Pilate’s round face betrayed bafflement. “Then you profess to be a king, but in another realm, the world of magic, spirits...?”
“I was born into this world to bear testimony to the truth,” Jesus answered. “Everyone who is of the truth will understand and acknowledge my Kingship.”
Then this man was, as Pilate had suspected all along, in no sense a revolutionary planning Rome’s overthrow; he was but another of these eastern mystics, dreaming of the imponderable and intangible. Hadn’t Herod Antipas beheaded another such fellow because of his slurs against Herodias, slurs undoubtedly deserved at that? The man before him, Pilate realized, was simply a religious leader, someone whom, perhaps, Caiaphas feared as a possible rival, who Caiaphas felt might even supplant him in the office of High Priest. Of course, reasoned the Procurator, the fellow might well be a little addled through too long immersion in this utterly foolish and depraved one-god religion of Israel. “Those who know the truth,” the fellow had just proclaimed, “will recognize me, acknowledge me as their king.” Hah!
“Truth”—Pilate shot forth his finger toward the prisoner—“what is truth?” He hunched his shoulders and waved his hands, palms up, in a gesture he had borrowed from the Jews. And without looking toward the man of whom he had asked the question, he stepped down from the tribunal and strode out to the High Priest and his restive throng.
“I have examined the prisoner as to the charges you have brought against him,” he announced to Caiaphas. “I find nothing criminal in him. He’s a religious man, a dreamer, but he is no revolutionary.” He was glad to be rid of the man, though, he confessed to himself; he was happy to wash his hands of this Jesus, Caiaphas, and the rest of them; if he could only be freed of all Palestine, if he could never lay eyes again upon another Jew. “I find no fault in the man; I shall release him.”
“No! No! O Excellency, no!” Hands were waving wildly in the air. “No! O Pilate!” The Procurator, scanning the throng, saw the priests fomenting the agitation into a swell of shouted disapproval of his verdict. Once more the High Priest stepped forward a pace or two from the front ranks. “The man is amazingly clever, O Excellency,” he declared, smiling agreeably, “as he has just demonstrated in thus deceiving the Procurator. But he is a criminal, and one of the most vicious and depraved order, O sir. And he is a revolutionary. Beginning in his native Galilee, he has deceived and perverted the people, and by his dangerous and evil perverting, his criminal teachings in opposition to our religion and Rome’s government, he has brought into Peraea and Judaea....”
“Beginning, you say, in Galilee? Then this man is a Galilean?”
“Indeed, O Excellency, and one of the worst of the Galilean revolutionaries, one of the most dastardly clever,” He smiled sardonically. “He smites with words rather than a dagger.”
... A Galilean, by great Jove! Then send him to Herod Antipas. Let the Tetrarch dispose of this case. He assumed jurisdiction over that fanatical Wilderness prophet and ordered him beheaded. Well, this man, too, is a Galilean. Let Herod stand between this persistent, obstinate High Priest and old Sejanus. Let the Tetrarch, for once, bear the brunt of any reports sent back to Rome; this time Sejanus may not overlook what he considers a mistake of administration in this gods-abandoned province. If there’s to be a mistake, let the Tetrarch make it....
“Then this man,” he said to the High Priest, “is a subject of the Tetrarch Herod Antipas. He should be remanded to the Tetrarch for trial.”