water, or sand. A brush, a mop.
Gallio spent night after night picturing eleven Galileans in a sealed tomb lit by flickering lamp-flames. Busy, each and every one of them, as they carved away flesh from the bones of Jesus. The disciples sawed through ligaments and tendons, then broke the skeleton, bone by bone. The tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, private property, and he could have stored cleavers and a hacksaw in advance, along with other useful supplies: fresh clothing, rolls of plastic bags, cleaning materials (water, sand, brush, mop). On an earlier visit Joseph could have left a commercial pestle and mortar. The disciples, most of them with a background in manual labour, silently grind the skull of Jesus into powder, non-stop in shifts for seventy-two hours. Three days and the labour of eleven men to annihilate a human body.
These were the same men who hanged Judas and made it look like suicide. The disciples could have made Jesus disappear, and Gallio knows there are people who can do such things to others they once fully loved. He reads the newspapers. He keeps up to date with human atrocity.
Logistically, eleven adults (one with basic medical training) could have dismantled the body of Jesus in three days. The disciples were absent from the crucifixion, but not because they were scared of being arrested. While the authorities were distracted by the death of Jesus the disciples hid inside the tomb. When Jesus was carried in they were already concealed inside, waiting with their knives and buckets, their plastic aprons and gloves.
The tomb was sealed, which would have muffled any noise, and the soldiers on watch heard nothing. To be fair, they weren’t making an effort to listen, even though Gallio had ordered them to guard the dead man as if alive. He used those exact words andsigned the order himself, and at the military tribunal his signature was used against him. ‘Unhinged,’ they said, because dead men don’t need a guard. ‘Not in his right mind,’ because tombs remain closed without a seal.
Night after night, as the months and years of his exile passed, Cassius Gallio would lie awake denying the resurrection. Life after death meant the end of the world as he knew it, but if Jesus were a fraud and never actually died then his later appearances weren’t the end of the world.
Gallio would put his head beneath his army-issue blanket and concentrate on his breathing. In, out. Feel the biological processes of being alive, oxygen in his lungs, blood in his veins and his brain. Make the bad supernatural thoughts go away.
He regretted not staying at the burial site, in person, for all three days. But at the time he’d made his point and he was the winner: Jesus was dead. The Lazarus story became instantly irrelevant, and Gallio worried that Valeria would despise him for watching a corpse so closely. He didn’t want to appear tentative about life after death, and by killing Jesus he had solved that problem. Whatever the story with Lazarus, Jesus now was dead.
In any case, he couldn’t have known the disciples were planning a breakout on the Sunday. How long should he have stayed? A week, a month, until the end of time? Gallio would still be there now, and no one would understand why, not even the army psychiatrists.
Cassius Gallio saw his first statue of a disciple on a transit through Belgium: a life-size piece in white marble, Simon leaning casually on a two-handled saw outside the Church of our Lady in Bruges. On the same trip he was surprised by a painted Jude in a roadside shrine near Avignon.
The cult was growing, and Cassius sometimes felt nostalgic for Jerusalem and his one big idea. He’d wanted to control the Jesus movement by setting up Lazarus as a client Messiah. Together he and Lazarus, taking the place of Jesus, would have preached a god of compromise amenable to the values of civilization. Pay taxes, respect the rule of law, be reasonable.
His plan hadn’t worked, which left the
Gallio spent night after night picturing eleven Galileans in a sealed tomb lit by flickering lamp-flames. Busy, each and every one of them, as they carved away flesh from the bones of Jesus. The disciples sawed through ligaments and tendons, then broke the skeleton, bone by bone. The tomb belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, private property, and he could have stored cleavers and a hacksaw in advance, along with other useful supplies: fresh clothing, rolls of plastic bags, cleaning materials (water, sand, brush, mop). On an earlier visit Joseph could have left a commercial pestle and mortar. The disciples, most of them with a background in manual labour, silently grind the skull of Jesus into powder, non-stop in shifts for seventy-two hours. Three days and the labour of eleven men to annihilate a human body.
These were the same men who hanged Judas and made it look like suicide. The disciples could have made Jesus disappear, and Gallio knows there are people who can do such things to others they once fully loved. He reads the newspapers. He keeps up to date with human atrocity.
Logistically, eleven adults (one with basic medical training) could have dismantled the body of Jesus in three days. The disciples were absent from the crucifixion, but not because they were scared of being arrested. While the authorities were distracted by the death of Jesus the disciples hid inside the tomb. When Jesus was carried in they were already concealed inside, waiting with their knives and buckets, their plastic aprons and gloves.
The tomb was sealed, which would have muffled any noise, and the soldiers on watch heard nothing. To be fair, they weren’t making an effort to listen, even though Gallio had ordered them to guard the dead man as if alive. He used those exact words andsigned the order himself, and at the military tribunal his signature was used against him. ‘Unhinged,’ they said, because dead men don’t need a guard. ‘Not in his right mind,’ because tombs remain closed without a seal.
Night after night, as the months and years of his exile passed, Cassius Gallio would lie awake denying the resurrection. Life after death meant the end of the world as he knew it, but if Jesus were a fraud and never actually died then his later appearances weren’t the end of the world.
Gallio would put his head beneath his army-issue blanket and concentrate on his breathing. In, out. Feel the biological processes of being alive, oxygen in his lungs, blood in his veins and his brain. Make the bad supernatural thoughts go away.
He regretted not staying at the burial site, in person, for all three days. But at the time he’d made his point and he was the winner: Jesus was dead. The Lazarus story became instantly irrelevant, and Gallio worried that Valeria would despise him for watching a corpse so closely. He didn’t want to appear tentative about life after death, and by killing Jesus he had solved that problem. Whatever the story with Lazarus, Jesus now was dead.
In any case, he couldn’t have known the disciples were planning a breakout on the Sunday. How long should he have stayed? A week, a month, until the end of time? Gallio would still be there now, and no one would understand why, not even the army psychiatrists.
Cassius Gallio saw his first statue of a disciple on a transit through Belgium: a life-size piece in white marble, Simon leaning casually on a two-handled saw outside the Church of our Lady in Bruges. On the same trip he was surprised by a painted Jude in a roadside shrine near Avignon.
The cult was growing, and Cassius sometimes felt nostalgic for Jerusalem and his one big idea. He’d wanted to control the Jesus movement by setting up Lazarus as a client Messiah. Together he and Lazarus, taking the place of Jesus, would have preached a god of compromise amenable to the values of civilization. Pay taxes, respect the rule of law, be reasonable.
His plan hadn’t worked, which left the
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