The Liars' Gospel: A Novel

  Caiaphas was shouting for his manservant even as he watched the unholy ruin the man was making of all the sacred appurtenances. The slave came swiftly, watched for only a moment before muttering, “I will tell the priests,” and hurrying away.

  A wave of tremendous irritation broke over Caiaphas like a fine sweat as he watched the man. It was this that he struggled against day after day—wanton demolition. As if they had built the holy Temple of the Lord out of mud and straw and every day the rains came and he had to renew its walls. So many hands were trying to pull it down, so few holding it up. It was against this that he made his daily visits and spoke to his spies and counselors, to hold the place solid against the rain. And this?

  The man was overturning the tables full of coins which the poor people had brought to pay for their sacrifices. Hard enough to come by coin outside the cities. Any piece with the head of any king would be taken, that was the pride of the Temple. No one would be turned away for lack of a particular currency. And because the marketplace was here, the priests could oversee the prices to ensure that the peasants were charged fairly, that everyone, rich and poor, men and women, could offer a sacrifice. One might have to wait, but everyone would be seen. It was organized and sensible, and these are the highest and best forms of kindness.

  The metal showered like hail and rang like hooves on the flagstones as the stallholders wailed and the children ran eagerly, stuffing their fists with coins. And Caiaphas thought: this? Is it possible that any sane man would prefer this to peace and quiet conversation and each man conducting his business with good humor? Only a man who had never feared for his own life or the lives of his children.

  They chased him out of the courtyard in the end, and the young priests set the tables to rights. Caiaphas heard a few complaints that afternoon, and announced at nightfall that the Temple would make good the stallholders’ losses out of its own coffers, for it was not right that men should go hungry because of one madman’s actions. And this meant of course that several men who had lost nothing claimed to be ruined, and he set a trusted Levite treasurer to sorting the true claims from the false.

  And then many days passed. There was a rising in the east and a spate of murders of soldiers and Roman citizens by bandits in the west. From the north came murmurs of a bad harvest, and from the south they heard there was another plague in Egypt. The eldest son of the house of Avtinas, the incense-makers, came to tell him that the wine they had received from Cyprus was of inferior quality—it had been delayed coming from the coast by the bandits and had spoiled in the casks. This lawlessness must cease. The young man was wealthy, his whole family one of the richest in Jerusalem; he spoke disdainfully, and the silk robe slung casually over his shoulders, its hem trailing in the dust, could have bought a dozen barrels of good wine, or a dozen men to guard the wagons. But he was right.

  He discussed the matter with Annas, who had spoken to the Prefect. Rome was unhappy. It was time, again, to round up the troublemakers and rabble leaders and make an example of them. The Romans had captured a man called only Bar-Avo—a typically insolent pseudonym meaning “the son of his father”—who, with his band of men, had been torching Roman houses and disrupting their convoys for months.

  It would look well if they could also produce a dissenter or two. They would find some of those twitching, raving men who proclaimed themselves the scourge of Rome, flog them in the public square, and be able to tell Pilate that they, too, were defending the honor of the Emperor. As if the Emperor were a fearful woman. The conversation was uncomfortable, as these conversations always were.

  Annas placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “To keep the peace.”

  And Caiaphas grunted in assent.

  It was a lucky thing that, among the crazed preachers and the careless plotters, a man Iehuda came to them saying that he knew where they could find Yehoshuah, who he said was the one who had tipped over the stalls in the courtyard that day.

  When they brought him, Caiaphas assembled an informal court in one of the rooms of his Temple house. It was only days before Passover. He managed to gather eight men: enough to try a simple case like this. There were a few witnesses willing to speak against the man. This was normal. Any trial would bring a group of people eager to gain favor with the Temple. Everyone in Jerusalem knew about the waste of money and goods and the disruption to the sacred services on the day that this Yehoshuah had thrown over the tables.

  “He said he would destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days,” said the man with lumps on his face.

  “He said that the end of days is coming,” said another, and none of these things seemed hard to believe to Caiaphas. He had seen the man raving. He was another of those, and whether he fomented rebellion against Rome or not, a man who spoke against the peace, who whipped people up, who destroyed property, was not likely to be let alone.

  The witnesses began to shout over one another. Ugly, angry calls. Yehoshuah had spoken against the Temple. They had heard him call himself the Messiah, the rightful king—this was a very serious charge. Under Rome, there is no king but the Emperor and those whom it pleases the Emperor to set on little thrones for a time.

  Caiaphas, seated at a long wooden table with four men to his left and four to his right, had the witnesses ushered back, then called one of the Levites to bring Yehoshuah forward. The man had been held at the back of the room while the testimonies were heard. Now he stood before them, seemingly calm, his face sunburnt. They sat him in a chair before the judges. Caiaphas stood up. The hubbub from the back subsided a little. He made his voice loud but low, a trick he had mastered during the endless prayers and services to give his words gravitas without exhausting his throat.

  “Yehoshuah of Natzaret,” he said, “we need an answer from you. You’ve heard what the witnesses have said. If it’s not true, if they’re lying, just tell us.”

  There was general nodding from the men around the table, an encouragement to behave reasonably. It was surprising how often even a raver, when faced with the calm interrogation of a court, found his wits long enough to deny the most serious charges, which gave them the necessary leeway. For blasphemy, the sentence is generally only a few lashes. There are ways to make an offense less severe in the eyes of the law. That is the purpose of the court—not to condemn but to make the most peaceful accommodation between the person before them and the community which surrounds them.

  The sages tell us that a Sanhedrin which kills only one man every seventy years has wrought enough harm to be scorned with the name “a Bloody Court.”

  But this madman said nothing. A small smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. And he said nothing in his own defense and he did nothing to show that he understood the charges, and the only movement was his foot twitching under his robe, and Caiaphas thought: this man is entirely mad, but it may still be possible to save him.

  He said, “You know what the most serious charge is. Do you say that you are the Messiah, the expected rightful king of Israel?”

  And if he had only remained silent, they could have said: he is a madman struck dumb. They would have assigned him lashes in the marketplace, because one cannot condemn a man to death on hearsay alone if the evidence is contradictory in the least particular, and these witnesses’ stories contradicted each other wildly. If he had only remained silent, the case would have fallen.

  Instead, with that eerie smile and his eyes affixed on Caiaphas, Yehoshuah said, “I am the expected king. And very soon you will see me sitting at the right hand of Yahaveh. We are going to descend to earth on the glowing clouds from heaven.”

  He spoke the sacred name of God, the name which is spoken only by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies on the most sacred day of the year. He spoke it as if it were the name of some casual friend.

  At this Annas let out a short involuntary breath. And Jonathan, one of the oldest and wisest men on the council, threw up his hands, and Micah, younger and less circumspect, muttered too loudly, “Now he speaks?”
The men on the court exchanged glances. Caiaphas looked at Yehoshuah. He had gone back to that strange unsettling silence. He was rocking back and forth very slightly on his chair.

  Caiaphas had the feeling that the man had been waiting for many years for this day, for this hour, when he would say this ridiculous thing to the court and force their hands.

  He stood up again. He took a knife from the table, where it stood next to the bread and cheese and wine his wife had laid out for them. He pierced the bottom of his robe and pulled the knife through to the hem. Then he took both sides of the cut cloth and pulled them apart. With a shredding sound and a scatter of fibers in the air, he ripped the garment halfway to the waist. The others around the table nodded, knowing that ripping one’s clothes, the sign of deepest mourning, is the only proper response to hearing the true name of God spoken in the wrong place and at the wrong time. The power of the name is strong enough to kill, though it grieves the hearers beyond measure.

  He said, and he found his voice hoarse despite himself, “If this is what you say, then we have no need for witnesses.”

  And the verdict was made. And they tried another two men that evening and found them guilty of more minor blasphemy, and sentenced them to the usual punishment—forty lashes, the final lash withheld in case they had miscounted. And he heard that Rome had taken a couple of thieves and intended to execute them too, because Rome never served up her mercy in portions more generous than a thin dribble.

  They might have found a way to save the man even yet. To take a son from his mother and a man from his friends is an evil thing. They could have left him in that locked stable by the Temple for a week or two, until their own memories had faded a little, until if they had asked each other, “What exactly did he say?” they might have contradicted one another and so proved false witnesses. There are ways to save a man from judgment. But it was the festival of Passover and the streets were thronged with people and the Romans feared that another rebellion might be rising in the city.

  And so Pilate summoned Caiaphas in the morning. He stood by a table covered in scrolls of messages and vellum maps, and a soldier standing quietly to one side, with his sword hanging at his belt. Pilate always greeted him in some similar way, so that he should never forget the power the Prefect represented.

  “I hear,” he said, “that you have a man found guilty of blasphemy.”

  Who had told him? Some spy among the witnesses, no doubt. One must never lie to Rome.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “This is a sin against Rome, you know. Against the sacred cult of Tiberius the Emperor. And it is a crime punishable by death according to your laws, is it not?”

  Again Rome, whose currency is death, can never hear equivocation. Others are weak for not dealing death, weak for seeking to avoid it. Rome’s daily business is death, her nightly amusement is the death match. Death is cheap and easy among them.

  “Usually, yes.”

  “But of course you cannot enact this sentence.”

  Death is the gift Rome reserves for itself. The people it occupies cannot pass their own sentences of execution.

  “No, we cannot,” said Caiaphas.

  “Give him to me,” said Pilate.

  This was not a request, and to refuse it would have meant death as surely as God smote the Egyptians at the Red Sea. If Rome wants something, Rome will have it.

  And he surrendered, as if the waters of the sea were closing over his head.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He had the man brought up to him first of all, to tell him that they were handing him over to Rome. Yehoshuah did not respond, though he must have known what it meant. His head wobbled a little on his neck. His eyes almost closed and then jerked open. There was a bruise on his face: very probably someone had kicked him or hit him while he was imprisoned in the stable. It is impossible to root out this kind of mindless cruelty; with so many people coming and going in the Temple, it could have been anyone. He swayed. The man was ill, it was obvious. Caiaphas felt ashamed. Before they came into the iron embrace of Rome, they would have found a way to save his life. When the soldiers escorted Yehoshuah away, Caiaphas found himself staring at a door that had closed on him for a long time.

  Annas told him later that they had crucified the man along with a few others, and in some piece of public theater, had released the rebel Bar-Avo—a mistake on Pilate’s part probably, but Bar-Avo was the more popular man. Perhaps Pilate knew he could recapture Bar-Avo, or thought that he could trust the man to keep the peace out of gratitude. Perhaps he was genuinely offended by this Yehoshuah’s claim to be a god: Pilate has always thought that Rome would be pleased if he pressed the cult of Tiberius upon the people. In this as in so much else, he is mistaken: Annas has it on good authority that Tiberius is a little embarrassed by the whole business of worship, and refuses to allow many temples to be built to him.

  Caiaphas, thinking guiltily of the man’s cracked lips and wild rolling eyes—and fearing, after Annas had set him thinking on it, that his tomb might become a meeting place for rebels—sent two slaves to bury the body honestly in an unmarked Jewish grave. But by the time they arrived, the corpse had already been stolen, they said, probably by his friends or family, for who else would have taken the trouble? A pity. The whole thing had been a foolish waste of life.

  And if anyone were to suggest to Caiaphas that this little episode, this regrettable but unavoidable matter, were the Holy of Holies of his life, the tiny chamber at the center of his heart which is somehow larger than the whole edifice which surrounds it, he would frown, and half smile, and attempt to be polite, and think afterwards that he had not understood the joke. If this is a secret chamber, it is entirely empty.

  It does not come from nowhere. A city does not catch fire in an instant. It has been months and years. It has been the taxes and the tribute. It has been the way the Romans look at the Jews, the little taunts, the kicked-over fruit stalls and shoulder bumps as they pass. It has been the sons and daughters who look at Rome and say to their family and to themselves, “Why can’t we live like that?” And the girls paint their faces and show too much of their thighs. And the boys shave off their bristles and go to the gymnasium to exercise naked. It has been the friends of these boys and girls, seeing them become strangers and collaborators.

  It was Pilate bringing the legions with their idolatrous banners into the city when his predecessor knew well enough not to do that. It was Pilate’s way of administering justice: swift, merciless, unpredictable. It was the fear that grew in the city so that no mother could see her son leave in the evening without fearing where he was going and whether he would return.

  These things rise and rise and no one stops them. And the city is full of angry men.

  And the city bakes in the sun. And the city is dried up by the sun. And the city is as dry as a tinderbox.

  Pilate sends word again that he will have the Temple money. Caiaphas has ten priests go down into the storerooms to bring up the gold. He picks them at random, but this is all it needs. They walk through the burning-hot marble plaza at noon with their boxes of gold, saying, “Make way, make way, these chests are bound for Prefect Pilate.”

  And the curled cedar shavings are smoking in the sun. And the flint is struck. And the spark flies off.

  They wait until dark. Through the roasting day, people go about their business with stiff bodies and dark waiting eyes. By the fifth hour of the afternoon the shops close up their shutters and the mothers bring their children in, and somewhere the young men are waiting but no one can see them, not yet.

  In the evening, the second daily sacrifice. Every morning and every evening, a new lamb. To remind us that we must die. Caiaphas can see it in the men who come to the offering.

  One of them mutters as they leave, “Stay home tonight, Cohen.”

  The others look and nod, to see that he has understood.

  They wait until dark, and past dark. Into the night, they wait, standing on street corners, the
ir cloaks pulled up around their faces. And the soldiers know something is wrong, but the garrison at Jerusalem is small and they are just standing, and they cannot arrest people for standing, and besides where would they put so many men?

  One of them begins to shout. It is the old call.

  “David!” he shouts. “For David, King of the Jews!”

  They take it up and throw it between them. “For David!” “For David!”

  Like a wolf pack taking up a howl.

  Their pockets are full of stones. One of them throws a stone at the shield of the small tangle of Roman men standing at the gates of their storehouse. It bounces off the shield with a dull thwack of stone on wood and tumbles clattering to the ground.

  And then the sky begins to rain stones.

  And the tiny smoldering spark on the cedar shaving bursts all at once into huge and beautiful and all-engulfing flames.

  The riot goes on through the night. They set the grain store on fire, the one the Romans keep as supplies for their garrison. A thousand days’ worth of wheat for a hundred men burns with the sweet smell of roasting and then the black scent of wasted wood and the death of summers past. The flames leap to the stable and the horses begin to scream in terror, kicking at the doors of their stalls, but the doors are built to withstand precisely this. Someone gets one of the stable doors open and the animals stampede through the streets, rolling their eyes and rearing and foaming, but not all of them are saved and their screams grow louder and soon there is the smell of blackened flesh, and death is always the same, whatever set the events in motion that led to it. Death and destruction are always just the same.