King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (58 page)

Some of the traders began at once to fold up their trestle tables, and gathering their goods together made off ; they knew the proverb : “A pilgrim crowd is a dangerous crowd.” But the president of the Money-changers’ Guild came boldly forward and thrust a paper at Jesus, crying : “Read this, Sir, if you can read! It is a receipt from the Treasurer of the Temple, son-in-law to the High Priest himself, a receipt for a thousand shekels in lawful money which our guild pay four times a year for the privilege of changing money at this gate. Do you set yourself above the authority of the Temple Treasurer ?”

Jesus answered : “Do you not set the God of Israel above the authority both of the Treasurer and of the High Priest? Beware this plaited cord !”

Then he began to overturn the tables of the money-changers and the money slid down to the pavement in heaps ; gold, silver and copper together. The money-changers threw themselves on the heaps in despair, clawing the coins together, snatching them from under the feet of the mob and screaming like women in travail. As for the doves and pigeons, the disciples opened the coops in which they were caged and released them in fluttering flocks, and the lambs ran hither and thither bleating. The confusion was increased by a number of wild young fellows in the crowd, who scrambled for loose coins or stray birds with shouts of laughter. Though no one was shameless enough to rob the trembling money-changers of any large sum, their president afterwards complained that, in all, his guild was the poorer by a month’s earnings.

Jesus continued into the Temple itself and purged the Courts of all forbidden traffic, as far as the barrier beyond which only a Levite might pass. Several hundreds of people supported him, and his word was taken up : “Is this Temple become a robbers’ den ?” For the Galileans who formed the greater part of the crowd had long resented not only the presence of the money-changers and sellers of livestock in the Basilica, but the extortionate prices with which they offset the high fees demanded by the Temple Treasurer.

The High Priest, when news of the rioting first reached him, took it calmly enough. “Passover pilgrims are hot-blooded men,” he told his son-in-law the Treasurer, “and the traders of the Basilica have perhaps overreached themselves and suffered justly for their greed. Indeed, the so-called purge that has been made of the outer Temple Courts does great credit to the religious feelings of the populace, though little to their intelligence. No serious injuries are reported, and now that they have had their fling the grandeur and vastness of the Temple and the dignified demeanour of our Tribe may be counted upon to restrain them from any further act of ruffianism. No, I have no intention of disciplining them with clubs. If I summoned the Watch they would run mad, and out would come their hidden daggers. In the end we should be obliged to call in the Romans, and then the fat would be in the fire.”

The Treasurer said : “But, Holy Father, what of the traders? Are they to resume their employment to-morrow ?”

“It were better not.”

“That would be a great loss to them and to the Temple revenue : and honest pilgrims wishing to change money or buy birds would be greatly vexed.”

“And the traders would learn to be content with smaller profits ; and pilgrims who are short of breath would soon realize the inconvenience of an over-scrupulous conscience when they had to retrace their steps and climb the Mount of Olives as far as the Booths of Hino to buy their offerings. No, I shall give the order that all trading must cease until the Feast is over.”

“But what action are you taking against this Jesus of Nazareth? He engineered the whole affair.”

“Jesus of Nazareth? I had no idea that it was he! According to my report it was an Edomite from Bozrah. So he did not take the hint at the Fish Gate, the obstinate fellow ?”

“No ; and strange stories are current about him. The strangest and most persistent is that he restored a dead man to life at Bethany a few weeks ago, by use of the Name !”

“Since the dead are, by definition, incapable of living again, and since, in any case, nobody but a High Priest can know the Name—even the version treasured by the High Court is not the true one—I hardly think that we need trouble ourselves with nonsense of this sort. What else have you heard ?”

“Yesterday he rode through the City dressed in scarlet with a branch in his hand, and a rabble of little boys shouting behind him.”

“Indeed? Why was I not informed? The affair, then, is more serious than I had supposed. Now that his insanity has taken a violent form we must act as quickly as possible. We should have arrested him at the Tabernacles ; Nicodemon son of Gorion officiously prevented us, you may remember.”

“By the way, Holy Father, someone of importance—I forget who—told me at the time that this Jesus is the same man who some twenty years ago was warned to keep out of the Temple until he could clear himself of the suspicion of bastardy.”

The High Priest’s son, the Chief Archivist, said : “Yes, it was I. I heard the story and it interested me, so I turned up the records. They go far to prove the charge. Unfortunately, however, the file is incomplete—the marriage contract of his mother is no longer there. Without it we cannot accuse Jesus of trespass, for his supposed father, the only relevant witness, has been dead for several years, I find.”

“He is a dangerous man,” said the Treasurer, “dangerous, reckless, and more than usually gifted. I shall be in suspense for the rest of the Feast unless we can place him under restraint. I fear that the rebuff that he was given as a boy set him brooding on imagined wrongs, and, like many an impoverished country Pharisee, he has come to identify his own sufferings with those of the people at large. Holy Father, may I convey your order for his arrest at once to the Captain of the Temple ?”

“Arrest him in the Temple ?” cried Caiaphas. “Son, would you make matters a thousand times worse? Wait until dark, wait until he goes off for the night to his lodgings. As that wind-bag Joseph of Arimathea never tires of telling the Sanhedrin, we must do our good deeds by stealth.”

“With your permission,” said the Chief Archivist, “I will send a person of importance to confront him in the Temple to-morrow and ask him a few questions : questions that will make a fool of him ; questions that he cannot answer without falling into trouble either with the Romans or with his own supporters—questions, therefore, that he will not attempt to answer. We will not need to arrest him if the affair goes as I hope it will.”

“I will leave it to you, my Son. Why not ask the questions yourself ?”

T
HAT
evening Jesus returned with his disciples to Bethany. He went to the house of Lazarus, but the porter would not admit him. Lazarus sent Martha out to explain that, by a general resolution of the Free Essenes,
none of them was permitted to converse with him again, as being in league with a witch and having himself used witchcraft. Nevertheless, to show that he was not ungrateful to the man in whose debt he stood beyond hope of payment, he would put his house at Jesus’s free disposal, and remove elsewhere with his two sisters. Jesus accepted the offer without comment, spent the night cheerfully there with his disciples and returned to the Temple on the following day.

By this time news of what he had done at the Basilica had run through the City like fire through dry grass. There was a sharp division of opinion. The Sadducees condemned the action as a wanton interference with legitimate trade. The leading Pharisees agreed with them in deploring the use of violence on the Temple Hill : for though the traders had been at fault, it was an inexcusable presumption to chastise sins of sacrilege which could be confidently left to the vengeance of Jehovah. But crowds of Zealots and Anavim—injudicious, easily stirred to religious zeal in festival time and careless of consequences—praised Jesus to the sky for his piety and daring. If anyone asked : “But surely this is the same Jesus who was expelled from Capernaum and Chorazin by the elders of the synagogue ?” the answer came pat : “It was done in jealousy. They could find no fault in him, except that he was not too proud to preach to poor men like ourselves.”

Tales of the remarkable cures that he had performed lost nothing in the telling : the cure of one vitiliginous leper became the cure of ten true lepers, and he was credited with having revived three or four dead persons in different parts of the country, including another Shunemite boy, his mother’s only child, like the one whom the prophet Elisha had raised from the dead. It was also asserted that he had the power of suddenly disappearing, and reappearing on the same day at a place fifty miles off, and of walking dry-shod over water. Many were stirred by huge hopes. Had the Messiah come at last, with Elijah in the guise of John the Baptist as his forerunner? Already certain of the required signs had been fulfilled : Jesus had entered the City in the manner prescribed by the prophet Zechariah, wearing the dyed garments prescribed by Isaiah, and had called Israel to repentance in no uncertain voice.

From a flight of marble steps on the shady side of the Court of the Gentiles he preached to a crowd of some five thousand men and women who listened to him with rapt attention. This time he did not prophesy in his usual manner, of the Pangs of the Messiah, the dangerous times, the times of national affliction, wars and rumours of wars, nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes, famines and disasters such as had never been since the Creation. Instead, he eloquently recalled the glorious feats of King David and his thirty-seven chosen companions in their war of liberation against the Philistines, and in their wars of conquest against the Moabites and Syrians. Companions worthy of their leader : Adino the Esnite who killed eight hundred men in a single battle, and Shammah the Hararite who fought the Battle of the Lentil Patch against six companies of Philistines and left them all dead
on the field ; and Benaiah of Kabzeel who set a pitfall for mountain lions in the snow and when one fell into it, leaped down and strangled it with his bare hands. Surely that heroic breed was not yet extinct in Israel?

He made these ancient tales live again by the power of his voice and gestures. “Swell with martial pride, pacific heart! Strut proudly, meek foot! For it was here at Jerusalem that King David elected to reign, and his free-hearted companions worshipped on this very hill !” He also told of the splendid reign of David’s son Solomon, whose navies sailed over all the seas of the world and in whose army twelve thousand horsemen served, and fourteen hundred chariot-men—Solomon King of Israel, who acknowledged no overlord, the wisest king and the most favoured of God who had ever reigned in Israel. Solemnly he recited the prayer that Solomon had uttered on that same hill at the dedication of the First Temple, publicly holding Jehovah to the promise, sworn to his father David, that there should never fail a prince of the royal line to sit on the throne of Israel. “Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Trumpet music sounded, and twenty venerable white-robed priests filed out from the Inner Court and made for the stairs from which Jesus was preaching. Side by side in the middle of the procession paced the Chief Archivist and the Captain of the Temple, wearing their ceremonial cloaks. In deep reverence the crowd made way for them.

The Chief Archivist courteously saluted Jesus, who acknowledged the salute with equal courtesy.

“You, Sir, are Jesus of Nazareth ?”

“I am so called.”

“You are an Israelite ?”

“I am.”

“Were you not warned twenty years ago, by men who had assisted in the building of the most sacred part of this Temple, never again to enter its gates until you could disprove an accusation of bastardy which a Doctor of the Law had laid against you ?”

“I am true born ; I am a native of Bethlehem.”

“You mean, I suppose, the obscure Galilean hamlet—Bethlehem of Zebulon ?”

“I mean Bethlehem of Judah, which the prophets have celebrated without obscurity.”

“How are we to know that you are no bastard but true born? What persons of repute have so accepted you ?”

“The Essenes of Callirrhoë, when I entered their strict community shortly after the Romans usurped the government of our country.”

“Whom can you call as witness to this ?”

“Simeon and Hosea, Free Essenes of Bethany, both men of honour. They were my fellow-postulants.”

The Chief Archivist was taken aback. He had expected Jesus to shuffle, stammer, contradict himself and cut a poor figure in the eyes of his
followers. He shifted his ground of attack. “We will question Simeon and Hosea at our leisure,” he said, frowning. “Meanwhile, be good enough to tell us this : by whose authority did you incite your followers to drive from the Basilica of King Herod the authorized vendors of sacrificial beasts and birds, and the changers of unclean money ?”

“You have now asked me four or five questions, all of which I have answered. Be good enough to answer one in return. You have heard of John the Baptist—John of Ain-Rimmon—my kinsman, whom Herod Antipas the Tetrarch of Galilee lately beheaded in the Fortress of Machaerus and of whose baptism my disciples and I partook when he anointed us prophets. Was John a true prophet of the Lord, or was he an impostor ?”

The Chief Archivist found himself caught in a dilemma. He knew that the Galileans, the Transjordanians and the hillmen of the South had reverenced John as a great prophet : to declare him an impostor was to approve of his execution by the hated Antipas and so bring the whole priesthood into disrepute. Yet to acknowledge him as an inspired prophet was to confirm Jesus’s own authority ; everywhere it was now said : “The mantle of John has fallen upon his kinsman Jesus.”

He turned for support to the Captain of the Temple, but the Captain of the Temple could not prompt him. Finally he answered : “Prophet or impostor, how can I tell ?”

“Then how can I answer your question, which hinges upon mine ?”

The crowd applauded Jesus, clapping their hands for delight, and the disciples beamed proudly—all but Judas of Kerioth, who was once again astonished and grieved. Why had Jesus broken the principle which he had strictly laid down for them? When asked by whose authority he had acted, why had he mentioned John? Why had he not answered boldly that Jehovah was his authority? And worse : why had he, hitherto a quietest and a prophet of peace, stood up to incite the Zealots and Anavim to passionate thoughts of military glory?