Fifth Gospel (9 page)

SALOME

T
he
house was clean swept, the bread was made, the lamps were filled and burning, the bowls were laid out for the modest repast that simmered aromatically in the hearth and Salome, having a rare moment to herself, went out of the house to watch the sun sink into its bed.

From b
ehind her came the comforting sounds of the young men washing for the evening meal, the bustling of Mariam and her daughters, and Mariam’s sister-in law, the wife of Joseph’s brother, Cleophas. But for now, Salome was alone with the long view of the hills and dales of Galilee and the stars poking out of the sky, speaking their silent language, one to the other. And she was so taken by this celestial spectacle of twilight that she did not hear Jesus come to the low stonewall and sit beside her.

So well known to her was the sound of his voice that Salome did not flinch or jump or feel startled when he said,
‘You are gazing at the kingdom of heaven, Salome. Do you feel it descending into your heart?’

Salome’s name meant peace and it was
peace she felt when she looked to her favourite – the reason why she had followed her beloved Mary, who was now dead, to Nazareth those many years before. She put a hand to his face and he did not mind it for she had long been his nurse and that hand, once so malformed, had nurtured him through illness and health and raised him through the various stages of his youth.

She narrowed her eyes
to look at him and made her voice practical, ‘You like to see into the hearts of others, Jesus, which is a fine gift…but you hold your own thoughts close to you…so that even I cannot see them.’

He acknowledged this with a
nod of the head. ‘Yes and it is a strange thing to me also, Salome. Strange and yet familiar! When I am working with my father and my hands are busy,’ he looked at them, ‘I feel like I am one man: I think I know who that man is, this son of a carpenter…but when I am with myself, when I gaze at my thoughts, I find that I am a different man. I find myself full of memories of things that I have not seen or heard or felt! I am a stranger…even to myself.’

Salome had a gift of
second sight which ran in all the women of her family, and so years ago, after the death of Yeshua, she had seen the reason for the change in him, which even Jesus himself did not seem to understand. She had waited for him to find a quiet space in which to speak with her.

‘You are full of restlessness
Jesus, I sense it, and I also sense that you will soon leave because of it…the question is, where will you go?’

Jesus
looked at her with surprise. ‘Well…you have surely read my mind! As you know, this village is small and has never supported us. And father is too unwell to travel in search of work…so I am of the mind to go alone this year.’

Salome
passed a hand over her face. ‘You see? I had guessed it! Promise me you won’t venture
outside the land
, where my forefathers once dwelt…you know that in those places you will find only darkness. Even the dust under your feet will be unclean on your return and all will think you defiled. The dirt of those places is like death and putrid things to a Jew. Will you seek to bring death home, so that men will have no traffic with you?’ She looked at him, to make sure he had taken it in and he matched her gaze with his own steady eyes.

‘
How should I concern myself with men whose view of the world is narrowed?’

This was his other self
, the one full of defiance!

‘What
do you hope to find in that wider world beyond your homeland?’

‘
A teaching that is true, that can help me to understand why everything is falling into ruin. This, I shall not find here in Nazareth.’

‘You know,
’ Salome said, ‘my mother once told me a story about a mule who wandered the world looking for the source of a wonderful perfume. One day the poor thing realised that the perfume came from a twig of jasmine caught behind its ear.’

‘When did
the mule realise it?’

‘
Not until the jasmine was already dead and withered, and had fallen to the ground.’

Jesus nodded. ‘And the meaning of the story
is that I will go in search of something I already have, something right behind my ear, is that it?’

‘That is it, for certain,’ she said.

‘Even so…I must go,’ he told her cheerily. ‘I am a stubborn as a mule!’

She paused a moment
, listening to the ring left behind by his voice. ‘Yes…yes,’ she confirmed it, ‘so you are…I know…and that is what I told my mother, and if I hadn’t wandered the world I wouldn’t be here with you this night. You see…all is as it should be.’ She looked at him. ‘Have you told your stepmother?’

He gave her a sideways glance
. ‘Not yet.’

‘Oh Jesus!
’ she chided. ‘You mustn’t be unkind to her. Her life has been a puzzle. Take a moment to think on it. First she loses a husband, then she loses her son, not long after that her other son moves into the Nazarite order to live a solitary life. Of the two youngest children, one has fallen into the lap of the zealots and the other is too young to help her. All of them have disdained their stepfather’s trade as something beneath them. Since your father’s illness, you have been her handhold in the world…how must she lose you too?’

‘I do not see
how I am her handhold,’ he said.

‘Well, let me tell you that o
ver the years, in all that time you were coming and going from Jerusalem, I observed her sadness each time you left.’

He looked at her.
‘She never seemed full of joy each time I returned. I appear to cause her pain no matter what I do, if I go, or if I stay…it is all the same,’ he said with a shrug.

‘That is because she is troubled, Jesus. The love that grows in her heart for you, does not sit well with the memory of her dead son, and so she stows it away like a seed awaiting its season…’

Jesus was long quiet, until it seemed his breath near stopped. ‘
Then I shall let it germinate while I am searching for wisdom,’ he said.

‘For how long
will you search?’

‘
As long as it takes to find it, or else to realise there is none to be found. In the meantime, perhaps her heart will mend if she sees me less.’

Salome
held back her tears for she remembered how she had missed him herself when he when he was away at the Temple. ‘And mine will break…for I fear I will not live to see you come over that rise again, my heart’s child!’

He
laughed in the purpling light. This was Jesus now, the one who could laugh.

‘
But you will Salome! You will see many things yet, even before others see them, you will see them!’

She
nodded her head with resignation. ‘Yes, yes…I suppose you are right…in my family women live long years…I will be alive to see many things…that is what I am afraid of,’ she said to him, and fell to watching the sky.

‘Do
n’t be afraid,’ he said to her, ‘Things will be what they will be, despite your worry.’

She
smiled to herself. ‘Yes I know they will and still, it does not prevent me from worry.’

He put an arm around her shoulders and she felt his warmth.
And thus they remained together, united in fellowship until noises reached them from the house and the spell was broken.

SUN HERO

G
aius
Cassius
was blindfolded and cold, holding a dagger in his mouth. In the stillness, he sensed the movement of his blood, the intake of his breath and the turning of his heart. He did not know where he was or how long he had been here, only that his stomach gnawed with hunger and the dagger was making cuts on his lips and tongue.

He told himself,

Harness your mind! Soon you will rise not Gaius Cassius the Roman, but Gaius Cassius the Sun Hero, a representative of Mithras. You will taste honey on your tongue and feel the warmth of the sun on your shoulders and you will be given to eat of the bread and given to drink of the blood.

First, however,
he had to pass the test.

This was the sixth degree. Men had died in the attempt.

‘Roman!’ The voice rang like a bell, coming from all directions. ‘Ascend the ladder!’

He knew there were seven rungs. Each represented a stage achieved.
In years past, he had climbed to five rungs, now he must climb them again, and add a further rung.

He climbed the first and second rungs
. He had swum across a fast moving river for the first and had jumped blindfolded over a burning fire for the second. For the third, he had climbed a steep mountain and had become a member of the sacred militia of the Invisible God Mithras.

He put a foot now, tentatively, on the fourth, and it was not where it should be. His head
spun and he felt the pull of the abyss below. He slowed down his breath for that was how he had achieved the fourth degree, by harnessing the air in his lungs. He pulled himself up to the fifth rung, by bringing rhythm into his blood and heart; this ability had once earned him the title of
Roman.

H
e was aware now, that he had come to the sixth rung and the trial he must undergo to achieve the sixth degree. He must recognise the bull and kill it, with the ancient weapon he carried.

Hunger, pain, darkness, all seemed immense to him.
That great yawning hole below beckoned him to fall into its waiting mouth. But death, he told himself, only frightened weak minds. Worse than death was to lose all rank and honour.

Suspended, he heard a beast. It would be an ugly creature full of instincts and passions and it would topple him from his ladder. The beast snorted in the darkness. Slow and careful
, Cassius took the dagger from his mouth and grasped the hilt of the weapon, while holding tight to the ladder. He brought it to his chest and felt the cold tip sharp against his skin. He felt his heart, beating against the steel in rhythmic strokes. The muscles of his hand and arm strained against the bones, strained to hold the knife still, strained not to let it go. His jaw clenched and unclenched. He took an in-sweep of breath and let it out and took it in again and held it, listening for the animal that would soon come. When the earth began to tremble he only had a moment. Then, as he lifted the weapon, between the upward arc and the downward thrust, a doubt tore through him.

There is no bull
! You are not holding a dagger. This is a test of your discernment; good from evil, truth from untruth…and this is an untruth!

The world shook beneath him and disclosed a crack in the matrix of the ritual
and into it he fell, into the cavity, into the abyss of his body.

When the blindfold was removed from his eyes he saw that he was on the stone floor of the cave, kneeling before a statue of Mithras killing the bull
, in a room lit by torches and candles. Someone had come to pour wine, the source of ritual ecstasy, into his throat, and to stuff his mouth full of bread, the flesh and substance of Mithras. A purple cloak was placed over his shoulders and he was crowned and told to rise.

‘You have asce
nded the ladder without falling; you have killed the bull; you have reached the Sun and become one with Mithras! You are a Sun Hero!’

There was
a loud battery of noise, now, the clashing of cymbals and the beating of drums. Figures wearing animal masks, invokers and worshippers chanted hymns describing Mithras’ journey across the sky. But Cassius was confused. He tried to bring sense to his thoughts. He looked to the chanting priests and wondered why they did not know that he had not climbed the sixth rung.

It was
a moment before he understood, a moment before it was clear. The trial had occurred in his heart, in his soul. The bull had been his lower self, and he himself had taken the place of Mithras. The priests had not seen it because they had lost the ability to see into the heart of a man! They could not go beyond the fifth degree themselves!

This realisation brought with it a
sense of dread, followed by a deep woe. He felt like a man who wakes up from his sleep to find that his entire family has been butchered while he has slept and that he is alone. Outwardly he might be a Hero of the Sun, but inwardly he had lost all rank and honour. He had lost his brotherhood, for he would never again consider himself an initiate of Mithras and so he grieved, because to lose this was more painful than death; it was like losing the very flooring and purpose of his life.

‡

‘Oh Lea!’ I said now. ‘I feel for this man, Cassius Gaius Longinus, he has lost everything he has ever believed in!’

‘
And he will lose much more before his meeting with Christ, because he has to let go of what he is, in order to become what he might be.’

B
ATH KOL

A
t the appropriate time, Jesus left his ailing father and his stepmother and took up his mind’s resolve to find work in far off places as a means of supporting the family, and to learn something of the world beyond what could be known in Jerusalem and Nazareth.

In
his younger years he had accompanied his father in the pursuit of his trade and now he used those same routes, and following in the skirt-tails of the caravans that passed through Nazareth and journeyed to the new city of Tiberias.

Tiberias
lay on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and was the thought-child of Herod Antipas. Many Jews considered it to be a waste-hole of the world because Herod had built it over an old burial ground. For this reason, the grand unfinished city was in need of men that were good with their hands: stonemasons, carpenters and engineers, and so Jesus had found work not only in the construction of Herod’s new palace but also on the many stately dwellings that were being built for the upper classes of Roman society.

It was his habit to speak little
, to listen, and to observe as he worked the temper and customs of the people around him. In Tiberias Jesus had seen the worship of Caesar and the cult of madness that the man inspired in those wealthy Romans who came to the city for the wonder benefits of its hot sulphuric springs. The worship of the ordinary people of Tiberias also interested him and one day, when he heard the celebrations in the streets for the god Attis, he went to see what it could teach him.

The procession was made up of m
en and women dancing to the sound of tambourines and flutes. The women wore amulets and flowing robes and painted faces and the men cut their bodies with knives to let their blood flow - an act which the people said inspired visions of the future. Intrigued by it he allowed himself to be led to the Temple of Attis. Here, while his everyday eyes observed the offering service performed by a priest at his altar, his other eyes saw a monstrous vision: the sacrifice offered by the priest was taken up by evil spirits! The idols of the pagan gods had become the likenesses of depraved beings and these were responsible for the frenzy and agitation of the people. The sight of it made him sick to the stomach and he had to take himself from the Temple for air, his spirit crestfallen and deeply troubled.

He
set off again, westwards to Syria and those great cities he had frequented with his father in his younger years. These were those cities bordered by oceans: Tyre, Zerephath and Sidon, Byblos and Sarepta. Their ports were doorways to other lands and other races and their pagan religions. He studied these cults and spoke to their priests, seeking the grandeur of the ancient life of the gods. But again he found only ignorance and empty rituals, which called forth the attention of those evil spirits of corruption. He also met many people at their work or during those quiet hours of rest in the evenings, when they sat listening to the murmur of fountains. He met others in the day, in those bazaars where they paused from their labours to exchange banter and thoughts. On the roads he spoke to merchants and itinerants, he listened to the woes of the pilgrims, to the gripes of the tax collectors, to the stories of the farmers and fishermen and the concerns of the labourers, publicans, priests, laymen and landholders. He befriended Gentiles, Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, Egyptians and Syrians, and wherever he went, whispers followed him:

A Nazar
ite of special qualities has arrived among us!

For this reason
he often found himself surrounded by those who were in need of moral comfort and he told them stories and sayings he had gathered from here and there. The people listened to him for hours and this seemed to comfort them, and yet, deep in their souls Jesus discerned an emptiness, which they did not know how to fill. He searched in his heart for a way to help them, but realised he could not give them what they needed for they needed more than stories, they needed their leaders to show them the way to God – but how could they when their leaders were also lost?

He wondered if he was
the only one who could see the world crumbling away, and he was full of despair for it. He wandered long and travelled far and wide, and in his wanderings his concerns grew until an inner crisis of soul reached its apex on his return from the outer lands, at Caesarea Philippi.

He was nearing t
he city, built on the slope of Mount Hermon, some furlongs northeast of the Sea of Galilee. It was perched on a lofty terrace, overlooking fertile valleys and a road that meandered through temples and grottoes and places of pagan worship. Walking this road he observed the quality of the air. He could see the spirit of the trees, rocks and soil, and he tasted the spirits in the water of the streams. He saw in nature the memory of the mighty power of the pagan priests, their wisdom and piety, but his spirit was directed also to the men who lived here and he saw that these people, more than any he had seen so far, in his travels, had suffered a decline. Lepers, insane persons, lame and deformed children came out of hiding holes to regard him with their eyes as he passed. He could hear scuffles and arguments breaking out here and there, and lewd language and uncontrolled laughter coming from one place or another. It reminded him of his journeys to the outskirts of Jerusalem with Gamaliel, and he now realised that the pagan priests, like the Temple priests in Jerusalem, had deserted their people. They had left them to die a living death.

A leprous child stood some distance from him
stretching out a skinless hand for a morsel of food. Jesus went to the child with pity and love in his heart and he held the child’s hand in his to comfort him. He gave the child some nuts and soon the child ran away and returned with others, the afflicted and the desperate, the forlorn and the hopeless. They lamented and pulled at their hair and cried into their hands.

Someone called out, ‘Are you a priest come to save us from this disease that has taken us? Will you offer up a sacrif
ice to the gods on our behalf?’

‘A priest! A priest has come!’
more voices joined in.

A
groundswell of joy and praise broke out around him and the people began to press him towards the threshold of their temple. It was with anxiety that he entered the ruined place, full of cobwebs and brick-dust and broken effigies and idols.

The crowd,
moved by longing and hope, pushed him towards the altar and he could not stop them. Now from this vantage point Jesus looked about him and saw something emerge from the shadowed corners, a red-winged being. It peered at him and said:

‘Well well…you’ve come in and made yourself comfortable have you? Look at you, poor fellow, pale as a ghost!
You can see that the world is perishing…the end of the world is near and you cannot stop it! So why not enjoy what time is left? You can lead this rabble and make something of yourself…go ahead…stand up on that altar and shout ‘repent, repent!’ This mongrel lot will follow anyone who says those words!’

Jesus
looked about him at the expectation on the faces of the men and women and children. He was no priest, how could he give them what they desired? Looking at them he saw all the pagan peoples that he had met in his travels gathered together into one great corpse made from unwashed bodies and wild faces; a corpse of human suffering overflowing with wickedness and with desperation and disease. He sensed the smell of rotted flesh, of darkness, stagnant, dank – the odour of human degradation. The world whirled around him and in that moment he felt the universal suffering of humanity as if it were his own. It streamed into him like a rush of white fire from all the faces that looked up to him for comfort and he could not take a breath for the immensity of its weight.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like my handiwork?’
said the being.

Jesus shouted
at it, ‘Who are you? Why do you do this?’

When the people heard his words they
seemed to grow afraid, for they sensed an open traffic with evil and began to push and shove to flee from the temple.

But
Jesus felt a pain, a dart of poisoned ice burst into a thousand lighted candles, each shimmering in the air ahead of his eyes. He was removed then, from that place and the people and the evil being.

In this
realm of nothingness, he heard these words:

‘
Listen Jesus...’

Aum

Evils hold sway

The ego of man struggles free

And guilt is incurred at the expense of others,

Which
is experienced in the daily bread

Wherein the will of the heavens does not rule

Because man has separated himself from your realms,

And forgot your names

You fathers in the heavens!

Jesus
recognised this voice! He shouted into the open vaults of the deserted temple, ‘Yes…evil holds sway because men have wanted freedom from the gods but now everything falls into ruin, the world is old, how can the people rise up to remember the gods again?’

The voice said.

‘Watch and wait Jesus, soon comes my Son and He will make the old new again!

‘Who
are you?’ he asked.

A w
arm, love-giving radiance, entered into his heart.

‘
I am knowledge and ignorance, I am shame and boldness, I am shameless; I am ashamed, I am strength and I am fear and I am war and peace, I am the truth and the speech that cannot be grasped. I am the name of the sound and the sound of the name; I am the sign of the letter and the designation of the division …I am Bath Kol, I am Sophia, the voice of the Wisdom that is All.’