Great Lion of God (81 page)

One night, Saul suddenly said to his son, when the visitors had retired to their chambers: “Before I leave with my friends, Boreas, you must marry. I have chosen the wife for you, the daughter of Judah ben Isaac, who is the son of my old mentor, Reb Isaac, may he rest in peace.”

“I do not know the maiden, nor the family!” Boreas exclaimed.

“Pish,” said Saul. “Of what moment is that?” He paused, and an unfathomable look of pain darkened his features for a moment. “I know the family. I have already spoken to Judah ben Isaac, though we are not friends any longer, for a reason I will not tell you. The maiden is named Tamara, and she is fourteen years old, and beautiful and modest. Her father, alas, is no scholar, but her mother has taught her the ways of rectitude and the wifely duties, and that is enough knowledge for a woman, for women are weak vessels and are not designed for wisdom. The girl has a handsome dowry, and dowries are not to be despised. Enough. It is arranged.”

Boreas brooded for a moment. During the meetings of the Nazarenes women were permitted to sit among the men, unlike the women in the synagogues, and though they were gentle and silent they had dignity and the men did not treat them as inferiors, but as sisters equal in the love of the Messias. Many a pretty face had caught the eye of Boreas. It made him rebel that his father had chosen a wife for him, of whom he had never heard, and expected that his son would take that wife meekly and not even see her face until the day of their marriage. Boreas had also rebelled at the note of light or grave contempt that would steal into his father’s fascinating voice when he spoke of women, even the Nazarene women.

Boreas said, “I will not take this girl to wife until I have looked upon her face, for I could not live with a woman who repelled me.”

Saul said, “A woman is born to obey her father, her brothers and above all, her husband, and she is born to marry and produce sons for that husband. Are we Romans and Greeks, that our women are bold and infamous and go their own impudent way on the streets and byways and in the marketplaces and banks and halls of commerce? No.”

Boreas, who had Saul’s own way of rushing into speech without due prudence, said with bitterness, “You are thinking of my mother!”

Saul paled with anger. Then he thought, “It is true, and I have offended my son.” So after a moment, he said in a milder voice “I will arrange for you to see the face of this maiden—at a distance—and you and I will speak with her father, though the prospective husband is not usually included in a conversation between fathers and if she does, indeed, strike you as repulsive then you need not marry her, though I have wished it, and as your father I can command it.”

For Saul was now thinking, with mingled pain and melancholy amusement, how he had defied his own father in the matter of Elisheba, though Hillel had commanded him to marry her.

So the matter was arranged, and Boreas lurked at a distance and gazed upon a young virgin with a face like a lily and eyes like dark stars and with a gay shy smile, and he had loved and had desired her at once. Later Boreas said to Saul, “I will marry the girl, if it is your wish, my father,” and attempted to look resigned and obedient.

Boreas was accordingly espoused to Tamara bas Judah, and the marriage was arranged to take place before Saul’s departure for Antioch. Boreas could not know the forebodings in the heart of his father, that never would they meet again, and that Saul wished his son to possess as much consolation as a wife and family could bestow on him.

“You will live in this house, which I have left to you in my will, with your wife,” said Saul. “The house is yours, and all that I have.”

There was a conversation Saul had with Lucanus and Barnabas which mystified Boreas, for it was the first time that Lucanus and Barnabas had looked coldly on Saul.

They were sitting in the gardens of the house of Saul ben Hillel in the late afternoon, after the heat of the day. The sky was no brighter nor more blue than the utterly still pond, in which it and its few little rosy clouds were perfectly reflected, as was the ebony carved and arching bridge with its dragon forms, and the white and black swans and ducks which sailed tranquilly over the water. A cypress or two was also reflected, sharp and black as if rigidly painted. The palms were already heavy with yellow clusters of dates, and the red pomegranates hung among their green leaves and the golden figs were fat in their hanging boughs and the citrons were like gilt amidst their glossy foliage. The fountains flashed like white fire in the sun, blinding the eye, and the walls broke into waves of red and white and purple flowers. The red-gravel paths sparkled like thrown rubies as they wound through grass and flower beds still vigorous for all the hot and passing summer, and an air of glittering peace shimmered over the gardens.

Saul and his son and nephew and the guests sat under the wide striped awnings with refreshments near their hands, and they discussed the spread of the Church into Greece, Rome, Africa and Asia Minor. “The Good News,” said Lucanus, “travels on the wings of the morning and is carried on the plumes of night.” The great Roman roads, which facilitated swift travel and rumor, were somewhat responsible for it, as well as the mighty commerce between east and west which had its center in Israel. “The moment of history was chosen,” replied Saul, with that catch of joy and excitement at his heart so familiar to him now. He would go with Barnabas to establish more churches, to give heart and courage to the new young ones, to settle any disputes, to bring his revelations to all who would hear. (There were indeed disputes, even so early, for new interpreters rose up like locusts with dissensions and argumentations, and though Barnabas expressed his concern Saul was indulgent. “They need but correction and explanation,” he said, with a hope that Barnabas fervently prayed would be granted.)

As Saul sat in his gardens, he knew this would be for the last time, and each day was sorrowfully closer to the end. Because his sight had been so sharpened since he had seen the vision of the Messias he was now constantly overwhelmed by the beauty of the world and no longer found sin in the contemplation of it, but only prayerful reverence and marvelings.

Barnabas said, “As Elias was carried to Heaven in the fiery chariot and Our Lord ascended before our eyes, so Mary was also lifted when she died in the house of John. We were in his house when she died, and she was wrapped in the burial cloths and spices, and we knelt about her bed, praying, and suddenly there was a great noise, greater than any thunder, for it shook the little house, and there was a light more vivid than the sun, and we fell on our faces, mute and blind and fallen of senses. And when we lifted ourselves, dazed, the bed was empty and only a glimmer of light lay there, which faded before our eyes as we stared at it.”

Instantly, Saul was incredulous, though the others bowed their heads and their faces were illuminated. “What!” he exclaimed. “A mere woman to receive such a divine honor! I do not believe it. You were stricken with grief, and so looked for a miracle—”

Barnabas said, “Whence, then, disappeared her body?”

Saul shrugged. He replied, “Who knows? Those who sought a miracle, or wished to reveal prodigies, bore her away while you lay stunned.”

He suddenly remembered that he had uttered similar words when his cousin, Titus Milo, had told him of the resurrection of the Messias. But he fumed. A woman, a mere woman, who had but given her virgin flesh to the Lord? Despite Leah and Judith and Rachel and Ruth and Sarah, there were few Mothers of Israel, and none of them however worthy and beloved of God, had been granted such divine favors. He had prayed countless times at the tomb of Rachel in Jerusalem, and had thought that despite the obvious nobility and grandeur of Rachel she had died and rotted as had millions of women before her. It was true that Mary had been chosen from among all women to bear the Messias, and had clothed Him with her flesh and had given Him her blood and her milk, but she had only been, as Lucanus had related to him, “the handmaid of the Lord,” a lowly Galilean girl if of the House of David. She had been but a woman, the weak vessel, the river on which Grace had traveled like a white ship. Who honors the waters which bear the sails and the Passenger? The river is but a helpless way.

It was then that a sad coldness spread over the faces of his guests.

Barnabas said, “You have forgotten. Even God waited on her consent—this little maiden just past puberty—to bear His Son! She had been announced from the ages, this virgin child. She nurtured God at her breast; she taught Him to walk; she heard His first childish words. She made His clothing; she rocked Him in her arms; she babbled to Him as only mothers tenderly babble, and infants listen with delight and trust. She cooked His meat and His fish; she made His bread. She milked the goats for Him, and gathered the fruit. She attended to the needs of His human flesh. For thirty years He was hers alone, and what wonders must have been revealed to her! And how she must have brooded and wept over His cradle, understanding that one day He must leave her and bring the holy tidings to mankind, and that He must die under frightful circumstances. The Apostles, and Lucanus, have told us of these things. The Lord performed His first miracle at her loving request. It was He who gave her as Mother to all men, as He hung dying on the infamous cross. She was present when the fire of Pentecost descended on His weeping Apostles and disciples. Did it carefully refrain from blazing upon the Mother?

“She was no ‘mere woman,’ Saul. She was the Mother of God. He loved her before He loved others in His human flesh. He ran beside her as a Child; He was helplessly dependent on her for nurture. We men love our mothers and reverence them. How much more, then, must God love and bless His Mother! Nothing is impossible with God. If He chose to lift her uncorrupted body to Him, as the Messias had been lifted, who shall dispute Him? Though,” said Barnabas, the merriment gone from his face as he regarded Saul, “she was but a woman.”

Saul reflected. He unwillingly granted all of the arguments of Barnabas. It was a mystery. Still, Mary had been only a woman, and women were not highly regarded by the prophets and the patriarchs, for all of the Mothers of Israel. They were prone to weaknesses of the flesh and the will. He thought of his own mother, and Dacyl and others he had known.

Then he remembered the one time he had seen Mary, when he had been a youth in Jerusalem, and she had dozed wearily near him, awaiting her Son. He recalled the tender reverence the Messias had given her; He had fed her with His own Hand. He had shown sorrow and concern for her. He had called her “Emi.” (Mother) If the Lord could so honor and love His Mother, when then should men cavil? Had not she cried, “All generations shall call me blessed?” Saul shook his head.

“It is a mystery,” he murmured, with uneasiness. “I must meditate upon it.”

The Nazarenes received women among them with full equality and respect. They met in the houses of wives and mothers, to escape the exasperated wrath of their fellow Jews. They honored women because of the Mother of the Messias. Saul shifted in his chair. He must, indeed, “meditate upon it.” Later he was to give reluctant acceptance to women, but it remained reluctant.

The marriage of Boreas, or Enoch ben Saul, to Tamara bas Judah, took place the day before Saul left Tarsus.

A Nazarene priest performed the ceremony in the house of Judah ben Isaac, and only before Nazarenes. Saul had dreaded the hour when he must face Elisheba, the aunt of the bride, and yet had longed for the occasion, for the last sight of that beloved face.

But Elisheba was not among the family. She was not among the guests. Saul dared not ask of her, and no other spoke of her. It was as if she had no existence.

He welcomed his son and the bride and the guests to his house and he looked upon them with heavy sorrow, and with new foreboding that never would he see them again. The road had finally been revealed to him, and he was a traveler forevermore. He was jubilant. But as a man, of human flesh, he was grieved also.

Chapter 41

T
HROUGH
the lonely years of Tarsus it had come to Saul slowly and inevitably as the patient falling of rain, that his mission was to the Gentiles. A thousand times he had rejected the conviction. There were other evangelists, other missionaries, though it was to be admitted that their work among the Gentiles had borne but rare rewards, and few there were among the converted. The Jews would not listen to him, Saul ben Hillel, distrusting him, and the Jewish Nazarenes had similar aversions. They listened to the missionaries and evangelists, but not to him!

It was Barnabas, who had known nothing of the slow only half comprehended revelations to Saul over those four years of exile, who had told him, “You are to teach and convert the Gentiles. That is your mission. And that is why our fellow Jews, under mysterious promptings, will have naught to do with you. God, blessed be His Name, knows what is necessary.”

Barnabas added, “The ways and the customs and the thoughts of the Gentiles are not familiar to me, as a Jew of modest life and quiet existence and narrow knowledge, as they are to you, Saul. Therefore, I have difficulty in speaking to them in terms they can understand and in metaphors congenial to their spirits, and in language familiar to them. I can speak and be comprehended by our fellow Jews, especially the humble and devout. (He did not add that Saul’s natural impatience and erudition and learning made it almost impossible for him to speak to those humble ones of little worldly knowledge. He was too easily inflamed.)

“But you are a learned man, of Greek and Roman understanding, as well as a Pharisee Jew. The Gentiles will listen to you, as they will not listen to me, and others like myself. More and more do I understand why and how God chose you, Saul ben Hillel! How wondrous are His ways!”

Saul had never been in Antioch of Syria before, the birthplace of Lucanus, who would accompany him and Barnabas on frequent occasions. “My adoptive father,” Lucanus had said with an affectionate smile, “loathed the city, called it a pestilential den, stinking with urine and gutters and rotten fruit and goats and camels and asses and unwashed hides of men and beasts. It was also too fervent, too hot, too alien to his Roman spirit. He had been sent there as legate, and despised every moment of what he called his exile. He was an able administrator, the noble Diodorus Cyranus, and a firm ‘old’ Roman, and a patriot, and a soldier above all, and adored the old gods and obeyed them, and was a man of justice and honor. For that he was respected by the inhabitants of Antioch, though hated by taxgatherers and not understood by the people of the city. To him, a matter was wholly right or wholly wrong, according to the law of old Rome. He was an anachronism in a world of hot confusion and a multitude of warring tongues. He had a simplicity and purity of nature not to be comprehended by men of compromise and veniality. Alas, the world is poorer that he died, and the world will grow poorer through the years that his kind is known no more.”