“What sort of man is he?”
“Flowing hair and beard. Kindly face. Clean clothes. But otherwise indistinguishable from anyone else in the city, except for one fact.”
“What’s that?”
“A crowd is always around him. Usually it’s friendly, but sometimes not. When I saw him, some of his enemies were asking, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.’ Jesus replied, ‘I told you, but you do not believe. The works which I do in my Father’s name, they bear me witness’—I think that was it.”
“So the man does give himself out as the Messiah!” Pilate’s brow wrinkled with concern. “What did his interrogators say to that?”
“They picked up rocks and were going to stone him for blasphemy. But he escaped.”
“What blasphemy?”
“His statement: ‘works I do in my Father’s name.’ He made claim to a special kinship with the Jewish god.”
The theological implications of such a claim were far beyond Pilate. He merely thought it interesting that the Jews apparently knew how to keep their visionary Messiahs in check. “Then this Jesus doesn’t really have much of a following?”
“I didn’t say that. After the attempted stoning, his crowds, if anything, were even larger…especially after that extraordinary event in Bethany. If I hadn’t been in Jerusalem gathering information on the Sanhedrin, I might have seen it.”
“What happened?”
“Jesus either raised a man from the dead, or performed the most magnificent trick in the history of magic. The man’s name was Lazarus, a friend of Jesus. He lived in Bethany with two unmarried sisters till he took sick and died. Jesus got there four days later and ordered the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. One of the sisters protested that the smell of decay would be too strong, but Jesus shouted, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ At the door of the sepulcher, a mummy-like figure appeared and then staggered out, tripping over the grave cloths which were binding his hands and feet. They unwrapped him. It was Lazarus, live and healthy.”
“Nonsense.”
“The news was all over Jerusalem that night—Bethany is only two miles away. I went there the next day and found the tomb open, but there was such a mass of people milling around the home of Lazarus that I didn’t try to talk to him.”
Pilate fretted, tapping his open palm with his other fist. “Fantastic,” he said. “How do you suppose he brought it off?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, making it look as if he raised a man from the dead. You see, the story comes apart on the point that Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. Well, the two friends decided to stage something truly spectacular in order to convince the people once and for all.”
“I don’t know, Prefect. I just don’t know. The doctors said the man was dead.”
Pilate smiled.
What Cornelius could not have reported was a crucial meeting of the Sanhedrin, which convened on the day he returned to Caesarea. The Lazarus phenomenon had precipitated this extraordinary session, whose agenda had but one item: what action was to be taken regarding Jesus of Nazareth? If he were allowed to go on performing his signs, he would win over the entire population, they reasoned. “And then the Romans will come,” warned an aged scribe, “and destroy our temple and our nation.” A rising commotion followed this opinion.
Then the high priest Caiaphas raised his hands for silence. “Use your sanctified intellect, brethren,” he said. “Is it not more expedient that one man die for the people, rather than the entire nation perishing? Our only problem is…how shall that man die?”
On or about February 22, A.D. 33, the Great Sanhedrin published the following notice for arrest and punishment. A court crier had to announce publicly or post such an official handbill in the major towns of Judea some forty days prior to a trial.
—— WANTED FOR ARREST: ——
Yeshu Hannosri or Jesus the Nazarene
He shall be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Anyone who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf. Anyone who knows where he is, let him declare it to the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.
Chapter 16
This was the year which would shift the course of human history and dislodge many strata in the world’s culture, from its dating system at the surface to its religious and philosophical values at the depths. But no one could have guessed this during the early months of 33. No one could have known that for once Rome would not determine world events, or that Jerusalem would.
For Rome it was a year as dangerous as the last. Tiberius, suspicious as ever, requested a special bodyguard to attend him whenever he should finally visit the Senate. Sheep-like as ever, senators not only bleated their approval, but passed a law requiring that they be searched for concealed daggers at the door of the Senate whenever the emperor visited. Implicit was their promise that there would be no repetition of the Ides of March.
But Tiberius never returned to the capital. Once again he ventured to within four miles of it, spending some time in the suburbs, but suddenly he found an excuse to return to Capri. “Like an insect circling a candle,” his critics said, “attracted to the light, but afraid of getting burned.”
And the trials and executions continued, though the emperor now wanted an end to them. He took two drastic measures to stanch the blood. He issued orders that all persons in prison condemned for complicity with Sejanus should be killed. And so the hapless partisans were dispatched and their bodies pitched down the Stairs of Mourning into the Tiber. Then, with a certain grim but poetic justice, Tiberius had the bodies of some of the most notorious accusers who had disrupted the state thrown after them into the river.
The public applauded him for that final gesture, and his popularity slowly edged upward in other ways. He refused further honors from the toady Senate. And when an economic crisis that year threatened to plunge Rome into financial ruin, Tiberius shrewdly pumped money back into circulation by setting up a fund of 100,000,000 sesterces, from which debtors could borrow interest-free.
For a time, A.U.C. 786 would be known as the year of Rome’s economic depression, but later ages would call it A.D. 33 because of what was happening that spring in Palestine. The prefect of Judea, of course, could hear nothing of any drum roll of destiny as he prepared to leave Caesarea for his appointment with history in Jerusalem. Plagued with the petty problems of government and living under imperial probation, Pilate paid scant attention to Jesus of Nazareth. If he worked his wonders like a good, orderly thaumaturge and did not preach rebellion, there would be no need to deal with him.
Pilate was a little nettled when the notice for the arrest of “Yeshu Hannosri” was posted in Caesarea, for it suggested that the Sanhedrin might be trying to reassert its ancient right to execute capital sentence by stoning. Cornelius pointed out that “stoning” did not necessarily mean “stoning to death,” in Jewish custom, though this was the extreme to which it usually went. To clear the air, Pilate dispatched a note to Caiaphas which, without mentioning Jesus, warned him, in effect, “Try whom you wish, but remember that the jus gladii remains in the hands of the prefect of Judea.”
The Passover that year would fall at the beginning of April, and Pilate planned, as usual, to spend several weeks in Jerusalem around the time of the festival. Because of the Messianic longings in the land, he gave serious thought to having a large contingent from the Italian Cohort accompany him, but then he dismissed the idea. Genuine Roman troops would have been introduced into the Holy City for the first time in thirty-seven years, and Jerusalemites would surely manage to find something dreadfully symbolic in that gesture. Better to take only the usual company of local auxiliaries, and rely on the Antonia cohort for security.