Killing Jesus: A History

his own town synagogue, to the people he knows best of all. Three times he has declared himself to be the Son of God, a blasphemous statement that could get him killed. It is a statement that cannot be retracted, just as he can never return to the humble and quiet life he knew growing up. There is no turning back. Nazareth is no longer his home, and he is no longer a carpenter.
    Jesus will never write a book, compose a song, or put paint on canvas. But two thousand years from now, after his message has spread to billions of people, more books will be written about his life, more songs sung in his honor, and more works of art created in his name than for any other man in the history of the world.
    But now the Nazarene is completely alone, cut off from the life he once knew, destined to wander through Galilee preaching words of hope and love.
    Those words will eventually rally billions of human beings to his spiritual cause. But they will not convert the powerful men who currently hold the life of Jesus in their hands.
    To them, the Nazarene is a marked man.

CHAPTER NINE
    CAPERNAUM, GALILEE
SUMMER, A.D. 27
AFTERNOON
    The local fishing fleet has just returned from a long night and day on the water, and great crowds fill the markets along Capernaum’s waterfront promenade. Paved with black volcanic basalt, just like the eight-foot seawall on which it rests, the walkway is a center of activity: fishermen sorting their catch into clean and unclean before making the official count for the taxman; 1 large freshwater holding tanks filled with live fish; Matthew, the local tax collector, sizing up the day’s haul at the marine toll station; and everywhere, customers eager to purchase the freshest catch for their evening dinner. What doesn’t get sold this day will be shipped to Magdala for drying and salting, whereupon it will be packed tightly into baskets and exported throughout the Roman Empire.
    For more than two centuries, the business of fishing has defined the bustling town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee, as boats and nets line every inch of the hundred feet between the stone piers and the breakwater. Some are ferries, designed to carry passengers quickly and easily down to Magdala or across the eight miles of sea to Gergesa. But most boats are for fishing. Of the more than one dozen major fishing villages on the shores of Lake of Gennesaret, as the freshwater sea is also known, none is busier than Capernaum—not even Antipas’s brand-new creation, Tiberias city. A detachment of one hundred Roman soldiers has even been posted here, to ensure that all taxes are collected according to the law.
    So it would seem that Jesus has come to the right place if he is looking for an audience—which, indeed, he is. The problem, however, is that Capernaum is actually too busy. No one will be able to hear him over the clink of sinker leads dropping onto stone and the haggling between shopkeepers and customers. The fishermen themselves are exhausted from hours of throwing out their flax fishing nets and hauling them hand over hand back into their boats, and they are in no mood to listen to a religious sermon.
    Jesus is undeterred. He stops to look up and down the long, fingerlike row of piers, carefully studying the various fishing boats. He is looking for one boat and one man in particular.
    Each boat features a step mast for sailing and oars for rowing when the wind is calm. The boats are constructed of wood and made stronger by the mortise-and-tenon joints 2 used in place of nails and the thick handcrafted ribs that run along the interior, just below the deck. The average boat size is thirty feet long, eight feet wide, and four feet high. The bow comes to a point, while the stern is rounded. Local shipwrights use cedar for the hull, oak for the frame, and Aleppo pine, hawthorn, willow, and redbud where needed. These are sturdy craft, designed to withstand the temperamental local winds that can turn the Sea of Galilee from dead calm into tempest in a matter of moments.
    The fishermen themselves are even sturdier, with thick hands and forearms heavily callused from a lifetime of working the nets. The sun has made their faces leathery and deeply tanned. It is a tan that extends over the entire body, for those who fish with cast nets (as opposed to the larger dragnets or multilayer trammel nets) must often jump into the water to retrieve their catch, and so prefer to work naked.
    Jesus narrows his search to two empty boats.