Pontius Pilate: A Novel by Paul L. Maier

Author:Paul L. Maier
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780825485459
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Published: 2014-08-27T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

This was the year which would shift the course of human history and dislodge many strata in the world’s culture, from its dating system at the surface to its religious and philosophical values at the depths. But no one could have guessed this during the early months of 33. No one could have known that for once Rome would not determine world events, or that Jerusalem would.

For Rome it was a year as dangerous as the last. Tiberius, suspicious as ever, requested a special bodyguard to attend him whenever he should finally visit the Senate. Sheep-like as ever, senators not only bleated their approval, but passed a law requiring that they be searched for concealed daggers at the door of the Senate whenever the emperor visited. Implicit was their promise that there would be no repetition of the Ides of March.

But Tiberius never returned to the capital. Once again he ventured to within four miles of it, spending some time in the suburbs, but suddenly he found an excuse to return to Capri. “Like an insect circling a candle,” his critics said, “attracted to the light, but afraid of getting burned.”

And the trials and executions continued, though the emperor now wanted an end to them. He took two drastic measures to stanch the blood. He issued orders that all persons in prison condemned for complicity with Sejanus should be killed. And so the hapless partisans were dispatched and their bodies pitched down the Stairs of Mourning into the Tiber. Then, with a certain grim but poetic justice, Tiberius had the bodies of some of the most notorious accusers who had disrupted the state thrown after them into the river.

The public applauded him for that final gesture, and his popularity slowly edged upward in other ways. He refused further honors from the toady Senate. And when an economic crisis that year threatened to plunge Rome into financial ruin, Tiberius shrewdly pumped money back into circulation by setting up a fund of 100,000,000 sesterces, from which debtors could borrow interest-free.

For a time, A.U.C. 786 would be known as the year of Rome’s economic depression, but later ages would call it A.D. 33 because of what was happening that spring in Palestine. The prefect of Judea, of course, could hear nothing of any drum roll of destiny as he prepared to leave Caesarea for his appointment with history in Jerusalem. Plagued with the petty problems of government and living under imperial probation, Pilate paid scant attention to Jesus of Nazareth. If he worked his wonders like a good, orderly thaumaturge and did not preach rebellion, there would be no need to deal with him.

Pilate was a little nettled when the notice for the arrest of “Yeshu Hannosri” was posted in Caesarea, for it suggested that the Sanhedrin might be trying to reassert its ancient right to execute capital sentence by stoning. Cornelius pointed out that “stoning” did not necessarily mean “stoning to death,” in Jewish custom, though this was the extreme to which it usually went.

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