The Order
by Daniel Silva
(New York: HarperCollins, 2020)
Never forget, the unimaginable can happen.
Page 21.
The ocular prosthesis, with its immobile pupil, had left the general with a cold, unyielding gaze. Even Gabriel tended to avoid it. It was like staring into the eye of an all-seeing God.
Page 29.
“The first rule of illicit behavior is to avoid a pattern.”
Page 50.
“The telecommunications industry and their friends in Silicon Valley promised us a brave new world of convenience, all at our fingertips. They told us not to worry, our secrets would be safe. None of it was true. They intentionally lied to us. They stole our privacy. And in the process, they’ve ruined everything.”
Page 88.
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
Page 149.
There were perhaps four and a half million of them spread throughout the Empire. They had thrived under Roman rule, taking advantage of the freedom of commerce and movement the Empire afforded them. Everywhere they settled they were wealthy and much admired as a God-fearing people who loved their children, respected human life, and looked after the poor, the sick, the widowed, and the orphaned. Julius Caesar spoke highly of them and granted them important rights of association, which allowed them to worship their God instead of Rome’s.
But those who lived in the ancestral homeland of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were a less cosmopolitan lot. Violently anti-Roman, they were riven with sects, perhaps as many as twenty-four, including the puritanical Essenes, who did not recognize the authority of the Temple. A massive complex atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, it was controlled by Sadducee aristocrats who profited through their association with the occupation and worked closely with the Roman prefect to assure stability.
Pages 169-170.
Pilate was a collector of taxes, a facilitator of trade, and a writer of endless reports to Emperor Tiberius.
Page 170.
Rome, by and large, did not involve itself in every facet of culture and society in the lands it occupied. Its laws hibernated during periods of tranquillity and awoke only when there was a threat to order.
Page 170.
As prefect, Pilate was Judea’s chief magistrate, its judge and jury. Even so, the Jews handled much of the province’s civil administration and law enforcement through the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical tribunal that convened daily.
Page 171.
Within a few short years of the Crucifixion, the Jesus movement was in grave danger of being reabsorbed by Judaism. If there was a future, it lay with the gentiles living under Roman rule.
Page 178.
The Gospels were never intended to be factual records. They were theology, not history. They were evangelizing documents that laid the foundation of a new faith, a faith that by the end of the first century was in sharp conflict with the one from which it had sprung.
Page 178.
“Do you know how many Jews there should be in the world? Two hundred million. We could be more numerous than the populations of Germany and France combined. But we were wiped out time and time again, culminating with the pogrom to end all pogroms.”
Page 185.
“The Gospel of Pilate calls into question the New Testament’s account of the seminal event in Christianity. For that reason, it is a most dangerous book.”
Page 202.
There is no such thing, practitioners of the secret trade like to say, as a perfect covert operation. The best a careful planner can do is limit the chances of failure and exposure.
Page 267.
His words had the dryness of a policy paper.
Page 281.
The Curia did not reward boldness or creativity. Inertia was its sacred calling.
Page 325.
“You have a perfect marriage.”
“I’m married to a perfect woman. Don’t confuse the two.”
Page 372.
“I’m a Swiss citizen who woks for the Vatican. Hiding the truth comes naturally to me.”
Page 373.
“The original Christians didn’t see themselves as founders of a new faith. They were Jews who were also Jesus followers.”
Page 418.
“I’m afraid there is a straight line between the teachings of the early Church and the gas chamber and crematoria of Auschwitz. To maintain otherwise is to engage in what Thomas Aquinas called an ignoramtia affetata. A willful ignorance.”
Page 423.
“We are normal people,” Gabriel laughed. “We just have interesting friends.”
Page 427.
Numerous critical biblical scholars and contemporary historians have concluded that the evangelists and their editors in the early Church consciously shifted the blame for Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews in order to make Christianity more appealing to gentiles living under Roman rule and less threatening to the Romans themselves. The two primary elements utilized by the Gospel writers to blame Jews for the death of Jesus are the trial before the Sanhedrin and of course, the tribunal before Pontius Pilate.
Page 436.