“I would scorn to wear a crown by favour of the Romans and be hated by the Sons of Israel for comforting their prime enemies.”
“Your noble father wore a Roman crown.”
“He was royal in his own right and would have been more greatly blessed if he had put it off his head.”
“What other crown would you accept ?”
“A crown bestowed on me by my own people.”
“What? In defiance of the Romans? Would you lead your people to war ?”
“No, to repentance and love. I accept your words as prophetic, Daughter of Rahab. One day, by the grace of the Lord, I will wear that crown.”
“May it bring you happiness and peace, and freedom to your people !”
They talked together far into the night. In the morning Jesus made a decision : to go off with Mary’s blessing, when the mourning for Joseph was over, and prepare himself for kingship under the guidance of Simon son of Boethus. He made over to her all the property bequeathed him by Joseph and all his own savings ; and she remained at Nazareth. Old Shelom of Rehoboth, now widowed, came as her companion in the house.
Jesus took his toolbag on his shoulder and provisions of parched corn, dried fruit and a bottle of water, and set out for the nearest ford over the Jordan. He crossed it and travelled southward through Lower Transjordania until he came to the Dead Sea, continuing along its shores to the town of Callirrhoë. The Essene colony lived at some distance from the town. Their round wooden huts were arranged in circles within a large irregular compound enclosed by earthworks topped by thorn hedges and faced with stone. When he knocked at the gate of the compound and asked for admittance he saw Simeon himself coming towards him across the sandy ground. They kissed affectionately.
Simeon was dressed in a white robe and a white apron. Around his middle was a leather girdle—as a charm against the Adversary—through which a wooden trowel was thrust. All the Essenes carried a trowel in perpetuation of a custom followed by the Israelites during their residence in the wilderness of Zin. He told the porter : “Send for Father Manahem !”
The porter fetched another Essene, who was tall and gaunt with a fiery eye. He took Jesus by the right hand and then, to the surprise of Simeon, the porter and Jesus himself, gave him two smart cuffs on his head, saying : “Not in anger, not in reproof, but to remind you of Father Manahem !” Then he embraced him and led him to the Overseer.
The Overseer, who was very aged and had charge of this community of four hundred and fifty brothers and novices, rose to his feet when Jesus came in.
“A postulant for the novitiate ?”
“A postulant.”
“Who ?”
Simeon answered for him : “Joshua son of Abiathar”—which was to say “Jesus son of Antipater”, no Greek names being in use among the Essenes.
“Leitimate ?”
“Legitimate.”
“Of what tribe ?”
“Of Judah.”
“Of good disposition ?”
“Of the best.”
“Trade ?”
“As you see.”
“Instructed in the Law ?”
“By myself.”
“Let him take the vows.”
Father Manahem told Jesus : “The vows are required for one year of service. If after one year you prove worthy of further progress in the Order, you will be made a partaker of the waters of purification and, as a novice, required to take further vows. If at the end of two years you are desirous of becoming a full member and no fault is found in you, you will be made a partaker of the Holy One and required to take lifelong vows.”
“I did not come here as a postulant but to greet my teacher and renew my studies. If this is not permitted unless I become a postulant, I am content to do so. Father Manahem sees one in me, Father Simeon sees the same, and I will not dispute their judgement. What vows do you require of me ?”
“Do you vow by the living God to show unhesitating obedience to the Overseer of this Order, and to whatever confessors and tutors he may set over you, and to keep all the rules of this Order as they are taught you? Do you vow to exercise piety towards the Lord and justice towards men ; to aid the righteous and hate the wicked ; to harm no one ; to reprove liars ; to waste no words ; to utter no rash judgements ; to refrain from women, perfumes, ointments, uncleanness, eggs and beans ; to shed no blood of man, bird or beast ; to love truth and to keep the Ten Commandments ; to communicate to no one any mystery peculiar to this Order ; to withhold no secret from your confessors ; to take no other oath or vows while these remain in force ?”
“I except the vow of secrecy. I cannot reveal to my confessor secrets that have been entrusted to me by others.”
“Secrets that are not your own may be withheld from your confessor.”
“Then I will take the vows.”
They gave him a lotus-blue garment, a white apron, a girdle of calf-leather and a wooden trowel. The Overseer said to Simeon : “Father Simeon, instruct the boy in the use of the trowel. Father Manahem, remain behind.”
When the door was shut the Overseer said to Manahem : “From my window I saw the cuffs dealt !”
“Rightfully bestowed.”
“As by your predecessor’s predecessor upon Herod the Edomite ?”
“The boy has the marks of royalty.”
“How do you read his destiny? “
“Glorious ; miserable in the extreme ; in the extreme again glorious !”
“Tend him well but impartially !”
Their meaning was this. When old Herod had been a child at Bozrah, where the Essene community had previously been settled, the Father who had the title “Manahem” had seen him pass by the gate of the compound on his way to school and beckoned him to come near. When Herod reached the gate Manahem dealt him two smart cuffs, saying : “Not in anger, not in reproof, but to remind you of Father Manahem !” Herod flushed red with passion but Manahem said : “When you are King of the Jews remember Father Manahem of Bozrah who cuffed you as a she-bear cuffs her young, wishing them well.” Herod answered : “You mistake me for another. I am no Jew but an Edomite.” Manahem said : “Nevertheless, it shall be as I say. You shall be a glorious king, and your dominions shall be wider than those of King Solomon ; but though your intentions will be pious, your crimes will be terrible !” Herod never forgot Manahem, and towards the Essenes he was kindness itself throughout his life. He named a Gate of Jerusalem “the Gate of the Essenes” in their honour, though they never came up to worship in the Temple.
The first rule of the Order that Jesus learned was a prohibition against spitting in company ; instead, he must retire apart and spit to the left hand, which was the side of evil and unclean things, not to the right hand, which was the side of good and clean things, and should cover over the spittle with sand thrown from the trowel. The next rule that he learned was that when he performed his necessities he must do it in a place apart, first digging a small pit with his trowel and then covering himself about with his garments, so that the eye of the Sun should not be affronted, and must then use his trowel again, as a lion its paws, to fill in the pit. The third rule that he learned was that he must rise before dawn every morning and speak no single word to anyone until he had offered up certain ancient prayers to Jehovah in supplication of the Sun’s rising. The Essenes do not indeed venerate the Sun as a god, but they venerate Jehovah who made the Sun ; and while the Temple was still standing they refrained from worship there. This was partly because, like the prophet Amos, they abhorred blood-sacrifices, but mainly because the priesthood prevented them from observing the custom of their forefathers : that of standing by the Eastern Gate at sunrise and worshipping towards the East, instead of turning towards the Sanctuary as the other Jews did. It was therefore to the Essenes that Herod had intended to commit the charge of the Temple, after he had purged it, under the High Priesthood of his cousin Achiabus, who was highly respected by them and had himself been educated at Callirrhoë.
The Law of Moses r
ules their lives, and anyone who blasphemes Moses is punished with death as if he had blasphemed Jehovah. This rule is unintelligible to other Jews, except to the Ebionite and Therapeutic sects which are allied to theirs, for the secret of the Essenes is that they give the name of Moses to the temporal aspect of Jehovah. Jehovah, that is to say, is the divine principle of life and light and truth ; Moses is this principle translated into flesh. Those of you who have been partakers of certain Greek mysteries will understand what I mean, by a comparison of the Moses myth with those expounded to you by the mystagogues. According to the oral tradition of the Essenes, which differs in many respects from the account given in Exodus, Moses was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, not begotten but born from an almond secretly brought her at On-Heliopolis by an angel of Jehovah the God of Israel. Pharaoh sent assassins to kill the infant, whose real name was Osarsiph, but his Israelitish midwife hid him in a harvest-basket and committed him to the waters of the Nile. Jochebed, wife to Amram, a shepherd of Goshen, found him among the reeds, called him Moses, which means “drawn out”, and brought him home to rear. As a young man Moses returned to On-Heliopolis and by a wonderful display of strength and intelligence attracted the attention of his grandfather Pharaoh, who was unaware of his identity. Moses then fought a successful war for Pharaoh against the Ethiopians, but when the crowds acclaimed him, Pharaoh grew jealous and sought to kill him. At Jehovah’s order he then brought ten plagues on Egypt by the use of his magical staff of almond-wood and rescued Jehovah’s chosen people from their cruel servitude at Pelusium. Pharaoh, rushing in pursuit, was swallowed up with his army in the quicksands of the Lake of Reeds. Moses became the Law-giver of the Israelites during their wanderings in Sinai, but, when already within sight of the Promised Land, was stung in the heel by a scorpion sent by God’s Adversary. He gathered and cleft wood, built a pyre and was consumed upon it. His ashes were buried in a secret tomb ; his soul mounted to Heaven in the form of an eagle, but his spirit journeyed to the sea at Hezron where three spectral queens approached in a boat, lamenting. They bore his spirit away with them to an island valley beyond the ocean, in the extreme west, the Island of Apple-trees, where there are no snows or intense heats or thunderstorms but the gentle west wind perpetually blows off the ocean.
Thus the life and death of Moses has for the Essenes the same double meaning as the life and death of Dionysus or Osiris or Hercules has for the mystagogues : Moses is regarded by them both as an ancient king and law-giver and as a symbol of the recurrent birth, fullness and decay of the year. They believe in the resurrection of the soul, which, they say, is united to the body as to a prison, and which when free from the bonds of the flesh mounts upwards shining and joins the cluster of shining souls which give the Sun its wonderful brightness ; but the spirit, which they distinguish from the soul, and which has the form and likeness of the man’s body, is conducted by Elijah or some other angel to the Paradise presided over by Moses. There the spirits live happily together in a glass castle at the doors of which fiery wheels of light perpetually turn. It is a doctrine that they received from the Pythagoreans, and the Pythagoreans had it from Abaris the Hyperborean ; but the Essenes claim that the Hyperborean priesthood originally had it from Moses himself. However that may be, the Essene philosophy is also overlaid with much doctrine borrowed from the Persians and Chaldaeans.
Many of them are physicians and do remarkable cures by laying on of hands, and by use of herbal decoctions, spring water, sanctified oil, sacred songs, precious gems of different sorts, and spittle mixed with clay. They also heal possessed persons by invocation of Raphael and other angelic powers, whose names they keep secret, and of the demigod Moses under his twenty seasonal titles, particularly that of Jeshua, or Jesus. Others of them are skilled in the interpretation of dreams and in astrological prediction. Whenever an Essene wishes to withdraw himself for meditation, he shrouds his head and takes up his station fasting within a circle marked with certain letters or figures in intercession of God’s favour ; and will sit there motionless for days. Sometimes they occupy their circles in order to achieve mastery of evil spirits that have vexed them ; or in placation of God’s wrath. The most famous of all these Essene holy men was one Honi the Circle-drawer, celebrated also for his acute and lucid judgements on the Law, who lived in the time of the later Maccabees. He is popularly credited with the breaking of a great drought by fasting inside a circle until God pitied him and sent rain. It is said that he avoided death for seventy years by remaining fast in another circle, until released by some accidentally spoken word, about the time that Archelaus was banished ; and that then, finding that all his friends and associates were dead, he implored God to take away his life too. But this is a fable only. He was stoned to death by the soldiers of Hyrcanus the Maccabee for refusing to curse the Temple priesthood when Jerusalem was being besieged.
No women, even old ones, are permitted into the compounds of the Essenes, and no children either. They are forbidden either to bear arms or make them, and consider laughter disgraceful except the laughter of joy in the bounty of their God. Some of the elder initiates go about chuckling continuously, but the younger ones are for the most part morose in the extreme. Besides the three main communities grouped around the Dead Sea there are also laxer ones in various parts of Judaea, where marriage is permitted, though only for the sake of procreation ; the initiates, not being cloistered in a compound, are known as “Free Essenes”. One of these communities, now no longer in existence, was at the village of Bethany close to Jerusalem.
Chapter Sixteen
Arrow and Tile
AT Callirrhoë Jesus spent the first seven months of his postulancy in studying the Scriptures under the Master of Postulants, who set him to memorize the Books of Moses, and in plying his trade under the Chief Carpenter, who set him to make coffins. His cell-mate was his cousin John of Ain-Rimmon, whom he now met for the first time. When the Master of Postulants was satisfied that both of them were word-perfect in the Books of Moses, he ordered them to memorize the prophecies of Ezekiel, the reputed founder of their Order. This they did, and agreed that each in turn should repeat a chapter to the other, to see whether he were word-perfect. But when John had recited the first chapter without a fault, Jesus asked him : “How do you read this chapter, Cousin ?”
“I learned it by heart, without considering the meaning.”
“Is this not to dishonour Ezekiel ?”
“I obey my tutor Gershon, who warned me that it is dangerous to ponder the meaning : he said that a Doctor to whom the meaning is known—and it is not every Doctor who is so favoured—may reveal it to a single chosen pupil only.”
“From my tutor Simeon I have received no such warning ; and since I have been granted understanding of the chapter, I shall expound it to you if you will listen. Are we commanded to burden our memory with texts that have no meaning ?”
“As you will, Cousin, but beware of rash judgements,” said John.
“Here at Callirrhoë we make our orisons not to the Sun but to One whom we worship in the figure of the Sun ; as we use our trowel out of respect not for the Sun but for One whom we worship in the figure of the Sun. Listen again !”
He recited the verses :
And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.
Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance ; they had the likeness of a man.
And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings.
And their feet were straight feet ; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot : and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.
And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides ; and they four had their faces and their wings.
Their wings were joined one to another ; they turned not when they went ;
they went every one straight forward.
As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side : and they four had the face of an ox on the left side ; they four also had the face of an eagle.
Thus were their faces : and their wings were stretched upward ; two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies.
And they went every one straight forward : whither the spirit was to go, they went ; and they turned not when they went.
As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps : it went up and down among the living creatures ; and the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.
And the living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning.
Now as I beheld the living creatures, behold one wheel upon the earth by the living creatures, with his four faces.
The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl : and they four had one likeness : and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.
When they went, they went upon their four sides : and they turned not when they went.
As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful ; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.
And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them : and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.
Whitersoever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their spirit to go ; and the wheels were lifted up over against them : for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.
When those went, these went ; and when those stood, these stood ; and when those were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up over against them : for the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels.