It all began with taxes. Doesn’t it always? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t object to paying taxes. I understand that we all have to contribute. The Emperor has wars to fight and bureaucrats to pay, and the roads and aqueducts don’t maintain themselves. Do I object to Roman control over my people’s land? Of course I do! But, let’s face it, when we had our own kings back in the day it wasn’t all sweetness and light either. And now we have Herod and his family with the title of King, but we all know they’re just business people, same as me. You’ve got to live in the world as it is, not as you’d like it to be. So I’m living in this world, where the Romans are in charge and always will be, and where I need to get ahead.
Trouble is, I got a little too far ahead.
It started with wheat, made a bunch of money. Then figs. More money. Then wine, then fish sauce, then turtle doves for the Temple. I was riding high, but you know what that meant? Tax. I didn’t work this hard to give all my money to the Emperor, and I was just watching tax money roll out the door. I needed less liquid assets, you know what I mean? Something they couldn’t see.
Land. I needed land. You can’t collect a percentage of a piece of land and send that to Rome. But land is owned by families – I should know, my family owns a bit of land like any other. No one wants to give it up. But then I heard about a way to get my hands on land. All I had to do was start lending money with interest. Sure, the torah forbids it, but the torah forbids a lot of things. And there’s no end of poor buggers who need a quick injection of capital, even if it means paying back at hugely inflated rates.
Pretty soon I got a reputation. I could deliver big amounts of cash for those who want to buy livestock or seed or transport their produce further afield. Some of the borrowers did good out of me, they made money and paid me back. It was a win-win. But some didn’t. And it was them who were most useful to me. You see, they’d put up their land as collateral and when they couldn’t pay me back, the land was mine. I managed to tie up most of my wealth in land that way – minimise my tax and keep my earnings locked away in the most secure bank possible – the ground. The easiest thing was to hire the former owners back as tenant farmers and day labourers. They knew their way around, and they knew how to get me a good profit. Making money is so easy when you have a system.
But some of those borrowers really overcommitted. They undervalued their land, and when it came time to pay, the land couldn’t cover the debt. So I had to take other things as well. Farming tools, animals, maybe some pieces of jewellery or pottery. Whatever they had, I wasn’t fussy. If they didn’t want to lose it, they shouldn’t have gambled it, right?
The law said that I could take everything they had to pay off the debt, including their outer garment – you know the coat thing that we wear over the top of our tunic. But I had to give it back every day at nightfall, so they could keep warm. It was a nuisance, but I had staff to do the dirty work. The important thing was I had a willing worker who would work for a pittance and who had to stay close by if he wanted to stay warm at nighttime.
It was a pain going up to the courts in Jerusalem to get what was mine, but it was worth it to show I meant business. It only takes a few people left with only the tunic on their back to show all your other debtors that you mean business.
Until one day.
It had all gone on in the usual way, I made my submissions, the bloke (I forget his name) begged for mercy, but I knew the law and I knew what I was owed. I got his land, his donkey, a few bags of wheat, his wife’s copper armband, some ratty crockery and, as the final piece of the payment, custody of his coat.
But this guy. This guy went feral. He took his coat off and handed it to me. No problem. I tried to receive it with some dignity, I’m not a bad person after all. He got himself into this mess, but I don’t want to rub salt into the wound. But he didn’t stop. He reached down and started pulling his tunic over his head. First his ankles, then his knees came into view. All at once the judges and I realised what he was doing. One of them tried to intervene, to tell him to stop, but he kept going and suddenly he was standing in front of us, naked as the day he was born.
I’m not the most religious of my people, but I know my torah, and I know that to look on someone else’s nakedness brings shame on me. Like Noah’s son, Ham who saw his father lying drunk and unclothed and whose children were cursed. I did not want to be like Ham. Here I was trying to build a better future, a secure future for my children, and this man, this man whose name I had already forgotten was bringing shame on me in public. He strolled out, his buttocks swaying as sauntered away from me while I held his tunic in my hands. I heard people outside gasp.
The rumours didn’t take long to spread.
I’m a rich man, but shame is no respecter of wealth. It was my fault that so many people looked on this man’s nakedness. I had brought shame on myself and all of them. Then I began to understand what was going on, because it became a trend. There was a wandering rabbi who was teaching the poor these disrespectful and defiant attitudes. I bet he thought it was a big old laugh, this Jesus, to mock our culture and our law and system. ‘From anyone who takes away your cloak do not withhold even your tunic’ – that’s how it was reported to me. That one pithy phrase and pretty soon, people like me didn’t want to call in our debts any more. I guess it worked in its own way for a while. Until he was executed, and his followers hid in fear. I could have told him he was headed for a grisly death with an attitude like that. I could have told him how to be successful and get ahead, but he never asked me and I never went looking for him.
I’m an old man now, and the times have changed. The rebels have taken Jerusalem and you know the first thing they burned to the ground? The treasury, with the records of all the debts, including my own! It doesn’t matter, I’ve still got the land and plenty of Roman friends. But the Romans won’t stand for this kind of uprising. They’re all going to die. The temple will be torn to the ground as punishment, mark my words, and the rebels will be executed in the ugliest way possible.
People sometimes still tell the story of that day at the Temple court, when that fella, whatsisname stripped to nothing and walked out without a care in the world. Now and then someone sniggers when I walk past – you never quite live these things down. I don’t know what happened to that man, but the followers of Jesus, followers of The Way are spreading throughout the Roman Empire like a plague. Jesus’ brother had an outpost in Jerusalem, another one called Peter ended up in Rome and Saul, who I thought was such a sensible person, spent years wandering the Empire spreading the word about Jesus, but calling himself Paul.
Hagios they call themselves. Saints. Holy ones. Pretty arrogant if you ask me, but they seem utterly convinced that they are doing God’s work. No sooner are a dozen of them put to death, then two dozen more appear. They’re like those accursed mustard seeds, you dig up one bush and another five germinate. They’ve upset everyone – wherever they go they wreak havoc. But little by little, they’re growing and spreading, infecting young people and women and even some rich people with their nonsense.
But don’t worry about me. I’m safe. I have land galore, more grandsons than I can count, and enough money put away to live comfortably until my dying day, and leave my sons a hefty inheritance. Yes, don’t worry about me. I’m just fine. It’s those saints you need to worry about. If they keep this up, they’ll come to a bad end for sure.