Killing Jesus: A History (7 page)

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 again.

*   *   *

The battle is done. The fighting has been as bloody and intimate as many had feared, with men literally clawing at their opponents as they struggled to murder one another in hand-to-hand fighting. Blood flows from open wounds and from those awful marks on their bodies where men have lost arms, eyes, and hands. Many soldiers have been hamstrung, the large back muscle of their legs flayed open with a sword’s blade, making it impossible for them to walk. These men will die a slow death on the battlefield.

Thousands upon thousands of dead bodies litter the earth between mountain and swamp, soon to be picked clean—first by the hordes of nearby citizens, who will fleece the dead of any signs of wealth, and then by the great buzzards and wolves, who will enjoy a rare feast.

Those alive from the losing army are now in chains but remain defiant. When Octavian appears, they jeer at him, showing gross disrespect.

The losing general, Marcus Brutus, is not among them—he has persuaded his slave to kill him with the single hard thrust of a two-foot-long sword. Brutus’s head will be cut off and returned to Rome, even as the rest of the body is cremated where it fell.

As one and all knew before that first long blare of the
tubae
, this day, and this battle, will decide the fate of the Roman Republic.

And it has. That largely egalitarian institution will soon be no more, replaced by a despotic empire. And though it will take eleven long years before he stands atop that kingdom as its undisputed emperor, Octavian will know that moment of glory, just as he knows today’s. He will reign for the rest of his life, growing crueler and more callous with every passing year. And just as Jacob of Nazareth is training Joseph to follow in his footsteps, the new emperor will teach his stepson, Tiberius, to reign with an iron fist, so when the day comes that
he
is named emperor, he will maintain his own ruthless hold on power—brooking no opposition, crushing any rebellion, and flogging, stripping, and publicly nailing to a cross any man who poses a threat to Rome.

That will include a humble carpenter.

But, on this day, another general walks among the vanquished and is not disrespected. Forty-one-year-old Marc Antony strides purposely through the carnage as men on both sides admire his strength.

Octavian and Marc Antony are the victors. But of course there can be only one ruler of this new empire. So, for the next decade, these two men will wage a long and bitter war for total control of Rome. The entire world will be affected by the outcome.

*   *   *

The final battle takes place in 31
B.C.
, in Actium, just off the coast of Greece. Just before the fighting begins, one of Marc Antony’s top generals, Quintus Dellius, defects to Octavian, bringing Antony’s battle plans with him. When this leads to the destruction of his naval fleet, Marc Antony’s nineteen legions and twelve thousand cavalry desert.
⁴
Now hunted and without an army, Antony flees to Egypt with his longtime lover the once-powerful queen Cleopatra, who chose to ally herself with the warrior rather than Octavian. Furious, Octavian gives chase, and Marc Antony kills himself with his sword to avoid being taken prisoner, dying in his lover’s arms. Cleopatra soon follows him into death by drinking a poisonous blend of opium and hemlock.
⁵
She is thirty-nine years old.

To ensure he reigns as his uncle’s undisputed heir, Octavian then orders the murder of Caesarion, Julius Caesar’s bastard child by Cleopatra. The sixteen-year-old Caesarion escapes to India but is lured back to Egypt by promises that he will be named the new pharaoh. This proves to be a lie. Octavian’s henchmen strangle the teenage pretender, putting an end to the scheme Cleopatra hatched when she first bedded Julius Caesar in those glorious years before his assassination. The devious cycle is now complete.

So it is that the new Roman Empire is ruled by just one all-powerful man who believes himself to be the son of god: Octavian, who will soon answer to a new name.

All hail Caesar Augustus.

CHAPTER FOUR

JORDAN RIVER VALLEY, JUDEA
MARCH 22, A.D. 7
NOON

The child with twenty-three years to live is missing.

The northeast road out of Jerusalem is dusty and barren, a desolate path leading steeply downhill through the city to the Jordan River and the rocky desert of Perea beyond. There is little shade and few places to take refuge from the sun. Mary and Joseph walk among a long line of pilgrims on their way back to Nazareth after the Passover festival in Jerusalem, a journey they are required by Jewish law to make each year. The couple leaves behind a city far different from when Jesus was born. King Herod is long dead, but rather than being better off—he was demented in his final hours, waving a knife and ordering the murder of yet another son—the Jewish people are actually worse for the tyrant’s demise.

Intense rioting followed his passing in March of 4
B.C.,
and anarchy reigned once the people of Jerusalem realized that Herod’s heir was a weak and ineffectual version of his father. But Archelaus, as the new king was known, struck back hard, showing that he could be as cruel as Herod. The slaughter came during Passover, the celebration of the night when the angel of death “passed over” the houses of the Jews while they were enslaved in Egypt during the time of the pharaohs, killing the firstborn sons of Egyptians instead. The holiday symbolizes the freedom from slavery that later followed, when Moses led the people out of Egypt in search of the homeland that God had promised them.

Passover is a time when Jerusalem is packed with hundreds of thousands of worshippers from all over the world, so it was horrific when Archelaus boldly asserted his authority by ordering his cavalry to charge their horses into the thick crowds filling the Temple courts. Wielding javelins and long, straight steel and bronze swords, Archelaus’s Babylonian, Thracian, and Syrian mercenaries massacred three thousand innocent pilgrims. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus saw the bloodbath firsthand and were lucky to escape the Temple with their lives. They were also eyewitnesses to the crucifixion of more than two thousand Jewish rebels outside Jerusalem’s city walls when Roman soldiers moved in to quell further revolts. In defiance of Jewish law,
¹
the bodies were not taken down and buried, but left to rot or to be devoured by wild dogs and vultures as a symbol of what happens to those who defy the Roman Empire.

Rome soon inserted itself completely into Judean politics.
²
By
A.D.
6, Emperor Caesar Augustus deemed Archelaus unfit to reign and exiled him to Gaul. Judea is now a Roman province, ruled by a prefect sent from Rome. There are still Jewish rulers reigning over other portions of Herod’s former kingdom, but they are nothing more than figureheads and carry the title of tetrarch instead of king. A tetrarch is a subordinate ruler in the Roman Empire. The term refers to “fourths” and the fact that Herod the Great’s kingdom of Judea was split into four unequal parts after his death. Three of those parts went to his sons, one each to Herod and Philip and two to Archelaus. Upon the exile of Archelaus in
A.D.
6, Rome sent prefects to be governors to oversee the land of the Jews.

Jerusalem is ruled by the local aristocracy and Temple high priests, who mete out justice through the Great Sanhedrin, a court comprised of seventy-one judges with absolute authority to enforce Jewish religious law—though, in the case of a death sentence, they must get the approval of the Roman governor.

In this way, Emperor Caesar Augustus balances the needs of his empire without insulting the Jewish faith. Nevertheless, he still demands complete submission to his domain, a humiliation that the Jews have no choice but to endure. This does not, however, mean they have stopped rebelling. In fact, their region is the site of more uprisings than any other part of the mighty Roman Empire, a sprawling kingdom stretching the length of Europe, across the sands of Parthia, and spanning almost the entire Mediterranean rim. The worst rebellion was in 4
B.C.,
when Jesus was just one year old. A rebel faction broke into the great palace fortress in Sepphoris, looted the royal armory, distributed its cache of weapons to the city’s residents, and then attempted a takeover of the local government. Under the orders of Caesar Augustus, Publius Quinctilius Varus, the Roman governor of Syria, ordered his cavalry to slaughter the rebels, burn Sepphoris to the ground, and enslave its entire population of more than eight thousand residents.

The Jewish people have also begun boycotting the purchase of all Roman pottery. As passive and understated as the act may be, it serves as a daily reminder that despite their oppression, the Jews will never allow themselves to be completely trampled beneath the heel of Rome. For, while the Roman Republic kept its distance from Judean politics during the reign of Julius Caesar, the Roman
Empire
rules the Jews in an increasingly oppressive fashion.

For now, the thousands of observant worshippers filling the desolate road spilling down to the Jordan River can forget their gripes and fears about the Roman soldiers stationed in the barracks right next to the Temple. Passover is done. They have been stopped at the city gate to pay the publican yet another one of the exorbitant taxes that make their lives such a struggle—this time a tax on goods purchased in Jerusalem. Now they are headed home to Galilee. The pilgrims march in an enormous caravan to ensure protection from robbers, kidnappers, and slavers. A lucky few lead a donkey that carries their supplies, but most shoulder their own food and water. Mary and Joseph haven’t seen the twelve-year-old Jesus since yesterday, but they are sure he is somewhere in the caravan, walking with friends or extended family.

This is not the easiest or shortest way home, though it is the safest. The most direct route means two days’ less travel. But it leads due north, through Samaria, a region notorious for racial hatred between the Samaritans and the Jews, and along mountain passes where murderous bandits give vent to that prejudice.

So the caravan is going around Samaria, on a path that can only be described as treacherous. There are few inns or sources of food and water, and the landscape alternates between desert and rugged wilderness. But there is safety in numbers, and Mary and Joseph’s fellow travelers are hardly strangers, for they make this journey together each year. The members of the caravan look after one another and their families. If a child has wandered away from his parents at nightfall, he is given a place to sleep and then sent off to find his parents in the morning.