The farmer trudges out to sow,
The leathern seed-bag slung at his side.
Along the merry furrows watch him go
To scatter the good seed far and wide.
He is credited with having also composed poems of a quality to compare with those of Isaiah and Ezekiel ; but none of these has survived.
He sometimes impressed a moral judgement on his disciples by the performance of a symbolical act—as, for example, at Cana when he attended the marriage of his nephew Palti and at a late hour the wine gave out and no more could be procured. The master of ceremonies, distressed and ashamed, came to him for advice. Jesus instructed the servants to fill up the wine-jars again with the lustral water which every pious Jew uses for cleansing his hands before and after meals, and to serve it with the same ceremony as if it were wine. They hesitated to obey until his mother, as the senior matron, insisted on their doing so. He then himself accepted the first bowlful of water, praised its delicious bouquet and colour and sipped it like a connoisseur. “Adam drank such wine as this in Eden”, he said. The master of ceremonies followed his example and swore that never had he tasted such good wine. He meant that he approved Jesus’s message : “Cleanliness, that is to say ‘holiness before the Lord’, is better than excessive drinking. For Adam in the days of his innocency knew purer joys than his descendant Noah, the inventor of wine ; wine is good, but wine taken to excess led Noah to shamelessness and his son Ham into sin and slavery.” However, according to my Ebionite informant, Jesus was saying even more than this : he was saying that Adam and Eve in the days of innocency abstained from carnal love—of which the emblem in the Canticles is wine—and that when they succumbed to it after the Fall the fruit of their union was Cain, the first murderer, who brought Death into the world. Only by a return to that love between man and woman from which the dangerous joys of carnality are banished can mankind return to Eden.
Jesus and the master of ceremonies played their dramatic parts with such gravity and verisimilitude that they persuaded a few of the drunken guests that they were, in fact, drinking wine ; and Jesus is therefore credited by Gentile Chrestians, who abstain neither from wine nor from marriage, with a vulgar and purposeless miracle of the sort performed by Syrian jugglers at fairs! They have made a similar miracle out of another of his symbolic acts—the pretended feeding of a great number of his followers with five loaves of bread.
He performed this act by the Lake of Galilee one afternoon, after taking refuge in a boat from a crowd of people, estimated at some five thousand, who came rushing about him near Taricheae. He coasted slowly in the boat for several miles along the south-eastern shore until all but a thousand of them, growing hungry and weary, returned to the city. Then he disembarked, satisfied that those who remained were not idle sightseers but sincere seekers after truth. “Of five thousand, four thousand are gone, one thousand remain. What shall we do with them ?”
Peter said : “Lord, the four thousand have returned to eat bread ; let the others do the same.”
“No. I will feed them ; for the sake of the saying : ‘Let your right hand repel, but your left invite.’ ”
“Two hundred drachmae would not buy bread for them even were a baker’s shop suddenly to spring up in this deserted place.”
“I will give them living bread.”
The sequel is recorded in the Acts and Sayings of Jesus, but the original meaning of his performance seems to have been forgotten, because the description is confused and vague.
Jesus sat on a rock and ordered the people to sit down on the grass. “Five loaves will suffice,” he said, “for six full companies. Afterwards I will feed the rest.”
“Who among you has loaves ?” bawled Peter, and presently a boy came forward ; he had five loaves in one bag and a few broiled fish in another.
Jesus gave his disciples their instructions : “Quartermasters, take a basket each. You are to distribute the rations. Number me six companies of men and women, and let them sit down in a circle facing me, with a gap at the southern end. But first let everyone wash his hands in the Lake !”
When this was done, he began to preach about the living bread, the word of God, how it is good to feed upon, day after day, all the year round. He also reminded them how Elisha the prophet had satisfied the hunger of a hundred men with only twenty loaves, after pronouncing : “Thus saith the Lord, they shall all eat bread and have bread left over !” For Elisha’s loaves were not common ones, but first-fruit loaves baked from grain of the first sheaf threshed at Beth Shalishah, grain thankfully dedicated to God, living bread in which the spirit of the harvest was immanent, bread from the House of Bread. “Bring me the five loaves for sanctification !”
They brought him the loaves. Jesus sanctified them with the formula used by the priests in dedicating the first-fruits, then broke them in fragments which he distributed equally among the baskets. “Quartermasters,” he said, “take up your stations, each on the right hand of a half-company !”
They obeyed.
“To each one a loaf !”
Then, starting from the gap, he moved sunwise round the circle, taking each basket in turn from the disciple who held it, dealing out a phantom loaf to everyone, and returning the basket again when he had done.
“Eat heartily !” cried Jesus. “Tastier and more strength-giving bread was never baked.” He set them an example by tearing at a phantom crust with his teeth and munching with relish.
Merrily or gravely, everyone followed his example.
When he came to the gap he paused and called his disciples to him. They came running. He cried : “Here is bread remaining. Turn it out on the grass.”
They did so, and he said : “Look, as much as would make five whole loaves. Call five more eaters to fill the gap !”
Five more men were called, and each of them received his phantom loaf. After this he sanctified the broiled fish and distributed them among all, as if it were a fish to everyone.
“Four thousand are gone, one thousand remain. Whoever has eyes to see, let him see !”
Having said this, he instructed everyone in the circle to yield his place to someone who had not yet fed. When the circle had been re-formed he preached again about the living bread. He told how Joseph, when he foresaw a seven years’ famine, built seven great granaries in Egypt, one of which he filled in every year of plenty as insurance against a year of famine.
He continued : “Joseph’s father Jacob and his eleven sons came down to Egypt to be fed, and Joseph appointed his brothers and his sons to deal out the bread to the people, each in turn doing duty for a week, and drawing in turn from each of the seven granaries.” With that, he divided the heap of broken bread into seven small heaps and put them into seven baskets. “Here are the granaries,” he said, and named each of his twelve disciples after a patriarch ; but since one more person was needed to act as Benjamin, he called out of the circle the boy to whom the loaves and fishes belonged.
Then began the second distribution. Each pretended patriarch in turn came forward and distributed bread to seven men, to each man a loaf from a different basket. Peter, playing the part of Reuben, began the distribution, and when he and his companions had each dealt out bread exactly four times, they came to the gap from which the boy had been called.
Jesus said to the boy : “Return to your place in the circle, Benjamin. The five loaves in these baskets are yours by right, for it is written : ‘Benjamin’s portion was five times as much as theirs.’ And the Psalmist also says : ‘There is little Benjamin, their ruler.’ ” Then he cried in a loud voice : “Whoever has eyes to see, let him see. Four thousand are gone and one thousand remain. And another Joseph is at hand !”
When all members of the crowd had been fed, and had washed their hands, he blessed them, dismissed them and returned to his seat in the stern of the boat. The sail was hoisted, and as they drew away from land he asked his disciples : “How many loaves of bread did I divide among the crowd on the first occasion ?”
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“Five.”
“And how many baskets were there ?”
“Twelve.”
“And how much bread was left over ?”
“Enough for five more people.”
“And on the second occasion ?”
“The same number of loaves, but distributed in seven baskets. Five loaves were left over, which were all given to the same person.”
“You have answered well. The first occasion concerned the four thousand that went away ; the second, the remaining fifth thousand. Who understands my reckoning ?”
Only Thaddaeus and Matthew could claim to understand it.
“Thaddeus, expound the four thousand who went away !”
“The four thousand years, of which you have taught us, that have elapsed since Adam’s day.”
“And the twelve baskets ?”
“The twelve signs of the Zodiac and the twelve Egyptian months of thirty days apiece, of which you have also taught us.”
“And the five loaves ?”
“The five seventy-two-day seasons of which you have also taught us ; which together make three hundred and sixty days of the Egyptian public year.”
“And the five loaves left over ?”
“The five days added to the public year, each a day of power.”
“You have answered well. Matthew, expound the other riddle !”
“The thirteen overseers are the thirteen months ; each a month of four weeks, as you have taught us. The year has three hundred and sixty-four days, as may be read in the book of the prophet Enoch. One merciful day is added, the day of the Chrestos, the Propitious Child. To him all the five powers yield to whom the five days were formerly sacred.”
“Who is the Child ?”
“The seed sown in good soil who, as you have also taught us, is reaped at the first-fruits and sanctified to God’s use.”
“And the thousand that remain ?”
“The thousand years of the approaching Kingdom of God.”
“You have answered well. Who will expound the fish ?”
Peter said : “It is written : ‘We remember the fish which we ate in Egypt.’ ”
Jesus said reproachfully : “Peter, Peter, bold in your errors !”
After a silence, Philip spoke : “Joshua was the son of Nun, which is to say Son of a Fish. You are Joshua, for Jesus is the Greek for Joshua ; and the son of a fish is a fish like his father. Joshua means : ‘Jehovah will save.’ You, a fish, distributed Joshua among the hungry, meaning that God will save them if they listen to your words and obey the Law of Moses ; for Moses was also a fish.”
“How so ?”
“He was drawn out of the water.”
Jesus was pleased with Philip ; and to this day the secret password among Chrestians is to draw a fish with one’s toe in the dust or to form a fish’s head with the fingers of the left hand.
According to my informant, however, this was not yet all. What Jesus had done was, in the manner of a poet, to convey a plain meaning and a difficult meaning simultaneously. The plain meaning was that the God of Israel would feed his people daily with the staples of life if they dedicated themselves to his service all the year round, feeding on the words which he had delivered to Moses and the Prophets. But the difficult meaning was this, that Moses followed the Egyptian calendar, which ran by thirty-day months, each divided up into three ten-day weeks, with five days over ; but that neither in this system nor in the system which had been substituted for it during the Captivity—a year of twelve months regulated by the moon, and a period of eleven days for intercalation at regular intervals—was the sacred seven-day week an exact division of the month.
Among the many great deeds prophesied for the Messiah son of Joseph was the reform of the calendar. Jesus had not yet revealed himself as the Messiah, so that though his plan for its reform was now delivered he had been content to make the demonstration without publicly drawing the moral. By dividing the year into thirteen months, each of twenty-eight days—which was the system followed by the ancestors of the Jews before they entered Egypt—each month would have four weeks, and only one day be left over from the count, namely the day of the winter solstice, the day of Jesus’s own birth, the day on which the sacred corn is sown ; and then the last seven-day week would be enlarged into an ogdoad, or eight-day week. Eight is the traditional number of plenty, for which reason an eight-pointed cross was marked on the Temple shewbread. In the new calendar, instead of the five days left over, which in Egypt were sacred to Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis and Nephthys, only one would be left over, sacred to the Son of Man prophesied by Daniel. To him all the seasons of the year would pay tribute. For Benjamin means “Son of my Right Hand”, and the Son of Man was to sit on the right hand of his Father, the Ancient of Days ; and the right hand among the Jews also signifies the south, where the boy had his station in the circle of listeners.
That Jesus abstained from an explanation has misled the Gentile Chrestians into thinking that he meant : “I am the fulfilment of all prophecies which refer to Tammuz the Corn-god.” For he was born on the birthday of Tammuz at Bethlehem, the “House of Bread”, in the cave of Tammuz and was cradled in the harvest-basket of Tammuz. And they also hold that he had hinted at Cana : “I am the fulfilment of all prophecies which refer to the Vine-god, Noah or Dusares or Dionysus. I am from Nazareth, the ‘House of Wine’.” For, later, he told the disciples : “I am the Vine, you are the branches” ; but on that occasion he was speaking of Jehovah, not of himself, and prefaced the prophecy with a doubled Amen. Later still he gave them far more solid grounds for their misunderstanding, as will be shown in due course. So far have some Chrestians gone in this mystical cult of Jesus that they wear thumb-rings inscribed with the letters Iota Eta Sigma, the well-known initials of Dionysus as “Disposer of the Waters of Life’ ; for these are also the first three letters of Jesus’s name when spelt out in Greek.
Jesus’s concern with the coming Kingdom of God is revealed in a prophetic intuition which suddenly came to him in a boat on the Lake of Galilee. He advised Peter and Andrew, who were with him and had caught nothing all night, to shoot their nets in a certain place and count their catch. They did so, and the catch was one hundred and fifty-three fish. This is a story hardly worth recording—for foolish and stupid people are often granted more remarkable intuitions—unless it is understood that one hundred and fifty-three is a symbolical number, representing all the distinct languages of the known world. Jesus was saying : “When the Kingdom comes it will include men from every nation in the entire world.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Bridegroom
MATTHEW son of Alpheus had been a customs official of Capernaum. Though he resigned his post when he answered Jesus’s sudden call to discipleship, he was not the man to forget his former associates, and Jesus, who often resorted to his house before he sold it and settled his affairs, came through him to know most of the tax-gatherers of the district. Theirs was the most hated profession in all Palestine : they were classed with thieves and highwaymen not only by the common people but by the High Court itself. No money that they offered to the Temple or to religious charities might be accepted, because it was almost certainly acquired by fraud ; nor might their evidence be accepted in any Jewish court of law, because of the judgement : “No tax-gatherer is capable of truth.” In both of these respects the tax-gatherer was the male counterpart of the prostitute ; and indeed fashionable prostitutes and tax-gatherers were often profitably related in business which included blackmail and brothel-keeping.
Taxation in Galilee was a source of general misery. Antipas the Tetrarch followed the example of his father King Herod by taxing land, cattle, fruit-trees, houses and every sort of marketable merchandise, besides imposing a poll-tax, a road-tax and a tax on exports and imports. His tetrarchy measured little more than fifty miles in length by thirty miles in breadth, yet he leased the farming of taxes to a ring of contractors for no less than two hundred gold talents 1 a year, and the r
ing subleased it profitably to smaller men, who employed paid collectors. The collectors relied on the police to support their demands and paid them a handsome commission on their takings, and the police employed spies to inform against evaders of taxation ; and the spies prospered on blackmail. Thus a tax of nominally five per cent. of the national income was increased to ten, twelve and fifteen per cent. as contractors, sub-contractors and collectors rewarded themselves for shouldering this unpopular burden ; and the cost of police protection brought it up to nearly twenty per cent. Thus, since the incidence of taxation is always heaviest on the poor man and lightest on the rich, at least half the earnings of a manual labourer or small farmer were taken from him under one pretext or another ; and the cost of living was higher even than at Naples, famous for its high prices.
Matthew was a sub-contractor, and, like every Israelite who had either adopted this profession voluntarily or inherited it from his father, was disabled by the odium it entailed from close observance of the Law ; though a Levite by birth, he had become half-Greek in his ways. But he was a man of such sensibility and shrewdness, and so whole-hearted a convert to Jesus’s teaching, that he soon outdistanced all the other disciples in his understanding of the finer points of the Law.
The synagogue elders of Capernaum were astonished to hear that Jesus was cultivating the friendship of the tax-gatherers. Two of them came as a deputation to him and begged him to stop the mouth of scandal by discontinuing his visits to Matthew’s house. They had been fishermen, but were now living on the proceeds of a wholesale fish-business in which they were partners and which their sons managed for them.
Jesus explained that he regarded tax-gatherers and prostitutes as sick people in need of a physician—a physician must not shrink from the loathsome diseases and injuries of his patients—or as lost sheep for whom a good shepherd must go in search, leaving the rest of his flock securely penned in their sheep-cote.