King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (41 page)

“Our Western gods Hephaestus and Vulcan are similarly lame,” said the elder Greek, nodding sagely, “and so is Egyptian Ptah.”

The younger Greek said : “Not only those three, Father. The Sicilians explain the name Dionysus as meaning not ‘Zeus of Nysa’ but ‘Zeus the Lame’. Did the buskins on which he is depicted as swaggering originally compensate for an injury to his thigh, like those gold shoes of Hephaestus which Homer mentions? He is called Merotraphes, which may well mean ‘One who takes good care of his thigh’. And now that you have mentioned the King of Argos, I recall that one King of Argos at least was lame and wore buskins : Nauplius the Argonaut. If the King of Hebron was either chosen king because of his lameness or ceremonially lamed when chosen, surely Jacob is also a dynastic title, not the name of a historical character ?”

The elder Greek praised his son’s acuteness.

“I know nothing and care nothing about your Greek gods,” said the merchant, “but I can tell you something else about Jacob, which is that he dislocated his thigh at the marriage games at Penuel when he took the name of his wife Rachel and became Ish-rachel, or Israel. This sanctified his thigh, and from that day to this Jews do not eat the thigh-flesh of sacrificed beasts. And when he bound his son Joseph to an oath, he required him to place his hand under his sacred thigh ; and nobody else in the Scriptures is recorded to have bound anyone by this form of oath, except Abraham.”

“And what does the name Rachel mean ?” asked the elder Greek.

“It means ‘The Ewe’.”

“That clinches the matter. For the Dove-goddess of Cyprus, who, as we learn from the myths of Cinyras and Adonis, had a Palestinian counterpart, is also a Ewe-goddess. Jacob’s marriage was doubtless with the Queen of Hebron.”

However, except for Jesus, nobody present could follow the ramblings of their argument, and he uttered no word either of approval or dissent.

At last the caravan reached Hebron, which was packed with pilgrims. The Fair was being held about a mile outside the town towards Jerusalem. The route lay along a fine flagged road through the extensive vineyards of Eshcol from which Joshua and Caleb, acting as spies for Moses, cut enormous bunches of grapes as samples of the prosperity of Canaan. On their left rose a hill terraced for olives and crowned with two very large standing-stones. The elder Greek said : “I wonder that one of your reforming kings did not remove those two sacred baetyls and convert them into rollers of a royal olive-mill.”

“You are mistaken, Sir,” Judas answered. “Those are not baetyls. They are the posts of the ancient town gates of Gaza which the hero Samson is recorded in the Book of Judges to have carried away, bar and all, from his Philistine enemies and planted there in scorn.”

“Well,” said the Greek, “to me they are plain baetyls raised in honour of the variously named goddess of this place. For it is clear that this shrine has had as many divine claimants as that of Delphi, which began as an oracle of the Python-priestess of Brimo and the Furies and was later captured by Apollo on behalf of his Hyperborean mother Latona of the palm-tree. Some say that the Bee-goddess Cybele also held the shrine for a while. But Apollo, who contains within himself the shades of numerous gods and demons, is now the sole master of Delphi. All secluded hill shrines with vents crannying down to Hades are the natural location of mysteries presided over by Sibyls : tribes destroy one another to gain possession of them and add the bones of their own oracular heroes to those already there. That the Sea-goddess should have become established here at Hebron is strange at first sight : one would not have expected to find her perched up on a high mountain so far from her native element. But Hebron is on a height between three seas—the Dead Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. And we must, of course, be careful to distinguish the Sea-goddess, who is a goddess of Love, from her sister-selves, the goddess of Birth and the goddess of Death.”

He went up with his son to examine the stones, and both came back delighted with the immensely wide prospect which opened to the west : a great part of the hill country of Judaea and a long stretch of what had once been Philistia. For this was the highest point of the Negeb range, and they could look across the rugged intervening ridges to the coastal plain, and forty miles or more away, to the row of famous cities : Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod and Jamnia, and the broad sea stretching beyond. “If your Samson carried those posts up from Gaza,” they pronounced, “he was a man who could have stuffed our Hercules into his wallet as a shepherd stuffs a strayed lamb.”

They came to the Oaks of Mamre and Abraham’s well lying close by, where a tent-village housing thousands of people had sprung up around a few ancient stone houses. The Sons of Abraham, all dressed in their oldest clothes—though the women by contrast wore holiday finery—
were a motley, jabbering assemblage of Arabians, Edomites, Ishmaelites, Midianites, Jews, Galileans, Phoenicians, Dorites and Transjordanians. In the middle of the camp stood a stone altar held to mark the spot where Abraham heard the angel announce the approaching birth of his son Isaac. The place was shaded by the largest terebinth in existence, said to be coeval with the world, and by fifteen other trees of lesser size and age, embellished with votive garments tied around the trunks and, as the evening drew on, twinkling with numerous lanterns hung from the branches. The altar, of undressed stone, was red with the blood of sacrificed beasts and birds—chiefly cocks, rams and bulls—that flowed off into troughs and was subsequently used for sprinkling the fruit-trees and vines of the district to promote their fertility.

Loud and ceaseless mourning was made for Abraham’s recumbent ithyphallic effigy, a sort of Osiris, which lay in state beside the altar waiting to be carried in procession to the well and there washed. This was done shortly after Jesus and his travelling companions arrived, and then, amid frightful howling, the image, which was golden-faced and ram-horned, with blue turquoise eyes, was liberally anointed with terebinth oil and laid in a coffin, while frankincense was burned to ward off evil spirits, and libations of wine poured on the earth to satisfy the thirsty dead. After this, the coffin was taken in procession to Machpelah, which lies nearer the town, and laid in the inner cave for safe keeping until the Autumn New Year.

The chief mourner was, as the Arabian had said, the murderous Kerm-king, a goat-headed, scarlet-faced, agate-eyed, phallic idol, borne upright. The two Greeks pronounced this King of Mamre to be indistinguishable from the Mamurius idols of the remote Latin villages and from the Hermes idols of Arcadia. His queen was a big-buttocked, spikenard-scented, scarlet-cloaked goddess with enormous breasts and a fish’s tail, her face painted green with copper malachite as a Love-goddess’s face should be, and necklaces of jewels and sea-shells about her neck. In one hand was a porpoise, in the other a dove. The elder Greek recalled an exactly similar festival at a terebinth grove sacred to the Sea-goddess of Cyprus ; the grove, he said, is called Treminthus, which is the Cypriot word for terebinth.

The Jews and Edomites who attended the Fair for business purposes were careful to avoid looking at the royal images, or contaminating themselves with any idolatrous practice and, though they wailed with the rest, said that they did so to deplore the sacrifices offered to an obscene block of wood, not for any other reason. The Temple authorities at Jerusalem had long since forbidden the public orgies which formerly concluded the festival, but had refrained from removing the idols for fear of cutting off the valuable trade which the Fair attracted. The booths were arranged in circles and stocked with a wonderful variety of goods—gums, spices and perfumes were the chief foreign products offered—and the sanctity of the Fair was such that nobody carried arms or feared for his safety. For religious reasons, the pilgrims were forbidden to
drink the well-water during the days of mourning, but were allowed to drop presents of silver and gold into it.

Jesus, though accustomed from his Egyptian childhood to the sight of idolatry, was grieved that it should be flourishing in a spot so sacred as this. He did not consider it his duty to interrupt or denounce the religious practices of strangers, but, being determined to measure and subdue the power of the Female, he searched out the merchant of Petra and asked him where Mary the Hairdresser was to be found.

The amused merchant answered : “Ask any of the harlots who have come here to catch the trade of the Fair. You will find them in an olive orchard beyond the hill waiting to welcome those Sons of Abraham who are less scrupulous in their mourning than others. Mary is their queen. A jill-of-all-trades is Mary. She dresses their hair for them, with embellishment of tresses stolen from the dead, receives their stolen jewels, regulates their prices, provides them with the necessary charms and philtres, and lays them out when they come to die. Though too old to continue in the profession, she rules them absolutely and they stand in mortal dread of her.”

“Of what nation is she ?”

“Mary is a Kenite, and so are most of her women. But let me advise you : it is best not to meddle with the Hairdresser. She will take the flesh of the ox, as they say, and leave you with the hide, bones and umbles.”

Jesus thanked the merchant and, dismissing Judas for a while, went over the hill to the olive orchard. It was evening and the moon had just risen. He found the prostitutes dancing in a circle of admirers to tambourine and flute music. A party of young Arabians raised loud laughter when they saw him. “Oho! Oho! A Jew, here comes a Jew, and a holy one at that, by the cut of his beard !” Jesus observed that most of the women’s customers were Arabians ; it is true that of the ten measures of lechery given to the world, Arabia has taken nine.

Two or three Kenite girls who stood aside from the dance ran up to him. He addressed them cheerfully : “Daughters, I have not come to buy from you. I am under vows. But where is your queen to be found ?”

At this they laughed more loudly even than the men and caused such a commotion that the flute-players laid down their flutes and turned round to see what was happening. The dance stopped. Soon a crowd of idle and inquisitive people clustered about him.

“What do you want with Mary, handsome fellow ?” the women asked him. “A love-philtre? No? Then an oracle perhaps? Not an oracle? An injurious charm to bury in the sand under your neighbour’s gate? A little quillful of poison to end the whining of a sick wife ?”

“I am not buying to-night, busy daughters,” Jesus answered.

“Then you are selling ?” asked the leader of the dance, a Galilean by her dress and accent, tinkling her ankle-bells provokingly at him as she pranced up and down. “Aha, I have guessed your secret. Taper
fingers, thieves’ fingers! You are the clever fellow who tricked the watch and filched the fingers and nose of the bandit Obadas whom the Romans crucified by the pools of Bethlehem last week. But clever as you may be, Child, avoid the Hairdresser’s company until the morning! A wise man will have no dealings with her unless he goes escorted by a trustworthy friend and in broad daylight. An incautious customer went to a rendezvous with her by moonlight three years ago, under Samson’s pillars, hoping to sell her a hand-of-glory. She took the fellow by the wrist, pulled him between the pillars, slowly waved her hands before his face like weeds in a brook, and ordered him to lie down and sleep. When he awoke, she was gone ; and so was the hand-of-glory. But the jest was, that when next he sneezed, he sneezed off his nose! It was a wax one that she had thoughtfully given him to replace the flesh and gristle she had taken off him.”

“I am not selling to-night, daughter of Israel.”

“I cannot guess your business then, Child. For nobody but a fool would seek out the Hairdresser, even by day, except to buy or sell.”

“I am not revealing my business.”

“Give me a blessing, with nothing in it said backwards, and I will take you to the place where she is to be found. But she will not greet you kindly ; this is the night of her vigil in the willow.”

“Do you indeed wish for a blessing ?”

“Which of us does not? Blessings from holy men are hard to come by.”

“Then may the Lord bless you with a sign of his mercy : a sudden splitting of the drum of your tambourine !”

She thrust out her tongue, returned to the dance and began beating her tambourine ; but he followed her with his eyes and no sooner had she begun the movement called the Horse Leech than the drum suddenly split across. She stumbled, stopped, fell down and screamed. They carried her away and soused her with water ; she stopped screaming, but did not dance again that night.

A Kenite girl said : “ I will willingly conduct you to Mary the Hairdresser, holy spoilsport, and tell her of the broken tambourine.”

“Do so, and earn my thanks.”

She led him back over the hill and into the town. They came to the fish-pool of Hebron where the sacred fish had once been kept, and she climbed over the wall of the enclosure and beckoned him to follow. But when they stood at the pool-side together, by a huge willow that leaned across a bed of reeds, she suddenly grew frightened. She left him there in the moonlight, saying as she ran off : “Knock at the door if you dare ; she is within.”

Jesus disdained to knock. He said in a voice of authority : “Willow-tree of Hebron, tree of death : for the sakes of Salmon and Salmah, and of Samson the strong who burst your green bonds apart, give up the witch who is hiding in your hollow trunk.”

Mary the Hairdresser (who in Chrestian books is named Mary of
Magdala) stepped out very angrily. She was a tall blue-eyed hag, her nose crooked like a falcon’s beak. “Who disturbs my vigil ?”

“Look !”

“I can see nothing.”

“Your eyes are shut. Open them and you will see.”

“Who gives me orders ?”

“Unstop your ears, deaf adder, and you will hear.”

“Master, what do you want of me ?” she asked, taken aback.

“Your help against God’s Adversary !”

“Against the champion of my Mistress ?”

“Himself !”

“Follow me to my Mistress’s house, madman, and dare repeat your request there !”