“And what about the sign that Pilate had ordered to be displayed above the head of Jesus? Did you leave that?”

“Oh, no. I have that also. In truth I have a small room containing only relics pertaining to Jesus.”

“The one you keep locked?”

His old eyebrows flickered.

“Yes.”

“Would seeing them be of any help to me?”

“In your search for the truth?” he asked, eyeing me hopefully.

“Yes.”

He started to speak but caught himself. After several minutes he shook his head sadly and said, “I do not believe so. If you cannot learn the truth from the living you will never learn it from objects.”

“Some of our archaeologists haven’t done too badly.”

“Indeed!” He snorted. “So what do you know about Jesus that was not already known a thousand years before your birth?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “But you will let me see that room, won’t you?”

“If we have time,” he said ominously. “And what of this place? Have you had enough?”

“Enough to last me a lifetime,” I said, immediately regretting my choice of words.

Joseph’s garden was less than a hundred yards from Golgotha, screened from the hill and the nearby passing road by tall stands of unkempt cypress. Approaching it, the old man turned to me apologetically and said, “I have had no heart for this garden and rarely visit here since the discovery of the empty tomb.”

Neither had anyone else from the looks of it. Like Gethsemane, the grass was above our knees, the flower beds and walks were totally overrun with weeds, and the broken limbs of trees lay where they had fallen. Even the tomb itself, part of a large outcropping of limestone near the garden’s eastern edge, was so covered with shrubbery and tall grass that Joseph had to point out its opening to me, an oval cavity no more than four feet high and two feet wide. Obviously the same feelings applied to the tomb as Golgotha. And why would anyone want to visit an empty grave, anyway?

“After his body was placed on the grass, here”—Joseph pointed—“Nicodemus and I cleaned it with aloe water and rubbed it with oil. Then, with the help of Shem and Gorion, we wound a fine linen cloth around his body many times, beginning at the feet, and between each layer, where the cloth overlapped, we placed myrrh and perfumed aloe wood and other spices until the sheet held nearly sixty pounds when we reached the neck. His head we left uncovered.”

The old man was going too fast for me. “Joseph, there are many questions I would like to ask you about your relationship with Jesus before his death, but perhaps this is not the place.”