Great Lion of God (62 page)

The bearded and dusty rabbis were more than alarmed at what appeared at them incredible cruelty and madness. It was one thing to dispute with fellow Jews in the streets and the marketplaces and even in the purlieus of the Temple, and warn against heresy, and quite another to deliver brother Jews to the cruelty and punishment of Romans. The priests could deal with heresy and blasphemy, and gently lead the deluded from their errors, or impose pious punishments. For truly awesome heretics who were a danger to Israel there was the Sanhedrin. But these “heretics,” though in error, were hardly more in error than the members of the other decayed sects, who in their turn had been denounced as blasphemers.

Some said, in argument, “It is not unpardonable to dispute a doctrine or reinterpret the words of Moses and the prophets and the scholars—for this is a matter of opinion and humans err. But it is another thing to assert vehemently, or mildly, that the Messias, blessed be His Name, was in the person of a poor wandering rabbi from Nazareth whom even his own neighbors despised, and who died at the hands of the Romans. Who was he? A carpenter from a little miserable village, seized with a desire for grandeur! He caused riots and aroused dangerous Roman anger against all Jews, and for this he was executed, and laid in the tomb. Do not speak to me of the strange events that occurred when he died! The priests and our wise men have explained it to our satisfaction, for it was all coincidence, even the disappearance of the sun and the earthquakes. Yeshua ben Joseph did not rise from the dead, as his disciples claim. It is well-known that Joseph of Arimathaea was among his followers, and that he bribed the Roman soldiers and the temple guards to permit him to take the still living man from the tomb, and then, after he recovered from his injuries he was seen among his followers who proclaimed that he had risen from the dead. Joseph, though a kind and famous man, has some reason for the misleading of his people, perhaps a secret reason of his own which we will one day know. But it is hardly fair to the people of Israel at this time, for the Romans make no distinctions between us and the heretics, and are only too pleased to beat us on the streets without discrimination or provocation, when it serves to amuse them. Is this just to us, who desire only peace, and who await the Messias? Let us be calm, and understand why Saul of Tarshish does as he does, and not condemn him as an enemy of his people. He is concerned with our safety and our lives.”

Multitudes agreed, expressing their horror of this monumental heresy, that the glorious Messias had been among them, had wandered in the meanest places footsore and beggarly and without a roof over his head, consorting with taxgatherers and harlots and the base, and that God, blessed be His Name, had permitted His Anointed to be so shamefully murdered by the Romans without the appearance of a single avenging angel with a sword of fire or a single proclamation from Heaven! The very thought was outrageous, offensive to God! But even these who were incensed by the “heretics” and whose piety and faith were insulted, and who feared the vengeance of God, were even more incensed that their fellow Jews were hunted down like diseased rats in the Holy City, itself, and were hounded from their homes and driven into exile. Persecution had an evil way, too, of passing from the guilty to the innocent, for men were notoriously inflamed by bloodletting and finally killed and hunted for mere sport and wicked gratification.

And there were thousands who muttered uneasily to themselves: “If it were indeed a blasphemous hoax that Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth did not die on the cross, but was taken alive to his tomb, and later restored to scores who swear they saw him and talked with him, what is the meaning of the hoax? As the Romans say, ‘Who gains?’ Yeshua of Nazareth? It is said that he has already disappeared, that none see him any longer, and none hears from him. His miserable poor followers? They do not appear to be men who desire to be honored and exalted and granted fame and fortune or treated as prophets! They do not even defend themselves against the Romans and fight with them, as do the Zealots and the Essenes! They submit, like sheep, praising God. If hoax this is, then who has benefited? Are they mad that they court prison and suffering and infamy and derision and hatred? Not even the mad do that! They behave like men of the deepest conviction, the deepest surety, the deepest faith and devotion. What is the meaning of this? Men do not submit to prison or humiliation or beatings in public places for something they know is a lie, or a cheap jest. Therefore, they believe. Therefore, even if deluded they do not believe they are deluded, and declare openly that they have seen the risen Yeshua with their own eyes, and have seen him ascend to Heaven, or they believe others who declare they have witnessed these marvels.”

Accordingly, in fearful secret and in quakings, even many of the priests of the Temple, and thousands of the Jews in Jerusalem, listened to the stories of those called Apostles and disciples, and hundreds were baptized in the dark of the night in the narrow golden river near the city. In their turn they sought out others to whom to tell the “good news.” But with discreet terror they attempted to remain obscure, and as so many were poor and humble this was not too difficult a task. Still, the news traveled, and invariably it reached the ears of Saul ben Hillel whose dismay and rage increased daily.

He consulted frequently with Pilate and with the High Priest. Pilate was beginning to find the whole matter amusing. He had always hated the Jews. It pleased him that a vigorous Jew, in the person of Paul of Tarsus, was persecuting, denouncing, imprisoning and punishing his own people. It lightened his days of ennui. He kept his own sense of uneasiness to himself, and attempted to forget the Greek physician, Lucanus, and what had occurred in Caesarea. Too, Herod Antipas was behaving like a man beset and was muttering in his red beard, which he regularly sacrificed to Jupiter in the latter’s temple, and then regularly regrew for the Day of Atonement and the Passover. Pilate found life becoming interesting.

Saul heard that the new and blasphemous Jewish sect had spread like the wings of the morning beyond Israel, was in Syria now, and in his own land of Cicilia, and, incredibly, had shown indications of reaching Greece! was now another Passover, another Pentecostal Feast of the Jews, and the dreadful sect—so insulting to God—appeared to nourish like the plagues of Egypt and to appear in the most unlikely spots. There were rumors that many Roman soldiers had adopted this faith, as well as humbler priests of the Temple, itself, and Saul thought of his cousin, Titus Milo Platonius, in Rome with his aged parents, and his rage rose to frenzy. He felt himself friendless. He knew himself unwelcome in the house of his kinsmen in Jerusalem, and an enemy to them though they made no overt acts to gain converts, and remained in seclusion. (But he suspected, out of his great intuition, that they gave aid and comfort to the persecuted.) He believed that he hated them, and more than all else he hated his sister, Sephorah, who had so deeply betrayed the faith of her fathers, and the faith of Hillel ben Borush, who mercifully had not lived to see this infamy, degradation and blasphemy for himself.

Why did all his efforts, in the service of God, blessed be His Name, appear to bear no fruit? He no sooner eradicated a source of infection than it sprang up, like the phoenix, in another spot, larger and more vigorous than ever. He stamped out a little fire, and a conflagration blazed at a distance, like a mystery out of Gehenna. Was God testing his determination in His service? Was He trying him, as He had tried the prophets and all the saints, to make him more worthy to carry His sword of vengeance and purity? Was He tempering His servant, as He had tempered Job? “I am afflicted!” Saul would cry to himself in his chamber in the house Pilate had assigned to him in Jerusalem, and he would bow his head in exhaustion and frustration, and try to discover where and how he had failed God that the blasphemous sect should still flourish and even spread. He feared the anger of God for his failure. He strove with the Almighty.

“I am but a man!” he would exclaim in his prayers. “I have but human endurance! It is true I have stamina, which You have given me, Lord, but it is not without a breaking point, and I am approaching that. None assists me but Pilate and the High Priest and a few of his creatures, and the lickspittle informers who look for the thirty pieces of silver—the market rabble I have always despised! Can You not deign to give me worthier allies? Better none than these!”

There were times when he was convinced that he was indeed being tested, that the task was greater than he had believed and therefore he needed more tempering, more resolution, that the enemy from hell was more powerful than he could know and demanded more strength than he had shown heretofore, that God was preparing him, as the Greeks would say, for the Great Games, for the amphitheater, for the circus, when alone he would be forced to fight the leagues of evil singlehanded—for the open glorification of God. At these times he felt an enormous and intoxicating pride, and an overwhelming exultation that he had been so chosen for so mighty a task. He would then smite his knees with his strong fists and laugh aloud, and then he would praise God in so loud and passionate a voice that his servants in the house would listen in wonder, shrugging, for they were Greeks. But some would shudder, and would touch a tiny little object of metal which lay over their hearts, and some would pray for this violent and desperate man out of the touching charity of their souls.

But there were other times when despair overcame him and he would groan on his bed, “I have failed, and God will not forgive me, though I have striven to fulfill His Will, and have fought with all my strength and have wearied my brain with thought and plans. What, then, will be my end, that I have been defeated by creeping wretches who can hardly be considered men, and who still live and spread their pollution and lies and errors among my people? But no, no! I shall not be defeated! I shall not endure this mortification! I shall not let worms halt my footsteps with their slime, and fill up my path! This is the one task the King of Kings has set me. May I die in disgrace, forever forgotten by men, if I do not succeed! Moses accomplished a far more formidable task. I am no Moses—but I can do what I can do, and even God can ask a man no more than that.

And there were other times when he thought of the Nasi of the Temple, Rabban Gamaliel, who neither sought him nor wrote to him nor sent him messages of consolation and encouragement, he, who above all, should inspire him. At these moments Saul was filled with a passionate anger and umbrage and even fury. But he tried to remember, to believe, that the Rabban desired him to struggle and fall or win by his own efforts, for had he not always said that each man, in his turn, must face God alone and create his own fate? That confrontation, fearful and inevitable, came to all men. Others dared not interfere in the final hours of struggle and darkness and wrestling with the angels of God. The victory must be each man’s, and not the victory of others, lest it be weak and not sustaining. Saul tried to be grateful for the silence of the great Rabban, who knew best. Still—a single letter, a single word of encouragement—I am betraying weakness, Saul told himself sternly.

Once or twice it came to him that he heard nothing from Aristo in Tarsus, though he had written his old teacher several times. Finally he wrote to Reb Isaac, to receive a short letter from his granddaughter, the widow Elisheba, who had once desired to marry him, to the effect that Reb Isaac now lay in the bosom of Abraham since the last Day of Atonement. She did not speak of Aristo, though Saul had inquired of him. Saul was overcome by the news of his old mentor’s death in his deep age, and it seemed to him that he heard another snapping of a link of a chain which bound him to those he loved and had loved.

I am all alone, he said to God, in his sorrow. I have been abandoned, except by You, my Lord and my God. It must suffice. I am hated by my own people for my deeds in their behalf and for the sake of their souls, except for a few I despise and would not have about me. Even those who deplore blasphemy almost as vehemently as I do avoid me. I have no friends, no kinsmen. But, are You not enough for man’s desiring, for man’s passion, for man’s surfeit of joy? For, there is none else but You, and if I am deserted by man, surely You, King of Kings, have not deserted me, for I have desired no other save You, my Bread of Life, my Source of living waters.

It seemed to Saul that he heard the words of God which had been spoken to Job, “Gird up your loins now, like a man! I will demand of you, and declare you unto Me! Deck yourself now with majesty and excellency, and array yourself with glory and beauty. Tread down the wicked in their place. Hide them in the dust together, and bind their faces in secret. Then I will also confess unto You that My own right Hand can save you!”

“Lord, Lord!” cried Saul, overcome with humility and remorse that he had been so human as to grieve and to voice his plaint that none helped him. Had he not God as his Advocate and his General, and did he not carry His immortal banner? He, Saul ben Hillel, should rejoice at his trials as a singular manifestation of grace, and never doubt of the victory. But, for some awful and terrifying reason, he was not comforted, and he sorrowed that God had rejected his repentance, and was offended at his weakness. It was, however, all he deserved.

One day in the heat of late summer Saul heard a report that stupefied and dazed him, and struck at his soul so violently that he feared for his sanity, and his bewilderment was crushing.

He knew that the apostles of Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth, and his disciples, were rumored to be causing great miracles in Jerusalem and the Provinces, notably one Simon Peter, a poor fisherman from Galilee. Saul had sent out many spies and soldiers to apprehend this dangerous man, who deceived many and corrupted the faith of Israel, but always Peter escaped as if melting into mist, and his followers with him. It was reported that many of the rich and illustrious were helping these criminals, these blasphemers, not only hiding them in their houses when pursued but sending them to country estates for safety.