CHAPTER 24

The soldiers dragged Jesus into the room by the chain attached to the collar around his neck. Pilate dismissed everyone except me and the centurion Longinus, who took his place by the door.

Pilate circled Jesus, looking him over. The prisoner stared straight ahead.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked. It was a scornful question, mocking the appearance of the man.

“Are you asking this on your own, or have others told you about me?”

I had to suppress a smile. This was the same rabbi who had dumbfounded the religious leaders just a few days earlier in the Temple courtyard. Now he was playing cat and mouse with Pilate. “Are you asking this on your own?” Was Pilate operating on hearsay? Had Pilate himself seen any evidence that Jesus was establishing a kingdom? Of course not.

Pilate’s visage darkened, and he stood directly in front of the Nazarene. He didn’t like being questioned. “I’m not a Jew, am I?” he asked. His voice was more caustic this time, less inquisitive. “Your own nation and chief priest handed you over to me. What have you done?”

“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus said slowly, deliberately, as if explaining something to a child. “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Jewish leaders. As it is, my kingdom does not have its origin here.”

“You are a king then?”

The question brought a pause from Jesus, as if he had all the time in the world. “You say that I am a king. I was born for this, and for this I have come into the world: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate looked Jesus up and down again as if he were appraising a visitor from another world. Jesus was talking about religion, but Pilate was an eminently practical man. He seemed torn between admiration for the prisoner’s self-assurance and frustration at the man’s insolence.

“What is truth?” Pilate asked with a snort, and I thought of the lessons drilled into me by Seneca. This was the right question, though Pilate asked it flippantly, not expecting an answer.

Accommodating him, Jesus chose not to respond.

Pilate nodded to Longinus, who called in the guards and led the prisoner away.

When the massive wooden doors closed behind them, Pilate shook his head in frustration. “The man is arrogant,” he said.

“He’s also innocent, Your Excellency.”

“He claims to be a king.”

“He may be delusional, but he’s no threat.”

Pilate frowned, deep furrows carved into his forehead. “Maybe he isn’t, but the men who hate him are.”

He walked over to a window and stared at the city for a long time. When he turned back to me, I could see the tension lining his face.

“He’s one man,” Pilate said. “And the truth is, I have an entire province to consider.” With that, he headed for the portico. I dutifully followed.

“What is truth?” I mumbled.

This time, Jesus stood at the top of the portico steps, facing the crowd. Pilate and I huddled behind him.

“There are no grounds for charging him,” I said.

Pilate agreed, but I could see uncertainty in his eyes. “Do they think I’m their slave?” he asked. “That they get to tell me when the power of Rome will be brought to bear?”

He stepped to the edge of the portico, and the crowd quieted. “I find no grounds for charging this man,” Pilate announced.

The words were met with shouting and jeering. The mob, which seemed to have grown while we were inside, pressed toward the stairs. Soldiers on the portico descended a few steps, and those on the exterior walls stood a little more erect, eyes trained on Pilate, waiting for his signal.

Pilate allowed the uproar to die down. He was still standing, a sign that he had not yet pronounced final judgment. “Let me hear your testimony,” he commanded.

For twenty-five minutes, the rabbi’s accusers called witnesses. Jesus had threatened to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. He had disrespected the Jewish leaders, calling them whitewashed tombs and vipers. He had told the Jews not to pay taxes, a charge which I knew had no foundation. The testimony was all over the place, but Jesus just stood there the entire time, like a statue, never disputing any of their charges.

I had been through hundreds of trials with Pilate. Together we’d seen grown men beg and argue and curse. We’d seen them lunge at their attackers. I had watched one man clutch his chest and die. But I had never seen this kind of stoicism in the face of such vitriol.

“Are you not answering anything?” Pilate asked at one point. “Look how many things they accuse you of.”

But Jesus didn’t even cast a sideways glance toward the prefect. He kept his gaze fixed on the crowd, his face showing no emotion, as if he were in a trance.

I found my sympathies shifting toward the Nazarene. I had watched him with admiration in the Temple courtyard and been drawn in by his advocacy skills. It was professional respect, one orator to another, the same way a great gladiator might develop grudging respect for a valiant foe. I had been intrigued by the things he had reportedly said to Nicodemus. But it was there on the portico of the Stone Pavement Courtyard that I saw the type of stoicism Seneca had preached about when I was just a boy.

As the witnesses paraded forward, one by one, I was only half-listening. The words of Seneca were foremost in my mind:

To see a man fearless in dangers, untouched by desires, happy in adversity, composed in a tumult, and disdainful of those things which are generally coveted or feared, all men must acknowledge that this can be from nothing else but a divine power that has descended on that man.

I had seen that divine power in my few short interactions with Jesus. And I had no idea what to do about it.

I was brought back to the moment by a particularly adamant witness who testified with flailing hands about all the trouble the prisoner had caused. “He stirs up the people,” the man yelled, “teaching throughout all of Judea, from Galilee, where he started, even to here.”

It hit me like a lightning bolt from Jupiter. Did he say Galilee?

“Your Excellency,” I said.

Pilate held up his hand to stop the witness, and I stepped forward for a brief conference. In criminal trials, a prisoner could be transferred from the forum apprehensionis, the place where he was arrested, to the forum originis, his home region. Pilate apparently hadn’t noticed the reference to Galilee, but I had. And now, in this brief moment, I was torn between my duty toward the law and my desire to help this prisoner. Galilee was the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, the bizarre son of Herod the Great. We could send Jesus there —we should send Jesus there. But there was no telling what would happen.

“The man said Galilee,” I whispered to Pilate. “He said the prisoner was from Galilee.”

Pilate’s eyes lit up. I didn’t have to spell it out for him.

He turned and looked down at the witness. “Say that again,” Pilate demanded.

The man seemed to wilt. “I think I was saying that he was stirring up trouble, um, pretty much everywhere.”

Pilate bored into him. “Go on. What else did you say?”

“From Galilee all throughout Judea,” the man admitted. His voice could barely be heard.

“This man is a Galilean!” Pilate exclaimed. “Take him to Herod!”