“This is then what he is thinking about. Didst thou hear him?”
CHAPTER V.
It was just about this time that Judas Iscariot took his first decisive step towards betrayal: he paid a secret visit to the high priest Annas. He was received very sternly, but this did not disconcert him and he demanded a prolonged private interview. Left alone with the stern ascetic old man who eyed him contemptuously from under his bushy eyebrows, he told him that he, Judas, was a pious man who had become a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth with the sole aim of exposing the deceiver and of betraying him into the hands of the law.
“And who is He, this Nazarene?” slightingly inquired Annas, as if he had heard the name of Jesus for the first time.
Judas for his part pretended to take this strange ignorance of the high priest at its face value and reported to him at length concerning the sermons of Jesus, His wonders, His hatred of the Pharisees and the Temple, the violations of the Law by Him, and His desire to snatch the power from the hands of the ecclesiastics and to establish His own kingdom. And so skillfully did he mingle truth with falsehood that Annas glanced at him more attentively, while he indolently observed:
“Are there so few deceivers and madmen in Judea?”
“No. But He is a dangerous man,” hotly replied Judas. “He violates the Law. And it is better for one man to perish than for the whole people.”
Annas nodded approvingly.
“But He has, methinks, many disciples.”
“Yes, many.”