This, at any rate, seemed to be the explanation over at the temple, for Malchus, Caiaphas’s servant, delivered the following message shortly before noon:
Joseph Caiaphas to Pontius Pilatus, peace.
The followers of the Nazarene will stop at nothing, as you have doubtless heard. They came by night and stole his body while the guards were sleeping. Therefore if any claims are made to his so-called “resurrection,” you will know how to interpret these. We are grateful for your cooperation. Do not think harshly of our guards for falling asleep. They have been exhausted over the last days in pursuing this case. Peace.
Pilate had contempt for such an excuse in behalf of sleeping guards. Didn’t they set up shifts? They would not have come off so lightly were they Roman auxiliaries.
Suddenly the import of Caiaphas’s note struck him with crushing force. Why had the high priest not resorted to the obvious loophole of an unguarded tomb on Friday night to account for the disappearance of Jesus’ body, rather than blaming it on guards sleeping on Saturday night? Friday night was the one hiatus in the grave’s surveillance to which Pilate had been clinging in his maddening quest for a logical explanation to the events of the weekend. Why had Caiaphas overlooked it? Unless his guards had proof that the theft occurred between Saturday night and Sunday dawn.
“Malchus! If you ever spoke the truth in your life, don’t fail to do so now.”
“Yes, Excellency?”
“Do you know any of the police who were sent to keep watch over the sepulcher in which Jesus of Nazareth was buried?”
“Yes, I know several of the men who were on duty.”
“Did you talk to them about what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, when they set up their bivouac around the tomb on Saturday morning, they certainly wouldn’t have bothered to roll back the stone to…to see if the body of Jesus were still inside, would they?”
“Yes, they would, Excellency. In fact, the chief priests instructed them to do that even before setting up their watch. The body was there, wrapped in linen bands. Certainly they wouldn’t have sealed the stone without first determining that there was something inside to seal.”
Pilate had worded his question so as to elicit a negative reply most easily. He wanted a negative answer. The puzzle would have been solved. Since stealing a body from a fully guarded tomb had to be impossible, the theft would have occurred Friday night, with the watch sealing a tomb they didn’t know was empty on Saturday, and then imagining the robbery had transpired Saturday night when the earth tremor shoved the stone aside Sunday morning to reveal the empty tomb. But now the last exit had been blocked, the last straw of logic wrenched from the clutch of a man sinking into an intellectual quandary.
“Well,” Pilate finally shrugged, “at least Caiaphas was honest enough not to use a Friday night theft as a convenient excuse.”
“He wasn’t being honest.”
Pilate was certain he had misunderstood Malchus. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said, my master wasn’t being honest.”
“What do you mean?” Pilate asked in astonishment. Now the servant grew frightened and hesitant.
“Go on, Malchus. I give you my word that I’ll not report anything you say. Speak on.”
“The prophet’s body was not stolen by his disciples. I was there when the guards reported everything to the chief priests. They said it happened at dawn. Half of them were on guard, half sleeping. Suddenly there was an earthquake. A fearful radiance flashed in and around the sepulcher. The watch heard a man’s voice talking to some women who had just arrived, saying that Yeshu had risen. Most of the guards were so panicked that they fled. Some, with more courage, cautiously looked inside the tomb after the women had left. They saw only grave clothes.”
Pilate was seriously disturbed. The story corroborated the women’s. He asked Malchus, “Then why did Caiaphas write me about a stolen body, sleeping guards?”
“Because this is now the official story. The chief priests met with the scribes and elders to decide what to do. They concluded that Yeshu removed himself from the grave by some fearfully occult necromancy, a sorcerer’s trick of some kind, inspired by Satan. But if they allowed the guards’ story to become public knowledge, even if they gave a demonic explanation for it, the people would say Yeshu was indeed the Messiah. Everyone would flock to his cause until Roman legions would finally have to put down the movement. They couldn’t have that, so they had the guards claim that Yeshu’s followers stole the body while they were sleeping.”
For some time Pilate looked at Malchus without really seeing him. Then he clapped him on the shoulder. “I appreciate your honesty.”
“If my Lord Caiaphas learns anything of this, I am undone, of course.”
“Your story will not be divulged.”
And then, while dismissing him, Pilate said, “One more thing, Malchus. Don’t feel you have to answer this, but just why were you so candid with me? You were, after all, compromising your own master.”
The servant smiled. “Because I now have a higher master, Excellency. Yeshu Hannosri healed me, and so I believe the other reports about him must be true also. I merely wanted you to know the truth.”
“He healed you? How?”
Malchus related the incident of his severed ear while Pilate watched him skeptically. “Are you sure it was cut off, Malchus?”
“It was on the ground…”
“And now, I suppose, you believe he actually…rose from the dead?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Good day, Malchus.”
More of the inexplicable. Pilate furrowed his brow. Because of the ear story and the servant’s new faith, he questioned the reliability of Malchus’s statements in their discussion. No, the man wasn’t necessarily coloring the facts, but what if he, too, were under a spell of some kind? In that case, would he ever learn the truth about the bizarre events of the past weekend?
Pilate arranged to leave Jerusalem in short order, delegating to the Antonia commandant the task of maintaining law and order during the remaining days of the Pesach.
He wanted to escape the extravagant fanaticism of the city, that Holy Utopia where otherwise respectable men and women dreamed dreams and conjured up visions. Procula, however, wished she might have had a further talk with Joanna, or better still, with some of the disciples of the man her husband had sent to the cross. It was not to be. Procula had to leave Jerusalem, but she carried with her a treasury of indelible impressions she would never shake off. Nor would she try.
Chapter 21
In Caesarea, Pilate was surprised to find that much of the populace knew of the events in Jerusalem during the recent Passover. He had hoped the news would not penetrate the other world represented at his capital, but returning Jewish pilgrims carried back every incident, every rumor. He was concerned that reports of his role during that festival week could damage his prestige as governor. Strangely, this was not the case. Most Jews appreciated his deferring to the Sanhedrin, while those who sympathized with Jesus’ cause looked back at his crucifixion only through the happy lens of the resurrection. And the large gentile element at Caesarea was not interested in what had transpired at Jerusalem, regarding Jesus only as a curiosity.
Pilate wanted to forget the entire episode, and in a way it was easy to do. The news and the rumors from Rome were certainly important enough to refocus his attention on the political puzzle there. After the fall of Sejanus, most Romans had confidently expected the party of Agrippina to stage a major comeback, beginning with her return from exile. But the inscrutable Tiberius had not recalled his daughter-in-law. Though her eldest son had died, there were hopes that Drusus, her second son, might now be released from his subterranean prison in the Palatine palace to assume the role of heir apparent.