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>3) Biblical scholar Delbert Burkett, in his groundbreaking work, From Proto-Mark to Mark, posits the idea that the Synoptic gospels and Stephen's trial in Acts of the Apostles used a “Sanhedrin Trial Source”. Burkett points out that this lost source tradition portrayed Jesus as being executed by fellow Jews without Roman assistance and could possibly be related to Yeshu in the Talmud. Separating the “Sanhedrin Trial Source” from the gospel context also solves the problem of how the Sanhedrin could have been expected to be assembled at night since the Toledot context has Yeshu being captured and tried during the daytime. The tradition of execution by Jews also better fits with 1 Thessalonians 2:15 and Mara Bar Serapion. In the Gospel of Peter, Jesus is condemned to death by both Herod and Pilate, not individually, as is described in the gospels of Luke and John, but together at the same time, which is rather implausible historically. Even more strikingly, Jesus is crucified by “the people” without any mention of Roman assistance, after which they get worried about the sudden darkness that comes about because of the Biblical law about leaving a condemned criminal's body up all night. After Jesus dies, Roman soldiers do get involved to guard the body. In the book, The Cross That Spoke, John Dominic Crossan suggested there are interpolations in the text, and while he still believes that Herod and Pilate played a role in the earliest core document, which he calls the Cross Gospel, an execution carried out by the people and not soldiers suggests the earliest version of the apocryphal gospel story may have been set in the first century BCE when public executions would have been carried out by Jews
