Killing Jesus: A History

ordered Roman standards to adorn the Temple, not only did the residents of Jerusalem succeed in having them removed, but they also wrote a letter to Emperor Tiberius detailing Pilate’s indiscretion.
    Tiberius was furious. As the historian Philo will report, “Immediately, without even waiting for the next day, he wrote to Pilate, reproaching and rebuking him a thousand times for his new-fangled audacity.”
    This year, tensions are running even higher, and the finger of blame can be pointed only at Pilate. He had the ingenious idea of building a new aqueduct to bring water to Jerusalem, but he faltered in this act of goodwill by forcing the Temple treasury to pay for it. The Jewish people were outraged about this use of “sacred funds,” and during one recent festival, a small army of Jews rose up to demand that Pilate stop the aqueduct’s construction. They cursed Pilate when he appeared in the streets of Jerusalem, taking courage from the size of the crowd, thinking that their words would be rendered anonymous.
    But Pilate anticipated the protest and disguised hundreds of his soldiers in the peasant robes of Jewish pilgrims, with orders that they conceal a dagger or club beneath the folds of their robes. When the crowd marched on the palace to jeer more violently at Pilate, these men surrounded the mob and attacked them, beating and stabbing the unarmed pilgrims. “There were a great number of them slain by this means,” the historian Josephus would later write, “and others of them ran away wounded. An end was put to this sedition.”
    To the Jewish people, Pilate is a villain. They think him “spiteful and angry” and speak of “his venality, his violence, his thefts, his assaults, his abusive behavior, his frequent executions of untried prisoners, and his endless savage ferocity.” 3
    Yet one of their own is just as guilty.
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    Pontius Pilate cannot rule the Jewish people without the help of Joseph Caiaphas, the high priest and leader of the Jewish judicial court known as the Sanhedrin.
    Caiaphas is a master politician and knows that the emperor Tiberius not only believes it important to uphold the Jewish traditions but is also keeping the hot-tempered Pilate on a very short leash. Pilate may be in charge of Judea, but it is Caiaphas who oversees the day-to-day running of Jerusalem, disguising his own cruel agenda in religiosity and piety. Few people in Jerusalem realize that the same man who leads the rite for the atonement of sins, appearing in the Temple courts on Passover and Yom Kippur wearing the most dazzling ceremonial robes, 4 is a dear friend of Rome and of the decadent emperor Tiberius.
    The glamour of his position is most spectacularly evident during the annual Yom Kippur atonement ceremony, when Caiaphas enters alone a Temple sanctuary known as the Holy of Holies, where it is believed that God dwells. To Jewish believers, this places him closer to God than any mortal man. He then walks back out to stand before the believers who pack the Temple courts. A goat is placed on either side of Caiaphas. As part of the ritual atonement, this high priest must decide which goat will go free and which will be sacrificed for the sins of the Jewish people.
    This same man who stands in the presence of God and sees that sins are forgiven is also the high priest who does not object when Pilate loots the Temple funds. Caiaphas also says nothing when Jews are massacred in the streets of the Holy City. He doesn’t complain when Pilate forces him to return those jewel-encrusted ceremonial robes at the end of each festival. The Romans prefer to keep the expensive garments in their custody as a reminder of their power, returning them seven days prior to each festival so that they can be purified.
    Prior to Caiaphas, high priests were puppets of Rome, easily replaced for acts of insubordination. But Caiaphas, a member of the Sadducee sect, has developed a simple and brilliant technique to remain in power: stay out of Rome’s business.
    Rome, in turn, usually stays out of the Temple’s business.
    The former helps Pilate keep his job. The latter increases Caiaphas’s power.
    Both men know this and are comfortable with the arrangement. So while Caiaphas’s four predecessors served just one year as high priest before being deposed, Caiaphas has now been in office for a dozen years—and shows no sign of going anywhere soon. And every year he is in power, the connection between Rome and the