Killing Jesus: A History (10 page)

For while Sepphoris is the very picture of prosperity, many in Galilee are starving.

*   *   *

Joseph and Mary, as do most other Jews, live in fear of Herod Antipas. With a dark beard covering the tip of his chin and a thin mustache wreathing his mouth, Antipas resembles a true villain. While his father, Herod the Great, had grave faults, he also performed many constructive acts. Not so Antipas, a callow man who has never known want and who always expected to be given a kingdom.

Antipas was born in Judea but educated in Rome, a city he adores. He pays homage to Caesar Augustus and Rome not only by taxing the Jews blind but also by ordering a Roman-style form of execution for any who would dare defy him.

Galilean outrage against Rome has been building for decades. The people have been levied with tax after tax after tax. Antipas is nothing if not “a lover of luxury,” and he uses these taxes both to rebuild Sepphoris and to finance his own lavish lifestyle. And the more luxury he needs, the higher the taxes climb.

Herod Antipas

Actual money is scarce. Every adult male Jew has to pay his annual half-shekel tax to the Temple in coin. Farmers can pay the rest of their obligation in figs, olive oil, or grain. They have no way of skirting the taxes because they must travel to Sepphoris to sell their harvest. The hated taxman is always on hand when they arrive at their destination. Fishermen have it no better. They are levied special rights fees, in addition to a portion of their daily catch, for permission to drop their nets or to dock in a port.

No men are more despised than the tax collectors, who not only extort funds from people with very little but also publicly abuse and even torture those who fall behind on their payments. There is no leeway. Those who can’t pay must borrow grain or oil from the storage silos manned by Antipas’s men. The interest rates are exorbitant—100 percent on oil and 25 percent on grain. And falling behind on these debts means ruin. Peasants are often forced to sell their children to creditors as debt slaves or to sell their farms and work the land as sharecroppers. Some lose their homes and inheritance and become beggars, the dignity of life as a Jewish landowner replaced by a degraded existence outside normal society.

There is, however, a booming city of some forty thousand residents to which many of these people have migrated and are accepted, despite their lowly status. This place is called Magdala—“Magdalena” to the Romans and “Magdalene” in the Greek language of the Gospels—and even as Jesus of Nazareth walks the streets of Sepphoris, a vibrant young girl named Mary walks the streets of Magdala. Her parents have nothing. Mary’s innocence will inevitably be shattered in the shabby confines of that outlaw village. She will grow up to be a prostitute, doing what she must do to survive, though she longs for something better in this world.

*   *   *

Because Joseph is a skilled carpenter, he is able to pay his taxes. And, indeed, most people in Galilee can do the same—but just barely. Many Galileans suffer malnutrition because they have no food left with which to feed themselves. And in the throes of that hunger, as hair falls out and both muscles and hope wither, they quietly seethe. But rather than point the finger of blame at Rome or Caesar Augustus, the people of Galilee begin to vent their rage at one another. They stop loaning grain or oil to friends and relations, fearing that their own supply will run out. They ignore the Jewish tradition of forgiving debts. The tight-knit peasant community that has sustained itself for so many generations, through rule by the Greeks and Persians and Assyrians, begins to unravel under the reigns of Augustus and Antipas.

The great legends of the Jewish people tell of heroes of their faith rising up to defeat foreign invaders. The people long for the glory days of King David, so many hundreds of years ago, when the Jews were their own masters and God was the undisputed and most powerful force in all the cosmos. The residents of Galilee are independent thinkers. Their persistent belief that they will ultimately control their destiny is one reason Judas of Gamala’s demand that they rise up against Rome had such a profound effect.

In that belief, there is hope. The hardships of the land and the cruelty of Rome have bred a resurgent faith in the power of the Jewish God, to whom they pray for rescue, power, and relief. This is the world a young Jesus of Nazareth inhabits. These are the prayers he hears poured forth every day. The promise of God’s deliverance is the one shaft of daylight that comforts the oppressed people of Galilee. Someday, in some way, if they just hold on, God will send someone to make things right, just as he did with Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Samson, and David.

Ten years after the death of Herod the Great, the populace of Jesus of Nazareth’s village and his land eagerly await a new king of the Jews.

*   *   *

How much Jesus is affected by all the turbulence in his town is unknown. He grows into a strong man, respectful of his parents. Joseph dies sometime between Jesus’s thirteenth and thirtieth birthdays, leaving Jesus the family business. Jesus remains devoted to his mother, and she to him. But as he passes his thirtieth birthday, Jesus of Nazareth knows that silence is no longer an option.

The time has come to fulfill his destiny.

It is a decision that will change the world.

It will also lead to his agonizing death.

BOOK

II

Behold the Man

CHAPTER SIX

JORDAN RIVER, PEREA
A.D. 26
MIDDAY

John the Baptizer stands waist deep in the cold, brown river, waiting patiently as the next pilgrim wades out to stand at his side. He looks to the shore, where scores of believers line up on the Jordan’s muddy bank, oblivious to the heat as they wait to experience the full immersion ritual that will cleanse them of their sins.

The believers are mostly poor working people. They are electrified by John and his radical teachings. The long-haired young man with the sunburned skin and unkempt beard has disciplined himself by living alone in the desert, existing on a diet of locusts for protein and honey for energy. His clothes are not the elaborate robes of the haughty Pharisees, now spying on him from the shore, but a coarse tunic stitched from the skin of a camel and cinched tightly around his waist with a simple leather belt. John is celibate, with a passion for God and God alone. Some think him eccentric, others consider him a rebel, and many find his direct manner of speaking to be caustic, but all agree that he has boldly promised them something that neither Rome nor the high priests can offer: hope. Thus, the believers have come to redeem that promise.

The end of the known world is coming, John preaches. A new king will come to stand in judgment. Wade into the water and be cleansed of your sins, or this newly anointed ruler—this “Christ”—will punish you in the most horrible manner possible. It is a message both religious and political, one that directly challenges the Roman Empire and the hierarchy of the Jewish Temple.

John extends an arm as the next pilgrim draws near. But before he can baptize the man, a tax collector cries out from the shore, “Teacher, what should
we
do?” He speaks for his profession, well aware that he is despised for diverting Jewish money to a pagan king in Rome.

“Don’t collect any more than you are required,” John answers.

There is little shade along the Jordan, and the believers have waited in line patiently for the chance to be immersed in these cool waters. But despite their discomfort, one and all listen closely to what John has to say.

“And what should
we
do?” calls out a soldier. Many soldiers have been known to engage in unethical practices in the name of that perverted and despised new Roman emperor Tiberius.

John’s answer is nonjudgmental. “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.”

The Baptist turns his attention back to the man who stands at his side in the river. He listens intently as the man confesses his many sins. Then John prays for him: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Only a slave would be tasked with loosening a man’s sandals, so John’s words are powerful, a tremendous show of respect. As the pilgrim nods in understanding, John places one hand in the center of the man’s back and slowly guides him down into the water, holds him under for a few seconds, and then lifts him back to his feet. The relieved pilgrim, his transgressions now forgiven, battles the lazy current back to shore. Before he has even reached the bank, another believer is wading out to experience the same sensation.

“Who
are
you?” demands a voice from the shore. John has been waiting for this question. It is the condescending request of a priest, sent from Jerusalem to judge whether John is committing heresy. The holy man is not alone, having made the journey in the company of other Pharisees, Sadducees, and Levites.
¹

“I am
not
the Christ,” John shouts back. The high priests know that he is referring to the new Jewish king, a man like Saul and David, the great rulers of generations past who were handpicked by God to lead the Israelites.

“Then who are you?” demands a Pharisee. “Are you Elijah?”

John has heard this comparison before. Like him, Elijah was a prophet who preached that the world would soon end.

“No,” John replies firmly.

“Who
are
you?” the priests ask once again. “Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us.”

John prefers to invoke the prophet Isaiah, a man whose name meant “the Lord saves.” He lived eight hundred years ago and was said to have been martyred by being sawed in half for uttering his many bold prophecies. In one particular prediction, Isaiah foretold that a man would come to tell the people about the day the world would end and God would appear on earth. This man would be “a voice of one, calling in the desert, preparing the way for the Lord, making straight paths for him.”
²

John has prayed and fasted for many days. He truly believes that he is the man of whom Isaiah wrote. Even if he dies a most horrible death, he feels obligated to travel from city to city, telling one and all that the end of the world is near and that they must prepare by being baptized.

“Who
are
you?” the priests demand once again, their voices angrier and more insistent.

“I am the voice of one,” John responds, “calling in the desert.”

*   *   *

The Temple priests are not the only officials keeping a close eye on John the Baptist. From his stunning new capital city of Tiberias, which he has built on an even grander scale than Sepphoris, Herod Antipas has sent spies to the Jordan River to track John’s every movement. The Baptist is the talk of Galilee, and Antipas fears that this charismatic evangelist will persuade the people to rise up against him.

Antipas is prepared to deal with John in the same manner as Judas of Gamala nearly twenty years ago. But there is something about John’s nonviolent message that makes him a much greater threat. Life in Galilee has become even more difficult since Judas was executed. Antipas’s decision to build Tiberias on the sunny shores of the Sea of Galilee a decade after rebuilding Sepphoris has increased the financial burden borne by the people of Galilee. As with all of Antipas’s building projects, no expense was spared. Once again, the peasants of Galilee are being taxed to cover these costs.

Antipas has named the new city in honor of the Roman emperor who succeeded the late Caesar Augustus twelve years ago. Tiberius was once a great general, defending Rome from Germanic barbarians. But a lifetime of personal sadness has turned him into a horrible man. Tiberius knows no boundaries. One of his amusements is swimming with handpicked “tiddlers,” naked young boys whose job is to chase him around the imperial pool and nibble between Tiberius’s legs.

The swimming sessions are the least of the emperor’s considerable depravities, but Antipas knows better than to pass moral judgment. Even after more than two decades on the throne, he rules solely at the pleasure of Rome. And indeed Antipas has his own depraved résumé. He has divorced his own wife and married that of his brother, an act of abomination to the Jewish people.

So it is that even as he began making plans to kill John the Baptist—a man whose only crime is an outspoken passion for the coming of the Lord—Antipas named the capital city of a devout Jewish province after a sixty-eight-year-old pagan who hosts orgies in his private villa and dispatches his enemies by throwing them off a thousand-foot cliff.

And while Antipas refuses to pass moral judgment on Tiberius, the vile man who controls his destiny, the Baptist will have no such qualms.

*   *   *

In Jerusalem, there now exists an uneasy alliance between faith and state. That unholy collaboration is also tracking the Baptist.