Gospel (17 page)

Cretan women of great heft and size, Minotauresses, disrobe and oil themselves with balms and likewise the snake, which finds its way into dread orifices, during which the women, entered by God, fall into spasms and ecstasies—I prosecuted all these camps in my
All Heresies Refuted
so there is no need to prolong this recital of damnations. One is apt, however, to feel sorry for the snakes.

17.
And everywhere, no less in Jerusalem, are the Heliogenesians and their attempt to recast the life of Our Master into that of Mithra. For example, they attribute the terrifying darkness and storm the day of Our Teacher's execution to the dimming of the Sun itself, with which Our Master was somehow consubstantial. It is inconvenient enough that Mithra was resurrected after three days, and that the Nazirenes claim this of Our Master as well.
17

18.
I briefly mention a heresy making progress due to the Roman infusion in our world, particularly in Philistine Ashkelon where no loyalties to anything fine exist, and that is the Jews and Nazirenes who have freely absorbed the atrocious rites of Attis.
18
As He Who Redeemed Us died upon a tree in the prime of youth, the devotees of Attis feel Our Master is Attis returned. These Nazirenes conform outwardly to orthodoxy but one enters their homes to find a five- or six-cubit pine tree decorated in the corner, offerings underneath the boughs, candles lit all around it. How long, O Lord, will these pernicious survivals endure?

19.
But onward, and to the worst of the heresies yet!

Xenon and I passed through Beersheba, beyond which the wastes and brigandages of the desert beckoned. We soon found a train of tradesmen under light Roman guard who were traveling to Eleuph to return with spices and incense bound for Rome itself. Lately this particular route had to be traveled with guards due to the dreaded Celepheans who live in the Negevian caves.

The Celepheans are the most insidious of the castration cults, which, having infected first the Essenes and Baptists, have passed their abominations onto the Nazirenes.
19
The Celepheans do not stop at mere castration, however, and proceed to unthinkable mutilations in the name of Our Master.

20.
The Celephean initiate endures a period of excessive punishment. The elders tie him to a post and beat him into confessing the lewdest of sins and, as a final act, the initiate is castrated and must preside, after this crude surgery, over the destruction of his own testicles, by hammer, by flame, by mincing knife, whatever.
20
This part of the ceremony is called the Second Baptism, the casting off of the old repositories of sin, and is the commencement of being born again, purification of sins, and like nonsense. In their most recent resurgence, the Celepheans have a female order in which the women, in surgery without intoxicants, have their wombs sewn shut with glowing needles hot from the forge to prevent their ever conceiving. Recognizing their potential for tempting the men, they submit themselves to the defeminization process in which their hair is shorn and their breasts are sheared off, and though one can't help but approve in spirit, these measures to limit the natural feminine wantonness and mischief-making, I assert, go too far.

(I see young Tesmegan smiles, because in Aethiopia women grow as big as water buffalo, have their fill of men in unseemly carnality, and then castrate the rest. As if with such as Sporus and Pindymion and Dareus there were not Roman mutilations enough of subject peoples, that we should add to it.
21
Such tales about us Jews only endear us to savages, I am sure—yes, Tesmegan, write down what I say, every word of it.)

21.
A word about their pseudo-messiah Celephus, the high priest of this movement. In an elaborate rite each Sabbath he would work himself up into a state of abjection and then stand before his mob for guidance, claiming the Son of Man would appear and touch the most offensive part remaining on him, and in solemn ceremony, while he fell into an ecstasy, a joint of a finger or a toe or some wedge of flesh from somewhere would be removed by pincers or saw, sending his congregation into spasms of flagellation and self-abuse. Celephus in his trance would be carried to his bed of thorns. Upon awakening he would wander the neighboring villages and be mocked, quite commonly mistaken for a leper, all in honor of the Greatest Martyr, our Son of Man, and then return to the compound and ask to be lowered into the latrines.

The only writings we have left to us—for most were burned under [the Procurator] Felix's orders—concerned which salves and juices provided the more pain upon open wounds. Mind you, he did not risk death as much as one might think, since he endeavored to recover sufficiently to continue to suffer.…

Ah, but enough, my scribe is wide-eyed with horror.

22.
Of course, convinced of the efficacy of virgin celibacy, I feel one makes the gesture pointless by removing the stewing pots from which desire and temptations seethe and pollute our bodies. How else can we know the strength of Our Master, who never stained Himself by as much as an impure thought, if we are not frequently delivered from our own base concupiscence?

23.
But to return to my histories:

Upon reaching Eleuph, Xenon and I beheld more brothel than city. Here ships and caravans from across Araby, leaving for Parthia, India, China, and the Frankincense Kingdoms of the south met and traded information and monies. As one might expect in such a place, no prostitution or degradation could not be purchased, no mother's safeguarding of a daughter's honor could overcome the clink of mercantile coins.

As Xenon and I walked south to the port through the main thoroughfare, women with oiled, splayed breasts presented themselves in upper windows, male prostitutes
22
not in their fourteenth year, painted and lacquered as some Babylonian temple-prostitute, called out with services they were willing to render Xenon and myself. I clasped my hands over Xenon's ears until we came to a corner where on a rooftop terrace a woman the size of an elephant, her enormous stomach and breasts distended over her wretched sex, led the street rabble in a chorus of obscenity, hooting and throwing a shell necklace at Xenon that constituted some form of discount. I moved my hands to protect young Xenon's eyes in order to prevent the permanent tainting of his thoughts.

24.
Upon reaching the dockside, we were directed to the nearest synagogue. The rabbi there spat when we asked about Thomas and it was obvious he thought little of us Nazirenes, but it can hardly be said that Eleuph knew God in any measure. However, this failed Pharisee did inform us that we could find Thomas's
harim
in the Old Quarter of the city. More filthy streets and execrable houses of base amusement presented themselves as we wandered into the complex alleys of the old city. Finally, with grudging help from the locals, who could be expected to do nothing without remuneration, we came upon the house of Thomas.

It was no small shock to learn that Thomas, whom I recall being newly married in the time of Our Master's epoch, had added another seven wives to his collection, including an Indian, a Parthian—who had erected a Zoroastrian shrine near the hearth, no less—and a tall aristocratic Negress from Barbaria.
23

25.
Thomas returned from the shipyards and welcomed me warmly, amused above all else to see me in such an outpost. After perfunctorily praising the beauty of his many wives, I asked him about the Law's restriction on such a brood.

“The Law is no more,” he said to me happily. “If we learned nothing else from Our Lord it was that the damned Law could be dispensed with.”

This kind of thinking is what I mean, dear Josephus, about the disregard for proper doctrine and codification! As if the Lord intended us to do as we please!

I reminded him, “But not one iota of the Law has fallen away,”
24
for Our Lord was observant of the Law.

26.
He said brusquely to me, “I see you haven't changed. You wish to wear out the holy with debates of doctrine. You should go to Ephesus and wrangle with John, who has an endless supply of foul breath for all debates.”

It was vain to suggest it, but I commenced a disquisition on the necessity of virginity and the difficulty of fully devoting oneself to the Most High while maintaining eight wives and as many families.

27.
But Thomas only laughed and confessed he had four or five more wives in various ports around the Orient, and informed us it cost less than a rebah a month to keep up a Carmanian
25
woman with Roman currencies valued as they were—better yet, one was married to all the sisters of a Carmanian woman as well, and all were allowed to join in the marriage-bed festivities! He even had a widow in Ctesiphon who adored him.

I said to him, making the sort of brilliant jest for which I am known, “Be careful on your travels there, that you don't make your theatrical debut like Crassus!”
26

Thomas claimed he had lost count of his other wives! (I only pass along my friend's baseness so that the type of man he was may be well recorded.) Thomas furthermore reminded me that I alone of the Disciples was not married; even John, who we both agreed had made himself a eunuch for Our Lord, had as a younger man burdened some poor village girl with his espousal.
27

28.
Dinner was tasty enough with a multitude of unusual spices that only later, I discovered, sent my bowels reeling. Before confessing my own spiritual maladies, I thought it best to get to the truth concerning a famous episode in the Disciple Thomas's life. “Much is told when the tale is recounted,” I said to him, “of your disbelief upon the final days of Our Lord.”

Here Thomas laughed with a belch and poured himself some more wine. I noticed young Xenon was looking at us with an unsure gaze not used to the quantities of grape. Thomas answered me, “Yes, I doubted He had come back from the dead. Not sure I believe it yet!”

(I was, I should here record, quite absent attending to business on the estate during the days after the execution of Our Master, and I am not proud of this. Like others, who now pretend to have been at the trial and execution, I will confess to my weakness and disloyalty. And I also will tell my readers what few Disciples will admit, that the appearances and teachings of our Master after He returned from the dead are a matter of mystery and great confusion.)

29.
Said Thomas to me, “I'm not sure He died on the cross. He was hammered to it, all right, but men last for days up there. He seemed to give up the ghost in a few hours.”

Surely, I protested, you don't mean to say Our Lord was in any way party to a pantomime!

Thomas answered, “Ah, He may have seemed dead when He was put in the tomb. The women fixed up His wounds, He had a long nap, and He may have thought He died and came back, Himself. Who is to say?”

Your doubts must never be made public, I insisted.

“Of course I make them public! You think the Pharisees themselves do not speak these things? It does not matter to me what anyone says. What Our Teacher lived and taught is enough for me. I leave the theologizing to you and John and his star-eyed catamites! Thanks to the Most High I was not a scholar, a cursed priest—thanks be to his Everlasting Mercifulness!”

30.
I, as all know, am considered somewhat of a scholar and historian and I here reasserted the need for scholarship.

Thomas raged on thusly, “The rabbis have crushed the life out of the Bible and if you had your way, my friend, you would stomp the juice out of Our Master as in a vat of grapes.”

And to another offering from the grapes our friend had recourse again, and was now quite inebriated. I inquired if Thomas had read my
All Heresies Refuted?
Thomas simplified far too much for my liking, I asserted.

Thomas said to me, “Plain old love and charity is simple, is it? Then why is it so difficult to get anyone to do it? What I think sours converts is John's talk of Eternal Sonship and whether the Word or the Holy Spirit came before the Father—as if Yahweh was a father like I am a father! Amazing that Yahweh does not strike us down for such an idea! I pity you, my friend, raised fancy to be a cursed Greek, Jewish blood in your veins, one foot in the Temple of Jerusalem, another in this new synagogue of ours, while living in the world of the Romans—you will never have a good night's sleep!”

31.
Thomas went on to tell me that my selection as a Disciple was not without its corruption: “I'll tell you the damned truth and the others won't! You had money, you have an estate and a lenient father, you have an education so that you might be of use in letter writing … though I understand you have written nothing but kindling!”

By this remark I saw that news of Peter's destruction of my last gospel had reached even Eleuph. (I chose not to tangle with him on this, though I reminded myself to send Thomas a copy of
All Heresies Refuted
when I returned to Jerusalem and could assign Xenon the copyist's task.)

32.
Thomas said to me, “So do not tell me it never occurred to you that it was your money and estate we were after, my fine fellow!” He said this while slapping me like some wine-tavern familiar. And then he said, “You were but sixteen! Did you think at that age we acquired you for your wisdom and maturity?”

And I hope, Josephus my own brother, you can appreciate how difficult it is to record that I was sought by the Nazirenes for my money, which I willingly gave them, and which you ridiculed me for. I hope you balance that satisfaction with pity for me for having fallen from the Nazirene Movement and to be at my age, homeless and confused. It is for the young to wander about in search of God, not for the weary and enfeebled, the old whose minds should be as stone tablets with the name of God indelibly engraved.