Jesus Christ: A Life. Chapter 4.
Jesus spent the winter months in Judea, staying in Bethany at the home of Lazarus and his sisters. Each day he walked with his three disciples to the temple in Jerusalem, two miles north and west of Bethany. The temple and its precincts, composed as they were of limestone and marble, were as white as the occasional snow that fell on Jerusalem and the surrounding hills. Each morning, as Jesus and his disciples crested the Mount of Olives across from the city, the temple, with its gold plating and gilded pinnacles, reflected the fiery splendor of the rising sun with such force that it was impossible to look at it for more than a moment at a time.
“It’s beautiful,” James said, on the first morning.
“Yes.”
“The dwelling place of God Almighty,” James said, using a name by which God had been known since before the time of Moses, El Shaddai.
Jesus looked at him.
“Look at it,” James said. “Who could doubt that God himself makes his dwelling there?”
“Within the walls which Herod built?”
“Within the Holy of Holies,” James said, nodding. By now he was used to the searching questions Jesus put to him and to every¬body.
“A place utterly dark and empty,” Jesus said.
“Yes.”
“Visited only by the high priest on a single day a year.”
“The Day of Atonement,” James said.
They had started down the gray, chalky road that lay along the olive grove which gave the hill its name. The trees, already old, were festooned with burls, gnarled and twisted as if by some ancient agony. The sun was warm on the backs of the men, but a cool morning breeze swept up from the Kidron Valley.
“He must be a lonely God,” Jesus said.
“He must?”
“Wouldn’t you be lonely if your only visitor was Caiaphas, and he came to see you only once a year?”
Simon, walking on the other side of Jesus, laughed. “I’d be glad the visit came only once a year,” he said.
James was thoughtful. As they crossed the narrow stone bridge spanning the brook that ran along the bottom of the valley, he looked back, squinting into the morning sun.
“I guess if I were God, I’d rather live there among the olive trees,” he said.
Jesus laughed. James, worried that he — and Jesus — were guilty of some irreverence, smiled uncertainly.
“I think God would rather live there, too,” Jesus said.
“He would?”
“And I think the time is coming when he will say as much.”
“To whom?” Judas asked, turning back to look at them. “To whom will God address these comments?”
“The voice of his thunder is in the whirlwind,” Jesus said, quoting the Psalmist. “His lightning lights up the world. The earth trembles and shakes.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“When God speaks, you’ll find it hard to miss,” said Jesus.
They entered Jerusalem by the Fountain Gate and turned onto a narrow road that ascended toward the temple in a series of steps, broad and shallow, with little open shops on either side. The streets inside the city were paved with cobblestones, cut square on all sides and fitted together with a thin sandwich of sand between. At this hour the streets were crowded with camels and donkeys, with men carrying large baskets of bread or fish or vegetables, with women carrying shopping baskets or water jars balanced high on their heads. Jesus picked his way among them, James beside him, Judas and Simon following behind. Shoppers haggled with shopkeepers over food and earthenware, brass vessels and cloth.
“Is it how you remember it?” Jesus asked James.
“It was even more crowded.” He jumped to avoid a side-stepping camel, a little Nabataean merchant balanced high on its back. “If that’s possible.”
“You were here for the Passover,” Jesus said. “It’s more than possible.”
Great covered walkways, thirty cubits across, formed the perimeter of the temple precincts. They passed between two rows of white marble pillars, each rising six times the height of a man and consisting of a single stone. James, looking up at the ceiling of polished cedar as they walked, was open-mouthed.
Jesus stopped them in Solomon’s Portico, that portion of the colonnade that bounded the temple precincts on the east side. He sat down on the stone flagging, and his three disciples sat around him. It was the posture of a rabbi, and several passers-by dawdled near them to hear what this one had to say.
“Moses tells us that we should not hate in our hearts any of our own people: ‘You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.’” Jesus looked at Judas. “Does that mean we are free to hate our enemies?” he asked.
Judas, sitting, looked around uneasily at those who were standing around them. “Yes,” he said. “By implication.”
“But God causes the sun to rise on the evil as well as the good. He sends rain on the righteous as well as the unrighteous.”
Simon coughed into his hand, and Jesus looked at him.
“Why then does Moses limit the obligation? If he meant for us to love our enemies as well as our friends?”
“Because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Moses had to set some minimal standard for his people; but consider — if we love only those who love us, what have we done? Doesn’t everybody do that? Even a Gentile, a man with no special relationship to God, will greet his own kinsmen, his brothers and sisters.”
A young man, one of the bystanders, said, “And does God expect more from the Jews? What does he want from us?”
He wore not one cloak but two, brightly colored. He was obviously affluent.
“Perfection,” Jesus said in answer to his question.
“How can a man reach perfection?”
“How does a man love?” Jesus asked him. “How does he reason?”
The man shook his head.
“God loves and reasons, and he shares those capacities with us, guiding us as a parent might guide the hand of a child first forming his letters.”
The man withdrew from his purse two gerahs, worth about a half-day’s wage. He gave them to Jesus and sat down with them in the small circle. By the end of the day, two others had paid to sit at the feet of the new rabbi. By the end of the week there were twenty. The crowds around the circle grew larger, and Jesus’ voice sounded in ringing tones throughout Solomon’s Portico.
In the spring, on the fourteenth day of Nisan, Lazarus came with them into Jerusalem. It was the first day of the Passover, Israel’s greatest festival, and in his arms Lazarus carried a plump, yearling lamb. It nuzzled his chest, trying to use its lips to draw his tunic into its mouth, and it let out an occasional bleat. Lazarus, though gaunt, was tall and strong; his gait was steady as they descended the Mount of Olives, and his breath came easily. The wind caught at his long, graying beard and tossed it streaming over one shoulder. James, somewhat in awe of the old man, matched his stride, keeping an eye on him and the lamb he carried.
“He’s cute,” James said.
“Yes. The best of my flock,” Lazarus said. “Sleek and fat, without spot or blemish.” Such were the requirements of the Passover sacrifice. His lips compressed in a grim expression as he walked along. “The priests get the breast and right shoulder; they’ll like that. Shouldn’t have to bribe the temple inspectors more than a couple of shekels to let him pass.”
“But that’s as much as the value of the whole lamb,” James protested.
“Aye, outside the temple. But only a tenth as much as they’d charge me for one of their own scrawny beasts.”
James looked back at Jesus. Criticism of the temple inspectors amounted to criticism of the priests themselves. Jesus was talking to Simon, no longer paying attention to James and Lazarus.
It was only as they entered Jerusalem itself, coming in by the Fountain Gate in the east wall, that they became aware of the noise. Everywhere there were people in movement. The direction of the crowd was northward, along the valley which separated the two hills on which Jerusalem was built. From the chatter passing back and forth in a half-dozen languages, Jesus and the others learned that Judea’s new procurator — its fifth — was on his way to Jerusalem. He was due to arrive that very morning.
Jesus and his friends turned to follow the crowd up the west hill toward the palace and the Genneth Gate beside it. The arrival of a new procurator was not without significance. Though the Sanhedrin — the Jewish Council of Elders — controlled the temple and dealt with many of the city’s internal affairs, the Roman procurator was the ultimate authority inside Judea, in full control of the province’s military and judicial administration.
“I hope he’s better than the last one,” Lazarus said. “We could use a procurator who’s fair and reasonable.”
“Better if he’s unfair and unreasonable,” Judas said.
“What’s the point in that?”
“It’s more likely to unite the people.”
“Unite the people, or incite them?” Lazarus said. “You’re too young to remember any real fighting. The last thing we need is another war.”
“I’ve done my share of fighting,” Judas said, and Lazarus eyed him long and hard.
“Aye,” he said. “I dare say you have.”
High walls encircled the palace and were patrolled by soldiers. The palace itself had been built of many different kinds of rare stone imported from all over the world. The roofs were remarkable both for length of beam and for ornamentation. The gate consisted of two arched doors, tall and massive, and these were closed.
The crowd carried Jesus and the others past the palace and through the Genneth Gate onto the north road. “The procurator himself isn’t here yet,” someone said. “Only his advance guard.”
“Look,” Simon said, pointing. Far along the road to the north was a cloud of dust rising brown against the blue sky. The cloud seemed large even at that distance, and it was growing larger as it approached. “More soldiers.”
Lazarus had tucked the lamb inside his cloak to shelter it from the press of people. “Aye,” he said enigmatically.
Judas put a hand to the short sword he wore beneath his cloak.
An entire legion was approaching to join the one already in Jerusalem. The first cohort, consisting of more than a thousand infantry, had custody of the eagle, the military standard of the Roman empire, a red bird on a field of white. The bust of the Emperor Tiberius topped the pole. The image could likewise be seen atop the legion’s standard, the cohorts’ standards, the companies’. The second, third, and fourth cohorts, each half the size of the first, came into view, trailing away along the crest of the mountain range until obscured by their own dust.
The feet of the soldiers sounded like thunder on the paved road. The sun flashed from their breast-plates, their oblong bucklers, and their ponderous javelins, tipped with massive, triangular points of steel. The soldiers’ faces, visible through open helmets topped with lofty crests, were clean-shaven and proud. As they reached the city gate, they ranged themselves before it, standing in well-ordered ranks as if awaiting inspection.
Coming up behind the first four cohorts of infantry was a troop of cavalry, consisting of one hundred thirty-two horsemen, the first troop of ten. Each horseman had a long broadsword strapped to his back, the great handles visible above one shoulder. The cavalry too fell into rank, the horses snorting and stamping as the horsemen reigned them in.
Judas’s hand dropped from the hilt of his sword. For the moment he was all but blinded by a black despair. Who could even conceive of building an army of Jews capable of besting a Roman legion? He glanced at Jesus and saw that, instead of watching the troop formations, Jesus was making friends with Lazarus’s lamb.
Nearly an hour after the first of the Roman infantry came into view, and the standard of the empire became recognizable, Pilate himself appeared, standing in a war chariot, a hand raised in greeting. Stretching out behind him was a continuous line of cavalry and infantry.
Two men came out from the gate to meet Pilate. One of them wore the mitered cap of the high priest and a long blue robe tied round with an embroidered girdle. Caiaphas. The other wore a linen robe even more luxurious in appearance, though without the same ceremonial significance. This was Annas, Caiaphas’s father-in-law and once the high priest himself.
“Greetings,” Caiaphas said, holding up a hand. “Greetings, Lord Procurator.”
Pilate stepped down from the chariot. He was of medium height, with a spare frame, and he wore light boots and a simple tunic under a coat of mail. His head was bare, his short brown hair combed forward.
“You’re the priest?” he said.
Caiaphas bowed. “Josephus Caiaphas, Lord Procurator. High priest of Israel.”
An expression of distaste crossed Pilate’s face. Though he raised a hand casually in acknowledgement of the introduction, he dropped it again almost immediately.
“May our association be long and peaceful,” Caiaphas said.
“Yes,” Pilate said. His military attire, combined with his narrow face and the prominence of his cheekbones, gave him a severe look.
“To that end I remind you of the custom of your predecessors.”
“What custom is that?”
“Of removing the metal busts from your military standards before entering Jerusalem. It is against our law for any graven image to be brought into the city.”
Pilate glanced over his ranked troops, taking in the eagle, flapping audibly in the brisk wind, and the other standards with the bust of Caesar Tiberius ornamenting the top of each.
“Rome dictates your law,” Pilate said. “The so-called graven image is the bust of your emperor.”
“Be that as it may,” Caiaphas said. “His image —”
Pilate’s nostrils flared. “You dismiss your Emperor so easily?” he said testily.
“His bust is a graven image forbidden by our God.”
“And what does the Emperor care for your God?”
Annas spoke, his voice strong but old, almost dusty with age. “The Emperor cares very much for the peace,” he said.
Pilate gestured off-handedly toward the troops still massing behind him. Beyond them rose Golgotha, the place of the skull, a dome-like hill bristling with the empty uprights of a dozen crosses. “Behold the Emperor’s peace,” he said. “Behold the Pax Romana.”
“Lord Procurator,” Caiaphas said. “You can’t . . .”
Again the nostrils flared, and Pilate’s head went back. “I can’t,” he repeated. “Tribune!” he called, raising a hand.
An officer on horseback wheeled toward him. Pilate gave a hand-signal. The tribune wheeled back toward the army, hand raised, and he spurred his horse from cohort to cohort, issuing commands.
“I am not my predecessor,” Pilate said.
“We’re not suggesting that you should be,” Annas responded. “You should, though, think before needlessly inciting the people. We can be valuable to you in your governance of this people, but a large part of our value to you consists of letting you know . . .” He hesitated, searching for a diplomatic turn of phrase.
“Yes?”
“Letting you know what things can be readily imposed on the people and what they won’t abide.”
A thin smile stretched Pilate’s mouth. The first infantry cohort was entering the city behind the standards topped with the bust of the Emperor.
“We’re going to have to resist you on this,” Annas said. “If we don’t, we’ll lose the support of the people.”
Pilate leaned close to Annas. “Resist me,” he said, grimly. “Please. Resist me.”
He turned away. Annas looked at Caiaphas. “Lord Procurator,” he said, mimicking his son-in-law. “Lord Procurator, you can’t!”
“He can’t,” Caiaphas protested. “The point had to be made.”
“‘You can’t’ isn’t an expression to use in dealing with these Romans,” Annas said.
Caiaphas frowned, but remained silent.
The troops entered the city, marching down the broad street lined with sullen, silent faces.