Great Lion of God (96 page)

Chapter 50

“T
HE
great renegade has cursed us again with his presence,” said the Jews of the city.

“The man who persecuted and imprisoned us has returned,” said the Nazarenes.

“The troublemaker,” said the priests in the Temple, “is amongst us again, and what will he plot now, that Zealot?”

“He admonished and repudiated us,” said the young Zealots and the Essenes, “though once he pretended to love us, so say our fathers. Has he returned to massacre us?”

Even the Roman procurator, Felix, spending the pleasant springtime season in Caesarea by the sea, heard of Saul of Tarshish, whom he called Paul of Tarsus. The news was brought to him by old soldiers who remembered Saul, and by many of the truckling priesthood. “He caused grave dissension in Jerusalem and throughout Judea,” said the soldiers, “and his people hated him and reviled him, a Jew, himself.” “It is he who has aroused the Nazarenes, or Christians, throughout Asia Minor and Europe, itself, against the rule of Rome,” said the priests. “He has caused riots and upheavals and blasphemies wherever he has trod. It is whispered that he is a member of the Zealots and the Essenes, who live but to destroy.”

“If all detest him,” said Felix indolently, “why has someone not murdered him before this?” He thought the situation amusing, and dismissed Saul from his mind.

In the meantime, Saul walked the streets of his city, wherein he had not walked for many years. He lingered in the walled space where he had first seen the Messias with His Mother, and he sat on the bench where he had sat and gazed at the empty bench opposite him. He wandered in the marketplace where he had heard his name called in that thunderous, masculine voice, “Saul! Saul of Tarshish!” He entered the Temple at an hour when it was not very crowded and stood on the very spot where he had felt the Presence of the Messias. He left the city for the wilderness where the youthful Zealots had been executed, and where Christ Jesus had comforted them, and they had known Him though others had not. He stood on the crossroads where he had heard the Messias address the Scribes and the Pharisees and the common people. He walked on the way the Messias had walked, with His cross, to the place of His shameful murder. He visited the tomb which Joseph of Arimathaea had given for the Messias’ body, and from which He had risen. He went to the mount where the Messias had ascended to Heaven, and to the cave where His child—Mother had given Him birth.

And he marveled, with a marveling as new as if he had just heard it, that God had actually been present on these sacred spots, had deigned to be born as a Man, with all man’s humiliations and animal functions of the body, with all humanity’s common pains and griefs and hungers and yearnings. Saul touched the earth the sandals of Christ had touched, and said to himself, “Surely this is a holy place.” Man, himself, had become holy through the Holiness of his Redeemer, though he merited nothing by his own efforts. Human life was holy because One had taken on the flesh of mankind, had redeemed man from sin and death. Sometimes, in contemplation at these places Saul would be seized by a rapture which held him immobile and trembling for moments at a time, and people passing would stop to stare at his illuminated face and wild fixed eyes, and would smirk at the sight of this workingman with his long tunic the color of the red earth, and his leonine white mane, and his strange appearance. But Saul, consumed by love and the passionate desire to see the Messias again, could only think, in the rapture: “Oh, surely men will never forget that He lived and walked in Israel and died here, and will forever hold this little land sacred and inviolate!”

And there were occasions when he felt no rapture and no hope, for all about him was confusion compounded by confusion, where men should be brothers in joy and delight and not mortal enemies. Sometimes it seemed to him that Israel was a cup from which poured violence, bewilderment and murder among brethren, and surely, he would say to himself, this was the greatest of all blasphemies, for Israel was holy beyond all other holinesses, and her people prophets. That there should be contentions, rivalries, disputes, hatreds, rebellions and betrayals in this holy land was an affront to God, Who had so blessed her through the ages and had protected her, and had given her His only Begotten Son. “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my eye be blinded and my right hand be withered!” Saul repeated from the prophets, and his heart would swell to bursting and his eyes would run with tears.

It was growing more and more incredible to him that the new Church could be rent by doctrinal disputes, narrow little interpretations, self-glorification, anger, repudiation, dissent and quarrelings which led to actual violence, for the Way was so plain and simple. But then, he would also think, we are only men, if redeemed, and we carry into the Holy of Holies our imperfections and our vices and our egotism, alas. Often we will not surrender our souls and our lives to Him, to Whom they belong, because to do so would rob us of the delicious sins we love so much.

His soul wept for his beloved people and his beloved land, the seat of prophets and heroes, the halo of revelation, the holy mountains, the sacred earth, the land above all lands which had been so blessed, and he remembered that the Messias had wept also and for the same country.

I have been commanded to return here, he thought, yet I do not know why, for none will listen to me, either Jew or Christian, and I am accursed of both. I linger, waiting. In the meantime he played with Sephorah’s grandchildren and walked in her gardens, and meditated impatiently, and sorrowed.

Then one Sabbath eve, he was urgently moved to go to the Temple. He arrayed himself in his meager finery, his heart shaking, and put on his best plain sandals and his prayer shawl and his phylacteries and curled his earlocks. He came upon Sephorah sitting in the atrium with two of her grandchildren, and when she looked at him it seemed to her that he had a grave and unearthly aspect, and she rose dumbly and stared into his eyes. He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead, and suddenly she clung to him and still could not speak. But she felt his sorrow, deep and speechless. He put her from him and left the house with his head bent, for he knew that never again would he see his sister.

“Saul! Saul!” she cried after him, regaining her voice, and she ran to the portico. But he was far down the street and did not answer her. The red sunset had inflamed the mountains, the streets and the skies over the city, and it was as if a conflagration was devouring them all. Sephorah could not even weep. She put her hands to her mouth and she watched until her brother disappeared, then she leaned against a column and prayed and now her tears came. She began to shudder. She saw that the dull red shadows from the sky cast black shadows on the earth, and she remembered the prophecies that the Temple would be destroyed and Israel rendered desolate, and it was all mingled, in her quaking mind, with the image of her brother and the prophets, and woe filled her heart and it appeared to her that the whole world was burning.

If the Christian elders and deacons had been wary of Saul, and had consulted with him only briefly on a number of occasions, at night, and stealthily, and if the Jews had fearfully avoided him both as a “heretic” and an alleged and violent Zealot who would bring fresh trouble on Israel, and if they had all hoped that his presence would not be known to the Romans, they had reason for dismay, thousands praying that he would depart and leave them in peace. The Roman garrisons and officers were well aware of his presence, and spies, encouraged by the High Priest, Ananias ben Nebedaeus, knew each step he took and with whom he conversed. The High Priest was determined that Saul cause no more upheavals in Israel. He felt a particular hatred for this aging Pharisee, a personal hatred, for he had learned of Saul’s contempt for the decadent High Priesthood and his denunciations of it in many cities. The Sanhedrin knew of his presence. If Saul sometimes had heard shufflings in the night, and had uneasily felt the eye of an enemy upon him during the day, and had seen shadows cast, he had attributed it to his imagination.

The priests knew that Saul, the pious Jew, would not long refrain from visiting the Temple, and they knew that he had a way of addressing the worshipers in synagogues, as was permitted by the Law. So, they kept a zealous watch on him, and on the night he dressed and began to walk to the Temple all were alerted, and in particular the Roman garrison which had been warned that Saul was dangerous to Rome. As he walked unhurriedly in the scarlet twilight he saw that others began to walk beside him too, in the crowded streets, men in cloaks and hoods, but he thought no evil. They were only Jews bent on his own mission, to worship at sundown, and on the Sabbath. That his death had been determined upon by the High Priesthood would have seemed the wildest absurdity, had it been communicated to him. He hated no man, except liars and hypocrites and evil-doers, and even for them he prayed each night with tears and hopes, that their hearts would be changed and their souls redeemed.

The priests had found none, not even amongst the most rigid arid devout Jews, not amongst the Nazarenes or Christians, nor among the Zealots and Essenes, who would consent to appear in a body, in public, or in the Temple, to denounce Saul of Tarshish. All had been approached, and threatened, but all had resolutely refused. “If he be of God,” said the Jews, “he must not be disturbed. If he be of the Devil, God will smite him.” The Christian elders said, “He is one of us, and though he baptizes Gentiles who have not been informed of the Torah, and disputes with his own Pharisee sect, we find no wrong in him except excessive zeal.” The Zealots and Essenes said, “He loves and honors our prophet, Jochanan ben Zachary, and speaks of him always, and knew him in his youth, and he loves his people and his country, and though we resent his denunciations of what he terms our ‘excesses’ and calls us ‘extremists,’ we have no complaint of importance against him. We feared his return, believing he would incite our people against us, but he has lived in peace.” (They did not mention that many of the Zealots desired Saul’s death, he having antagonized them.)

The High Priesthood seethed with wrath, for these very people had frequently complained to them of Saul ben Hillel in the past. Now they were willing that he be left in peace and not punished for some vague violation of some law. Without a public demonstration against Saul, which would inflame the Romans, Saul could not be apprehended and executed. Caiphas had warned the priests of this man, and the present High Priest had vowed to destroy him—and yet this pusillanimous and complaining people refused to do their duty! “I would,” said Ananias ben Nebedaeus, “that a thunderbolt fall on Israel, for its cowardice!” As this was said only to his familiars the Jews did not hear of it.

There was but one thing to do: To gather a market mob and call them “Jews from Asia,” and have them denounce Saul either in the Temple or on the street, and thus bring about his arrest. There were thousands among the rabble to do this, with bribes and with promise of excitement and violence. So long before Saul went to the Temple on the Sabbath the careful plan had been laid. It needed but the public appearance of Saul ben Hillel. Tonight, he had appeared, and was on the way to the Temple.

As Saul walked along the streets and descended them, he saw the Sabbath candles already lighted in the scarlet dusk and standing in windows, and he saw the people, streaming from side streets, arrayed in holiday garb and moving with him toward the Temple. The Queen of the Sabbath was presiding again over the hearths and the homes of the people of God, and Saul’s heart was suddenly filled with happiness and expectation. If some pressed too closely to him, and some jostled aside from him and the jostlers moved nearer, he did not heed. He forgot his premonitions.

Now he saw the Temple, burning gold against the crimson sky, and the mounts like bronze beyond it. He saw the golden dome and the thin spires and the gardens and the colonnades, all so dearly familiar and beloved, and his heart was moved strongly as one who comes home after a far journey. The Temple was always crowded on the Sabbath, even the Court of Women and the Court of the Gentiles, so Saul was not aware for a few moments that he was unable to lift his arms and that he seemed to be sweeping in a tide. When he became aware he attempted to slow his pace, looking about him, in the Temple precincts, at the hooded men, and he saw fierce and sparkling eyes fixed upon him and teeth visible between stretched lips, like the teeth of wolves. His awakened instincts shouted to him that he was about to be killed, and he tried to halt in that mass of shoulders and heads and elbows and arms and legs and feet, but they pressed closer to him and moved him on, and now he heard that sound which affrights any man: The wolf growl of hatred and blood-lust. It echoed back and forth among the columns, low, intense, vicious and deadly.

The crowd was no longer moving. The mass was retreating to make him the center of a small tight circle, and his white mane rose on his head and the coldness of death raced over his body. He saw the flaming torches on the far walls and the lanterns, and the distant bronze doors standing open and the crowded pale faces beyond the doors, staring. Then he returned his attention to the panting throng near him and made his face firm and bold.

“What do you wish?” he asked, and now the snarling was silent and there was only the hissing of the torches in the immense quiet.

Then a man shouted, “You! Vile enemy of Israel, renegade, traitor, despoiler, heretic, blasphemer, betrayer of the people!”

The crowd roared, and fists were flung up into the warm dim air and many spat at Saul, who stood unmoved and apparently undismayed.

“Men of Israel,” he said, when the last echo had died away, “you profane the Temple with your cries, your shouts, your imprecations!

One man, with a loud sonorous voice, was evidently the leader, and the others only the chorus, so Saul knew this was no chance demonstration against him, but a prepared one, and if prepared, it would end in his death. His lips were icy and numb but his eyes looked at his enemies without apparent fear, and there was a blue kindling in them.