King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (51 page)

Jesus derided the charge. “Baal Zebul, the Prince of the Demons,” he said, “must have grown senile if he now empowers magicians to evict his subjects from their pleasant dwelling-houses !”

The Passover had come round and Jesus went up to Jerusalem with his disciples in the company of thousands of other Galilean pilgrims. On
his arrival at the Temple he entered boldly, conscious of his legitimacy. He took his stand in the Court of Gentiles and expounded the text in the Psalms : “Blessed be the Lord, who dwells in Jerusalem”, to a large audience, for the most part Galileans. This was an occasion of great importance in his ministry, since it was the first time that he had preached in Jerusalem. His thesis was novel and provocative : that God dwelt in the hearts of the people who came up for the Feast, rather than in the Temple itself. When the Temple had been profaned and destroyed, had Jehovah been houseless? Had he haunted the bare hill-top like a demon, or had he gone into exile with his people to comfort them? The Temple raised by Solomon was gone ; the Temple raised by Zerubbabel had made way for another. Did Jehovah himself order the building of the present Temple, or was it built to satisfy the ambitions of King Herod—Herod who had desecrated Zerubbabel’s Temple when he besieged and took it by storm, killing many priests and pious men in the action?

“Though in the narrowness of your understanding you desire a visible sanctuary to which you may turn when you address our God in prayer, what need have you of these splendid buildings? Destroy this Temple, and by God’s grace I will build him as acceptable a dwelling-place in three days ; for your servant is a carpenter. Israel was great when our God was worshipped as dwelling in an ark of acacia-wood ; until at last that narrow house was made an idol, and was removed from the eyes of men by the prophet Jeremiah at the orders of our God himself. Yet this same Jeremiah prophesied in his Name : ‘For your sake, Israel, I will remember the love you showed me in your youth in the wilderness ; for then Israel was holiness to his God and the first-fruit of his increase.’

“How say you, Men of Israel? Has not this mountain-top too become an idol? Its stones are stained with innocent blood, from the blood of Abel the first shepherd to the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, wickedly shed in our fathers’ day at the Altar of Incense. The prophets railed against Mount Tabor in Galilee when in ancient times idols were raised upon it ; but now the idols are gone and the place is clean. On Mount Zion the idols remain. You have made grinning golden idols of these towers and gates.”

This daring speech was well received by the Galileans, but rather because it flattered their provincial self-esteem than because they accepted Jesus’s transcendental view of God ; to the Judaeans it was impious and they showed their resentment by hissing and shooting out their tongues. The Captain of the Temple Watch came up with a small party of Levites, fearing a breach of the peace, but Jesus’s staff and rough mantle earned him a prophet’s privilege and no riot followed.

He did not eat the Passover lamb and restrained his disciples from doing so. The Essenes say : “To shed the blood of sacrifice is to murder Abel again.” Their oral tradition is that Abel the shepherd offered, on that very hill-top, a sober sacrifice of sheep’s milk and wild honey, and
that Jehovah accepted it, while rejecting Cain’s sacrifice of a plough-ox ; and that Cain killed Abel in jealousy. Jesus had similar scruples, reinforced by the pronouncement against blood-sacrifices made by the prophet Amos. On the evening of the Passover he went out of the City to the suburb of Bethany to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs in the house of his brother-in-law Lazarus ; and there he met his queen for the first time since their coronation.

Mary had been ill at ease all this while. Her brother Lazarus, whom she loved dearly, had frequently spoken to her in praise of sexless wedlock and assured her that only by practising it would man and wife avoid death and live to their promised thousand years in the Messianic Kingdom.

“Desire for progeny in marriage is an ancient error implanted in men and women by God’s Adversary,” he said. “He has persuaded them that by this means they are staving off the ultimate victory of Death over mankind. ‘We shall die,’ they say, ‘but our children and grandchildren will live.’ But the truth is that by performing the act of death they are yielding Death the victory. Abstain from the act of death, and what need is there for progeny? Jesus and you and I will live in Paradisal love together and never grow old.”

“Yet I desire children. Why should I be denied children? Why should my children and I not share together in the Kingdom of which you speak ?”

“Because those who do the act of death must taste of death. You are fortunate beyond all other brides that your husband by abstaining from the enjoyment of your body has devoted you to eternal life.”

“Our sister Martha says : ‘He is intent only on his own salvation, Mary, and cares little for your shame : you are returned to this house as if you had a secret deformity or a perverse nature.” ’

“Those are malicious words and you should defend the honour of your husband against all malice. Your husband acts in pure love.”

“Yet he has chosen twelve disciples, I am told, of whom all but two or three are married men, and some are fathers. Does he preach the Kingdom of God to men already doomed ?”

“When he comes to this house he will answer your question.”

“Until he comes I will withhold my opinion.”

As soon as Jesus entered the house, Mary came to him and washed his feet and sat silent with her eyes fixed on his face all the afternoon while he talked with Lazarus and his kinsmen. Jesus, after greeting her affectionately but with reserve, paid no further attention to her until Martha ran in complaining loudly that Mary was shirking her household duties.

“Let her be,” said Jesus. “She has chosen the better part.”

Later in the day, when Jesus and Mary were left alone for a while, she began to question him.

“My lord, some of your disciples are fathers. Are they therefore doomed to death ?”

“Who am I to pronounce sentence of doom? Only our Father in Heaven judges.”

“It is recorded that the prophet Enoch has avoided death. Yet he performed the act of death and begot a son, our long-lived ancestor Methuselah.”

“It is prophesied that neither Enoch nor Elijah has avoided death for ever ; both must presently return to earth and die and there await the general resurrection.”

“Why have you cast me off, my lord, to go walking through Galilee? With your disciple John to-night you exchanged looks of love ; from me you withhold your love. Am I not beautiful? Am I not yours ?”

“There is beauty of the flesh and there is beauty of the spirit. The beauty of the flesh is as the wind-flower’s, which is swiftly cut down and withers, and is flung into the hay-loft or the furnace of a baker’s oven. John’s beauty is of the spirit—as King David cried to the corpse of his blood-brother Jonathan : ‘Thy love for me was wonderful, surpassing the love of woman.’ ”

“I love you, and you only. As the Shunemite said to Solomon : ‘Bind me like a phylactery on your arm, the satchel turned towards your heart. For jealousy is cruel as the grave, and burns like a fire of charcoal. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If any other man offered all his worldly goods for my love, I would reject them with scorn.” ’

“Solomon puts these words into the Shunemite’s mouth as an allegory of the love of the repentant soul for his God.”

“Yet Solomon, though he may have spoken in allegories, did not deny himself the pleasures of love. Not content with seven hundred queenly wives, he also maintained three hundred concubines ; and it is written that he surpassed all the kings of the earth in wisdom. You have said that God does not desire men to injure their excellent bodies by fasting. They fast awhile in order to eat again. Must a man injure his body by perpetual fasting from love? Love is an appetite as natural and excellent as food, else our God would assuredly never have given men means of satisfying it. My lord, I charge you to answer me, for I am a woman and you cannot conceal from me that your body longs to be joined in love with mine.”

He did not answer.

“Do not be angry with your servant, but answer a fair question fairly, for she has the right to ask it.”

He sighed, and looking away from her unveiled face said : “Jose the son of Jochanan of Jerusalem wisely ordered : ‘Do not prolong converse with a woman’ ; and this is interpreted by the Sages as meaning : ‘not even with your own wife.’ Hence they have said : ‘Each time a man disobeys the order, he does evil to himself, desists from the Law and at last inherits Hell.’”

“How so ?” asked Mary. “Are women all evil? Why then did you marry me ?”

“Women are not all evil, for our God created woman to be man’s helpmeet. Yet it is well said : ‘Man is to woman as reason is to the
bodily senses, as upper to lower, as right to left, as the Divine to the human.’ ”

“Yet, my lord, what is reason when it is divorced from the bodily senses? Or can an upper storey stand without a lower to bear it up? Or can an ass stand on his two off-legs only? And what honour has our God on earth unless humankind worship him? Command your servant to come with you on your wanderings and she will obey.”

Greatly troubled, he rose and left her.

It was at Bethany that Nicodemon son of Gorion came secretly to Jesus, having paused to hear him preach in the Court of the Gentiles and been wonderfully drawn by his words. Nicodemon was one of the three richest men of Jerusalem, having the monopoly of conveying lustral water to the City in festival time ; he was also a member of the Great Sanhedrin and an elder of the Temple Synagogue, to which all the synagogues throughout the world looked for guidance in doctrine and ritual—the biggest fish that had yet come into Jesus’s net. Jesus welcomed him, but found that he was a timorous man and of more service to him as a hidden disciple than as an open one.

It was at Bethany, too, that Jesus revealed himself to the Free Essenes, at the house of their Overseer Simeon. He came knocking at the door and said to the porter : “Tell them that I am the man whom they have been expecting !”

“Your name ?”

“Jeshuah son of Jose ; not Esu son of Ose.”

Presently an old Essene came out, and led him through the first door.

“If that is indeed your name, man, give us proof.”

“Split the tree ; I shall be found. Raise the stone ; I shall be revealed.”

“Which tree, Lord ?”

“The heather-tree, but not that of Byblos.”

“Which stone, great Lord ?”

“The altar stone, but not that of Tyre.”

The old man, trembling with excitement, drew him into the inner chamber, where his cross-examination was continued before a circle of adepts.

“Greatest of Lords, how is the tree split ?”

He signed to them with his hands : “David cleaves it.”

“Who dares raise the stone ?”

He signed again : “Telmen dares, not Telamon, nor yet Ouri-Tal.”

“Who will reveal you ?”

“Caleb shall reveal me, not Calypso.”

The signs that he made with his fingers were these :

DAVID DAVIZEI
TELMEN TOLMAEI
CALEB APOCALYPSEI

“Where did you learn to read the lintel of our mysteries ?”

“It was given to me at Callirrhoë. I also visited the House of Spirals and dared the Dog.”

“You returned safe from the House of Spirals ?”

“I am the King, the son of the eldest son of the eldest son, and my mother was the daughter of the youngest daughter of the youngest daughter.”

“Where were you crowned ?”

“Where bulls once roared and holy mallow grows. Have I not the seven marks of royalty, and the eighth ?” He bared his right shoulder and thrust out his left foot.

They bowed before him and asked : “Lord, Lord, when will you come riding into the City by the East Gate ?”

“Not in this month of willows, but in the next, when I shall visit you. Yet I have come to end all mysteries, not to perpetuate them. Carry these words to the college-overseers of Callirrhoë and Engedi and Middin. Tell them also this : that when Herod died, word went about : ‘The Lion is dead’ ; yet from his carcase honey will yet be taken.”

“It is no news that the Lion of Edom is dead ; let our Lord prophesy rather of the Eagles of Rome.”

“It is written : ‘Wherever the body is, there shall the eagles be gathered together’ ; but living men need fear no carrion birds.”

J
ESUS
asked his disciples : “Are you prepared to receive the baptism that I received at the hands of John ?”

Peter answered : “John has already baptized my brother Andrew and myself, also Philip here, and Simon of Cana.”

“He baptized many. But did he wash away your pride of manhood? Some men are born unmanned ; some are unmanned in the slave-market ; some, forewarned of the coming Day, as it were unman themselves for the sake of the Kingdom of God. For the Day will come like a thief when least expected, and then it shall be again as in the days of Noah : there was eating and drinking in the bridal hall, and soft embracing in the bridal chamber, when suddenly the rains fell, the waters rose, and all but Noah and his sons were swept away. Renounce delight in the flesh, Children, or you will never become citizens of this Kingdom. Whoever can receive this other baptism, let him receive it.”

Peter was the first to cry out : “Lord, I am able,” and the others said the same, though less readily.

Philip asked : “If we are no longer permitted to company with our wives, what prevents us from divorcing them and returning them to
their fathers’ houses? For we are no longer the men who contracted for them in marriage, and divorce is licensed by the Law.”

“Moses gave this licence to an evil generation doomed to die in the wilderness. The learned Shammai held it to be a permanent ordinance but pronounced : ‘Adultery is the sole ground.’ Then Hillel—his memory be blessed—pronounced : ‘To those who hold that the licence is yet valid, adultery cannot remain the sole ground : the licence can be so stretched by the hard-hearted that a man may justify himself before the Court for divorcing his wife if she spoils his dinner or loses her beauty. Beware of accepting this licence : for if a wife serves a husband a graceless meal, or neglects her appearance, or commits adultery, she thereby accuses him of a failure in loving-kindness towards her. The graver her fault, the heavier the accusation. Let him be aware of his own sin and forgive her, as he would have our God forgive him, and think well before he divorces her.’ ”