“As we were leaving the place, I turned and looked back,” Cornelius added. “The strange prophet and the tall Galilean were standing in the river with the water up to their loincloths; the tall one had asked to receive something they call baptism, a symbolic cleansing of one’s sins, as I understand it.” Cornelius paused and stared thoughtfully at his hands. “I shall never forget the look on that man’s face, Longinus. Ever since that day I have been wondering about him. The Jewish Messiah.” He said it slowly, as though he were talking more to himself than to his friend. “Do you remember that day on the ‘Palmyra’ when we were talking about this Yahweh of the Jews, this one-god spirit? You said then that you would never be able to imagine a being without a body.”
“Yes, I remember it quite clearly. But what are you going to say,” Longinus demanded, “that this tall fellow might have been a god turned into a man? By all the gods, Cornelius, you don’t mean to tell me you think this Galilean could be the Messiah of the Jews? Their Messiah, if I understand it correctly, will be a great military leader who will drive us pagan Romans out of Palestine and re-establish the ancient Israelite kingdom. Even the Jews don’t believe he’ll be a god, do they?”
“I don’t know, Longinus. I think most Jews believe he’ll be a great earthly king, as you say. But listening to that wild fellow and seeing the look on that young man’s face”—he paused, then ventured a hesitant grin—“well, those strange words, the prophet’s evident sincerity, his intense manner....”
“Jewish gibberish.” Longinus shook his head and scowled. “This superstition has captured you, my friend. This eastern mysticism that comes to a head in that cruel and extravagant circus down there.” He pointed toward the great Temple, whose gold-plated roof shone brilliantly in the light of the moon now emerging from behind a cloud. “A carpenter from Galilee to overthrow imperial Rome! What with, pray great Jove! A hammer and a chisel and a flat-headed adz?”
For two days after his long meeting with the High Priest Caiaphas and the former High Priest Annas, father-in-law of Caiaphas, the Procurator Pontius Pilate was in a sullen mood. He said little and kept close to his quarters in the Antonia Tower. Now and then he would walk out onto the gallery overlooking the Temple enclosure and, leaning upon the parapet, would stare balefully at the magnificent structure and the stir of life within and around it.
