At the center of this pandemonium was the Temple. Roman soldiers kept watch on the celebrations from their garrison at the Antonia; Pilate, from his splendid private chambers in Herod’s Citadel. Any hint of unrest—a challenge to Roman rule or to the collaborative Temple authorities—would have been dealt with ruthlessly, lest the situation spin out of control. One spark, one agitator, and Jerusalem might erupt.

It was into this volatile city—perhaps in the year 33 C.E., or perhaps as early as 27 or as late as 36—that there came a Galilean, a healer, a worker of miracles, a preacher of parables who warned that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. He arrived, as prophesied, astride an ass. It is possible Pilate already knew of this Galilean and that he witnessed his tumultuous entrance into Jerusalem. There were many such messianic figures in first-century Judea, men who called themselves the “anointed one” and promised to rebuild David’s kingdom. Pilate viewed these preachers as a direct threat to Roman rule and extinguished them without mercy. Invariably, their adherents suffered the same fate.

Historians disagree on the nature of the incident that led to the Galilean’s earthly demise. Most concur that a crime was committed—perhaps a physical attack on the currency traders in the Royal Portico, perhaps a verbal tirade against the Temple elite. It is possible Roman soldiers witnessed the disturbance and took the Galilean into custody straightaway. But tradition holds that he was arrested by a joint Roman-Jewish force on the Mount of Olives after sharing a final Pesach meal with his disciples.

What happened next is still less clear. Even the traditional accounts are riddled with contradictions. They suggest that sometime after midnight, the Galilean was brought to the house of the high priest, Joseph ben Caiaphas, where he was subjected to a brutal interrogation by a portion of the Sanhedrin. Contemporary historians, however, have cast doubt on this version of the story. After all, it was both Passover and the eve of the Sabbath, and Jerusalem was bursting at the seams with Jews from around the known world. Caiaphas, having put in a long day at the Temple, is unlikely to have welcomed the late-night intrusion. Moreover, the trial as described—it was purportedly conducted outside in the courtyard by the light of a bonfire—was strictly forbidden by the Laws of Moses and therefore could not have taken place.

One way or another, the Galilean ended up in the hands of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect and chief magistrate of the province. Tradition holds that he presided over a public tribunal, but no official record of such a proceeding survives. One central fact, however, is indisputable. The Galilean was put to death by crucifixion, the Roman method of execution reserved solely for insurrectionists, probably just outside the city walls, where his punishment would serve as a warning. Pilate might have witnessed the man’s suffering from his chambers in Herod’s Citadel. But in all likelihood, given his fearsome reputation, the entire episode was quickly forgotten, swept away by some new problem. Pilate, after all, was a busy man.

But then again, the prefect may well have carried a memory of the man long after ordering his execution, especially during the final years of his rule in Judea, as followers of the Galilean, who was called Jesus of Nazareth, took the first halting steps toward creating a new faith. Traumatized by what they had witnessed, they comforted each other with accounts of the Galilean’s ministry, accounts that would eventually be written down in books, evangelizing pamphlets known as gospels, which circulated among communities of early believers. And it was there that Archbishop Luigi Donati, in his rooms at the Jesuit Curia on the Borgo Santo Spirito in Rome, picked up the thread of the story.

25

JESUIT CURIA, ROME

MARK, NOT MATTHEW, WAS THE first. It was written in colloquial koine Greek sometime between 66 and 75 C.E., more than thirty years after the death of Jesus, an eternity in the ancient world. The gospel circulated anonymously for several decades before Church Fathers ascribed it to a companion of the apostle Peter, a conclusion rejected by most contemporary biblical scholars, who contend the author’s identity is not known.

His audience was a community of gentile Christians living in Rome, directly under the thumb of the emperor. It is unlikely he spoke the language of Jesus or his disciples, and he probably possessed only passing familiarity with the geography and customs of the land in which the story was set. By the time he took up his pen, nearly all of the firsthand witnesses had died off or been killed. For his source material he drew upon an oral tradition and perhaps a few written fragments. In the fifteenth chapter, a blameless and benevolent Pilate is portrayed as having bowed to the demands of a Jewish crowd to sentence Jesus to death. The earliest versions of Mark concluded abruptly with the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb, an ending many early Christians considered anticlimactic and unsatisfying. Later versions of Mark had two alternative endings. In the so-called Longer Ending, a resurrected Jesus appears in different forms to his disciples.

“Mark’s original author did not compose the alternative ending,” explained Donati. “It was probably written hundreds of years after his death. In fact, the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus, the oldest known copy of the New Testament, contains the original empty tomb ending.”

The Gospel of Matthew, Donati continued, was composed next, probably between 80 and 90 C.E., but perhaps as late as 110, long after the cataclysmic First Roman-Jewish War and the destruction of the Temple. Matthew’s audience was a community of Jewish Christians living in Roman-occupied Syria. He drew heavily from Mark, borrowing six hundred verses. But scholars believe Matthew expanded on the work of his predecessor with the help of the Q source, a theoretical collection of the sayings of Jesus. His work reflects the sharp divide between Jewish Christians who accepted Jesus as the messiah and Jews who did not. The depiction of Jesus’ appearance before Pilate is similar to Mark’s, with one critical addition.

“Pilate, the ruthless Roman prefect, washes his hands in front of the Jewish crowd gathered on the Great Pavement and declares himself innocent of Christ’s blood. To which the crowd replies, ‘His blood shall be on us and our children.’ It is the most consequential line of dialogue ever composed. Two thousand years of persecution and slaughter of Jews at the hands of Christians can be traced back to those nine terrible words.”

“Why were they written?” asked Gabriel.

“As a Roman Catholic prelate and a man of great personal faith, I believe the Gospels were divinely inspired. That said, they were composed by human beings long after the events took place and were based on stories of Jesus’ life and ministry told by his earliest followers. If there was indeed a tribunal of some sort, Pilate undoubtedly spoke very few, if any, of the words the Gospel writers put in his mouth. The same would be true, of course, of the Jewish crowd, if there was one. Let his blood be upon us and our children? Did they really shout such an awkward and outlandish line? And with a single voice? Where were the followers of Jesus who came to Jerusalem with him from the Galilee? Where were the dissenters?” Donati shook his head. “That passage was a mistake. A sacred mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.”

“But was it an innocent mistake?”

“A professor of mine at the Gregoriana used to refer to it as the longest lie. Privately, of course. Had he done so openly, he would have been dragged before the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and defrocked.”