by Ryu Mitsuse
“May God grant his blessings to this young man, and may He grant His love which is higher than the blue sky above us and deeper than the sea to Lord Pontius Pilate, representative of Rome. Amen.” Peter’s resonant voice lifted above the heads of the crowd.
Pilate despaired. The bowing, praying throng completely outdid any display of authority he might have hoped to make. As it stood in that crowded street, Rome was losing much, while the poor people of Jerusalem had lost nothing—even when many of them would have been better off dead than live the way they did.
“Release him, Ceint.”
A look of defeat came over the advisor’s face.
“I said release him.”
Ceint whispered to the guard captain. Abruptly the burly soldier let go of the young man’s arm and thrust him away. The freed man stumbled backward into the crowd of bowing onlookers, where the sobbing old woman, near-delusional with relief, embraced and clung to him.
A moment later a cry went up from the crowd—a victory cheer.
“Let’s go.”
Pilate took his whip to his horse, flying over the stones of the arcade. All he could see around him were omens of Rome’s decline.
They did not speak of the incident until after they had stopped to calm their nerves with some refreshment. Then, as Pilate was climbing back onto his steed, Ceint drew close. “Prefect,” he said. “I am increasingly of the opinion that we should arrest this carpenter when we find him.”
Pilate frowned. “As representative of Rome, I really don’t want to get involved in local troubles. The Jews can do whatever they want—they can even start a new religion. It makes no difference to the Empire.”
Ceint shook his head.
“Ceint, as you know, it is the foremost duty of the prefect in Jerusalem to collect taxes from the land and send them back home. Next, I am to protect those Romans who work here from banditry and ensure a modicum of peace and order. Lastly, I am to ensure that the roads leading from Rome to this province are always kept in proper condition so as not to hinder the movement of our armies. These three things are expected of me. Beyond this, the representative of Rome has no business interfering in local affairs.”
The administration of Rome’s colonies had always hung on these three requirements. The Romans had never considered the vast territories that they held to be part of their own native soil—they thought of the provinces as barbarous lands belonging to uncivilized peoples. They had no desire to claim them as second homelands, nor did they invest much capital into developing the regions. Such was the Roman way of thinking, and it had succeeded in making a giant orphan out of Rome.
“Pax Romana!” the people shouted, yet in the echo of their voices, Pilate could hear the sound of an empire crumbling.
“Lord Prefect. Will you be returning to your quarters?” Ceint asked, his voice betraying a hint of mockery.
“Not yet. Let’s have a look at this man they call Jesus. Show me the way.”
Ceint prodded the shoulder of the servant who held the reins of Pilate’s horse.
The entourage proceeded down a crooked backstreet paved with bricks of fired clay. Tiny rooms were packed like crates along both sides of the narrow way, each providing living quarters for an entire family. In these cramped stone spaces, the inhabitants had laid out rugs of woven hemp and hung curtains to shelter themselves from the street. The rugs and curtains were so dirty and tattered that it was impossible to tell their weaves or patterns, and they spilled out over the bricks, occasionally catching the feet of people as they passed.
The air smelled like stewing vegetables and sweat. The clouds of flies were inescapable, and the swarms of children seemed equally numerous. Such were the backstreets of Jerusalem.
It was no wonder that the perfumes favored by the nobles of Rome had always been greatly coveted in the provinces. In the beginning, all Roman emissaries were members of the military, and they had spent their days eating the same food and breathing the same air as the dusty, sweaty locals. Their wives and daughters likewise spent their hours in the grime and sweat. Fresh water was a valuable commodity in the provincial cities; bathing was a rare luxury. Later emissaries had established a greater distance between themselves and the local populace, but there was nothing they could do about the living conditions—thus the high level of interest in perfumes. For those who live a wholesome life in a clean environment there is little need for masking fragrances.
The great baths of Rome and the fine quality of its perfumes might be a testament to the unsanitary conditions of Roman life—but they were also a sophisticated comfort unavailable to the provincial servants of the Empire.
“Two more years,” Pilate muttered. That was all he had left in his term as Prefect of Israel. He had been living here for three years already.
“Yes?” Ceint looked up from beside his horse, lifting an eyebrow.
“Never mind.”
Pilate wanted nothing more than to serve his last two years without incident.
After they passed through the brick arcade with its dust and its flies and its cacophony of voices, they emerged quite abruptly into a large circular plaza that seemed comparatively empty—though there were still a large number of citizens bustling about in the course of their daily activities. In the very middle of the open space stood an ancient royal poinciana with bright crimson flowers, looking like a pillar of flame. Pilate held up a hand to shade his eyes from the sun.
Ceint stopped in his tracks. “There. Over there.”
“Where?” Pilate followed his advisor’s gaze.
Ceint was staring with great intensity into a corner of the plaza. There, beyond the giant tree with its fiery petals, a dozen or so people were gathered near a wall of stone. Some members of the small crowd stood, some sat, others lay sprawled upon the ground, but all were looking upward at a lone figure standing atop the wall.
Pilate advanced his horse slowly. No fewer than twenty different streets opened into this plaza; it was a central meeting place and crossroads for this part of the city. Now the movements of the merchants going to and fro, the beggars along the edges of the streets, and the town officials surrounded by weary travelers struck Pilate with a strange sort of uniformity, like the movements of actors upon a stage. It seemed that the Romans’ sudden arrival at the plaza was spreading a very tangible ripple through the crowd. In the middle of the hubbub, the group standing beyond the poinciana seemed eerily quiet.
Fragments of garbled speech, thick with the accent of Galilee, reached the prefect’s ears.
“No matter how much man possesses, no Kingdom of God will he build . . .”
“. . . makes this . . .”
“. . . man must look back upon the deeds of the day . . .”
“. . . that is our Lord in Heaven, Jehovah . . .”
“. . . Jehovah will judge . . .”
“. . . and when He decides that yes, it is good, only then will . . .”
The man atop the wall looked like a farmer. He wore a grimy hempen robe sewn together at the sides like a monk’s—probably a gift from some Roman—and garlands on his feet in place of sandals.
“Jesus, carpenter of Nazareth,” Ceint whispered.
Drops of sweat gathered in the man’s sunken cheeks while his small eyes darted around, taking in the citizens gathered before him.
“It will come. Don’t forget it. That is—ah, that is to say . . .”
An old man hunched over at the foot of the wall lifted his face and said in a clear voice, “The Final Judgment, my lord.”
“That’s it! That’s right! The Final Judgment is what it is! Oh, and it is a truly frightening thing! Jehovah, our Lord in Heaven, will look at every one of our sins . . .”
Pilate strained to hear the words over the bustle of the plaza.
“. . . to the Kingdom of God. Those who are left will be burned in Jehovah’s fire, charred . . .”
“. . . which is why we must all make haste to . . .”
A breathy c
ollective sigh emerged from the small crowd of listeners. Pilate frowned. To these poor, simple people of Jerusalem, the image of a final judgment at the hands of God should have been a nightmare vision of their own deaths. Why are they so enthralled?
“That’s why everyone has to pray to God. You get it? And praying isn’t about saying you want God to do this or do that. You have to make yourself ready! If you’re a drunk, stop drinking. If you are a gambler, stop gambling. Just for one day. And on that day . . .”
There was something about the man’s crude Galilean accent that perfectly matched the tone of his words. Pilate had to admit that the man’s voice was imbued with a certain unique passion, a strange intensity that was altogether unfamiliar to him.
Pilate urged his horse forward until he had reached the edge of the carpenter’s audience. He gazed over the heads of the listeners at the man who addressed them.
“Are you Jesus of Nazareth?” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice as low as it could be and still be heard. As one the crowd turned. Several grew pale and began edging their way toward the nearest alley.
“There is no need for flight,” Pilate urged. “I’m merely asking a question.”
Yet as the silence lengthened the audience gradually dispersed until only the man on the wall and the older man hunched before him remained.
“Are you Jesus of Nazareth?” Pilate asked again.
“The prefect asks a question. You should answer,” Ceint declared loudly, hand on the hilt of his short sword.
“Yes. I am Jesus Christ, son of Jehovah our Lord in Heaven.”
“Hmph.” Pilate raised an eyebrow. “Okay. What about you, old man? We’ve met before.”
The old man got to his feet and bowed curtly. “I am Peter, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, son of Jehovah, our Lord in Heaven.”
“I see.”
Pontius Pilate sat atop his horse, wondering how this “apostle” had gotten here so fast, and wondering what he should say next. There was nothing in what the man was saying about God that should concern an emissary of Rome or require his intervention. He had seen several Jewish sects of this kind spring up lately. That is, they purported to be sects, even though they rarely displayed any original thought or had anything new to say. Most were led by provincial priests who had been barred from joining the kohanim and so sought another way to make a name for themselves by proselytizing on their own.
So why are the kohanim so upset about this man? He barely seems capable of drawing a crowd, even here in Jerusalem. Not to mention that from the look of the rags he’s wearing, he doesn’t have many supporters. Is that blood on his feet?
Ceint moved closer to the wall. “Carpenter of Nazareth who calls himself Jesus! What is your true name? There are plenty of Christs around, but few Jesuses. I’ve heard the people here call you Yeshua?”
“That is my name. I am Yeshua of Nazareth.”
“Good official,” spoke Peter, “it is in truth his name. In the land of Nazareth, there are many with the name of Yeshua.”
“Are there now?”
“What’s troubling you, Ceint?” Pilate asked quietly, knowing full well what his advisor was about. He was seeking to turn this chance encounter with Jesus of Nazareth into a pretext for taking the man into custody.
“Ceint?”
“Prefect—the people of the town are watching. The supporters of the kohanim are among them. We must be wary.”
Pilate glanced at the plaza behind them. Where it had appeared only sparsely populated before, it now seemed unexpectedly crowded—as if every citizen who lived off every side street that opened into the plaza had suddenly decided to put in an appearance. Fully half of the broad space was packed with people, all standing in utter silence, intently watching the discussion between Pilate and the shoddy-looking preacher.
“Jesus of Nazareth. Tell me, this ‘final judgment’ of which you were speaking—”
“Is something the matter?”
“Yes, something is the matter! Where did you hear such nonsense?”
“It is not nonsense. Good official, are you a follower of the Jewish faith?”
Ceint smiled a cool smile. “The Romans have no religion. At least nothing like the kind of ‘faith’ your lot goes on about.”
“That is because your spirit has withered.”
“Excuse me?”
“The Romans pilfer the gods of the Greeks and call themselves pious!” The preacher’s voice grew suddenly louder. “There is only one true God. No ‘god of the sun,’ or ‘goddess of the moon,’ or ‘god of lightning,’ or ‘god of the sea.’ So many gods and they all mean nothing!”
The outburst left the loquacious Ceint tongue-tied. While most Romans understood that the gods were to be feared, they were also inclined to treat them as a kind of game, often evoked for little more than entertainment. Romans knew little of hardship; they had managed to cope rather well with the challenges and sorrows of their world, and they saw very little need for a savior in the true sense of the word. The gods of the Romans cast light shadows on the empire. In truth, for most they were little more than seasoning to add a touch of gravitas to the citizens’ daily lives.
This conversation had been doomed from the start. The carpenter-turned-preacher spoke from a spiritual height that the pragmatic Ceint could not fathom.
Pilate leaned forward on his horse. “I’ll admit that the concept of a final judgment is an interesting one,” he said, his tone that of an instructor reprimanding an impertinent pupil. “Yet will the ignorant people not fear you for your dire predictions? It does not seem the best way to gain followers. There are a lot of men popping up these days saying very similar things, you know. They talk about how the gods will judge us, and how those with evil hearts will be burned with fire.”
“But it’s true. I saw it,” Jesus said.
“That’s what they all say,” Ceint spat, unable to restrain himself any longer. “Every one of them. I saw it. It was me. Me me me. The sun lost its light, the moon and stars fled, and in the eternal darkness that followed the great God in Heaven appeared, ripping the void in two, and cast a shining spear down upon the sullied land. And where the spear falls it rends the land, molten rock spews forth like a fountain, the seas rise up and sweep the land clean, all life perishes . . . blah, blah, blah.”
“Ceint,” Pilate interjected, a sadness in his voice, “there’s no need to take this man back to the guardhouse. Tell the kohanim they have nothing to fear.”
“But, Prefect!” Ceint whispered urgently. “Should we not first take him back with us? We can release him later if we feel it is the right thing to do. If we simply let him go now, it will seem to the crowd that the representative of Rome challenged him and lost.”
Pilate sighed. At least I tried. “All right, do it.”
Ceint motioned with his eyes to the captain of the guards. Within moments the prefect’s bodyguard pulled the man from Nazareth down from the wall. They held him roughly, pinioned by both arms.
“Ow! That hurts!” the carpenter yelped. “There’s no need for such violence. I’ll go peacefully.”
“What about the old one?” Ceint demanded.
“I don’t care about him. Let him go.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Pilate’s advisor thrust the apostle Peter aside with a sour look.
“Time to leave.”
With Pontius Pilate at its head, the Roman entourage led Jesus from the plaza. The prefect hurried them along, eager to get away from the growing throng.
The crowd that gathered now around the fiery poinciana watched the Romans’ departure in silence, faces dark with betrayal, brows creased with a nameless yearning.
What the prophet says is true.
Surely the Kingdom of God will appear before us, a beautiful, ideal land. What need have we of harsh rules and privations, and petitioning our masters for forgiveness?
God forgives. Jehovah takes pity on mankind and forgives us all our sins. We must pray
to Him.
Only those who truly let God into their hearts may reach the kingdom of Heaven. God is absolutely fair. God’s heart is big enough to hold our entire world many times over . . .
Such was the God that the people wanted. They dreamed of the glory and the blessing of the Kingdom of God that would come one day to relieve them of their endless toil, their sickness and their poverty.
And yet, the carpenter of Nazareth had miscalculated.
“You know, I’d rather drink then get picked up by some God when the Final Judgment comes.”
“When is this final day coming anyway?”
“Sometime, according to what he says.”
“So when is sometime?”
“How should I know? Probably not while we’re still alive.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Maybe if we live our lives right and pray to God, our children or their children will be saved at the time of the judgment?”
“Well, I don’t have any kids, so who cares?”
The crowd muttered and began to disperse, flowing back into the alleyways and arcades like a receding tide, leaving the flowers of the poinciana to flutter by themselves like lonely flames. Peter, the wizened disciple, had also vanished. Most of the citizens of Jerusalem had already forgotten about the man who was taken away—most would never again think on what had happened in the plaza that day or remember the man who called himself a carpenter of Nazareth.
When the kohanim heard that Pontius Pilate had taken Jesus of Nazareth into custody they were greatly pleased. This representative of Rome had never shown much promise before, but the latest turn of events was worthy of attention. With time, the kohanim decided, they might even be moved to reassess their views on the prefect. Future potential aside, it was an excellent sign that this man of Rome could be dealt with.
The next morning, before the sun had risen, a crowd of men in long black clerical robes had gathered in the stone-tiled courtyard of Pontius Pilate’s villa. The harsh criticisms they had muttered on the day before were gone, replaced by an intense interest in the sentencing of Jesus.