Great Lion of God

  Saul waited while one of the sneering guards went to the house with the message. His heart was tumultuous; he kept drawing great audible breaths, and the other guards looked at him curiously, their helmeted heads cocked. Saul was thinking. In all the world there was none he despised more than Caiphas, the son-in-law of the legendary and ruthless Annas, who was mightier than Herod Antipas, himself. Saul considered the High Priest the most despicable of traitors to his people, the sycophant of Rome—the vestments of the High Priest reposed, at the will of, the Romans, in the Fortress of Antonius, next to the Temple. He was High Priest so long as the Romans permitted him to be so. He was their servant. He was hostage for the obedience and docility and submission of all Israel. He was paid by the Romans. To offend the Romans would be to be cast out of this beautiful palace, to become a beggar, to be divested of all monies and glory and power, to be shamed forever. (But was that not preferable to treason against his people, to infamy against God?) Nevertheless he, Saul ben Hillel, needed this detestable man in order to protect his country and keep the Name of God from blasphemy.

  Caiphas, a sepulchral but stately man of about forty-five years, and with a carefully shaped gray beard and fine, apparently artless, blue eyes received Saul with unexpected courtesy. He conducted Saul from the atrium—a magnificent room—into a secluded chamber bright with silk and velvet and murals and Persian rugs, and a guard obsequiously closed the door. “I know of your illustrious house, Saul ben Hillel,” he said, in a very rich and unctuous voice. “Your grandfather has no dearer friend than I.” Wine was brought in jeweled goblets, but Saul, struggling to conceal his hatred and scorn, motioned it aside with impatience. He sat in a beautiful chair, dripping with rain, and offered no apologies. Caiphas was a shrewd man, and very subtle, and he only lifted his eyebrows and smiled affectionately. He recognized Saul for what he was and was not deceived by the rude garments and the rough gestures and voice. Caiphas adjusted his tall oval and pointed Pharisee hat—of white silk embroidered in gold—and waited with a paternal expression. He had no doubt at all that Saul had something of immense importance to tell him.

  He was not disappointed. He listened acutely, not only to Saul’s words but to his inflections, and he thought, Here is the one for whom I have been seeking!

  When Saul had concluded, and the brightening lamplight was glittering in his eyes, Caiphas sighed and affected to be overcome with weariness and bent his head and rubbed his forehead. A beautiful ring sparkled and shone on his right index finger.

  “Alas,” he said, and there was a deep throb in his voice, “the dangerous days have not departed from our afflicted and holy land, Saul ben Hillel. In truth, I am afraid the danger is increasing. Pilate angrily accused me of knowing that his followers had removed the body of Yeshua of Nazareth from the tomb, though later he apologized. But he was distraught. His accusations, he knew, were both unjust and hysterical, for had not I delivered the malefactor into his hands? Why, then, should I plot to make it seem that he had risen from the dead, as he had ‘prophesied’? Ah, those were sad hours! Yeshua’s etched followers fled Jerusalem, but now my spies say they are returning, and that they are seen worshiping in the Temple again, with their fellow Jews on whom they have brought disaster. They engage soft harangues, trying to convince their brothers that Yeshua ben Joseph was, indeed, the Holy One of Sion. To reject him, they plead, is to reject God, Himself, blessed be His Name. Unfortunately, and to my terror, hundreds are being convinced! They had seen Yeshua, himself, and had listened to his uncouth utterances in the streets and in the Temple. Did you know that he had the effrontery and outrageous impudence to drive the currency-changers from the Temple, and the sellers of sacrifices, and the bankers? He shrieked that they were making his Father’s house ‘a den of thieves!’”

  “I have heard,” said Saul.

  Caiphas peeped at him from under his hand. “And have you heard, Saul of Tarshish, that my dearest friend, your grandfather, and your grandfather’s family, have been seduced into the madness of believing that Yeshua of Nazareth is the Messias?”

  Saul flushed darkly. “I know,” he said. “That is why I am here. They must be convinced that they are the victims of a low necromancer, in collusion with a thief of a servant in their own house.”

  Caiphas sighed as if with pain, and dropped his hand and gazed mournfully at the frescoed ceiling. “There are others, even of equally distinguished family,” he said. “Who shall deliver us from this madness?”

  “I have told you, lord. I—,” said Saul.

  “Ah, yes. You are a Roman citizen, an officer of the Roman Law and Roman courts.” He looked at Saul. “Did you know that my brother-in-law, Judas Iscariot, hanged himself after the arrest of Yeshua? Rash young man! An Essene, he had left his father’s house, his father, Annas, and his mother’s devotion, to live in the desert with other savage creatures like himself. He became one of Yeshua’s disciples. He believed this Yeshua was the Messias. Judas was a proud and haughty young man. How he had convinced himself of that appalling blasphemy I do not know! But he was always hasty and uncontrollable, and pampered. To ‘force’ Yeshua to reveal himself as the Messias Judas contrived to deliver him into my hands. He thought that if Yeshua were seized and arrested, the very angels would descend to rescue him! Ah, ah.

  “And when Yeshua was flogged by the Romans, and a crown of thorns thrust on his head, then Judas—tragic young man—knew that there was no Messias, no Holy One of Sion, but only a cheap magician, a spinner of foolish tales, a deceiver, a man of delusions and conceit. According to the Law, I had to give Judas the prescribed thirty pieces of silver which is the reward for the exposure of a blasphemer, and Judas burst into the most awful tears and flung the money into my face, and ran from me with great howls of despair and torment. When I think of my wife’s brother, Judas Iscariot, so distraught over his own betrayal by Yeshua, my heart bleeds with sorrow.”

  For the first time, there was a genuine distress in his voice. He seemed surprised at this, himself. He smiled faintly at Saul.

  “Tomorrow I will have the letter from the procurator, Pontius Pilate, in my hands, with your staff of authority and a parchment proclaiming that you are the Roman prosecutor of troublemakers and rebels in all of Israel, Saul of Tarshish. May God, blessed be His Name, strengthen you in your holy task, in your firm determination to rid our afflicted land of blasphemers who would destroy her.”

  He embraced Saul with secret elation. Saul of Tarshish, Roman citizen and lawyer, Saul ben Hillel, grandson of the noble Shebua ben Abraham—what more formidable man than this could be on the side of the angels, and on the side, of course, of the High Priest Caiphas?

  But it was Pontius Pilate, himself, who graciously summoned Saul to him, invested him—with his own hands—in the robe of office, gave him the rod of authority and had him repeat the oath of fealty to Rome. (The latter made Saul turn very white, but he forced himself to remember it was only the price he must pay to defend his God. He would pray, on the next Day of Atonement, to be loosed from the oath demanded of him.) Then Pilate informed him that as an officer openly in the service of Rome he would have an entourage of legionnaires who would seize and arrest at his will, and Saul, therefore, would live in a suitable house in Jerusalem, kindly bestowed on him by the procurator.

  “I do not believe, lord,” said Saul, “that the matter will consume much time. A few weeks, perhaps, a month or so—”

  Pilate was a dark thin man, somewhat tall, with a bald head and an elusive expression and a large Roman nose and a tight wide smile. He smiled at Saul’s words, then shook his head. “Alas, Saul of Tarshish, I am not so sanguine. News of Jesus of Nazareth and his death and alleged arising from the dead, has spread far and wide and converts among the Jews increase in number daily. I have also heard that they have left Israel in many numbers, to proselytize among their fellow Jews in other countries also. It is as if reports of him have been borne on the wind, and the wind is becoming a hurricane.”

  His p
alace was stately and magnificent, and the hall where he had received Saul was the grandest the young man had ever seen. Pilate walked from him, meditatively, pacing up and down the vast room. He said, “I have just returned from Caesarea, and have seen and heard remarkable things there—from a Greek physician who was a guest in my house. But it is of no moment. The peace and tranquillity of Israel is our purpose, yours and mine, Saul ben Hillel. I entrust the matter in your hands for so long as you desire it.”

  He turned to Saul and seemed about to ask a question, then refrained. Saul bade him farewell. Pilate watched his going, and he pursed his lips then made a wry expression. How these Jews adored and defended their God! How they hated blasphemy! It was absurd; it was laughable. Certainly, Marcus Tullius Cicero, a century before, had been accused of blasphemy in Rome and had almost been tried on the charge. But Rome had thrown off that stupidity, had become fully enlightened, in these past one hundred years or less. No nation coveting the name of civilization would endure such childish abominations any longer—except for these Jews. Long before Rome, they related, they had been a nation and a people, and had possessed their God—yet they had not progressed in the arts of urbanity and tolerance. Had they done so the word “blasphemy” would be a jest now, and not the gravest of charges. A murderer, a true malefactor, the worst of thieves and degenerates, were not regarded by them as so loathsome as a “heretic” and could often receive mercy. But heretics were stoned to death in public places! Incredible.

  If I remain here longer, thought Pilate, I shall lose my wits also. Suddenly he recalled again the man who had been a guest in his house, and he sat down to think and to frown and to pull his lip and to fear, as he had feared then.

  That night Saul prayed with the greatest ardor of his life, and with all-consuming power and exultation and conviction. “God of my fathers, God of Abraham and Jacob and David, God of Sinai and Moses, King of Kings, Creator of the Universe, Redeemer of Israel, my Lord and my God: I now know Your Will for me, that I rid Your holy land of blasphemers and idolaters, of Your wickedest enemies, of Your defamers, as You have commanded in the past and as You command this day! Oh, joy of joys, that I have known this hour, when You have spoken Your will to me! I shall hunt out this Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth who was conveyed, still alive, from his tomb, and hidden in order to deceive the simple, and I shall expose him to the light of Your ineffable day, so that all may see. I shall bring all to justice, so that Your land will be cleansed and worthy again of Your blessing, my Lord and my God!”

  It seemed to him that there was a profound tenderness near him, profound sweetness which thrilled through his flesh and his bones and almost consumed him with delight, and that a divine gravity had been turned toward him—and a waiting. He fell to the floor of his chamber and lay in utter peace, a peace he had not known for a long time, a peace he could not remember. Somewhere, something imminent had moved in his direction and was gazing upon him, and he buried his face in his arms both afraid and desiring to see the vision.

  Chapter 29

  THE people of Israel remembered that it had been said that a man’s most desperate and relentless enemy was of his own flesh, his own blood, his own house, his own name, his own city and his own country. And that that desperate and relentless enemy often rode and lashed and killed in the Name of God, and was justified in his own sight and in the sight of many of his followers, and was exalted in his heart. It was a frightful mystery. “Surely,” many whispered, “one who violates the Laws of God in the Name of the Lord has committed the most unpardonable of sins, and let us leave him to judgment if not to mercy.”

  To the people of Israel Pontius Pilate was the present terror, aided by Herod Antipas and the Roman legions, and tolerated by the Sadducees in the name of peace, and by some more exigent Pharisees in the name of the Law. But now another terror had risen whom the Romans called Paul of Tarsus, a pious Jew, an erudite Pharisee, a pupil of the great Rabban Gamaliel, a man of position and family, a Roman citizen, an executor of Roman law, a lawyer of a notable house in Israel. Even those of immense piety who believed in the punishment of blasphemers and heretics were alarmed, and spoke with pity of their fellow Jews, who, though deluded that one Yeshua ben Joseph, of Nazareth, was the Messias, and who, though they Proclaimed his name in the Temple openly, were gentle people of mud mien, harmless as doves, poor and unassuming, without violence Or insistence. They adhered to the Laws of the prophets and the commandments with even more devotion than did their fellow Jews who laughed at the name of Yeshua, and visited the Temple more frequently and were more assiduous in their pious duties, and were certainly more charitable and patient.

  Many of the disturbed people said, “Have we not many sects in Israel, all quarreling with each other and determined that each should prevail? Do we not live in peace with these emphatic men of our blood and our bone? Why, then, should those of us who believe that the Messias has already been born to us not be visited with the same tolerance, even if we laugh at them? Why this unbridled fury, this persecution, this perfidious alliance of Saul of Tarshish with the Roman oppressor? What excesses he has been committing in every Province and every town, and in the countryside, dragging the wives and children of those whom the priests call heretics from their homes and imprisoning them, and holding them hostage until fathers and husbands swear not to spread the erroneous message any longer! Never has Israel seen this before! Our fellow Jews are beaten in the streets, until they flee for their lives from the hands of the market rabble, who are incited by this Saul of Tarshish. Not even the wildest of the screaming Essenes and Zealots, howling in the marketplaces for an open rebellion against Rome, have been so hunted down and so terribly, as these poor harmless Jews are being hunted! Saul of Tarshish sets the Roman legionnaires upon the defenseless creatures, who beat and cripple them on their own thresholds, and have thrown them into noxious prisons at Saul’s command.”

  The bearded and dusty rabbis were more than alarmed at what appeared at them incredible cruelty and madness. It was one thing to dispute with fellow Jews in the streets and the marketplaces and even in the purlieus of the Temple, and warn against heresy, and quite another to deliver brother Jews to the cruelty and punishment of Romans. The priests could deal with heresy and blasphemy, and gently lead the deluded from their errors, or impose pious punishments. For truly awesome heretics who were a danger to Israel there was the Sanhedrin. But these “heretics,” though in error, were hardly more in error than the members of the other decayed sects, who in their turn had been denounced as blasphemers.

  Some said, in argument, “It is not unpardonable to dispute a doctrine or reinterpret the words of Moses and the prophets and the scholars—for this is a matter of opinion and humans err. But it is another thing to assert vehemently, or mildly, that the Messias, blessed be His Name, was in the person of a poor wandering rabbi from Nazareth whom even his own neighbors despised, and who died at the hands of the Romans. Who was he? A carpenter from a little miserable village, seized with a desire for grandeur! He caused riots and aroused dangerous Roman anger against all Jews, and for this he was executed, and laid in the tomb. Do not speak to me of the strange events that occurred when he died! The priests and our wise men have explained it to our satisfaction, for it was all coincidence, even the disappearance of the sun and the earthquakes. Yeshua ben Joseph did not rise from the dead, as his disciples claim. It is well-known that Joseph of Arimathaea was among his followers, and that he bribed the Roman soldiers and the temple guards to permit him to take the still living man from the tomb, and then, after he recovered from his injuries he was seen among his followers who proclaimed that he had risen from the dead. Joseph, though a kind and famous man, has some reason for the misleading of his people, perhaps a secret reason of his own which we will one day know. But it is hardly fair to the people of Israel at this time, for the Romans make no distinctions between us and the heretics, and are only too pleased to beat us on the streets without discrimination or provocation, when i
t serves to amuse them. Is this just to us, who desire only peace, and who await the Messias? Let us be calm, and understand why Saul of Tarshish does as he does, and not condemn him as an enemy of his people. He is concerned with our safety and our lives.”

  Multitudes agreed, expressing their horror of this monumental heresy, that the glorious Messias had been among them, had wandered in the meanest places footsore and beggarly and without a roof over his head, consorting with taxgatherers and harlots and the base, and that God, blessed be His Name, had permitted His Anointed to be so shamefully murdered by the Romans without the appearance of a single avenging angel with a sword of fire or a single proclamation from Heaven! The very thought was outrageous, offensive to God! But even these who were incensed by the “heretics” and whose piety and faith were insulted, and who feared the vengeance of God, were even more incensed that their fellow Jews were hunted down like diseased rats in the Holy City, itself, and were hounded from their homes and driven into exile. Persecution had an evil way, too, of passing from the guilty to the innocent, for men were notoriously inflamed by bloodletting and finally killed and hunted for mere sport and wicked gratification.

  And there were thousands who muttered uneasily to themselves: “If it were indeed a blasphemous hoax that Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth did not die on the cross, but was taken alive to his tomb, and later restored to scores who swear they saw him and talked with him, what is the meaning of the hoax? As the Romans say, ‘Who gains?’ Yeshua of Nazareth? It is said that he has already disappeared, that none see him any longer, and none hears from him. His miserable poor followers? They do not appear to be men who desire to be honored and exalted and granted fame and fortune or treated as prophets! They do not even defend themselves against the Romans and fight with them, as do the Zealots and the Essenes! They submit, like sheep, praising God. If hoax this is, then who has benefited? Are they mad that they court prison and suffering and infamy and derision and hatred? Not even the mad do that! They behave like men of the deepest conviction, the deepest surety, the deepest faith and devotion. What is the meaning of this? Men do not submit to prison or humiliation or beatings in public places for something they know is a lie, or a cheap jest. Therefore, they believe. Therefore, even if deluded they do not believe they are deluded, and declare openly that they have seen the risen Yeshua with their own eyes, and have seen him ascend to Heaven, or they believe others who declare they have witnessed these marvels.”