  The sun was lifting above the Mount of Olives when Pilate’s orderly awakened him from heavy sleep. “Sir, the High Priest Caiaphas and others of the Temple leadership,” he said apologetically, “insisted that I inform you that they have arrived with the prisoner about whom he spoke with you last night. They said that they were most anxious for you to proceed at once to dispose of the case.” The Procurator sat up in bed and blinked his heavy-lidded eyes. “Insolent Jew!” he muttered. “He would not only tell the Procurator what to do, but when to do it! By the great Jove, I may surprise him!” He threw back the covering and rose ponderously to his feet. “Go tell the High Priest to have his witnesses ready. I shall be there shortly.” The great Fortress of Antonia, Rome’s bastion in the Jerusalem region, consisted actually of four straight-walled, high buildings joined together by corner towers to compose an impregnable stone structure some fifty by one hundred paces on the outside walls. The space within the inside four walls had been paved with great stone slabs to form a tremendous courtyard reached by huge gateways, one on each of the edifice’s four sides. Massive gates guarded the fortress against sudden attack; when opened, they admitted a flow of nondescript traffic into the courtyard. Along the southern side of the fortress there was another paved court from which a wide flight of stone steps led up to a terrace; the terrace, in turn, led into the interior courtyard. In a high-ceilinged chamber on the ground floor of this structure, Pontius Pilate had set up his Praetorium. A Roman praetorium, or trial place of a praetor, consisted of a semicircular dais on which the curule, or magistrate’s chair, had been placed. In the rear of this chamber was a small doorway, and it was through this doorway that Pilate, shortly after the orderly had reported to High Priest Caiaphas, came into the Praetorium. The Procurator strode straight to the dais, mounted its several steps, and sat down on the curule. Frowning, he glanced toward the tall, manacled prisoner. Flanking the man on both sides were several guards, all Roman soldiers, who had been assigned to the Temple detail. Though a throng had already assembled in the court beyond the gateway, the Procurator could see from where he sat on the tribunal that not a Jew had followed the prisoner inside the vaulted chamber. “What charge is brought against this man?” Pilate snapped. “And where are his accusers?” The captain of the guard saluted. “High Priest Caiaphas commanded me, Excellency, to bring the prisoner before you with instructions that he has been tried before the Jewish Sanhedrin and found guilty of crimes punishable by death. He said you, O Excellency, were to confirm the verdict of the Jewish court and order its sentence put into execution.” Anger suffused the Procurator’s round, usually bland face. “And why hasn’t the High Priest come himself to bear witness to the Sanhedrin’s action? Why has this man no accusers confronting him?” The captain was plainly ill at ease. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, started to speak, then swallowed. “The Jews, O Excellency, will not enter the Praetorium for fear that to do so will be a profanation, that it will render them unfit to eat of their Passover evening meal,” he finally revealed. “They will come no nearer than the steps”—he pointed—“out there.” Pilate, as the captain had expected, was furious. “Profanation! Profanation! All I hear in this rebellious, proud province is profanation! Hah! They would profane themselves by entering a Roman hall of justice!” His already flushed cheeks were purpling. He stood up quickly, strode down the steps of the tribunal, and stalked forward to the stairway; from there he could survey the mass of excited, chattering Jews, who quieted perceptibly on seeing him emerge from the Praetorium. “The prisoner,” he said, motioning with his head toward the The multitude was silent. Eyes turned toward a group near the foot of the steps; in the center of the knot stood the High Priest. He advanced a pace and bowed to the Procurator. “O Excellency, this man has been tried by our Sanhedrin and found guilty of grievous crimes. If he had not been found to be a criminal of desperate wickedness, then we would not have brought him before the Procurator to be sentenced.” The bold insolence of the High Priest’s reply did not escape Pilate. “If you have tried him then and found him guilty, why don’t you also take him and execute upon him your sentence?” Caiaphas stood silent for a moment. “But the Procurator must know, O Excellency,” he replied at length, a humorless smile lifting the corners of his mouth, “that under the dominion of Rome the Sanhedrin has not the authority, however heinous the criminal’s deeds may have been, to execute upon him the sentence of death. Therefore, O sir, we petition the Procurator to order executed upon this vicious criminal the sentence of death which the Sanhedrin has found him so fully to deserve.” But Pilate was obdurate. “You would ask a Roman magistrate to find a man guilty and send him to the cross, even though no accusation had been made against him and no witnesses had confronted him,” he declared. “Don’t you know that were I to do so I would violate every principle of Roman justice?” He jabbed a pudgy forefinger toward Caiaphas. “Would you, O High Priest, ask the Procurator thus to violate his oath as Rome’s regent in Judaea?” The Procurator, however, had failed to gauge the High Priest’s cunning. “Indeed, O Excellency, of course I would not seek to lead the Procurator into violating his oath to uphold Roman justice.” He smiled and bowed, mockingly. “Nor would I stand silent and unprotesting while the Procurator released a clever though iniquitous criminal who seeks not only the demoralization of Israel’s religion and the perversion of her people but also the overthrow of Rome in this province and the establishment of himself as King of Israel.” The High Priest’s answer was not only a skilful parry of the Procurator’s question but it was, moreover, a well-aimed thrust of his own most effective weapon. Caiaphas knew that Pilate lived always in mortal fear of being reported to Rome; he knew that the Procurator would not dare to ignore any situation in Judaea, or even the hint of it, that might be fostering incipient revolt against Roman rule. But Pilate maintained his composure; he would not yield obsequiously to this hateful symbol of Jewry’s stubborn pride of race and nationality and her cold scorn of everything Roman. He studied the group for whom the High Priest professed to be speaking; it was a nondescript assemblage, Temple hirelings, a knot of Pharisees, and surrounding the High Priest himself, his own Sadducean coterie; the others were, for the most part, sunburnt fellows who might well be, the thought came to him suddenly, Galilean and Judaean revolutionaries come in for the Passover feast from their mountain and Wilderness strongholds. Scowling, Pilate confronted the cynically smiling Caiaphas. “You say this man is guilty of heinous crimes, you declare he would set himself up as King of Judaea, but, O High Priest, you have made before me no accusation, you have brought no witnesses to testify against him.” He turned to point with a sweep of his arm toward the Galilean, standing calmly beside his guards. “There stands the prisoner before the tribunal. I ask you again, O High Priest, what charges do you bring against him? Where are his accusers?” Caiaphas realized that the Procurator was refusing to admit what he had assumed, at last night’s meeting, had been a tacit agreement, that a retrial of the prisoner would be unnecessary; perhaps he was fearful that Rome would disapprove such a disposition of the case. At any rate, reasoned the High Priest, further verbal sparring would mean delay in sending the upstart Galilean to the cross, and he wished this Jesus dead and taken down before the beginning at sunset of the sacred Sabbath. Too, the longer they delayed, the more likely it was that other hot-blooded Galileans would get noise of the trial and come storming to their leader’s support; they might even succeed in effecting “O Excellency”—Caiaphas raised his hand and the rays of the morning sun flashed in the gems of his rings—“we charge that this fellow not only sought to lead astray the people from the true worship of our God of Israel, but that he did also forbid them to pay tribute to Caesar, and that he did declare that he himself was rightful King of Israel and would so establish himself!” Pilate would give no consideration to the first charge, the High Priest was sure, but, he reasoned, the Procurator could not ignore the other two. And the soundness of his reasoning was immediately demonstrated. Pilate turned his back upon Caiaphas and the crowd and returned to the Praetorium, where he mounted the tribunal and sat down. “Are you”—he pointed toward the prisoner, who still, though weary, stood erect and calm—“the King of the Jews?” “Do you ask this of your own desire to know”—the trace of a smile lightened the solemn countenance—“or has someone else said it of me?” The Procurator shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Am I a Jew?” he asked sarcastically. “Your own nation, your High Priest, and the others of the Temple leadership have delivered you unto me. What have you done?” “I am a King,” Jesus replied calmly. “But my Kingdom is not a worldly kingdom; if it were, then my servants would fight against my being delivered to these leaders of the Jews. The Kingdom I rule is not of this world.” Pilate’s round face betrayed bafflement. “Then you profess to be a king, but in another realm, the world of magic, spirits...?” “I was born into this world to bear testimony to the truth,” Jesus answered. “Everyone who is of the truth will understand and acknowledge my Kingship.” Then this man was, as Pilate had suspected all along, in no sense a revolutionary planning Rome’s overthrow; he was but another of these eastern mystics, dreaming of the imponderable and intangible. Hadn’t Herod Antipas beheaded another such fellow because of his slurs against Herodias, slurs undoubtedly deserved “Truth”—Pilate shot forth his finger toward the prisoner—“what is truth?” He hunched his shoulders and waved his hands, palms up, in a gesture he had borrowed from the Jews. And without looking toward the man of whom he had asked the question, he stepped down from the tribunal and strode out to the High Priest and his restive throng. “I have examined the prisoner as to the charges you have brought against him,” he announced to Caiaphas. “I find nothing criminal in him. He’s a religious man, a dreamer, but he is no revolutionary.” He was glad to be rid of the man, though, he confessed to himself; he was happy to wash his hands of this Jesus, Caiaphas, and the rest of them; if he could only be freed of all Palestine, if he could never lay eyes again upon another Jew. “I find no fault in the man; I shall release him.” “No! No! O Excellency, no!” Hands were waving wildly in the air. “No! O Pilate!” The Procurator, scanning the throng, saw the priests fomenting the agitation into a swell of shouted disapproval of his verdict. Once more the High Priest stepped forward a pace or two from the front ranks. “The man is amazingly clever, O Excellency,” he declared, smiling agreeably, “as he has just demonstrated in thus deceiving the Procurator. But he is a criminal, and one of the most vicious and depraved order, O sir. And he is a revolutionary. Beginning in his native Galilee, he has deceived and perverted the people, and by his dangerous and evil perverting, his criminal teachings in opposition to our religion and Rome’s government, he has brought into Peraea and Judaea....” “Beginning, you say, in Galilee? Then this man is a Galilean?” “Indeed, O Excellency, and one of the worst of the Galilean ... A Galilean, by great Jove! Then send him to Herod Antipas. Let the Tetrarch dispose of this case. He assumed jurisdiction over that fanatical Wilderness prophet and ordered him beheaded. Well, this man, too, is a Galilean. Let Herod stand between this persistent, obstinate High Priest and old Sejanus. Let the Tetrarch, for once, bear the brunt of any reports sent back to Rome; this time Sejanus may not overlook what he considers a mistake of administration in this gods-abandoned province. If there’s to be a mistake, let the Tetrarch make it.... “Then this man,” he said to the High Priest, “is a subject of the Tetrarch Herod Antipas. He should be remanded to the Tetrarch for trial.” Pilate returned quickly to the Praetorium. “Captain of the Guards,” he commanded, “conduct this prisoner to the Tetrarch Herod Antipas. Bear to the Tetrarch the Procurator’s compliments and say to him that the Procurator is sending him the King of the Jews”—a sneering smile for an instant pushed away the scowl on his round face—“a Galilean. It may be that the Tetrarch will wish to examine the prisoner concerning the charges that have been brought against him by the High Priest Caiaphas. At any rate, the prisoner, being from Galilee, is a subject of the Tetrarch and under his jurisdiction.” He nodded curtly. “Go.” Quickly the guards formed about the tall prisoner and led him from the Praetorium, down the steps into the Court of the Gentiles. Leaving the Temple area through the Gate Shalleketh, they crossed the bridge above the Valley of the Tyropoeon and arrived shortly in front of the sprawling Xystus. A few moments later they paused before the gate giving admittance to the gloomy and forbidding ancient stone residence of the Hasmonean kings. |
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