(A/N) Entirely belongs to Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Because the first time I heard 'This Jesus Must Die,' Caiaphas's professed motives made me stop dead and stare off into space for the rest of the song. Please, please, if you read this, review it.
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Look, Caiaphas,
they're right outside our yard…
Quick, Caiaphas, go call the Roman guard…
They're here. Jesus Christ of Nazareth and his followers. I can look down from my window and see them, see him. He's not the Messiah, as some call him. Everyone would know if he were. But watching him preach, I see the light of God in this man. He is kind, and gentle, and he preaches peace and compassion and love. It is that last that is most dangerous, in a way. People are drawn to his heretical doctrine of forgiveness; they want to believe God forgives their petty sins, that God is as kind as this man can be. He is a good man, and he believes in kindness. I admire him for it, even as I curse his naiveté. I know what will happen; I have seen the way people react. Even now, as he heals them, they call for war.
This will be his downfall, for even now they begin to call him king, a King of the Jews. Soon they will want their king to fight for them, against the Romans. And even if it doesn't come to that, the Romans will never allow a King of the Jews to remain unmolested. I've spent years building our fragile and precious autonomy from the Romans, getting what few concessions I can for our people and fighting to keep them, fighting with religion and diplomacy and expediency and blackmail to keep us from persecution. And now this young man, with the light of God in him, with shining ideals that are too bright for the shadowy world we live in, he is ready to destroy all of my work with his unintentional army and his doctrine of forgiveness. If he remains as he is, preaching in the streets to a rapidly growing crowd of riffraff, we'll have a war on our hands, and it won't be the Romans who will lose it. My life's work for my people will come toppling down around my ears as my people die, under swift, cold, heartless, Roman injustice.
I am not a prophet. I have no divine guidance to support my predictions. I merely have a thirty years' study of human nature to go on. Jesus will be crowned king in laurels. Rome will hear of it. A special order will be sent. The blood of my people will run in the streets; we will lose our lives, our livelihoods, our families, our friends, our homes. And all because of a gentle, naive boy with the light of God shining through his eyes.
No, wait! We need a more permanent solution to our problem…