CHAPTER 76

Nearly three months to the day after my initial meeting with Paul and his companions, the physician Luke came to my house in the early evening and delivered the requested manuscript in two parts. Mansuetus stood by watching, arms behind his back, proud of the role he had played in developing the evidence. As was the custom, Luke had sewn the pieces of parchment together with vegetable fibers, making two long strips that he had rolled into separate scrolls. Each was far longer than I had ever anticipated.

“You did all this in three months?”

“We worked with great urgency, day and night. We had no idea when Paul might go to trial.”

We celebrated the accomplishment with a glass of wine, and Luke detailed all the help he had enlisted in compiling the two books. He lauded the assistance of Mansuetus, who had served as a sort of secretary, taking notes as the others talked so that they would have something to reference as they transcribed the final text.

“The first book describes the life of Jesus,” Luke explained. “Good portions of it are based on John Mark’s work. It will prove that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and not the founder of some strange new religion.

“The second book is the story of the followers of Jesus. Naturally, I have emphasized Paul’s ministry, and I’ve provided a detailed account of each of his trials. It ends with his imprisonment here in Rome.”

I played the gracious host and listened patiently to Luke. I didn’t say anything, but I was secretly anxious for him to leave so I could begin reading his masterpiece. When the process had first started, I had expected maybe thirty or forty parchment pages. But as I watched Mansuetus engage with Luke, Paul, and their companions, I knew the manuscript would grow much larger. Still, I had never expected this. I didn’t have the heart to tell Luke, but I doubted whether Nero or his assessores would ever take the time to read something this long.

Nevertheless, it was exactly what I needed. There was more than enough here for me to decide whether Paul would become my first client, other than Seneca, in the last fifteen years.

As soon as Luke left, Mansuetus urged me to start reading. I thought he might stand there and look over my shoulder as I did. To get him out of the way, I gave him some assignments for the next day and sequestered myself alone in my study.

Luke was a good writer. He was straightforward, paid attention to detail, and knew how to tell a story. My instincts had been right.

He started off with a formal and confident introduction. To his credit, in the very first sentence he mentioned the things that had been “fulfilled,” a reference to Jewish prophecies and a tie-in to the Jewish faith.

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, Most Excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been told.

He began his story with a dramatic account of the birth of Jesus. With the precision of a historian, he pinpointed the exact time of the Nazarene’s birth.

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)

He claimed that Jesus had been born of a virgin and was some kind of child prodigy. He skipped quickly into the Nazarene’s three years of ministry. Page after page, Luke told of the teachings and miracles of Jesus. He healed people. He challenged the conventional thinking of the Jewish religious leaders. He spoke of the Kingdom of God.

I was most intrigued by the final pages of the first scroll, where Luke described Jesus’ last days. By the time I read that part, it was late at night, and Mansuetus had long since gone to bed. But I couldn’t stop reading. It was as if Luke had been there himself.

I read the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, and I recalled the way Pilate had sneered when he heard the news. I thought about the contrast of my own entrance that week, trailing the great caravan of soldiers. A few pages later, when Luke described Jesus driving out the traders who sold pigeons in the Temple courts, I closed my eyes and could still visualize the scene.

I was pleased to see that Luke included the incident where the Pharisees’ spies asked Jesus whether they should pay taxes to Caesar. This was, I knew, a critical part of our defense. Luke quoted the rabbi’s question: “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”

I remembered what my friend Nicodemus had told me, how the words actually played on two levels. But Nero wouldn’t need to know that. The words of Jesus were plain enough: “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

I loved what Luke wrote next:

They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.

It was surreal, reading about these events as if Luke had been standing right next to me. Every detail was correct.

When I got to Luke’s description of the night before Jesus’ death, I could no longer sit still. I picked up the scroll and began pacing back and forth, reading the words intently. So much had been going on behind the scenes that I didn’t know about. Jesus had predicted his betrayal. That same night, he had prayed to the Jewish God that he could somehow escape his destiny but then had ultimately submitted himself to his fate.

Next came the trial of Jesus.

Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.”

So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“You have said so,” Jesus replied.

Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.”

I had to set the scroll down and walk away from it for a few minutes as the events and all the emotions that went with them came flooding back. Pilate’s agonizing attempt to declare Christ innocent. Sending Jesus to Herod. Jesus coming back dressed in that ridiculous purple robe, the victim of Herod’s insults and torment.

When I picked up the scroll again, I read the words I had been dreading.

But the whole crowd shouted, “Away with this man! Release Barabbas to us!”

Wanting to release Jesus, Pilate appealed to them again. But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Emotions overtook me as I contemplated the enormity of what I had done —and not done. I had suggested the gambit with Barabbas. I shuddered as I recalled the chants of the crowd to crucify Jesus. Hearing them, I had remained silent instead of urging Pilate to do what we both knew was right.

“What is truth?”

At the time, I knew we had executed an innocent man. But if Luke was right, it was much more than that. If Luke was right, we had crucified the Jewish Messiah and the very Son of God.

I sat down again and read about the crucifixion. The words of Christ echoed back to me, piercing my conscience.

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

So did the words of those who taunted him.

“He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the chosen one.”

I remembered the woman caught in adultery and how she had told me about Jesus defending her. It gave me chills to think about how I had used that same strategy to rescue Flavia.

Luke described the darkness that came over the land at noon and how the Temple curtain was torn in two. He even mentioned the centurion, though he was careful not to name the soldier who cried out to God at the foot of the cross.

By all rights, that’s where the first scroll should have ended. From my perspective, that was the end of the story. A righteous man unjustly killed. The gods were angry. Even nature protested.

But Luke was not finished. He went on to describe the events I had heard rumors about for the past thirty years. Three days after the Nazarene’s crucifixion, his tomb was empty. He came back and walked among his disciples, ate with them, and appeared to numerous witnesses.

Jesus reminded them that he had predicted both his death and his resurrection. “The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.” He had done exactly what he said he would do.

His followers remembered those words and found a cause worth dying for.

After teaching them, he “left them and was taken up into heaven.”

It was all scintillating stuff. But was it true?

Paul and Luke sure seemed to think so.