Chapter 29: Pharisees, High Priests, and Judas

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book II: The Rabbi
Part Five–Messiah
                                      

The next day Jesus strode into the busy outer courtyard of the Temple and chased out the money changers and animal sellers as he had done three years before. “Get out, you sons of dogs!” he commanded. “You belong in the gutters of the worst alleys in the lower city!”

He shooed them out with his hands, walking behind them. Three years before he had needed a whip. This time, though, so great were the anger and power on his lined face and the authority in his voice that, when people saw him, they ran before they even knew what they were doing.

As he walked about the cleared Temple courtyard, his red hair flaming in the midday sun, he grabbed a broom and began sweeping the courtyard floor of the animal dung lying everywhere. As he worked, people cautiously began filtering back into the enclosure. The scent of the dung was strong.

Suddenly Jesus called out again. “You there! With the scrolls under your arm and the blankets over your shoulder! Do you not know the Temple is a place for prayer and discussion? This is not a thoroughfare of the city, a shortcut between streets! It is reserved for those who seek a quiet refuge!”

The man Jesus pointed at, in expensive robes and with long, carefully groomed hair, looked at Jesus in fright. Quickly he hurried out. Others carrying similar burdens disappeared out the gates as fast as they could.

“Come back when you are done with your errands,” Jesus called after them, more gently. “You will be thankful for what you find.”

He gestured to everyone left in the wide court. Most of the people were staring at him. “Come to me, you who are sick and lame,” he called. “Today is the day of healing for you who can accept my power.”

Jesus reached out and touched a small boy, with curly locks, on the arm. The boy’s flesh was shriveled from an old, severe lamp-oil burn. The wound suddenly became pink and shiny with new skin.

In minutes Jesus had several dozen hurt and maimed people around him while hundreds of others looked on. As the day wore on, Pharisees of the Temple service and Sadducees, many of whom were the owners of money-changing booths that Jesus had overturned earlier in the day, came and went on the edge of the crowd. They muttered to each other. The Sadducees, dignified and confident in their richer clothing and way of life, turned up their noses at the horrible smells coming off the sick people Jesus was healing. Waving sprigs of mint in front of their noses, they quickly left.

The Pharisee lawyers, though, often stayed on. They generally were of a lower class than the Sadducees, anyway. Pharisees were used to the dung-and-sweat smells of the Temple courts and the sight of blood and disease from sacrificial animals and sick humans. They watched Jesus carefully and listened intently to catch the slightest slip Jesus might make against the Laws.

This same watchfulness and waiting continued the next day, Tuesday, as Jesus healed more people in the Temple and taught simple little lessons to the crowds. His envoys and friends came and went around him, helping as they could.

Finally the Pharisees and the officials of the Sanhedrin could wait no longer. Caiaphas the high priest and his father-in-law Annas, who was the skinny and aging secret power behind the whole of the Pharisee political party, wanted Jesus killed, but legally. They sent out a command to force Jesus into a falsehood.

The Pharisee lawyers closed in. “By what authority do you teach?” a rangy, dark Pharisee scribe demanded, over the heads of the crowds.

Jesus swiveled and looked in surprise. His heart began pounding rapidly. He had become used to these priests hovering on the edge of the crowd, ever silent and threatening, but never doing anything.

He smiled, now, with just his lips. His eyes danced in cold delight as he regarded the scribe. Finally, Jesus knew, the Pharisees were making their move.

He touched the old man before him lightly on the shoulder. “I will talk with you later, grandfather.”

Then Jesus faced the Pharisee. “Answer me another question,” Jesus told him, over the head of the people about him. “By what authority did John, whom Herod killed, teach? Was his authority given him by the spirit realm, or by men?”

The scribe scowled and looked at the other scribes who had sidled up beside him. “What am I supposed to answer?” he asked them in a low voice.

A tall, bony-faced Pharisee shook his head carefully. He spoke so only his fellow priests could hear. “We cannot say, ‘from the spirit realm,” the Pharisee told them. “For then he will claim the same authority and ask why we don’t believe in him.”

The younger scribe scowled and looked all around him. “But look at these crowds watching us! We don’t dare claim that the authority for either of them comes just from men! These people think John and this imposter are prophets!”

The older Pharisee turned and faced Jesus. “We do not know!” he said.

The other Pharisees looked at each other and nodded smugly.

Jesus smiled. He glanced at the high walls of the Temple across the courtyard. “Then neither will I tell you the source of my own authority!” he said.

The Pharisees’ mouths dropped open. Then they glared at him. This man was playing games with them.

“Listen!” Jesus commanded them. “A man who owned a vineyard had two sons. To each son he said, ‘You will go now and work with the grapes.’

“The first son said, ‘I will not go today! I am too tired!’ But later he went anyway. The second son said, ‘Yes, Father, I go right away.’ But he whiled away the time and never got there that day.”

Jesus peered at the little group of Pharisees standing back from him. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see some people in the crowded courtyard beginning to smile.

“Now,” asked Jesus. “which of these two sons did the will of his father?”

The young, dark Pharisee looked at the others questioningly. They nudged him to go ahead.

“The first son,” he told Jesus. He looked proudly but suspiciously at Jesus as if he had beaten Jesus in a game.

“You are right,” Jesus said. “But listen. For truly I tell you Pharisees and scribes, the tax collectors and whores will find the spirit realm before you! For they listened to John and me and believe us, while you who teach the spirit’s Laws do not even recognize the touch of the spirit when it comes to you.”

He looked at them angrily. “Beware, you fools! The day of your reckoning is coming! Soon you will be tossed into the outer darkness while men and women much smaller in power and intelligence than you will pierce the throne of heaven and ascend into the light. God is within! Cannot you break even one second of your concentration on legalities and moral condemning to discover your true self within? There lies what you seek; it is not in empty words and never will be! How you will weep and tear your hair when you die and all your pretenses fall away. Then you will see, with the naked eyes of spirit, just what you have wasted in this life.

The Pharisees scowled at him. Several shook their fists. People in the crowd, though, were laughing. Others were sitting, quietly rocking back and forth, as they listened to the words of Jesus, trying to memorize them. Andrew and the Greek envoy Thomas, sitting nearby, handed a rough skin of water up to Jesus.

He took it, drinking the cool spring water long and deep. He was tense with anticipation, waiting for the Pharisees to attack him again. He wondered why they insisted on trapping him legally, looking for him to speak against the Laws. Why hadn’t their secret killers found him and knifed him? But then, he reminded himself, afterward they would have to account to the mobs of angry people who would demand to know why a citizen of Israel had been killed without trial. A revolution might boil up out of such frustration and anger. That was the last thing the Pharisees wanted. The Romans would interfere, killing everyone in sight. Pharisee heads might roll, and the Romans might declare the Sanhedrin illegal.

“Master. Master!” The voice flew up and out of the noisy crowds.

Jesus turned and saw a bright-faced young man with a recently trimmed beard waving his hand.

“Yes?” Jesus answered. He sensed a sudden danger that was coming from the young man, whose eyes were slightly glassy and his elaborate courtesy somewhat overdone.

“Master,” the young man said. “I know that you are a kind man, and intelligent and one of the greatest prophets our country has ever seen.”

Jesus glanced at the Pharisees, who had withdrawn further back in a tight group against the high-rising inner Temple wall. Some of them had their backs to the great blocks of stone. All of them were strangely silent and looking back at him with intent vultures’ eyes. None of them was watching the young man. It was as if they already knew him, and were gauging Jesus response.

“Tell me, Master,” the young man continued. “Should we really go on paying taxes to Caesar?”

Jesus’ eyes flashed as he suddenly felt, psychically, the connection between the young man and the Pharisees. The young man was one of them.

“You fools,” Jesus quietly said. “How long must I bear with you? Bring me a sample of the taxes you pay.”

The young man flushed, but he dug into a money purse hanging at his belt and pulled out a silver coin. He took it up to Jesus as people shifted right and left to move out of his way. He held the coin out, sending a drifting air of cinnamon scent with it, and avoided Jesus’ eyes.

Jesus took the coin. “You see?” He held it up. “Is this not Caesar’s face and name?”

The young man nodded. “That’s right. It was minted in Rome.”

Jesus handed the coin back. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s!” he told the young man. “And to the true self, give what belongs to it.”

Judas Ischariot, who also was there, suddenly jerked upright. His eyes grew round as he thought of the followers’ silver coins he was carrying in his purse, and those held for them in money caches in Capernaum and Bethany with friends. It occurred to Judas that even though these coins were charitable gifts, which the Romans didn’t normally tax, still the amount of them was so large that perhaps he should have mentioned it to the lawful tax counters. He shifted uneasily and wondered if he should talk about this with Jesus.

The young man who had asked Jesus the question about taxes flushed a deeper red and nervously glanced at his Pharisee masters as he quickly pushed his way out of the crowd. The Pharisees were scowling even more and scraping their sandaled feet on the smooth stone pavement. The oldest one opened his mouth to speak. His angry, flashing eyes and Jesus’ met and clashed with an almost audible ring, over the heads of the crowd.

But before the Pharisee could utter his lashing rebuke, someone interrupted. “Excuse me,” a pleasant voice spoke out. The tone of it, though easygoing and respectful, commanded attention. Everyone became silent and turned their face to this new speaker.

He was obviously a Sadducee, Jesus saw. He wore his robes tighter around the waist and looser around the shoulders in the upper-class manner, making his body more attractive. He was washed and manicured, shaven of his beard, and his hair was becomingly short. The sash of his colorful robes revealed that he was a lawyer, and rich from many clients judging by the costliness of the silken cloth. People raised their eyes at him in surprise and uneasy respect.

He met Jesus’ eyes squarely with his own. “I judge your answers fair and honest,” he told Jesus. “Tell me, what do you say is the most important law?”

Jesus searched the man’s eyes and what he could sense of his inner spirit. He found nothing more than some normal, if rather confident, energies. He relaxed, concentrated within himself, and then spoke. “As Moses told us,” he said, “’Hear, oh my people, our God is a Oneness! You will love this Oneness out of all your heart and with all your life, out of all your mind and out of all your strength.’”

The lawyer nodded. His eyes began to light up.

“A second law, which Moses brought us, is almost the same as the first,” Jesus continued. “’Love your neighbor as yourself!’ These are the two greatest laws.”

“Excellent!” the smiling Sadducee said. “You have spoken like a true prophet, for these two laws are more valuable than all the Temple sacrifices and money offerings in the world!”

Jesus suddenly felt good all over. He smiled at the rich Sadducee. “You, sir,” he told the lawyer, “are closer to the kingdom of God than you realize.”

The man stared at Jesus levelly, then suddenly he bowed his head in salute. He sat down on the edge of the crowd, right on the dirty paving stones in spite of his fine robes, and waited for Jesus to teach more.

The crowd, and Jesus, turned expectantly toward the little band of disagreeable Pharisees against the Temple wall.

The Pharisees had been as caught up in Jesus and the lawyer’s discussion as everyone else. They were completely unprepared for everyone to suddenly start staring at them. The eyes of the chief Pharisee–the old, angry one–glazed in fear.

For an instant Jesus suddenly found himself looking right through the eyes of the old man and into his soul. It was a vision of darkness and beating lines of energies in scarlet reds and pale yellows, heaving and clashing violently against each other.

Jesus shook his head to clear it. He had no desire to see inside a Pharisee soul.

The Pharisee was sensitive enough to realized that somehow Jesus ha looked into his deepest self and rejected him. He glared at Jesus resentfully.

Jesus gazed back at him evenly, patiently.

The old man turned and left, striding quickly through the shifting crowds to the nearest gate. The other Pharisees ran off behind him.

Jesus, his envoys, and all the people who clustered in hundreds around him for learning breathed a joint sigh of relief. They were not bothered again for the remainder of Passover. That is, they were no long bothered in the Temple, where Jesus was left free to teach and heal. The Sanhedrin’s attention turned instead, like a great angry beast on a long chain, to the private life of Jesus and his friends beyond the Temple walls. The Sanhedrin’s leading priests sent out more spies secretly and began to lay more plans.

As the Sanhedrin gathered their forces to decide what to do about Jesus, he and his envoys continued teaching and healing. The crowds in Jerusalem for Passover, many thousands of them from Judea, Galilee, Perea, and as far away as Egypt and Athens all were inflamed by the news of Jesus’ activities. Many were openly calling him the Messiah, while others scoffed at this and called him merely a great prophet. Some thought he was mad.

Whatever they called him, they came to the Temple and listened and watched his miracles of healing. Many cynics, convinced that Jesus’ act was mere showmanship, found fault with him. They believed he was just a magician. Yet they kept their counsel to themselves, for the supporters of Jesus were having their day, for the time being.

Jesus and the envoys quickly established a regular pattern. In the mornings they breakfasted and prepared messages for sending to the friends who weren’t present. Jesus sent one of the women followers to Capernaum to tell his mother that the time of his dreams was at hand, and another to Judy at Mount Carmel with the same message. Judy, he knew, would stay home. She was too old to travel. But Jesus expected his mother to travel as quickly as possible with friends by the more dangerous short route to Jerusalem, so that she might join him in time for his death.

After breakfast the group went to the Temple where they stayed most of the day. Then they would take dinner at one of the richer Jerusalem followers’ houses and spend part of the evening meditating outside the east gate of the Temple and city, on the Mount of Olives. After that they would return to Lazarus, Martha, and Miriam’s home in Bethany to sleep.

No less than fifty people were near he and the envoys at all times, except whenever they were on the Mount of Olives meditating in private. Sometimes this figure rose as high as eight thousand. They were the peaceful center of a strong windstorm of speculation, hope, anger, and awe.

While Jesus and the envoys kept to their busy schedule, Caiaphas the High Priest and other elders of the Sanhedrin and the nation met frequently. They came together in Caiaphas’ house in the upper city, high above and out of reach of the stench of sweat and animals, and the boisterous noise, of the lower city’s crowded streets.

Caiaphas house, though modest considering his position, was still large and well appointed. Mud-brick walls lined the cool, shady interior hallways and quiet, well-appointed rooms. Simple silver candelabra and cedar boxes in a variety of sizes and shapes rested quietly on inlaid-wood tables everywhere. Undecorated silken rugs hung in bright greens and yellows on the walls of his favorite day rooms and sleeping rooms. Well-trained servants padded in a hush to and fro carrying the sweetmeats and honeyed foods for which Caiaphas had a weakness.

His wife, a frail and angry young woman whose father was Annas, the great High Priest before Caiaphas, kept to herself in her house, avoiding her husband’s company whenever possible. She preferred going to the Temple under a chaperone’s and catching the attention of Roman soldiers’ appraising glances.

Caiaphas, his dark and heavy eyebrows bent low, waited in his great wooden chair while a dozen men were ushered into the long, high meeting room. He rose only when his father-in-law, Annas, a wiry older man with a careful scowl and bright, bird-like eyes, came through the door. This was the same Annas who had been high priest when Jesus ha talked with the priests of the Temple when he was twelve, and Annas himself had spoken with Mary and Joseph. Caiaphas now stood up and bowed low to this father -in-law. Annas, annoyed that Passover week could be so easily ruined by a stupid small-town troublemaker from Galilee, barely noticed the younger bearded man.

Caiaphas called the meeting to order with a frustrated wave of his hand when all of them, most of whom were old Pharisee priests, were present.

“He has control of the Temple,” he told them. He picked up a small cedar box of writing instruments and slapped it back down on the table. “We must stop him before the people try to give him Israel’s throne.”

“Let him go his own way!” exclaimed a white-haired priest stroking his beard rapidly. “Surely he will destroy himself by his own words! He promises the people everything. He even promises we will kill him. If we do, he will become a martyr in the eyes of the people!”

Caiaphas waggled his black-bearded chin slowly. “Yes,” he said, “but in the same breath he promises to rise from the dead.” His eyes scoured the room, looking at each of the older priests in turn.

“Hah!” laughed a tall, lean priest with a beard tinged reddish-brown. He leaned forward in his chair. “The fool will be laughed at, once we are through with him. ‘Rise from the dead’ indeed!”

Caiaphas’ lips turned up at the corners in a smile. His upper lip wrinkled. “He may be able to do true wonders, yes,” he exclaimed, “but nothing like that! And he is dangerous. Without him, the nation will continue to prosper under Roman rule. With him, we may have Caesar coming down on our heads and destroying what little power the Romans already have given us! We need to be free!”

He peered, narrow eyed, before him. “Free, I tell you! This Jesus is a revolutionary. He will destroy our chance for freedom before we are strong enough to throw off the Roman rule. I have warned him myself. I have sent messages. The fool won’t stop. He claims he is God’s son. If that is so, then let God get him out of this.”

Annas slowly stood up and leaned toward Caiaphas and the others. His grey eyes were glaring. His perfumed breath, as he spoke, sent a minty odor throughout the room. “What,” he asked evenly, “is all this wasted noise and worry about? Don’t you so-called leaders of our nation have even the ability to get rid of a troublemaker? Why wasn’t he destroyed before now? We have already met three times, and for what? Nothing!”

He turned and glared at Caiaphas, who stared back. Caiaphas refused to be intimidated, even if his father-in-law was still the most powerful Pharisee in Jerusalem.

“You,” Annas said. “Husband of my daughter. What do you fear? Why is this Galilean carpenter’s son, a country idiot, still alive?”

Caiaphas grimaced. He waved away a servant who was trying to hand him a cup of water. “We are afraid of the people, Father-in-law. If we do this at the wrong time, we may start the very revolution we are now trying to avoid.”

“Then take him in secret!” Annas yelled, waving his fist.

“And before the great Feast Day!” a little old priest exclaimed, nodding and bobbing his head, “Or they might try to crown him king!”

Annas stabbed his forefinger at Caiaphas. “While you gentlemen of Israel,” the older man said, “have been deliberating these many months what to do, I have been busy making the acquaintance of one of his envoys.”

Everyone in the room, even Caiaphas, leaned back and gasped.

Annas grinned coldly. His long fingernails tapped the table. “Yes. I have made a friend among the enemy. The rest of you were too afraid, weren’t you? You were worried that you would be accused of sympathizing with this Jesus fool.”

“He is no fool,” a short, squat priest cautioned. He smelled of the sweet frankincense and balsam of the Temple rites.

“Then he is young and naïve,’ Annas said. “An intelligent man in his dangerous position would go to the mountains or desert and teach there, as do the Essenes from whom he has come. Listen!” He waved his hand. “You still are wasting time! I will meet with this envoy of his. I have led the young man to believe I secretly admire Jesus. I will offer the man something in return for leading all of us to this carpenter fool. I understand that he goes with his envoys every evening somewhere on the Mount of Olives. Let us arrest him there.”

The old man’s eyes gleamed. “But I will need money for the deed,” he said. “The envoy who is my friend likes pretty clothes, and cheap scented oil for his skin and hair.”

Caiaphas, tugging at his black beard, looked slowly around the room at the gathered strength of Judea and Jerusalem represented there. They were silent in thought. “Are you agreed?” he asked them.

One after another they nodded or spoke their acceptance.

“Then go, Father-in-law,” Caiaphas said. “I authorize one hundred silver coins from the treasury for your work. This should be enough to tempt any of his followers.”

Annas chuckled long and low. Half an hour later, he was on his way to Bethany to met with the envoy whom he had made his friend.

He met him outside of the little well-to-do village by sending a messenger to Lazarus’ home to get him. As the envoy approached, Annas began to rub his hands together in pleasure as if he was washing them. he saw the envoy striding across the grassy lawns toward him.

“Hello Judas, son of Ischariot,” he greeted him.

“Hail Annas High Priest!” Judas exclaimed, panting a little as he came up to the small old man. Judas’ handsome dark eyes were gleaming. He liked being a friend of such an important political leader. “How much longer must we keep these meetings secret? I long to bring you to Jesus and tell him you are one of his admirers.”

Annas quickly held up on of his aging hands. Liver spots were just beginning to show on them. “Not yet,” my friend Judas! You know that should the other leaders of Israel discover my sympathies, they would respect me no more. Then, my friend, how could I plead your master’s case among the Sanhedrin’s own leaders.

Judas nodded. He looked quickly through the olive groves to his left and the rich village to his right. “Yes, but Annas, you must proclaim yourself soon. The other envoys and I have been talking. Have you heard that Jesus plans to be killed and rise from the dead?”

Annas nodded cautiously. His eyes narrowed.

“Some of us who follow him,” Judas said, almost in a whisper, “think it means he plans on becoming Israel’s king.”

Annas’ eyebrows lowered. “How is that?” he asked Judas. He, too, looked around. A servant in the distance was clipping a low red bush.

Judas raised both his hands in a shrug. “What else?” he asked. “No man can really avoid his own death, not even Jesus! He must be telling us, in symbolism and not in reality, that he will lay down his ordinary life and rise to the high position of ruler!”

Annas concealed a scowl. “Yes, yes,” he answered. “Excellent! And perhaps I can give you the means of doing this!”

Judas’ eyes grew wide. “How?” he exclaimed.

Annas moved closer. His minty breath spread over Judas’ face. “Simple,” Annas said. “The elders of the Sanhedrin are beginning to think Jesus is the Messiah. They wish, my young friend, to speak with him privately and examine his claims.”

Judas began smiling. But suddenly he looked at Annas suspiciously. “This is a new story,” he told Annas. “Never before have you told me the Sanhedrin favors Jesus.”

Annas shrugged as casually as he could. “Yes, yes, but they are intelligent men. Since the healing of Lazarus, they have been changing their minds. Bring him to us. Better yet, we will come to him! How does that sound to you, Judas envoy?”

Judas hesitated.

Annas leaned closer. “Thirty pieces of silver. That is what we will give you for doing us this favor.”

Judas stared at Annas. Should he, the envoy wondered, take money for something like this?

“It is just a fee,” Annas told him. “Give it to the poor. Buy yourself new robes. All we are asking of you is to point out Jesus to us tomorrow in the evening, when all of you are on the Mount of Olives.”

“You know, don’t you,” Judas cautioned, “that if any of you try to trap or hurt him, he can just walk away from you unhurt? I have seen him suddenly become invisible if you but look away from him once. He exercises strange powers over men’s minds.”

Annas chuckled, not believing it a bit. “Oh of course, Judas Ischariot, and for that reason the elders already have promised not to touch him. They just want to question him!”

Judas nodded slowly. He stubbed the toe of his sandal idly into the grass. “Then I will do it.”

“One more thing,” Annas stated. His voice grew commanding. “Do not tell Jesus anything about this.”

“Why not?” Judas asked, though he himself had already decided not to mention it. He wasn’t sure if Jesus would approve of the thirty silver coins, or the secret way he had been meeting with Annas for several months.

Annas stretched his lips s wide as he could in a smile. “We wish to surprise him! That way he cannot say no if he does not care to talk with us. Remember! The whole kingdom and future of Israel may be at stake! First, we must talk with him.”

Judas looked off toward the green, hilly top ridges of the Mount of Olives. In the distance several white doves, their coloring pure enough for Temple sacrifice, silently flew over a forested rise and disappeared. The roar of a bull sounded from a small cattle yard a few minutes’ walk away, further down the slope behind him. A sweet, mouth-watering scent of fresh olive oil came from his own hands. He had been filling an oil lamp when Annas’ messenger had come for him.

He looked at the old, wiry man beside him who was waiting with clenched jaws for an answer.

“I will do it,” Judas told him. “I will come for you tomorrow evening and lead you to him during the midnight watch, when all the envoys will be tired. I will show you Jesus with a kiss of greeting.”

Annas nodded. Grumpily, his work now done, he said farewell to Judas and turned on his heels to go back to Jerusalem, and peace and quiet in his servant-staffed house.

He sneered as he walked home. “Why,” he asked himself out loud, “are Galileans so stupid?”

An Egyptian Jew from Alexandria, present in Jerusalem for the first time in his life for Jerusalem’s Passover, turned on the dusty road and looked at the old man talking to himself. The old man, back slightly bent, continued on down the narrow road without even noticing him.

The Alexandrian, a young and very light-skinned rich merchant, smiled to himself and shook his head. Jerusalem, and especially its old prayer-zealous grandpas, seemed more to him each day a foolish, backward outpost of the great Roman Empire.

He hoped he never had to visit it again, even for business. Even its famous olive oil was little better than the fine oils imported from Greece. And its native Hebrews were much too intense.

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Oct. 2020.