Gospel (101 page)

I saw by this clever twisting of rhetoric that I was left no choice but to expose him for the fraud he was. I asked to be taken to the central building of the village and, with resignation, he led me to the door of the synagogue. The elders were assembled and women came from their kitchens; I was asked to stand upon a rock near the garden of the synagogue.

15.
Then something quite untoward happened that perhaps will shock you: as I spoke, claiming my lineage as a True Disciple, One of the Blessed Twelve, I was actually doubted! What is more, as I tried to convince this mob that Pseudo-Philip was not of the official rank he claimed and that he should be demoted, Levi—the rough beater of women—was angered and decided to vent his wrath upon me. I was seized by the robes and thrown to the ground. I was told that I should perform miracles and do combat with Crassus and so reveal who God aids. As I refused, knowing that sort of demonstration has not historically been available to me, one man cried out “Why do you come to cause trouble?” and another “Go back to the rubble of Jerusalem, you Pharisee!” and this sort of thing.

I was carried outside the gate of the oasis and set down roughly in the dirt. The gate was locked behind me. As I lay there, injured and bruised, I considered that Crassus had seduced them like a draft of opium and controlled their minds. Crassus himself, nearly an hour after the scene with the mob, came to the gate with a young girl who dabbed my wounds with linen and warmed water.

16.
He said to me, “What has your rank availed you, my friend Matthias?”

I said honestly, dejected in spirit, that it had brought me very little. Perhaps—it occurs to me now—better an impostor who follows the Lord's teachings than a Disciple who is useless. Silas, Linus, Timothy, Agrippa: the Nazirene Church was increasingly in the hands of people who were not Disciples, indeed, people who never met the Teacher of Righteousness.

I explained to Pseudo-Philip, “I am embarked on a journey to complete a full and comprehensive history; on my way to Elephantine to prove a scurrilous rumor about Our Master false. But perhaps we could start again? I could stay the night in Ammos and then try again to speak before your community.”

He said to me, “I would rather you not. You have already sewn seeds of doubt among the village here—it was a mistake, after all, to let you speak. As long as my primacy was undoubted we could live without rancor, but already the elders compete among themselves for the hierarch's seat … Ah, what have you started? You have led us to doubt. They were not the doubts that plague every man, but forgive me, my friend, they were
your
doubts. It would be difficult to honor you among the leaders here when your own faith is uncertain.”

17.
I abased myself and said to him, “Then I shall be as the lowest among you!”

He refused, saying to me, “It should cause too much worry if a man who looked upon the face of Our Master and heard His voice has come to doubt. Perhaps you should talk to another of the great Disciples whose convent is not too far from here.”

My heart leaped to think there was a Disciple I had failed to trace. Was it long-lost Matthew?

“Mary of Migdal, Chief of the Disciples,” he answered.
11

Mary! A woman, our chief! However, I asked, did he get that notion?

He said to me, “But is this not common knowledge? Was not she the Disciple closest to Our Master?”

18.
My memories of Mary [Magdalene] were respectful. She was a wealthy woman and intelligent, in as far as the latter becomes a woman. I was sure that if she knew that this misinformation was circulating (that she, not Peter, was Chief of the Disciples) that she would write the necessary missives to clear up all confusions. Indeed, I saw that I might facilitate a published renunciation that she might sign before heresy had a chance to take root and grow! (Imagine my distress at having to shore up these ruins by adding mortar to the pedestal of that incompetent, Simon Peter! But yet it seemed then what God would have me do.)
12

19.
Reaching the outskirts of Thmuis that next week, I was taken by a Bedouin to the door of the convent. An Amazon of a girl stood atop the convent wall armed with bow-and-arrow and I am sure she would have thought nothing of skewering me. Mary herself, after some time, emerged at the doorway to talk through a sliding panel. She was enshrouded in a black robe, only her eyes revealed.

She said at last to me, “Ah, indeed it is you, Matthias. Why should I let you in?”

I said to her, “But dear Mary, I am a Disciple of Our Most Beloved Master and Teacher!”

20.
Mary said to me, “You always despised and denigrated me. Any interest I showed in Our Master's teaching, you ridiculed, saying it was not a woman's place. I shall give you food and water, of course, but I do not see why I should entertain you.”

I protested saying that I never meant to be unkind to her; indeed, in the company of Our Teacher I never gave her a moment of sustained thought.

She said to me, “That is exactly the unkindness to which I refer. You and John both: women-haters.”

It is no exaggeration to say that I begged Mary for admittance and offered up a psalm, composed on the spot, of praise to her steadfast lifelong chastity.

At last she relented, saying to me, “Actually, I have been expecting you.”

21.
The door was opened and I heard a flurry of iron works and levers alter in the door. The women were well protected, as I suppose they must be in a Roman world! What locks are too secure for the guarding of that precious boon, virgin purity?

I was escorted through the compound and I observed the totally draped women, sexless and featureless except for hands and eyes that saw the light. One must be impressed by this show of holiness and Mary informed me that the women did not observe one another undressing or bathing, and most properly, all their hair was shorn so as never to be displayed should a wind gust remove their veils.
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I was led to the kitchen where some food and wine were found for me.

22.
Throughout the entire visit I saw nought but Mary's aged eyes—as to her form or weight beneath her robes, I could wager no guess. Like the Essenes of old, the true women-haters, she had managed to make the gross, shameful body invisible before men.

Mary said to me, “I have been expecting that you might travel here. Some years back I received a letter from Thomas's wife that you were writing a history and had become strained with doubts. Then Peter wrote some years ago, among other more important news, that you had lost your faith.”

(I was horrified to learn my innocent questionings had become common lore!)

Mary said to me, “No, it is no use to lie to me. I can tell by your eyes that the light of faith has gone. I wonder that it was ever really there.”

I ate the meal quietly, as she talked further.

23.
She said to me, “We have come to Thmuis to avoid the menfolk.”

Very good, lest the women become snares of temptation!

She said to me, “My brother Matthias, it is the so-called scholarship and prejudice of men that we wish to rid ourselves of. Look at what your fellow male creatures have made of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judea. The Romans proved the least of our enemies. Here we keep the true teachings of Our Master alive.”

I informed her, “At Oxyrhynchus, dear Mary, some are possessed of the notion that you are Chief among the Disciples. I come, in part, to aid your renunciation of such a claim.”

Those mysterious eyes stared hard at me, and at last she said to me, “If I am raised up it is not by my word or deed but by those who observe me. I leave the matter to you who are best suited for such trivialities.”

24.
Mary took me to a library in which the women were reading and copying—the women! Mary said to me, “These scrolls contain the words of Our Savior as I recall them. Maryam of Bethany too has contributed. I have taken a dictation of Mary, wife of Alphaeus, who talked often with He Who Redeemed Us. Joanna, Susanna, Leah and her sister Agrippina, and of course Procla.
14
Every lesson Our Deliverer taught to women, every parable I can remember I have set down.”

What of the martyrologies of James, the Epistles of Peter, even the heterodox ramblings of Thomas? (Of course, I felt it unseemly, having admitted a loss of faith, to ask if my own
All Heresies Refuted
was within her vault.)

She said to me, “I have little of men here, for men distort and impose themselves and make a tale of it, or worse, aim an account to a place their minds are happy to go. Our Master spent most of his time in this world with women, and I have spent these forty years collecting their tales and reminiscences.”

25.
It must be said that the completeness of Mary's effort was daunting; why, it is not incorrect to say that her family's great wealth had been utterly squandered on this enterprise. I asked how she continued to finance herself.

She said to me, “The women themselves bring this money. Widows and their estates, prostitutes and their treasure.”

Common harlots and courtesans, adulteresses and criminals, no doubt conveniently eluding capture and punishment, pretending to pore over these unorthodox texts as if it were the School of Gamaliel itself! Accounts scrawled by women with no training in the arts of rhetoric, history, theology, composition. And yet, as I have had more time to think of it, the accusations of Mary have stung me, and I have found this enterprise not entirely misguided—something Our Master may indeed have intended, such was His peculiarity about the worth of women and their minds.

(Ah, Tesmegan has interrupted to inform me that in
this
ludicrous kingdom all the teachers are women—how is that for outlandish?)

26.
Mary then said to me, “While John and your lot argued over who was to be the first in the Kingdom
15
like spoiled children, I sat at His feet and asked questions. And moreover, He discussed matters with me He shared not with the Twelve for He knew I would not distort them or raise myself up by them.”

I too sat down on the long stone bench, which was fashioned uncomfortably so that no ease would befall those who studied there. I began to read, in an elegant Greek (though the penmanship left something to be desired), Mary's account of the Teacher of Righteousness.

27.
I do not possess her scroll to recopy it here, but I remember it well enough. What was revealed was a vision of Our Master vulnerable and pessimistic, and, dare I say it, confused and offended often, weaker than I remembered. Could it be He was brave for us, but confessed His insecurities to the womenfolk who would understand? Mind you, Our Master was ever-confident about God and His ministry—all the teaching and debating, I recall, showed Our Master to advantage, He being more skilled in the learned arts than any man I have ever met. But I encountered in Mary's history a man of misgivings, of profound cynicism even: I repeat, not about God or His Mission, but about
us
, His followers and the followers yet to be born.

How anxiously I scanned her text for fear that my name would appear and he would express a reservation about my inclusion on certain meetings, a doubt as to my fitness for the ministry. But though I found the other Disciples, I saw not a word about myself. Indeed, tears even come to my eyes now. Who was I that the Teacher of Righteousness, the One Who Was Delivered Up, should notice?

28.
One of Mary's accounts has Our Teacher prophesy about the future of the Nazirenes: Our Savior foresaw a priestly caste as bad as the Pharisees arising from His followers, steeped in error and arrogance, and that the women who would object would be persecuted. Our Savior goes on to urge Mary to fight this caste and never give back the better portion, which the women have taken in His ministry. Such mysteries!

Another collection of papers titled the
Amarantikon
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has the Teacher assure Mary that His Church would be in the hands of women, safeguarding its true virtues as the centuries progressed.

29.
Mary said to me, “Our Deliverer came to fulfill the Law and to abolish it. We women are no longer to be the chattel of drunken husbands and greedy fathers.”

(Well, now, here we had it all—typical female usurpation one finds in all Jewish women of money and position. But I shall record the rest of her rhetoric.)

Mary further said to me, “‘She that would follow Him must leave her father and mother, and cease to be wife and maidservant,' Matthias. Do you not remember His teachings? The men of the Temple mocked Him for not delivering them to a victorious military engagement, and they do not see that He was the deliverer for us, for women. When I think that alone of women He chose me to confide in completely…”

Here, tears filled Mary's eyes.

30.
And I pronounced truly, “You were in love with Him!”

She said, “With all my heart and all my soul, I shall love Him always, and teach my sisters to love Him as I love Him, chastely and with reverence. My brother Matthias, you see He is the only bridegroom we can ever know? There is no other now. He has bade us express our love for all humanity. If it is sufficient for every man to be nurtured by his mother, why is it no less important for the Earth and all her children to be nurtured by the Female Wisdom in all female creatures?”
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31.
You shall, predictably, find this sort of talk inane, Josephus, but knowing what I did of Our Teacher, I had few doubts that He might have spoken such to her. Indeed, it explained a lot of His strange choice of companions—slave girls, prostitutes, adulteresses, widows wicked by reputation, all who have been much fodder for the enemies of the Nazirenes, who accuse Him, the Stainless One, of consorting with a
harim,
of fornications and sodomies, profligacy and license.
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But perhaps, shall we consider, that God having made Man out of nothingness, having given Man the Law and appointed men earthly kingdoms, that now the Master of the Universe has sent One to lead the women? It all has the peculiar awkward fit of many of Our Master's ideas.