King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (3 page)

In Chrestian Churches, as among the Orphics and other religious societies, secret doctrine is taught largely in the form of drama. This, though an ancient and admirable way of conveying religious truth, has its disadvantages when the characters are historical rather than mythical ; and when the worshippers accept as literally true what is merely dramatic invention. I have before me a copy of the Nativity Drama now used by the Egyptian Church, in which the principal speakers are the Angel Gabriel, Mary the Mother of Jesus, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s husband Zacharias the Priest, Joseph, Mary’s husband, three shepherds, three astrologers, the midwife Salome, King Herod, Anna the prophetess and Simeon the Priest. The play is simply but skilfully written, and I have no fault at all to find with it as devotional literature. Its purpose is to demonstrate that Jesus was the expected Jewish Messiah, and more than this, that he was the same Divine Child who had been foreshadowed in all the ancient mysteries—Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, Armenian and even Indian. The third scene, for instance, opens in the Bethlehem stable on a darkened stage.

The Cock (crowing) : “Christ is born !”
The Bull (lowing) : “Where ?”
The Ass (braying) : “
In Bethlehem!
”

These creatures, by the way, are not quaint characters borrowed from the Fables of Aesop : they are sacred animals. The cock is sacred to Hermes Conductor of Souls and to Aesculapius the Healer. It dispels the darkness of night, is the augur of the reborn Sun. You will recall that almost the last words spoken by Socrates before he drank the hemlock were a reminder to a friend that he had vowed a cock to Aesculapius : he was expressing, I suppose, his hope in resurrection. The cock likewise figures in the story of Jesus’s last sufferings and is now interpreted as an augur of his resurrection ; though I find this notion far-fetched. The bull and the ass are the symbolic beasts of the two promised Messiahs, the Messiah Son of Joseph and the Messiah Son of David, with both of whom the Chrestians identify Jesus. The “feet of the bull and the ass” mentioned in the thirty-second chapter of Isaiah are invariably explained by Jewish commentators as referring to the two Messiahs.

After this brief dialogue between the creatures, the day dawns, and the Holy Family are discovered together. Virgin Mother and Child in their ancient pose : the mother wearing a blue robe and a crown of silver stars, the child traditionally laid in the manger-basket which is used for the same purpose in both the Delphic and Eleusinian mysteries. Bearded Joseph leans on a staff a little way off, not crowned nor even clothed in purple—the type of all just men whose virtue has earned them a part in the divine illumination. Distant sounds of drum and pipe, gradually nearing. Enter three joyful shepherds, like those of Mount Ida who
adored the infant Zeus…. Or (if it is permitted to disclose this) like the mystagogues dressed as shepherds who, at the ceremony of Advent which gives its name to the Eleusinian mysteries, introduce the virgin-born infant by torchlight and cry : “Rejoice, rejoice, we have found our King, son of the Daughter of the Sea, lying in this basket among the river reeds !”

Now, I do not question the tradition that the infant Jesus was laid in a manger-basket in a stable, nor that shepherds arrived to adore him, but the rest of the scene must not be read as literally true : it is rather what Aristotle in his
Poetics
terms “philosophically true”. And I cannot, though my authorities are reliable, be sure that my own Nativity narrative is correct in every particular, but I will say this much. An expert in Greek sculpture or pottery can usually restore the lost details of a damaged work of art : take for example a black-figured vase, with a scene of the harrowing of Hell by Orpheus. If the Danaids are there with their sieves and, next to them, above a defaced patch, the expert notices part of a bunch of grapes and two fingers of a clutching hand and, beyond, a rough piece of rock, that is detail enough : he imaginatively sees Tantalus gasping for thirst, and his fellow-criminal Sisyphus pushing the outrageous boulder up the hill. My own problem of reconstruction is very much more difficult, because history, not myth, is in question. Yet the history of Jesus from his Nativity onwards keeps so close to what may be regarded as a pre-ordained mythical pattern, that I have in many instances been able to presume events which I afterwards proved by historical research to have taken place, and this has encouraged me to hope that where my account cannot be substantiated it is not altogether without truth. For instance, Jesus has so much in common with the hero Perseus, that the attempt made by King Acrisius to kill the infant Perseus seems relevant to the story of Jesus too ; this Acrisius was the grandfather of Perseus.

I have also witnessed the performance of another religious drama, concerned with the final sufferings of Jesus. The Chrestian fear of offending the Romans makes this play a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Since only what was publicly said or done on that painful occasion is enacted on the stage, Pilate’s infamous behaviour appears correct and even magnanimous and the entire blame for the judicial murder is, by implication, laid upon the Jews whose spokesman the High Priest claims to be.

But I must now warn you against accepting the Hebrew Scriptures at their face value. Only the rhapsodies of the Hebrew poets, the so-called “prophetic books”, can be read without constant suspicion that the text has been tampered with by priestly editors, and these too are for the most part incorrectly dated and credited to authors who could not possibly have written them. These unscholarly practices the Jews justify with : “Whoever speaks a good thing in the name of the one who should have spoken it brings salvation to the world.” The historical and legal books have become so corrupted in the course of time, partly by accident and partly by editing, that even the shrewdest scholars cannot hope to
unravel all the tangles and restore the original text. Still, by comparison of Hebrew myths with the popular myths of Canaan, and of Jewish history with the history of neighbouring nations, a general working knowledge can be won of the ancient events and legal traditions most relevant to the secret story of Jesus, which is all that need concern us here.

What an extraordinary story it is, too! Slave to books though I am, I have never in all my reading come across its match. And, after all, if the Gentile Chrestians, despite the clear prohibitions of the Hebrew Law against idolatry, are moved to partake of Jesus’s substance in their symbolic Eucharist and to worship him as a God, declaring : “None was ever like him before, nor will be again, until he returns to earth !”—who, except the devout Jew, can blame them? To be laid at birth in a manger-basket, to be crowned King, to suffer voluntarily on a cross, to conquer death, to become immortal : such was the destiny of this last and noblest scion of the most venerable royal line in the world.

A
NNA
, daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher, had been widowed for sixty-five years ; but the memory of her husband’s benefactions to the Temple and her own remarkable devoutness, which kept her in the Women’s Court of the Temple night and day, had secured her at last an honourable office, that of guardian mother to the holy virgins. These were wards of the Temple, and were instructed by her in obedience and humility, in music and dancing, in spinning and embroidery, and in the management of a household. All were Daughters of Aaron, members of the ancient Levite nobility, and had for the most part been dedicated to the Temple by their parents as an insurance against an unworthy marriage. Pious, rich and well-born husbands could always be found for Temple virgins. Their initiation into the lore of their clan was in the hands of the guardian mother, who was tested by the High Priest’s deputy for knowledge of Temple procedure and correct deportment but, being a woman, was not expected to have a perfect understanding of religious doctrine. Since their return from Babylonian captivity under Ezra, the Levites had denied the Daughters of Aaron their former function as priestesses, debarring them, with all other women, from any closer approach to the Sanctuary than the Women’s Court, which was separated from it by a massive wall and the spacious Men’s Court, or Court of Israel.

Anna whined and mumbled in a devout sing-song whenever she moved among priests and Temple servants, but when alone with her charges spoke to them in a voice of calm authority.

The eldest of the virgins was Miriam, whom the Chrestians call Mary,
the only child of Joachim the Levite, one of the so-called Heirs of David, or Royal Heirs. She had been a Temple ward since the age of five and had been born on the very day that masons first began to work on King Herod’s Temple. Year by year the glorious building was swallowing up the bartered old Temple, called Zerubbabel’s, which had risen from the ruins of King Solomon’s Temple but had been several times seized by foreign armies and seemed to have lost a great deal of its virtue since its desecration by the Syrian king Antiochos Epiphanes. Thirteen years had now passed, and though the central Sanctuary—the House of Jehovah and the Court of the Priests—was completed, and the greater part of the two Inner Courts as well, it was to be nearly seventy more years before the masons ceased work on the Court of the Gentiles and the enclosing walls. The new Temple grounds were twice as large as the old ones, and it was necessary to build out vast substructures on the southern side of the hill-top to allow sufficient space for them.

Anna had been entrusted with dyed flax from Pelusium in Egypt, to be spun into thread for the annually renewed curtain of the sacred chamber called the Holy of Holies—a task which virgins were alone permitted to undertake. She cast lots in turn among her elder charges for the honour of spinning the purple, the scarlet, the violet and the white threads. The purple fell to Miriam, which excited the envy of the rest, who teasingly called her a “little queen” because purple is a royal colour. But Anna said : “Daughters, it is vain to dispute the lots, which are of Heaven. Consider, does anyone else among you bear the name Miriam? And did not Miriam, the royal sister of Moses, dance in triumph with her companions beside the purple sea ?”

When she cast lots again and the royal scarlet also fell to Miriam, Anna said to forestall their jealousy : “Is it to be wondered at? Who else among you is of Cocheba ?” For the village of Cocheba is named after the star of David, and the Heirs of David owned Cocheba.

Tamar, one of the virgins, asked : “But, Mother, is not the scarlet thread the sign of a harlot ?”

“Does Tamar ask me this? Did not Tamar the wife of Er, Judah’s first-born, play the harlot with her father-in-law? Did not the other Tamar play the harlot with Amnon her brother, David’s first-born? Does a third Tamar covet the scarlet thread because she wishes to do as they did ?”

Tamar asked demurely : “Is it recorded, Mother, that either Tamar was punished for her sins by barrenness or by stoning ?”

“These times are not those, child. Do not think that by emulating the first Tamar you will be enrolled among the glorious ancestors of another David.”

Miriam said : “With your permission, Mother, Tamar shall help me spin the scarlet, for the sake of the scarlet thread that Tamar the wife of Er tied about the wrist of Zarah, twin to our common ancestor Pharez ; they had quarrelled for precedence within her womb.”

The violet and the white flax were allotted to two other virgins, and
as the distractive noise of spinning might not be heard in the Temple, the four spinners were set to work in private houses. Miriam was entrusted to the care of her cousin Lysia, Joseph of Emmaus’s daughter ; Joseph’s wife, now dead, had been the eldest sister of Miriam’s mother. She had borne him four sons and two daughters, of whom the elder. Lysia, was married to a purple-seller of Jerusalem, another of the Heirs, and lived near the Temple, just across the Bridge. To Lysia’s house Miriam went with Tamar every morning to spin ; every evening they came back together across the Bridge and through the Beautiful Gate to the Virgins’ College in the Women’s Court.

This is the story of Miriam’s birth. Her mother, Hannah, had been married ten years but continued childless, to her grief and shame, and found little comfort in the riches of her husband, Joachim. Every year at the appointed day he rode up to Jerusalem from Cocheba to offer a donation to the Temple. There, because of the nobility of his birth and the riches of his estate, he usually took first place in the line of gift-bringers, the elders of Israel dressed in long Babylonian robes embroidered with flowers. It was his custom to say, as he dropped his gold pieces through the slot of the chest : “Whatever I give of my earnings is for the whole people ; and here I give it. But these other coins, which represent a diminution of my estate, are for the Lord—a plea for his forgiveness if I have done anything amiss or displeasing to his eye.”

Joachim, a High Court judge, was a Pharisee—not one of the Shoulder Pharisees, as those are called who seem to wear on their shoulders a list of their own good actions ; nor a Calculating Pharisee, who says : “My sins are more than counterbalanced by my virtues” ; nor a Saving Pharisee, who says : “I will save a little from my fortune to perform a work of charity.” He could well be reckoned one of the God-fearing Pharisees who, despite the sneers of Chrestians who hate to be in their spiritual debt, compose by far the larger part of that humane sect.

This year, the seventeenth of Herod’s reign, as the elders of Israel stood waiting for the hour of donation, Reuben son of Abdiel, a Sadducee of the old school, stood next below Joachim. Reuben had recently gone to law with him about the possession of a well in the hills beyond Hebron, and lost his case. It irked him that Joachim should be devoutly offering to the Treasury, as his own gift, part of the value of the well, which would water a thousand sheep even in the height of summer.

Reuben cried aloud : “Neighbour Joachim, why do you thrust yourself to the head of this line? Why do you boast yourself above us all? Every one of us elders of Israel is blessed with children—with sons like sturdy plants, with daughters like the polished corners of a palace—everyone but only you, and you are childless. The Lord’s displeasure must be heavy on your head, for in the last three years you have, to common knowledge, taken three lusty young concubines, yet still you remain a dried stock without green shoots. Humble your heart, Pharisee, and take a lower place.”