15
For two days after his long meeting with the High Priest Caiaphas and the former High Priest Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas, the Procurator Pontius Pilate was in a sullen mood. He said little and kept close to his quarters in the Antonia Tower. Now and then he would walk out onto the gallery overlooking the Temple enclosure and, leaning upon the parapet, would stare balefully at the magnificent structure and the stir of life within and around it.
The orderly movements of the priests, set through the long years into an inexorable pattern as they followed the prescribed routine of their duties, seemed almost to infuriate him. “Look at them, Centurion!” he snapped to Longinus on one of these occasions when the centurion happened to be sunning himself on the gallery. “See how smugly they go about their mummery, as if it were the most important thing in the world. They seem studiously to ignore our all-powerful Rome and lavish every attention upon their Yahweh.” He doubled his fist and banged it upon the parapet. “Yet one lone Roman century ordered into that hive of impudent, arrogant busy bees could send them all flying, one Roman century, Longinus. And by the great Jove, I’m tempted to dispatch soldiers down there to clean out that insubordinate, traitorous nest!”
Fortunately, though, the Procurator issued no such order, and the day passed without the Romans’ becoming involved in the religious ceremonies of the Jews. The next morning, however, Pilate called together all his officers on duty in Jerusalem, including Longinus and Cornelius. Immediately it was evident that the Procurator’s hostility toward the Temple leadership had not diminished.
“We are in a war of wits with these obstinate, proud Jews,” he declared, “and I cannot defeat them by remaining on the defensive. It’s been a war of words and gestures thus far, but I have been forced to the opinion that we can have no victory over them until we have had some blood.” His blue eyes swept coldly over the unsmiling faces before him. “So I have determined upon a bold plan in which we shall take the offensive.”
Pilate revealed that Caiaphas and Annas had rebuffed, though with unctuous smiles and sugared words, his every effort even to discuss the possibility of using Temple funds for the improvement of Jerusalem, particularly the health of its residents, through the construction of facilities to enlarge and improve the city’s water supply.
“They insist that this money has been dedicated to their god and belongs to him and that for me to use one denarius of it, even in promoting their welfare, would be a profanation and a sacrilege. Old Annas, may Pluto burn him, even suggested that the people—he emphasized the fact that he was not himself suggesting it—might even believe that I had seized the money for my own use.” Pilate’s anger had turned his face an ugly crimson. His voice rose to a shout. “A profanation indeed! To these insufferable Jews everything they do not wish to do or to have done is a profanation. Yet their priestly caste is sucking the very lifeblood of the people in the name of religion.” He paused for a moment, then continued more calmly. “So I have determined to initiate a bold new plan. I shall have these Temple leaders crawling to me, and on their bellies, cringing!”
When it was clear that Pilate had, at least temporarily, finished, Sergius Paulus ventured to speak. “But, Excellency, do you plan to raid their Temple’s treasury, to commandeer the gold the Jews have stored there? Such a course, you must realize, might provoke the wrath of the Emperor and the Prefect, since they have made a compact with....”
“No, Commander, I am planning no raid on their treasury,” Pilate interrupted. “On the contrary, they will bring their treasure to me and urge me to use it in providing a new water supply for Jerusalem. In so doing they will admit to me and, more importantly, to their fellow religionists that Rome is master and that their puny Yahweh is a lesser god than our Emperor.”
Quickly and more calmly the Procurator unfolded his plan. When three days ago he had come into Jerusalem at the head of the troops, he reminded them, he had suffered the humiliation, for the first time in his military career, of marching with the proud ensigns of Rome all sheathed. This was done, he pointed out, to appease the Jews, to mollify their Yahweh.