The Jesus Novel: Chapter 17.
The council of Sanhedrin met in called session. “He will capitulate,” Caiaphas said of Pilate. “A display of resolve like the one we made in Caesarea, and he will capitulate.”
“The last display of resolve cost my father his life,” said Elionaeus, a young firebrand of the house of Boethus.
Annas inclined his head in acknowledgment of the sacrifice. “All Israel honors him for his courage.”
“There are times when one man must give his life for the lives of many,” Caiaphas said.
“So what do you say, Annas?” Elionaeus said. “Will he capitulate as Caiaphas says?”
Annas shrugged. “If we let this go unchallenged, it sets a precedent that may ultimately prove our ruin. If Pilate can raid the treasury for this purpose, then why not another — and another?”
“Though the aqueduct is ultimately to our advantage,” said Joseph, a rich Pharisee from Arimethea, a town in the hill country of Ephraim. “And these particular funds were unsuitable for any sacred purpose because of their source.”
“And we have another problem,” Elionaeus said. “There is one here at the festival some say is the Messiah.” He told them of the priest’s report. “Each day a mob rallies around him to hear him speak.”
Annas frowned. “We are familiar with this Jesus,” he said. “He’s been causing quite a stir up in Galilee.”
“And now that he’s come to Jerusalem —”
“Yes, we must follow his career closely from this point.”
“What’s wrong with people?” a man said. “Have they no learning? When the Messiah comes, he will appear out of nowhere.”
“The Scriptures don’t make that as clear as we could wish,” said Annas.
“One thing is certain — he will not come from Galilee.”
“No,” said Nicodemus. “Not from Galilee. The Messiah will be a descendant of David, and he will come from the village of Bethlehem, which gave us David.” Nicodemus stroked his dark beard.
“What are you saying?” Annas said, turning to him. “Do you know this man’s origins? Is he not a Galilean?”
“His speech and his dress are those of a Galilean,” Nicodemus said.
“If he looks like a Galilean and he talks like a Galilean . . .” The remark produced general laughter.
“It is not our way to condemn a man without giving him a hearing,” Nicodemus. “What does he himself claim?”
“Nicodemus,” said someone. “Are you too from Galilee?” There was more laughter. In the holy city of Jerusalem, Galileans were not highly regarded.
“Search the Scripture,” Annas said. “You will find that no prophet is to arise in Galilee. Still, what you say makes sense. Let us have this Jesus in for questioning. Let us ask him point blank whether he is the Messiah, as we did John.”
“And suppose he says he is?”
“Then we will deal with him.” Annas lips stretched into a thin smile. “We’ll have to. We’re the only Messiah the people need.”
Elionaeus shook his head. “He’s a great favorite of the crowd. I don’t know if it’s wise to arrest him. We might provoke a riot beyond our ability to control.”
“Perhaps he’ll come willingly,” Annas said.
“And if he does not?”
“Why shouldn’t he come willingly, if he is a good Jew?”
The mob surrounding Jesus was larger than had been reported, filling the area between the sanctuary and the elegant stone partition that barred the Gentiles. The half-dozen guards sent by Annas edged through the crowd, nervous despite their swords and helmets, well aware of the black stares they attracted. Jesus fell silent as they gained the steps.
The guards stopped, conscious of the crowd’s attention. Some shifted uneasily from one foot to another, their movements accompanied by the clanking of arms — an alarming sound amid the quiet.
“Yes?” Jesus asked.
The chief guard cleared his throat.
“Whom do you seek?”
A low murmur worked its way through the crowd like the rumble of distant thunder. The guard’s head jerked from side to side, alert to hidden dangers.
“Are you looking for someone?” Jesus asked.
The guard mumbled something in a gruff voice that was too low to hear.
“I’m Jesus of Nazareth. Have you been sent to arrest me?”
The question seemed to produce alarm. The guard pulled his head more closely into his shoulders, and his words were lost in the renewed murmur of the crowd.
Jesus waited expectantly. Realizing that some further action was required of him, the guard decided on retreat. He jerked his head at his men and shuffled backward off the steps. The crowd seemed denser than before as the guards pushed through it.
“I may be with you for only a short time,” Jesus said to the crowd. “The time will come when you look for me, but you will not find me.”
Mutters of anger and displeasure swept the crowd. The guards, reaching its fringes, were pushed this way and that before breaking clear of it.
Jesus and his disciples left the city by the Fountain Gate and climbed the west slope of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the city walls. Today, on the last day of the festival of booths, the hillside was spotted with booths — temporary shelters constructed of leafy branches in commemoration of Israel’s time in the desert before entering the Promised Land. Peter, stopping and looking back over them in a kind of awe at the sheer numbers, noticed the commotion before the Place of Herod, Pilate’s Jerusalem residence. “Look, Jesus,” he said, pointing. “What do you think it is?”
Simon and Judas came back to join them. There was a mob in the open area before the palace gates, a mob so large as to dwarf the one that had surrounded Jesus within the temple precincts. “A riot,” Simon said.
“Pilate looted the temple treasury to help pay for his new aqueduct,” Judas said, amplifying. “There was a lot of anger in the crowd today.”
“The people were like smoldering coals,” Simon said. “Wanting only a breeze to fan them into flame.”
“And the Zealots have supplied it?” Jesus said.
Judas shook his head. “They’re involved, certainly, but this is Annas’s doing. He’s hoping for another victory like that at Caesarea.”
Jesus shook his head.
“It’s risky, certainly, but he has little choice,” Judas said. “His control over the temple treasury is at stake.”
The demonstration before the palace gates continued to degenerate into chaos. Some in the crowd banged on iron pots, some hollow drums. Some hurled invectives, making wild and improbable speculations about Pilate’s ancestry, about his sexual practices, about his anatomy. By dusk negotiation had become impossible.
“They leave me little choice,” Pilate said to the tribune at his side.
“Yes.”
“So be it, then.”
Pilate stepped up to the wall and raised his hands. The crowd saw him and, rather to Pilate’s surprise, became quiet — still hostile, certainly, but apparently prepared to hear what he had to say.
He hesitated, for a moment tempted to try to reason with them, but he abandoned the thought. He had tried reason. “Disperse,” he called. “In the name of the emperor, I command you to disperse.”
It was not a command likely to have a soothing effect on the crowd, and it did not. A roar went up, deafeningly loud. How many tens of thousands packed the streets, Pilate wondered? How many women and children?
Many. He could see that. He stood within plain sight of the crowd, his arms still upraised. Rocks bounced off the wall below him and off the battlements around him. It was the clatter of a spear that decided him.
Pilate lowered his arms in a swift gesture.
It was a prearranged signal. Among the sea of homespun before the gates, cloaks were thrown aside here and there, exposing steel that sparked in the torchlight. Five cohorts, half the heavy-armed infantry of the twelfth legion, were scattered among the protestors and grouped strategically. Six thousand one hundred blades slipped from their scabbards as one, each a short, well-tempered Spanish blade with a double edge, equally suited for slashing or thrusting. A few thrusts and kicks brought each cohort into its preferred formation: eight deep, a sword-length between each file of soldiers and each rank. Before the Jews realized there were enemies among them, they were boxed in against the palace walls, Roman soldiers advancing from three sides. The rocks and sticks the Jews brandished were totally ineffective against the ample bucklers, four feet in length and two and a half in breadth, against the helmets and breastplates, against the greaves protecting the soldiers legs. The Romans attacked. Jews cursed and screamed; the Romans fought silently, striking hard and jerking their blades from the falling bodies of their victims. The spray of blood speckled the shields and garments of the soldiers, soaked through the clothing of the fallen onto the stone flagging.
In half-an-hour it was over. The few who remained alive were trying to crawl away or were groping for succor. The soldiers walked among the fallen, hacking and thrusting with their swords. At a cry from their commander, the legion reformed at one side of the square. The palace gates opened, and the soldiers went into the palace compound. The gates closed, and all was silent but for the occasional moan and the persistent dripping of blood.
Jesus and his disciples were in Bethany, in the home of Lazarus and his sisters. Mary, the younger sister, sat on the ground by Jesus’ feet, gazing up at him with widened eyes.
“The priests sent the temple guards to arrest you?” she said. “What happened?”
James the elder, the son of Zebedee, answered her, giving a rather humorous account of the mumbling guards and their subsequent retreat. Mary laughed, and her eyes flashed in the firelight, and James felt a warm glow at being the focus of her attention.
“They were that afraid of the crowd,” she said wonderingly, unused to the idea of armed men being afraid of anything.
“They were afraid of Jesus as much as the crowd,” said Simon the Zealot. “They are Jews. Even they have heard about the signs Jesus has done. They ask themselves, ‘When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than these?’ They wonder about him.”
A new voice cut into the conversation, a woman’s, high-pitched and irritable. “Lord, there are many here to cook for, and my sister sits idle.”
Jesus looked up and met the eyes of Martha, a tall, spare woman with a pale, thin mouth. “Idle, Martha?”
“She has left me to do all the work by myself, though I told her I would need her to help me.”
Jesus smiled at Martha, his expression sympathetic. “Ah, Martha,” he said. “You are a worrier.”
“Be that as it may, Lord, I have a meal to prepare, and my sister sits at your feet doing nothing.”
“Perhaps you would do well to imitate her example.”
“But the dinner . . .”
“The dinner will be prepared.”
“How?” Martha asked. “And when? By whom?”
Jesus got to his feet and went over to her, grasping her arm and drawing her back to where he had been sitting. “Take my stool,” he said. “Here.”
“Lord —”
“Martha, you are distracted by many things, when at the moment, you need focus on only one.” He sat cross-legged on the ground beside Mary.
James was on his feet. “Lord,” he said. “Take my place.” And he indicated his stool.
Jesus smiled and shook his head. “Sit,” he said. “Sit. But the offer becomes you. All of you, if you are invited to a wedding feast, do not choose for yourself a seat of honor, because others more distinguished than yourself may be invited. Think of the disgrace when your host comes to you, and he says, ‘Give up your place to this person and move lower on the table.’ If instead you sit down at the lowest place, you allow your host to say, ‘Friend, move higher,’ and you will be honored in the presence of all.”
“That is his way,” Judas said to Simon in a low voice. “He goes off into a parable on the slightest provocation.”
“He seeks the teaching moment,” said Simon.
“Even at the cost of an abrupt change of subject.”
Judas watched Jesus’ face, which seemed curiously mobile in the shifting light of the fire. He nodded to himself. “Yet,” he said. “His manner adds much to his air of authority.”
There were shouts on the path below the house, and Jesus broke off in his teaching. Soon a traveler came into view, flushed and disheveled. “There’s been a battle,” he said. “Not a battle. A massacre. Tens of thousands dead before the palace gates.”
His news stunned them, sickened them.
Nobody that night had any supper.