King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (39 page)

When they had crossed the pass, John said : “Rest here under this tree of wild broom and sleep well, for you will need a store of sleep to draw upon in the days and nights that lie ahead.”

Jesus slept, and when he awoke in the morning he found a pitcher of water and a batch of freshly baked ember-loaves at his side. He heard John’s voice from behind him : “Eat and drink well, then sleep again, Lord, for you will need a store of food and drink to draw upon in the days and nights that lie ahead.”

Jesus ate and drank and afterwards slept again. When he awoke in the evening, he found more ember-loaves ready baked, and water in the same pitcher. John told him : “Eat and drink, sleep another few hours yet ; the trial will be too hard for you otherwise.”

Once more he ate and drank, and once more slept.

While Jesus lay asleep, John climbed in moonlight up the white crags of Horeb until he came to a watch-tower which the Essenes had built there for the Watchman.

Simon son of Boethus, now very aged, greeted John tremulously, asking him : “Is it good news ?”

“It is good.”

“He is come ?”

“He lies asleep under the tree of Elijah and will present himself for trial to-morrow.”

“Many years I have waited for this day !”

In the morning John brought Jesus before Simon. They kissed and Simon asked : “Lord, are you instructed in the figure ?”

“I am instructed.”

Simon said to the single disciple whom he had with him, Judas of Kerioth : “Conduct my Lord to his station !”

Judas led Jesus to a level platform under a thorn-bush, close to the peak of the mountain, and there left him.

It was noon ; and with his forefinger Jesus drew a circle in the dust about himself, revolving sunwise three times. Then he divided the circle into four by means of a cross of equal arms, and seated himself in the southern quarter, facing towards the Red Sea and the desert lands of Arabia.

Ten days and ten nights he waited there patiently under the thorn-bush, unsleeping, his pulse and respiration slow, eating nothing and drinking nothing, preoccupied with his vigil. On the morning of the tenth day, as the sun rose from the direction of Elam, a loud roaring sounded in his ears and it seemed to him that out of the eye of the sun a huge tawny lion with bloody jaws sprang into the circle to devour him. He addressed the lion : “Enter in peace, God’s creature! There is room for both of us in this circle.” He remembered the allegory in which Jehovah sent an angel to stop the lions’ mouths that would otherwise have devoured the prophet Daniel. The lion roared and ramped for anger, lashing its tufted tail ; but could do Jesus no harm, being confined by the cross within the eastern quarter of the circle.

Ten more days and nights passed. On the twentieth day at noon, it seemed that a wild he-goat with a single horn capered into the circle from the rear ; and as the lion was Anger, so the goat was Lust. Jesus turned and said : “Enter in peace, God’s creature! There is room for the three of us in this circle.” The goat, which was of immense size, danced lecherously, rolling its eyes and tossing its horn ; the smell of its rut was as pervasive as that of ambergris. Jesus remembered another allegory of the prophet Daniel, where it is written : “The he-goat waxed very great, but when he was strong, his great horn was broken.” The goat could do Jesus no harm, being confined within the northern quarter of the circle. So lion and goat continued with him ten more days.

Then, at sunset, on the last day of his vigil, from the western side of the circle came a still more terrible beast : it was a seraph, a fiery serpent with fangs, hissing and rattling its brazen scales ; and as the power of the lion was Anger, and that of the goat was Lust, so the seraph’s power was Fear. Jesus said : “Enter in peace, God’s creature! There is room for the four of us in this circle.” But though he spoke the word of Love that he had learned from the Psyllian, the seraph hissed and darted its head towards him from sunset to midnight ; and this was the hardest trial of all. But he remembered how good King Hezekiah had broken in pieces the seraph whom the men of Jerusalem held in awe, crying : “It is a mere piece of brass.” The seraph could do Jesus no harm, being confined within the western quarter of the circle.

Then, at dawn, it seemed that the three creatures were joined together into one, with lion’s head, goat’s body and legs, seraph’s tail. He recognized the Chimaera of the Carians, which is an emblem of their three seasons—for, like the Etruscans, they do not reckon the dead season of winter in their sacred year. The lion was the springtime aspect of the
waxing sun ; the goat the midsummer aspect of the sun in glory ; the seraph the autumn aspect of the waning sun. “And I am child to the white bull of winter.” Turning, he was suddenly aware that a great white bull had all the while shared the southern quarter of the circle with him, stretched out at his left side. But as soon as he attempted to study its power, it vanished. He said : “This beast has shared the southern quarter with me. Is it my secret fault? May our God protect me from its power !”

At noon the month of thirty days and nights was over, and out of the circle Jesus stepped ; the lion, goat and seraph, discrete again, following subserviently at his heels. Thereafter he had authority over these three Powers : over Anger, Lust and Fear. But the thought of the white bull troubled him exceedingly.

Simon, as Master of the Trials, came up to greet him. He said : “Lord, you have endured your vigil well. The three beasts follow at your heel. Now is the time to break your fast. Here is bread freshly baked and fresh spring water fetched from the source of the Madara brook.”

“Do not deceive me! You know that ten days and nights remain to be endured. Forty days were required of Moses and of Elijah on this very mountain—neither of whom ate bread or drank water during all that time.”

“Moses was a prophet, Elijah was a prophet. But are you not more than a prophet? How are you bound by such trifles as a count of days ?”

The smell of the water and of the freshly baked bread was delicious, yet Jesus took the bread, broke it, scattered it for the birds to eat and poured the water over his hands lest any fragment of bread should have clung to them.

Simon said : “Lord, that was honestly done. But why do you not change these stones into loaves and this sand into water : then though you eat stones, not bread, and drink sand, not water, your pangs will be eased.”

“It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by the word of our God. My soul has eaten bread of Bethlehem for thirty days, and drunk water of Bethlehem.” At these words, it seemed to Simon, a wild boar sprang up from where the bread was cast and followed obediently behind Jesus with the other three beasts ; which was the power of Greed.

Simon said : “Lord, that was honestly done. Now you shall see your reward.”

He led him up to a pinnacle of the mountain, and desired him to look east and west and north and south.

“Here,” he said, “a fine prospect extends, does it not? To the west, the Mediterranean Sea and ancient Egypt ; to the east, Moab and Elam ; to the south, Arabia ; to the north—ah, to the north the Holy Land of Israel stretches as far as Hermon, whose snowy peak glitters at us invitingly. Yet the regions that you view are in extent as nothing to those that will presently be yours. Beyond Arabia lie Ethiopia and Ophir
and the Land of Frankincense ; beyond Egypt lie Libya and Mauretania ; beyond Elam lies India ; beyond Israel lie Syria, Asia and the Black Sea ; beyond the Mediterranean Sea lie Greece, Italy, Gaul, Spain, and the Land of the Hyperboreans. At the point of the lance you will drive the Romans out from every land that they have overrun ; you will also break the Kings of the South and East ; you will establish the Empire of our God over all the one hundred and fifty-three nations, to become the King of Kings, the greatest who ever reigned. Alexander beside you will seem a mere robber-chieftain !”

“It is recorded that the great Caesar killed a million men ; Pompey the Great two million ; Alexander the Great three million. Must your servant destroy ten million or more to earn the title of ‘Greatest’? How may this be? Is your servant a warrior? Is it his destiny to spill blood and rule by the sword? And is it not written : ‘Thou shalt not kill’ ?”

“Your ancestor David had never put on armour, yet the Spirit of the Lord came upon him in the valley of Elah and in the sight of two armies he destroyed Goliath the champion of the Philistines, whose height was six cubits and a span, and rescued his nation from oppression. Do you shrink from battle? Is it not prophesied that the Son of David shall rescue his people by a mighty hand, that he shall be victorious in a bloody battle, and shall restore peace to Israel for a thousand years ?”

“Let others choose the path of conquest and petulantly sever with the sword the master-knot of mystery as did Alexander at Gordium. Let it rather be granted to me to weave the same sacred knot again, with golden wire, fastening it to the canopy bar above my throne. Have you not heard the judgement of the wise Hillel, how he said to the skull floating in the lake : ‘Because you drowned, you are drowned ; but in the end those who drowned you shall also drown’? So I say : ‘The sword makes no decision, but only confusion ; and he who lives by the sword, by the sword must perish.’ The battle to be fought is on another field.”

“Lord, that was honestly spoken. Let the battlefield be of whatever kind you please : only rule your people and deliver them. You shall master the Empire of the Romans in the name of the Lord of this Mountain, whose image is the golden calf which was set up in this very place when the tribes first came out of Egypt. Look yonder, where his apparition stands gleaming. He is the gracious bull-calf of the Cow Leah (which is to say Libnah, the White One), the universal Mother whom the Greeks call Io and the Egyptians Isis or Hathor. Adore him now as he deserves, and the whole world through which his raging mother wandered, stung by the breese, is yours !”

“Would you have me adore a golden calf ?”

“What else did Solomon worship, who was the wisest of men ?”

“Behind me, God’s Adversary! Is it not written : ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve’ ?”

At these words it seemed to Simon that an elephant with a gilt tower on its back lurched from behind a rock and followed obediently behind Jesus with the other four beasts ; which was the power of Pride.

Simon cried : “That was honestly spoken. I had feared that you might make the same choice that your grandfather Herod made at Dora —Herod whose mother was the heiress of Nabataean Lat and who married Doris, the heiress of Edomite Dora. Offered a kingdom greater than that of Solomon, with all the honours and trappings of royalty, if only he would bow his knee to the Baal of Dora, he swallowed the bait. Thus Herod was proved unworthy of the greater kingdom that you have chosen : the greater kingdom that carries with it the greater curse. He chose the lesser curse, which is a long, happy life with disaster at the close ; but you will be shipwrecked before your prime.”

“It is no news to me that Herod bowed to the Golden Onager. Tell me, rather, of his eldest son, enroyalled by birth from Caleb and by marriage with the Heiress of Michal.”

“He reigned, but only as his father’s son. Because he shrank from taking arms against his father his end was inglorious.”

“No, but glorious ; in a dream I have seen him sitting under a silver-blossomed apple-tree in an orchard of apples, the Western Paradise.”

The fortieth night rolled away. At noon Jesus broke his fast with a little barle-orridge and smelt at an apple which John fetched him.

Then Simon broke into a song of praise which is still chanted among Chrestians, though its context is unknown except to a few initiates : “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace according to your word. For his eyes have seen your salvation, which is prepared before the face of all nations : to be a light to illumine the Gentiles and to glorify your people Israel.”

He died there, on the very peak where Aaron the first High Priest had died, his life’s work ended.

S
IMON
was buried on Horeb in a cleft of the rock and John returned to Beth Arabah. Under the care of Judas of Kerioth, Jesus slowly regained his strength. After ten days he left the mountain and made for Hebron, fifty miles distant to the north, by way of the tortuous Ascent of Akrabbim.

Judas of Kerioth (a village not far from Hebron) accompanied him as his disciple. He was a prudent, generous-souled and learned man, formerly in partnership with his uncle, a merchant in the salt-fish trade, and had become an Ebionite from disgust with the world, after being wrongfully accused of incest with his uncle’s young wife, who had thereupon hanged herself. He was to prove of great service to Jesus, for ten years of business had taught him to understand the ways of the
Romans with their Greek and Syrian hangers-on, and how to address magistrates, synagogue officials, town-clerks and the like with dignified urbanity ; seven years with the Ebionites had also taught him to understand the ways of the poor and the outcast.

At a narrow place in the pass the two overtook the rear-guard of a great company of men travelling together for safety through this desolate, bandit-ridden country. They seemed for the most part to be Edomites, and Arabians from Sinai, but among them were a party of Phoenician merchants, and two Greeks dressed in the grey cloaks of philosophers.

Judas saluted the captain of the rear-guard, an Arabian, and asked him courteously why the whole party wore mourning garments : had any public calamity occurred of which news had not reached him?

“We are pilgrims going to Hebron to mourn for our ancestor Abraham and sacrifice to his shade. Are you ignorant that on the day after tomorrow the Terebinth Fair begins? Our train of two hundred asses and camels is carrying valuable merchandise there.”

“Graciously permit my master and myself to join your caravan. We also are Sons of Abraham.”

“Of what nation ?”

“We are Jews. My master is a holy man ; I am his disciple.”