The Liars' Gospel (33 page)

For the new god was welcomed for one thing at least: it was evident to all that the destruction of Jerusalem must be a message
from the God of the Jews. The wisest men sought for prophecies that could make the thing comprehensible. They thought of signs
they had seen—perhaps a comet, perhaps a cow giving birth to a lamb. The new god, the Crucified King, provided an explanation:
the Jews had angered their God by rejecting his true emissary. The people fingered their coins, rubbing their thumbs over
that weeping Jewish woman, the figure of a man with his sword raised against her. It needed an explanation. If the Jews had
rejected their God’s true emissary, that was why Jerusalem, one of the greatest and most famous and most prosperous and most
beautiful cities on the earth, had been destroyed. Blame could not, this explanation made abundantly clear, in any way attach
to Rome.

Storytellers know that every story is at least partly a lie. Every story could be told in four different ways, or forty or
four thousand. Every emphasis or omission is a kind of lie, shaping a moment to make a point. So when, between thirty-five
and seventy years after Yehoshuah’s death, Mark and then Matthew and then Luke the complier and then John the theologian came
to tell their stories it was as well for them to exonerate the Romans, who ruled the empire they lived in, and to blame the
Jews, whose wickedness had clearly caused the destruction of their holy city. It was as well for them to add in perhaps a
line here or there in which Yehoshuah had predicted that the Temple would fall, that the city would fall. This made him look
wiser, as it made the Jews look worse for not believing, even in the face of such clear evidence. Nothing happened without
a reason.

Storytellers know that people enjoy tales that explain to them the origin of things, the way things come to be the way they
are. This story is no different. Every story has an author, some teller of lies. Do not imagine that a storyteller is unaware
of the effect of every word she chooses. Do not suppose for a moment that an impartial observer exists.

Once upon a time there was a man, Yehoshuah, whose name the Romans changed to Jesus, for that sat more easily on their tongues.
There may well indeed have been such a man, or several men whose sayings are united under that one name. Tales accreted to
him, and theories grew up around and over him. He became, like Caesar, the son of a god. Like the god Tammuz, or the god Ba’al,
or like Orpheus, also the son of a god, it was said he died and rose again. Like Perseus, he was born of a woman who had never
known a man. He was turned into a god and certain things were lost and certain things were added.

And when one peels away the gilding and the plaster and the paint that were applied to him, what remains? So much of what
he said, he took from the Torah of the Jews. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is an old Jewish ideal. But Yehoshuah was unique,
in his time and place, for saying, “Love your enemy.”

It is a dreamer’s doctrine. Visionary, astonishing. And a hard road, in times of war and occupation. If all involved had listened
to those words, matters would have fallen out quite differently. And if those who claimed to follow him later had dedicated
themselves to that one thing—“Love your enemy”—much bloodshed might have been avoided. But perhaps the idea was too difficult,
for it is not much observed, even to this day. Easier to prefer one’s friend to one’s enemy. Easier to destroy than to build
or to keep a thing standing.

And so the Temple burned. The walls of Jerusalem fell. The people were scattered into exile in ten lands and ten times ten.
And they took with them their unusual stubbornness and their distinct ways. And a book walked those same paths, from synagogue
to synagogue at first, telling a tale of how miraculous one man had been and how evil those who rejected him were, and therefore
bringing good news for some and bad for others.

This was how it ended. And all the sorrow that came after followed from this.

This is, of course, a work of fiction. Much of it is made up, especially the personal lives of public figures, which tend
not to be recorded. However, many of the most surprising parts of this book are based in fact. So, a few brief notes on some
of the things that are true. Insofar as we know what is true. My main sources have been the works of Josephus, the Talmud
and the Gospels themselves.

“When his family heard about it, they went out to lay hold on him, for they said: ‘He is out of his mind.’” —Gospel of Mark
3:21

“Then his mother and brothers came to see him and, standing outside, sent someone in to call him.…And he answered them saying,
‘Who is my mother, or my brothers?’ And he looked about on those who sat around him and said, ‘These are my mother and brothers!’”
—Gospel of Mark 3:31–35

Josephus,
Antiquities of the Jews,
XVII, 10, contains an account of the rebellion at the festival of Shavuot (The Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost) in around 4
BCE, along with the result: “The number of those that were crucified on this account was two thousand.”

“A follower said to him: ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him: ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury
their dead.’” —Gospel of Matthew 8:21–22

“And in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at table there came a woman with an alabaster flask of pure spikenard,
very precious. And she broke the flask and poured it on his head. And some disciples were angry and said, ‘Why waste this
perfume? It could have been sold for a very high price and the money given to the poor.’…Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve
apostles, went to the priests to betray him.” —Gospel of Mark 14:3–10

“Seven days before Yom Kippur [the Day of Atonement] we sequester the High Priest from his house…we even make sure there’s
another wife for him, because what would happen if his own wife died?” —Talmud Yoma 1, 1

“And the priest shall write these curses in a scroll, and he shall wash them out in the bitter waters. And he shall make the
woman drink the bitter waters that cause the curse.” —Numbers 5:23–24 (the whole ritual is recounted in Numbers 5 throughout)

The massacre in the square by plainclothes soldiers is recounted in Josephus,
The Jewish War,
II, 9.

Sicarii mingle with the crowd and kill people with daggers concealed in their cloaks in Josephus,
The Jewish War,
II, 13.

“[Titus’s soldiers] caught every day five hundred Jews; some days they caught more…they nailed those they caught, one in one
way and another in a different way, to the crosses for a joke. Their multitude was so great that there was no room for all
the crosses.” —Josephus,
The Jewish War,
V, 11 (Titus’s speech here is also largely taken from Josephus)

(anglicized versions of the names are in italics)

First of all, I must thank my mother, Marion, who passed on an interest in the history of this period to me, and my father,
Geoffrey, a historian himself, who taught me the value of rigorous research, insofar as it is possible. The interest in lies
I probably came to myself. I am grateful to my Hebrew teachers, who may not want their names associated with a book that is
quite so visceral as this, and to Mrs. Louise Pavey, who taught me Latin and, more importantly, taught me to love it.

Thanks to my agent, Veronique Baxter, and my editor, Mary Mount, for support, faith and courage. Thank you.

Thanks to Giles Foden, who told me it was time to write it, and to Jacqueline Nicholls, Dr. Raphael Zarum, Daniel Harbour,
Dr. Lindsay Taylor-Guthartz, my research assistant, Rebecca Tay, and Francesca Simon for pointing me in good directions to
get to grips with this complicated period. Thanks to the friends and colleagues who have read it and discussed it with me:
Andrea Phillips, David Varela, Miki Shaw, Dr. Benjamin Ellis, Natalie Gold, Susanna Basso and Daniel Hahn. Thanks to Seb Emina
for the word “tallest” and other creative wonders and to Rebecca Levene for title inspiration. Thanks to the North London
Writers’ Group, especially Emily Benet, Neil Blackmore, Alix Christie and Ben Walker for wonderful, firm, thoughtful suggestions.
Thanks to Esther Donoff, Russell Donoff, Daniella, Benjy and Zara Donoff, and to Leigh Caldwell, Bob Grahame, Yoz Grahame,
Tilly Gregory, Rivka Isaacson, Ewan Kirkland, Margaret Maitland, Rhianna Pratchett, Robin Ray, Poppy Sebag-Montefiore and
Nicole Taylor. Thanks to Adrian Hon, Alex Macmillan and Matt Wieteska for staying strong and holding the (besieged) fort.

Particular thanks to Professor Martin Goodman and Professor Amy-Jill Levine, who graciously took time to read and comment
on the manuscript and picked up scores of errors. All errors that remain are, of course, my own. For those who want to start
learning about the Jewish history of this time, I can’t recommend better than Professor Goodman’s
Rome and Jerusalem
and Professor Levine’s
The Misunderstood Jew.

And finally. All books, when one looks at it, have wide roots, fumbling out in search of help and inspiration. This one has
a longer taproot than many, perhaps.

This is a true story: after I had mostly finished researching this novel my mother, Marion, happened to find her father’s
Victorian copies of Josephus. Eliezer Freed, my grandfather, who died when I was two years old, was a novelist and short-story
writer, fluent in ancient languages, a self-taught musician, inventor and scholar. I flicked through his Josephus with mild
curiosity about differences in translation. And there, in his own handwriting, I found that my grandfather had marked up precisely
the passages that I’d been looking at: the ones about Jesus. He had the same question mark in the margin, the same part bracketed
where we both, I imagine, made the same frown at the same moment.

So it seems as though my family has been after this hare for a while. I suspect that if my pious and kind grandfather had
written a novel about Jesus his might have been a bit more gentle.

Jews aren’t encouraged to think a lot about the afterlife. There’s some reward, they say, for a life lived well, but better
to focus on the world we can see, better not to spend your years on earth obsessed with the world to come. The life after
death we should mostly anticipate is twofold: the continuation of our ideas and our studies, and the continued life of our
children and grandchildren. So it feels fitting to end the book on this note, in my discovery that I have produced a very
Jewish kind of resurrection.

Naomi Alderman is the author of
Disobedience,
which won the Orange Prize for New Writers and has been published in ten languages. She contributes regularly to
The Guardian
and lives in London.

naomialderman.com