Gospel (81 page)

I had been once a man of God, but in Alexandria I had become a man of nothing—moorless, adrift. I would attend the Nazirene synagogue and hear ludicrous claims, untrue stories, tales of staggering miracles (so popular where a faith must compete with the theistic wealth of Africa), and I would wander to my lowly apartment through the noisy, dusty streets, dejected and without peace, keenly aware of how I had failed the Nazirene Church, how much yet my Church needed me to ascend to the scholar's chair. And more: how much my soul cried out for the guidance and assurance of God!

It is at that point, broken in spirit nearly to the point of refusing to rise from my pallet each morning, that by chance—no, it was by the Most High's doing!—that I encountered that scoundrel Duldul ibn-Waswasah who, like many merchants, had moved his business from obliterated Jerusalem.

28.
Waswasah accosted me in the marketplace and ran to embrace me. From the din of the market he led me, still in the shock of surprise, to his home on the outskirts of the city where the Sabaeans had banded together in tent cities. Waswasah commanded one of his slaveboys—with a painted face, purchased for some unspeakable use—to make us some tea of mint and jasmine. Waswasah bade me lie down on his silks and cushions and kissed me fondly, heaping blessings and greetings upon my soul and my family.

He in time said to me, “You have decided your rebbe is not of God? You wish to go to Yavneh and make amends with the Pharisees? It can be arranged!”

I said that my affection for Our Master was strong but in my years of wandering and research I had yet found no part of his Church that reflected His True Teaching, no disciple that was His worthy heir.

29.
Waswasah said to me, “It would be best for you and your people to forget their Messiahs before the Romans make an end of you. I have thought often of you, dear Matthias, with sadness, and I assumed in the siege you too had been made an end of.”

With the torrid nature of the Arabian race, he seemed as if he might weep in his happiness to see me. But I now imagine he was overjoyed that more of my money might fall into his purse. I explained that I was but a poor tutor now and had no money to spend upon his services.

He asked, “What of your estate?”

Ruined in the Roman march, I said to him, and furthermore the deed was now in the hands of my famous brother, the general.

“Ah, the traitor,” said Duldul ibn-Waswasah to me.

(I commit his opinion to print, in the interest of accuracy.)

30.
I said to Waswasah that I was, as ever, curious about the last days of My Master. Was it possible to talk to any of the Roman guards who watched his tomb?

The Sabaean said to me, “My friend, those guards who let your master escape saw soon the cross themselves! And in any event, if they survived it was only to die elsewhere. It has been decades!” Then Waswasah amazed me, saying, “I have, I admit, taken advantage of you in the past, and this you know. While your money has held out I have sent you through the known world, taking a substantial fee for my arrangements and information. But now that there is no more to take I will reward you with the truth, for free. Your Master's body, as the Jews tell, was stolen from the crypt in Golgotha Field.”

31.
I replied, such is a familiar libel.

He said to me, “And if there was proof?”

I shouldn't believe any set of old bones, nor even a convincing collection of robes. Such shams are on display for every would-be Prophet. Aside from the horrors of James bar-Alphaeus's collection, I have myself seen the quill of Isaiah, the rod of Moses, even was once shown the skull of Elijah in an Idumaean marketplace, of all asininities.
17

32.
Waswasah said to me, “Joseph of Arimathea in the Sanhedrin asked for Your Master's body after the crucifixion, no? I knew Joseph very well as a fellow merchant and his trade in spices was important to me. He told me, in fact, that he expected Your Lord to be borne from the cross by the angelic host. Did you know that there were many portents the evening your Master died? Oh, yes! A tremor in the earth bode ill, and before the Temple a cow gave birth to a lamb—such things were seen.”

Where are such things not seen?

33.
Waswasah related the popular slander, repeated by the School of Shammai, Gamaliel the Younger, and others: “Joseph had a meal sent down to the Roman guards with a sleeping-draught in the wine.”

My host leaned closer, though there was no one that could overhear. “But now comes the thing as a historian, a great scholar like yourself, will surely find interesting. Joseph sent his two slaves to the tomb to remove the body and this they did.” Waswasah then asked of me, “Did you yourself, my friend, see Your Master upon his return from Hades?”

“No,” I answered him, “but many Disciples I have talked to did bear witness. John and James bar-Alphaeus.” Although as I made this answer, the untrustworthy natures of the men who so testified began to trouble me.

34.
“I feel you are not so convinced,” said my Sabaean host, “otherwise you should not have pursued your researches with such fervor. I merely save you much time and bring out the truth for you: the slaves who stole Your Master's body from the tomb took this relic to Egypt for safekeeping. It is there still! The bones of the Jewish Messiah.”

“And I suppose,” I said, displaying my learned sarcasm, “that you propose to show me a stack of old dog bones and thereby collect another fee for your services?”

But at this, Waswasah pulled back and it took many moments of ameliorations and blandishments to apologize for my rash comment. He said, having recovered, “I merely try to save you more trouble and worry. How you repay my kindness!”

35.
I argued that there was a problem with his tale. If these slaves of Joseph indeed possessed such a relic and harbored such a secret, these slaves might surely profit richly by it. Indeed, the Pharisees and the Romans alike might pay handsomely for such a proof of Our Master's mortality.

Waswasah said to me, “You are quite wise. The slaves became as wealthy as you say! I do not recall the first man's name—but no matter, I am quite sure he is dead. But the other man, Benjamin, lives in Elephantine where Joseph paid him extravagantly to hide his secret. I knew Benjamin, you see, because he gave a generous measure to his master's salt when we traded—now I hear he is richer than any of us in Elephantine! How can one explain such a fortune in a former slave? How can one explain such a disappearance? I leave this analysis to a gifted historian such as yourself.”

He said further to me, “Benjamin was Bithynian. Why would he go of his own will to Elephantine where his tongue and even Greek is rarely of avail? Perhaps it was a condition of his freedom that he hide there, yes? Hide there with the secret relics of Your Master, of which I've heard rumors. Indeed, ghastly terrible rumors concerning their nature.”

36.
I declared that Waswasah was a vessel of gossip and rumors. “What should it prove,” I presently asked, “if I were to go to Elephantine and investigate this report? I shouldn't believe any old bones against the testimony of scores of people who saw Our Master back from the dead.” Although, I did not relate to my host the conflicting and ethereal nature of most of these sightings.

He said to me: “What if I were to tell you, dear Matthias, that the death-relic is intact and incorrupt, like the mummies of old?”

Such abominations! No custom more barbarous or unclean and against all that God in His Law forbade than the embalming of corpses! And to think Waswasah suggested that our Master met this fate!

He said to me, “Ah, but it is true. It was part of a larger plan, my friend, to have Your Master appear at some distance from a crowd and establish a resurrection. However, the Nazirenes managed to invent their resurrection well enough without this bit of helpful theater. But that, if Benjamin is still alive, is what awaits you if you pursue your history to Elephantine.”

37.
Elephantine! Several hundred miles down the Nile into the infernal Abyssinia to chase such a story! I said to him, “You take me still for the fool I've been. You believe that my brother will give me money for this expedition and that I am lying to you about my poverty.”

He did not get angry, but said to me, “No, I do not hope to take money from you. I tell you this to ease your mind. Ah, I pity you believers-of-Gods. What God there may be or may not be I leave to others, yes?” He lifted his purse and rattled the coins within. “There is my God and I know that He exists. He is omnipotent and good to those who worship Him, yes? Go. Go build a new home, make a new family, sleep and forget, and wake to spend the rest of your days in the service of education—ah, buy yourself a beautiful boy like Kamaar there, yes?”

Waswasah's wretched little cup-bearer, obviously the prize of his master's aquiline eye, looked up at us with heavy lids. (The vices of the Sons of Ishmael know no bounds!)

38.
There was a lull when at last Waswasah said to me, “However, if you must go to Elephantine, I have a way. O the upper reaches of the Nile are beautiful to behold! A poetical soul like yourself would surely be moved. Ah yes, I remember in addition to all your other skills and excellencies that you are a poet of the first rank!”

I inquired about this voyage with suspicion.

He said to me, “Each year I conduct business to buy spices and frankincense from my cousins among the Sabaeans, ivory and gold-dust from the Aethiope, and the like. I have attempted to entrust my order and letter of greetings to Romans and other couriers but in these times the posts are undependable. I need to entrust such an important document to someone I know who will go and return. If you were to go to Nubia for your stupendous history, my friend, you could deliver my letter.”

39.
I saw everything now: his story of Benjamin was an elaborate ruse to get me to do this chore! But when I said as much, he sighed and played hurt again to be so distrusted, though he warranted nothing else.

Waswasah said to me, “A caravan leaves in four days and as my agent it shall cost you nothing to ride along to Elephantine. As for your food and supplies, I shall give you a maneh, and for your trouble, a second one [6000 shekels]. Come. I would not make up such a story for my business's sake. It will be a simple thing for you to sail back down the Nile and I would have to face your wrath when you return, no?”

40.
Yes, Josephus, it indeed proved my last folly. Perhaps, my brother, you turn your head and laugh even now as you read it, but I agreed to deliver Waswasah's letters and I boldly prepared to ascend the Nile. Because I had to know! Of course, I had to complete the life-account of Our Master for the generations of historians who awaited my work—to them I felt a duty, as a great scholar must. But also for myself! Had I followed mistaken paths yet again? Was I to learn by this investigation that the Nazirenes' claims of resurrection for Our Master were invention, calculated to keep his wondrous movement alive?

What responsibility suddenly rested with me. Here at the very last, old and beyond all plans and usefulness, the Most High had lifted me up to this task: to know, as no other Nazirene or Disciple, the truth of the final days after Our Master's execution. I assumed, naturally, that this was a groundless tale, another carefully crafted libel to discredit Our Master … but what if it were not?

41.
Ah, Tesmegan, you should have seen me those last days in Alexandria! I became giddy as a young man; I was alive and joyous as if returned to a former happiness—it seemed I was not dead after all! And were there not Disciples left to search for? Matthew, who had evangelized the Nile decades before—might he be in Elephantine? Philip, who was said to be in the Faiyum. And I toyed with the thought of going to Mary of Migdal's illustrious convent (though I had had little success with Nazirene women and their willfulness).

42.
But this greatest and last expedition was not undertaken without fear and a heavy heart:

I tried to imagine how I would feel were I to prove that Our Master's body was in fact held by the slave Benjamin! Would I continue to write and preach in favor of Our Master? Perhaps for the sake of the charitable Nazirene communes and all the good they do I would keep quiet if I found it were so. (Tesmegan, my dutiful scribe, smiles, for he knows the answer and what I found here in Meroe.)

43.
And a worse, wrenching fear yet … God could dictate my life as suited His Will, but how I loathed the idea of perhaps having to one day return to Jerusalem to preach my discoveries, good or bad, before the Nazirenes and Pharisees alike! My Lord, anything but that! Alas Holy
Sophia,
Blessed Wisdom, it has seemed in these painful years no path would give peace, save one: the road leading away from Jerusalem, seat of all accursed and damned! Source of all enmity and war, destroyed as Our Master presaged, gone with its fanatics and troublemakers, zealots and hypocrites. Surely the Master of the Universe will never allow its irksome, smoldering rubble to rise again!

JERUSALEM

 

In less than thirty years the Israelis have produced a modern country.… It is both a garrison state and cultivated society, both Spartan and Athenian. It tries to do everything, to understand everything, to make provision for everything. All resources, all faculties are strained.… These people are actively, individually involved in universal history. I don't see how they can bear it.

—
To Jerusalem and Back
(1976)
S
AUL
B
ELLOW

There are miracles under my chair if I would bend over.

—attributed to Rabbi E
LEAZAR

Here, in this carload, I, Eve, with my son Abel. If you see my older boy, Cain, son of Adam, tell him that I