King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (54 page)

In order not to mar the sanctity of the occasion no attempt was made to arrest Jesus, who was surrounded by a crowd of his Galilean followers, and when the procession had moved forward on its way towards the Water Gate, he was not to be found.

The incident was brought up at a meeting of the Great Sanhedrin on the following morning. It was not doubted that Jesus had uttered the cry, but nobody could positively swear to this, since it had been evening and he was not a tall man whose head could be distinguished above the crowd. Annas, the former High Priest, proposed that he should be summoned before the Court for a breach of the solemnities, not so much because he had given way to an ecstatic impulse, as because his quotation was a provocative one : a direct promise to the people of a revolutionary leader. “Himself, no doubt,” said Annas dryly, and his colleagues laughed as he added : “A David who does not need to feign madness and let the spittle run down his beard.”

Nicodemon warmly opposed the motion as inconsistent with the dignity of the Court. Even if it could be proved that Jesus, or any other person, had uttered the words, they could not be construed in a provocative sense. Isaiah was quoted at the reception of the water in the Court of the Gentiles ; why should he not be quoted at the drawing of the water outside the Temple precincts?

Annas asked him jocosely : “What? Are you also a follower of this mad Galilean ?”

Nicodemon’s intervention was decisive, since he was the accepted authority on all questions concerned with libations and lustrations ; but Annas had startled him by his question and he regretted that he had not spoken with a more careful show of disinterest.

Jesus returned with his disciples to the Lake of Galilee. He preached on the outskirts of Magdala, centre of the fish-curing industry, but did not enter the market-place or any synagogue. Because of the notoriety that he had acquired as a sponger on prostitutes and tax-gatherers, a Sabbath-breaker, and a man cast off by his family, only the dregs of the populace came to listen to him. His audiences were indeed now so thin that the police, though instructed to keep a watch on his movements, did not molest him in any way, and said to one another : “He seems an honest enough fellow. That the synagogue elders hate him is a clear proof of his friendship for Rome.”

From Magdala he sailed with his disciples across the Lake to Old Bethsaida, where they hauled their boat ashore and went on foot along the Upper Jordan until they reached Mount Hermon, the immense mountain
which marks the northern limit of the ancient Land of Israel. Here they visited the grotto of Baal-Gad, famous as the source of the River Jordan ; it lies at the water-reddened base of a high limestone cliff crowned with the city of Caesarea Philippi. The grotto is sacred to the Lord of Gad, the goatish god of good fortune, whom the Greeks identify with Pan. Judas of Kerioth read a Greek inscription carved on the rock-face : “To Pan and the Nymphs.” He asked Jesus : “Did John the Baptist ever inspect the source of the water in which he baptized us ?”

“This water, which the Lord has blessed for our uses, would be clean though the jaws of a dead dog were its faucet ; as, at the synagogue lectern, the Law of Moses still flows clean between the lips of a sinner.”

They sat on the rocks idly tossing pebbles into the water. He suddenly asked them : “Who do the people say that I am ?”

“Some say that the mantle of John the Baptist has fallen on you, as Elijah’s fell on Elisha.”

“Some say that you are Elisha ; but others that Elisha is dead and that you must be Elijah.”

“I have heard you named Enoch.”

“And Isaiah.”

“But who do you say that I am ?”

Peter spoke in tones of conviction : “You are the Messiah, of whom our God spoke through the mouth of David : ‘My Son, I have begotten you to-day.’ ”

Jesus prayed aloud : “Father in Heaven, if you have revealed the truth to this child, I thank you ; if he has spoken foolishly, let him be forgiven. Anointed though I am, my destiny is known to you alone. With King David I cry : ‘Keep me from the sin of presumption, lest it master me. Keep me undefiled and innocent from the great offence.’ ” He charged them all to silence in the matter.

He took Peter, James and John climbing up the southern slope of Mount Hermon, while the others went off to preach in the neighbouring villages. They started before dawn and by noon had reached a place near the summit where the wind blew cold and snow lay in drifts under the bright sun, dazzling their eyes. There he stood still, and his face became transfigured as he conversed aloud with two invisible persons, who gradually took on substantial form : a majestic white-bearded elder spirit, robed in light and wearing a golden mitre, and a red-bearded younger spirit, in pastoral dress and with a lamb under his arm. The disciples could understand only a part of what was said, because the voices came to them as if in a dream ; but the spirits were clearly warning Jesus against going to Jerusalem.

The red-bearded spirit was saying : “Brother, that road does not lead to the gates of the Kingdom but is swallowed up in the marshes. Avoid it !”

And the white-bearded : “Beware of the fourth beast, my Son, lest it catch you on its horns and toss you into the bottomless abyss !”

“Should I shrink from my task ?” Jesus asked. “Should I flee to the Wilderness as Elijah fled from Jezebel the harlot? Or temporize with evil as Moses did at Meribah when he humoured the rebels and struck the rock with his staff of kerm-oak ?”

The red-bearded again : “Worse things even than my father suffered you will suffer! Be warned : the Female’s snares are already laid.”

And the white-bearded : “Abtalion’s judgement : ‘Wise men, guard your words ; for if you are exiled to the place of corrupt waters—as clear streams flow into the accursed sea and are mingled with it—those who come after will drink of them and die, and the Name of Heaven will be profaned.’ ”

Jesus cried in a loud voice : “What Israelite except only Enoch the pure ever paid the uttermost farthing of his debt to our God? Yet I will pay mine. Only at Jerusalem can it be paid. A word of Hillel’s—his memory be blessed—‘If not now, when?’ ”

He was not to be deflected from his course. The dispute continued less and less intelligibly, until Peter broke the spell by babbling the first random words that entered his head. “Master, this is a pleasant place, but the wind is wild and houses are few. Give us leave to build three snow huts ; one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.”

Immediately the vision faded.

Judas, when Peter told him the story later, divined that the spirit whom he had mistaken for Elijah was John the Baptist, and that the spirit whom he had mistaken for Moses was Simon son of Boethus. He began to grow anxious on Jesus’s behalf, because spirits of upright men appear only to the upright and do not deceive.

H
E
did not make directly for Jerusalem, but first took the westward road to the province of Sidon, where he visited the scattered Jewish communities that lie just inside the border. At Sarepta a Phoenician widow, under whose fig-tree he was sheltering from the rain, implored him to heal her cataleptic daughter. He refused, on the ground that his duty was only to the Israelites, and asked : “Woman, what have I to do with you ?”

“My fig-tree has given you shelter.”

“For that I thank you, but bread from the children’s table may not be thrown to the dogs.”

The widow was importunate. “Do not grudge the dogs the fallen crumbs,” she pleaded.

Then, remembering Elijah who, some seven hundred years before, had performed the miracle of the inexhaustible oil-cruse and flour-barrel for a Phoenician widow in that very town, he relented and cured the
girl. She was the only foreigner for whom he ever relaxed his exclusive rule.

It must be understood that his capacity to perform cures was limited. As experienced physicians are aware, the act of healing by faith, even though performed in a divine name, is physically exhausting and when too often performed dulls the spirit. Once at the height of his popularity Jesus was jostled by a crowd outside the synagogue doors of Chorazin. Sensible of a sudden drain of power, he cried out : “Who touched me ?” A woman confessed that she had touched the sacred fringe of his praying-robe in the hope of a cure ; she suffered from a menstrual discharge which made her perpetually unclean. “Would you make a magician of me, thievish one ?” he cried in indignation, then hastily spoke the words which would dedicate the cure to God.

As the winter drew on he left Sidon and made for Samaria by way of Galilee. In order to distract attention from himself he dispersed his disciples in twos and threes. As he and Peter passed through Capernaum, the synagogue treasurer whose duty it was to collect the Temple-tax stopped them and demanded payment of their arrears. The amount authorized in the Book of Deuteronomy was half a shekel, that is, two drachmae, for every adult Jew throughout the country ; it was the one tax which nobody dared to evade, and which therefore cost nothing to collect. Although in Jesus’s view the Temple priesthood grossly misused the enormous sums of money that the tax brought in, he did not refuse payment. But he was at the end of his resources, Joanna and Susanna having been forbidden by their husbands to continue their support of his mission. He told Peter : “Collect the shekel from the fish, while I wait here.”

Peter thereupon borrowed a line, hook and bait from a friend and, going down to the Lake, swam out to a rock some distance off-shore. There he had extraordinary luck, soon landing a huge fish of the sort called
mouscos
that the surly fishmongers would bid against one another to buy. In the market he held out for four drachmae, got his price and brought a four-drachmae piece to the treasurer’s house within the hour. He told the treasurer with mock gravity : “I baited my hook with prayer and let it down. Look what sort of a stone I found in the mouth of the first
mouscos
that I pulled up !” For this fish is alleged to open its mouth as a refuge for its fry when enemies are about, and close it with a stone chosen from the Lake-bottom.

But Peter’s luck did not hold. He returned to the rock and caught nothing at all.

The disciples were beginning to be disheartened by the shifts to which they were reduced for obtaining food, and most of them had not eaten a good meal for weeks. Their clothes were stained and ragged and their sandals worn out. “Anyone might mistake us for the Gibeonites on their visit to Joshua,” complained Philip, who had been something of a dandy in his day.

At Shunem Jesus comforted them with the promise that any man
who abandoned home, family and trade for the love of the Lord would not go unrewarded in the Heavenly Kingdom. As they munched locust-beans in a fallow field he said : “It is written in the Apocalypse of Baruch : ‘The day shall come when vines grow with ten thousand branches on each stock, and with ten thousand shoots on each branch, and with ten thousand clusters on each shoot, and with ten thousand grapes on each cluster, and when every grape when pressed yields five-and-twenty measures of wine. As soon as a citizen of that rich land reaches out his hand to a cluster, another cluster will cry out : “No, take me, I am juicier, and praise the Lord with me.” ’ ”

“We shall not lack for wine, then,” said John, “unless the jars give out.”

“It shall be the same with the corn. Every grain planted shall grow into a plant of ten thousand ears, with each ear of ten thousand grains ; and each grain, when milled, will yield ten pounds of fine white flour. The date-palms and fig-trees and quinces shall yield in the same prodigious manner.”

“And will butter and honey be as plentiful ?” Thaddaeus asked in his high voice. His real name was Lebbaeus, but he was nicknamed Thaddaeus (“Bosoms”) because of his matronly figure. “My belly wearies of locust-beans and stale crusts.”

“Isaiah prophesied butter and honey for the Messiah in the Kingdom ; they shall be as plentiful as sour looks and harsh words are to-day.”

“That is difficult to believe. How will the soil support such growth ?”

“You will see.”

Then he said : “When the Son of David is seated on his royal throne, twelve men shall be seated on twelve lesser thrones judging the twelve tribes. Whatever they have renounced to-day shall be restored to them a hundredfold.”

Their eyes glistened with hope. “May those twelve kings prove to be your twelve disciples !”

“The thrones are not in my giving ; and even the humblest citizen of the Kingdom must first drink the bitter cup, the Pangs of the Messiah. Dare you set it to your lips ?”

“We dare,” they said, not knowing to what they had committed themselves.

“Fear not, little flock,” he said. “Our God will feed you.”

At the Samaritan frontier he sent James and John ahead to Mount Gerizim, to the house of the Samaritan High Priest. They were to say : “The King and his followers are on their way to Jerusalem. Prepare to acclaim him !” But when they delivered the message, they were told : “Inform the King that his priests are not yet ready. On his return in triumph from Jerusalem they will welcome him as he deserves.”

James and John brought the answer back to Jesus and cried in indignation : “Lord, give us leave to call down fire from Heaven to consume those wretches, as Elijah did with the captains of King Ahaziah.”

He calmed them : “I have come not to destroy life, but to save it.
They are weak men, but in time your faith will strengthen them. Since we may not go through Samaria, let us pass through the Pride of Jordan.”

They crossed the Jordan and travelled southward through the forest-land on the further side where white poplars and mallows and tamarisks grow. The country people had heard of Jesus from his brother James the Ebionite and flocked out to see him ; some brought their little children for him to bless. The disciples would have sent them away, for the sake of a proverb : “From two years forward the child is a hog, revelling in filth.” Yet Jesus blessed them, saying that whoever was not as improvident and trustful as a little child should not participate in the Kingdom. Of the elder children he said : “These see clearly the divine Brightness of God, for the world has not yet clouded their eyes, and their voices turn away his wrath.”