The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,
By the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles,
The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great light,
And those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a light dawned . . .
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Soldiers and citizens clung to the shaking slope, their imminent deaths assured, and they cried out the name of God.
Judas Iscariot picked himself up. He could hear another voice speaking to him from somewhere in the rolling earth below his feet.
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“Your Majesty! You must tell me what this means. Why do you strike down your own people?”
“Legate. I will soon report on my failure to the Planetary Development Committee. Yet understand that this failure is only one of my results. Legate, you saw the fire? It was that fire that foiled my plans! It was the greatest barrier to the designs of the committee, and the final reward for our efforts.”
“Your Majesty—!”
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Judas stood, flustered, and looked around. Majesty? Was that the emperor in Rome? Surely not! And who is this “legate”?
By now, the blue brilliance was nothing more than a dot of light among the stars that shone in the vault of the sky.
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“Have you understood, my prince? Do you know whose statue that is? Not even Brahmā, ruler of this world, does. The great god after whom that statue was modeled was a resident from another world who visited this region and claimed it for his own. This world is to be ruled from without, you see. Five billion six hundred seventy million years from now, he will once again appear in this world and determine the fate of all who remain here. That is what they call Maitreya.”
“What of salvation? What of salvation in the time of the last dharma?”
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Judas’s mind raced, his thoughts wild. Who is this prince? And who is Brahmā? Five billion years seems an impossibly long amount of time. And Maitreya . . . Maitreya?
Judas cocked an ear in hopes of hearing more of the strange conversation that seemed to be coming to him from some impossible distance. Yet there was nothing. He ran up the slope of the hill, stopping occasionally to listen, ears pricking like a wild beast’s. The voices were nowhere to be heard.
Who was that talking? And why did it feel as though the weight of the world hung in their words?
Judas crawled up a steep ridge, then ran again. True darkness had returned to the hill around him. The memory of the distant voices filled his mind, feeling far more important than the miracle Jesus had wrought.
He had no way of knowing how long the darkness would continue—indeed, it might never end. It might actually have been a punishment from Heaven. The conversation he’d overheard, on the other hand, was certainly not divine. Judas felt himself standing at the juncture of two worlds.
He saw a line of torches, wavering in the distance.
Before he had time to catch his breath, Judas found himself thrown from the rocky ledge on which he stood, hurled out into empty space. A vast amount of dirt and rock crumbled behind him, following him into the void. The thought came to him that he should reach out to grasp something—anything—but quicker than he could act, his consciousness was lost to the depths of darkness.
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The darkness that fell upon the hill of Golgotha that day began around eleven o’clock in the morning and continued until about two o’clock in the afternoon. According to ancient records from the region, this day fell on the third month of the nineteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. It was the seventh day before the first of the fourth month, fourteen nights after the new moon. It was also noted that this was the seventy-ninth year by Antiochus’s reckoning, since Sulpicius and Sulla tangled in Rome, and Casius, Prefect of Syria, was designated the new commander of the region of Jerusalem by the emperor.
Though the veracity of this report is a matter of debate, it has often been quoted as fact. It is important to note, however, that there was no Prefect of Syria named Casius. It is also true that there are no other examples of the emissary of Rome to Jerusalem simultaneously holding office as Prefect of Syria. This was primarily for military reasons—the road that led from the port of Acre on the Mediterranean overland through Nazareth and on into the Jordan River Valley, which then passed through Ha-arava, through Petra and Al Lejjun and on to Aqaba on the Red Sea, was a trading route far too important to be left in the hands of a single official. It was common practice for three commanders, one in Jerusalem, one in Syria, and one in Aqaba, to divide administration of the road between them. This fact alone is sufficient to cast considerable doubt on the reliability of these records.
There is, however, reason to believe that the Roman Empire willfully removed all mention of the darkness at Golgotha from the public record, claiming that the occurrence was no more than a legend and therefore unworthy of official recognition—motivated, perhaps, by a wish to eliminate any suggestion of misgovernment in Jerusalem.
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On the third day of the fourth month in the thirty-third year of the Julian Calendar, the entire region around Jerusalem experienced three hours of darkness in the middle of the day, centered on Golgotha. Historical astronomical analysis shows that at no time in the weeks around that date did the Middle East experience even a partial solar eclipse.
Years later, a historical theologian would claim that the stories of that day were, in fact, accounts of a lunar eclipse that occurred on the fifteenth of Nisan, tales that had become twisted over time. However, the darkness upon Golgotha is said to have occurred while Jesus still writhed in pain upon the cross—early in the day, not during the night.
There is more.
In Revelation 4:6–7, it is written:
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And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
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It is thought that these hallucinations symbolizing the four apostles came as a vision, yet who can say what Saint John, Saint Mark, Saint Luke, and Saint Matthew truly saw that day?
According to the accounts of one Roman centurion, from that day forth, there were none in Jerusalem who laid eyes upon the man Judas Iscariot. Nor was Judas’s body found among the dozens who fell from the cliffs that day in the darkness.
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Thus did Jerusalem’s most devastating day come to an end.