by Nick Tosches
The Sadducees, who did not believe in resurrection, put a puzzling question to him, seeking to entangle and entrap him in confusion regarding his own beliefs, of which Aaron must have well informed them. It was the eldest of their priests who posed this question:
“Teacher,” he began, “Moses said that if a man dies, having no children, his brother must marry the widow, and raise up children for the brother. Now, let us say that there were seven brothers among us.
“The first married, and died, and, having no children, left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them, the woman died. In the resurrection, to which of the seven brothers will she be wife? For they all had her.”
“You know not the Book, and you know not of what you speak. For in resurrection none marry or are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”
He obfuscated further, until it was they who were entrapped in confusion.
“Thank you,” said the eldest priest, and the rest of the robed Sadducees, including Aaron and Ephraim, followed him, the poser of the problem, in his retreat from Jesus. As they did so, Jesus waved good-bye to Aaron and Ephraim, once again calling them by name; and once again Aaron and Ephraim turned away their heads.
Only Peter returned with us and the donkeys every evening to Gethsemane. When we had first entered Jerusalem, innkeepers were eager to have Jesus as their guest, and we were offered good lodging and food without cost. Now these same innkeepers would not have us, saying that their inns were filled with Pesach pilgrims.
To both Peter and me, there seemed a new change in Jesus. By day, in the holy city, he was excited, impulsive, foolhardy, and very often mad-speaking. But by night, in the garden, he was subdued, peaceful, and often quietly pensive. There was no more cursing of fig trees; nothing like that.
One night, while Peter slept and the breezes brought us the luscious scent of daffodils, I turned to Jesus.
“When will this end?” I asked him, as one might ask for mercy.
He was sensitive to the cry for mercy in my hushed, weak, and imploring voice. He ceded a moment to the daffodilly breeze and the sound of crickets before answering.
“Soon,” he said. “Very soon.”
My eyes fell on Peter in his slumber, and I found myself in reminiscence.
“He was the first,” I said. “Do you remember?”
“Sepphoris. The Feast of Trumpets.”
“What a fine night that was,” I said. “I can still hear the ram’s horn blasting.”
“He will betray me,” said Jesus, indifferently. “He will betray me and renounce me.”
I waited to hear the soft sound of his laughter, but there was none.
The next day, I found myself studying Peter repeatedly. His words. His movements. His eyes. I could not get the words of Jesus from my mind. I told myself that the breezes of the night before had stirred up a bit of his madness, and that was all. But this did not keep me from again and again looking to Peter with a searching eye. As attuned to, and wary of, his demeanor and behavior as I was, all I could see was good-hearted Peter. I decided to dismiss the matter. Jesus had spoken figuratively, and I had taken him literally.
It was Andreas whom I did not trust. It was the Sadducee priest of the reversible cloak whom I did not trust. It was Thaddeus, the nowhere-to-be-found drifter of Canaan, whom I did not trust. It was Levi, the errant tax-collector, whom I did not trust. It was the two who joined us in Jerusalem, a Greek gentile and a Jew from Damascus, whom I did not trust. It was he who had fallen from us before we entered the city, he whose name and face I could not recall, whom I did not trust.
Jesus damned the Pharisees, and he damned the Sanhedrin. If a fly or bee came near to him, he damned it. There was no danger in the damning of bugs. This was not so of Pharisees and the Sanhedrin.
“They sit where Moses sat,” declaimed Jesus, the Temple colonnade behind him and the masses before him, “so observe and practice whatever they tell you. But do not as they do. For they preach, but they do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and they lay them on the people’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with their slightest finger.
“They do all their deeds to be seen in public. They make their phylacteries broad and their tassel-fringes long. They love the places of honor at feasts, and the best seats in the synagogue, and salutations in the marketplaces, and being addressed with reverence as priestly doctors of the law, grand rabbis, and masters.
“They devour the houses of widows, while for pretense they make long prayers. They say: If anyone swears by the Holy Temple, it is nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the Temple, he is bound by his oath.
“Woe to you, scribal judges of the law and Pharisees! Woe to you, hypocrites and fools! Woe to you! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear clean, but within are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Woe to you! For you outwardly appear to be righteous, but within are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe to you! In your streets, there is not to be found the most wretched of whores who is undeserving of more glory than the high priests and judges of this place.
“Oh, Jerusalem, killing prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! Oh, Jerusalem, defiling all wisdom and all truth and all good. Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate.”
Dark figures looked down on him, listening to him, from vaulted windows in the Temple tower-reaches high above us. There were those in the crowds who drew away, fearful even to be seen as members of his audience.
Again he cursed the Temple, and prophesied its destruction and its downfall. But now he foretold the end of the age as well. And then he simply said:
“You will not see me again.”
His voice was now a ghastly dry rasp, almost painful to hear. He would take no food and no wine, but only small swallows from cups of water offered to him.
“What are you doing to yourself?” I asked him.
“I am purifying myself,” he said. Not only was his voice rough and croaking. His lips were pale, parched, cracked, and swollen.
“Purifying yourself?” I stared at him and laughed. “You’ll be shitting dust at this rate.”
I reminded him of the good food and wine at the inn at Caesarea, and brought back to his mind the sea-fresh oysters served there.
He smiled. There was blood in the cracks of his lips.
I had ceased pretending in the presence of others that he was the Messiah. I had ceased pretending that I was his follower. I had ceased pretending that we were anything more than two men who were friends.
No one seemed to notice this. Not even Simon Peter, who was among those who were with us when the woman called us into her home.
She was a woman of hardened looks, which robbed beauty from her. She wore the clothes of a common wife, but there was no evidence of a husband in the furnishings or the few decorative elements of her home.
She welcomed us to sit, then brought out an alabaster jar and unsealed it. The aromatic scent of balsam-oil of precious nard was taken up from the opened jar by the spring breeze through the window. The jar of veined white alabaster appeared to be the most costly of her belongings.
Pouring the oil into a wooden basin, she used her hand to ladle some of it onto the forehead of Jesus, massaging it into his temples and across his brow. He slowly closed his eyes. She applied some of the oil to his lips.
After anointing him in this way, she knelt before him with the bowl, removed his sandals, and rubbed the rest of the oil into his dry and callused feet. Jesus appeared transported, and uttered several long and audible sighs of pleasure.
It was the Jew of Damascus who dared speak and interrupt this pleasure.
“This jar of ointment,” he said, “could have been sold for three hundred denarii or more, a huge sum, which could have been given to feed a great many of the poor.”
Jesus opened his eyes and glared at him. Then he rebuked him sternly.
“The poor,” h
e told him, “will be there always.”
On the eve of the Pesach, there was at the main gate of the city a commotion like that which had met the arrival of Jesus astride his donkey.
Preceded and followed by curtained and elaborately fitted carpenta drawn by pairs of yoked and fine-plumed stallions of exquisite chestnut color and black flaxen manes, there came a litter that shone with gold and gleamed with ivory, its carrying poles borne on the shoulders of six brilliant-muscled men. The red veils that enclosed the carriage of the litter blew and billowed in the breezes. Through a windblown parting of the veils, I saw and recognized the tall bald man who sat on the raised cushion seat within, distractedly playing upon his white-robed thigh with a golden scepter he held in his right hand.
“Who is this?” asked Jesus.
“It is Pontius Pilate, the praetor of the province, come to make his annual address.”
There was no encroaching or directing this manned and stallion-strong retinue, as there had been with our scraggling bunch and sluggish, confused donkey.
The litter was brought to a platform near the base of the Temple steps. The awning-cloths above the platform were of black and purple, the colors of the Jews. The bunting round the platform was of Tyrian scarlet, the color of Rome everlasting.
The litter was lowered, the carriage curtains were drawn aside, and Pilate stepped forth. Awaiting him was Joseph Caiaphas, the ruling high priest of the Holy Temple and the Sanhedrin. The two men embraced.
Pilate was cheered loudly by many, and jeered loudly by some.
Or it may have been Caiaphas who was cheered and jeered. Or it may have been the both of them. Or, more likely, it may have been their embrace. As I have said, these people were like the crude, plebeian noise-making crowds at gladiatorial games.
Pilate ascended the platform. Caiaphas followed him and sat to the rear of where Pilate stood. The crowds became quiet. The prefect raised his scepter, and then bowed his head slightly, with formality, first to Caiaphas, then to the masses.
“Oh, Jerusalem! Holy flower of a holy nation, whose guest I am privileged and proud to be. When I first came to this land, I sought the guidance of the good and venerated man who sits with me before you on this day.
“It was he, through his sagacity, righteousness, and selfless love for the people of Israel and the welfare and prosperity of Judea, who brought me to share with him in this love. Together, with the rulers of the territories of this land, we forged a government, new and strong, soldered and welded of Judean vision and Roman goodwill; a government of and for the people. Your voice is the voice of your land, and we heed it as we cultivate and build.
“The peace of mutual benefit between Judea and Rome is manifest to all who travel our new highways, enjoy water from our new aqueducts, and are protected by the benevolent presence of legionaries who bring freedom from danger to where menace and lawlessness once threatened you. This peace of mutual benefit is so firm and flourishing that the Syrian legate has been dispatched.
“You who embody the glory of your past are the glory of the future. I salute you. May this Pesach deliver you from all that is evil to all that is good, and may all the days of your lives do the same.”
At this, there was much cheering. Pilate stood properly, and, for a moment, he smiled properly. Then he resumed his properly dignified countenance. He turned his head toward Caiaphas.
“Will my good friend be so kind as to come forward.” There was no questioning tone in these words. They were more of a stage-signal, or a command.
Joseph Caiaphas rose properly and stood properly beside the much taller man. For a moment, he smiled properly. Then he resumed his properly dignified countenance. The two men looked to one another, then embraced. Again there was much cheering.
“I thank you,” said Pilate, waving his scepter once through the air, then lowering his head in a cursory way.
Caiaphas said nothing, and nor did he bow his head to the rabble.
I remembered what Pilate’s adjutant in Caesarea had told me: “We have no use of a speech-writer here. The procurator gives but one speech a year, in Jerusalem. It is always the same speech.”
So this was Pilate’s speech. It was not a bad speech. It was not without some effect. But it was indistinguishable from the usual stale political fare. It was perfectly fatuous, blandly fraudulent, and woven of drab rudimentary rhetoric.
The maker of this speech was not the same honest, sharp-minded, and outspoken man whom I had met in Caesarea. It was my hope that I would have a chance to meet that man again, here in Jerusalem.
During the first part of Pilate’s speech, I saw in the eyes of Jesus, as they looked here and there and to the platform and then here and there again, that he entertained a notion to disrupt the speech by diverting the crowd from Pilate to himself, by breaking out with some sort of loud pronouncement of his own.
“Render unto Caesar,” I said to him.
He seemed surprised that I had read him so well, and there was in him no further sign of mischievous intention. But after Pilate and Caiaphas were no longer to be seen, and the crowd dispersed and began to wander, Jesus drew them back with a cry:
“Out of Egypt did Moses lead you, and to Egypt you have returned!”
This was enough to bring them back, gathering as quickly as they could to him.
“Look well at your Holy Temple, and see the palace of not of God, but of Ramses.”
I did not know what to think. I grew anxious. I wished he would shut up.
“You are of tepid blood, you who with timidity offer up your wrists for bondage.”
Some were made uneasy, felt threatened and affronted, by what was said; and they hid behind a noise of protest and jeering. Some found truth in what was said; and they made a noise of enthusiasm and agreement.
“You are lukewarm. You are neither hot nor cold. I shall spew you out of my mouth. I shall vomit you forth from me, and God will not receive you.”
He spat with violence upon the ground.
It was he who took leave of the crowd, not the crowd that took leave of him. He merely turned and walked away, and left them there behind him, alone and afraid, or stilled by the truth that hung in the air.
The sky became dark with coming storm. But no storm came, and the darkness passed.
A second darkness approached: the nightfall of the first day of Pesach. Watching the sun descend behind the tower of Psephina, I was slow in seeing that the emerging colors spreading through the twilight sky were the purple of the Jews and the red of Rome.
We were found by Peter and Thaddeus and the Greek who was new to us.
“Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Pesach meal?” asked Thaddeus.
“I have no hunger for unleavened bread,” said Jesus.
“But you must,” said Peter.
“Is that so?” He looked at Peter very oddly, and there was also a cryptic oddness in his voice. “Must I, now?”
Only very slowly did he let go of Peter’s eyes. “Anywhere,” he said to Thaddeus. “Find a place. Anywhere. I do not care.”
An hour or so later, we sat at a long table in the upper room of an old inn on the southeast hill of the Lower City, above the houses of the poor, whose part of Jerusalem this was.
We were alone in this room. There were nine or ten of us: Jesus and myself, Peter and Andreas, Thaddeus and Levi, the Greek and the Damascene, one or two others. Thomas the Essene had returned to us, of a mind that he could be both an Essene and a follower of the Word and the Way. He was there. We sat on long benches at a long table, which the innkeeper had set with a lamp, unleavened bread, some cured tilapia, some pickled olives, a jug of water, a jug of wine, and wooden cups. The poor, in their crumbling, dirty limestone dwellings in the streets below, likely had finer and more sumptuous feasts before them.
Jesus looked with little interest to what was on the table. I told one of the disciples to give me a piece of fish and some wine. Jesus did the same. I ate mine down, emptied my cup,
called for more. But my friend ate but a morsel, and took only a sip from his cup.
“There is at this table someone whom I detest,” he said. In his voice there was little emotion other than a hint of torpid disgust. “He is foul and rotting within. It would have been better if he had not been born. He has betrayed me.”
Moments passed in excruciating silence.
“It is I,” said Levi. “I have never prayed the prayer you taught us to pray, the prayer to our Father who art in heaven.”
Jesus looked at him, waved him away with a dismissive, weary turn of the hand.
“I have no prayer to any Father who art in heaven,” he said to Levi without bothering to look at him. “It was Gaius here, who sits by me, my fine pagan friend and Roman of rank, Gaius; it was he who wrote that prayer for me.
“He who believes in God, believes not in himself. He who prays to God, prays into the shit-hole of the bottomless latrine pit of his own meaningless being.”
Andreas looked as if he was being taken by the paroxysms of apoplectic seizure. His left hand became claw-like and rigid, and struck at his neck repeatedly with tremor. His upper body convulsed, most of all his shoulders. He stood suddenly, raising a piece of unleavened bread in his right hand. There came from him choked attempts to speak, and when he succeeded in making coherent sounds, it was as if his tongue were a fat unruly snake in his mouth and throat.
“Our Lord would have us eat of this bread, for it is his body.”
He grabbed and raised a cup of wine, spilling some of it on the table and himself. The spasms of his body were less pronounced, but his speech was still halting.
“Our Lord would have us drink this wine, for it is his blood.”
He brought the cup to his lips with both hands. A small, fitful stream of wine ran down his chin as he drank.
I found these antics of the tick to be quite entertaining. It was as though he felt that he was losing his Lord, and his discipleship, and that his mind broke at this. Jesus was not entertained. On this night, there was nothing in the world that could entertain him.