“I fear you won’t believe me, Mistress…”
“Trust us and tell us, Joanna,” begged Procula.
“As we were returning to Jerusalem, we suddenly saw Jesus in our path.”
“What!”
“Of course we fell down in adoration before him. It was the Lord! It was! You must believe me! He smiled and reminded us of his mission. He also told us to alert his disciples, which we did.”
After they returned from the Hasmonean palace that night, Procula excitedly reported Joanna’s story to Pilate. What stupefied him was not just the fantastic information, but the almost sympathetic ebullience with which Procula related it. “Don’t tell me you believe this bizarre business?” he said with a sniff.
“I didn’t say I did. I didn’t say I didn’t,” she triffled. “I’m just reporting what Joanna told us at dinner. Of course, Herodias tried to laugh it all off, but I thought she was cackling rather nervously. The wife of Manaen had tears in her eyes.”
“Procula, I don’t really care about their emotional reactions,” said Pilate testily. “I just want to know if you, as a sensible Roman matron, can give any credence to such myths, such hallucinations on the part of this Joanna. That woman was delirious with grief.”
“She was not suffering from delusions,” Procula retorted angrily. “She’s one of the most sensible women I’ve met. And she wasn’t flaunting this information. We had to worm it out of her, since she was afraid of Herodias.”
“Oh—the whole thing was a wish or illusion. Do you notice how it was women who claimed to see a resurrected Jesus? Of course women! You creatures are far more imaginative than men. We could never dream up such a story!” He laughed, then frowned. “Jesus is dead, Procula. Accept the fact and be done with it.”
“I’m not finished, Pilate. Joanna and the women hurried to tell his disciples, but, like you, the men thought it was all nonsense. Evidently they have the same opinion of women which you seem to hold. But that night, Sunday night, it was different. While they were gathered at the house they’re using here in Jerusalem, Jesus appeared to them. The disciples thought it was a ghost, but he ate some of their food and had them touch his scarred hands and feet to show that he was very much flesh and blood.”
Pilate began perspiring. Gone was the carefree bravado. But it was not fear which clouded his features so much as anger. “You say there are men who would swear they saw Jesus alive?”
“Yes…and women too!”
Pilate jerked his head about and yelled for a servant, who came running. “Go to the Antonia and summon the centurion and the three auxiliaries who crucified Jesus of Nazareth.”
“At this hour, Master?”
“Yes, at this hour—now—immediately!”
Procula let her husband vent his steam. Then she ventured quietly, “What do you hope to learn, Pilate?”
“A solution to this ridiculous mystery which has been addling my wits, an alternative I’d not thought of till this moment. Let’s say I believe your story, Joanna’s story. Suppose Jesus is alive. You know why he is? Because he never died, that’s why. It would explain everything. Why he ‘died’ too soon on that cross, for one.” Pilate paced the room. “Yes, it all falls into place now. Someone gave him a drink from a sponge, the centurion said, and shortly after that Jesus presumably died. What likely happened was that one of his disciples had put a deep narcotic into the posca soaked up by that sponge…You’ll remember that they did not break his legs so he never suffocated. After he was carefully ‘buried’ by Joseph, another of his henchmen in on the scheme, he revived in the cool of the tomb as the drug wore off. There were no guards on Friday night, so he climbed out without anyone’s help; or his followers were there to assist with the stone. He rested through Saturday. He recuperated by Sunday. Then he went back to the tomb to make his appearance.”
“Magnificent, Pilate,” said Procula quietly. “But remember, one of the troops did something more lethal to Jesus than breaking his legs: he thrust a spear into his heart.”
“That’s why I called for the execution detail.”
The quaternion of soldiers arrived and reported to Pilate. “Centurion,” he demanded, “what was in that sponge from which the crucified Galilean drank shortly before he died this past Friday?”
The four troops peered drowsily at Pilate. Their getting out of bed and hurrying across a sleeping Jerusalem only to hear a question like this gave an air of unreality to Pilate’s query. The centurion asked that it be repeated. Then he replied, “What was in that sponge? Plain, ordinary posca—vinegar and water. What else? It came from my canteen.”
“No one tampered with that canteen?”
“Of course not. At the beginning, some of the women tried to offer the Nazarene some drugged wine, but he wouldn’t take it. All he drank later was our own good old sour posca.”
Procula looked at her husband, who avoided her eyes.
“Now, Centurion, this is a far more important question,” he said. “Tell me again why you didn’t break the prophet’s legs. Wasn’t that my order?”
“With all due respect, sir, not quite. Your message read, ‘You may break legs to induce death near sundown.’ But the one on the center cross was already dead, so we didn’t have to—”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“That was clear, Prefect. There was no breathing, not the slightest twitch of a muscle, the pallor, the glassy stare of death in his eyes—there was no question.” The other men nodded in agreement.
“Then why did you feel it necessary to spear him with a lance?”
“Just an executioner’s gesture, I suppose, to make assurance doubly sure.”
“Which of you threw that spear?”
“I did, sir,” a burly young auxiliary replied, “only I didn’t throw it. He was too close for that. I just drove it into his side as far as I could.”
“How far was that?”
“Well over a foot, sir.”
“Then what happened? Did he gasp, or cry out?”
“No, not a thing. He’d been dead for at least an hour, I’d say. When I pulled the lance back out, blood and water followed it.”
Procula looked as if she would faint. Pilate had an attendant assist her from the room.
“Show me where that spear went in.”
The fellow opened his tunic and put his finger between the fifth and sixth ribs on his left side.
“It missed the ribs?”
“Well, it went between them.”
“At what angle?”
The soldier took his dagger and pointed it, describing a thirty-five-degree angle from his chest.
“It could hardly have missed the heart, could it?”
“No, Prefect. Nor the lungs.”
“No question, then, about him being quite dead?”
“I’d wager my life on it, sir.”
“Do you know why I had to recheck all this with you?” Pilate asked the centurion.
“To be honest, Prefect, we have heard rumors about the Nazarene…coming back to life.”
“That will be all, Centurion. Take your men back to the Antonia.”
The next morning, Pilate summoned Joseph of Arimathea to inquire exactly how he had buried Jesus. The councilor replied that he and the fellow Sanhedrist, Nicodemus, had been somewhat hurried, since the Sabbath was approaching, but all the usual customs had been observed, including the placing of a downy feather just below Jesus’ nostrils for about ten minutes. The feather had not moved. Jesus was dead.
Pilate asked Joseph the final query he could logically muster: Did Jesus have a twin brother? But Joseph shook his head.
Wearily, Pilate returned to his original supposition of a dead Jesus, whose body was stolen by his disciples on Friday night. Subsequent “appearances” to his followers would have to be hallucinations or optical illusions of some kind—or lies.