Caught by night in the Cedron Valley by a handful of guards of the Temple, he was dragged to the High Priest, in the presence of whom there was a confrontation which permitted to set forth precise indictments which could be presented to the Roman Governor, the only one who had the power to pass death sentence and to order to execute it. We must say clearly that there was not a due process of law and that the members of the Sanhedrin which met at night were almost certainly not able to deliberate in a legal situation. Jesus was all the same given in charge of Pilate who, after some sessions and procedures which seemed to be a real trial, decided to condemn him with two other criminals after making him flagellated. Was this a precautionary measure, an attempt to please the priests who had given Jesus in charge of him, or was it hate towards anyone among the Judeans who seemed to transmit a message not in line with the imperial ideology? It’s likely that all these reasons together led Pilate to the decision of condemning that Galilean. What is certain is that Jesus dies on the cross, going through what according to the Romans was “an extremely cruel and horrible torture” (Cicero) and according to the Jews was, like the hanging, an excommunication sign for the sinner, a God’s curse for the blasphemer, as the Torah says: “Damned is anyone who is hung on the wood” (Deuteronomy 21:23; see the Epistle to the Galatians 3:13). Jesus dies in the infamy of his nakedness, hung half-way up, because neither the earth nor the sky want him. He dies in the shame of those who are condemned by the official law of their own religion, or by the civil authority because of their being harmful to the common good of the polis! Unlike John the Baptist, Jesus doesn’t die as a martyr, but as an excommunicated and cursed man, using an expression loved by Paul, who is proud of preaching the crucified Jesus, a scandal for the religious men and a folly for the wise men of the Greek world.