Pontius Pilate: A Novel

by Paul L Maier

  “Learn anything more about him in Jerusalem?”

  “Quite a bit. Herod Antipas seemed to protect him for a while, but then he wanted to arrest him, so Jesus came down into your territory.”

  “Into Judea?”

  “Yes, Prefect. And it’s not the first time. He’s been to several Passovers in Jerusalem. And last week I finally caught a glimpse of him myself on the terrace of the temple at the Feast of Dedication.”

  “What sort of man is he?”

  “Flowing hair and beard. Kindly face. Clean clothes. But otherwise indistinguishable from anyone else in the city, except for one fact.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A crowd is always around him. Usually it’s friendly, but sometimes not. When I saw him, some of his enemies were asking, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.’ Jesus replied, ‘I told you, but you do not believe. The works which I do in my Father’s name, they bear me witness’—I think that was it.”

  “So the man does give himself out as the Messiah!” Pilate’s brow wrinkled with concern. “What did his interrogators say to that?”

  “They picked up rocks and were going to stone him for blasphemy. But he escaped.”

  “What blasphemy?”

  “His statement: ‘works I do in my Father’s name.’ He made claim to a special kinship with the Jewish god.”

  The theological implications of such a claim were far beyond Pilate. He merely thought it interesting that the Jews apparently knew how to keep their visionary Messiahs in check. “Then this Jesus doesn’t really have much of a following?”

  “I didn’t say that. After the attempted stoning, his crowds, if anything, were even larger…especially after that extraordinary event in Bethany. If I hadn’t been in Jerusalem gathering information on the Sanhedrin, I might have seen it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jesus either raised a man from the dead, or performed the most magnificent trick in the history of magic. The man’s name was Lazarus, a friend of Jesus. He lived in Bethany with two unmarried sisters till he took sick and died. Jesus got there four days later and ordered the stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. One of the sisters protested that the smell of decay would be too strong, but Jesus shouted, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ At the door of the sepulcher, a mummy-like figure appeared and then staggered out, tripping over the grave cloths which were binding his hands and feet. They unwrapped him. It was Lazarus, live and healthy.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “The news was all over Jerusalem that night—Bethany is only two miles away. I went there the next day and found the tomb open, but there was such a mass of people milling around the home of Lazarus that I didn’t try to talk to him.”

  Pilate fretted, tapping his open palm with his other fist. “Fantastic,” he said. “How do you suppose he brought it off?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, making it look as if he raised a man from the dead. You see, the story comes apart on the point that Lazarus was a friend of Jesus. Well, the two friends decided to stage something truly spectacular in order to convince the people once and for all.”

  “I don’t know, Prefect. I just don’t know. The doctors said the man was dead.”

  Pilate smiled.

  What Cornelius could not have reported was a crucial meeting of the Sanhedrin, which convened on the day he returned to Caesarea. The Lazarus phenomenon had precipitated this extraordinary session, whose agenda had but one item: what action was to be taken regarding Jesus of Nazareth? If he were allowed to go on performing his signs, he would win over the entire population, they reasoned. “And then the Romans will come,” warned an aged scribe, “and destroy our temple and our nation.” A rising commotion followed this opinion.

  Then the high priest Caiaphas raised his hands for silence. “Use your sanctified intellect, brethren,” he said. “Is it not more expedient that one man die for the people, rather than the entire nation perishing? Our only problem is…how shall that man die?”

  On or about February 22, A.D. 33, the Great Sanhedrin published the following notice for arrest and punishment. A court crier had to announce publicly or post such an official handbill in the major towns of Judea some forty days prior to a trial.

  —— WANTED FOR ARREST: ——

  Yeshu Hannosri or Jesus the Nazarene

  He shall be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Anyone who can say anything in his favor, let him come forward and plead on his behalf. Anyone who knows where he is, let him declare it to the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem.

  Chapter 16

  This was the year which would shift the course of human history and dislodge many strata in the world’s culture, from its dating system at the surface to its religious and philosophical values at the depths. But no one could have guessed this during the early months of 33. No one could have known that for once Rome would not determine world events, or that Jerusalem would.

  For Rome it was a year as dangerous as the last. Tiberius, suspicious as ever, requested a special bodyguard to attend him whenever he should finally visit the Senate. Sheep-like as ever, senators not only bleated their approval, but passed a law requiring that they be searched for concealed daggers at the door of the Senate whenever the emperor visited. Implicit was their promise that there would be no repetition of the Ides of March.

  But Tiberius never returned to the capital. Once again he ventured to within four miles of it, spending some time in the suburbs, but suddenly he found an excuse to return to Capri. “Like an insect circling a candle,” his critics said, “attracted to the light, but afraid of getting burned.”

  And the trials and executions continued, though the emperor now wanted an end to them. He took two drastic measures to stanch the blood. He issued orders that all persons in prison condemned for complicity with Sejanus should be killed. And so the hapless partisans were dispatched and their bodies pitched down the Stairs of Mourning into the Tiber. Then, with a certain grim but poetic justice, Tiberius had the bodies of some of the most notorious accusers who had disrupted the state thrown after them into the river.

  The public applauded him for that final gesture, and his popularity slowly edged upward in other ways. He refused further honors from the toady Senate. And when an economic crisis that year threatened to plunge Rome into financial ruin, Tiberius shrewdly pumped money back into circulation by setting up a fund of 100,000,000 sesterces, from which debtors could borrow interest-free.

  For a time, A.U.C. 786 would be known as the year of Rome’s economic depression, but later ages would call it A.D. 33 because of what was happening that spring in Palestine. The prefect of Judea, of course, could hear nothing of any drum roll of destiny as he prepared to leave Caesarea for his appointment with history in Jerusalem. Plagued with the petty problems of government and living under imperial probation, Pilate paid scant attention to Jesus of Nazareth. If he worked his wonders like a good, orderly thaumaturge and did not preach rebellion, there would be no need to deal with him.

  Pilate was a little nettled when the notice for the arrest of “Yeshu Hannosri” was posted in Caesarea, for it suggested that the Sanhedrin might be trying to reassert its ancient right to execute capital sentence by stoning. Cornelius pointed out that “stoning” did not necessarily mean “stoning to death,” in Jewish custom, though this was the extreme to which it usually went. To clear the air, Pilate dispatched a note to Caiaphas which, without mentioning Jesus, warned him, in effect, “Try whom you wish, but remember that the jus gladii remains in the hands of the prefect of Judea.”

  The Passover that year would fall at the beginning of April, and Pilate planned, as usual, to spend several weeks in Jerusalem around the time of the festival. Because of the Messianic longings in the land, he gave serious thought to having a large contingent from the Italian Cohort accompany him, but then he dismissed the idea. Genuine Roman troops would have been introd
uced into the Holy City for the first time in thirty-seven years, and Jerusalemites would surely manage to find something dreadfully symbolic in that gesture. Better to take only the usual company of local auxiliaries, and rely on the Antonia cohort for security.

  Procula wanted to make the trip also, but Pilate refused to consider it. “Too risky,” he warned. “The city is seething with unrest.”

  It took her several days of indirect persuasion, gentle coaxing, and even a tear or two to achieve what most wives accomplish in a far shorter time, changing a husband’s “unalterable decision.” But she dared not disclose her real motive in wishing to go along, for that would have ended the matter: Cornelius had told her that Jesus might attend the Passover in Jerusalem. The various reports about the Galilean prophet had at first only tickled her curiosity, but now she was intrigued by what the extraordinary man said and did. She had even thought of asking her husband for permission to go and hear the prophet, but his veto would have been so certain that she had not bothered. Yet her native religiosity kept feeding a blazing interest in the Galilean. Even if he did not show up in Jerusalem—he was, after all, a hunted man—she might at least interview those who had seen him.

  Their journey to Jerusalem lagged behind schedule, because the roads were choked with crowds on their annual pilgrimage to the Holy City. But traffic was lighter on Saturday, when no pious Jew would break the Sabbath by traveling more than a half mile, so Pilate’s entourage arrived almost as planned on the last Sunday in March.

  Even now, as they approached the final rise of the northern road into Jerusalem, the highway was increasingly congested with pilgrims chanting psalms and singing the traditional Passover songs. Freight donkeys squealed, sacrificial sheep bleated an accompaniment of their own. Old people were being helped along by the young, children were getting lost, mothers were calling them, and men were swearing at recalcitrant burros or scampering to keep the sheep in line. A smell of dust and reeking animal dung hovered over the highway, broken only intermittently by gusts of wind from the west.

  When they reached the summit of the last ridge and all Jerusalem lay before them, much of the caravan fell on its knees in tearful joy and prayer. Pilate and his retinue moved on through the worshipers toward the Water Gate. Great clusters of canvas suburbs ringed Jerusalem, a larger tent city than Pilate had seen at previous Passovers. Since the Jewish capital could not hope to house the hordes of pilgrims arriving for the festival, such hillside shelter was a necessity. Before the week was over, Jerusalem’s population would temporarily increase by 250,000.

  “A regular religious army,” Pilate commented. “Imagine what would happen if each of them were armed. We wouldn’t stand a chance.” He had a magistrate’s wariness of crowds, and certainly the experience to rue them.

  Suddenly Procula tugged at his arm. “Look to the east, up the slopes of the Mount of Olives there…”

  Pilate squinted. Parallel bands of wriggling green were hovering over the heads of an enormous, oblong throng of people, split in two by a roadway. The crowd seemed to be waving branches of some kind, perhaps palm fronds. A tumultuous roar, muffled by the distance, welled up as a small knot of people came down the roadway.

  “I can’t make it out, Procula,” he said. “Now if this were Greece, that would be a demonstration in honor of a returning Olympic victor. We’ll find out when we get to Jerusalem; they seem to be heading toward the city.”

  It was not until evening that Pilate received a full briefing on the palm-waving phenomenon from the tribune at the Antonia. But the explanation hardly satisfied him, since it was so full of contradictions. Yes, the demonstration was in honor of a man, the prophet Jesus, who had evidently come out of hiding. Yes, the event might have serious political overtones. Many Jews thought their Messiah would be declared as king on that very Mount of Olives. The crowds had also shouted praises to “the son of David,” a loaded name if Jesus should claim to be heir of King David in a restored Judean monarchy. Even the waving of palm branches could be symbolic, for the palm was the national emblem of Palestine. These were Jewish flags…And of the extra quarter million people jamming Jerusalem, how many were members of the Zealot party from Galilee?

  Yet others told him that Jesus was a nonpolitical person, the commandant continued, and that he was misunderstood by the swarms of pilgrims. Still others insisted that the people knew this and were only cheering on their favorite prophet. His vehicle was not a golden chariot but a jogging ass, certainly a poor prop for any kingmakers. And when he reached Jerusalem, Jesus made no incendiary speeches to the masses or flaunted pretensions of any kind. He simply walked over to the temple, enjoyed the view across the Kidron Valley, and then returned with his disciples to Bethany, for it was getting on toward suppertime.

  Pilate was baffled by the significance of it all. The episode was either harmless or it was meaningful in the extreme. But the fate of the puzzling prophet would clearly depend on what he did or did not do from now on in the face of such enthusiastic support. If Jesus veered into politics, Rome would intrude, much as Pilate hated the thought of getting involved.

  But then it occurred to him that even if the prophet remained strictly within a religious sphere, he would still be in trouble with Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, who had posted the notices for his arrest throughout Judea. In that case, why hadn’t the Jewish temple guard seized him during his afternoon visit to the temple?

  In the Herodian palace that night, Pilate retired more bewildered than ever. But Procula barely concealed her satisfaction that Jesus had come to Jerusalem after all. At last she might have the chance to hear him, perhaps even meet him. Would he accept an invitation to have dinner with them in the Herodian palace? she wondered. After all, Roman governors were always giving dinners for famous people in their provinces. Maybe she could see with her own eyes whether or not he actually performed wonders. At least she could try to learn something about the secret power he had over people, whether it was in his personality or in his message. But the bubble of her idea burst on the thought that her husband was not about to entertain Messiahs of any kind.

  On Monday, while reviewing the Jerusalem cohort at the Tower Antonia, Pilate warned his auxiliaries to be on especially good behavior during the coming week. He then went to the south wall of the city to inspect his beloved aqueduct. Due to heavy rainfall that spring, the water was gushing along better than ever.

  Later in the day, he presided over a meeting of the chief regional tax collectors for Judea. He was in the process of assigning toparchial quotas for the annual tribute when little Zacchaeus, the diminutive superintendent of taxes for Jericho, announced, “Noble Prefect, in going over my accounts, I find that I made an error of 50,000 sesterces in last year’s tribute.”

  “Zacchaeus,” Pilate sniffed, “securing a tax rebate from the imperial treasury is impossible.”

  “No, no, Excellency. I owe the treasury 50,000 sesterces. And here they are.” Zacchaeus’s eyes were blazing happily.

  Pilate’s jaw sagged. “What’s come over you, Zacchaeus? You usually battle me down to the last quadrans.”

  “Last Thursday, while I was up a tree in Jericho, the prophet—” He stopped abruptly, then laughed. “Oh…nothing, gentlemen. Now, Excellency, how much did you say poor Jericho will have to ‘contribute’ this year?”

  That drew a general chuckle, since Jerichoans had the highest per-capita income of any purely Jewish city in Palestine.

  When the fiscal conference adjourned, the tribune of Jerusalem arrived to report something he felt would be of interest to Pilate. “Just an hour ago it happened, Prefect. At the Antonia we heard a commotion in the temple area. I took a squad of men up to the outer courts, but by then it was too late.”

  “For what?”

  “The prophet Jesus. He had a whip in his hands and was flailing away with it against the cattle and sheep merchants in the temple courtyard, who sell their animals for sacrifice. He drove them out—cattle, sheep, and all. You should have
heard the bellowing and bleating. And cursing!”

  While recounting the incident, the tribune’s face broke into a low smile, which Pilate found a bit contagious. He asked, “Did Jesus give any explanation for this…unusual conduct?”

  “He said, ‘My Father’s house is for prayer. You have made it a den of robbers!’ Oh, but he was scowling furiously! Then he went after the dove dealers, and while they stood by gaping, he opened their cages and let all the pigeons fly away. And finally the money changers. That was a scene! Jesus stormed into their stalls and pushed over the change tables, sending the coins clattering across the courtyard. Hah! You should have seen the bankers scramble!”

  “Tell me more!” Pilate begged.

  “He simply purged the place of commercialism. If you’ll pardon my opinion, sir, I think he had the right idea. The temple was getting to look like a Persian market.”

  “I dare say, or a zoo. But Tribune, didn’t you or your men try to interfere?”

  The tribune winced a bit. “Well, no, sir. I didn’t want to infringe on the authority of the temple guard.”

  “Why didn’t they act?”

  “They wouldn’t have dared arrest Jesus at that time and place. He’s too popular with the pilgrims.”

  “Suppose there were no crowds and no temple guard. Then would you have tried to stop the prophet?”

  “I’d have been awfully slow about it.”

  “You’re a good man, Tribune.” Pilate clapped him on the shoulder. Then he grinned. “I just recalled that most of the concessions in the temple courts are owned by the family of Annas and Caiaphas. What I wouldn’t give to have seen the looks on their faces when they learned the news!”

  At supper that evening, Pilate rehearsed the incident for Procula’s benefit, and they enjoyed a round of laughter. She intended to go to the temple the next morning in hope of seeing Jesus, but Pilate knew nothing of the plan. Nor would he have approved.