bench at a place called ‘The Stone Pavement’ — in Hebrew ‘Gabbatha.’

¹⁴ It was the Passover Preparation Day, and about noon. Then he said to the Jews: “Here is your King!”

¹⁵ At that the people shouted: “Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!” “What! shall I crucify your King?” exclaimed Pilate. “We have no King but the Emperor,” replied the Chief Priests;

¹⁶ whereupon Pilate gave Jesus up to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus;

¹⁷ and he went out, carrying his cross himself, to the place which is named from a scull, or, in Hebrew, Golgotha.

¹⁸ There they crucified him, and two others with him — one on each side, and Jesus between them.

¹⁹ Pilate also had these words written and put up over the cross — ‘JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.’

²⁰ These words were read by many of the Jews, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and they were written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

²¹ The Jewish Chief Priests said to Pilate: “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews’, but write what the man said — ‘I am the King of the Jews.’”

²² But Pilate answered: “What I have written, I have written.”

²³ When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four shares — a share for each soldier — and they took the coat also. The coat had no seam, being woven in one piece from top to bottom.

²⁴ So they said to one another: “Do not let us tear it, but let us cast lots for it, to see who shall have it.” This was in fulfilment of the words of Scripture — ‘They shared my clothes among them, And over my clothing they cast lots.’ That was what the soldiers did.

²⁵ Meanwhile near the cross of Jesus were standing his mother and his mother’s sister, as well as Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary of Magdala.

²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved, standing near, he said to his mother: “There is your son.”

²⁷ Then he said to that disciple: “There is your mother.” And from that very hour the disciple took her to live in his house.

²⁸ Afterwards, knowing that everything was now finished, Jesus said, in fulfilment of the words of Scripture: “I am thirsty.”

²⁹ There was a bowl standing there full of common wine; so they put a sponge soaked in the wine on the end of a hyssop-stalk, and held it up to his mouth.

³⁰ When Jesus had received the wine, he exclaimed: “All is finished!” Then, bowing his head, he resigned his spirit to God.

³¹ It was the Preparation Day, and so, to prevent the bodies from remaining on the crosses during the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a great day), the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies removed.

³² Accordingly the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man, and then those of the other who had been crucified with Jesus;

³³ but, on coming to him, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

³⁴ One of the soldiers, however, pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water immediately flowed from it.

³⁵ This is the statement of one who actually saw it — and his statement may be relied upon, and he knows that he is speaking the truth — and it is given in order that you also may be convinced.

³⁶ For all this took place in fulfilment of the words of Scripture — ‘Not one of its bones shall be broken.’

³⁷ And there is another passage which says — ‘They will look upon him whom they pierced.’

³⁸ After this, Joseph of Ramah, a disciple of Jesus — but a secret one, owing to his fear of the Jews — begged Pilate’s permission to remove the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him leave; so Joseph went and removed the body.

³⁹ Nicodemus, too — the man who had formerly visited Jesus by night — came with a roll of myrrh and aloes, weighing nearly a hundred pounds.

⁴⁰ They took the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen with the spices, according to the Jewish mode of burial.

⁴¹ At the place where Jesus had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a newly-made tomb in which no one had ever been laid.

⁴² And so, because of its being the Preparation Day, and as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.