The Life of Jesus: Chapter 25
Jonah Bartimaeus sat on a four-legged stool in the chamber of the Sanhedrin. His eyes were closed, his head tilted backward in what was undeniably an odd angle for a seeing man. Caiaphas was on his feet, pacing. Annas sat nearby, working his lower lip with his teeth as he studied Jonah. No other members of the council were present.
Caiaphas stopped in front of the man, leaning over him with his index finger rigidly extended. Jonah opened his eyes for a moment, squinting, then closed them again.
“Bah,” Caiaphas said. He straightened and continued his pacing.
“You’re overlooking the obvious,” Annas said.
“Which is?”
“That this isn’t the blind man who sits at the Fountain Gate.”
“But -”
“Yes, yes. We have witnesses who say it is.”
“Exactly.”
“Also witnesses who say he isn’t, that this is a look-alike. What better way to stir up the enthusiasm of the crowds, if you notice that one of your disciples bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain blind man?”
“Jonah’s pretty well-known. For years he’s been at that same gate. Since he was a boy.”
Annas stood, uncoiling himself. “What did you say your name was?” he asked the witness.
The man opened his eyes. “Jonah.”
“The son of Timaeus.”
“Yes.”
“Is your father alive?”
“Yes. He lives right here in Jerusalem.”
“Your mother?”
Jonah closed his eyes again, as if the world of sight were too much for him to endure for more than a few moments at a time. “Yes.,” he said, his head already beginning to tilt oddly as he lost his visual point of reference. “They are old, both of them, but very much alive.”
Annas looked at Caiaphas. “There you are,” he said to Caiaphas, as if the man Jonah had told them anything of importance.
“Where am I?” Caiaphas said, his voice somewhat petulant.
“Have the man’s parents brought here.”
Caiaphas went to the door, and, while he talked with the guard, his voice rolling audibly through the council chamber, Annas stood over Jonah. , Annas’s chin rested in the crook of his hand between his thumb and forefinger. “How long have you known this Jesus?” he asked abruptly.
Jonah’s eyes opened, though his expression was, to Annas, unpleasantly and inappropriately vague. “I met him today,” Jonah said. “I’d heard of him, of course.”
“Ah, of course.”
“Do you think he could be the Messiah? The one we’ve waited for?”
“Is that what you want us to think?”
When Jonah didn’t reply, Annas said, “Let’s try to avoid blasphemy, shall we? Tell me again what happened to you this morning.”
“This man called Jesus -” Jonah hesitated.
“Yes, yes. This man called Jesus,” Annas said, moving him along.
“He rubbed mud into my eyes and helped me to wash it out with water from the pool of Siloam.”
“And you could see.”
“Yes.”
“And you couldn’t before.”
The man shook his head. “Not from birth.”
“You were blind from birth. Do you realize that in recorded history there is no record of sight being restored to one born blind? Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
The door opened, and Annas whirled toward it. Nicodemus was there, and with him Joseph of Arimethea. Annas looked at Caiaphas.
“I thought a question of this magnitude should be decided by the full council,” Caiaphas said.
Annas turned away, rolling his eyes in exasperation. They didn’t yet know where this was leading - how best to use it or diffuse it - and his idiot son-in-law was calling in witnesses. Other members of the council began to arrive: Cephas and Talman and Baruch and Nissim. By the time the guard returned with old Timaeus and his wife, the Sanhedrin had a quorum.
“Tell us again who you are,” Annas said, and Jonah told him. “And this morning you were begging as usual by the Fountain Gate?”
“I was.”
“Because you were blind.”
“Yes, I was blind.”
“And what happened this morning?”
Jonah went over it again.
“Where is this man now?” Annas asked him. “This Jesus - did he say where he was going?”
Jonah shook his head, his eyes closing and his chin coming up in a way that was almost taunting.
Caiaphas cleared his throat, and Annas turned sourly toward him.
“He’s preaching on the temple steps,” Caiaphas said. “In the Court of Gentiles.”
“Preaching openly, is he?” Annas said. “Well, well.”
“He put mud in my eyes, and I washed,” Jonah said. “And now I see.”
“You’ve made that quite clear.”
Talman, one of Annas’s closest allies on the council, said, “One thing is clear. This man Jesus cannot be of God. He doesn’t honor the Sabbath.”
“The miraculous restoration of sight is work within the meaning of the law?” Nicodemus queried.
“Healing. A physician is prohibited from plying his trade on the Sabbath.”
“This man is no physician.”
“That doesn’t change the nature of the action.”
“You realize you’re conceding the miracle,” Nicodemus said. “That this Jesus gave sight to one born blind.”
“Not at all, I -”
“Because if he didn’t perform an act of healing, he hasn’t been working within the meaning of the law.” Nicodemus turned to look at the others. “If this man is not of God, how can he give sight to one born blind?”
“This isn’t the first miracle of healing that’s been ascribed to him,” said Joseph of Arimethea.
“No, it isn’t,” said someone. “And that is the question we must ask ourselves: How can an obvious sinner perform such miraculous signs?”
All eyes turned to Annas.
“Get this man Jonah out of here,” he said. “Send in his parents.”
The guard jerked Jonah to his feet and led him to the door. As Jonah’s parents entered the room, old Timaeus hobbling with difficulty, supporting himself on his wife’s arm, they stopped for a long moment and looked at their son. He looked back, his gaze a little vague, but clearly seeing. Tears came spontaneously to the old man’s eyes, and he shook his head.
“Go on, go on,” the guard said, prodding him.
“Come have a seat here in front of the room,” Annas said, indicating the stools. “Have a seat.” He hesitated, glancing at his son-in-law. “Caiaphas, it is your place to question them.”
Annas took a seat to one side of the council chamber, and Caiaphas strode to the center of the room. “You there, your name,” he said, pointing at the witness.
Timaeus’s tremor became worse, his head moving atop his thin, waddled neck. “Timaeus,” he said. “This is Mary, my wife.”
“You are the parents of this man Jonah, the man you passed just now in the doorway?”
“We are,” Timaeus said tremulously.
“He is your son,” Caiaphas said. Annas snorted audibly, and Caiaphas turned toward him.
“Go on, go on,” Annas said.
Caiaphas wheeled ponderously on the couple, who sat holding hands for mutual support. “He is your son,” he said again, more loudly than before.
Timaeus’s head bobbed as if set atop a spring. “He is. He is our son,” he croaked.
“Your son,” Caiaphas repeated, and Annas restrained himself.
“He is our son.”
“Tell us, how long has he been able to see?”
“He has never been able to see. He has been blind from birth.”
“He was born that way,” Caiaphas said.
“Yes.”
“Born blind.”
Annas stood up. “For heaven’s sake, sit down,” he said to his son-in-law, and Caiaphas went obediently to his seat, apparently glad to be rid of the responsibility of cross-examination.
“You’re aware that your son is no longer blind,” Annas said. “He can see now.”
“Yes.”
“In fact, you passed him on the way into the chamber.”
Timaeus nodded.
“And you looked at him.”
“Yes.”
“And he looked back. How do you explain that? If your son was born blind, how is it that he can now see?”
“You’re asking us? It is we who should be asking you - by what means has God accomplished this thing?”
“What makes you think God has done anything?”
“Who else could have done it?”
“Perhaps a man possessed by a demon.”
“Do demons open the eyes of the blind and unstop the ears of the deaf?”
Annas looked irritably toward Nicodemus and Joseph, sitting together on the front row. “Do you confirm everything your husband Timaeus has said to us?” he asked Mary.
“We know he is our son,” Mary said.
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“We know he is our son, and we know he was born blind. But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He’s a grown man and can speak for himself.”
“Get out of here,” Annas snarled. “Both of you.”
Jonah was brought back in and pointed to the stool in the front of the room. “Sit down,” Annas said. “Do you know who we are?”
The man looked at Caiaphas. “I know he’s the high priest,” he said, pointing.
“And I was high priest before him,” Annas said. “There are Simon, Eleasor, Ismael - high priests all of them, at one time or another. We are those appointed by God to lead his people. And of one thing we can assure you, this man Jesus is not of God. He’s crooked. Twisted. A sinner among sinners.”
“I wouldn’t know. All I know, I was blind, and now I see.”
“You keep saying that, but what did this man do to you? How, exactly, did he open your eyes?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“Why? Are you thinking of becoming one of his disciples?”
Annas turned back to the rest of the council, his arms outstretched, palms up. “There you have it,” he said. “The man is a disciple of this Jesus. Even here he cannot resist the opportunity to proselytize. We can’t rely on anything he tells us.”
“I wasn’t one of his disciples until today,” Jonah said. “I was blind, incapable of following anyone.”
“Why would he defend him, if he were not a disciple?” Annas asked, rhetorically.
Nicodemus spoke. “Perhaps because this man Jesus gave him his sight?”
Annas ignored him, turning again toward Jonah. “You say you are this fellow’s disciple. Who is he? Where does he come from? We are disciples of Moses, and no one can doubt that God spoke to Moses. As for this fellow -”
“Are you saying you don’t know where he comes from or anything about him?” Jonah interrupted, incredulous.
“Nobody knows anything about him. The man’s a nobody, a pretentious nobody.”
Jonah looked from one to the other of them, making an obvious effort to bring them into focus. “A nobody? He opened my eyes, I tell you. Could a nobody do that?”
Annas leaned over him. “He could if he was in league with the devil!” Annas shouted, spittle flying from his lips. Jonah’s eyes closed, and his head went back defensively. “He could if he was possessed by Beelzebub,” Annas shouted. He slapped the side of Jonah’s head with his open palm. “Well?” he said. “Well?”
Jonah didn’t open his eyes. “God doesn’t listen to sinners,” he said in a low voice that was nonetheless determined. “Only to the righteous.”
“What?”
“God -”
“What does God have to do with anything? It wasn’t by God’s power that this Jesus did whatever it was he did to you. What do you know about the almighty God? What do you even think you know? You were steeped in sin at your birth. You -”
“We know he was steeped in sin because he was born blind,” Nicodemus interjected.
“You’re an ignorant…” Annas broke off, turning toward Nicodemus as the words penetrated. He stood for a moment without speaking, his breathing plainly audible. Then he turned backto the guards, standing on either side of Jonah. “Get him out of here,” he said.
Jonah found Jesus where Caiaphas had said, in the Court of Gentiles. Jesus was talking to a crowd of nearly a hundred, and Jonah stopped at the edge of the crowd to listen. He was startled to hear Jesus call him by name.
“Jonah Bartimaeus,” Jesus said, and many in the crowd who had heard of Jonah’s healing turned and craned their necks to see him. “The prophet Daniel said that as he looked in the night there appeared before him one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. If I told you I were that son of man, would you believe?”
All eyes were on Jonah, who stood by himself in the midst of a small clearing. Jonah’s eyes remained fixed on Jesus. Slowly, awkwardly, he lowered himself to his knees on the tile mosaic.
To the others, Jesus said, “I have come to bring sight to the blind and blindness to those who see.”
“What does that mean?” a man said.
Jesus, turning, recognized him as a rabbi, a scholar of the law.
“What category do the rest of us fall in?” the man said. “The sighted blind or the blinded seeing?”
“You tell me. You think the blind have no sight because they have sinned, but I tell you, it is you who see clearly who are truly in danger of the judgment.”
Passing close by the crowd came a couple of priests herding yearling lambs toward the Bazaars of Annas. As the bleating of the animals receded, Jesus walked down through the crowd to where Jonah was still kneeling. Helping him to his feet, he said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep, and my sheep know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. It is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.” Jesus pointed back up at the Pharisee. “While the hired hand runs away,” he said.
“Yes,” shouted a voice in the crowd, Judas. “They sell us to the Romans for their own selfish gain.” The Pharisee started, his eyes darting nervously to this man and that one.
“He’s raving,” he said. “Are we sheep or men? Why are we listening to him?”
“I will lay down my life for the sheep,” Jesus said. “I will lay down my life of my own accord, and I will take it up again.”
“He’s possessed,” the Pharisee said.
“For such has my Father promised.”
“Get him!” Again, it was Judas, red-faced and pointing. The crowd took a step toward the Pharisee, almost as a single organism, and the Pharisee turned and ran.
“Stop!” Jesus said to the crowd, and in the answering silence only the sound of the Pharisee’s retreating footsteps could be heard. “Why seek him out? I will be with you for only a short time; stay with me and learn about the one who sent me. If any of you is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, from within him shall flow streams of living water.”
He was quoting Isaiah, but to many the reference seemed cryptic, its meaning obscure. Its very obscurity, however, seemed to add to its import in the minds of his listeners.
“Surely, he is a prophet,” said one.
“Or the Messiah,” said another.
“He’s a Galilean,” protested a well-dressed man. “Doesn’t Scripture tell us the Messiah will be a descendant of David, a Judean?”
Someone pointed at him. “You’re one of them, one of the Pharisees in league with Rome.”
The well-dressed man, his eyes widening in fear, took a step backward and began to sidle away through the crowd. He reached the edge of it and was gone.