Killing Jesus: A History

all was lost. But the Liberator was wrong. Shortly after he committed suicide, his legions reversed the flow of the battle and won the day.
    Octavian also nearly died that afternoon. His lines were overrun during Cassius’s counterattack, and the young leader escaped only by hiding in a swamp while Cassius’s legionaries plundered Octavian’s camp before returning to their lines. Disgraced by his cowardice and that he had allowed more than fifteen thousand of his men to be slain, Octavian remained hidden for three days before sneaking back to his tent.
    Now, three weeks later, the unmistakable blasts of brass tubae (trumpets) echo from one side of the plain to the other, a sound that makes the heart of every Roman legionary beat faster, for this is the call to battle.
    On this morning, the coward will have his revenge. Octavian knows this because the fight between the two eagles has just been decided. The two majestic birds were not part of an orchestrated ritual and fought over the battlefield only by pure chance. But the eagle that approached from Marcus Brutus’s side of the lines is now plummeting to earth, killed by the majestic bird of prey that flew into combat from Octavian’s side.
    It is an omen—a good one. And like his dead uncle Julius, the Divi Filius is a firm believer in omens.
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    Even two years after the fact, the death of Julius Caesar still affects almost every part of the world. It can be felt in Rome, where chaos continues to reign, and in Egypt, where Cleopatra has ruthlessly scrambled to maintain her toehold on power by murdering her own brothers. The shock waves are slow to reach Judea, but they will soon be keenly felt in the province of Galilee, in the village of Nazareth, where a builder named Jacob is raising a son called Joseph.
    Jacob is a direct descendant of Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish faith, and of David, the greatest king Judea has ever known. Twenty-six generations separate Jacob from Abraham, and at least fourteen separate him from David. But while Abraham was extremely wealthy, and David and his son Solomon even more so, their lineage has fallen on hard times. The quiet and humble backdrop of Nazareth is a far cry from the great kingdoms enjoyed by those prior generations. It is a village of fewer than four hundred residents and three dozen homes, situated in a hollow formed by the rolling hills of southern Galilee. The tiny houses 3 are built from the soft limestone and other stone that litters the hills. As a builder, Jacob works with both foundation stone and oak from nearby forests to construct roofs and furniture. When work is scarce in Nazareth, there are always jobs to be found in the cosmopolitan city of Sepphoris, just an hour’s walk away.
    Like his father before him, Jacob trains Joseph to follow in his footsteps, teaching the boy not only how to build but also other vital skills, such as pressing wine and olive oil, terracing a hillside to grow the crops that will feed the family, and rerouting the local spring as a source of irrigation. But most important of all, Jacob raises his son up in the Jewish faith. For though the Greek, Arab, and Roman cultures have all made their mark on Nazareth over the centuries, the lineage of Jacob and their devotion to a one true God has not changed since Abraham walked the earth two thousand years ago.
    Even the great Julius Caesar did not attempt to alter Jewish tradition. The calculating dictator who believed in the divinity of Venus and who sought omens in the entrails of dead animals rather than through prayer, was, surprisingly, an ardent supporter of Judea and the Jewish way of life—if only because its location provided a natural buffer between Syria and Egypt. Caesar understood, as the Nazi Germans would two thousand years later, the importance of maintaining an empire by allowing local leaders to have some measure of control over their own destiny. In fact, the Nazis would one day borrow from the basic tenets of Roman occupation: a local official appointed to serve as a puppet ruler, a network of informants to flush out any pockets of rebellion, and the appearance that normal life was being maintained in spite of subjugation.
    The death of Caesar has directly affected the backwater known as Judea, even if its citizens do not realize it. But the Battle of Philippi, an epic moment in history, will affect the area even more. When this battle is over, nothing for the Jews will be the same