Jesus Christ: A Life. Chapter 2.
As the afternoon turned to dusk, Centurion Marcus Antoninus marched from the garrison at Jericho to the Hiljah Ford with half his company. Herod had arrived in Jericho bellowing complaints about the lack of security at the ford, and Antoninus was under orders to take possession of the ford, by force if necessary, and to seek out and capture a long-haired, unshaven barbarian known as John the Baptizer.
“Not publicly, not publicly,” Herod had insisted. “The people will riot. He’s a great favorite of the people.”
“So what? So what if we upset a few Jews?” Antoninus’s tribune said.
“It may not be just a few Jews. If we fan this into a full-fledged insurrection, Rome won’t look too kindly on either of us.”
“Where else but in public can I find him? You think his Jewish friends will point me freely to his door?”
“You secure the ford,” Herod said. “If you find John, arrest him. If you don’t, let it go. I’ll find him eventually. He’s well known in my territory beyond the Jordan.”
The tribune looked at Antoninus. “Take fifty men,” the tribune said. “See to it.”
The first travelers Antoninus came upon were Nabataean merchants, two of them, small and dark, each sitting side-saddle on his donkey. Four camels plodded behind them carrying huge sacks of grain, two to a camel, each sack large enough to have held one of the Nabataeans and his donkey as well.
“Stop,” Antoninus called out in Aramaic, the common language of Palestine.
The merchants stopped their donkeys, and their camels came to a halt behind them.
“You have come from Hiljah Ford,” Antoninus said. “What were the conditions there?”
The first man said something in a language incomprehensible to Antoninus.
“What?” he said, this time in Latin. To his troops he called, “Does anybody speak this monkey tongue?”
None of his men volunteered.
Turning back to the merchants, Antoninus said something vulgar about the sexual practices of the Nabataeans’ mothers, and the two bobbed their small, dark heads.
He let them go. The Romans were two miles from the Jordan River when they came upon their first group of Jews.
“Stop,” he cried again.
The Jews stopped. There were five of them, too few to be any kind of threat, to be anything but terrified.
They pressed close to the side of the road, eyes on their own sandaled feet.
“I seek John the Baptizer,” Antoninus said in broken Aramaic.
None of the travelers answered him or even raised his eyes.
Antoninus pointed to one of them. “Seize him,” he said, and two of his men stepped forward to grab his arms and jerk him forward.
“What is your name, Jew?” Antoninus said.
The man looked up at him. One of Antoninus’s men jerked his hood from his head, revealing a dark face and a short black beard. It was Judas.
“What is your name?” Antoninus repeated.
Judas told him.
One of Antoninus’s men pulled the scabbard from beneath Judas’s cloak, jerking it loose of the fabric that held it. “He’s armed, centurion.”
“He is. How very interesting. Are you one of the sicarii, Judas of Kerioth?”
Judas shook his head, denying comprehension of the Roman’s Latin. “I’m not sick,” he said.
Antoninus wasn’t fooled. “I wasn’t inquiring into the state of your health,” he said. “I was suggesting you were an outlaw who preyed even on his own people in the name of a misguided patriotism.
Judas lifted his shoulders, turning his hands palm-upward in a helpless gesture.
“Speak up, Jew.”
“No, centurion,” Judas said plaintively. “These are violent times. I am concerned for my safety, and for that of my friends.”
“Were you at the river earlier today? Did you see the man they call John the Baptizer?”
“The wild man? Yes, I saw him.”
“Where is he now?”
Judas shook his head. “Beyond the Jordan? I can’t say where.”
“You can’t, or you won’t? In what village does this Baptizer reside?”
Again Judas shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Antoninus stared at him. Judas kept his eyes on the Roman’s feet.
“Let him go,” Antoninus said abruptly, and his soldiers flung Judas backwards to the ground.
“March.”
They passed other travelers on their way to the river and stopped twice more to question them. No one could tell them anything about the Baptizer, and, when they got to the ford, it was deserted.
“Are you hurt?” Judas’s four companions were gathered around him, looking down.
“No. I’m not hurt.”
Judas held up his hand, and a man named Simon helped him to his feet. “Roman dogs,” Judas said. “They’ll pay for that one day.”
“Judas Sicarii,” Simon said.
Judas looked at him irritably. “What?”
“It’s what the Roman called you. Sicarii.”
“Sicarii is plural,” said one of the others, who knew a little Latin. “It should be Judas Sicarius, Judas the Daggerman. It has a ring to it.”
Judas half-smiled. “For a revolutionary,” he said.
Simon said, “We can’t stand here jabbering; we have to go back. If they arrest the Baptizer, we will lose the rallying point we’ve placed so much hope on.”
“Maybe the arrest would be the trigger needed to rouse the people,” Judas said, disagreeing. “John is a popular figure.”
“You heard him, though. He is not the Messiah; he is not Elijah; he is not the Prophet. None of that is going to raise his stature any.”
“People are wondering about him, though. People are asking. And you saw the reaction to Herod’s attempt to arrest him.”
“True, true. And consider the questions: Are you the Messiah? Are you Elijah, returned from heaven?”
“Yes, we can’t ignore this John. If the Romans arrest him, we need to act. We’ll make camp outside Jericho tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the Jordan to see if we can find out what has happened to him.”
Neither Herod Antipus nor Judea’s procurator — a position to which a man named Pontius Pilate had recently been appointed — lived in Jerusalem. The procurator lived in Caesarea-by-the-Sea, a city built by Herod the Great on the site of a settlement known previously as the Tower of Straton. It was a Greek city in every respect, complete with agora, theater, amphitheater, stadium, palace, temple of Caesar, and colossal statues of Augustus Caesar and of Romulus, the mythological founder of Rome. When the procurator visited Jerusalem, which he was compelled to do from time to time, he occupied the Palace of Herod, which had been the primary residence of Herod the Great, the father of Herod Antipas.
Herod Antipas, whose capital city was Tiberius, a city he himself had built on the Sea of Galilee and named for the emperor, visited Jerusalem with roughly the same frequency as Pilate, though it was not located in either of his territories. On the occasions of his visits, he was limited — unhappily — to the smaller, less elaborate Hasmon¬aean Palace, which had been the home of the dynasty that had ruled Judea during its brief period of independence some generations ago. The palace was located in the upper city, close to the Xystus Gate of the temple.
Herod arrived there two days after the incident at the Hiljah Ford. Once he had time to rest from his journey, to sleep and to bathe and to dress himself in the royal purple, he sent for the high priest of Jerusalem.
Within the half-hour, the high priest was announced, and Josephus Caiaphas entered the throne room.
“What are you doing here?” Herod asked him snappishly. “I sent for Annas.”
“My apologies, majesty,” Caiaphas said ponderously, giving Herod a slight bow. “I had heard that you sent for the high priest, a title which has been mine now for some years.” He was dressed in the Greek style, with a long, seamless tunic and a cloak with tassels on the four corners of the hem. On his head was the embroidered cap of the high priest.
“I was thinking of Annas.”
Caiaphas was a big man with a thick black beard and a booming voice. He had physical presence, but to many it was a hollow presence. He was dominated by his father-in-law, who had been high priest many years before him. His mind lacked Annas’s subtlety. His will lacked Annas’s resolve.
“Is there a message I could give him for you?” Caiaphas asked.
“Yes. I was attacked by the Baptizer and his followers on the road to Jericho only two days ago.”
“John the Baptizer?”
“Are there others? He incited the crowd against me, and I was lucky to escape with my life.”
“Has he been arrested?”
“Not that I know of. We haven’t been able to find him.”
Caiaphas raised his eyebrows. “He has ceased to preach publicly?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I want him arrested quietly, out of sight of the crowd.”
“Ah,” said Caiaphas. “Very politic of you.”
“Rome replaced my brother Archaleus because he continually riled the people. I won’t make his mistake.”
Caiaphas bent at the waist slightly in acknowledgement of Herod’s wisdom.
“But the point is, I was attacked. Tell Annas that. Tell him I hold him personally responsible.”
“Responsible!” Caiaphas echoed. “How —”
“The Baptizer’s a priest, isn’t he? One of yours.”
“He’s a Levite. He serves no formal role in the priesthood.”
“Perhaps you should give him one. Why has an unsupervised Levite been permitted to develop such a following among the people? It isn’t good, I tell you. It isn’t safe. I alerted the tribune at the garrison in Jericho as to his revolutionary activities, but I expect you to look into it as well.”
“We’ve been looking into it. A delegation returned from questioning him only yesterday.”
“What did they ask him? What did he say?”
“It was inconclusive, your majesty.”
“Inconclusive! Tell your people to stay on him until they reach some conclusions. This John is preaching apocalypse: I want to know why, what his motives are. When you find out, I expect you to report to me.”
“Certainly, your majesty. Certainly.”
“It may be that we’ll have to do something to stop him.”
When Herod had left the throne room, he found Herodias standing in the hall. Her arms were folded across her chest, and her slippered foot tapped impatiently.
“Why do you appoint that boob to do your work for you?”
“It would be better if John were dealt with by one of his own.”
“The man is a revolutionary. He precipitated an attack on your own person.”
“No, you precipitated the attack by thoughtlessly ordering his arrest with all those people around him.”
“No one can be permitted to address you as he did. The man must be nailed up and left hanging on a cross in the very place we found him, by the Hiljah Ford.”
Herod’s lip curled. “You’re a blood-thirsty wench,” he said.
She stepped against him, looking up. “But an attractive one?”
His smile widened.