Great Lion of God (68 page)

Caiphas rose and lifted his voice in anger, gazing at Saul who had paused before him, “Are these animals or are they men, Saul ben Hillel, that they swarm before me like swine? Where is their decorum in this company of the Sanhedrin?”

“Lord,” said Saul, answering him in the deliberate Latin he spoke, “forgive them, for they are inflamed by their fury that this blasphemer dared exhort them in their very synagogue, where they were peacefully at prayer, and offer up blasphemies to offend their ears.” But he turned and spoke in a loud hard voice to the witnesses and they stared once at him with restlessly gleaming eyes, breathed heavily, then flung their prisoner at the feet of Caiphas.

Stephen ben Tobias was hardly conscious and bleeding from several small wounds in his face and on his arms. His amber head, so crisply curled and shining, lay on the marble floor, dabbled with blood, and his arms and his long and elegant hands were stretched before him. Now a deep silence suddenly filled the chamber and the judges in their chairs craned to look upon this scion of a celebrated house, and some knew him and bit their lips and looked aside, and some were curious. Caiphas closed his eyes briefly. He opened them to regard the disheveled witnesses in their many colored garments and he saw the lust to kill on their dark and bearded faces and he thought, It matters not to them what this man has done not done, or whether he blasphemed or not, for what do cattle know of blasphemy? They only wish to kill him. When will this horror end? Why has Israel been cursed with another new and militant beet?

He said to Saul, “Is the prisoner dead or only fainted, and can he aroused to answer to the charges?”

“Request wine for him, lord,” said Saul, still speaking in Latin. “He is not dead.”

Caiphas clapped his hands and when a slave appeared he ordered wine. Then he hesitated. He loathed Saul as he loathed all contumacious and turbulent men for they not only vexed his mind but disturbed his digestion. In some manner, deftly and with all too human a dexterity, he had shifted the blame for the origin of the persecution of the blasphemers and cultists from himself to Saul, and at times considered himself a sorely distraught man who desired only peace. So, to ease the spasm within him and to annoy Saul and perhaps even to insult him, he said to the servant, “Bring also a chair for this prisoner and some water and towels for his wounds, and serve the wine in one of the suitable goblets, for this is Stephen ben Tobias of a distinguished house in Israel, and not a workman from the Street of the Tentmakers nor a peasant from the vineyards.”

Some of the judges, with pardonable pleasure, saw that Saul’s face swelled and that he bit his lip until a bead of blood appeared upon it. But he stood rigidly in silence, like an image of himself, and stared over the High Priest’s head at one of the high windows through which fell the strong pale sunlight. His countenance had turned gray, his mouth was livid.

The servant helped assist Stephen to his feet and into a chair drawn before the judges and the High Priest and Stephen fell against the back, his pallid face the face of a dead man, his eyes closed, his cheeks bleeding. Great bruises were already appearing on his flesh and on his throat. But even these, and his poor garb, could not diminish his patrician aura. When the wine, in a superb Alexandrine goblet, was pressed gently against his lips he swallowed it slowly, drop by drop, and a faint color returned to his handsome face. Then he looked at the High Priest and said, “Caiphas.”

“Yes, it is I,” said the High Priest. “It is an evil day when a scion of a noble house is caught in blasphemy, Stephen ben Tobias, and arrested like a common felon and brought before members of the Sanhedrin. Speak, Stephen, what have you to say for yourself, what denials do you wish to make?”

Stephen appeared to ponder, not moving those open lustrous eyes of his from the High Priest. At last he said, “So He was brought, like a common felon and judged, and I feel no shame. I am overjoyed that I can imitate Him.” His cultured voice grew stronger instant by instant, and then, incredibly, he smiled. He turned in his chair and looked at Saul, who moved his head stiffly in his direction and returned his gaze.

“Long have I wished to dispute with you, Saul of Tarshish,” he said, “for we are men of the same breed, and I have prayed to reason with you.”

“Reason with me now,” said Saul in his loud and bitter voice, “for you have betrayed what is best in Israel, the obligation of a man of an illustrious house to set an example to his people. You have behaved indeed as a common felon, as a cheap and rowdy blasphemer, a low fellow creating unrest out of mere mischief, and exposing our people to danger, and to the wrath of God.”

Before Stephen could answer him Saul raised his hand peremptorily, and said, “But what are you, Stephen ben Tobias, but a Hellenist, an apostate Jew, who cannot honor the faith that has guarded Israel through the centuries because he knows little or nothing about it, its history and its saints and its prophets! No, rather, you have idly embraced false gods and evil philosophies, and have been easily led into error and blasphemy. I am prepared,” said Saul, for his heart was filled with an unfathomable pain, “to have you confess that you have I sinned out of ignorance, and out of lack of knowledge, and not out of I conviction, and perhaps only to amuse an effete self.”

The judges glanced at each other in amazement, and the mouths of the heaving witnesses fell open, for the formidable Saul of Tarshish had offered the prisoner an escape so that he would suffer, perhaps, only a few lashings and then be released.

Saul did not understand even himself, and all the complex emotions, wound one within another like many threads rolled together, which had impulsively moved him to suggest to Stephen how he could avoid the punishment of a true blasphemer, and so receive only a flogging and short imprisonment. Perhaps it had been Stephen’s name and house, or perhaps the beauty of his face and the openness of his look, and his youth, for he was younger than Saul and only on the threshold of full manhood, and in some manner he reminded Saul of the boy, Amos, his nephew. He had seen that at the very altar in the synagogue, even in his rage.

It was possible that Stephen, with that keen insight which had come to him lately, understood all this, and his eyes welled and darkened with compassion, as if he, not Saul, was the accuser and the judge, and Saul the victim.

Caiphas said quickly, “Confess, Stephen ben Tobias, that you have been in error, not out of conviction but out of ignorance, as Saul of Tarshish has—accused.”

But Stephen did not turn to him. He continued to contemplate Saul, and now a deep excitement filled his eyes and the sweetest of smiles curled his Grecian lips. He rose slowly and feebly from his chair, then stood beside it, his hand upon it to support himself. Then it was that he looked at the judges and began to speak in his seductive and enchanting voice.

I have been accused of being an apostate Jew, with little knowledge of our sacred history and the saints and the prophets, and therefore inclined to misinterpretation and error. But, lords, this is not true.”

He glanced strongly at Saul and said, “There is a worse betrayal even than that of a friend or a kinsmen, or a people, and that is betrayal of God, blessed be His Name, and the betrayal of His truth.”

He turned to the judges and said, “Lords, hearken unto me and tell me then in all justice if I am a Jew ignorant of the history of our people.”

He embarked then on a long and eloquent dissertation on the history of his people and the saints and the prophets, and now there was no sound in the chamber at all but his compelling voice and no gesture but his moving and graceful gesticulations, and even the witnesses did not shuffle their feet and Caiphas and the judges listened in astonishment, and Saul, himself, in spite of his efforts, could not glance away from that glowing face near him.

There was not an event, however obscure, how far away in the clouds of time, that Stephen did not relate, and it was as if he were telling an absorbing story which none had heard before. He spoke of Abraham and Jacob, and Joseph and Moses and Aaron and Solomon and David, with precision and deep knowledge. He had the cultured man’s genius for assembling facts and presenting them logically, with no vague hesitations or uncertainties, but with absolute order and incisiveness. Moment ran into moment, and time into time, and all were held by his voice as if held by his hands. (Acts 6 and 7)

He came to a halt. It was understood that he had not finished, but he looked smilingly at the bemused judges and waited. Saul, too, seemed to be under a spell, and his face was wrinkled and drawn.

Then Saul said, “A witness against you, one of those present, has declared that you have said, of the Temple, ‘Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth will destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.’ What have you to say in answer?”

Stephen, again only addressing him, replied: “It is written in the Scriptures: ‘Solomon built Him a House. “Howbeit the most High dwells not in temples made with hands—saith the prophet.” “Heaven is My Throne and earth my footstool. What house will you build Me?” said the Lord, or what is the place of My rest? Has not My hand built all these things?’ The Messias has told us,” said Stephen, his voice deepening, “of these things again, reminding us that gilded houses made for God may be pleasing to man’s reverence, and therefore to God, but men can pray and be heard in the open fields at their labor, and in their secret places and not only in the synagogues and the Temples, and in their beds, and alone. These He said, and I have repeated them, and like Him, I have repeated the words of Solomon, for we have forgotten them, as men always forget the words of God and prefer to listen to their own desires.

“In quoting Solomon, lords, was the Messias a blasphemer, and am I, too, a blasphemer?”

Now Saul was freshly infuriated. He exclaimed, “You are a quibbler! We are astonished at your knowledge of your people and their sacred history, as you intended us to be astonished. I praise you for your erudition! But you have been accused of saying that Yeshua ben Joseph will destroy the Temple—”

“I never said that, nor did the Messias, blessed be His Name. He prophesied that our Temple will be destroyed, our nation dispersed, and Jerusalem laid low and the walls of her be broken down. But He repeated what prophets before Him had said, and He again prophesied that Israel will once more bloom as the rose, after the days of tribulation.”

The witness against Stephen raised a shrilling cry: “He lies! He lies! I have with me men who will testify to his lies!” And he turned violently on his companions and shouted. “Is it not so, men, and will you not swear by your fathers’ beards that it is so?” He stamped his feet like a madman, and glared like a beast.

For the briefest instant, the men with him hesitated, then swept by his passion and believing what he had said, they raised their voices in a thunderous affirmation, and it seemed to them that Stephen had indeed said that his Master had declared he would destroy the Temple and the Law. “Aye, Aye, it is so, it is so!” they howled.

Stephen, still standing by the chair, still oozing from his many small wounds, gazed at the men and sighed, not with impatience or disgust, but with pity. Then, as if he had heard a commanding voice he started and lifted his eyes to one of the windows and an ineffable smile broke out upon his face and he raised his hands in awe and worship.

He said, and his voice shook, “Behold! The Heavens open and I see the Son of Man standing on the right Hand of God!”

He is demented, thought Saul, and now his pain left him and he said to himself, He has a devil, and blasphemes.

He said to the High Priest and the judges, “You have heard his lame falsehoods, and now his open blasphemy, declaring that Yeshua of Nazareth stands at the right Hand of God!”

Still Caiphas hesitated. He turned to the judges. He saw them pondering. If they dismissed the charges against Stephen ben Tobias then these witnesses would cast it abroad that the Sanhedrin feared to rebuke and punish a rich man of an illustrious house, though they had not hesitated to deliver Yeshua of Nazareth up to death at the hands of the Romans, for was not Yeshua only a poor man and a carpenter? They would howl: “One law for the mighty and another for the weak!” Worse still, they would proclaim that the Sanhedrin had upheld a blasphemer. Chaos would result.

So one of the judges said, “Let him be delivered to the ultimate punishment.”

The witnesses yelled with joy, and losing all restraint and respect now they rushed upon Stephen and seized him, and they hurled him with them out of the chamber and the tumult died behind them.

Caiphas looked at Saul and said, “What? Are you not accompanying them to give a semblance of the order of law to the proceedings?” He smiled richly, and with malice, and his jewels flashed on his hands.

Saul said not a word but went from the chamber and Caiphas thought, I have repaid you, my arrogant friend of the audacious red hair and the leonine countenance, for the insults you have heaped on me since I have known you, and the proud glances, and the condemnations.

The turbulent procession of vociferous and bellowing death, led by Saul ben Hillel, and followed resignedly by the Roman centurion and his men, clamored through the streets of Jerusalem, adding to itself other throngs as a river on the way to the sea gathers brooks and rivulets unto it. The late winter sun was dropping in the west, and it was a hole of red fire in the whitish heavens, for a cloudy mist was rising. And now a dusty wind rose that swirled through the narrow streets and billowed under the many feet of the hurrying crowd. The mounts were a lilac-bronze, not yet taking upon themselves the green of spring, though islands of dark cypresses lifted their spires here and there.

Merchants closed little shops to run at the rear of the procession, and to ask questions, and now some men joined that procession on little asses, and from side streets camels and their riders stared, and women peeped from small windows, and little boys ran shrieking, stuffing sweetmeats into their mouths and opening wide their dark and shining eyes in excitement. “They are taking a blasphemer to the Field of the Stoning!” they shouted. It was a festival, for the children were too young to know of death and death by so horrible a method, and they laughed gleefully among themselves until men in the running cavalcade drove them off. It would be no sight for children.