David Epperson - The Third Day

“That may be,” snapped the commander, “but we can’t afford this kind of disorder — not this week.”

“If this man caused a disturbance at such a sensitive time, why didn’t you arrest him?”

“On the Temple Mount? All that marching in the hot sun today must have melted your brains. If those people saw a Roman uniform on their holy spot in the middle of their festival, we could have a full scale insurrection on our hands. You know that.”

“The prefect would be most upset,” said Publius.

“The prefect would be the least of our worries. Even with your entire century, we’d not have one chance in ten of getting back here alive. That mob would tear us to pieces.”

“Why didn’t their Temple police arrest him, then?”

Volusus sighed. “He has sympathizers in their high council. I can scarcely believe it, but he came back to the Temple, once more, this morning — yet they did nothing.”

“Have you seen this man yourself?”

The commander shook his head. “No. My informants mostly just repeat the rumors they’ve heard. A miracle worker, some call him; heals the sick; turns water into wine.”

Publius lifted his empty cup. “A handy person to keep around, I’d say.”

The other man laughed, possibly for the first time that week.

“It gets better. A story is circulating that a few days ago, he raised one of his childhood friends from the dead.”

“Even handier,” said Publius. “I’m beginning to like this fellow.”

Volusus laughed again and visibly relaxed.

“Just get us through this week without a riot,” he implored. “Then these people will all go home, where they belong, and we can return to civilization in Caesarea.”

“Until next year.”

“Next year, this will be your problem. I am retiring and will recommend to the prefect that you take my place. After the festival is over, you can come visit me on my farm.”

“Are you going to tell us what they were talking about?” said Markowitz after the two Romans had left.

Lavon shook his head. “I’m having trouble believing it — not what they said, but that we’re here to see it.”

“What did they say?” asked Markowitz.

“They were complaining,” said Lavon, “griping about the crowds and a new prophet who has appeared on the scene.”

“Prophet?”

The archaeologist pointed to the southern end of the Temple complex.

“Right over there; that’s where the merchants sit. Yesterday morning, this prophet came charging in and drove them all out.”

“The moneychangers?” said Sharon.

“The same,” said Lavon. “The commander is worried that he’ll come back. The crowds are so volatile; anything could happen.”

Bryson looked at him skeptically. “It can’t be that bad,” he said.

Lavon didn’t speak for a few moments. Finally he directed our attention out the window toward the west.

“Look down at that wall,” he said, “the one extending from below our room to the battlement on the other side of the fort. A few years from now, a Roman soldier stationed there will turn his backside to the crowd on the Temple Mount and break wind in a very loud and deliberate way. According to Josephus, more than twenty thousand people died in the ensuing riot.”

“But Robert,” replied Bryson, “you’ve said it yourself: These ancient writers were prone to exaggerate.”

“Yes; Lavon replied, “the casualties may have been half that number, or a tenth, but that still means two thousand dead. The ancients didn’t have tear gas or water cannons. Once a crowd got going, the only way to stop it was to march through the streets, killing everyone who got in the way. That’s why the Romans pounced so hard on the slightest whiff of trouble. It didn’t take much for a situation to get completely out of hand.”

“That was an intentional insult,” said Markowitz. “The soldier should not have done that.”

“I’m sure he was punished, but it goes to show how unstable things really were. You saw it coming in — the looks on peoples’ faces.”

They mumbled assent.

“And on the flip side,” Lavon continued, “Roman officials didn’t have to worry about videos of dead children showing up on the internet. The whole setup was a recipe for abuse.”

I didn’t doubt that, either.

Inflaming the situation still more, most of the “Roman” soldiers were in fact auxiliaries, recruited from a pool of the Jews’ traditional enemies.

For a while, we all continued to stare down at the activity below. The Temple area had finally gone quiet. The workers had departed and only the Temple watchmen remained. We could see two of them making their rounds, while a third priest fed the fire that burned perpetually on the altar.

“So where does this leave us?” asked Bryson. “Assuming this prophet they’re talking about really is Jesus Christ, will he come back to the Temple again? Could we even get a recording of him teaching from our vantage point here?”

Lavon glanced over to Sharon. “If I remember correctly, the Gospels don’t record anything Jesus did between some teaching on Tuesday and the Last Supper, which is Thursday night.”

“So you don’t know where he will be until then?” asked Bryson.

“We don’t really know even then,” said Lavon. “We can only speculate where the Last Supper was held. We know he was arrested later that night, but we don’t know where they took him afterward.

“Was he brought before the full Sanhedrin here in the Temple complex, or to a smaller gathering at Caiaphas’s house? We don’t even know whether Pilate sat in judgment here in the Antonia or at Herod’s palace, on the other side of town.”

“How can we find out?” asked Bryson.

“For starters,” Lavon replied, “we’d have to go outside and have a look, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Well, we need to do something,” said Markowitz. “We can’t just sit here until Sunday.”

That’s exactly what we should do, I thought, though I didn’t expect the others to see it the same way.

“Let’s do this,” I finally said. “We’ve had a long day. Let’s get a good night’s sleep and work out our plan with a clear head, in the morning.”

Our next day got off to an abrupt start just before dawn. Several men ran shouting into the room, but I couldn’t understand a word. Lavon stared at them with equal incomprehension; whatever they were speaking, it wasn’t Greek.

Moments later, Publius strode in, carrying a torch and laughing uproariously. He waved his hand and the others scrambled away.

“Decius has lost his bet,” said the centurion. “I told him there was no chance you were Parthian spies.”

“ Spies ?” said Lavon. “That’s what this was all about?”

Publius nodded. “The best test is always a surprise. Each of these men spoke different languages, telling you that the fortress was on fire, and that you should run quickly to save your lives — Parthian, Aramaic, Egyptian. It is obvious you know none of them.”

“I could have told you that and saved them the trouble,” said Lavon.

“What’s going on?” asked Markowitz.

Lavon motioned him to be quiet. “Why would Decius think we were spies?”

“He thought it was odd that you, a traveler from so far away, seemed to have known the name of that little village we passed through yesterday.”

Lavon thought quickly. “It resembles the name of my ancestral town, in Norvia.”

“You also displayed great interest in the construction, pitiful as it was.”

He turned toward Bergfeld. “Her father has an interest in how other countries house their poor. He left us specific instructions to investigate this.”