King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (20 page)

Simon asked again : “Brothers and Sons, does any of you wish to question the learned Reuben further ?”

All sat silent, awed and scandalized, each hoping that his neighbour would speak before him. At last the same curly-bearded associate arose, but this time looked modestly about him and coughed inquiringly as if seeking permission to ask another question.

Encouraged by a low murmur, he said : “Holy Father, pray ask him this : ‘Were the tracks that you saw like those of an ass walking on all fours, or like those of an ass walking on his hind legs?’ ”

Simon asked the question.

“On his hind legs,” answered Reuben, shuddering. He persisted in his story without contradicting himself, though Simon attempted to shake his evidence by ridicule.

Simon then requested the associates to retire while he consulted with the full members : the question was, whether the case should at this point be referred to the High Court, since it had taken so painful and embarrassing a turn. But jealousy triumphed over embarrassment. A vote was taken and it was decided to continue with the inquiry.

The associates were recalled, and when the clerks had read out Reuben’s deposition Zacharias was summoned to appear. He came in blinking, for he had fallen asleep from weariness.

Simon began mildly : “Son of Barachias, this Court wishes to know how it happened that the fire was extinguished on the Altar of Incense during the evening of your ministry, when you were struck dumb. Let me warn you before you answer : you have been accused of sorcery.”

Zacharias stood silent for a while. Then he asked bitterly : “Shall I tell you the truth, which will outrage you, or shall I tell you a comfortable lie ?” He added with a groan : “Would to God that I were dumb again !”

“You are to tell the truth, Brother, as you desire justice.”

“You will kill me if I tell you the truth ; yet my soul will have no peace if I lie to you or withhold the truth. Will you not mercifully leave me in peace? Will you not dismiss the Court ?”

“I cannot dismiss this Court, which is a Court of Inquiry. I may only adjourn it. Do you pray for an adjournment ?”

Zacharias considered. After a while he said : “An adjournment would mean only increased misery of soul. No ; so be it! I will tell you the truth to-night, but you shall swear by the living God that if I must die because I have told it, you will take no vengeance on my family, and that you will kill me cleanly, for the truth’s sake. Do you hear me? You shall swear by the Holy Name that I shall not die by hanging or strangulation or fire : that you will grant my body decent burial at least. For to die is hateful ; but to die accursed is to wander houseless among lizards and jackals, an unquiet phantom perpetually seeking rest.”

Simon answered gently : “There is no need for the swearing of oaths. Tell the whole truth and trust to the mercy of the Lord.” He then read Reuben’s deposition and asked Zacharias whether it were true.

“That Reuben saw what he deposes that he saw,” said Zacharias, “I do not doubt, nor that in the uncharitableness of his heart he thought, and thinks, that I am capable of abominable crime. His anger has been hot against me ever since I testified before the Court of Disputes sixteen years ago in the matter of the Well of the Jawbone, the property of my brother-in-law Joachim, whom I see yonder : for Reuben’s heart is a nest of grudges. May the Lord cleanse it with a sudden scare-fire !” He fell silent again, but at last, by fits and starts, nervously fumbling with the phylactery on his arm, he told his story.

“I was offering incense on the Altar, clean in body and clean in dress, having fasted all day. The Watcher of the Curtain had left the Sanctuary upon my arrival, as the custom is. And as I was finishing the rite, suddenly I heard the sound of a still, small voice. It proceeded from behind the Holy Curtain and it called me by my name : ‘Zacharias!’ I answered : ‘Here I am, Lord! Speak, for thy servant heareth.’ The voice said : ‘What things are these that you are burning at my altar?’ And I answered : ‘The sweet incense, Lord, according to the command that thou gavest to thy servant Moses.’ Then the voice asked : ‘Is the Sun of Holiness a harlot or a catamite? Do my nostrils snuff storax, hinge of scallop, frankincense, narthex, pounded together and smoking on coals of cedar-wood? Would you make a sweat-bath for the Sun of Holiness?’ I could make no reply. Then, as I abased myself, I heard the Curtain drawn and majestic steps approaching. And I heard a hissing and a spluttering as the fire was suddenly extinguished on the Altar. My senses left me.”

The Sanhedrin listened in a fearful silence. Not a man dared look his neighbour in the face to read what was written there.

At last Simon spoke in a faint voice : “Once to John Hyrcanus the High Priest, when he was offering incense at the same altar and at the very hour, came a divine voice informing him of the victory of his sons over the evil King Antiochus. But a voice only was heard : no sound of footsteps. Proceed with your evidence !”

“Have I not told you enough ?”

“You have more to tell. Proceed !”

“Then, when I came to myself I saw—and I saw, when at last I came to myself, and when I raised my head to look, I saw—”

“What did you see ?”

“I saw—O merciful God, return to me my dumbness !”

“What did you see ?”

“Holy Son of Boethus, pity me that I have to declare the nature of my vision! I saw a Power clothed in robes of light that resembled the same sacred robes which you yourself wear at the grand festivals. And this Power hugged to its breast a triple-headed golden dog and a golden sceptre in the form of a budding palm branch ; and, as the Lord our God lives, this Power stood in a gap between the Curtain and the wall on the right hand ; and this Power was of more than human stature ; and this Power spoke in the same still, small voice that I had heard before, saying : ‘Be not afraid, Zacharias! Go out now and tell my people truthfully what you have both heard and seen!’ But I could not, for I was struck dumb.”

Beads of sweat started on Zacharias’s brow and rolled down into his beard, where they hung shining in the light of the pine-torches that blazed beside him in an iron cresset. He opened his mouth to say more, but closed it again convulsively.

Simon’s heart ached for Zacharias. He told the Court : “I have done with my questions. Need we question the son of Barachias further? These are words of frenzy or of a sick imagination. To record them in the minutes of this meeting would be injudicious in the extreme.”

An old Doctor named Matthias son of Margalothus rose resolutely. “Holy Son of Boethus,” he said, “if Zacharias alone had testified to the apparition, I should support your kindly proposal to stop our ears to his raving. But what of Reuben’s testimony? Reuben saw tracks. Am I permitted to cross-examine the son of Barachias ?”

“You are permitted,” said Simon.

Matthias said : “Zacharias, answer me with care. Did this Power who spoke in the Name of the Holy One reveal his countenance to you ?”

Zacharias answered with trembling lips : “Son of Margalothus, I am commanded to tell the truth. The countenance was revealed.”

“Listen to his blasphemies, elders and sons of Israel! What need have we of further evidence? Is it not written that the Lord instructed his servant Moses : ‘But for my face, thou canst not see it ; for there shall no man see it and live’ ?”

Zacharias stood like an antelope-ox at bay. He shouted out : “The Lord God has given me ears to hear, eyes to see, a mouth to speak. Why should I deny these holy gifts? Hear me, all you Elders and Sons of Israel, hear me well! What did I see? I say that I saw the face of the Power, and the face shone, though not unmercifully bright, and the likeness of the face”—his voice rose to a scream—“and the likeness of the face was that of a Wild Ass !”

Then a sigh arose and a murmur, like the sigh and murmur that precedes a thunderstorm. A subdued cry arose here and there : “Alas! Blasphemy, blasphemy !”

Every man in the hall stood up and began to tear his garments. These were stolid men, men of the world, and refrained from the wild rending and ripping practised by Jewish village folk when a blasphemous word is spoken. They were content to pull open the short blasphemy-seams of their coat-lapels, and exclaim : “Woe to the mouth that utters these things !”

Reuben raised his voice above the clamour. “Simon son of Boethus, I declare this man, though he is my kinsman, to be a sorcerer and by sorcery to have defiled the Sanctuary! I demand that this declaration be converted into a charge, that Zacharias be instructed to answer it immediately, and that, if he cannot do so, a vote be taken and counted for a summary death verdict.”

Simon replied sternly : “Not so, Son of Abdiel! Summoned before us as a witness, do you set yourself up as an accuser? And must I remind you that we have met here as a Court of Inquiry, not as a Court of Justice? Even as a Court of Justice qualified to try this case we could not condemn the son of Barachias at once. For the rule runs : ‘If a verdict is for acquittal it may be spoken to-day ; if for death, it cannot be pronounced until to-morrow.’ And are you ignorant of the Law itself, which forbids a man to be tried, as you would have him tried, without at least two witnesses called against him ?”

Simon was in anguish of mind. Though he knew in his heart that Zacharias was innocent of sorcery, he could not put it to the Court that the vision might perhaps have been a divine or angelic one. Still less could he publish his own suspicions, which if they had been accepted would have plunged the nation headlong into civil war. Yet these suspicions were so strong that he would have been prepared to announce them as fact. Only one explanation of the vision was possible, now that he connected it with an incident reported to him on the following day by the priest of the Temple Watch. The Temple Watch was a standing patrol of one priest and seven Levites : they marched around the Temple all night and all day at regular intervals to see that the various priestly sentries were vigilant and that all was in order. One sentry was posted at the Chamber of the Hearth, another at the Chamber of the Flame, a third in the Attic. The Priest of the First Watch had reported to his superior officer, the Captain of the Temple : “As I passed with the Watch into the Attic, shortly after my relief of the Third Watch, I found the
sentry Zichri son of Shammai asleep. I set light to his sleeve with my torch, as my orders are, but even then he did not wake. Almost he seemed drugged or drunken, for the flesh of his arm was well scorched before he awoke.” The Captain of the Temple, passing on the report, had pleaded : “Pray, Holy Father, do not bring the matter before the High Court, for this Zichri is brother to my own wife, and has already suffered for his folly. Besides, let me tell you frankly, the last refreshment that he took was at my own table.”

Simon could picture the whole scene as vividly as if he had witnessed it from the steps of the Altar. The clue to the apparition lay in the secret underground passage which ran from the Tower of Antonia to the Inner Court ; Herod’s excuse for building it had been that if a sudden riot in the Temple endangered the sacred instruments of worship they might be quickly borne away to the security of the Tower. Near the outlet of the passage a narrow stairway led to the store-rooms above the Sanctuary, and thence to the empty chamber immediately above the Holy of Holies—the Attic where the sentry stood guard. And in the floor of this empty chamber was a trap-door through which, very rarely, after a propitiatory sacrifice and a warning tinkle of bells, seven times repeated, Telmenite workmen were lowered to perform necessary repairs to the fabric of the Holy of Holies itself ; for to descend from above into this awful place, in case of need, was to evade the curse of entrance. Moreover, the robes and regalia peculiar to the High Priest, which the Power was said to have worn, were now laid up in the Tower of Antonia under the charge of the Captain of the Temple, who had been appointed by Herod himself. The golden onager’s head of Dora, the golden dog of Solomon, the golden sceptre of David—Simon recognized all three by Zacharias’s description.

Who was the Power? Simon knew. He had read the
Histories
of the Egyptian Manetho. Manetho recorded that the City of Jerusalem was first founded by the Shepherd Kings of Egypt when they were expelled from their great city of Pelusium, the City of the Sun, by the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The Israelites had been vassals of the Shepherds. When, a generation or two later, they themselves fled from Egypt under Moses, and—after a long stay in the wilderness—returned to Canaan, they there renewed their homage to the God of the Shepherds, and to his bride, the Moon-goddess Anatha. With the homage went a mass-offering of foreskins ; for during their wanderings the Israelites had abandoned the Egyptian custom of circumcision.

The God of the Shepherds was the Egyptian Sun-god Sutekh, or Set, who appears in Genesis as Seth son of Adam, and when King David captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, the descendants of the Shepherds, Set became the god of all Israel under the title of Jehovah. The Menorah, the sacred seven-branched Candlestick of the Sanctuary, was a reminder of his history. It was constructed to represent the Sun, the Moon and the five planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn ; and according to the Doctors of the Law it illustrated the text in Genesis where on
the fourth day of Creation Jehovah said : “Let there be light.” The Menorah faced west-south-west, a quarter of the heavens not obviously connected with the Sun, except as he approaches his decline ; so that when the Jewish Solar religion was reformed under King Josiah the ancient tradition, “In that direction the Lord God has his habitation”, was not either altered or suppressed. Yet draw a map of Judaea and Egypt and make Jerusalem the centre of a twelve-pointed compass and follow along the ray running west-south-west. The eye travels over wild hills and desert places until it strikes the Nile at the head of the Delta, and there on the eastern bank stands On-Heliopolis, the oldest and holiest city in all Egypt, the city of the Sun-god Ra, whose titles, when he grew senile and dribbled, Set won by conquest : On-Heliopolis, where the sacred persca-tree grows from whose branches the Sun-god is said to arise each morning ; On-Heliopolis, where the sacred bull Mnevis is stabled and gives oracular responses ; On-Heliopolis, where the long-lived Phoenix dies and in a nest of frankincense is renewed ; On-Heliopolis, where Moses was a priest ; On-Heliopolis, near to where in the days of Ptolemy Philometor the fugitive Jewish High Priest Onias built a rival Temple to that of Jerusalem, justifying his action by the nineteenth chapter of Isaiah :