‘In other words?’
‘In other words, everything happened under Roman influence. There are no originals of the sacred texts, only transcriptions of unknown authorship and motivation. Christianity is a patchwork quilt, based on historical misrepresentations. Why do you think the Vatican is always so attentive to archaeological discoveries? Always so quick to refute or control any new fact unearthed? Because they’re living with a time bomb. They know that everything they have established is based on a lie. The New Testament is a purely political document, created to control the people. I think it also aimed to control the Jews, only they didn’t succeed.’
‘And why do you think they didn’t succeed?’ Gavache asked.
‘Because they knew the truth.’ Ben Isaac got up now and paced the room. The subject annoyed him. ‘Pontius Pilate wasn’t the good, courteous man the Bible portrays, nor was he intelligent. He was a bloody man with wicked instincts, a perverse schemer. He never washed his hands or let the Jews decide Jesus’s fate. Washing the hands was a Jewish ritual of purification, not Roman, the netilat yadaim. Barabbas, whom the Jews chose to free in Jesus’s place, according to the New Testament, was a Zealot, from a violent, fanatical sect of Judaism, different from the Nazarites, though they shared some methods. Barabbas had killed Roman soldiers, a serious crime; today he would be considered a terrorist. The Zealots led innumerable rebellions, always put down by the Romans, and in their final hour committed suicide en masse — men, women, and children. Pilate would never have freed a killer of Romans. It’s not only improbable but impossible.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean he didn’t wash his hands of it,’ Gavache insisted.
‘How does the Bible say that Jesus died?’ Ben Isaac asked.
‘Crucified.’
‘Exactly,’ Ben Isaac answered, as if expressing an obvious truth that Gavache didn’t get. ‘If you had doubts, the Crucifixion was proof that Pilate never washed his hands. He was the one who condemned Him, and not others.’
Gavache was confused, and Ben Isaac realized it.
‘Crucifixion was always a Roman sentence, not Jewish,’ he explained. ‘If he’d been condemned by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, the punishment would have been death by stoning.’
‘A devil of a choice,’ Gavache said ironically.
‘But He wasn’t sentenced to the Jewish punishment, was He?’ Ben Isaac ignored Gavache’s comment. ‘Jewish participation in the death of Christ was greatly exaggerated.’
‘You mean they had nothing to do with His death,’ Gavache said.
‘Not only did they have nothing to do with it, they tried to help Him.
‘When the Roman soldiers and the Temple Police arrested Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, they didn’t bring him before Pilate. The first stop occurred during the night at the house of Caiaphas, the high priest of the Sanhedrin, in front of the Praetorium, the governor’s palace. It wasn’t at the Temple or the place where the Sanhedrin met, which indicates an informal meeting, not an audience. Also, the Sanhedrin never met at night. One of its members was Joseph of Arimathaea, who aided Jesus along the route of the cross and offered his tomb to receive His body.
‘It was the beginning of Passover, the celebration of the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt, and the Sanhedrin never condemned anyone to death during this period. It was prohibited,’ Ben Isaac continued. ‘There are many indications in the Bible that suggest that the Jews never at any time mistreated Jesus.
‘The prophet said that the Messiah would enter Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and the crowd would hail him as the Son of David. Jesus did that in the final days of His life, but the event was not as grand as Holy Scripture describes. The Romans reinforced all the gates of the city during Passover. If the event had had all the significance the Bible gives it, Jesus would never have entered the city without being arrested. It was a capital crime for a nobleman to proclaim himself king of the Jews. Another story has Jesus expelling the money changers and sellers of doves from the Temple. It was obviously an insignificant event, exaggerated by the apostles and the writers of the gospels. Any major altercation within the Temple would have called the attention of the Temple Police, and there’s no reference to this having taken place. Jesus couldn’t have created a great scandal without being expelled from the Temple and the city itself by the authorities.
‘Or killed?’ Gavache suggested.
Ben Isaac shook his head. ‘The maximum would have been jail awaiting sentencing. As I told you, during Passover, there were no executions.’
‘But that’s not what happened. They did execute Him,’ Gavache contradicted him.
Ben Isaac didn’t reply; he stopped suddenly, as if he were revealing too much. Too late. Gavache noticed.
‘It’s possible they didn’t have Him executed,’ Ben Isaac finally said, leaning back in the chair, defeated. ‘It’s possible that the evangelists and Paul changed certain events and exaggerated others, blaming the Jews and speculating about what they didn’t know. Only Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Matthew knew Jesus. No one else witnessed anything that occurred. All the other accounts are based on hearsay. There is also the problem that the evangelists relate conversations that occurred in private without any witnesses. How could they have known what was said?’
Gavache sat down in a chair next to Ben Isaac. ‘None of this means that Jesus wasn’t crucified.’
Ben Isaac sighed. ‘Do you know what documents the lady just carried out of here?’ he asked sorrowfully.
Gavache didn’t know.
‘An inscription placing Christ in Rome in A.D. 45 and a gospel written by Him around the same year,’ he said.
Gavache listened without expressing an opinion. He was used to stories being a string of lies. In his profession he had caught many charitable souls, defenders of morality, some prominent in society and politics, with their hands in the cookie jar, caught doing the very thing they criticized and even prosecuted publicly. Everyone lied for one reason or another, or for no reason at all, because it was easy to complicate life, maybe a human need. The church had no reason to be any different, and wasn’t.
‘Do you believe what was written in the gospel?’ Gavache asked.
‘I don’t know. It has the same errors as the others — contradictions, incoherencies, coincidences. It’s a testimony in the first person up to the final days before the Crucifixion, with some interesting information — mysterious, even — and other news. It gives Him a real human dimension that’s different from the other gospels. He seems to have been in search of a state of permanent illumination. Perhaps it was His consecration to God from the cradle that nurtured this. He said, I am not the son of God, but the way to Him. The gospel places Him in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion… and then ends abruptly.’
‘At least he didn’t narrate his own death, like Moses,’ Gavache joked.
Ben Isaac didn’t react.
‘Tell me, Dr. Isaac, like you’re explaining to an eight-year-old kid, what all this means.’
Ben Isaac took a deep breath. He was worn out. ‘It means He could have been simply a man whom the accidents of history ended up deifying.’
‘I understand,’ Gavache said thoughtfully. ‘What do you think?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Do you think He’s the Son of God or just the product of legend?’
Ben Isaac didn’t hide his shock at Gavache’s question. How dare he ask a question so personal, so profound, that Ben Isaac had asked himself for years without an answer.
‘Did I upset you, Ben Isaac?’ Gavache asked without a trace of pity. He waited for a reply. ‘Come on. You should know better than anyone. You’ve guarded the secret for more than fifty years.’
‘What does it matter to you what I believe?’ Ben Isaac snapped back angrily. ‘Is that going to bring my son back to me?’