We respectfully request that a large contingent from your Antonia garrison assist our guard. Of the vast numbers of pilgrims camped on the hills surrounding Jerusalem, how many are followers of Yeshu, who would attack our police if they knew we had the deceiver in custody? If you are amenable, we can arrive at a mutual strategy concerning time and place for the arrest. The blessings of peace be yours.
Pilate hated to make decisions when he was sleepy and preparing for bed. He resented the intrusion, but he had little choice in the matter. Gritting his jaw so that the muscles bulged a bit below the ear lobes, he dictated a reply to an aide, who handed it to Malchus:
Pontius Pilatus to Joseph Caiaphas, greeting.
I sympathize with your concern. We also have been kept informed of Jesus the Nazarene over the past months, and have been ready to arrest him if he preached rebellion. Thus far, it appears, he has not. He may well have offended you on religious grounds, but I am hardly qualified to judge on that score.
Accordingly, I do not feel justified in committing Roman auxiliaries to apprehend Jesus, even if the temple guard would make the actual arrest. I feel certain that if your police proceed with any strength, they will have no trouble arresting Jesus by night. Were our troops to join yours, would this not advertise your purpose to all the pilgrims? If your men are attacked, our garrison will, of course, march to their immediate assistance. Farewell.
There was an unexpressed reason for Pilate’s refusing his auxiliaries. Why should he, rather than Caiaphas, bear the popular opprobrium for arresting a prophet? Certainly the people would be inclined to blame Rome, rather than their own countrymen in the temple guard. He would not make Antipas’s mistake and cut down a Jewish prophet, especially not in his present, probationary status. In fact, it looked as if Caiaphas also disdained the role of prophet-killer, and was trying to wrap himself in a Roman mantle for the distasteful task.
At that moment, the high priest was meeting with his father-in-law Annas and the inner council of the Sanhedrin at his mansion, not far from the Herodian palace in that part of Jerusalem called the Upper City. The Sanhedrists were unanimously in favor of arresting Jesus, but divided on whether the arrest should take place before or after the Passover. Those who favored delay argued that there would hardly be enough time for trial and punishment before the Pesach, and no prosecution was possible once the feast got under way. Better to wait until the close of Passover week and the departure of the pilgrims—then apprehend the man.
“But what if Yeshu leaves then also, surrounded by his followers?” Caiaphas asked.
“What may sooner happen is this,” Annas interposed. “The deceiver will use the Pesach as the time to raise his followers against us. You know what he said and did at the temple! Therefore we must strike at once.”
This opinion carried. They would now alert all members of the Sanhedrin to be available at a moment’s notice. The temple police were to arrest Jesus when this could be done conveniently. It would have to be at night, when he was away from the crowds. It would have to be in or near Jerusalem, for if the guard were sent as far as his lodging place at Bethany, the thousands of tenters on the eastern hillsides might get word of his arrest and raise a riot.
To fulfill all these conditions required the services of an insider who could alert them when Jesus was in such a vulnerable position. They found such a man, or rather, he had found them.
“His name,” said Caiaphas, “is Judas Ish-Kerioth, a mercenary sort, willing to sell out his teacher for thirty denarii. But there may be more to it. You see, he’s the only non-Galilean among Yeshu’s disciples. Probably he realized his heretical allegiance and wanted to relieve his guilt by coming to us. He said he’d try to get their plans for tomorrow night.”
“How difficult do you suppose it will be to deal with Pilate?” Annas asked.
They had the answer when Malchus arrived with Pilate’s reply. Caiaphas read it aloud, then commented, “He won’t commit his auxiliaries, but he suggests that our temple guard should have no trouble making the arrest. Reading between his lines, I think we get the following message: ‘This is your affair. Rome won’t interfere.’”
Thursday was equally crowded for Pilate. Again his tribunal was besieged with cases, but fewer people than usual attended court as observers, since the day of preparation for the Passover began that sundown. Others, including many Galileans, would eat the Pesach meal that evening, for there was a divergent calculation among the Jews as to whether the week of Passover celebration began then or the following day. The majority, with the priestly establishment of Jerusalem, would begin celebrating at sundown Friday.
Pilate’s docket fell behind schedule, so again he resorted to an afternoon session of his court. The two most serious cases of the day were now introduced, a pair of highwaymen who had assaulted and robbed a small group of Passover pilgrims trudging up the desolate Jericho-Jerusalem road on their way to the Holy City. The brigands encountered resistance and killed several of the party before despoiling them, but their luck failed them almost immediately. A patrol of Roman troops from the Jericho garrison, guided by surviving pilgrims, flushed them out of the hills and sent them, shackled, to Jerusalem.
In Roman law, prosecutors were private, not governmental, individuals, so Pilate opened the trial by calling on three women of the assaulted party to act as plaintiffs. Tears and hatred in their eyes, they pointed accusing fingers at the two highwaymen and charged them with robbery and murder. Witnesses, including other pilgrims in the party, as well as several auxiliaries from the Roman patrol, then gave evidence for the prosecution.
The defense in the case was very weak. The bandits had no attorney and tried to defend themselves. They supplied a witness who claimed they were in Jerusalem at the time of the felony, but the alibi fell apart when written evidence was introduced into the trial. The Jericho patrol had extracted signed confessions from the two just after capture.
Both sides now presented summations, the Roman patrol captain prompting the women on what to say, while the brigands threw themselves on the mercy of the court. Finally, it was time for sentencing or acquittal.
But the proof of guilt was conclusive. The only complication in what would otherwise have been a simple case was the problem of sentence and execution. It was too late in the day for crucifixion, and yet punishment had to follow immediately upon sentencing. Pilate solved the matter by announcing, “Judgment and sentence will be suspended until tomorrow morning. This court is adjourned.”
At the temple, a priest who had been carefully scanning the darkening heavens shouted that he could see three stars overhead. Answering trumpets shattered the hush of evening. For the Jews, a new day, Friday, Nisan 14, had begun, since they reckoned from sundown to sundown. Pilate heard the trumpet flourish while dining with Procula. For them it was still Thursday, April 2, since Romans counted from midnight to midnight.
In a borrowed upper room a few blocks directly south of the Herodian palace, a group of thirteen men were eating an early Passover Seder of unleavened bread, greens, bitter herbs, meat, and wine. It represented the diet of the Israelites on the night before their hurried exodus from Egypt some 1,300 years earlier. Yet this meal had a different ending. The controversial teacher from Galilee distributed bread and wine around the table and then, strangely, called it his body and blood.