“Joseph’s act must have offended many of his fellow Sanhedrin members after they had condemned Jesus to death. Did you take any action against him or that other member—Nicodemus, I believe—who seems to have assisted Joseph in the burial?”

“Those two are very independent men, honored and respected by the people for their many charitable deeds. When we chastised them severely for their behavior, they offered to resign from the court rather than cause us any further embarrassment. They insisted that nothing they had done was unlawful and said that no Jew who spoke and lived as Jesus lived deserved to have his body tossed in a common grave with criminals of the street.”

“Have you ever looked back, Caiaphas, and reflected that had Joseph not claimed the body there would have been no empty tomb—”

“Every day,” he moaned, “and many sleepless nights. Without that empty tomb for them to gloat over, there would probably be no Christians at all today.”

“I understand that you even took some measures to guard the tomb.”

“As it turned out, not enough, Matthias,” he lamented. “Reminded by one of my priests that Jesus had not only prophesied his death but promised he would rise again on the third day, I went to Pilate early in the afternoon of our Sabbath, the day after the crucifixion, and told him what Jesus had said. I asked that he have the tomb sealed and guarded until the end of the third day, to prevent Jesus’ disciples from stealing his body and telling the people that Jesus had risen as he said he would.”

“Pilate agreed?”

“He laughed in my face and said he wanted nothing more to do with the matter. The procurator told me that I had many guards in my Temple, and if I wanted the tomb guarded I would have to see to it myself since he needed every soldier to attend to the Passover crowd that overran the city. I returned to the Temple and ordered Shobi, one of my most experienced officers, to take three of his best men to the garden, seal the tomb, and stand watch through the night and until sundown of the following day.”

“When did you learn that the tomb was empty?”

“Sometime before dawn I was awakened by my orderly, who said that the guard had returned from the tomb and insisted on seeing me immediately. Alarmed, I dressed hurriedly and went down to the lobby, to find the four of them acting as if they had all taken leave of their senses. Shobi, who is a huge man, rushed toward me and fell to his knees sobbing. He clutched at my garment, begging for forgiveness, crying that he and the others had grown weary of guarding a dead man, after their long day in the Temple, and so they had fallen asleep. While they all slept, he wailed, someone must have come to the tomb, removed the great stone, and taken the body away.”