Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have
helped me.
Do not cast me away, nor forsake me,
Lord, you are my salvation! Even if my father or mother
forsake me,
you will bear me up.
It was no use. The psalms of David did not help. He pushed the sheets away and left his house. He would walk to the Temple and contemplate the glory of the Lord in His Holy place. A stroll like this had served him in the past and it would again. As he stepped over his door sill, he spied the boy, Marius. Unfortunately, the boy also saw him and before he could retreat into his house, the boy scampered up to him,
“Excellent, sir,” he said, “my maser asks if you would meet him for a moment only.”
“I cannot.”
“He said that if you left your house, you would be walking about and what harm would come to your Holy Day if you were to meet him somewhere? He wishes to ask you a question.”
“Marius, we are not having this conversation. It is Shabbat and I cannot meet, discuss, or in any way engage in the Prefect’s problem. I have said too much already.”
With that, Gamaliel turned on his heel, reentered his house, and slammed its door in the boy’s face. He tried, but failed, to suppress his annoyance at the boy and Pilate. Even to yield to that would violate his strict observance of Shabbat. He took a deep breath and ate an early midday meal. He spent the remainder of his day parsing an Isaiah scroll sent to him from the community in Qumran. Their leader wanted a fresh pair of eyes on it. Copyists, he’d declared, sometimes left out parts of or attempted to improve on the text. Gamaliel had to admit that studying the scroll for errors bordered on work, but as it was for El Shaddai, he thought he could be forgiven if he spent the afternoon looking for a stray neqqudot or a missing word, either of which could change the meaning of a sentence or a whole passage. Surely, that would be deemed a worthy Shabbat enterprise by the Lord.
***
Pilate did not expect Gamaliel to interrupt his Shabbat. He had dealt with that particular bit of Jewish stubbornness before. He had hoped he might persuade him otherwise. He was now at loose ends. His Centurion, Priscus, had been intercepted by his accusers and had been closeted with Cassia and the ominous Tribune all morning. He did not like what that implied. Were they in the process of suborning his captain? When the boy returned without Gamaliel, he yelled at him but spared him the beating he’d promised if the boy failed in his assignment. Properly chastised and fearful, he’d sent the youngster back into the streets to watch for anything that might be useful.
“Look especially for the agents of the men who oppose me. Do you know who they are?”
The boy said he did. Considering the Prefect’s obsession with the visitors to the exclusion of all others, he wondered if the Prefect did in fact know who his enemies were. Either way, he did not want to invite another session of invective being screamed at him. In truth, Marius had only a dim and confused idea of who Pilate thought they might be. He knew the man, Rufus, was probably on the Prefect’s side and had been told that the men who were in the Fortress when the other two arrived were not. The moves and counter moves men made as they went about their daily routine were a mystery to him. He, on the other hand, had more serious worries. He guessed he should try to understand Pilate if he ever wanted to survive this low position on the social ladder and get the chance to return to his home rich and famous or, if not that, alive The latter, unfortunately, was not solely in the hands of the Prefect. There were the others. He shuddered at the thought. He knew now that he’d made a serious mistake in agreeing to their terms and feared he would never be able to correct it. He tried to concentrate on the actors in this odd drama playing out in the Fortress, those who had approached him initially and all of these new ones. He dismissed the Prefect’s wife from his list. She could not be a party to any of it although the rumor about her being a mad woman did pose a question or two. And anyway, aristocratic women like her were not capable of stabbing a man. Everyone knew that. Once outdoors and in the spring sunlight, breathing became easier. The Prefect remained confined within the Fortress and could not track him here. Marius had not had his midday meal and he went in search of a place where there might be refreshment. He did so without success and it was at that point the extremes Shabbat entailed were made apparent to him.
***
Gamaliel’s head began to ache. Evening had come and with it the end of Shabbat. Yet he still stared at the scroll in front of him in the flickering yellow lamp light. Binyamin had brought him a bowl of stew, but he had not touched it, so absorbed had he been in the words of the prophet. He rubbed his eyes and let the ends of the papyrus scroll roll together, but the words he’d read remained etched in his mind. Isaiah, prophesying about the fate of nations: Moab, Egypt, Babylon—did the prophet mean the Rome of the future, not Nebuchadnezzar’s royal domain from the past? He hoped so. But what did these few lines mean. Peace for the Nation, his contemporaries all agreed. Hope for peace also meant the departure of the Roman presence, surely. Did it? Was it remotely possible that the pax Romana was what Isaiah meant? Never. Ha Shem would not allow it, would he? It was all too much, Rome, Israel, all the nations under the rule of Rome. Did they all, like him, wish to shed the Roman yoke? If not the pax Romana, then what? Will there ever be this kind of peace in the land and if so, when? Now? Soon? Ever? Or should he seek another, a deeper meaning? He pushed the two ends apart and read the words again.
…A shoot will rise from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord— and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
That would be David. Jesse was his father, so…
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy; with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist.
Solomon? David’s son by Bathsheba, he could be a shoot from Jesse as well, once removed, and an arbiter of great skill.
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
This was hopeless. David, Solomon, world peace? Understanding prophesies was like fishing with a torn net. Just when you think you have caught something, the prize slips away through a hole. More importantly, did any of this bit of Holy Writ harmonize in any way whatsoever with his involvement with Pilate? He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears…Good advice, that. I will do as Isaiah suggests, judge with righteousness and not be concerned with anything or anyone else. He would leave the remainder of Isaiah’s prophesy for another day.
Gamaliel blew out the lamp and took himself to bed.
YOM RISHON
Chapter XV
Dawn. Yehudah, known as Iscariot, a surname he’d acquired, but not inherited, had not slept. He frequently had difficulty sleeping. Too many things pressed in on him, still unresolved issues from the past, but last night had been different. Yeshua’s mad actions the previous day preyed on his mind. What had he been thinking? He ground his teeth. We were so close and then this nonsense with the ass and the parade down the hill. Why? Everyone knew that the city would be teeming with Roman legionnaires and collaborators. The last thing we needed to do was to attract attention. Yes, we should go to the city for Passover. It would be expected. Yes, teach on the Temple Mount. It would be expected, annoy the Temple party. It, too, would be expected. There was no danger in doing the expected, the predictable, or the acceptable
if only marginally so. But Yeshua…with him there seemed no limit to what he would do to make trouble for himself—for all of them.
He’d been instructed to secure an ass, and he’d done it. He hadn’t asked why. He doubted Yeshua would have told him if he had. Yeshua acted on some inexplicable instinct half of the time, anyway. It’s possible even he didn’t know why he wanted the beast. Not right away. So, he’d done as he’d been asked and with the others, gathered on the Mount of Olives. Yeshua sent two, Simon and Andrew, to fetch the animal. When the poor beast had been dragged over to them, he mounted and started down the hillside. He looked ridiculous, knees drawn up to his hips to keep his feet from dragging on the ground. The animal was too small and obviously not used to bearing the weight of a full-grown man, and it lurched and huffed down the slope. The rest of us formed a ragged procession. Yeshua seemed unconcerned at the spectacle we made. He’d made an entrance.
Madness.
Pagan gods make entrances, kings and conquerors make entrances. Important personages make entrances. Earlier, Pilate had made his own entrance into the city. But he rode a tall horse and wore his dress armor. He was accompanied by his entourage of soldiers and hangers on. The crowd lining the street had cheered. Most were coerced or purchased, but cheers they were nonetheless. It was the show people expected. And what do we do? Days later, on the Mount of Olives, here comes this great tall man riding down the hillside on an ass’s colt. Did he intend to mock Roman authority? What was Yeshua playing at? It was a farce. Worse, the people on the hill joined in this piece of bad theater and began to chant. “Hosanna…” At least those who were not laughing did. They’d cheered and laid palm fronds and scraps of clothing in his path—a perfect parody of the triumphant entry Pilate had made. Nothing good could possibly come from this.
Later, Tomas told him that Yeshua’s ride down the hill fulfilled prophesy. What prophesy, he’d asked. That the Messiah would be riding on a white colt and enter the city in triumph through the Golden Gate at his coming. Well, they had entered the city through that gate, alright, and had provided entertainment to many who witnessed it. But triumphal? Foolish, yes, dangerous probably. Now there could be no doubt, this journey they’d begun at the Jordan, years before, had wandered off the path. Where had it gone wrong? He’d believed, had wanted to believe, indeed had committed his very soul to it. And now this. Perhaps those officials from the Temple had been right. Perhaps it was time to move away from this man before too many lives were compromised, too many dreams dashed.
Yehudah sat with his back against the still cool stone wall. The others still slept within. He watched as the sun lighted the wall opposite. He remained there until he heard stirring within. His decision made, he stood and walked away.
***
It had been exactly one week since Marius had accosted him at his door step and taken him to see Pilate. Once again the youth waited at Gamaliel’s door. He had not knocked. If he had, Binyamin had instructions to put him off until the fourth hour and in any case not to admit him. Gamaliel would not be denied his morning meal and prayers and, furthermore, there was something about the boy that disturbed him. He could not put his finger on it, but there was something not quite right about Marius. He consigned that thought to the depths of his mind where it would work its way through its myriad corridors and rooms in search of significance.
He signaled Marius to proceed and the two set off to meet Loukas at the entrance to the Fortress. Their conversation consisted of Marius’ description of his early life and how he’d ended as a slave-servant in the Prefect’s household
“Loukas, did you know this boy says he comes from far off and is the Prefect’s slave/servant quite by chance. He says he comes to us from Gaul and elsewhere. What do you make of that? This is his first visit to David’s City.”
“Truly? From Gaul, you say, Marius? I had no idea.”
They entered the building using the nearly invisible door that lead into the depths of the fort. Gamaliel made a point of checking their progress into the building. The last time they’d been there he’d memorized the route out of the building. Today he reversed his memories and was pleased that he correctly anticipated each turn to the cell occupied by the Prefect.
“Greetings, Excellency,” he said and again drew up a stool uninvited. The Prefect’s brows rose at his presumption, but Gamaliel did not care. He had not sought this task, had not wanted it, and felt put upon for having been coerced into taking it. He would bestow only the respect due the Prefect’s position, or former position, and that as little as possible.
“I had no idea this place was so vast. It is like a small city. So, to business. Is the Centurion, Priscus, available, and also the legionnaires under his command?”
“Rabban. Sit down, please.” The Prefect tried a bit of sarcasm but it was a poor effort. “Priscus is no longer with us. He has been transferred to the barracks in Tyre. He left an hour ago. I tried to dissuade him, but he had his orders. It doesn’t matter, anyway.”
“Doesn’t matter? How so? I needed to determine the nature of his message to you.”
“He spent most of yesterday in conference with my accusers. They must have turned him. Rufus asked him that question as you might have, and I am afraid he has betrayed me.”
“Really? What questions did your friend ask, and how did his answers signal a betrayal?”
“Well, in the first place, Rufus asked who had he entrusted the message to and he said, ‘What message?’ You see? He denied ever sending a message. He has made me out as a liar and a fool. I maintain I went to the hallway at his request and now he says he never…he has compromised my defense.”
Gamaliel helped himself to a cup of the Prefect’s wine and offered a second to Loukas, who declined.
“Loukas, what do you make of all this?”
“The Prefect has a problem, it would appear.”
“Yes, but what sort of problem? After all he has had one large problem all along. How does this news change things?”
“If the Prefect—” Loukas began.
“I am right here and can hear you, Physician,” Pilate grumbled. “You needn’t speak as if I were not.”
“My apologies, Excellency. Very well, if your entire defense hinges on the Centurion’s testimony that it was he that lured you to the crime scene, then you have lost a key piece of evidence, but I am guessing the Rabban has a different take.”
“Different? How?”
Gamaliel cleared his throat and sipped at his cup. “Suppose the Centurion spoke the truth? Suppose he was sent away not because they wanted him to make you out a liar but because your accusers couldn’t shake his story?”
“What? He spoke the truth? But I did receive a message from him.”
“Did you? All you know is that you were told by the bearer of the message that it came from Priscus. Suppose it did not. Suppose someone else sent it in his name.”
“Someone else? But that is absurd. He sent it. Why would you think he didn’t?”
“Several reasons, the most important of which is, he said he didn’t. Also, he was not in the hall when you arrived. You may have arrived early or late, as you said, but surely he would have arrived with or shortly after Cassia. He didn’t. So why not?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because he never sent the message in the first place. Therefore, he had no reason to be there.”
Pilate scratched his head and frowned. He shot a quizzical look at Gamaliel.
“Did anyone else see you receive this message, possibly hear how it was delivered?”
“I am at a loss, Rabban. What are you getting at?”
“Stay with me. I ask again, do you know if anyone else witnessed the message being delivered to you? If so, did he overhear any or all of it, particularly what the person said when he identified himself to you?”
“Identified? What do you mean? It was a legionnaire. I already told you that. What more is there to know?”
“Prefect! Please l
isten to me and try to concentrate. If a legionnaire approaches you and wishes to address you, he doesn’t simply start talking, does he? He presents himself. He says something like…‘Sir, I am so-and-so from such-and-such unit. I have a message from Priscus the Centurion for you.’ Am I correct in this?”
“Yes, that is approximately what he might say. And?”
“And? What did this one say to you? Who did he say he was?”
“I can’t recall.”
“Yes, so I ask you once again, was there anyone there, beside yourself, who might have heard and who would remember?”
“Oh, I see. Let me think. Well, the hallway was crowded with people. If they had wanted to, any one of them might have heard it as well. Yes, and my good wife stood no more than two cubits from me when the soldier approached. Understand, Rabban, they are all alike in my eyes and since they are all assigned to me here or in Caesarea Maritima, I rarely pay attention to how a soldier appears before he delivers news.”
“So you said. May I question your wife? You see the importance of this. If we can find the messenger, we can find out who sent the message. If we find out who sent the message, we will have our killer.”
“You wish to query my wife?”
“I do.”
“But her testimony, should she be called on to give it, would be discounted.”
“Because she is a woman?”
“Because she is my wife. It will be assumed she would lie for me, so who will believe her?”
“We are not in court, and I am not asking for exculpatory evidence. I simply want to know what she heard. If she remembers who delivered the message and any details, we will be able to move closer to a solution.”
“I have no objection, but there may be problems from the current authorities. She is under close surveillance. If she wanders in here and they discover you are interrogating her…well, there could be problems.”
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