Caiaphas

So the Chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, "What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed." He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation …

John 11:47-51

Here at the end of the Christian Holy Week I want to say a kind word for Caiaphas. His is a great story, rarely told. It's the stuff of classic tragedy and it ought to make him one of the most dramatically interesting characters in any passion play.

Most dramatic retellings of this story linger sympathetically with Pontius Pilate. That's understandable — his character also provides fertile dramatic soil. He even gets some of the best lines in the Gospel accounts: "What is truth?" and "Behold the man."

But from a purely dramatic perspective, Pilate pales in comparison with Caiaphas.

Each is reluctant to see an innocent man punished, yet each ultimately, tragically, is willing to allow this to happen. But consider the very different motives at work in the two men. Pilate is trying to preserve his job and his domestic happiness. Caiaphas is trying to save his people and their holy place.

Pilate's inner conflict is compounded by his wife's dream, with its vague warnings about the death of an innocent man. From what we know of the historical Pontius Pilate, he was not normally a man troubled by ordering the violent death of innocents. Luke's account of Pilate mingling the blood of Galileans with the blood of their sacrifices is supported by other accounts of Pilate's brutal reign. But his wife's dream has Pilate troubled, after which his encounter with Jesus leaves him deeply unnerved. Yet whatever misgivings he may have had from the dream or Jesus' words, they ultimately had little effect on his actions.

Caiaphas, on the other hand, is driven by a prophecy direct from God, received in the Holy of Holies. This is a classic motif in tragedy: Caiaphas is acting upon an ambiguous oracle. His motives, though, are nobler than those of, say, Macbeth or Laius — other tragic heroes striving to avert or to fulfill prophecies. He is determined to preserve his people and their holy place — an end of such paramount importance that it justifies, for him, any means, including the death of a single innocent man.

And, unlike Pilate, Caiaphas is willing to act, decisively, and to own his actions. He does not have the authority or command the strength of arms that Pilate does, yet convinced of the rightness of his cause, he persuades first the council, then the crowd, then Pilate himself that "it is better … to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed."

Yet despite all that, Caiaphas tends to get shunted to the sidelines in most dramatic retellings of the passion play. The few times we see him center stage, he seems to be caricatured as waxed-mustache twirling villain — as in, for example, "Jesus Christ Superstar" or in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

The choice to present Caiaphas as a two-dimensional villain may have as much to do with dramatic economy as it does with a conscious anti-Semitism. Storytellers may think they have room for only one supporting character who makes a tragic choice, and that role is already filled by Pilate or Judas, or even poor Peter at the fireside.

Other storytellers may be convinced that their retelling must have a conventional villain — and with Pilate groveling and begging not to be cast in that role it falls to Caiaphas. But inserting a conventional villain changes the story, misreading the high priest's prophecy as surely as Caiaphas did. An essential aspect of this story in particular — and the story of the innocent outsider, more generally, from "Frankenstein" to "E.T." — is that it does not have a singular, conventional villain. By forcing Caiaphas into that role, storytellers distort not only his character, but the entire story.

I'm still waiting for a version of the passion play that gives Caiaphas his dramatic due. The high priest is a tragic figure worthy of epic consideration. The themes suggested by such a story — the conflict between ignoble means and noble ends, the dangerous mingling of the priestly and the political — might even be seen as particularly relevant to our time.

We need a retelling of this story that treats Caiaphas not only with sympathy, but with empathy — one that makes us consider this story while standing in his shoes and to realize that those sandals are an uncomfortably comfortable fit.