The Magistrate
Treatment
A few years after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth in Judea the
rumors that reach Rome about His Resurrection and mainly the effect that this
‘superstition’ has on almost all the social classes of the Empire will for the
first time force the emperor Claudius to carry out unofficial
inquisitions as to the origin and goals of this ‘myth’.
The orator Titus Livius will take on
the difficult mission of going to Judea in order to interrogate all those who
were witness to the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth and to put to trial
whoever spread the falsehoods about the resurrection of this prisoner who had
been put to death on the cross.
A little while before leaving Rome, Titus Livius is paid a visit by the
widow of a Roman officer, Lydia Granchs,who asks him to
investigate the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death in Judea as all
those who survived the attack on their encampment by Jewish robbers had
returned to Rome with huge fortunes…
The orator is charmed by Lydia and accepts to investigate the circumstances
of her husband’s death in order to keep in contact with her.
However, when he goes to Judea and begins his investigatory work he will
soon realize that the attempts on his life do not ultimately come from the
followers of Jesus who want to obstruct his work, but from the paid assassins
of those who have reason not to want the circumstances of the strange attack by
Jewish robbers to come to light, including the disappearance of a large amount
of money that was being transferred to Rome by a military detachment whose
leader had been the centurion Poplius Lentulius, Lydia’s husband.
Nonetheless, performing a delicate balancing act, Titus Livius will
eventually succeed in questioning significant surviving biblical figures as well
as ordinary people who had met Jesus, collecting valuable information which
will allow him to reach a final conclusion as to who Jesus of Nazareth really
was and whether in fact he was resurrected three days after his death.
The young Jew companion, Simon, that is convinced finally
for his honesty, but also for his internal need to find the truth, Christian
himself, will show him the place of Jesus’s torture but also the place
that they placed His body.
The next step is for Titus Livius to meet one of Jesus’s student,
Evangelist Matthew, which firstly he approaches with mistrust. The
anaphora of Matthew in the Crucifixion and His Resurrection shakes the
certainties of Titus Livius, however as judicial speaker he wants proofs in
order to accept the truth of Christians.
Matthew asks him to have patience
and the proofs will come to him.
After a few days Simon will lead him to Galiley, where he will meet Maria
Magdalene. The interrogation of Maria Magdalene is catalytic.
Titus Livius has drawn his conclusions, ready to
returns to Rome.
On his journey back to Jerusalem,
however, his overnight stay in Bethlehem in the home of the Jew Elai
brings to light the truth about the murder of Lydia's husband.
Elai has saved a severely wounded
Roman soldier, whose face is hideously disfigured, from an armed attack on the
public road leading to Jerusalem. The
violence of the pursuit has compelled Elai to hide him until he recovers and is
able to tell him the truth.
And the truth, as the legionary Maximus
Germanicus describes it, supplies the answers to Titus' questions
concerning the real murderers of Lydia's husband.
When, however, Titus legally
frames the chief suspect of the murder of Lydia's husband, who is none other
than the centurion Maximus Krasus, he will reveal his accomplices in a conspiracy
in which not only is the Roman patrician of Jerusalem, Gaius Primus, directly
implicated, but also Lydia's senator father, Caicillus Secundus, who
had acted as mediator to the Emperor Claudius in order to appoint Titus Livius
for the mission to Judea...
Those guilty of conspiracy are
either executed or commit suicide, but the violence of Nero's persecution of
the Christians becomes a nagging matter of conscience for the Roman magistrate
as to his duty to give his forensic testimony to the emperor about the
legendary resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
So, when he 'questions' the Apostle
Paul, who is being held in the Mamertine prisons in Rome, he will
quickly overcome any inhibitions he might have had, and above all, his love for
Lydia Grachus, sending his forensic report on the truth of the Resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth to the Emperor Nero, and will soon go on to
execute the Apostle Paul in the Mamertine prison, loyal only to his duty to
serve the truth.
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