A terrible thing has happened to Caiaphas: Religion has left the realm of respect for person. For Caiaphas, sacredness has become institutions, structures, and abstractions. He is dedicated to “the people,” so individual flesh and blood men are expendable. Caiaphas is dedicated to the nation. But the nation does not bleed like Jesus. Caiaphas is dedicated to the Temple—impersonal brick and mortar. Caiaphas became impersonal himself, no longer a warm human being but a robot, as fixed and rigid as his unchanging world.
