by Paul L Maier
The dinner Tuesday evening at the Hasmonean palace was a feast of friendship to honor repaired relations between Herod Antipas and Pilate. Not that either of them had any delusions about a genuine cordiality being established. It was more an unofficial peace treaty or at least a truce, an agreement to cooperate with each other in maintaining their separate positions in the uncertain world of a suspicious Tiberius. There would be no more tattling to Rome, they agreed, which was a small diplomatic victory for Pilate, since Antipas had been the chief offender on that score.
Not much was said about the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. Though Antipas was privately happy that he now had company in the select fraternity of Palestinian prophet-killers, he did not want to embarrass his guest. What talk there was centered rather on speculations about the empty tomb and the resurrection rumor which had now saturated Jerusalem. It was all that Antipas’s aides Chuza and Manaen seemed able to talk about, Pilate noticed. They were exchanging the latest information, cheerfully careless of the fact that the man who had condemned Jesus was sitting at the head of the table and overhearing them.
Antipas would have silenced the pair, but for his own inordinate interest in the supernatural and the spectacular. The man who once feared that John the Baptizer might have risen from the dead now cocked his ears to learn the latest gossip on the empty sepulcher. When his guests left that night, he would ask Chuza and Manaen for all the details. Pilate would also learn them from Procula.
As was fitting for Jerusalem, the ladies of the party were dining separately, and their whole evening was devoted to bartering news about the missing body. One of them could speak authoritatively, but earlier in the banquet she had hesitated to do so. It was only after much coaxing that Joanna told her story. She was the wife of Chuza, Antipas’s chief steward and general manager of estates.
“Our Joanna was there when it happened,” Herodias told Procula with a sarcastic leer. “Why she’s been a follower of Jesus ever since he supposedly healed her in Galilee. She used to keep that confidential, but now she doesn’t care who knows, do you, Joanna?”
“Please, Joanna, tell us your story,” Procula interrupted, to stop Herodias’s badgering.
A little hesitant, yet deliberate, Joanna began. “Well, several women followers of his and I were worried that he had not been buried properly. So we went out to Joseph’s tomb early Sunday morning to anoint the body of Jesus with spices. You see, we didn’t know this had already been done.”
“You say you went out Sunday at dawn?” Procula inquired.
“Yes.”
“Why not Saturday morning, just after he died?”
“The Sabbath, Lady Procula.”
“Of course.”
“Just as we got to the sepulcher, the earth trembled and the great stone rolled away from the entrance to the tomb. We were frightened, of course, but also a little relieved because we had no idea how we women would be able to budge that stone.” She smiled shyly. “But then we were terrified: standing inside the sepulcher was some white and radiant personage, who said, ‘Don’t be afraid. You’re looking for Jesus who was crucified. But he is not here. He has risen, as he promised. Come, see the place where he lay. And then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead.’”
“Who said all this?” Herodias snarled. “And where were the guards?”
“I think he was an angelos, Mistress, a messenger from God. The guards were there, but they were horrified. I believe they ran back into Jerusalem.”
“My, but the story grows!” Herodias observed sardonically.
“Please continue, Joanna,” urged Procula.
With a look of joyful serenity, she said, “Naturally, we were still shaken by it all. But thrilled at the incredible news. Then we hurried off to tell the disciples. But—but—”
“Out with it!” Herodias snapped.
“I fear you won’t believe me, Mistress…”
“Trust us and tell us, Joanna,” begged Procula.
“As we were returning to Jerusalem, we suddenly saw Jesus in our path.”
“What!”
“Of course we fell down in adoration before him. It was the Lord! It was! You must believe me! He smiled and reminded us of his mission. He also told us to alert his disciples, which we did.”
After they returned from the Hasmonean palace that night, Procula excitedly reported Joanna’s story to Pilate. What stupefied him was not just the fantastic information, but the almost sympathetic ebullience with which Procula related it. “Don’t tell me you believe this bizarre business?” he said with a sniff.
“I didn’t say I did. I didn’t say I didn’t,” she triffled. “I’m just reporting what Joanna told us at dinner. Of course, Herodias tried to laugh it all off, but I thought she was cackling rather nervously. The wife of Manaen had tears in her eyes.”
“Procula, I don’t really care about their emotional reactions,” said Pilate testily. “I just want to know if you, as a sensible Roman matron, can give any credence to such myths, such hallucinations on the part of this Joanna. That woman was delirious with grief.”
“She was not suffering from delusions,” Procula retorted angrily. “She’s one of the most sensible women I’ve met. And she wasn’t flaunting this information. We had to worm it out of her, since she was afraid of Herodias.”
“Oh—the whole thing was a wish or illusion. Do you notice how it was women who claimed to see a resurrected Jesus? Of course women! You creatures are far more imaginative than men. We could never dream up such a story!” He laughed, then frowned. “Jesus is dead, Procula. Accept the fact and be done with it.”
“I’m not finished, Pilate. Joanna and the women hurried to tell his disciples, but, like you, the men thought it was all nonsense. Evidently they have the same opinion of women which you seem to hold. But that night, Sunday night, it was different. While they were gathered at the house they’re using here in Jerusalem, Jesus appeared to them. The disciples thought it was a ghost, but he ate some of their food and had them touch his scarred hands and feet to show that he was very much flesh and blood.”
Pilate began perspiring. Gone was the carefree bravado. But it was not fear which clouded his features so much as anger. “You say there are men who would swear they saw Jesus alive?”
“Yes…and women too!”
Pilate jerked his head about and yelled for a servant, who came running. “Go to the Antonia and summon the centurion and the three auxiliaries who crucified Jesus of Nazareth.”
“At this hour, Master?”
“Yes, at this hour—now—immediately!”
Procula let her husband vent his steam. Then she ventured quietly, “What do you hope to learn, Pilate?”
“A solution to this ridiculous mystery which has been addling my wits, an alternative I’d not thought of till this moment. Let’s say I believe your story, Joanna’s story. Suppose Jesus is alive. You know why he is? Because he never died, that’s why. It would explain everything. Why he ‘died’ too soon on that cross, for one.” Pilate paced the room. “Yes, it all falls into place now. Someone gave him a drink from a sponge, the centurion said, and shortly after that Jesus presumably died. What likely happened was that one of his disciples had put a deep narcotic into the posca soaked up by that sponge…You’ll remember that they did not break his legs so he never suffocated. After he was carefully ‘buried’ by Joseph, another of his henchmen in on the scheme, he revived in the cool of the tomb as the drug wore off. There were no guards on Friday night, so he climbed out without anyone’s help; or his followers were there to assist with the stone. He rested through Saturday. He recuperated by Sunday. Then he went back to the tomb to make his appearance.”
“Magnificent, Pilate,” said Procula quietly. “But remember, one of the troops did something more lethal to Jesus than breaking his legs: he thrust a spear into his heart.”
“That’s why I called for the execution detail.”
The quaternion of soldiers arr
ived and reported to Pilate. “Centurion,” he demanded, “what was in that sponge from which the crucified Galilean drank shortly before he died this past Friday?”
The four troops peered drowsily at Pilate. Their getting out of bed and hurrying across a sleeping Jerusalem only to hear a question like this gave an air of unreality to Pilate’s query. The centurion asked that it be repeated. Then he replied, “What was in that sponge? Plain, ordinary posca—vinegar and water. What else? It came from my canteen.”
“No one tampered with that canteen?”
“Of course not. At the beginning, some of the women tried to offer the Nazarene some drugged wine, but he wouldn’t take it. All he drank later was our own good old sour posca.”
Procula looked at her husband, who avoided her eyes.
“Now, Centurion, this is a far more important question,” he said. “Tell me again why you didn’t break the prophet’s legs. Wasn’t that my order?”
“With all due respect, sir, not quite. Your message read, ‘You may break legs to induce death near sundown.’ But the one on the center cross was already dead, so we didn’t have to—”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“That was clear, Prefect. There was no breathing, not the slightest twitch of a muscle, the pallor, the glassy stare of death in his eyes—there was no question.” The other men nodded in agreement.
“Then why did you feel it necessary to spear him with a lance?”
“Just an executioner’s gesture, I suppose, to make assurance doubly sure.”
“Which of you threw that spear?”
“I did, sir,” a burly young auxiliary replied, “only I didn’t throw it. He was too close for that. I just drove it into his side as far as I could.”
“How far was that?”
“Well over a foot, sir.”
“Then what happened? Did he gasp, or cry out?”
“No, not a thing. He’d been dead for at least an hour, I’d say. When I pulled the lance back out, blood and water followed it.”
Procula looked as if she would faint. Pilate had an attendant assist her from the room.
“Show me where that spear went in.”
The fellow opened his tunic and put his finger between the fifth and sixth ribs on his left side.
“It missed the ribs?”
“Well, it went between them.”
“At what angle?”
The soldier took his dagger and pointed it, describing a thirty-five-degree angle from his chest.
“It could hardly have missed the heart, could it?”
“No, Prefect. Nor the lungs.”
“No question, then, about him being quite dead?”
“I’d wager my life on it, sir.”
“Do you know why I had to recheck all this with you?” Pilate asked the centurion.
“To be honest, Prefect, we have heard rumors about the Nazarene…coming back to life.”
“That will be all, Centurion. Take your men back to the Antonia.”
The next morning, Pilate summoned Joseph of Arimathea to inquire exactly how he had buried Jesus. The councilor replied that he and the fellow Sanhedrist, Nicodemus, had been somewhat hurried, since the Sabbath was approaching, but all the usual customs had been observed, including the placing of a downy feather just below Jesus’ nostrils for about ten minutes. The feather had not moved. Jesus was dead.
Pilate asked Joseph the final query he could logically muster: Did Jesus have a twin brother? But Joseph shook his head.
Wearily, Pilate returned to his original supposition of a dead Jesus, whose body was stolen by his disciples on Friday night. Subsequent “appearances” to his followers would have to be hallucinations or optical illusions of some kind—or lies.
This, at any rate, seemed to be the explanation over at the temple, for Malchus, Caiaphas’s servant, delivered the following message shortly before noon:
Joseph Caiaphas to Pontius Pilatus, peace.
The followers of the Nazarene will stop at nothing, as you have doubtless heard. They came by night and stole his body while the guards were sleeping. Therefore if any claims are made to his so-called “resurrection,” you will know how to interpret these. We are grateful for your cooperation. Do not think harshly of our guards for falling asleep. They have been exhausted over the last days in pursuing this case. Peace.
Pilate had contempt for such an excuse in behalf of sleeping guards. Didn’t they set up shifts? They would not have come off so lightly were they Roman auxiliaries.
Suddenly the import of Caiaphas’s note struck him with crushing force. Why had the high priest not resorted to the obvious loophole of an unguarded tomb on Friday night to account for the disappearance of Jesus’ body, rather than blaming it on guards sleeping on Saturday night? Friday night was the one hiatus in the grave’s surveillance to which Pilate had been clinging in his maddening quest for a logical explanation to the events of the weekend. Why had Caiaphas overlooked it? Unless his guards had proof that the theft occurred between Saturday night and Sunday dawn.
“Malchus! If you ever spoke the truth in your life, don’t fail to do so now.”
“Yes, Excellency?”
“Do you know any of the police who were sent to keep watch over the sepulcher in which Jesus of Nazareth was buried?”
“Yes, I know several of the men who were on duty.”
“Did you talk to them about what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, when they set up their bivouac around the tomb on Saturday morning, they certainly wouldn’t have bothered to roll back the stone to…to see if the body of Jesus were still inside, would they?”
“Yes, they would, Excellency. In fact, the chief priests instructed them to do that even before setting up their watch. The body was there, wrapped in linen bands. Certainly they wouldn’t have sealed the stone without first determining that there was something inside to seal.”
Pilate had worded his question so as to elicit a negative reply most easily. He wanted a negative answer. The puzzle would have been solved. Since stealing a body from a fully guarded tomb had to be impossible, the theft would have occurred Friday night, with the watch sealing a tomb they didn’t know was empty on Saturday, and then imagining the robbery had transpired Saturday night when the earth tremor shoved the stone aside Sunday morning to reveal the empty tomb. But now the last exit had been blocked, the last straw of logic wrenched from the clutch of a man sinking into an intellectual quandary.
“Well,” Pilate finally shrugged, “at least Caiaphas was honest enough not to use a Friday night theft as a convenient excuse.”
“He wasn’t being honest.”
Pilate was certain he had misunderstood Malchus. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said, my master wasn’t being honest.”
“What do you mean?” Pilate asked in astonishment. Now the servant grew frightened and hesitant.
“Go on, Malchus. I give you my word that I’ll not report anything you say. Speak on.”
“The prophet’s body was not stolen by his disciples. I was there when the guards reported everything to the chief priests. They said it happened at dawn. Half of them were on guard, half sleeping. Suddenly there was an earthquake. A fearful radiance flashed in and around the sepulcher. The watch heard a man’s voice talking to some women who had just arrived, saying that Yeshu had risen. Most of the guards were so panicked that they fled. Some, with more courage, cautiously looked inside the tomb after the women had left. They saw only grave clothes.”
Pilate was seriously disturbed. The story corroborated the women’s. He asked Malchus, “Then why did Caiaphas write me about a stolen body, sleeping guards?”
“Because this is now the official story. The chief priests met with the scribes and elders to decide what to do. They concluded that Yeshu removed himself from the grave by some fearfully occult necromancy, a sorcerer’s trick of some kind, inspired by Satan. But if they allowed the guards’ story
to become public knowledge, even if they gave a demonic explanation for it, the people would say Yeshu was indeed the Messiah. Everyone would flock to his cause until Roman legions would finally have to put down the movement. They couldn’t have that, so they had the guards claim that Yeshu’s followers stole the body while they were sleeping.”
For some time Pilate looked at Malchus without really seeing him. Then he clapped him on the shoulder. “I appreciate your honesty.”
“If my Lord Caiaphas learns anything of this, I am undone, of course.”
“Your story will not be divulged.”
And then, while dismissing him, Pilate said, “One more thing, Malchus. Don’t feel you have to answer this, but just why were you so candid with me? You were, after all, compromising your own master.”
The servant smiled. “Because I now have a higher master, Excellency. Yeshu Hannosri healed me, and so I believe the other reports about him must be true also. I merely wanted you to know the truth.”
“He healed you? How?”
Malchus related the incident of his severed ear while Pilate watched him skeptically. “Are you sure it was cut off, Malchus?”
“It was on the ground…”
“And now, I suppose, you believe he actually…rose from the dead?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Good day, Malchus.”
More of the inexplicable. Pilate furrowed his brow. Because of the ear story and the servant’s new faith, he questioned the reliability of Malchus’s statements in their discussion. No, the man wasn’t necessarily coloring the facts, but what if he, too, were under a spell of some kind? In that case, would he ever learn the truth about the bizarre events of the past weekend?
Pilate arranged to leave Jerusalem in short order, delegating to the Antonia commandant the task of maintaining law and order during the remaining days of the Pesach.
He wanted to escape the extravagant fanaticism of the city, that Holy Utopia where otherwise respectable men and women dreamed dreams and conjured up visions. Procula, however, wished she might have had a further talk with Joanna, or better still, with some of the disciples of the man her husband had sent to the cross. It was not to be. Procula had to leave Jerusalem, but she carried with her a treasury of indelible impressions she would never shake off. Nor would she try.