King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (64 page)

Peter led them out into the street, but though he impressed on them the need for caution they were soon cheering, yelling, uttering threats of vengeance and waving weapons above their heads. Someone broke into the well-known ballad against the grandees of the High-Priestly families ; and all chanted it lustily through the narrow, empty streets :

A curse on the House of Boethus,
   On their truncheons a curse!
A curse on the House of Annas,
   On their whispers a curse!

 

A curse on the House of Cantheras,
   A curse on their pens!
A curse on the House of Phiabi,
   A curse on their fists!

 

A curse on the High Priests
   And their Treasurer sons!
A curse on their sons-in-law,
   The Temple grandees!
A curse on their Levite servants,
   The proud halberdiers!

A Roman patrol of a sergeant and eight men met them unexpectedly at a street corner. There was a clash and a short, furious skirmish. The Zealots, despite their numbers, were no match for well-armoured Roman veterans. Though one soldier fell, mortally wounded in the throat, five Zealots were cut down before the remainder took flight, leaving three prisoners in Roman hands ; namely Peter, whose swiftness of foot had deserted him, and two drunken Upper Galileans named Dysmas and Gestas. These three were marched off at once to the guard-room at the Roman barracks, flogged and knocked about by the guards and, after a brief trial, in which they were advised to plead guilty unless they cared to be put to the torture, sentenced by the Commanding Officer to crucifixion. Peter, not wishing to be called in evidence against Jesus, withheld his true name : he described himself in Court as Barabbas, “my father’s son”, which was taken to be a surname.

Soon after dawn Jesus was fetched under Levite guard to the Residency, which was the Palace of Herod under a new name ; Pilate used part of it as his Headquarters when he brought troops three times a year from Caesarea to forestall trouble at the great Feasts. Caiaphas and the five sons of Annas followed at some little distance, at the head of a large company of their retainers, and sent in a message to Pilate, requesting an immediate audience.

Pilate, formerly a colonel in the Praetorian Guard, owed his Governorship to his friendship with the notorious Sejanus, now the Emperor Tiberius’s right-hand man. He was humorous, bold, greedy and entirely unprincipled. Philo, in an extant letter to the Emperor Caligula, further describes him as inflexible, merciless and obstinate ; but malicious humour was his chief characteristic, and his greatest delight lay in upsetting the dignity of the shrewd, witty, but humourless grandees of the Great Sanhedrin. He sent out a message : “The Governor-General will be charmed if the High Priest will join him and the Lady Barbata at their private breakfast table.” Warm kitchen smells drifted down the corridor.

Caiaphas replied with a slight shudder : “My thanks to your master : pray inform him that by a vexatious old tradition we Jews are forbidden to partake of his desirable breakfast dishes. My colleagues and I will wait on the porch of the inner court until he is at leisure to see us.”

It pleased Pilate to keep Caiaphas waiting on the porch for half an hour while he breakfasted comfortably with his wife. Then he sauntered out, napkin in hand, wiping his lips.

He greeted Caiaphas affably enough : “You are up early, Your Holiness ; I presume that you have come to discuss the Jesus affair before I try my morning’s cases ?”

“We have handed the prisoner over to Your Excellency’s guard.”

“What is the charge against him ?”

“Leading a riot in the Basilica of Herod, with damage to property and danger to life.”

“No one killed? Then what is all the commotion about? Surely this is not a case for the Praetorian Court ?”

“It is aggravated by sedition and blasphemy. Your prisoner has set himself up as the Messiah, the Sacred King, and has blasphemed the Name of our God, for which the penalty prescribed by Moses is death by stoning. We have come for your permission to have him handed over to popular justice at the Fish Gate.”

“As a simple Roman I cannot understand your paradox. How can a man claim to be the Sacred King and at the same time blaspheme the very God by whose favour, presumably, he intends to reign? And your esteemed colleague Nicodemon son of Gorion assures me that the man is a loyal friend to the Romans, which seems equally inconsistent with his claim to the Sacred Kingship. You cannot consider the prisoner mad, or you would not have troubled either yourselves or me with the case : you would have beaten him well and let him go. In any case, I cannot grant your plea for popular justice, which would set a dangerous precedent. Why not give him an official execution if he is guilty of a capital crime, as you allege ?”

Caiaphas began an explanation, which Pilate cut short : “—Really, Your Holiness, it is of no consequence. I shall examine the prisoner myself. Nicodemon assures me that he speaks Greek fluently, so I need not ask you for an interpreter—or misinterpreter.”

“Shall I send the witnesses in ?”

“Do not trouble. I hardly think that I shall press the petty matter of the rioting in the Basilica, where—so I understand from my Oriental Secretary—the money-changers and livestock-dealers have no right to trade. By the way, see that their contracts are cancelled without delay. I will tolerate no provocation to the religious scruples of the Galilean pilgrims. Upon my word, you are much to blame for allowing your Treasurer to turn your Sacred Hill into a common market-place. As for the blasphemy, surely that is a matter for the High Court to settle, not for you or me ?”

Humming a tune, he went into the Judgement Hall, the very place where Antipater had been judged by his father Herod, and gave instructions for Jesus to be brought before him.

“Unshackle him,” he ordered, when a sergeant and two files of soldiers escorted Jesus into his presence. “Now bring him a comfortable chair, and send someone in with Cyprian wine and some cakes. Then clear the Hall and keep everyone well away from the doors. I intend to examine this prisoner in private.”

The sergeant showed no surprise and did what he was told. On his return to the guard-room he said : “That smart High Priest has blundered badly this time. I will take you on at ten drachmae to three that he has
arrested one of our own secret agents ; and now the Samnite is treating the fellow to wine and getting the story from him. At least, that is how it looks.”

“Yes, that is right, I think. Did you see how he let the Sanhedrin gang cool their heels on the porch while he finished his bacon and devilled kidneys? I had to laugh, though the High Priest kept his temper pretty well, I must say.”

Pilate asked Jesus kindly : “You drink no wine ?”

“I have a Nazirite vow.”

“I see. I will not press you to break it. How fortunate that you speak Greek. By the way, you ought to go to a good surgeon with that leg of yours, unless the injury is an old one. Hippocrates in his treatise on dislocations gives precise directions for setting the head of the femur back into its socket. If you leave things to Nature, who is a notorious bungler, a false joint forms and you will suffer agonies from sciatica in your old age. My household surgeon will see to it for you, if you care to put yourself in his charge ; he is skilful enough. The operation may be painful, but in the long run is worth the pain. However, we can discuss the matter at our leisure. Meanwhile, I wish to ask you a routine question or two, which perhaps you will not mind answering. I will confine myself to questions of identity.”

“Say on.”

“Your name is Jesus ?”

It is.

“You were born at Bethlehem—Bethlehem of Ephrath in Judaea ?”

“I was.”

“And you are reckoned of the House of David ?”

“I am.”

“Tell me, are you the Jesus whose name appears on this paper? It is a sheet from the Quirinus census of twenty-two years ago ; I have just had it extracted from the file.”

“I am that man.”

“I had hoped so. According to this entry you were born at Bethlehem three months or so before King Herod’s death. By the way, Jesus of Bethlehem”—here he wheeled suddenly round in his chair—“
Are you the King of the Jews?
”

“Do you ask me this of yourself, or did someone put it into your mouth ?”

Pilate brushed aside the question with pretended candour. “Do you think that I am a Jew, trying to trap you into a statement which can be twisted into a criminal charge? I am a Roman magistrate, and I am asking you a straightforward Roman question, a simple question of identity. Are you the rightful heir to the Herodian throne by the legal marriage of your two parents ?”

Jesus answered reluctantly : “I am.” He added : “But my Kingdom is not of this world.”

“I understand you perfectly. The Crown has been in demise since your infancy and you waive your claim because you have neither money nor influence to press it. Nevertheless, you are conscious of your royalty ; you have therefore amused yourself with a modest progress on ass-back through the streets of this City and a brief, if somewhat furtive, occupation of the Davidic throne in the Chamber of the Hearth.”

Jesus did not reply.

“In fact, you claim the spiritual sovereignty while forgoing the temporal. But, my friend, what in the world prevents you from enjoying both? You must be aware that, unless a king is invested with temporal power, his spiritual power cannot possibly become effective. Nicodemon son of Gorion, who is a staunch supporter of yours, has talked the matter over with me, and I have assured him that if you trust your affairs entirely to my management, the chief problems of your unhappy nation can be settled to the satisfaction of everyone. Under the last valid Will of your grandfather, which the late Emperor approved and deposited with the Vestals, you come next in the succession to your uncle Philip the Boethian ; but since he has long ago signed away his claims, you have an irrefutable title to the entire dominions of your grandfather and to the dignity of King. My suggestion is this : I will draw up a memorial to the Emperor with a sworn statement of your claim, emphasizing your loyalty to him and mentioning your outspoken condemnation both of the costly farce of Temple ritual and of the self-righteous disdain in which the Pharisees hold police officers, tax-gatherers and other Government servants. I will suggest that you should be given a free hand in spiritual matters, as well as the title of Allied King, on condition that you engage yourself to break down the misunderstandings between your country and ours ; to decentralize worship ; to foster commerce and agriculture ; and generally to bring Judaea into line with other civilized members of the Imperial community. The Emperor, who is taking a holiday from public business at Capri, will not, of course, see the memorial. It will be dealt with by my friend and patron Lucius Aelius Sejanus, who implicitly trusts my judgement in Palestinian affairs. But come, Sir, you are not listening! Are you unwell ?”

“My Kingdom is not of this world.”

“So you have already informed me. Does this mean that you will not accept my proposal. Your father was a King. For what other reason than to reign do you suppose that you were born into this world ?”

“To bear witness to the Truth.”

Pilate cried scornfully : “What is truth? Every so-called truth has its antithetical truth, equally valid in logic. The salt of life is humour : the realization that, in the long run—praise to the Gods!—nothing really matters. Do you never relax from your monomania of holiness ?”

Jesus was silent.

“Come, Sir, I am not a man to be trifled with. You must realize that I have the power of life and death in this Province—that I can even crucify you, if it pleases me.”

Jesus was silent.

Pilate recovered quickly from his pique, and chuckled at the fantastic humour of the situation. “Upon my word, I cannot make you out. You seem to be
chrestos
rather than
christos
!” (He meant : “simpleton rather than anointed king”.) “Well, think it over while I go out for another chat with my Perfect Valet.”

He went out to the porch and said off-handedly to Caiaphas : “I find no fault in your prisoner.”

“No fault in that seditious wretch? Why, he has stirred up the whole land from Galilee to Edom !”

Pilate smiled engagingly : “I thank Your Holiness for the suggestion. He may well be wanted by Herod Antipas of Galilee—whose subject he is—for political offences committed in the Tetrarchy ; I will inquire about this at once from Antipas, who arrived here this morning to keep the Feast. He has never quite forgiven me for not asking his permission before I crucified that batch of Galileans who tore down my new Bethlehem aqueduct. If this fellow Jesus has already got into trouble there, we shall be saved a deal of embarrassment. Have the goodness to wait here a little longer, unless you prefer to enter my unclean apartments and listen to a little gentle music.”

Caiaphas had known Pilate long enough and been humiliated by him often enough to be frightened by his jocose manner. He must have hit on a new and profitable scheme, in which Jesus somehow figured, for blackmailing the Sanhedrin ; but precisely what the scheme was remained obscure.

Pilate went into the Judgement Hall again. “Come now, King Jesus, you cannot be the simpleton that you pretend to be. I am ready to overlook your highly discourteous silence and to give you one more chance to secure glory for yourself and your posterity and to inaugurate a new Golden Age for your distressed subjects. I am prepared to put your claim before Aelius Sejanus, first securing the endorsement of my immediate superior, the Governor-General of Syria. I need not conceal from you that I make this offer largely because of my dislike of the tubby Tetrarch and of those Sanhedrin rats on the porch ; and of course I expect you to remember me generously once you have come to power. I realize that the news of your good fortune must come as something of a shock after the poverty of your early life and your recent fugitive existence. But compose yourself, pray, and try to behave more like a King and less like a peasant. Your scoundrel of a grandfather would weep tears of shame if he could get leave of absence from Hades and look in on us this morning. Here is my right hand, offered in sincere friendship. Do you accept it ?”