The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ

by Frank G. Slaughter

  “To the palace of the high priest, I think,” Mark said. “The guards came from there.”

  Peter seemed not to understand. Mark took him by the hand. “Let us go to the palace, Peter,” he said. “Maybe we can help Jesus.”

  The words seemed to penetrate the shocked mind at last. “Yes. Yes, we must help Jesus,” he said almost mechanically.

  “This is the way,” Mark said, starting to lead the tall fisherman down the path. “I will take you there.”

  And so the two of them, the boy and the man who both had tried to help Jesus, together left the garden the Master had loved.

  VI

  For the mockery that was to be called a trial, Jesus was first taken to the Palace of Annas, the former high priest who was still the most influential figure in the priestly hierarchy. Annas had held the high priesthood himself for only six or seven years, but had managed afterward to have several of his sons, as well as his son-in-law, Caiaphas, succeed him. By dexterously using the vast temple revenues to further his power, as when Pontius Pilate had been allowed to use temple funds for the great aqueduct, Annas had managed to keep himself and his family on good terms with the Romans and had thus kept the highest religious office under his control. He did not now intend to allow Caiaphas, who sometimes failed to reason before acting, to bungle the matter of Jesus’ death, and had ordered the Nazarene to be brought to him as soon as He was taken.

  Annas first asked the prisoner to implicate His disciples, thinking Jesus might seek to save Himself and incriminate others, thus making the charges which were to be leveled against Him even heavier. But Jesus refused to answer any questions about the disciples even though they had all fled when He was betrayed by Judas and then had been taken. So the old high priest switched to matters of doctrine, where the chief charges against Jesus lay.

  “Why do you ask Me?” Jesus answered him. “I spoke openly to the world and always taught in the synagogue or in the temple, where the Jews go. I have said nothing in secret. Ask them who heard Me. They know what I said.”

  At His words, Abiathar struck Jesus across the mouth with his fist, almost knocking Him to the ground. “Do you answer the high priest so?” the captain demanded indignantly.

  A trickle of blood flowed from Jesus’ lip where the captain’s fist had driven the flesh against a tooth, but He did not falter or cringe.

  “If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil,” He challenged Abiathar. “But if I have spoken well, why do you strike Me?”

  They continued the questioning but realizing at last that it was futile, they took Him to the palace of Caiaphas where the Priestly Council had been waiting since the end of the Passover to pass judgment upon Him.

  With Jesus now in his hands, Caiaphas ordered Abiathar to let the Roman soldiers who had aided in the arrest return to the Antonia. Until it was time to ask Pilate’s approval of the death sentence, he meant this to remain a strictly Jewish matter. The fewer Romans involved, the better.

  Abiathar and several guards took Jesus into the inner court of Caiaphas’s palace. The rest remained outside where Jonas and some others were warming themselves by the fire. Jonas had been startled to see Jesus a prisoner, but the connection between the green thorns he had gathered that afternoon and what was happening here did not occur to him.

  As on the other occasions when he had condemned Jesus and sought a way to capture Him, Caiaphas had been careful not to invite Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea to the Priestly Council, sometimes called the Lesser Sanhedrin. It was only the inner circle, who had long ago decided that Jesus must die, who were waiting. Jesus was now brought before them by Abiathar and left standing alone in the center of the audience chamber.

  Caiaphas, Jochai, Elam, Annas, and several of the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees were seated behind the long table. They could not have claimed to constitute a legal meeting of the Sanhedrin, though all were members of the high court. Their only purpose here was to give a semblance of legality to what had already been decided, so that there would be no trouble when they brought Jesus before Pilate and asked for His death.

  For this preliminary hearing, Caiaphas had prepared carefully. A number of witnesses had been brought in and coached to swear they had heard Jesus speak blasphemy. But now, before the pitying look in Jesus’ eyes as they perjured themselves, the witnesses began to stumble in their carefully rehearsed stories and contradict each other. Some claimed to have heard one thing, some another, and Caiaphas was white with fury before he finally managed to get three of them to agree on the same story, that Jesus had blasphemed against the temple by saying He would destroy it and build another within three days. The charge was flimsy enough, and Caiaphas realized now how badly his case might go if he went to the Romans with so makeshift a body of evidence and Pontius Pilate examined it at all closely.

  Finally, in exasperation, the high priest addressed Jesus. “Do You answer nothing?” he demanded. “What is it these men witness against You?”

  The confusion of the witnesses had already proved that Caiaphas had no real case, but Jesus did not point that out. When He did not answer, the furious high priest shouted, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

  For the first time since He had been arraigned before the Priestly Council, Jesus spoke. “I am,” He said calmly. “And you shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.”

  “What need do we have for further witnesses?” Caiaphas exclaimed triumphantly, and tore his robe in the conventional gesture of indignation. “You have all heard blasphemy. What do you think?”

  Like puppets the Council gave the prepared answer. “He is guilty of death.”

  Jesus showed no visible reaction to the verdict, but continued to stand before His accusers, observing them with a look of compassion on His face as if He pitied them for their part in this scurrilous travesty of a legal trial. Before that gaze, some of them began to fidget, but at a signal from Caiaphas, Abiathar and the guards struck Jesus again and spat upon Him. Then, as if to find a relief from their own shame and guilt at what they had done, the members of the Council also began to vilify Him.

  Even before Caesarea-Philippi, Jesus had predicted this very scene with the words, “The Son of Man shall be delivered to the chief priests and to the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death.’’

  One part only of that prophecy remained yet to be fulfilled, the phrase “And shall deliver Him to the Gentiles.”

  That, according to Caiaphas’s plan, was the next thing to be done.

  VII

  Jesus had already been taken into the palace of Caiaphas when Mark and Peter arrived. A crowd was beginning to gather outside the gate of the courtyard and, knowing the city as he did, Mark noticed that it consisted largely of beggars and other rabble, with a sprinkling of merchants and artisans, including money-changers and sellers from the temple. They were making little noise. In fact they appeared to be waiting, as if for a signal.

  Peter still seemed to be in a trance and did not resist when Mark led him to the opening in the hedge through which he had watched Judas betray Jesus to Abiathar. By creeping through the hedge, they, and a few others who had pushed their way through the gate, were able to enter the outer courtyard where the guards waited around the fire for the deliberation of the Council to be made known. It was a cold night and as they approached the fire to warm themselves, a servant girl from the palace who had been talking to one of the guards came to Peter and looked up into his face.

  “You were with Jesus of Galilee!” she cried accusingly.

  Peter drew back sharply, and only Mark’s hand on his arm kept him from bolting with the same overpowering surge of fear he had experienced when the guard had disarmed him in the garden. A deep-seated terror took control of him for a moment, driving out all sense of loyalty and duty.

  “I
know not what you say!” he shouted loudly and drew back into the shadows of the porch where his size would not make him so conspicuous.

  Another of the high priest’s servants saw Peter there a few minutes later and, thinking to curry favor with her master by denouncing one of those close to Jesus, cried, “This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth!”

  “I do not know the man!” Peter shouted, half out of his mind, not only with fear for himself but also from the sorrow and bitter disappointment that the man he had believed to be the Son of God had failed to use divine power for His protection.

  The violence of Peter’s denial drove the girl away, and he continued to sit in the shadows, with Mark beside him, shivering in the cool night air but not daring to approach the fire where someone else might recognize him. In spite of his shock and his bitter disappointment that Jesus had allowed Himself to be taken, there still burned in Peter the faint hope that at the last moment the Master would smite His enemies with the sword of God, not ineffectually as Peter had tried to do in the Garden of Gethsemane, but with the power that had raised Lazarus from the dead and had fed the five thousand on the shores of Galilee.

  The courtyard was becoming crowded now, as more and more of the crowd outside pushed their way through the gates. A money-changer from the temple, eager for a chance to belittle any who followed Jesus, saw Peter in the shadows and, sure that he recognized him because of his size, came up to question him.

  Peter answered only in monosyllables, but it was impossible to hide the rough accent of Galilee in his speech.

  “Surely you are one of them,” the money-changer said. “Your speech betrays you.”

  “I know not the man!” Peter shouted with a curse and shambled from the courtyard with Mark at his side. Hands reached out to seize him, but with his great strength he put them off. Cursing his tormentors, he reached the street and continued on until he was beyond the edge of the crowd massed now at the gate, waiting for the decision of the Council to be announced.

  Only when the voices of his tormentors no longer pounded in his ears did Peter become conscious of another sound, the distant crowing of a cock announcing the first rays of dawn. And as if the words were being spoken in his ear once again, he heard the voice of Jesus saying, “Before the cock crows this night, you shall deny Me three times.”

  Shame and guilt engulfed Simon Peter now and great sobs shook his body. He wept, not so much for the Master he loved, who was a prisoner waiting sentence, as in thought of the rock of strength he could have been to Jesus had he not yielded to the fear for his own safety. Distraught and sobbing, Peter hardly realized that John Mark was taking his hand and leading him away from the palace of the high priest toward his own home in whose upper chamber Peter himself had that night eaten the last supper with Jesus.

  VIII

  As he watched Jesus being led in chains into the palace of the high priest, Jonas could not help comparing the Nazarene’s present estate with that less than a week ago when He had entered Jerusalem in triumph. In spite of the misery which the past week had brought him, the hunchback felt only sorrow for the Nazarene. Strangely enough, now that he had seen the Teacher closely, he could not shake off the feeling that somewhere he had known Jesus before, although he had no memory of the exact circumstances.

  It was unfortunate that the Galilean prophet had tried to oppose Caiaphas and the priests, Jonas thought sadly. Unless, of course, He was the Messiah—and that was impossible. No Jew would dare treat the Anointed One as Jesus was being treated for he would surely know that the wrath of God would destroy anyone committing such a blasphemous act. But even the best men, Jonas knew, could hardly hope to oppose such powerful adversaries as the chief priests and the Romans. And Jesus was a man.

  Jonas had heard Simon Peter deny that he knew Jesus, but he had not blamed him. The Galilean’s was a lost cause, and nothing could be gained now by His disciples destroying themselves with Him. Peter had been only acting wisely, Jonas thought, in denying any connection with his former master.

  The night was cold and, small as he was, Jonas had gradually been pushed away from the fire as the crowd filled the courtyard. He wished Abiathar would come out soon and pay him the other shekel so that he could go back to his hovel and sleep. He could not afford to lose the coin, for there would be no thorn-gathering on the day after the Passover and the next day being the Sabbath, he would lose two days of work. Even the two shekels he had earned would barely buy food for Eleazar and himself over that period.

  The sun had already risen when the door to the inner court of the palace swung open and Abiathar came out. Pushed from the fire by the crowd, Jonas had been working his way gradually toward the porch and the door leading to it. When Abiathar opened it, he was only a few paces away.

  “Abiathar,” he called, his teeth chattering from the cold. “I brought the thorns. Where is my shekel?”

  “Don’t bother me, woodseller,” the captain said impatiently. “I will give it to you later.” He strode to the gate of the courtyard and looked over it at the crowd that had been gathering there. At the sight of him a shrill voice among them cried, “Death to the Galilean blasphemer!”

  With a start, Jonas recognized the voice. It was Zadok’s.

  Hearing the cripple call out and seeing the way the rabble pressing against the gate seemed to be looking to Abiathar for instructions, Jonas was sure now that he was watching something already rehearsed. For how else would the crowd know what charge was being made against Jesus when none of them had been inside the court?

  “Be still!” Abiathar ordered, and at once the tumult that had begun to rise subsided. “There will be time enough for that.”

  “You’ve kept us waiting overlong, Abiathar,” a man in the crowd called. “When do we condemn the Nazarene?”

  “Hold your tongue!” Abiathar shouted. Turning, he strode back to the porch and threw open the door to the inner court. Jonas could see Jesus now, with the blood congealed upon His cheek from the cut in His lip. He stood straight and silent before the Council and the guards while they spat at Him and reviled Him. Once again the hunchback was seized with the conviction that he had known the Nazarene a long time ago. If he had not needed the other shekel so urgently, he would have left at once. He wanted no part of this attack upon a man of whom he had never heard evil spoken, except by those whose sins He had attacked so forthrightly.

  Two guards came out, leading Jesus between them; He stumbled a little as they jerked Him along by His bound hands. Even in degradation, with spittle upon His face and His robe, the Nazarene had an oddly royal dignity about Him, and when He first appeared, the crowd waiting in the courtyard and outside the gate fell back and for a moment was silent.

  Then Zadok’s shrill voice cried, “Blasphemer! He blasphemed against the temple!” Others took up the cry again, it seemed to Jonas, as if by signal. A great tumult and shouting eddied about Jesus and the guards as He was taken from the courtyard.

  ‘“Where are they going?” someone shouted at the guards. “To Golgotha?”

  The “place of skulls,” Golgotha, so-called for the shape of the rock formation there, served as the scene of executions for the city, required by Mosaic Law to be outside its walls. Here those convicted of any capital offense were either stoned to death or crucified according to Roman custom.

  “That will come later,” the guards called back in answer to the question. “You know the Law; only the Sanhedrin can pass sentence of death.”

  Jonas understood where Jesus was being taken now: to the house of the Sanhedrin located by the sanctuary area. The sun had already risen over the hills toward Jericho so that it was fully light, and as Jonas looked out over the crowd, he was not surprised to catch sight of Zadok swinging along in their midst, dragging his body expertly between his arms while he chattered steadily to those around him.

  Moving through the crowd, Jon
as came up beside the cripple. “What brings you here?” he demanded. “You are supposed to be sick.”

  Zadok still looked a little pale and there was sweat on his forehead. “I wish you had brought Eleazar,” he said.

  “You have no business here at all,” Jonas told him severely.

  Zadok grimaced. “Would you have me give up my location to another beggar?”

  Jonas knew that Abiathar assigned places in the proximity of the temple, the area where the beggars were most likely to receive the largest alms. In return, the favored ones shared a part of their gain with the burly temple captain. The arrangement was no more reprehensible than that by which the sellers in the temple sold tickets for only the choicest lambs and then delivered an animal of lesser quality to the altar, dividing the profit with the priests.

  “Why would Abiathar take your place away?”

  “Word went out last night to the beggars and others who profit from the temple that Abiathar wanted us here this morning to shout against the Nazarene,” Zadok explained. “He is paying me extra to call for the prisoner’s death.”

  “But that is unjust!”

  Zadok shrugged. “Caiaphas wants it done. That’s all the justice you need in Jerusalem. Call for the Nazarene’s death when the time comes, Jonas, and I will put in a good word for you with Abiathar.”

  Jonas shook his head. “The Galilean is a good man. I wish Him no harm.”

  “Neither do I,” said Zadok matter-of-factly. “But I have to live and since Caiaphas means to destroy Him anyway, it’s no harm to do as Abiathar wishes.”

  “Why does he need you to shout against the Galilean?” Jonas asked. “After all, the Sanhedrin can sentence Him.”

  “The Nazarene cannot be executed unless Pontius Pilate approves the sentence,” Zadok reminded him. “Caiaphas cannot have much of a case against Him, but if Pilate believes the people are stirred up against the Nazarene, he will be easy to convince. After all, what is one dead Galilean to a Roman governor if he can serve to prevent a riot? With enough of us who have something to gain from it shouting for the Galilean’s death, how will Pilate know that most of the people believe Him to be a prophet?”