gang of revolutionaries, they had pillaged caravans, waylaid tax
collectors and robbed them of their revenues, descended from the hills
upon merchants’ pack trains and looted them, even assailed detachments
of Roman soldiers and slain some. Then the witnesses confronted them.
One of the priests, accompanied by fellow priests of the Temple, was
returning from Caesarea when the party was set upon and robbed. He
identified the three as among his assailants; he declared he was
positive the shackled men standing there were the culprits. Then another
lavishly robed priest was called upon to give testimony.
“O Excellency,” he began, “it was on the Jericho road that these men,
this Bar Abbas and these other two”—he pointed to each in turn—“came
down from the rocks and seized me. I was bearing a large pouch of gold
and silver, funds of the Temple I was taking to be put in its coffers,
when this big fellow here....”
“He was coming _from_ the Temple!” screamed Bar Abbas, interrupting the
testimony, as he lifted his pinioned hands and shook them so that the
chains rattled loudly. “He had stolen the money from its coffers! But we
took it from him and gave it to feed the poor and those dispossessed by
the traitorous publicans!”
“Silence!” commanded Pilate. “You will have your turn to speak.”
Next, two soldiers, one after the other, who had been coming to
Jerusalem the past week as members of the century commanded by Centurion
Cornelius, testified that the three were among the marauders who had
swept down from the rocks beside the Jericho road to capture for a few
minutes the detachment that was escorting Tetrarch Herod Antipas and his
wife and to assail the near-by flanking columns put out by the
centurion. In this assault, the witnesses testified, several of the
Roman soldiers had been killed.
The three offered no evidence in rebuttal. The one called Dysmas, who
looked both grave and resigned, seemed to be studying the pattern of the
mosaic at his feet; Gesmas glared sullenly at the smirking priests who
had witnessed against him; and Bar Abbas stood, as wide-legged as his
chains would permit, with his sharp black eyes fixed in defiance on the
round face of his judge and his lips above the tangle of his beard
twisted in a sneer.
“I adjudge you guilty,” Pilate said, looking in turn toward each of the
prisoners. He called to one of the soldiers on courtroom duty. “Go tell
the commander to send me three centurions.”
When after a short wait the soldier returned with the three officers and
they had reported to the Procurator, Pilate faced the convicted
revolutionaries. “I sentence each of you to the lash and the cross. And
may all such dastardly wicked enemies of Rome so perish!” He turned
again to the tribunal attendant. “Prepare a titulus for each,” he
commanded, “and write thus: robber-assassin-revolutionary.” He leaned
forward. “Take them now into the courtyard and scourge them, and then
conduct them outside the walls to the Hill of the Skull, and crucify
them. Each of you centurions will choose a quaternion to assist, and
each will have charge of the scourging and execution of one of the
prisoners. And do not dally. I wish them on the crosses quickly, so that
the Passover crowds may see what becomes of those who plot revolution
against Rome. It should have a salutary effect.” He waved his arm
imperiously. “Take them away!”
49
Hardly had the Procurator climbed the stairs to his apartment and
ordered his long delayed breakfast to be brought in, when a soldier
assigned to the Praetorium reported to him.
“Sir, the Galilean whom you sent to the Tetrarch Herod has been returned
to you,” he announced. “The High Priest and his Temple associates,
together with a throng of excited Jews, are down there awaiting your
return to the Praetorium to resume trial of the prisoner.”
“By great Jove!” The Procurator’s scowl was heavy. Why had Herod sent
him back? Surely the bumbling Tetrarch hadn’t been clever enough to
comprehend Pilate’s scheme to evade responsibility.
He did not question the soldier, however, and a few moments later he
mounted the tribunal again and sat down upon the curule. From the
pavement before the Praetorium the captain of the Temple guards and his
detachment, forming a square about the Galilean, advanced to the
tribunal. Jesus, Pilate saw, was wearing a bedraggled, purple-bordered
robe. One of the soldiers was carrying the folded brown homespun robe
which the prisoner had been wearing before.
Pilate, color mounting, pointed to Jesus and glared at the officer.
“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Why is he wearing this
emblem of authority? Speak up! Who is responsible for this mockery?”
“Not I, sir,” the captain hastened to declare. “The Tetrarch ordered one
of his old robes to be placed upon the prisoner; he said he appreciated
the Procurator’s raillery in calling the man the King of the Jews, and
he ordered him arrayed in the purple in order to further your joking,
sir.”
“Didn’t he examine the prisoner?”
“He questioned him, sir, and sought to have him work some tricks of
magic, but the prisoner made no reply.”
Once again Pilate descended from the tribunal and went out upon the
pavement before the Praetorium. At first sight of him the mob began to
raise a clamor. “Bar Abbas!” a man toward the rear of the multitude
screamed. “Bar Abbas! Give us Bar Abbas!” Others joined in the uproar.
Pilate seemed not to understand them. “They want to see the
revolutionaries’ leader,” he said to the soldier who had accompanied
him. “They will see him as the condemned men start for the Hill of the
Skull. But not until I have disposed of this Galilean. There is already
too much commotion. Go into the courtyard, and tell the centurions not
to start to the execution ground until I give the order.” He turned back
to face Caiaphas and the priests and behind them the motley crowd. “You
brought me this man and charged that he was a revolutionary, that he
sought to overthrow the rule of Rome in this province, but I found no
guilt in him, and when I sent him to the Tetrarch Herod, ruler of
Galilee, he, too, found nothing worthy of death. So I shall discharge
him. And now, disperse and let us have no more of this tumult.”
“No! No! O Procurator, crucify him! Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas!”
“Crucify the King of the Jews!” Pilate looked toward the High Priest as
he said it, as though he were jesting, but he could not effectively
conceal the scorn in his voice and on his face. “I must let him go
free!”
His words provoked another storm of shouted entreaties and demands. “Bar
Abbas! Bar Abbas! Give us Bar Abbas!”
“When I have disposed of this Jesus of Galilee, you shall get to see
that revolutionary”—he smiled glumly—“as Bar Abbas goes to the cross.”
“The Passover release! It’s the long-established custom, O Procurator.
Give us the Passover release!”
Pilate stared in surprise at the crowd shouting below him. Could it be,
then, as he had first suspected, that this throng hated the Temple
priests and especially Caiaphas and wanted the release of the Galilean?
But he had found Jesus not guilty and technically had already released
him. If, however, he should find him guilty of some minor crime, such as
causing a great disturbance and commotion among the people, for example,
and punish him for that, then he might logically release him as the
Passover recipient of the Procurator’s pardon. At the same time he would
dull considerably any report concerning this case that might find its
way to Rome.
“I find no serious fault in this Galilean,” he declared, as he held up
his hand to signal for silence, “but because of his indiscretions and
his provocation of tumults and unrest and much bickering among the
people, I shall have him scourged before I release him.”
He returned to the tribunal and gave the formal order for the scourging
of Jesus. Then once again he climbed the stone stairway to his apartment
and called for his breakfast. His food was placed on a small table by
the window, for already the morning sun was warm and out beyond the
smoldering Vale of Hinnom dark, thickening clouds had begun to form. But
the Procurator was not permitted to relax calmly over his morning meal.
The din below not only continued, but the shoutings grew increasingly
loud. After awhile, Pilate pushed back his plate and stood up.
“I’ll abide this no longer!” he shouted to his orderly standing near the
doorway. “The obstinate, cantankerous provincials! They’ll end this
disgraceful tumult, or I’ll have the Antonia garrison on them with their
swords!” He caught up his toga and started once more for the Praetorium.
“Bring out to the pavement the robber Bar Abbas and the Galilean miracle
worker,” he commanded, when he arrived in his tribunal chamber.
“Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas! Bring forth Bar Abbas, O Procurator!” the
multitude began to shout, as Pilate appeared on the mosaic in front of
the Praetorium. “The Passover release! Give us Bar Abbas!” The
Procurator, studying the vociferous throng, saw that the cries for the
release of the robber chieftain seemed to be coming from a group of
wild-eyed, fanatical-looking rough fellows bunched behind the High
Priest and his clique. The thought came to him that they might be
Zealots, even some of the escaped members of the Bar Abbas band broken
up a week before by the Centurion Cornelius. But the supporters of the
Galilean mystic, he reasoned, would outnumber these men screaming for
the release of Bar Abbas.
The multitude calmed perceptibly as the scourged revolutionary appeared
on the pavement before them and then, recovered somewhat from the shock
the man’s sad state had caused, burst into a new clamoring for his
release. Bar Abbas stared stonily ahead, as if indifferent to the
screams and yelling of the people, no doubt still half dazed from the
ordeal from which he had that moment been delivered. Although his coarse
robe had been returned to him after the scourging and was thrown loosely
about his shoulders, the milling crowd saw at once that the
leather-thonged whip had stripped and torn the flesh of his shoulders
and back; already the robe was reddening into a gory, clinging covering
like that which a butcher might have worn to carry on his shoulder a
freshly slaughtered lamb.
But Jesus, when he was led forth from the courtyard to the pavement
before the Praetorium to stand near the robber chieftain, made an even
more pitiable figure. The purple robe he had been wearing when he was
brought back from Herod’s judgment hall was once again about his sagging
shoulders, and it was soaked with blood. His long hair was matted with
drying blood where it curled above his flayed and bruised shoulders, and
his naked upper arms were crisscrossed with bleeding cuts and great
reddened welts. But more shocking than the lacerations and the bleeding
flesh, the blood-soaked purple robe, the mercilessly flayed, drooping
shoulders burdened beyond human strength to endure, was the evidence he
wore upon his head of a sadism past comprehending. Pressed down hard
against his skull, so that the sharp points in some places actually had
pierced the skin of his forehead and temples, was a circlet hastily
fashioned from a long thin branch torn from a rhamnus thorn.
Pilate noticed it immediately. “Why the victor’s wreath?” he asked the
soldier guarding the Galilean.
“It’s not a victor’s wreath,” he answered. “Sir, it’s the royal crown of
the King of the Jews.” He ventured a smile. “The soldiers made it from a
shrub growing near the scourging post and crowned him with it.”
“Indeed, the crown goes well with the Tetrarch’s purple.” Pilate smiled
humorlessly. Then he held up his hand to command silence. “It must be
well known to you that each year at the Feast of the Passover it is the
custom of the Procurator to release a prisoner. Here before you are the
revolutionary and murderer and robber, one Bar Abbas, who has been
sentenced to the cross, and the prisoner brought by the High Priest, one
Jesus of Galilee”—he paused and looking directly at the group of Temple
priests, smiled appreciatively—“the King of the Jews....”
“We have no king!” shouted Joseph Caiaphas, and a chorus of angry voices
supported him, “no king except Tiberius. This man is not our king; he is
a blasphemer, an enemy of Israel’s God; he stirs up the people; he
declares himself to be king in Israel; he calls himself the Son of God!”
He paused, as if fearful at having uttered the ineffable name.
“Crucify him! Crucify him!” The mob renewed its angry demanding. “He
claims to be the Son of God, the blasphemer! Crucify him!”
But Pilate paid them little heed. Turning his back upon the High Priest
and the clamoring throng on the esplanade below, he withdrew into the
Praetorium. “Bring him inside,” he said, motioning with his head as he
looked back. And then he spoke to the soldier guarding Bar Abbas. “And
remove that one from the sight of the multitude. But presently I shall
call for him again.”
The Procurator had hardly mounted the tribunal when a soldier entered
the chamber from the courtyard and handed a tablet to one of the
attendants. The two whispered, heads together, for a moment. Then the
attendant strode quickly to the tribunal, saluted, and presented Pilate
the wax tablet. “A message, sir, from the Procurator’s wife,” he
explained. “The messenger reported it was urgent.”
Hastily Pilate scanned the tablet. He scowled, then beckoned to the man.
“Fetch me the soldier who brought this tablet.”
In another moment the soldier was standing stiffly before the tribunal.
“Soldier,” Pilate inquired, “did you bring this message from the hand of
the Lady Claudia?”
“No, sir,” he answered. “It was handed to me in the courtyard over
there.”
“By whom?”
“The Centurion Longinus, sir; he had just come, I understood, from the
Palace of the Herods.”
A quick frown darkened the Procurator’s countenance. “And where is the
Centurion Longinus now?”
“Sir, I think he went up to his apartment in the fortress.”
Pilate nodded and waved the man aside; his face was heavy as once again
he read his wife’s message:
_Hear me, Pilate_:
_Take no responsibility for that righteous man’s blood, for in the night
I had a frightful dream concerning him._
What on earth, he wondered, could Claudia have dreamed about this
Galilean fanatic? And how did she know that the man had been brought
before the Procurator’s tribunal? Yes, and by all the gods, why had the
message come from Longinus, and why, moreover, had Longinus not
delivered it himself?
Still frowning, Pilate turned once again to question the prisoner
standing calmly before the tribunal, his face streaked with drying sweat
and blood, his robe turned deep crimson from the whip’s fearful wounds,
his matted hair still crowned with the circlet of thorns. “They say you
claim to be the son of their god,” he said. “What do they mean? Tell me,
where _do_ you come from?”
Jesus appeared lost in introspection. If he heard the Procurator’s
question, he ignored it. An infinite sadness seemed to possess him.
But Pilate, still scowling, perhaps upset further because of his wife’s
message and the manner in which it had been brought to him, revealed his
impatience. “Will you answer me?” he asked testily. “Don’t you know that
I have the power either to release you or to condemn you?”
Calmly, looking the Procurator in the eyes and with no tone of rancor,
Jesus replied. “You would have no power over me were it not granted you
from above. Therefore, he who delivered me to you”—he pointed toward the
esplanade where the High Priest and his cohorts awaited—“has a greater
guilt than you.”
Once again the Procurator stepped down from the tribunal and strode out
to the pavement in front of the Praetorium. “Bring forth the prisoner,”
he commanded. “And have Bar Abbas brought to me, too.”
“I shall release to you a Passover prisoner,” he announced to the
multitude when the two scourged prisoners stood before him. “Here stand
a robber and assassin”—he pointed toward Bar Abbas—“and”—he smiled
grimly as he waved his hand toward the Galilean—“your King of the Jews.
Which shall I release?”
“Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas!” the people howled, and Pilate could see the
priests exhorting them to shout their demands. “Release Bar Abbas! Bar
Abbas!”
“But what shall I do with the King of the Jews?”
“Crucify him! Crucify him!” they stormed. “Release unto us Bar Abbas!”
“He is not our king!” shouted Caiaphas. “We have no king but Caesar!”
Grudgingly, Pilate nodded to the robber chief’s guards. “Release him.”
The Procurator had lost. He had been sure the Galilean’s followers would
outnumber the vociferous Zealots. But Caiaphas had been the better
schemer.
Quickly the soldiers freed the hulking Bar Abbas, and in another moment
he disappeared with a tumultuously happy group of his supporters,
probably members of his own band, in the mass of people thronging the
Court of the Gentiles. But the High Priest and his hirelings kept their
places on the pavement before the Praetorium. Now the Procurator,
pointing toward the Galilean, spoke to them.
“What then shall I do with the King of the Jews?” His tone was
sarcastic. “_I_ find no fault in him. I shall release him, just as I
have already released your robber.”
“No! No! Crucify him! He is not our king! He is a blasphemer who would
destroy us!”
“Crucify your king?” A cold smile lifted the corners of the Procurator’s
heavy lips. “Crucify the King of the Jews?”
“We have no king, O Procurator,” Caiaphas declared evenly, when he had
lifted his hands to still the clamor, “no king but Caesar. And if you
are a friend of Caesar, O Excellency, you will rid us of this one who
not only seeks to destroy our religion but also to set himself upon the
restored throne of King David. Should word get to Tiberius or Sejanus in
Rome....” The High Priest shrugged and smiled suggestively.
Word would certainly reach the capital. And the story would be of the
High Priest’s coloring. The Procurator Pontius Pilate, despite repeated
warning and ample testimony establishing the guilt of the accused, it
would be told, had released a dangerously clever revolutionary intent
upon restoring the ancient kingdom of the Jews in Palestine with himself
as king.
“But he declares that his kingdom is not of this world,” Pilate tried to
protest. “He’s nothing but a harmless babbler, a religious fanatic whom
too much reasoning has driven mad....”
“So he would have you think, O Procurator. The man is cunning, amazingly
clever, captivating.” Caiaphas smiled indulgently. “Has he not already
deceived even the wise and discerning Procurator?”
The High Priest Joseph Caiaphas had won. Already too many reports of the
conduct of the Procurator’s office had gone to Rome; one more might be
sufficient to arouse the wrath of the Prefect Sejanus. Nevertheless,
since the High Priest had forced the verdict, the responsibility would
rest on him. He clapped his hands and when a servant came running,
called for a basin of water. A moment later, as the servant held the
basin before him, the Procurator plunged his hands into the water and
rubbed them together vigorously. “Let the people heed,” he said loudly
and with ostentation, “that I wash my hands of the blood of this man. I
am guiltless. His blood is not upon me.”
“Indeed, O Procurator”—the High Priest’s smile was scornful, his tone
sneeringly derisive—“let his blood be upon us, yea, and our children!”
“Then take him, and crucify him.” Pilate glanced toward the prisoner,
standing tall and calm and regal in the blood-drenched discarded purple.
But when their eyes met, Pilate’s shifted in that same instant to the
mosaic at the Galilean’s feet, so that momentarily the judge’s head was
bowed to the prisoner. Then, in a voice that was scarcely more than a
whisper, Pilate spoke to the guard who held the fetter binding Jesus’
wrists. “Lead him into the courtyard.”
As they were going out he summoned an attendant. “Fetch a tablet that I
may prepare the titulus.” His eyes fell upon the wax tablet that his
wife had sent him. “Wait,” he said. “This one will suffice. There’s
space enough on it for what I have in mind.” The soldier picked up the
tablet with the attached stylus. “Write this,” Pilate commanded, “and
when you have written it, take the tablet into the courtyard and have
the words inscribed on the headboard in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.” He
paused, reflecting. “Write what I say: _This is Jesus of Nazareth, the
King of the Jews_.”
Joseph Caiaphas had heard. “No, O Procurator! Write that he says he is
King of the Jews!”
Pontius Pilate stared in stony silence at the furious High Priest. “What
I have written,” he said after a moment, “I have written.” He turned to
the soldier. “Go prepare the titulus board.” Then, without a glance
toward the High Priest and his group, he returned to the Praetorium and
mounted the tribunal. Only the few soldiers in attendance remained in
the vaulted great chamber. Pilate sat down upon the curule; his eyes,
unseeing, were fixed on the pattern of the mosaic at the foot of the
tribunal steps.
_... Great Rome’s vaunted justice. But must not justice yield sometimes
to expediency, the expediency of the greater good for the greater
number? Will not his death end a developing tumult in Palestine that
might have brought even bloodshed and death for many Jews and perhaps
even Roman soldiers? And now no report will go to Sejanus from Joseph
Caiaphas._
_... The Galilean. A dreamer, a devotee of the Jewish religion, a
visionary ... a righteous man, Claudia said. “Take no responsibility for
that righteous man’s blood.” Claudia’s dream, bah. Superstition,
astrology maybe, foolishness. Calpurnia had a dream, and Caesar laughed
at her warning. Caesar laughed, and Caesar died._
_... But no report will go to Rome of the Procurator’s releasing a
dangerous revolutionary who was planning to establish himself on the
restored throne of ancient Israel. Joseph Caiaphas has been
silenced...._
Suddenly a cold, numbing fear clutched Pontius Pilate. “By great Jove!”
But he had not exclaimed aloud. No report would go to Rome from the High
Priest, no fawning spies would tell how the Procurator had freed a
cunning revolutionary, but Claudia had warned him not to judge the
Galilean. Could his wife, by all the gods, be a secret follower of this
mystic? Didn’t many high-placed women of Rome become devotees of this
strange Jewish one-god religion? Could the Emperor’s stepdaughter, by
great Jove, have become, of all persons, interested in religion, in any
religion? Could Claudia really feel strongly about this Nazarene fellow?
_... And Longinus had fetched her message. Longinus, yes, by all the
gods...._
The soldier who had led Jesus forth from the pavement into the courtyard
had returned to the Praetorium. “Sir, the titulus board is complete.
They are ready to proceed with the crucifixions, except....”
“Then start at once with the three prisoners to the Hill of the Skull.”
He paused. “Except? What were you going to say?”
“You have assigned no centurion, sir, to have charge of the crucifixion
of this fellow whom you have just condemned. Do you wish Porcius, who
was to have crucified Bar Abbas....”
“No.” Then, in a flash came an idea. Pilate maintained a sternly
impassive countenance, but inwardly he exulted in the suddenly revealed
manner of solving his dilemma. Now _no one_ would be sending stories to
Rome, for certainly nobody would be foolish enough to reveal to Sejanus
the execution of an innocent Jew if _he himself_ had participated with
the Procurator in that Jew’s crucifixion. “I wish Porcius for another
duty today.” He pointed upward. “Go at once to the apartment of the
Centurion Longinus and inform him that the Procurator assigns him to
take charge of the quaternion and orders him to proceed immediately with
the crucifixion of the Galilean.”
50
Beside a cluster of gnarled olive trees along the Bethany road Centurion
Cornelius halted his weary cavalcade. They had attained the summit of
the Mount of Olives. Steady climbing from the Jericho plain had lathered
the laboring horses, and the dust-grimed faces of the men were streaked
with perspiration. Since the passing of midday the heat had grown
increasingly oppressive; now, as they approached Jerusalem in the eerie
half-darkness, it weighed upon them like a heavy blanket.