A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

the Jewish establishment. Accordingly, he was arrested and taken before the high priest. Caiaphas
has come off rather badly in the history books, but he cannot really be blamed for what followed.
When asked if he was the Messiah, Jesus replied in the affirmative. Caiaphas was understandably
outraged, for it must have seemed obvious to him that nothing was less likely than that this
unprepossessing little man with his hump-back and straggly beard could be the man destined to
lead the Jews to freedom. He called Jesus a blasphemer - which, technically speaking, he was - and
sent him off to Pilate to be judged, confident that the Roman would recognise the danger. But Pilate
was a cultured Roman, and when he asked Jesus the same question, Jesus was cautious enough to
reply only ‘You have said so.’ Pilate had been a weary spectator of the endless religious squabbles
of the Jews for years - he probably thought they were all mad, or at least deluded - and he no doubt
resented the attempt of Caiaphas to make him the executioner of this gentle-looking little man. He
tried to get Jesus released - mercy was shown to a condemned man every Passover - but the people,
who were as clamorous as a Roman mob, said they would prefer another rebel called Barabbas,
who at least had tried to kill a Roman guard. Pilate gave way - he had sentenced so many rebels to
death that it made little difference; in fact, this Jesus was to be crucified between two of them. And
so, like thousands of other victims of Rome, Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross.
And how did he go on to conquer the world? Again, the reasons are complex. The most important
is undoubtedly that soon after his death his disciples claimed to have seen him again, and actually
touched him. One historian, Hugh Schonfield, argued in The Passover Plot (1966) that Jesus was
probably given a drug that made him appear to be dead and that he revived in a perfectly normal
way. It is just conceivable. It is just as conceivable that Jesus was not completely dead when taken
from the cross - a good bribe to a Roman centurion could work wonders. In another controversial
book, published in 1982 (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Henry Lincoln, Michael Baigent
and Richard Leigh), Henry Lincoln also suggested the drug hypothesis; and he went further to cite
a secret Rosicrucian tradition that Jesus was married, and left Judea with Mary Magdalene to live
out the remainder of his life in Gaul, where his descendants became the Merovingian kings. (He
argues that the discovery of this secret explains the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and how a poor
Catholic priest became rich overnight.) Sceptics may feel that the explanation could be altogether
simpler, and that the whole story of the Resurrection was invented by the followers of Jesus.
Whatever the explanation, it is certain that stories of Jesus’s miraculous revival after death were
circulating soon after the crucifixion.
One thing about Jesus that seems very clear is that he possessed remarkable healing powers.
Josephus, as we have seen, describes him as a magician. It makes no difference whether we
attribute such powers to suggestion or to some genuine ability to release a healing force; what
seems quite clear is that they work, and can be developed. Jesus had developed them to a high
degree, and this seems to explain why he was regarded as a magician.
Nothing spreads faster than tales of the marvellous; and this undoubtedly explains why Jesus’s
death on the cross only made his name more potent than ever. At this early stage there were two
distinct groups of disciples. The Nasoraeans, or Messianists, were the original followers, who
believed that Jesus was a political Messiah who would lead the Jews to freedom. He was still alive,
and would in due course reappear to fulfil his promises. (King Arthur later inspired identical beliefs
in Britain, and many people were still expecting him six centuries after his death.) They most
emphatically did not believe that Jesus was a god in any sense of the word - this would have been
contrary to all Jewish religious teaching. The other group, who came to be called Christians, were
followers of Paul as much as of Jesus. Within a few years of the crucifixion, this Paul, who loathed