One of the scribes struck me across my face and hurled me to the floor.
Witnesses were brought—citizens. One testified that I had vowed to destroy the temple within three days and rebuild it without hands. Other witnesses disagreed. A woman said I faked miracles. A man testified I had threatened to depose the governor. Others disagreed.
“Are you Christ...are you the man the people call Christ?” Caiaphas asked.
“I am.”
A priest gestured; he seemed to tear his robe. Caiaphas smiled.
“You have heard this blasphemy,” he said. “We need no more witnesses. I condemn this man to death.” I knew nothing more could be said in my defense.
As I sit at my table, underneath the trees, at Peter’s home, I write as if I were writing about someone else, a friend perhaps. I write without prejudice. I am shaken by man’s corruption and yet my lack of faith in man does not influence my writing.
I was left in the hands of guards and palace servants and then I was led into a room where my hands were roped behind me. I was thrown on the floor and beaten and kicked and spat on. Men placed me in a chair and covered my eyes and asked me to guess who struck me, everyone laughing.
I fell asleep on the floor and was wakened for a trial before priests, elders, scribes, in a marble-floored room, Roman insignia on the wall, the room icy, airless, officers and soldiers at one end, one of them in battle gear—to impress me, I thought. But I was scarcely able to stand, scarcely able to think. My hands on the back of a chair, I put my mind to work: I singled out my home, its doors, its windows, the grass growing in the street. I forced myself to visualize my mother and father. Though I was in pain I remembered my little friend, Amos: we were kneeling in the dust before my house, playing marbles: dust flipped as we shot.
I was asked if I was the son of God.