King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (21 page)

In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of Hosts.

One of these shall be the City of the Sun.

And in that day an altar shall be raised to the Lord in the middle of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border.

For On-Heliopolis lies both in the middle of Egypt and at its border.

Who, then, was the Power? The Power could only be Herod himself, impersonating the Deity. He had crowned half a lifetime of premeditation by this outrageously daring act—a pretended theophany of the Lord God of Israel in his archaic character of Set, whom the Egyptians worship in the likeness of an onager, or wild-ass!

Oh, the mad fool! thought Simon. To suppose that he could turn the shadow back on the sun-dial, to suppose that the elders of Israel who had now for centuries worshipped a transcendent God, a Being so unique and so remote that neither his nature nor his appearance could be comprehended, but a God of mercy and justice and loving-kindness for all that, could be tricked into bowing the knee to this barbarous beast-headed deity! To the infamous Set, who had torn his brother Osiris in pieces and sent scorpions to sting the Child Horus to death ; to Set, the fire-breathing sirocco-demon, hated by the gods, whom the Greeks also call Typhon ; to Set, the great oppressor of mankind, in whose odious name victims were still yearly tossed to the beast of the reeds, the musky yellow-fanged crocodile of Pelusium!

Simon knew that Zacharias was in peril of death. The very walls of the Chamber seemed to cry out against him. He should never have been deceived : he should have distinguished instantly between the voice
of the Lord which speaks inwardly, and the voice of man which strikes through the gross outward ear ; between the majesty of the Lord which glows in the heart and mind, and the pomp of man which flatters the gross outward eye ; between the timber of the grove, as poets call it, and Divine Wisdom who had hewn out the choicest timber for her holy temple.

Simon called for silence while he summed up the case. “If the son of Barachias, by conjuration, summoned an evil demon to defile the Sanctuary, as Reuben son of Abdiel charges, without the warrant of this Court, then the wrath of the Lord will assuredly overtake him. For it is written : ‘Against him that turns after familiar spirits and after wizards, I will set my face and cut him off from among his people.’ And that no false demon, but the Lord God himself, has appeared to Zacharias is manifestly impossible, since Zacharias is yet alive, whereas it is established that all who look upon the Lord’s face must instantly die ; Moses saw the Holy One’s hinder parts only. Moreover, Zacharias, even if he did not conjure up this demon himself but accidentally encountered him in the Sanctuary, yet by his own admission addressed him reverently as though he were the Lord himself. Has he not therefore broken the First Commandment, which runs : ‘Thou shalt have no other gods but me’? For my part, I cannot conceive Zacharias to be guiltless of a grave fault ; yet I doubt whether this honourable Court, even if convened as a Court of Justice, is empowered to try the case. It seems to me that we have no choice but to refer it to the High Court, where charges of this unusual sort are tried.”

Reuben interrupted indignantly : “But we have heard his blasphemies with our own cars! For those alone he deserves death by stoning.”

“Son of Abdiel, do not insult us by your continued pretence of ignorance. Death by stoning is meted out to a blasphemer only if he joins the Holy Name with a curse or an obscenity ; blasphemy of the Lord God’s attributes earns no more than a severe flogging. And it is my duty to warn you that if you are found to have borne false witness against your kinsman in a capital case you yourself will fall under the shadow of death.” Simon then dismissed the Court with a decisive gesture, after thanking them for their correctness in painful circumstances and requesting the twelve senior members to remain behind and advise him what precise charge, or charges, if any, should be preferred against Zacharias, and in which Court.

Zacharias himself was now free to return to his own house, for in Jewish law an accused person is regarded as wholly innocent until sentence has been passed, and is subject to no bodily restraint. But he remained brooding in his chair until Simon desired him to leave. After a formal reverence he walked slowly out into the lobby crowded with members and associates whispering excitedly to one another in groups. His distraught looks persuaded some of them that he had devils nestling in the lap of his robe and they shrank away from his shadow as if it were a leper’s.

Reuben pointed with his finger and cried : “This clemency is not to be borne. He must die to-night, else all Israel will be shamed. The sorcerer must not be permitted to look upon another sun !”

Joachim, Mary’s father, who had been sitting as a full member, reproved him : “Son of Abdiel, this is contempt of court. You take too much upon yourself.” But the words served only to rouse still angrier passions in Reuben’s heart.

Outside a noisy crowd was assembled. A junior club-meeting of the Sons of Zadok had just broken up after a festive banquet near by, and about a hundred young men, flushed with wine, were gathered at the door of the High Priest’s house, drawn by a rumour that something extraordinary was happening there. Some of them had already ventured into the lobby, where Reuben gave them a hurried and inaccurate summary of the proceedings and was now inciting them to take the law into their own hands. He advised them : “Do nothing to this sorcerer yet, my sons—do nothing in the sight or hearing of the people. But do not flinch from the deed. This touches the honour of our own House.”

Zacharias went out into the street, and Reuben with the club-members followed after him in silence. As he crossed the courtyard between the house and the gate Reuben ostentatiously prised up a cobble-stone and dropped it into the lap of his robe. The Sons of Zadok followed his example. From what Reuben had told them they expected that Zacharias would go out through the Southern Gate into the wilderness, making for the cliff of Beth Hadudo where he would claim the protection of the demon Azazel to whom the scape-goat is yearly sacrificed on the Day of Atonement. Fortified with wine, they did not fear the wiles of this fiend. But instead, he led them uphill, hurrying towards the Temple. The few passers-by were unaware that anything of importance was happening : if the Sons of Zadok had dispersed after their club-meeting and the more zealous of them were now going up to the Temple for prayer, what was that?

The moon was full, and shone so brightly that the colours of Zacharias’s embroidered cloak showed almost as truly as by day, but the shadows in the clefts of the Cheesemongers’ Valley, as they passed over the Bridge, were as black as tar. He reached the Temple and glided like a sleepwalker across the Courts. The Zadokite clubmen, in a pack, pressed hard on his heels ; behind them in a ragged procession panted the members and associates of the Great Sanhedrin, most of them anxious to restrain Reuben from an act of violence, a few, however, secretly hoping that justice would be done in the antique manner.

Zacharias entered the Sanctuary. At this, the associate with the curly beard, who had been among those most deeply moved to anger by the confession of Zacharias, drew a cobble-stone from the lap of his robe and laid it down on the pavement. He cried out loudly : “Stay, brothers, for the son of Barachias goes to be judged by the Lord God himself! Is it not written : ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay’ ?” With these words he restrained the clubmen who were near him, and
they in turn restrained those that followed. But about twenty others had by this time followed Zacharias into the Sanctuary.

Zacharias took his stand by the Altar of Incense and flung out his hands in despair. He cried : “Men of Israel, in what way have I sinned? In this Holy Place I call the Lord God to witness that I have used neither conjuration nor other forbidden sorcery ; that I love him only and detest the princes of evil ; and that I have told only the truth !”

Reuben replied passionately : “Have you not heard the decision of the High Priest? You have defiled this Holy Place, Son of Barachias, and only your hot life-blood can cleanse it.”

He took the cobble-stone from his robe and let fly. It struck Zacharias full in the mouth. “Ha! ha !” Reuben cried. “ ‘He breaketh the teeth of the ungodly!’ ”

Zacharias chanted in a quavering voice :

The God of Israel, blessèd be he,
Who visited his sons in majesty
And bought them from Egyptian slavery!

Ten of Reuben’s companions were abashed and fled hastily. But those who remained took courage from him and pelted Zacharias until he fell dead with a great cry to the Lord for vengeance. His blood was spattered on the Altar and even on the lilies of the Candlestick.

Simon came stumbling in when all was over, accompanied by the Temple Watch. He was horrified by the bloody scene. “Alas, brothers !” he cried. “If you could but have waited until morning !” Reuben and his companions stood triumphant, for according to ancient tradition the crime of sorcery could be expiated only by the shedding of the sorcerer’s life-blood, and where could this expiation be more fittingly made than at the Altar which he had defiled?

Reuben answered him boldly : “Son of Boethus, do not reprove our zeal! You are provoking the Lord to anger. Come, give us instructions for expelling the demons who may still be lurking in some corner of this holy place !”

Again, Simon was faced by a painful decision. Either he must approve the act as a just one inspired by righteous zeal and transcending juridical forms or else he must condemn it as a sacrilegious murder by a drunken gang of young patricians. To approve was to sanction contempt of court and so to weaken the authority of the Great Sanhedrin, of which he was President. Yet the young men had not acted maliciously or impiously ; it was Reuben who had misled them. And to have them condemned to death for their folly would cause endless trouble and distress : nearly every one of them was nearly related to some member of the Great Sanhedrin. Nor would their deaths recall Zacharias to life.

Simon chose the lesser of the two evils : he signified his approval, though without heartiness. Then to satisfy Reuben he ordered the heart and liver of a letos-fish to be burned on a pan over a fire, as the Angel Raphael had once advised Tobit the Babylonian to do as a charm for
the expulsion of the demon Asmodeus. Evil spirits, it is said, loathe the stench of burning fish, but none more than Asmodeus, who shares with the Demoness Lilith, the First Eve, the dominion of all the Lilim, or Children of Lilith, and is believed to live in the burning deserts of Upper Egypt.

When the heart and liver had been duly burned, the work of purification continued with sulphur and brimstone, after which came washings with pure water—seven times seven washings of every stone and piece of furniture in the Sanctuary—and prayers and litanies and sin-offerings and fastings.

All concerned in these events were sworn to silence, but the news of Zacharias’s death had already been brought to Herod by the Captain of the Temple. He was greatly angered, yet not dismayed. If the Great Sanhedrin had unanimously rejected the theophany—though not one of them, it seemed, had suspected an imposture or doubted that the vision was supernatural—then, the stiff-necked bigots, they had lost the chance which he had offered them of assisting in his religious revolution ; they had condemned themselves to destruction. A fine sort of Jehovah they now worshipped! An impotent Moon-thing from Babylon! A dead-alive god of reason and legality who had ousted the god of life, love and death. A monomaniac recluse who brooded all the year round in his Sanctuary on the three paltry articles of furniture with which his worshippers saw fit to supply him : a yardstick, a liquid measure and a set of standard weights! Yet inconsistent in this boast of mathematical perfection, still daily swilling the hot blood of sheep and goats, still demanding the music of trumpets, and dressed in the stolen garments of the Great Goddess Anatha, absurdly perfumed in her scent! Well, he would wait patiently another few months and then stage a second and final theophany. This time the ruling priesthood would not be given the chance to reject their ancestral God—the ageless God in whose honour all the lesser gods of Egypt wield the ass-headed sceptre—he would sweep them away, forged Scriptures and all, and the whole indecent cult would be abolished for ever.

There remained one well-organized body of Israelites true to the Sun of Holiness ; and these he would reward for their faithfulness by establishing them as the priests of the Most High God on the Sacred Hill from which they had been so long banished. He had not yet told them what he had in store for them, because they were quietists and might well shrink from becoming accessories to a massacre ; nevertheless, once the deed was done, how could they refuse? They were four thousand men, none of whom had bowed his knees faithlessly to the Usurper of the Sanctuary ; they served the true God in desert communities apart, singing their morning-hymn to him at sunrise, and celebrating a love-feast on the first day of every week—the day sacred to the Sun.

Meanwhile he kept silence, pretending complete ignorance of what had occurred ; but his anger fell upon Simon because of his ritual burning of the heart and liver of the letos-fish, sacred to Set’s murdered brother
Osiris ; for this is the very charm which the Egyptians use against the blowing of the hot desert wind called the Breath of Set. He charged Simon and the Queen, his daughter, with having been criminally aware of Antipater’s plot against him. He removed Simon from the High Priesthood, divorced the Queen, and blotted from his Will her mild and studious son Prince Herod Philip, who stood next in succession to Antipater.

E
ARLY
one morning at Ain-Rimmon, Shelom awakened Mary and said : “My lady, I have news for you. It is heavy news, sent you by Anna daughter of Phanuel. The Rechabite has brought it and awaits your reply.”