aiming Talmudic knowledge second to none, sneered at
Jesus, calling him the king of the beggars, calling his doctrine
Ebionism, which, as he explained to me, was to the effect that only the
poor should win to heaven, while the rich and powerful were to burn for
ever in some lake of fire.

It was my observation that it was the custom of the country for every man
to call every other man a madman. In truth, in my judgment, they were
all mad. There was a plague of them. They cast out devils by magic
charms, cured diseases by the laying on of hands, drank deadly poisons
unharmed, and unharmed played with deadly snakes--or so they claimed.
They ran away to starve in the deserts. They emerged howling new
doctrine, gathering crowds about them, forming new sects that split on
doctrine and formed more sects.

"By Odin," I told Pilate, "a trifle of our northern frost and snow would
cool their wits. This climate is too soft. In place of building roofs
and hunting meat, they are ever building doctrine."

"And altering the nature of God," Pilate corroborated sourly. "A curse
on doctrine."

"So say I," I agreed. "If ever I get away with unaddled wits from this
mad land, I'll cleave through whatever man dares mention to me what may
happen after I am dead."

Never were such trouble makers. Everything under the sun was pious or
impious to them. They, who were so clever in hair-splitting argument,
seemed incapable of grasping the Roman idea of the State. Everything
political was religious; everything religious was political. Thus every
procurator's hands were full. The Roman eagles, the Roman statues, even
the votive shields of Pilate, were deliberate insults to their religion.

The Roman taking of the census was an abomination. Yet it had to be
done, for it was the basis of taxation. But there it was again. Taxation
by the State was a crime against their law and God. Oh, that Law! It
was not the Roman law. It was their law, what they called God's law.
There were the zealots, who murdered anybody who broke this law. And for
a procurator to punish a zealot caught red-handed was to raise a riot or
an insurrection.

Everything, with these strange people, was done in the name of God. There
were what we Romans called the _thaumaturgi_. They worked miracles to
prove doctrine. Ever has it seemed to me a witless thing to prove the
multiplication table by turning a staff into a serpent, or even into two
serpents. Ye