Gospel (143 page)

2
. From
Genesis
10:1 and 6 there is a jumble of place names masquerading as genealogy:
These are the generation of the sons of Moah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth; sons were born to them after the flood.… The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan … Cush became the father of Nimrod; he was the first on earth to become a mighty man.”
   Cush, the short-lived but glorious 25th or “Ethiopian” Dynasty of Egypt (728–664
B.C.E.
) eventually ceded Lower Egypt but continued to rule in the Sudan, first at Napata (653 to 525
B.C.E.
) until trouble with the Persians moved them farther south up the Nile to Meroe (near modern-day Khartoum). The First Century saw Meroe at its height.

3
. Meroe, by Roman times, was considered untakeable. Herodotus and other Greek sources tell of futile attempts to take Cush by the Egyptians, who eventually would lose their own kingdom to the Cushites. The gospel's author seems to reflect the Meroitic xenophobia for visitors. Herodotus records the ingenuous response of an Aethiopian king:
The king of Persia has not sent you with presents in order to foster a friendship. You have come to get information about my kingdom; therefore you are liars and your king is a bad man.
Romans toyed with a mission in the 60s
C.E.
but the scouting party disappeared; indeed, the few historical contacts with Meroe suggests they did not let ambassadors or emissaries leave.
   Rome's Egyptian Province bordered upon Meroe, and was the one border in their empire they did not defend (after an attempt at Qasr Ibrahim), choosing to garrison troops in fractious Alexandria where they could be more usefully applied.

4
. Aethiopica, the land of burned faces, is not to be thought of as modern-day Ethiopia, but rather the southern Sudan. Nor, confusingly enough, is modern-day Merowe (which was Napata) to be thought of as Meroe (whose ruins are near Khartoum), nor is present-day Dongola in Nubia the site of ancient Dongola.

5
. The author imagines he is at the meetings of the two Niles, White and Blue, near modern-day Khartoum, but it is the Astaboras, which flows into the Nile near Meroe, not the Astapus. The Meroitians and Greek-speakers probably called the Astaboras “the Atbara,” which confused the author.

6
.
Exodus
7:20–21, the Plague of Blood.

7
. Meroe is not well excavated or well known about, due to its impenetrable language and its location in the harsh realms of the Sudan, whose modern government is not always cooperative with intellectual undertakings within its borders. However, some is known of their astounding trade. Meroe's foreign contacts were as vast as Rome's, whose coins have been found in digs throughout Meroe. The capitals of Meroe and Napata traded with Ethiopians farther south and the sub-Saharan nomads; indeed, the seeds of the Great Sudanese Empires of West Africa, Ghana, Mali, and Songhay derive much from these primitive trading routes. Near the Red Sea, the Meroitians traded with India, Parthia, later the Kushans (no relation), and indirectly with the Chinese. The society seemed to adopt whatever pleased them from Egypt, the Ptolemies, the Jews, the Romans, and eventually, when the Axumites overran them in the 300s for sure, but probably earlier, the Christians.
   For all this, their language, despite 800 textual examples and a phonetic code deciphered in 1909, is still mysterious, resembling no known Indo-European or African tongue. The Egyptian hieroglyphs the Meroitians used before developing their own written language are turned backward and read differently—as if from the very beginning their language had been composed to be a mystery to the outside world.

8
. The Greeks called Augustus Caesar “Sebastian,” and the proliferation of his image as an ideal youth were “sebastians” as well. A head of Augustus, curiously, was found purposefully embedded in one of the Meroitian palace doorways. Whether this was reverence (as suggested by this document) or disdain (after the Meroitians sacked Roman Aswan in the 20s
B.C.E.
) is hard to say.

9
. The Meroitians had a notoriety for the fatness of their queens. Their cult of the large black woman, aside from the universal earth-mother connotations, had its roots in Cush/Egypt (Egyptians called themselves
kamit
or “black”) and attained its height in Meroe. Most female gods of the Nile had “black” as a divine attribute; indeed, the Mediterranean has no shortage of venerated Black Madonnas even now. A large black woman was thought to embody the virtues of Isis, who was commonly rendered in hieroglyphic as “the great black woman.” No ancient society of the period was so thoroughly a matriarchy as Meroe, though mother-son and husband-wife coregencies are recorded in what little we know of Meroitian history.

10
. This “Century of Debacles” is lost to history, but during a period where at least three men ruled consecutively (ending by 12
C.E.
) the Romans, under the vicious governor Petronius of Egypt, managed to avenge the sack of Aswan by razing Napata, the second-greatest city of the empire.

11
. A note about the slaves: Though the Nubian slave was valued in antiquity [see above 7:7] for his strength and size, racial slavery is a latter-day concept and ancient nations enslaved each other regardless of nationality, and freed them more readily as well. The Meroitians, confirmed in this author's account, seem to have been a black nation with white slaves, a situation that has not seen enough research, considering the derivation of “slave” (from the use of white Slavs) suggests white slavery in empires of color was at some point a norm. See the Victorian historian G. A. Hoskins's quaint and fascinating
Travels in Ethiopia
for many evidences of white slavery in Upper Egypt and Abyssinia.

12
. Shanakdekhete was a historical and repeated name of the candaces but this particular queen is unrecorded. Shanakdekhete's namesake was a candace of the 160s
B.C.E.
who appears to have been the first sole female ruler of Meroe; her name appears on the Meroitic hieroglyphs at Naga, among the earliest examples of Meroitic known.

13
. The jewels of Meroe, like its gold, was a legend with a source in truth for once. Ferlini in the 1830s raided the Meroe funeral complexes, hence the splendors of the Berlin and Munich museums. Meroe led the ancient world in gold mining—they were expert miners, having taken iron smelting to its highest-known state. Entire Meroitic temple interiors were caked in gold leaf.

14
. The Sabaeans (modern-day Yemen and Djibouti) had the custom of never allowing the queen or king to leave their palace; indeed, the Queen of Sheba (Sabaea) in her trip to King Solomon was a rare emissary. If identified out of their palace, the king or queen of the Sabaeans would be stoned by their subjects. The source of this predisposition to regicide might well be ancient Cush, in which the priests could advise a king to commit suicide and were unflinchingly obeyed (except for one Greek-loving Meroitian king who had the priests killed, according to Diodorus Siculus!).

15
. The author's odd reference to magic balms derives from an odd bit of Old Testament apocrypha in which Solomon impresses the Queen of Sheba by showing her a depilatory cream that removes the hair from her legs.
Your beauty is as the beauty of women,
Solomon informs her in the Ethiopian
Kibre Negest, but your hair is as the hair of a man!
Curiously, some fragment of this tale made its way into the Quran, in which Sheba's legs are bared before Solomon,
Surah
27:44.

16
. Twenty-fifth Dynastic temples and Cushite legendary cycles resemble that of the Greeks on the subject of the marauding Persians. They too tell of Darius and Xerxes attempting to take their kingdom and failing. Having launched an arrogant raid to the “land of the cannibals,” the Persians, ironically, starved before reaching Meroe and turned to eating each other. This much-recounted Persian disgrace bolstered popular notions that no northern or Eurasian empire could harm them. Indeed, it was the Axumites from the south who defeated them unexpectedly.

17
. It is curious, and confirming what many patristic scholars have long suspected, that the Early Church, and Matthias here, know nothing of any Christian ceremony, i.e., the Eucharist.

18
. About fifteen lines are lost due to a tear in the papyrus here. The manuscript continues at 7:37 below.

Chapter 8

19
. For speculation over the missing paragraph, see my paper in
The University of Chicago Theologian,
vol. XXVIII, no. 1. Patrick V. O'Hanrahan, “Textual Problems in the
Gospel of Matthias.”

20
.
John
18:38.

21
. Josephus's later work,
The Antiquities of the Jews,
was accompanied by an autobiographical
Life
that in many places contradicts his account of his actions in his earlier
The Jewish War.
In the earlier work one reads of his superhuman diplomacy and martial skills, but one finds a humbler Josephus in the
Life,
i.e.,
And on this [escapade], I suppose, it was that God, who is never unacquainted with those that do as they ought to do, delivered me still out of the hands of these my enemies
.… (
Vita,
15). This editor is not convinced there was a wholesale conversion from the pro-Roman life back to observant Judaism. It seems where before his own magnificence brought him rewards, in the
Life
it is because Josephus is God's own warrior that he succeeds. His egotism remains undimmed.
   More curious in the
Life
is his insistence on his compassion. For example,
They also came to me to Taricheae with four miles of loadings of garments and other furniture, and the weight of the silver they brought was not small and there were five hundred pieces of gold also.… And it is prohibited by our laws even to spoil our enemies
(
Vita,
26). Certainly loving one's enemies was no part of Hasmonean or Herodian Judea. When a faction insists on persecuting another Jewish sect for their heresies, Josephus says he said,
“Everyone ought to worship God according to his own inclinations and not to be constrained by force”
(
Vita,
23). Might he, in later years, have truly investigated the Ebionite Christianity of his brother?
   See S. J. D. Cohen,
Josephus in Galilee and Rome,
appendix 1 (Leiden, 1979) or more recently, M. Hersch,
Josephus,
“Vita” chapter (HUP, 1992).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The epics of old invoked the muses for inspiration and gratitude … we have acknowledgments pages.

B
RITAIN.
Let me thank John and Chris Kelly for the best that was in Oxford, the monks at Blackfriars, late-night theological discussions with Gordon and Jonathan, Tania Glyde on general principle, and St. John's College and their legendary Arabist Freddie Beeston. I
RELAND.
Apologies to Cormac about the name; many thanks to David and his folks (and Bruce and Andrew) in Belfast and their splendid hospitality in contrast to my little encounter with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Utterly indispensable was James Logue for his savvy and guidance. I
TALY.
Ciao,
Enrico, love to my muse Elisabetta, an enormous
grazie
to Davide, with thanks to Tom, who lost everything with me after the robbery in Rome. G
REECE.
Nothing was possible without the assistance of Father Timothy Ware, who got me onto Mt. Athos where I enjoyed the charity of monks in Dionysiou, Pantokrator, Megistri Lavra Monasteries, and most especially the skete of Prophet Elias and its abbot Father Seraphim, a true man of God (I hope nothing herein gives offense,
Pater
). Love and gratitude to Henrietta Miers, who endured the night we hit the flock of sheep on the freeway, James Delingpole for his heroic endurance by my side, and the Stamboulopouloi for their incomparable Athenian hospitality, with exceeding thanks to the lovely Artemis for all the dirty Greek words. J
ERUSALEM.
The unflappable Christina Gerstgrasser at the wheel for her superb rock-dodging in Hebron, Occupied West Bank (and Hertz for being so forgiving about the windshield), my old pal Jacob, the one and only Mimi Stark, George Moffat at the
Monitor,
my friend Khaldoun, and countless kind Palestinians along the way. A
FRICA.
James Fergusson for his company up the Nile, the American University in Cairo, Father Matthew at the Monastery of St. Bola, who lovingly revealed the splendors of the Coptic faith, and the monks of Deir el-Muharraq, and the guestmaster of Deir el-Suriani who took me to the desert and prayed with me in the cave of Pope Carolus where the Holy Spirit dwelt, where one looked out upon the wastes seeing the occasional light from the fires of the lone monks, some of them out there thirty years.… Blessings upon the aid workers gathered in the Metropole Hotel in Khartoum, the Holy Spirit abides with you! Innumerable thanks to my African friends Sele and Rashawn for extricating me from many a bureaucratic scrape. Peace upon your lands!

Also, closer to home, thanks to Henry Dunow, Danetta Genung, Mary Pendergraft of Wake Forest University, the tireless Cal Morgan, Amelie Littell, Leslie Sharpe, Ian Sturgess, Jeremy Drake, Loie Kostelich, Greg Kelly, Rev. Stimp Hawkins, Don Campbell (fastest xeroxer east of the Mississippi …), and my support staff in Chicago: Leslie, Ceece, Cynthia, and Judy. And of course and always Thomas McCormack, through whom all things flow, the munificent, the deferrer, forgiver of failed deadlines, who is with me always.…

Oh yeah. And to Lux Rent-A-Car, the Bashir and Mengistu regimes (one down, one to go), to the Ethiopian Tourist Commission, and to American Express, who canceled my card
when I was in the friggin' Sudan
after a review showed I had “insufficient salary” to deserve renewal, I execrate you:
Anathema! Anathema! Anathema!