Fifth Gospel (37 page)

Was he an
y better than these men?

And so it was. O
n that terror-full night, when all hell was let loose on the world, Jacob finally found the purpose of his life and his spirit home…

And
it had come too late.

WAGES OF SIN

J
udas
was present during the trial in the palace of Caiaphas. Among the crowds he watched and listened and clasped that bag of silver tight to his chest, talking to himself and making strange gestures in the air. Divergent thoughts flitted like phantoms across his mind and fought for dominion over his reason. He considered them his unruly companions.

He looked for Magdalena and found her with her brother and the
stepmother of Jesus. Her sorrowing face told him that she was in that agony he had prepared for her, and he was glad for it. He was glad for it all, for the screaming of the masses and the abuses of his master and the hooting of laughter and derision.

Glad.

And yet not glad!

For a small voice now began
to take from him his gladness.

Look scorpizein
! Look at what you have made! You will long be remembered! Yes…your name will be a curse on every man’s lips!

He shooed the thought away –
a dirty insect of a thought it was.

Betrayer!

He took a swipe at it.

Lover of demons.

He cowered.

All faces seemed
now to bear down on him, their countenances full of strangely distorted grimaces and frowns.

They accused him with their stares
and pointed at him with grimaces.

This is the one! Look at him!

He felt disordered, broken into a thousand pieces, all of them ugly and disfigured, rotten, despoiled and shrivelled up. His soul was eaten to the nub. He could smell the stench of his own decay, the putrid manure of his being. He looked at his hands and the skin began to split apart to reveal maggots, maggots and flies were everywhere around him. He swatted them. His breathing grew quick but he could not catch air for the flies trying to enter into his mouth. Round and round was his head turned by voices. Too many people, too many fingers pointing, too much whispering, too many maggots and flies!

He stumbled out of the palace
, through the courts and out to the streets where the wind pursued him like furies. It caught his garments and pulled at his hair and poked at his eyes. The wind entered into his head and moved about in his mind. The wind was a woman, as cold as the Pascha moon, as cold as death. It was a dead hag looking for living things to kill. It was a pale virgin trembling with wrath. It was a demon with sharp talons and long teeth and yet, with skin as soft as a lover’s bare breast! It was a phantom, come to devour his soul and if it so desired it he would freely give it! For the wind was Magdalena! Beautiful, cruel Magdalena! And when she shrieked her vengeance upon him he heard the sound of a thousand birds and there came a vision of them feasting on the carrion meat on his bones.

He
ran out of the city and found a cave in which to hide. With his head between his knees and his hands to his ears he fell into a fitful sleep.

When he woke the sun was up and the streets were quiet.
He betook himself to the temple, to where he knew the priests would be preparing for the morning ritual. He ran, slipping and falling on the smooth marble steps. He saw some members of the council conferring in the court of the Gentiles and went to them. Frantic he tore the bag of silver from his belt. He was a child, weeping for the breast, weeping for a father’s approving glance.

‘Take it back!’ he
pleaded, ‘Take back your dirty silver…release him! I have sold innocent blood!’

But the faces of the priests were turned into the faces of
hellish imps, frowning through the folds of flesh at him.

They s
eemed both annoyed and amused, both fascinated and revolted.

‘What have we to do with your sin? If you think you have sold innocent
blood that is your own affair! You have earned your wages this night for Jesus is already judged guilty and today will be crucified. Now go on your way, before you defile us!’

Horror struck a note of discord in his spine, and clutching the bag close he
turned his dismal mind to what he should do. It came then, the thought, and he took to his heels. He went through the courts of the Gentiles, over the steps and through the Beautiful Gates to the Court of the Women and onwards to the Courts of Israel making for the sanctuary, where was situated the altar and the Holy of Holies.

‘Stop!’ he heard voices echo behind him.

But he did not stop. He ran past the incensed Levites, escaping their clutches until he came to the boundary that separated the Court of Israel from the pavement of the sanctuary. Here he flung the bag with all his might and it burst open and the coins toppled onto the marble pavement.

He took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter, in the house of the Lord!

After that he ran with heaven and earth slipping from his grasp.

May the devil stand at his right hand; when he is judged may he go out condemned!

There was no escape, no help, no counsel and no hope!

Where should he go? There was a moment of incertitude and then a voice told him
,

Go to the valley of Hinnon.

He turned and ran, gulping for air, over the bridge that crossed the torrents of the Kidron
, across the valley and up the steep sides of the mountain to the potter’s field.

Run Judah, betrayer of
your brother! Run Judas Maccabeus, betrayer of your people! Run Judas Iscariot, betrayer of God! Run to the field of blood, dead man, old man! Run to the potter’s field, the field of blood, and be broken!

W
here the two valleys merged he slipped on the cold clay, cutting himself on the jagged stones. He looked for a place and saw a gnarled tree growing from out of the rock. It was surrounded by rubbish and death. He could smell it. Turning he saw the origin of the smell, it was the carcass of an ass, bloated and swarming with flies and maggots. Death, yes death! Death to the ass! Death to the old ways! The old ways were at an end. Israel was like that ass! He climbed to the top of the rock, unwound the long girdle that held his garment and fastened it over a limb. He heard a voice:

Put an end to it…put an end to
your misery! The wages of sin is death!

He
tied the girdle around his neck.

Jump! Let
yourself be saved from this miserable life!!

He
went to the lip of the rise.

No mother will ever desert you!

He looked down to the jagged rocks below.

No woman will
ever turn away from you!

He took a breath.

No disappointments will ever again assail you!

He let his foot slip...

Jump!

He fell!

But he did not fall far enough and was hung in the air, a heavy dying lump, grasping for the girdle.

His throat was cut off sharp
, and his eyes bulged with blood.

He choked.

Pain! Horror!

No!

Not yet!

He struggled.

His tongue grew as big as the world in his mouth.

Above
, the knot unloosened, and for a moment time lay suspended. In that arrested flow he saw Satan leave his soul, expelled with his breath. All the demons that had possessed him, in swarms were gone from him. All things were now different to his dying eye. He saw his entire life pass: the betrayals, his wanderings with Jesus, his baptism, his time with the Sicarri, his failed initiation, his birth and then…

Behold!

He saw a vision of Christ.

Now
, for the first time, he saw Him! He was not an initiate, He was not a priest, He was not a king, He had not come to save Israel. He had come to save Judas’ soul!

He was a living God!

Only now could the future become manifest before his dying eyes.

‡

I was afraid and put my hands to my ears. ‘No! Tell me no more!’

‘What do you fear,
pairé
?’

‘I fear
, I fear that I am him, that I am this man Judas!’

‘
Oh! Many men fear this,
pairé
, but they would not if they knew of his redemption.’

‘Redemption? How can he be redeemed?
He is the betrayer of betrayers! Does he not go to hell where every day is Good Friday?’

She laughed a little, ‘
No,
pairé
.’

I was full of wonder,
‘Tell me then, what happens to him, what does he see before his dying eyes?’

‘
He sees a solitary man writing his confessions in a quiet peaceful cell. This man is a good man. His name is Augustine.’

‘
Augustine?’

‘Yes, he is born again as Augustine.’

‘Well that makes sense! I can see how a betrayer could become Augustine, one of the Fathers of the Roman Church!’

‘
Now, now,
pairé
, don’t forget that Augustine was a Manichean before he took up the Catholic faith.’

I was nodding, for it was true. Augustine of Hippo had been a Manichean. I had forgotten that!

‘As Augustine Judas’ failed initiation and his betrayal of his people lived deeply hidden in his will, and drove him to betray his people again. You see, he turned his back on the Manicheans when he was converted to Catholicism and wrote his polemics against them.’

‘Augustine
is the father of those men who sit below this fortress in judgement of our faith,’ I told her, ‘since the Dominicans took up his rule!’

‘Yes
that is true.’

‘What happens to him after that?’

‘He will have another life in which these memories will be transformed into pictures.’

‘
Another painter…?’

‘
Yes…this man is yet to come. Many returned as painters,
pairé
, to tell what they had seen. If all goes well the man who was Judas and Augustine will create wondrous works of art in which he will often depict Magdalena and her brother Lazarus-John over and again. Sometimes he will confuse them, one with the other, and people will say that his John is really Magdalena, but this is only because he could not prise them apart himself. His greatest achievement, though, will be his hardest task; he will paint the last supper, but he will struggle to paint the dark face of Judas, his own face.’

‘
Oh!’ My sense of wonderment increased. ‘Will he paint his own face?’

‘That remains to be seen
. One day you will know how close he came to his own ideal. He will also see me, as you do, and I will tell him many things of the past, and the future, and he will paint my portrait. Many will think he has painted the face of a wealthy woman, but in this woman’s face he will portray the soul of all women! He will take that portrait with him everywhere as a memory of our meeting, and will loathe to let it go. One day you will look at it carefully,
pairé
, and you will see that in the background he has painted that place in which he died, the valley of Hinnon.’

‘
So he does not go to hell!’ I said, ‘He is given the chance to redeem himself as Augustine and then as this painter!’

‘
You see,
pairé
, the wages of sin might be death, but from death comes new life…that is the gift Christ gave to mankind, that is what the church of Rome has hidden from men, for their Christ is like the God of the Sadducees and Pharisees – a God of death.’

‘What happens now to Judas?’

‘At the very moment he sees whom he will become, the girdle around his neck lets go, and he falls onto the rocks. His last thought is of Magdalena and of the rocks…something he will also paint. But at that moment, as he falls, he hopes for nothing and he fears nothing. He is free in his spirit,
pairé
, for the first time in all his lives.’

WHAT IS TRUTH?

B
efore I could take these things into my heart Lea had begun again to tell
of Pontius Pilate who was standing, stone-faced and weary, upon the court outside his palace.

‡

Some called this court the
Pavement,
because it was inlaid with mosaics, and others called it the
Gabbatha,
or the high place, because from it one could glimpse the township of that name. Whatever the case these days Pilate had made it a raised tribunal, erecting at one end of it that marble seat from which he always pronounced his sentences and judgements.

A wide sweeping staircase, usually
a-swarm with guards at these times, led from the Pavement down to a great square bounded by stone walls and lined with columns and seats where the people could gather. He stood stiffly looking down upon it. It was near the
hora secunda
, the second hour of the day, and even at this early time it was already hot. Above the smoke from the sacrifices made columns rise towards the heavens, while below in the temple the Levites pierced the valley with their woeful songs. These ordinary things on such a day as this made him full of discomfort – for this was no ordinary day. Pilate wiped his brow and thought things through.

Last night around the midnight hour
his wife had woken him fearful for a dream in which Jesus of Nazareth was covered in blood. It had taken him long to console her. The sentinels, he had told her, were doubled and the cohorts drawn up, as was customary during the feast. Nothing could happen without his knowledge. Still she had wept and among her weepings had confessed her belief in the man, how often she had seen him and heard his words, and how much she feared for his safety.

Later,
reports reached the pr
ae
torium of a commotion in the city and he understood the accuracy of his wife’s augury. His Centurion, Gaius Cassius, had returned from the palace of Ananias with news that the Jew had been arrested on made up charges and was being taken to face trial by the council at the Palace of Caiaphas.

Cassius
had told him that the followers of Jesus would not oppose it for they were peaceable, but Pilate considered that the Sicarri might use the unrest to play upon the different factions for their own ends. All these years he had feared another uprising of great proportions and now that it was near he felt ill prepared for it. He had ordered Cassius to gather the men and to use force if necessary, but had cautioned restraint. If the entire population of Jerusalem decided this day to rise up against Rome, his meagre soldiery would not suffice to hold them back and there was no time to send for reinforcements.

After that he had not returned to bed
but had paced the halls, waiting on further reports, thinking on his wife’s dream and on her sudden confession of faith. It was clear to him why she had so often urged him to be lenient with the man, why she advised him to allow Jesus to come and go freely and to speak as he saw fit in the city.

These last days
his men had reported to him that Jesus seemed peaceable, a man who spoke of a heavenly kingdom not an earthly one. But Pilate had sensed ferment in the people –why he had not listened to his reason, he did not know.

B
efore the sun rose pale and cheerless over Jerusalem he had washed, anointed himself and waited for word. The message had come as the sounds of horn blasts announced the break of day. The message was from Caiaphas. The priests would bring Jesus of Nazareth to him for sentencing when the city had quieted down. Pilate knew the Jews would not be coming to him for a light sentence, since they were given the sanction to punish any crime against their religious laws as they saw fit. They were coming to him for a civil judgement and had no doubt already found him guilty.

He stood n
ow upon his court thinking on Claudia’s warning to him of the terrible reprisals he would suffer should he condemn a living God, and at the same time feeling keenly how tight was Rome’s leash around his neck. The Governor of Syria would not look kindly upon him if he defended a Jew at the expense of the peace of an entire province.

Now as the members of the Sanhedrin and scribes came flowing like a malignant smell into the forum, he looked to the moment and prepared to exe
rcise his mind’s best guidance.

The forum was a large
area that stood opposite the pr
ae
torium. It was used as both a market place on ordinary days and also a public place of punishment. It was usually crowded with people and merchants but since this day was a holiday it stood empty. An archway connected the forum to the square outside the pr
ae
torium and it was here that the party of priests stood paused at the threshold of his square, and he knew why. This day marked the commencement of their
Feast of Unleavened Bread
and the priests could not risk contact with a gentile.

He squinted away the sun whose
light edged a green-grey cloud to see Jesus being led in chains to the foot of the steps leading to the pavement. The Jew had been beaten to a pulp and walked with a limp.

Pilate made a sigh of distaste. ‘Why do you bring this man here?’ he said to Caiaphas in
Latin, forcing the man to speak the tongue he despised.

‘For sentencing,’ Caiaphas told him.

‘At this early hour?’

‘It is urgent, procurator.’

‘What has he done? Look at him! Will you tear the man to pieces and execute him before he is judged by me?’

Caiaphas
spoke with a ring of apology in his voice, ‘We would not have disturbed the Roman Governor if this man were not already judged a malefactor. Take him to you and listen to our accusations.’

‘Bring him to me
then…hurry up!’ Pilate told the Jew guards with a n impatient hand.

The
temple guards moved at once to deliver Jesus to his men and they contrived to bring him up the steps but it was a slow work since the man’s chains prevented him from moving freely and he near fell from the obvious exhaustion, and perhaps from the pain of those wounds. Once on the Pavement he was left to stand midway between Pilate and his centurion.

Pilate moved an eye over him.

The nearness of the man he had seen only from a distance made Pilate feel overtaken with conflict. Though he was made small and ravaged from his beatings something in the man spoke to him of eloquence and some hidden, inner power affixed to that frail and sorry form.

‘What is the accusation?’ Pilate said to the priests.

‘He is a blasphemer!’ Caiaphas told him.

‘Why do you bother me
, then? If he has transgressed your religious laws it is not for me to judge him but for you to sentence him according to the dictate of your laws! I will have nothing to do with it!’ he said, and made a turn to go.

Caiaphas forestalled him.

‘You know well, Governor, that we cannot condemn a man to death!’

Pilate turned around again
. His head ached.

‘What has he done that you judge him so harshly?’

‘He has violated the Sabbath by curing the sick.’ Caiaphas gave back.

Pilate made his voice laconic, ‘It seems to me that compassion should make no distinction between one day and another. Surely if you were sick you would not care if you were healed on a Sabbath! This is not a good cause, you waste my time!’

‘It is our law!’ Caiaphas shrieked.

‘Then you should look to change it,’ Pilate answered.

The old priest, Ananias, shuffled forward. ‘Governor, he is a magician, he turns water into wine and bread into flesh and tells that if one eats of his flesh and drinks of his blood they will have eternal life!’

Pilate considered this, recalling the
Mithraic rituals of the military. ‘Are you one of his disciples then? For you seem to be following his doctrines very well. I see with what eagerness you seek his flesh and his blood!’

‘We have not told you all,’ Anani
as added, ‘he incites rebellion by telling the people to deny Caesar his tribute!’

‘If he had done so I would have heard of it…I have good spies. I have heard only that when you tried to ens
nare him with that question he answered that you must give to Caesar what is his!’

Ananias was not to be put off, ‘
And yet he calls himself a king and says that his followers wish to take from Caesar the kingdom of Israel! Two of his disciples are members of the Sicarri!’

He
turned an eye to Jesus of Nazareth before ordering Cassius to bring him to an adjoining apartment.

Here
, away from the priests, the man stood before him in his much abused state, with spit and blood mingled in his hair.

Pilate took a moment to formulate his thoughts. ‘Well then…’ he said to him in Latin, ‘they say you call yourself the King of the Jews. I
s that true?’

Jesus
lifted his good eye to look at Pilate. The other was bruised and closed shut. In that open eye’s many coloured profundity Pilate saw something.

‘Do you say this of me because you believe it
? Or do you say it because others have said it to you?’ Jesus asked.

Pilate was taken back for
the man spoke in perfect, learned Latin. His voice was full of certainty and calm and it seemed to be challenging him to see for himself who Jesus truly was.

‘Why should I believe you to be the King of Israel?’ he told him,
disconcerted, put off balance. ‘I am not a Jew! Your own priests have delivered you to me and they seek from me a sentence of death. I only mean to ascertain for myself what it is that you have done. Are you a pretender to the Kingdom of David?’

‘My kingdom is not of this world, for if it were
, my servants would have fought for me and prevented me from being delivered to you.’

Pilate felt something in his heart and he was amazed to feel it! A
feeling
for the truth of his words!

He did not think
before he said, ‘You
are
a king!’

‘You recognise what I am,’ Jesus said to him a little breathless, ‘And I tell you, for this reason was I born, for this reason did I come
into the world, that men might see what lives in me. That I should come and be among them, that with their own eyes they might see the truth as it stands before them.’

Words were caught in Pilate’s throat now and he held them, scarcely knowing how to formulate them, f
or here was that very question on the tip of his tongue!

‘
What is truth?’ he blurted out.

Jesus swayed and steadied himself
, and it was a moment before he could speak, ‘It lives beyond this world, beyond your
reason,
’ he said. ‘With reason you know only what you see of this world, and with faith you believe what you cannot see…which is higher than this world. But reason and blind faith will last only until you can make eyes that can see the
truth
of the spirit in all its glory – then you shall know it because you can see it that I am the truth embodied in a human being. Every man that sees what lives in me, sees the
truth
, and will also hear its voice when I speak.’

Pilate was astounded at the sense this made to his mind! The quandary between his wife’s
feeling and his reason now seemed perfectly resolved. This man must truly be a prophet, a holy man! His wife was right. How could he sentence a holy man to death? He paced up and down, trying to think on what to do. He took himself out of the arch to the portico then, and told Caiaphas, ‘I find no cause in him!’

Caiaphas was sent into turmoil
and in his poor version of Latin said, ‘If you do not…revile him…his followers will rise up!’

Pilate called for Cassius to bring Jesus of Nazareth out, ‘Do you say nothing to this
? Look how they accuse you!’

Jesus of Nazareth remained obdurate.

Pilate steeled himself. ‘I’m not a fool Caiaphas, it is plain that what you allege is false!’

Ananias stepped in. ‘If you let him go
, he will continue to incite the people to revolt, not only here, but also in his home of Galilee…do not think he will stop at Jerusalem! The entire province will fall under his power! It shall be said of Pontius Pilatus that you are no friend of Tiberias!’’

Pilate curbed his anger and took a moment to think. ‘Of course
, this man is a Galilean! I had forgotten it. I say to you, he is not my concern…he belongs to Herod!’

He said this and
without waiting for an answer walked off through the marble columns into the pr
ae
torium, leaving the priests behind him.

It was not over.

Herod was weak willed and would not make a judgement and the man would return to his hands. What would he do then? Once more he felt himself standing like two pillars on either side of a raging sea: one pillar was the Roman statesman and the other was the man. How must he marry his mind’s reason to that soft voice that had begun, only now, to speak of that strange thing called truth?