by Paul L Maier
Pilate slept fitfully that night. Calls, cries, angry shouts, and chanting broke the silence of the city. At 2 A.M., he walked over to a palace window and looked out across Jerusalem. The Jewish capital seemed ablaze with moving torches. He was glad Procula had not accompanied him on this trip.
Returning to bed, he searched for sleep. His last thoughts seemed to be a conversation between two unknowns. “Why the rioting?” someone asked. “Be firm!” someone replied. Then he dropped off.
“PI—LIT! PI—LIT! PON—SHUS—PI—LIT!” The thundering chant awakened him.
He looked out. A huge crowd filled the gray-white expanse of the esplanade in front of the palace. “PON—SHUS—PI—LIT!” The cry continued.
Pilate summoned a herald, who went out and announced: “The prefect will ascend his tribunal shortly and hear you. But your shouting must stop immediately, or the square will be cleared by force.”
The din of the crowd gave way to a reduced, but still colossal, murmur.
When he had breakfasted and dressed in official garb, Pilate appeared before the crowd and mounted his tribunal, an elevated dais just in front of the palace. A small bodyguard of auxiliaries flanked him on either side. Beyond that, there were only a few Roman soldiers in sight, stationed at the edges of the crowd.
“What do you wish?” Pilate asked the mass assembly.
A spokesman for the throng edged his way closer to the tribunal, a middle-aged Judean whom Pilate did not recognize. “The sacred treasury dare not be used for building a Roman aqueduct,” he said. “Sacrificial gifts cannot he so desecrated! You must return the money to the temple treasury. This abomination must not continue!”
The statement was seconded by a swelling cry of affirmatives.
“Is this your appointed spokesman?” Pilate asked.
“Yes…Yes,” the people replied.
“And why not the high priest Caiaphas?”
There was a general grumbling.
“And why not the temple treasurer?” Pilate probed further. “Surely he above all should be concerned about the Corban.”
Further murmuring greeted the statement, but no reply.
“Perhaps, then, one of the chief priests of the Sanhedrin should speak for you, rather than this man.”
The people were growing impatient, but Pilate persisted, “Is any chief priest present?”
He quickly scanned the plaza, and seeing no hand raised—though of course he did not wish to see any—continued, “Your leaders aren’t present because they concurred in this equitable arrangement, whereby, according to your own traditions regarding shekalim, the Corban may be used for such important purposes as ensuring a good water supply for the city of Jerusalem.”
“But you forced the high priest, the treasurer, and the other leaders into this arrangement!” The spokesman was pointing his hand directly at Pilate.
“I didn’t force them. The only threat I used was cancellation of plans for the aqueduct.”
“Would that you had cancelled them, Prefect!” someone called from the crowd. The people laughed and applauded.
“And you probably enjoyed a drink of water from that very aqueduct before coming here this morning,” Pilate countered.
“I spat in that water!” he shot back. The crowd roared its approval.
In the absence of troops, the people were in a very spirited mood, feeling free to speak their mind. This was as Pilate had hoped. So far, all the energies of the crowd were verbal, with no hint of physical violence. Again he tried to combat emotion with logic.
“Men and women of Israel: listen closely to my final statement,” he called out. “I planned this project for the welfare of Jerusalem. Not one of you can deny that the city was badly in need of a better water supply. Now, if our government had paid the entire cost of the aqueduct, your tribute would necessarily have been doubled for several years, which would have been hard on all of you. But since there’s an annual surplus in the temple treasury, and since your own traditions permit excess funds to be spent for such needs as this, the water system was financed in the best manner for all concerned. Besides, where does the water flow? Into the temple! You and your children can enjoy the water with no additional taxes to pay. You should be grateful to your prefect instead of staging these hostilities.”
“Grateful we should be?” someone yelled. “We’d be grateful if you’d remove yourself!” Pilate’s soldiers clapped their hands to their swords.
“And take your cursed standards with you!” cried another.
Pilate ground his teeth, fighting to control himself. “How can a governor deal with you people in rational terms? You know I removed the ensigns!”
One of the young Zealots hoisted himself onto the shoulders of another and cried, “Stand fast, my compatriots! We won at the stadium in Caesarea, and we’ll win here too!” Then, pointing to Pilate, he said, “We shall stay here until you return the money to the temple!” A great affirmative chorus reinforced the threat.
“Hear me, my young friend,” Pilate shouted, “and all of you: the funds will not be returned. They were spent for a justified purpose, approved by your own leaders. The money certainly didn’t go into my pocket—I had nothing to gain by this aqueduct—it was built for the public good. Don’t now make the mistake of interpreting my reasonable explanations to you as weakness. I tried to be fair. You’ve been unreasonable. This plaza will be cleared at once! With the first trumpet blast, you will leave in orderly fashion. At the second, my auxiliaries will advance and clear the square by force. Do not wait for the second trumpet!”
He turned and signaled his trumpeters. A rising commotion smothered the dying echoes of their brief flourish. The people seemed divided. Some felt that Pilate was bluffing. Others sensed he was not, and started to move toward streets leading away from the esplanade.
Pilate watched the crowd in an agony of suspense. According to his plans of the night before, he was far more prepared than they realized. He had ordered two hundred of his soldiers to dress as civilians, concealing swords and cudgels beneath their robes. These troops were now well distributed in the crowd with orders to subdue the most vocal of the agitators at Pilate’s signal.
Ten minutes passed, but at least two-thirds of the multitude remained defiantly. Pilate seemed reluctant to give the second trumpet signal. The most vociferous in the crowd began taunting him.
“We call your bluff, noble Prefect. You wouldn’t slaughter us all.”
“Remember Caesarea!”
“Brave Pilate! Why don’t you clear Judea of Romans instead? Then we’d both be happy.”
“Go back and make love to your pretty wife, Prefect. You’ve no stomach for this kind of thing!”
Livid with rage, Pilate gave the signal for the second trumpet. The notes spat out in the strains of the Roman battle charge and ricocheted across the vast plaza. Troops poured in from adjoining streets, but most of the riot control fell to the auxiliaries dressed in Jewish clothing, who now began cudgeling those who had taunted Pilate. Then they savagely went after others with their flailing staves.
A full-dress Near Eastern riot broke out, a gory melee in which it was difficult for the auxiliaries to spare the innocent. They waded into the people, their clubs impartially knocking whatever heads and bodies lay in their path. Although Pilate had cautioned his men not to use swords, the stinging insults to their chief, and to Rome itself, were too much for some of his men. Blades began to glint with furious enthusiasm, slashing and carving their way into human arms, legs, trunks. Many of the Jews managed to escape. Others bravely resisted, grabbing weapons from fallen troops and fighting back. But the people had not really expected the sickening spectacle of anguished screams from the wounded, the sweaty stench of people fighting for their lives, the dull and ugly thud of wood against flesh, the flashing of forbidden swords, and the bloodshed.
The dust settled. Bodies, bruised and brutally torn into shreds of red flesh, lay strewn in clusters near the two major exits, trampled
to death by the panicking crowd. Hysteria had claimed as many lives as had Roman clubs and swords.
The plaza quivered with wounded demanding immediate attention. One bewildered casualty tried to stand up, but collapsed because his left foot was missing. Pilate ordered his troops to give aid to the injured, but few Jewish mothers wanted his men to so much as touch their wounded sons and husbands.
Jerusalem’s new water supply was used for a quite unexpected purpose: washing the wounded, cleansing the dead. Slowly, the square was cleared. There were no further protests. And everyone began using Jerusalem’s improved water system—a victory hollowed, Pilate knew, by his resort to force.
Frustration, resentment, and especially apprehension swirled in the cauldron of his emotions. Would the violence go down in Jewish memory as “The Jerusalem Massacre,” or rank simply as “Riot Number 13” in the perennial quarrel between Jew and Roman? On the answer to that question hung the chances of his success or failure as prefect of Judea.
When he returned to Caesarea, Procula wanted to know everything, and this time he had to recount events that she had missed with something less than enthusiasm. As if to compound his mood, he found her asking some searching questions about the aqueduct riot.
“I know you were in a terrible spot,” she admitted, “but put yourself in place of the Jews. They had imagined all along that Rome was paying for the aqueduct, only to discover that it was their own temple treasury instead.”
“What we should’ve done, I see now, was to announce from the start that it was legal to use temple funds for that purpose, so people would’ve gotten used to the idea. Because our action was legitimate. No one seems to remember that.”
“All right, but once the protest was made, did you really have to resort to force?”
“I tried to avoid it. They left me no choice. You should’ve heard the insults, some even involving you.”
“The people wouldn’t move away from the palace. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you simply leave them standing there and go on about your business?”
“For days on end, like the first time here in Caesarea?”
“Why not? Wouldn’t that have been better than bloodshed? Eventually the crowd would have dispersed itself in boredom.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Some fanatics would probably have camped there permanently. But you fail to see that this demonstration was a direct challenge to Rome. To have let it go unopposed would have flaunted weakness and encouraged a Jewish revolt. That point is simply beyond debate.”
“But why kill anyone?”
“I told you,” Pilate snapped, “I ordered my men not to use swords. They exceeded my orders. Some had to. We were greatly outnumbered, of course.”
“I wonder. Your men were armed and prepared. The crowd was not.”
Now at the end of his patience, Pilate fairly exploded: “What do you take me for, Volesus Messala, the proconsul of Asia who beheaded three hundred provincials one morning, then strutted among the corpses, boasting, ‘What a kingly deed!’? I hate this kind of thing.”
“But…”
“But why go to Asia? Let’s look at the record here in Judea. At the time Herod died, our legate Varus had to put down an insurrection in Jerusalem. He ended by crucifying two thousand Jews. And if you think that’s bad for a Roman—and it is—remember what the Jewish King Alexander Jannaeus did to fellow Jews who opposed him. While that wretch was lounging with his concubines at a public feast, he had eight hundred of them crucified for his entertainment; and, while they were still alive, he ordered the throats of their wives and children cut before their very eyes.”
“Stop, Pilate!”
“Well, against that kind of cruelty, don’t quarrel with a necessary police action which unfortunately resulted in some casualties.”
“Tell me, Pilate, can one justify a wrong by resorting to favorable comparison with a greater wrong?”
Pilate clenched his hands until the knuckles whitened. “I had to do it, Procula.”
Chapter 10
Jerusalem was quiet now. No further anti-Roman demonstrations followed the clash over the aqueduct, but deep resentment against Pilate lingered. That this did not ignite sympathy riots elsewhere in Judea was due less to any chastened mood of the Jews than to their greater concern over the Antipas-Herodias scandal in Galilee.
The smoldering indignation of the people at this notorious misalliance was being fanned into flame by a newly popular desert prophet named John the Baptizer, who was holding forth in the rugged badlands east of Jerusalem toward the Jordan River. John would have escaped Pilate’s notice but for two factors which could prove dangerous when combined: first, the man was apparently announcing some oncoming world crisis—“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” was his most typical pronouncement in reports Pilate gleaned concerning the wilderness preacher; second, great numbers of Judeans of all classes were marching out into the desert to hear him. Many were being converted and washed at the Jordan in a purification rite called baptism.
Prophets of judgment and doom were familiar enough in Pilate’s world; they cluttered public squares from the Athenian agora to the Roman Forum. But they had few listeners, fewer converts. The Baptizer, by contrast, was commanding multitudes with his oratory, and the locale was not sophisticated Rome or Greece, but volatile, ever-turbulent Judea. Here, possibly, was another pseudo-Messiah in the making, another religio-political troublemaker who could add to the administrative woes of the prefect of Judea.
Pilate dispatched an Aramaic-speaking aide down to the Judean wilds to hear John and report back to him on the movement. The intelligence that he provided, after his return, answered a few questions, but raised so many more that it left Pilate thoroughly perplexed.
“This John makes no Messianic claims for himself, so you can bury your anxiety on that score,” the aide told Pilate. “One look at the man, of course, would convince anyone that he’s not the Jewish Messiah. Hardly.” He laughed. “He wears a straggly beard and a rough camelskin tunic with a leather belt. I inquired about his background, and it seems he was associated for a while with the Essene monastery just above the Asphalt Lake. Then he launched out into the wilderness on his own, keeping himself alive on a diet of honeycombs and—would you believe it—insects, locusts!”
“Friend, fried grasshoppers are a delicacy on Roman tables,” Pilate advised. “It seems your Baptizer is something of a primitive gourmet…But how do you know he doesn’t have Messianic ambitions?”
“While I was there, some priests from Jerusalem asked him about it, and he said, ‘I am not the Messiah.’ Then they inquired, ‘Are you the prophet Elijah?’ He said, ‘No.’ Finally, they demanded point-blank, ‘Who are you then? What do you have to say about yourself?’”
“How did he answer that?”
“‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord.’”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That he’s the forerunner of the Messiah, who’s just about ready to appear in Judea.”
Pilate frowned. “How did this news strike the people?”
“Hard to say. Some seemed disappointed that John himself was not the Messiah, since he preaches a powerful message and is regarded as a kind of oracle for advice. For instance, some of the pious folk asked him how they ought to live, and he gave them a simple message about sharing. But then some tax collectors also wanted counsel, and he suggested, ‘Collect no more than your due.’”
“Would that they did just that!” Pilate grunted.
“Part of our cohort from the Antonia was out there to police the crowds, and several of the troops asked John, ‘And we, what shall we do?’”
Pilate moved forward in his chair to catch every syllable of the reply.
“The Baptizer told them, ‘Rob no one, either by violence or by fraud,’ I believe he said, and…oh yes: ‘Be content with your wages.’”
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�By Hercules, that’s good advice!” Pilate chuckled. “I’m beginning to like the Baptizer. How did the Jewish authorities react to this fellow?”
“With extreme suspicion. And you can’t blame them. When some of the Pharisees and Sadducees came to hear him, this John blasted them with such a verbal assault as I’ve never heard before. ‘You brood of vipers!’ he snarled. ‘Who warned you to flee from the approaching wrath? Repent!’”
“Brood of vipers?” Pilate laughed. “A real Demosthenes!”
“That’s about it. Oh, later in Jerusalem I heard a rumor that the Baptizer had actually singled out some Galilean in his crowds as the coming Messiah.”
“What? Any demonstration by the people in support of this Galilean?”
“Nothing I heard about.”
Pilate paused to think. “And John the Baptizer…what, if anything, should we do about him?”
“I think he’s moving beyond the Jordan, so we can’t touch him. That’s Herod Antipas’s territory.”
“And even if he stays in Judea,” Pilate said, “I think we should let him alone. Unless, of course, he raises a sedition. He may be a good counterpoise to the Jerusalem authorities. The greater the number of divisions among the Jews, the harder it’ll be for them to unite against us. Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, Essenes, followers of the Baptizer—several more parties wouldn’t hurt at all.” Pilate reflected, then smiled. “And John’s attacks on the tetrarch of Galilee and his beloved Herodias make me look positively virtuous by comparison.”
As it happened, John the Baptizer was no long-distance critic. Instead of castigating Antipas from the safety of Pilate’s Judea, the desert prophet boldly crossed over into the territory of the tetrarch to continue his preaching.
During the remainder of the year 29, Roman travelers visiting Caesarea told Pilate of dramatic changes taking place back in Rome. An era had passed, they said, with the death of the aged empress-mother Livia, wife of Augustus. Surprisingly, Tiberius had not left Capri to attend his own mother’s funeral. Public business detained him, he claimed. But all Rome knew that mother and son had been estranged ever since her attempt to interfere in affairs of state. Indeed, many gossiped that Livia herself was the real reason for Tiberius’s prolonged sojourn at Capri.