Fifth Gospel (32 page)

BETRAYAL

C
aiaphas the high priest and chairman of the Sanhedrin sat among his priests and rabbis in the cold room lit by torches and bothered by draughts trying to prevent himself from scratching the terrible itch, which like worms crawled under the skin of this back.

His physicians were all bent in the direction of the Pharisees, he was sure of it, for they all agreed his itch was due to transgressions of the law:
he had either eaten honey not blessed separately, or crumbs from the table of a gentile, he had either kindled the incense before entering the sanctuary or worst of all spilt the water of libation upon the altar on the Feast of Tabernacles.

Incantations had not worked, nor had the poultice of onion, aniseed and saffron
, which he had worn day and night for a year, whose smell being combined with his natural perfume, caused revulsion in all those who came near him.

How he hated the Pharisees!
He hated them because he was a Sadducee and it was only natural that a Priest of the line of Levi should hate such a mongrel breed; for they were a plague on the earth with their endless laws and their predilection for religious concerns. It was ill fortune indeed the Sanhedrin was composed of both Sadducees and Pharisees in somewhat equal parts, since it forced him to be conciliatory and amicable to these upstarts! Meaning he must live always with one eye keenly upon the Romans, to whom he owed his office and its privileges, and the other upon those Pharisees, who hated all things Roman, and would, by the by, subject even the light of the Sun itself to their laws!

In truth
he did not put them beyond causing his itch with their evil eye!

But it was not only his eyes that were made to stretch to unnatural performances
. Caiaphas’ ears, too, were also pulled in diverse directions. One ear was reserved for his father-in-law, the bilious Ananias, whose intrusions, disapproval and superior scorn he suffered day in and day out, while the other ear was reserved for his wife, the old man’s daughter, whose only trace of womanliness was her constant nagging.

He surmised that his itch came, therefore, from a stretching of his soul in every direction at once! A stretch that his poor skin was forced to follow!
Of course he prickled and broke out in sores!

Oh the
hour was late! And beyond his bodily distress his head was also full of inconvenience. Still, he could blame no one but himself, for he had called this council together at this hour so that it might be held in secret. For only this way could the exclusion of those members of the Sanhedrin known to be sympathisers of that annoying Jesus of Nazareth be guaranteed. Joseph of Arimathea, Gamaliel and Nicodemus, had succumbed to Jesus’ soft words an he knew they would have proved unhelpful to his plans.

For his part, Caiaphas had grown a special hate over the years for the arrogant Nazarene
, a hatred that had fired up the festering wounds on his back whenever he thought of him. Two nights ago, quite alone, he betook himself to the sanctuary to consult his priestly oracle. He threw the sacred stones over the altar and in their patterns he had discerned death for Jesus of Nazareth at the hand of Jerusalem’s enemy. He made a resolve, then and there, to side with power: he would sneak in first and make a present of the insurrectionist.

Afte
rwards, he had sent his guards to seize Jesus, but the stupid men had returned time and again saying that many spoke like Jesus and looked like Jesus, so they had not known whom to seize!

Now in the cold hall a sudden raised voice
brought him to this testing moment.

‘Caiaphas! This man does too many miracles
! He raises the dead from the
temple sleep
in broad daylight and the people are in a frenzy over it! Something must be done!’

The council erupted in agreement:

‘Blasphemer!’ said an ungainly Pharisee.

‘Devil!’
said a Sadducee with sheep’s eyes.

A crusty old rabbi shook his fist.
‘Conjuror of magic tricks!’

‘
No, he is more…he is the son of Beelzebub!’

The
roar of their words was so fierce that Caiaphas thought their vehemence had seized the torches at that moment to make them flap.

‘What will he do next?’
said a pale priest with no teeth, ‘If we let this man go on his way the people will believe in him and what will that mean for us?’

‘
I’ll tell you what it shall means, Jeroboam!’ answered another. ‘The Romans won’t stand for it and our temple and nation will be taken from us!’

Supporters of this
rang out their loud approval.

A Pharisee tried to rise above the din, ‘All week he is at the
temple! We’ve tried to trap him and make him speak blasphemy, but he twists our laws around his tongue!’

A Sadducee called Simon
, snarled, ‘That’s because, you have so many laws, that loopholes can be found everywhere – loopholes big enough for thieves and murderers to crawl through!’

Rabbi Tolomei,
said, ‘Without laws, we are no better than animals! But you would not know it, being an animal yourself!’

‘
Listen to me, to rid ourselves of this animal, we have to forget laws!’ The toothless priest countered.

The room broke out in
to a tirade of disagreement and insult. When a representative of the Pharisees spoke, a representative of the Sadducees countered it, and so the meeting degenerated into a free for all.

‘He healed a
blind man on the Sabbath! This is enough to convict him!’ said one.

‘But it is permissible to pour wine over the eyelids on a Sabbath!’ said another
. ‘Since it’s considered washing!’

‘On the eyes
, yes, you fool! But not
in
the eyes! And not with spit, since that constitutes a remedy and remedies are forbidden on the Sabbath from the neck upwards. Besides, he made clay with his spit and applied it to the eyes – this is work!’

‘
He has transgressed the Sabbath many times!’

‘But the people
love him!’

‘Even the proselytes, those hateful Greeks
, are spellbound! What shall we do?’

‘
Cut his throat!’ said a priest.

‘
This is above the law!’ said a rabbi. ‘I will not stand for it!’

‘Can we not appeal to Rome?’
asked another priest.

‘If we bring Rome into it, you idiots, what shall the people say
– that we are licking the skirts of our enemies!’ retorted a rabbi.

‘This is no good! You are all fools, the people will revolt against us, for they love him!’
snapped another.

Caiaphas
was fed up. He stood but no man noticed it. Finally, he yelled, ‘Silence!’ And there was quiet. ‘We can pay men to hate him and those that love him shall not wish to do so when they learn that I shall impose the highest excommunication extending to all places and all persons on any man who comes forward in support of Jesus. Meaning that such a man must be considered dead by his relatives, for he shall never again have intercourse with his family and his people. He shall be shown the road out of the city and told never to return again to the temple. Who would risk such a fate to defend a blasphemer?’

There was a sudden silence.

‘But how can you do this?’ the toothless priest said, ‘Since any accused man has the right to answer to accusations and to witnesses who can speak on his behalf without fear of excommunication!’

Caiaphas
waved it away, ‘Yes yes…we shall listen benevolently to our little heretic and it is my guess that if the right questions are asked, he shall profane the name of God again. He must do so before the crowds, so that thereafter it is clear that
whoever
confesses that he is the Christ is likewise profaning the name of God and shall suffer the same fate he suffers!’

‘What you speak of is unlawful to my ears!’ cried
the ugly rabbi. ‘Such doings are evil!’

Caiaphas bore down his condescension over the Pharisee and said, quite plainly, ‘
Is it not fate that this man should die? Is not everything foreordained to the Pharisees?’

Another spoke out against it, ‘If we do not follow the law this council shall be defiled!’

Caiaphas stamped his foot and brought down his crosier at the same time. ‘Silence! In this Jesus is right…you Pharisees
are
hypocrites! You say that pure water does not lose its purity, despite the vessel, and yet you cannot see how this council will not lose its purity for having dirtied its hands to cleanse itself of a defiler!’

A
great commotion erupted, one side against the other, until Caiaphas, irritated and itchy, stood and raised his crosier.

An uneasy q
uiet fell again.

He felt a chill in his kidneys. ‘No matter how you see it, that man will bring our nation to unrest
and possibly to its ruin! Shall an entire nation perish because of one man? No! One man shall die for a nation! We will take him, trial him, and let him answer our questions. In this way our conduct will be lawful.’

T
he room broke out again.

‘But how do you propose
to take him, Caiaphas? No one knows which one he is, for he and all his followers look the same and they speak the same way, one moment one speaks and then another?’

‘Kill any one member of his group and you will put fear into them all!’
answered an old Sadducee.

At this point
Ananias interjected with his thin voice, ‘I disagree! If we take the wrong man Jesus will continue to foment the people. Even our guards are deceived by him!’

The elders consulted with one another and the room was
again abuzz with conversation.

One man stood and said, ‘How are we to know with certainty
which is the right man?’

Caiaphas sat down full of satisfaction
, since this man had asked the question he had been waiting for. ‘Only one of the disciples, one close to him can say which one he is. And one of his disciples has come and is now among us!’

The gathering of elders looked
to where Caiaphas was pointing, to the cold shadows of one of the yawning arches. From it emerged a man, dark of hair and eye and red of beard. He moved out of the inky hollow like a wild beast coming from a thicket, looking about him with the cold eye of suspicion, not knowing if a snare or an arrow awaited him.

A shiver of whispers was sent running through the small council.

Caiaphas grinned from his mouth to his very ears, but something caught his eye then…something in the bearing of the man bespoke an exchange with death, something mildly disconcerting. It was as if to look at this man called Judas, was to look into the horrid depths of one’s own soul and to find beasts hidden therein. His heart thumped. His fellows must have seen it for a chill silence was poured out over the room. A momentary thought came to Caiaphas and it caused him to hold his breath: was he making a bargain with a man or was this the devil himself, which stood before him? And if a devil what would befall Israel from such a bargain?

‘He is a me
mber of the Sicarri!’ said one.

‘What if the Romans hear of it!’ said another.

Among these words Caiaphas continued holding his breath until he could hold it no more, and when he let it out, the thought went with it and was dispersed about the room, and he saw it for how it was – these days one could not choose one’s instruments.

‘His name is Judas of Cariot,’ Caiaphas said, ‘one of the disciples of Jesus and he is a friend of Pontius Pilate. He offers us a solution to all our problems. Come forward, Judas and tell us your proposal.’

Judas
spoke with eyes shifting from this to that. His words in Hebrew were fine, very near scholarly and his voice was an odd mixture of passion and practicality, ‘There is no way for you to tell which of them is Jesus without me,’ he said, ‘the others all take his place and he speaks through them…their love for him prevents you from knowing who he is.’

‘Yes, yes,
get to the point!’ Caiaphas said, desiring that all of it should move along, ‘Have you come to tell us what we already know?’

‘I can show
you which one he is!’ Judas let it out all in one go.

The room exploded with conversations and rumbles and utterances.

‘And why would you do this, Judas of Cariot? For advantage…or…money?’ Caiaphas said, looking askance at Ananias with a smile of satisfaction.

Judas hid behind h
is dark brows and said nothing.

‘Money then!’ Caiaphas
cried merrily, ‘Silver, the colour of the soul…in return for betrayal!’

The word betrayal seemed to sting Judas. ‘It is Israel that is betrayed!’ he burst out
. ‘He is not the Messiah that was promised!’