Skinny Legs and All (30 page)

So, it was just as well that Dirty Sock did not know. He lay, curled and otiose, in front of the grate, innocently awaiting the appearance of Turn Around Norman, paying only a modicum of notice to Can o’ Beans as he/she, in his/her way, speculated to Spoon about the possible size, shape, and significance of the Third Temple of Jerusalem.

Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.

If Can o’ Beans were a man, it’s probable that he/she would be bearded. Some, at least, could imagine the bean can sporting a neatly trimmed vandyke, or else something Lincolnesque; dressed, maybe, in a white suit, frayed of cuff and buttercupped with age; and supported by an eagle-headed cane; imagine the can pensively twirling a snifter of cognac as it pontificated before a library fire at the Explorers Club.

Perhaps that projection is far too narrow, far too simplistic to do justice to a complex figure, but no matter. As it was, facial hair and the dopey removal thereof was no issue for the tin of beans. It simply did its dignified best to protect what was left of its label as, misshapen and scarred, it squatted atop a soot-powered hymnal, which in turn lay atop an overturned coal bucket, straining to make itself heard above the mad waltz of traffic whose goosey crescendos honked and hissed through the grate. Nevertheless, the dessert spoon that sat at its feet could not have been more attentive had it raised a hand from time to time to stroke a pedagogish tassel of whiskers.

For Spoon’s benefit, Can o’ Beans had reviewed the information about the First Temple—Solomon’s (or Hiram’s) Temple—that had been imparted upon that shaky, pessimistic day in the aftermath of their ordeals in the Wyoming mountains. Now, he/she was reviewing aloud what they had learned of the Second Temple—Herod’s Temple—from accounts provided, at Can o’ Beans’s prodding, during a siesta in a fossil bed in northwestern Nebraska.

“I suppose we ought to keep the dates straight,” said Can o’ Beans. “Solomon’s Temple was destroyed in 586
B.C.
Right? The Second Temple, its low-rent replacement, was knocked together in 515
B.C.
That would mean that for, let’s see, seventy-one years, Jerusalem had no temple at all. Of course, most of the Jews were in exile in Babylon during that period, so there would’ve been no reason for a temple in Jerusalem town. But 515—aren’t you glad, Miss Spoon, that inanimate objects don’t live in history? At least, not in one that requires us to memorize dates. We’re luckier than we admit. No historical dates, no common cold, no income tax, no toe jam, toothaches, dandruff, herpes, halitosis, heartburn, or body hair. Especially body hair. Ugh! Although a smart goatee might be agreeable.”

“Dry rot,” growled Dirty Sock.

“Begging your pardon?”

“At least humans don’t dry rot. Or rust.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure,” Can o’ Beans disagreed. “Remember those old Republicans we saw at that rally in Iowa?” Spoon tittered. “But, say, Mr. Sock,” the can went on, “do you happen to recall the date when King Herod is said to have renovated the Second Temple?”

“Sure do. It was back in the year twenty-one afore Christ that the ol’ boy come across that fixer-upper.” Dirty Sock rolled over and turned his full attention to the street, leaving Can o’ Beans and Spoon to gape at each other in mild amazement.

It was during the Babylonian exile that the patriarchs finally got their monotheistic ducks in a row. In the tens of centuries that had rolled by since the tribe of Abraham made the political decision to promote its local tribal deity. Yahweh, as the one and only god in the cosmos, worship of the Great Mother had continued in Judea and Israel. Ancient Jews loved the Goddess, loved her wisely and well, and even when they came to accept Yahweh, they kept a shrine for her—in their temples and in their hearts. Astarte, or Ashtoreth, as they called her, reigned in the First Temple of Jerusalem alongside Yahweh and periodically, in place of him, a state of affairs that rankled the right-wing misogynists of the Yahwehistic extreme.

In exile, however, the Jews were unified as they never could have been at home. Oppression and homesickness strengthened their common bond. The more the Babylonians mocked the macho Yahweh, the tighter the Hebrews clung to him as a unique, indigenous cultural icon. Spurred by the prophet Ezekiel, the patriarchal priests hastened to take advantage of the situation.

It was in Babylon that the heretofore multitudinous, unmanageable laws and rituals of Judaism were edited and codified. New traditions, such as the synagogue, were established. And a stern, broad, inspiring dogma was hammered out of the ancient desert ores that they had hoarded and slowly refined in the fire of their longing. From that time on, a shield of dogmatic brass would deflect every tendered kiss of the Mother. So great was the patriarchs’ hatred and fear of her that she was left unnamed in their transcriptions. When referred to at all, it was as some vague, unspeakable, whorish pagan evil.

By 538
B.C.
, when the jubilant exiles were permitted to return to a desolated Judea (it had been leveled in the Babylonian invasion, remember), nearly a half-century of reprogramming would have purged them of their matriarchal affection. It was for the glory of Yahweh and Yahweh alone that they rebuilt their nation, their capital, and their Temple. The Second Temple, although as large as the First, was simple and plain; an odd, impoverished, jerry-built, unembellished religious blockhouse erected upon a pile of rubble. Neither the Goddess nor Conch Shell and Painted Stick would ever see the inside of that particular version—but their days and nights on the Temple Mount were not yet done.

“Yes, my goodness, yes,” said Spoon, “it’s coming back to me now. We were in that place with all the old petrified creepy-crawly things, and you were under the impression that Conch Shell and Painted Stick had been subjected to some kind of exile of their own, but Conch Shell explained that once they had escaped the rampage of the Babylonian troops, it had been business as usual, as far as their lives were concerned. Wasn’t that the story, ma’am/sir?”

“Correct. Under cover of darkness, as the expression goes, Mr. Stick and Miss Shell stole down from the Mount of Olives and made their way by starlight to a village, I forget its name, where they knew their goddess to be adored, and there they laid themselves on the doorstep of a priestess. In the morning, they were taken in, no questions asked, dusted off, kissed, and placed immediately upon an altar. Because the Babylonians were lovers of Ishtar, the occupation wasn’t hostile to those activities that Mr. Stick and Miss Shell were employed in. Judea was bread-and-water poor then, I guess; populated by a scattering of downtrodden shepherds, and it surely was a far cry from their glory days in Temple Number One, but our friends apparently were busy and content. As Mr. Stick put it, human folly does not impede the turning of the stars. During the exile, they were at work, never more than a few miles from Jerusalem. What was left of Jerusalem.”

“But after the Jews returned . . .”

“Ah, after the return it was a different ball game. Idolatry was no longer tolerated.”

“As well it shouldn’t be,” said Spoon, with a squeaky firmness. She rotated her dainty stem toward the far corner where the shell and the stick were conferring. “No offense intended.”

“My dear,” said Can o’ Beans, “don’t you see that an ’idol,’ so-called, is usually just a derogatory name for the other fellow’s god. To a non-Christian, a statue of Jesus could be considered an idol.”

“Blasphemy! There’s only one god.”

“And who is that, Miss Spoon? That silversmith in Philadelphia who made you?”

“You know very well who I mean.”

“I could take a wild guess. As an object, however, I confess to being bewildered by the whole rigamarole of religion. And I’m convinced that the way Mr. Stick and Miss Shell are involved in it is not at all the same as the way humans are involved. In the Bible, an ’idol’ is any deity other than Yahweh. But there’s a second definition of ’idol’ that describes it as an object that humans worship. An object, Miss Spoon. One of us. Why, you or I could be ’idols,’ if only someone cared enough. Can you imagine Spoonism? Or the Bean Can Cult? The Church of the Dirty Sock? No, I can see that you can’t. No matter. You would have fit in quite well in post-exile Jerusalem, although I daresay there was precious little crème caramel being spooned thereabouts. But our friends didn’t fit in anymore. And after several decades underground, so to speak, they were smothered inside a basket of wool and secreted to Phoenicia on the rump of a camel.”

“Scary.”

“Exciting.”

“A tribulation.”

“Or an adventure. Depending on your outlook. In any case, they remained in Phoenicia for a very long time. After the Greeks took over Judea, I believe that was around three hundred thirty-something
B.C.
, wasn’t it, Mr. Sock—oh, he’s not listening—they very well could have come back—the Greeks loved beautiful things and were pagan to the tips of their sandals—but our stick and shell were suitably occupied in their native Phoenicia, apparently, and happy to be there.”

“But separated.”

“Well, yes, Miss Shell was serving in a splendid temple in Sidon, Jezebel’s old hometown, and Mr. Stick was at sea a lot. On long voyages, Phoenician ships often had priests aboard, and they found a use for Mr. Stick. A combination of scientific and spiritual duties, it sounds like.”

“They were separated.”

“No, in ancient times, the scientific and the spiritual were virtually synonymous. At the higher levels, they still are.”

“I’m not talking about that, you big silly. I mean Conch Shell and Painted Stick were separated. How sad.”

“Do you really think they were sad about it? Maybe they were. At any rate, they got back together eventually. Reunited in Herod’s Temple. Just like a Hollywood movie.”

“Sigh.”

Herod was a Semite, half-Hebrew, in fact, and king of Judea, but he had “Property of the Roman Empire” stamped on his backside, and nobody would let him forget it. He stood on his head and spit shekels in an attempt to win favor with the Jews, but liking Herod was harder than trying to explain quantum radiation on a Mexican postcard. The pillaging, the rape, the torture, humiliation, and butchery visited upon Jerusalem’s Jews over the centuries by various foreign contingents were simply too great and too horrendous to ever, ever be forgotten. Herod could part his hair like a Jew, shine his shoes like a Jew, trim his wick like a Jew, and spit in the whiskers of every pig he passed, but having received half of his chromosomes from Edom, and his throne (and license to tax) from Rome, he was considered an opportunistic foreigner who could not, would not be trusted.

During the thirty-three years of his reign, Herod did everything but wiggle his ears to wow Jerusalem, including restoring its architecture and religion (the buildings that originally had replaced those demolished by the Babylonians were functional, at best, and the practice of Judaism had been brutally restricted toward the end of the Greek occupation). Although Herod’s friendly overtures were appreciated, even applauded, he remained personally unpopular until that time when, in a final magnanimous gesture, he set about to renovate and glorify the Second Temple.

Unattractive to begin with, the Second Temple had been reduced to practically a burnt-out shell by Hellenistic antagonists. Nevertheless, it had stood for four centuries, and the rituals performed therein had so impressed a visiting Alexander the Great that he consented to leave it standing. Everyone was excited, if suspicious, when Herod whipped out the hammer and the paintbrush. But Herod did it up right.

To assuage the fears of his subjects that he would pull down the existing temple and then be unable or unwilling to complete his grand design, Herod spent eight years gathering materials and selecting and training a work force. The inner buildings were built by a crew of one thousand Hebrew priests, laying every stone according to some arcane religious law.

The overall structure, with its retaining walls, cloisters, massive pillars, and courtyards within courtyards, covering thirty-six acres, was virtually a carbon copy of the First Temple, which is to say, ironically, it was an ancient and thoroughly pagan Phoenician or Canaanite design. (As Can o’ Beans had learned that day in the fossil bed, Phoenicians and Canaanites were really the same people, their chief difference being that the branch of the race called Phoenicians were coastal dwellers and seafarers, while Canaanites lived inland in the deserts and hills. Incidentally, Canaan meant “land of the purple” in a Near Eastern dialect, precisely what Phoenicia meant in Greek, so both branches were indelibly colored by the royal dye of the conch.)

Herod’s embellishments turned out to be every bit as lavish as Solomon’s. The Temple and its enclosures were covered with plates of silver and gold, so much gold that Josephus claimed that men literally went blind from temple-gazing on sunny summer days. From a distance, it shone like the sun itself.

Perhaps unconsciously, certain pagan compounds were stirred into the mixture. Josephus mentioned that the Temple roofs were “adorned with cedar, curiously graven,” and surrounding the inner buildings were rich spoils that Herod’s armies had pillaged from Arab countries. The lintel above the entrance to the Temple proper was “adorned with embroidered veils, with flowers of purple.” Purple, mind you. And from the crownwork hung carved vines of purple grapes, clusters “as tall as a man.” At the back of the foyer, giant gold-plated doors were concealed by what was described as “a Babylonian curtain . . . of fine linen . . . in scarlet and purple,” and “embroidered upon it all that was mystical in the heavens excepting that of the twelve signs.” While the priests may have sought to avoid depicting the animalistic aspects of astrology, they didn’t hesitate to include celestial symbols: the first enclosed section of the Temple contained a candlestick with seven branches for the seven planets that were known, and a table upon which rested “shew-bread—twelve loaves representing the circle of the zodiac.” And wittingly or not, they paid tribute to the most intimate feature of the Goddess, when to the ceremonial garments of the high priests they attached sweet little vaginal pomegranates of solid gold.