Random Thoughts

He's Alive

2012-01-03T02:55:00.000-05:00

There's a song called He's Alive. The version I have is by Mark Murphy and is probably about 20 years old. Recently I heard a version by some other artist on the radio. When it first started playing, I thought, That's interesting, it starts out at a faster tempo than the Mark Murphy version, which starts out rather slow and almost recited rather than sung. But then as the song went on, I realized that the whole thing was in the same tempo; there's no build up, no anticipation; it's just several verses of a song. It just doesn't work.

The first 2:45 of the Murphy version is almost mournful as Peter doubts and speculates as to whether Jesus is really alive as Mary claims, especially in light of his recent denials of Jesus. Then the build up runs about 45 seconds: "Then suddenly the air was filled with a strange and sweet perfume/ A light that shone from everywhere drove shadows from the room/ Jesus stood before me with His arms held open wide/ And I fell down on my knees and just clung to Him and cried./ He raised me to my feet and as I looked into His eyes/ Love was shining out from Him like the sunlight from the skies/ Guilt and my confusion disappeared in sweet release/ Every fear I ever had just melted into peace."

And then the orchestra breaks into the crescendo and a powerful voice sings: He's Alive, He's Alive, He's Alive and I'm forgiven/ Heaven's gates are open wide; lines that are repeated twice more, seemingly more powerful each time. I find it impossible to listen to, or even think about it without feeling a great tearful swelling inside.

It's a song that's meant to be experienced, not just heard.

Coming Home

2011-08-05T00:14:00.000-04:00

Because vacation was so good, we decided to take our time coming home. After we checked out of the resort, we went to the Lost Canyon and rode the horse drawn cart through the narrow canyon. The trip actually ends right about where the resort skyway goes over the canyon near the ziplines.

Then we drove over and visited with Liz for a few minutes and toured her house. I know it's Eric's house too, but writing "their house" didn't sound grammatically correct. We drove a while longer and decided to lunch at Culver's. It's actually pretty good, sort of an upscale McDonald's.

By this time I was concerned about Chicago traffic on a Friday afternoon, but we had no problem the route we took (thanks, Leah.) The problem began when we exited I-80 to go to US 30 to get to Warsaw where our motel was located. We exited I-80 earlier than we needed to so that we could avoid the construction heading into Indiana. Big mistake. Traffic on US 30 going into Indiana is horrific. And the traffic lights all seemed designed to create the longest traffic jams.

The rest of the day and most of the travel day Saturday was routine, until we got to the Days Inn in Sandusky. Without a doubt one of the worst motels I have ever been in. There was a terrible stench in the room, and since nothing in the room, like linens, curtains or rug smelled up close, we could only conclude that there must be mold or something growing in the walls. It was made worse by the fact that the air conditioner hadn't been turned on. We couldn't really complain because the couple at the check in desk spoke such broken English, it was difficult to communicate with them. We turned on the air full blast, emptied a can of Glade and went out to dinner. By the time we got back I could tolerate it, although Kim said this morning that it was the worst night's sleep she had on the whole trip. She's always been wary of Days Inn, and now I am cured as well.

The only reason we stayed there instead of driving straight home was so we could visit Kelley's Island on Sunday. That turned out to be fun. We took the Jet Express Ferry across from Sandusky, rented a golf cart and toured the island. There's not as much to do there is at Put-In-Bay, but the more relaxed atmosphere is definitely to my liking.

So now we're home, feverishly planning our next trip. Branson, maybe?

Post Visit

2011-08-02T22:28:00.000-04:00

There's not a lot to say about our recent stay at the resort in Wisconsin, because the people I care about the most were all there, so they all know what a great time it was. My only regret was not having more energy to be able to keep up with them. But I guess when you're the old patriarch, allowances have to be made.

After the girls and their husbands were gone, we discovered that there is even more to the Wilderness than we thought. The part we had walked and thought we were at the end really wasn't even half of it. That place is just humungous. So we did more walking, but never did cover the whole place.

We did more old people stuff, like walking around the mall, driving down to a state park, and riding a horse drawn wagon. We wanted to hike on one of the trails at the park, without realizing how difficult it was going to be. It was marked "moderate" on the map and was only a few miles long, but the change in elevation turned out to be at least several hundred feet, and much of it was spent climbing up rocks. It was exhausting. I'm really glad we didn't try one of the "difficult" trails.

Checking out was difficult, but that's life. Vacations end, and one always has to get back to reality. But it was really great to see everyone.

A Better Way

2011-07-31T20:48:00.000-04:00

I guess it's been a long time, and there's so many things I could write about that have happened in the past 10 months. There's been so much going on, but I guess that's it. Many of the things happening are things that impact my job, or rather the thought of losing it, and so my thoughts are often occupied with things I don't really want to write about.

This week, however, I've had a thoroughly wonderful vacation trip, and so I wanted to describe it. However, on the way up to Wisconsin, and now on the way back, the thing that is currently pressed on my mind goes back to my job. As a turnpike toll collector in Ohio, I constantly live with the threat that the turnpike will be leased or sold. If this happens, there are a number of scenarios that could play out, none of which could be interpreted as good to the employees there.

I think of myself as a Republican and I voted for John Kasich. In general, I support his efforts to find ways to bring Ohio's budget back under control, and to plug any shortfalls. However, there are right ways and wrong ways to do things, and to simply give away one of the state's most valuable assets for the paltry sum of 2.5 billion dollars net is about as shortsighted as one can get.

Notice, I'm not even making the argument here, as some have, that the turnpike is NOT a state asset. Others have argued that case persuavely. I'll just concede the point and move on. There is a much better way to deal with the turnpike that would put it in state hands, and make a whole lot more money. It's called High Speed Tolls.

I discovered this while driving around Chicago last week, and I think it's a most marvelous thing. I had seen a High Speed Toll plaza in Pennsylvania near the Ohio border the last time I drove through there, and while I thought it was kind of cool, I didn't think much more than that. But the Illinois Tollway has taken that concept to a whole new level. With High Speed Tolls, drivers with transponders simply drive through the plaza area, and their transponders are automatically read without them having to even slow down from highway speed. People without transponders have to pull off down a ramp to pay in cash and then reenter the roadway. I don't know exactly how many of these on-road plazas there are, but there's a lot of them.

I believe the Ohio Turnpike could be retrofitted to accomodate high speed tolling, placing plazas along the roadway every 20-40 miles. Some of the current toll plazas could be eliminated completely, and others would be reduced to partial plazas. Now that the turnpike EZ Pass system has been in place for nearly two years, people are aware of it, and have gotten used to it, and even many more would apply for a transponder if this change were made, thus streamlining the system even more.

What about the loss of jobs that would result? Not to worry, because this system should also be instituted on other interstates in Ohio, particularly I71 and I75. About 15-20 years ago, the federal government was advocating that states build more toll roads. Some states did. Ohio did not. I never thought that it was practical to convert existing interstates into toll roads. But with high speed tolling, most of the obstacles disappear.

If the governor would institute such a plan, instead of settling for the shortsighted plan he has, Ohio would be much better off.

Frustrations

2010-09-16T11:38:00.002-04:00

Frustrations come in many forms. When they involve playing a game, they can normally be set aside as unimportant or irrelevant. Nevertheless....

There were only a handful of video games that ever interested me, and my favorite was Super Mario Brothers 3. When I owned it about 15 years ago, I got to be pretty good at it. I never got bored with it even after beating it became somewhat routine. A few months ago, I discovered that it had been re-released for the Wii. I tried playing against my daughter when visiting her once and discovered that I couldn't complete even a single level in world 1. So naturally, I had to download it onto my own Wii to practice.

While working at it over the past few months, I'm slowly getting better, but it frustrates me that it's taking so long. Granted, I'm not spending hours and hours doing it, but I can't be getting THAT old, that my reflexes have become so slow.

The two things that give me the most trouble are the note boxes and the sliding duck. For the most part, the note boxes are not vital to the game and I can do them well enough to at least get by. But the sliding duck is crucial at certain levels, and my inability to make it work more than once in every 15-20 tries (it's probably actually worse than that) is getting me down.

The second fortress in world 6 is one of those crucial places that I've been working on lately. There's a spot in there that if you can't make it through, then even if you do continue on and make it to Boom-Boom's hall, it will be as small Mario, and since he's one of the more trickier ones in the game, he's tough to beat when you're small.

Fond Baseball Memory

2010-09-09T17:22:00.003-04:00

One of my fondest memories is of when I was 8 years old and my uncle took be to an Indians' game against the Yankees. I had been to one game with my father the previous year when I was 7, but that was a day game and the only thing I remember about it was that the Indians won against, I think, the Tigers. Because memory is such a tricky thing, I tried to research the game to see how much of my memory is trustworthy. Turns out I had a few things wrong. I thought it was on September 8th on a Wednesday, but it was actually on September 9th on a Tuesday. I also thought Billy Martin was on the Indians and was actually the last batter in the game, but he didn't actually play for the Indians until the following season. And I thought the Indians scored 10 runs in the fifth, but it was only 8.

Those minor things aside, my basic memory was correct. It was a night game. I got to see Mickey Mantle hit a home run, and I remembered that the Indians catcher Russ Nixon hit two home runs in that game. The Indians were behind 2-1 when they came up in the bottom of the fifth. They proceeded to score 8 runs. They had the bases loaded with 2 outs and whoever the batter was (I thought it was Martin, but I guess it couldn't have been) had a 2-2 count when it started pouring rain and the umpires stopped play.

We sat for exactly one hour until the game was officially ended due to the rain. This caused me to believe that there was a rule that if a game was stopped for rain, they would wait one hour, and then call it. Funny the conclusions you draw from experience as a kid. The Indians won since they were the home team and were ahead in the bottom of the fifth.

It seems as I get older, memories such as that become more precious.

Less Than Perfect Ending

2010-03-27T19:15:00.002-04:00

By the time Thursday rolled around, I think we were both just too tired. We went to Yorktown, which, like Jamestown, is divided into two parts. Yorktown Victory Center has a museum with artifacts from the time period of the battle, as well as a movie. They also have a re-creation of part of the camp so we could see the little tents with hay on the floors that the soldiers had to sleep in. There is also a working farm there in the style of the 18th century, so that was pretty interesting. The second part is part of the national park system and includes the actual battlefield, which still has the siege mounds from back then. There are also a lot of plaques around the place.

In both places, we more or less sleepwalked through it. It would be something that I would have to do again sometime if I wanted to really get anything out of it.

The real problems came on Friday, when we tried to come home. There was some kind of accident on I-64 that came into play shortly after we left that left us mostly sitting for nearly two hours. Along with a few other things that caused problems, particularly at a service plaza in Pennsylvania, where they didn't have a Cinnabon place like we expected (this made Kim cranky because she had sort of promised Kelly) and problems with the gas pump where no attendant is on duty, which made me have to go find someone (this made me cranky), I then drove straight home without stopping to eat, which made both of us crankier.

I promise, though, that it will not ruin the memory of a good vacation.

Williamsburg Part II

2010-03-25T23:52:00.002-04:00

Tuesday and Wednesday we spent walking around Colonial Williamsburg. It was the capital of Virginia during colonial times. The re-created village is built on the ruins of the original town, so it's pretty authentic. The visitor's center is about half a mile away where you park and take a shuttle bus (or walk) around the village. Many of the places to visit are shops where people in costume do make things like shoes, clothing, and newspapers, the same way they were made back then. Additionally, there are actors in the streets that act out the parts of various characters that lived back then, as well as stage performances at different places. My favorite was of Lafayette giving a speech outside the governor's palace of the "recent" arrival of General Washington's troops to prepare for the battle of Yorktown. He was really entertaining.

At the other end of town there was a performance outside the old Capitol Building where the Declaration of Independence was read from the balcony, aided by other characters standing in front of the building. Characters scattered through the crowd would shout "Huzzah" at appropriate times, and it was just so easy to picture the real thing.

If was very tiring spending two days walking throughout the village visiting the shops and stores. It's not a really huge area, maybe a mile from one end to the other, and less than half a mile wide. But some of the museums are rather large, and I'm not as young as I used to be.

But really, the only negative experience I had was looking at price tags of things that were for sale. I know and fully expect to pay high prices at tourist traps, but I don't think I've ever been anywhere with prices as high as these. A simple hand-made girls shawl is $150, and a ceramic cup goes for $40. Even a boys size tri-cornered hat was $25. Fortunately, I'm not easily swayed.

All in all, it's been a great visit. My only regret is not realizing how much there is to do here. I thought visiting the triangle would be a part of our vacation in between doing other things at the resort. Instead it has sort of become the vacation. Maybe we should just plan on coming back again someday.

Williamsburg Part 1

2010-03-23T22:31:00.003-04:00

We arrived in Williamsburg on Friday for our 7 night $250 vacation. On Saturday morning we sat through the 2 hour time share sales pitch to get an $80 voucher for dinner at Opus 9 and 2 movie tickets. We could have just gotten a $75 gift card for anywhere, but decided this would be a good opportunity to go to the type of restaurant we normally can't afford, and considered the movie tickets as sort of a bonus.

Good choice! The steaks were great! In fact, everything about the place is superb, including the service. Of course, the prices reflect it. So for just two of us, with an appetizer, two steak dinners and no desert, we still paid out $40 besides the $80 voucher and a 10% off coupon. I was generous with the tip, even for me, but still!

We spent two hours after we got back to the resort trying to find a church to go to on the internet, but had no luck. Should have researched this sooner.

Sunday afternoon turned out to be so beautiful and so warm for this time of year that we drove over to Norfolk where the nearest beach is, and just walked up and down the beach. It wasn't a clean beach, and I've never cared much for the Atlantic coast anyway. But we ignored that part and just enjoyed the warmth. We'll be back in Ohio soon enough.

Monday was Jamestown day. There are two parts to a Jamestown visit, which require separate admission prices. First, you go to Jamestown Settlement, which is about a mile from the actual site of the original Jamestown. There is a rather large museum there which goes into a lot of detail about the period from 1607-1700. In fact, there is a separate section for each decade. It's a typical musuem, with artifacts, models, re-creations, and movies about various aspects of the colony. Outside the museum, there are authentic re-creations of the original fort and of the Powhatan village, as well as of some of the ships that brought settlers over. All re-creations are based on solid evidence from the time as to what different things looked like, and in most cases where they couldn't be sure, they just don't include it.

The second part of a Jamestown visit is to drive about a mile to the national park that includes the site of the original Jamestown. There's a smaller Welcome Center there, and you walk from there down to the archaelogical dig site where the original fort stood. Up until 1994, it was thought that the site of the original fort had eroded into the James River, but that year archaeologists discovered otherwise. It turns out that only the site of one corner of the triangular fort was underwater. Ever since then they've been digging it up a litle at a time, removing whatever artifacts they find, then back fill it and then mark the places where original walls stood. As time goes on, they get more and more of a feel for the sizes and locations of everything in the fort.

All in all, I think the visits were well worth the price.

Almost forgot. Included with the visit to the Jamestown site is a short drive to a glass blowing shop where you can watch them make glass things. You can also buy them if your name is Rockefeller. The modern plant is about 100 feet from where the original plant stood in the 1600s. It's considered to be the first industrial enterprise in America.

21 - The Meeting of the Ways

2010-03-18T13:27:00.002-04:00

In the midst of a wall of shields, the two apostles walked, hand in hand, chained to a soldier on either side. As they walked, they continuously murmured, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. . .”

The centurion in command, who had lately felt a certain friendliness toward the Christians, had allowed them to go together, saying to his men, “Let them go together as far as the Porta Ostiensis. But they must be separated there. The old man goes to the Trans-Tiber and to the Vaticanum to be crucified. But this one is a Roman citizen and must be taken to the Cesti Pyramid and beheaded."

Before they were led away, Paul had bent down over the opening in the ground, and called out to the prisoners in the dungeons, “The grace of our lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit! Amen!”

After him Peter called down, “Peace be with you who are in the lord Messiah! Amen!”

A chorus of voices floated up from the depths below from the strong, the weak, the firm and the tremulous, “Peter and Paul! Pray for our souls!”

And for the first time the two names were intertwined in a single cord of salvation.

When they reached the Porta Ostiensis, they embraced one last time.

“Peace be with you, brother Paul!”
“Peace be with you, brother Peter! I bow to you who lived with our lord.”
“And I bow to you who carried the gospel to all the world.”

As they were led away from each other they turned their heads back.

“I will see you soon in the lord’s presence,” cried Peter.
“Pray for me, apostle to the Jews.”

Old Simon, with his bloody feet, was led uphill. Beyond the Porta Trigemina lay the Sublicius Bridge. How often the faithful had led him this way to the assemblies in Priscilla’s house on the Aventine hill! Simon looked up the slope, where a few passersby stopped and paused. Their lips moved unmistakably in prayer, and Simon recognized them. And as the procession drew through the narrow streets of the Jewish quarter the cortege grew. A proclamation seemed to run ahead, for heads appeared at the windows of the high houses.

“They’re leading the apostle to the cross,” was heard.

Simon saw a multitude of sad faces. He smiled at them and they tried to draw enough courage to smile back.

“Don’t cry. I’ll be with the lord soon to live with him forever. And you too will one day be with him as well. I promise you this in the name of our Father in heaven, who is the God of all grace. Peace to you all.”

After passing through the Jewish quarter, he began the climb to the place of execution, where his cross waited for him. But before they nailed him to the cross, the law required that he be scourged first. They bound him to a wooden block, and two soldiers wielded the lead-loaded whip over him. His blood gushed out under the lashes, but no sound came from the old man. His lips moved silently in prayer of thanksgiving for the privilege of suffering like his lord.

Suffer like his lord? Who was he to compare himself with the lord? How often he’d denied him, how often he’d fled from the cup again and again. How could he possibly say that he was dying the death of his lord?

They unbound him from the block and half led, half carried him, toward the cross. They asked him if he wanted a cup of sour wine, for even a slave was allowed this.

No, but he did have a last request. In the broken Greek he’d picked up in the years of his wandering, he asked them to nail him to the cross head down.

The executioners thought maybe they misunderstood his broken Greek.

“Head down?”

The old man nodded and feebly moved his hands to indicate his meaning.

“Head down. Nail me to the cross head down.”

As strange as this request was, they accommodated him, nailing his two feet to the arms of the cross, and his hands to the upright.

Two naked feet looked down from the crosspiece, the toes twisted and broken, like the roots of an old olive tree. But they were mighty limbs, broad boned, and gnarled like tree trunks. Blood ran from his wounds, which were like open mouths. And as the bleeding feet looked heavenward, the gray, mighty head with its short, tangled beard, hung earthward. And still the eyes smiled, seeking the little group of men and women who stood at a distance, and still the lips moved in prayer and greeting.

After a time his voice was heard clearly, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

Men and women lifted their faces heavenward and repeated, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

There was silence as blood descended, pulse-by-pulse, into his head. His feet were now as white as snow, but his face was crimson, like a flame. And now the old man pulled his head violently away from the cross. His bloodshot eyes were wide open. In a hoarse, joyous voice, he called out, “My Rabbi! My Rabbi!”

His head fell back on the cross, and was motionless.

* * * * *

At the same time that the apostle to the Jews was being nailed to a cross at one end of Rome, the apostle to the Gentiles was being dealt with at the other end. A small group of faithful also accompanied him on his last earthly journey, walking behind at a discreet distance. Luke the physician and Eubulus the soldier were among them. Pudens and Linus plus two or three women were there also, and Paul greeted them with his last looks and commended them to God with his last thoughts.

He had no fear now for the future of the congregations. He’d planted their roots deep, and the storm would only drive those roots deeper. He’d done his work well and there were strong hands to continue it.

“I have fought a good fight,” he said to himself as he stood at the execution place.

In his final moments he once again reviewed the years that linked Saul with Paul. There was nothing he would change. The errors and sins he committed when he was Saul were brought to nothing. He’d cleansed them with his blood, sweat, and sorrows. And Saul too had sought God, in his own way, according to the light he’d been given. Everything had been as it had to be, according to its own time. He’d always done what he understood to be right in the eyes of God, and he’d never done anything with a view to his own advantage. His life had been a sacrifice laid on God’s altar.

Even that part of his life that had been without Christ, and even against Christ, had been consecrated to God. It had been one long pursuit of the divinity.

Now the pursuit was over, and he was at the end of his course. His life was whole; his death was just the next part of his mission. Everything was as it should be. He had discharged his obligations, and now a crown of righteousness was laid up for him.

Firm in the bond of peace between him and the Lord of the world, he approached the block on which his head would be severed from his body with unfaltering steps.

As a Roman citizen, he was spared the final humiliation and torture of the lash. A soldier approached him, to bind his eyes.

“Must this be done?” he asked.

“It’s the law,” said the soldier, and Paul submitted, for his respect for the law did not abandon him even then.

As he knelt and placed his head on the block, Paul spoke one last time.

“The grace of our lord, Jesus Christ, be with you all.”

In those final seconds, Paul saw the vision once again of the white, radiant angel, his body steeped in stones, his arms lifted up for flight. And now Paul felt himself transformed into the angel. He felt himself being lifted up, he was in flight, the world was below him.

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

These were the last words of the apostle to the Gentiles.

* * * * *

A few days later, word came from Jerusalem that the long awaited storm in Judea against the might of Rome had finally broken out. The Jews had risen in rebellion and had defeated the troops of the Procurator Festus. Once again, after so many years, Jerusalem was in Jewish hands. Jerusalem was free!

The Jewish congregation in Rome received the news with mixed feelings. There was joy, certainly, but there was also uncertainty and fear. They trembled not only for themselves, but even more for the fate of the Temple. They trembled for the ultimate symbol of Jewish unity, more important in their eyes even than national independence.

But on the following Sabbath at the crowded Augustus Synagogue in the Trans-Tiber, they talked of another portentous event, the execution of the two apostles. The martyrdom of Christians had served to heal the breach between the two sections of the congregation even before the apostles’ deaths, and if any bitterness survived the common sorrow of the long persecutions, it was wiped away now. The uprising in Jerusalem and the martyrdom of the apostles became connected in the worshippers’ minds.

Zadoc, the old rabbi of the congregation, sought to restore calm in his sermon that morning.

“We don’t know whether the hand of Israel can overcome the sword of Rome. Certainly all things are possible with God, but what is the earthly power of Israel against the earthly power of Rome? Isn’t it like a thorn against a mighty forest?

“But I say to you that the spirit of God has already overcome the power of Rome, right here in the city of Rome.”

The congregation looked at the preacher in wonder.

“All things are possible with God!” cried a voice.

“All things are possible with God!” repeated Zadoc. “I say to you that Rome has already been overthrown!”

“What do you mean, rabbi?” someone asked.

“Do you see what is happening in Rome? The more they burn the believers in Christ, the more they throw them to the beasts, the mightier grow their numbers. Behold! Rome went forth against Jerusalem with the sword, and Jerusalem went forth against Rome with the spirit.

“The sword conquers for a while, but the spirit conquers forever!”

THE END

20 - The Grace of the Lord Be With You

2010-03-16T02:56:00.001-04:00

The word “Tullianum” filled every Roman with dread. The dungeon prison was carved out of solid rock in the Capitoline Hill on the steep side overlooking the Forum Romanum. This was one place from which there was no escape. Prisoners were lowered by ropes into its lightless depths, and high above them, around the “entrance” they could never reach without outside help, a strong guard was kept day and night.

As a rule prisoners who were lowered into the Tillianum never again saw the light of day. They weren’t starved to death so much as they were eaten alive. Food of some kind was given to them, but they in turn became food for the monstrous rats and crawling things that bred in countless numbers in the foulness of the cells and corridors.

The prisoners were chained, either to rings in the walls or to great, immovable blocks of wood. The floors were littered were human offal, moldering bodies and bones gnawed clean. The poisonous air ate into the lungs and skin. Thick ooze dripped from the walls, and dampness caused the bones and flesh to swell painfully. The prisoners’ limbs, often immovable in their chains, rotted, and became gangrenous masses. The diet of bread and water quickly undermined whatever health the prisoners brought with them. When a prisoner died, the warders unchained the carcass and rolled it over toward the nearest heap of offal, so the chains would be ready for the next one.

Simon Peter, the old fisherman from Galilee, spent his last months in the Tullianum.

He was thrown into the underground dungeon with other Christians taken at the last service in the Jewish catacombs. His name was well enough known that even Caesar himself had heard that he was one of the leaders along with the man named Paul. But at the time of Peter’s arrest, Nero wasn’t in Rome. He was in Athens looking for a sympathetic audience for his poetical and musical compositions, and officials were waiting for his return before carrying out the execution of the important prisoner.

Those months of imprisonment were like a living hell. The aged apostle was chained by both legs to a ring in the wall, and he would often awaken from a fitful sleep to feel rats gnawing at his feet. The odor of decaying flesh, living and dead, assailed his nostrils from out of the darkness. No light ever broke into the prison. Yet he endured.

He endured because he knew that his savior might come at any moment. All around him he heard the moaning of his brothers in the faith, but he couldn’t see them. They constantly called on the name of Christ, begging him to hurry. But he didn’t hurry, and some of them began to fall away from the faith in the horrors of the dungeon.

From his plot of darkness, the apostle spoke words of comfort to the dying, assuring them that Messiah waited for them beyond the portals of death. He was calling them to his cross, that they might share his sufferings and eternal life. But between these ministrations, Peter himself pressed his face against the damp stone in despair.

At other times he chanted Psalms. The warders would sometimes beat him for his interminable praying. Criminals, murderers, and thieves, who were thrown in with the Christians, if they were near enough, would reach over and strike him in the darkness. His hair and beard were sticky with blood, and if his skull weren’t so hard, it probably would have cracked when a wild hand threw it at random against the rock wall.

Gabelus, the old soldier, was one of the ones whose faith began to fail, and the apostle wept when he heard him, like the others, yielding to despair.

“Come, lord,” prayed Peter in his heart, “come and help me, for the waters have come up to my lips.”

A day came when a prisoner was lowered into the hole in the ground. Two warders fastened the newcomer to a ring in the wall opposite Peter. When they left the prisoner called out, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, Amen!”

Peter couldn’t see the prisoner’s face, but he certainly knew that voice. In sudden joy he cried out, “Is that you, brother Paul?”

The Christians, languishing in their corners, feeling the last embers of their faith dying out, started up when they heard that name. Feebly they cried out, “Paul the apostle is with us!”

“Yes, I am your brother Paul, a servant of God. I’ve come to bring you the hope of Israel in Jesus Christ. Christ calls you to share his suffering. The grace of our lord be with you all, amen!”

“It is Paul!” whispered several voices. “That’s the greeting he uses in his letters!”

All Peter could say was, “Paul, my beloved brother, Paul.”

“Yes, Peter, it is I. I’ve come to share your chains in Christ!”

“My beloved brother!” wept Peter. The tears coursing down his cheeks seemed to soften the pains in his body. “Where are you?”

From opposite walls in the narrow cell they reached across to each other with their free hands and intertwined their fingers. It was like they could feel their whole bodies through the contact, and they embraced and kissed each other in the touch of their fingers.

And as if from an inner signal, they both began to chant together, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me!”

Instantly the black chamber resounded with the song of hope, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me!”

Paul felt someone crawling at his feet. He reached out and touched a face, a beard, warm flesh.

“Paul, the bringer of salvation!”

“Gabelus, is that you?” cried Paul. “Praise be to God for giving you a share in Christ’s sufferings.”

“Praise be to God for finding me worthy to be one of his soldiers,” answered Gabelus.

“Brothers in the faith!” said Paul into the darkness. “May God, our eternal help, accept our suffering as a sacrifice! Rejoice in your sufferings, for they bring you nearer to Christ. Come, brothers, let us sing a great song. God has chosen us to suffer with Christ! Let the Name of God be praised from now on and evermore.”

From the cells along the invisible corridors, across the heaps of refuse, decaying flesh, and skeletons, through halls of death and darkness, there came a sound of voices. It was like the wind stirring through the valley of withered bones in Ezekial’s vision. The voices rose, took on power and self-assurance, and shook off the weakness of the flesh.

“God has chosen us to suffer with Christ! Let the Name of God be praised from now on and evermore.”

As they spoke the words, their voices rang louder and louder, repeating after Paul the verses of the Psalms in Greek. The Jews among the prisoners recalled the original Hebrew version, as it was sung on the Temple steps in Jerusalem, and they took up the chorus in Hebrew.

“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, praise all you servants of the Lord. Praise the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever.”

They repeated the Hallel, as was done on the day of a great festival amid the glory of the Temple courts. The Greek mixed with the Hebrew, the two melodies rose side by side, like double fountains of joy. The flood of strength and renewal filled the whole underground prison. Health, liberation, and hope were found again, as if a flood of sunlight had shattered the prison and the glory of the heavens had burst on the prisoners.

The criminals in the prison and the warders outside listened stupefied to this song of exaltation coming from these half dead Christians. It was utterly incomprehensible to them. And the wonder grew daily. Ever since the new prisoner was lowered into the deeps, it was like a wind of life passed through the decaying bodies and withered bones chained to the walls and blocks. It was clear that in their singing the Christian prisoners were transported to another world.

They asked each other, “Who is this man? What does he say? He shows them something we can’t see. He makes them hear something we can’t hear.”

“Enter with us!” cried Paul. “The door is open for everyone! Come to the arms of the lord, his love waits for you too!”

“Are you crazy? We’re the ones who tormented you!”

“God’s grace is boundless. For Him there is neither stranger nor kin. Those who believe in Him will not be ashamed. The Scripture says that He is the same Lord for all. Whoever calls on Him will be saved. All of you, come, the door stands wide open!”

The hell of that prison, where the darkness of despair had been secure, was transformed into a radiant threshold on which white-robed souls waited for admittance to the innermost sanctuary of God’s eternal presence. And those whose eyes were closed to the radiance were filled with deepest envy. It wasn’t just the condemned criminals who drew close, but the warders too came with wonder and desire to those whom they had tortured just yesterday.

There was a new spirit in the Tullianum. What little water and dry bread they were brought became their common meal, and in the darkness, heavy with death, the banquet of the living faith was spread.

So the lifeline of Christ was thrown out, not just to those for whom death was already prepared, but to those who watched them, the soldiers and the warders on the upper levels of the prison. Gabelus’ faith, which had been flickering toward extinction, was rekindled, and he set about the task of winning those whose comrade-in-arms he’d once been. Old Gabelus, who once led the cohorts of Caesar to victory in the battlefield, now led the soldiers of Caesar stationed in the Tullianum to victory on the field of faith.

19 - I Have Kept the Faith

2010-03-14T12:39:00.001-04:00

A heavy guard conducted Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, in chains across the ruined streets of Rome, where thousands of slaves were at work. No deputation greeted him on the Via Appia this time, and no one waited for him in the city. Luke was his only companion and he walked a distance behind so as not to be seen by the guard.

Where had the apostle been during the days that led up to the frightful slaughters in Rome? It would be easier to ask where he hadn’t been. From Rome he hurried to Ephesus and its neighboring cities, where he visited new congregations he’d never been to before. He went to Colosse, Nicopolis and Berea. He visited his beloved Philippi in Macedonia, and went to Crete with Titus, where he’d been considered a holy man ever since the shipwreck. He was in Naples for a time, and from there he went to Troas, where he stayed in the house of a man named Carpus.

It was while he was in Troas that he was arrested on the charge of being a Christian and spreading pernicious and forbidden doctrine among Romans and slaves. Now he was being led to the Praetorian guardhouse until he could be brought to trial in one of the basilicas on the Forum Romanum.

So quickly had he been seized that he left most of his belongings, a mantle and a few parched documents, with Carpus. In the damp prison, he greatly needed his mantle, but he sorely missed the parchment rolls with their sacred messages.

Paul felt like a man forlorn and abandoned. All his companions were gone. Some of them he’d sent out on missions or left behind to complete his work. Crispus was in Galatia, Titus had gone to Crete and Macedonia, and Timothy was in Ephesus. And when the persecutions came about, some of his companions abandoned him. Demas, who'd served him throughout his first imprisonment in Rome, left him and returned to Thessalonica, “because he loved this world.” Trophimus fell sick in Miletus and stayed there. A certain coppersmith, Alexander, did him “much evil.” Aristarchus, his faithful servant, was taken with many other Christians at Troas, to be tried before the local courts.

Luke’s completely Greek appearance and bearing kept him from being taken. He accompanied Paul when, as a Roman citizen, the latter was called to be tried in Rome.

Paul was closely guarded in the prison this time, and it didn’t matter that he was a Roman citizen. The crime of Christianity obliterated almost all distinctions.

And yet the persecutions did not destroy all his communications with the world of believers. After a while he found a way to exchange messages with friends.

Some of the soldiers taking turns guarding him were members of Gabelus’ cohort. Gabelus himself had been arrested in the Jewish catacomb, but the Christian thread was not broken, for the gentle and noble-spirited Eubulus took Gabelus’ place. When these men were on guard, they carried messages to and from Paul and his friends. They also allowed Luke to attend the apostle, and what was of the most importance, they smuggled in writing materials to allow him to send letters to the communities.

Even at noon the cell in which he was confined was dim. By afternoon it was pitch black and remained so until morning. But Paul sat steeped in light, as though the walls around him had dissolved and the heavens were shining on him freely. He was more aware than ever of the eternal light that is kindled in us when we conquer death. “In faith there is no death, there is only eternal life,” he had taught. This made him quite incapable of understanding, let alone sympathizing with, any manifestation of panic. He expected everyone, without exception, to continue to work as diligently as before and not to withhold a single act of service out of fear of death. He was filled with contempt for those believers who fled before persecution or who refused to renew contact with him for fear of discovery. Weakness and timidity cannot be associated with faith.

Not that he lacked compassion, for he interpreted defection as the loss of a great treasure. To those who’d avoided him during his first trial in Rome, he said, “Be not ashamed of risking danger for the lord, and be not ashamed of me, his prisoner.”

Paul knew the time had come to take an accounting of himself. He looked back on the course of his life and felt that everything was as it should be. He could leave the world no man’s debtor. He even owed nothing to himself.

Faith was a great peacemaker between him and the world. For there was no death; there was only one great life that passed from this world to the next, and wherever God wanted him, well, there God would find him! Those who were afraid of death were the ones who were bringing death into life.

Ah, how he longed to plant this ultimate truth of faith into the hearts of the believers! Then there would be no timidities and no defections. Then they would reach the highest perception of Christ, and the passage through death would be nothing more than a stepping-stone across a narrow threshold.

The door of the cell swings open and daylight is diffused toward the dim corner where the apostle, seated in chains, is steeped in his own inward light. Good Eubulus leads a man in. Paul looks up to see a tall, stately, black-bearded stranger. Eubulus pulls the door to, and the stranger speaks in the darkness.

“I am Onesiphorus of Ephesus. I have come to pay my respects to the apostle to the Gentiles.”

Joyously Paul asks, “You come to greet me here, in Rome? Weren’t you afraid? Weren’t you ashamed of my chains?”

“Afraid to come to you? Ashamed of the chains Christ has given you?”

The tall stranger falls on his knees before Paul, and kisses the chains.

“These,” he says, “are the ornaments of the faithful.”
“Are there many like you?” asks Paul, eagerly.
“Everywhere the faithful encounter death with a song on their lips.”
“Don’t say death,” cries Paul. “Rather say eternal life.”

He struggles to his knees.

“Oh, praise be to Christ, who has destroyed death and revealed eternal life!”

It was under the inspiration of this visit that he wrote his farewell letter to his beloved son, Timothy. That day Eubulus smuggled in pen, ink, papyrus, and a lamp. Paul wrote laboriously by the dim flame, adjusting himself to the heavy manacles.

Paul’s condition is very different now than it was during his first imprisonment. Then he was in his own house. Now he’s in the dread Praetorium prison. Then his guards, even if not Christian, were more easily moved to friendliness. The horror of the Christian accusation hadn’t yet seized the city. Now only a Christian legionary permits himself to be friendly with the apostle, and that only when another Christian is stationed outside the cell. For even the inclination to pity the “enemies of mankind” would be regarded as a sign of that infection for which the only cure is the arena. The longest record of faithfulness in service to Caesar would mean nothing. Witness old Gabelus, awaiting his trial along with the rest. Paul’s Roman citizenship performs only one service for him. He doesn’t have to wear the frightful collar or neck manacles that are put on the arrested slaves. But one hand is chained to his jailor and one foot is chained to the wall of the cell.

A letter can be written only when the guard in the cell and the guard outside the cell are both Christians. But it must be written at one sitting, for neither the papyrus nor any of the other writing materials can be left in the cell overnight. Both guards will be changed in the morning, and neither of them may be Christians. If the letter is discovered, it is death for the guards, and death for the men and women who are mentioned in it.

And yet Paul does name names. He sends greetings from Eubulus and Pudens and Linus, and he sends greetings to Priscilla and Aquila.

He must write fast. He can’t say all that is in his heart, but he must indicate his thoughts. He knows the end is near, and yet he doesn’t seem to give up hope.

“I am ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is near at hand.” And, “If we die with him, so shall we rule with him; and if we deny him, so will he deny us.”

He remembers that no one came forward to defend him at his first trial, “Nevertheless, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, that by me the preaching might be fully known, and I was delivered out of the lion’s mouth. And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me until His heavenly kingdom.”

He also says about them, “I pray God that it not be charged against them.”

With incredible obstinacy the apostle makes no mention of the bloody calamities that have befallen the Christians, or of the persecutions they suffer, in this last letter to his beloved son. Is this because of his hope, or is it the same obstinacy that forbids him to mention his impending death?

He calls on Timothy to come to Rome at once, even though he knows he’s asking him to put his head in the “lion’s mouth.” “Hurry to get here before winter!” he writes.

And as if to deny his own premonitions, he asks Timothy to bring the mantle and the manuscripts he left behind with Carpus.

Life and death are mixed in the letter, as though the two are one and have become indistinguishable in his eyes. One instant he lays down plans for the future, and the next he bids a father’s farewell to his son. No matter what happens, Paul will accept it, not with stoical indifference, but with the love of faith. It is Paul’s last letter, and it pulses with the sensitiveness of his soul.

This last letter to Timothy, the one joy he has allowed himself in life, expresses a tender sentimentality that would be searched for in vain in any of his other letters.

“I greatly desire to see you, remembering your tears and the real faith that is in you, which was first found in your grandmother Lois and in your mother, Eunice.”

Timothy was the only person who awakened the instincts of family and fatherhood in Paul. Thus the peculiar touch of tenderness and the intimate recollection of his sufferings, which are not so much a complaint as an expression of closeness, a loving father-son relationship.

“Persecutions and afflictions came to me at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, but the Lord delivered me out of them all.”

He can’t help these allusions. But he doesn’t close the letter with them. He learned from Rabbi Gamaliel that “the words of parting between rabbi and disciple shall be words of the Torah. The father parting from the son shall leave him with words of wisdom to take along on the path of life.”

Therefore he turns from the personal to the admonitory, “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power. . . hold fast the form of sound words that you have heard from me, in faith and love that is in Jesus Christ.”

In feverish haste he sets down the leading principles of his son’s mission. “Preach the word. Be instant in season and out of season. . .watch in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of your ministry.”

And it is here that the words slip from him, “For I am now ready to be offered.”

Looking back over the long years of his life, he sees the devious routes, the detours, the returns, and he knows that in the end his feet are on the straight path. He sees that the sum of it all is just, and he adds, in complete assurance, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.”

He will wear a crown of righteousness, hard won by a life of labor. For all his life was given to bringing men under the sign of righteousness.

He’s never gone easy on himself; never shrunk from suffering; doesn’t shrink from death. And he imposes this same discipline on others, even on his beloved son. Just a few moments ago he wrote him with infinite gentleness. Now he bids him come to Rome! Bids him too to bring Mark with him, “for he is useful to me in the ministry.”

It’s an invitation to share his fate and the fate of the believers of Rome, both to his own son, and to the nephew of his beloved boyhood friend, Barnabas. For when the moment of personal tenderness has passed, he is back in the spirit of his service, and faith reminds him that there is no break for those who serve Christ.

The light trembles on the papyrus as he hurries through the last lines of his letter. He is motionless. His yellow, wrinkled face, his lofty forehead, shine in the half darkness. His eyes are fixed on the distance, beyond the heavy walls that imprison him. In his heart is the peace of fulfillment. He has reached the point where joy and sorrow are one. Everything that was to be done has been done, and everything that was to be said has been said. He is now ready to abandon the earthly instrument that has served him so long and so painfully.

* * * * *

The end came soon. Two days after his letter to Timothy was smuggled out of the Praetorium, Paul was brought before the Tribunal. The investigation was short. He identified himself with the words, “I am a Christian;” he refused to offer incense to the image of Caesar; he made no appeal to his Roman citizenship.

He was taken to the prison reserved for those already condemned to death, where he found Simon Peter, Gabellus, and many others he’d personally led to faith in Christ.

18 - In the Catacombs

2010-03-13T01:12:00.002-05:00

Crives Fastanus was a gladiator who was pardoned and set free by Claudius Caesar. Sometime later he was given a position as an attendant in Nero’s circus on the Vaticanum. Now in his mid-fifties, he looked back on a life that consisted mostly of mortal struggles with four-footed and two-footed beasts and that he had persevered only because his astounding physique had endured far beyond the age at which gladiators were expected to make a good showing in the arena. But for every victorious combat, there was a sign on his body, a memento he would carry to his grave.

Indeed his body was a record, for it was covered with a network of scars, old sword wounds and the marks of teeth and claws. His nose was flat, one eye was slit and the other was missing. There was a hole in one cheek, constantly whimpering. In preserving his own life, he’d taken many others, slashed so many bodies that he lost all feeling with regard to the death of a human being. The sight of a man in his last agonies moved him about as much as the sight of a dying insect.

Yet, here was Crives Fastanus walking anxiously through the alleys of the Trans-Tiber, asking every coppersmith and sandal sewer, in a low, gentle voice, “Can you tell me where I can find Miriam the perfume mixer?”

The men he asked invariably started back from him. His vast, naked breast was like a ruined battlefield, his mighty arms were like battering rams, and his one eye emitted a dull, heavy light. His helmet showed him to be a gladiator, and the bronze tablet proclaimed him a servant in the imperial household, an attendant in Nero’s circus. And every Jew in the Trans-Tiber knew that regular meetings of Jewish Christians occurred in Miriam’s house.

Therefore every man who answered him told him no.

The Jews weren’t really sure why Miriam hadn’t been arrested, for her house was as well known among the Christians of Rome as that of Priscilla and Aquila had been in the past. So they thought this might be a belated attempt to take her. But that made no sense since a lone man would not set out to make arrests. Besides, there was something in this giant elderly man’s bearing. His voice was rough, but low and pleading.

Finally he found someone who would talk with him. Mordecai, a Christian, sold pots from a stall on the Tiber banks.

“How do you know that name?” Mordecai asked cautiously.
“One of the Christians gave it to me before he was driven into the arena.”
“Why would a Christian betray one of his kind to you?”
“I begged him for it, do you hear? I want to be one of them.”
“You want to be a Christian?”

Mordecai shrank away from the old gladiator.

“You heard me.”
“But don’t you see,” asked Mordecai, lowering his voice, “what they do to them?”
“I would rather die with you than live as I have lived till now.”

The pottery merchant remained silent, turning this over in his mind. Was this the trick of a spy? It couldn’t be. The man’s face might be brutal, but it was utterly devoid of cunning. And even the brutality was softened by something shining from within.

“You say a Christian gave you the name.”

“Yes. I was among those who drove him into the arena with the whip, and I envied him. I’ve seen many men die in pain in the arena over the years. But I’ve never seen men die as these men and women died, with a song on their lips and joy in their eyes. I want to be one of them, you hear me? I asked this Christian to give me the name of one to whom I could turn, who would take me into the company of Christians.”

Quickly Mordecai made up his mind. He turned his stall over to a neighbor and led Crives Fastanus to Miriam’s house.

A gathering of the faithful met in the little apartment on the top floor of the old house, and their clothes were torn in mourning for those who would never again break bread in this place. Miriam and her visitors sat on the floor, according to custom, for it was less than a week since her two sons and their wives had been put to death.

The few leaders who remained were there also. There was Rufus, one of the founders of the congregation, and his mother, an old woman with sorrowful eyes. She came from Jerusalem, and it had been her lifelong dream to return to the Holy City. There was Linus, a middle-aged man with a stern, strong face set in a black beard. He’d begun to reorganize the remnants of the congregation on the very day following the dread slaughter in the circus. Eubulus and Pudens helped him. There were others, too, and they sat barefoot on the ground with Miriam.

Their voices were low, and they didn’t talk about the martyrs or the past, but about the congregation and the future. After the slaughter they feared that there would be a great falling off of converts. The congregation would remain a tiny group, perhaps even scattered abroad, as in the days of Claudius. They discussed plans for bringing together those who remained alive and taking them to the Via Appia quarter, where Simon Peter was hiding. Perhaps he could comfort them.

As they sat thus talking, there was a knock at the door. Mordecai, the Jew, who was one of them, entered leading Crives Fastanus, who’d been whipping Christian prisoners just a few days before.

Many of the lives lost had been due to spies, so the group was not easily convinced that the old gladiator had pure intentions. But Crives Fastanus lay at their feet with his face turned to the floor, and begged them in a broken voice to believe him.

“I come,” he cried, “from the lovely land of Galatia. It’s a green land where the moss on the stones makes you think of spring. I was just a child when they snatched me from my mother’s side, and from that day on I’ve lived in the midst of blood. They taught me to fight and to preserve my life by taking the lives of others. Indeed, I lived only to take the lives of others. I believed that the greatest happiness was to be alive and that nothing mattered but whatever helped me to stay alive.

“I believed this until I saw your men and women dying with songs on their lips and joy in their hearts. And then I knew my belief had been a false one, and there is greater happiness than life. There is eternal happiness. I beg you, take me back to the springtime of my childhood, to the heavenly fields where the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, feeds his flock. I want to be one of his sheep.”

“When did you hear them speak this way?”

“During their imprisonment and in the hour of their death. I heard them sing of green pastures by still waters, and of the shepherd. All my life I’ve sent men to their death, but I never heard one go with a song on his lips. And before the last of them were driven into the arena, I begged them to take compassion on me and tell me who could make me one of them. There was a man who believed me, and he gave me the name of a woman I could talk to. Please don’t turn your faces from me, but lead me to the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, whose name I’ve learned to call on.”

The believers looked at each other, and one said, “Surely God has sent the tormentors to take the places of the martyrs in the congregation. Blessed be the Name of God!”

They received the gladiator into the faith that day and taught him all the signs of the faithful.

* * * * *

As it was with Crives Fastanus, so it was with many others who’d witnessed the deaths in the arena by day and on the campus at night. It was the first time masses of Romans heard the song of hope and triumph from those entering the shadows of the underworld, and many of them were seized with an irresistible desire to learn the secret of the faith that transformed the darkness of the underworld into the light of everlasting life.

Figures came stealing through the streets while Rome slept. They came from rich homes and they came from crowded shelters where the homeless lived. There were Jews and Gentiles, freedmen and slaves. They exchanged the secret signs of the faith, drawing the symbol of a fish in the air, or an anchor on the ground, and they whispered instructions to each other. The gathering was to take place on the Via Appia where they would break bread, eat the common meal, and hear words of comfort from Simon Peter.

And so it was that the fears of the congregational leaders were proved false; for the torment visited on the believers only strengthened the growth of the faith. It was as if a competition had set in tacitly between the two powers, the cruelty of Nero and the love of Christ over the heart of man. It turned out that the greater the danger to the Christian congregation, the larger were the numbers that were drawn to it.

Among the non-Christian Jews the deaths of the Christians created a profound impression. Martyrdom itself was part of the Jewish tradition, so the newcomers, who died as Jewish martyrs had died from time immemorial, came to be regarded as brothers.

The Jewish synagogue, legal by Roman law, became the cover to the Christian faith. It was to a Jewish synagogue in the catacombs that the Christians were now hurrying. They slipped through the darkness across the Sublicius bridge, down from the Aventine hill, and even from the slopes of the Palatine toward the Porta Capena and the Via Appia.

Now these particular catacombs were new and not yet known to Tigellinus’ spies and so provided a second layer of protection to the believers’ secret meetings. There was a large subterranean hall at the center of the catacombs, from which extended the labyrinthine corridors. Funeral services were held here, as were congregational assemblies and anniversary services for the dead. The walls were decorated with sacred designs, candelabra, citrus fruits, grapes and palm branches. Images of the ram’s horn, the shofar, appeared here and there. It was the symbol of the resurrection that would come with Christ. There were drawings of Abraham and Isaac, representing the sacrifice, and of Jonah in the belly of the fish. Here the Christians found refuge and a place of worship under the light of oil lamps.

On this first re-assembly of Christians after the great calamity, there were strange and moving encounters. Servants and masters who had no idea that the other was of the faith came face to face as brothers. Men and women who’d hidden their inner lives from each other out of fear of betrayal embraced and wept with joy. The blood Nero shed, the sword he still held over the community, drew the Christians together in a bond that was stronger than ever. More than brothers and sisters of one family, they were more like members of one body. No one knew when he would be called on to testify for Christ, but they all knew that sooner or later death would be their common portion. And beyond death, which was but a gate, rebirth and everlasting life would be their common portion.

When the believers had taken their places, Simon Peter was brought in from his hiding place. They crowded around him as he spoke. He said a prayer and then observed a time of silence with all the others, on their knees with faces buried on the ground. After a long pause, bread was broken and distributed and the cup of wine was passed from hand to hand. They all felt they were sanctified and united in Christ and in his sufferings.

* * * * *

One night the hall of the catacombs was surrounded by a band of legionaries. Tigellinus’ spies had discovered the secret meeting place of the Christians. There was no cry of terror, or sign of panic, when the soldiers broke into the service. The worshippers remained where they were, their faces pressed against the cold stone, their thoughts stubbornly given to Christ. And even when they were chained and dragged out into the night, they said not a word, but meditated on their faith.

Among the prisoners were the disciple Simon Peter and the one-time gladiator Crives Fastanus.

17 - Kaddish

2010-03-11T03:26:00.001-05:00

Late that evening the Jews assembled in the great synagogue received the message of the account of the slaughter in the arena and of the fiery sacrifice at nightfall. The worshippers who’d been fasting and praying all day under Zadoc’s leadership now learned that the souls for which they’d been praying had departed in all purity, with forgiveness on their lips.

Zadoc rose and said, “My brothers in Israel, blessed is he that has drawn so many souls into the shelter of the divine wings.

“This is a great day for Israel. Many souls have been born to our father Abraham this day. God’s Name has been sanctified throughout the world, and it will be sanctified wherever the name of the martyrs is carried, from now on forevermore. Sanctified be all those who have perished in Him, and whether they be Jews or Gentiles, from this day forth, they are our brothers.

“Therefore let us rise and bless their memory. Let us say a great Kaddish for their souls to the one living God of Israel.”

Then the rabbi stood before the scrolls and cried out, “Judge of the world, Father of all living, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, accept the blood of your servants that has been poured out before You like water. It is for You alone that this sacrifice was made. Therefore let it be acceptable in Your sight. Assemble the martyred souls under the wings of Your glory and bind them in the bond of eternal life.

“Let not the blood of Your servants be shed in vain, but let it be a pillar of fire to be a guide to Your people in the wilderness, and let Your Name be spread in all the corners of the earth, so that every knee may come and bow before You, for Yours alone is the glory and the praise. Let all people make a bond to serve You in utter trust. Let Your justice be unfolded over the earth, so that evil may cease and the reign of Messiah begin, for we can wait no longer.

“Look on our pain and our wretchedness, have mercy on Your creatures, eternal God of Israel!”

The rabbi could no longer hold back the tears. His voice shook as he began to intone the Kaddish for the martyrs, “Magnified and sanctified be the Name of God.”

The whole congregation of widows, orphans, brothers, and sisters of the martyrs repeated the Kaddish in tears, “Magnified and sanctified be the Name of God.”

* * * * *

Late that night groups of Jews stole out of the pent alleys of the Trans-Tiber, carrying little oil lamps. Quietly they wound their way through the streets and open places and crossed the Janiculum to the Vaticanum. A few crosses still stood smoldering there, but most of them had fallen into ashes, and in the ashes lay the bones of the martyrs. The silent group went from cross to cross, gathering up the bones and wrapping them in cloth. The sleepy soldiers on the campus didn’t interfere, for the Jews were within their rights. In addition to the crosses, there was a great heap of garbage that had been carried out from the circus, and the Jews searched it for human remains. Carefully and lovingly they gathered up bodies, limbs, bloody fragments, and wrapped them in cloth.

When they’d collected everything that appeared to have belonged to a human body, they went in procession to the Jewish burial place, which was a cave far out in the Trans-Tiber. A great weeping broke out there. But the leaders of the Jewish community and the leaders of the new faith, who accompanied them in the task of giving Jewish burial to the remains of the martyrs, said that it wasn’t fitting at this moment to weep for the martyrs. It was fitting, rather, to sanctify the Name of God, even as the martyrs had done.

So the orphan sons were led forward and ranged about the large common grave, and the whole people accompanied them in the saying of the Kaddish.

“Magnified and sanctified be the Name of God.”

16 - In Green Pastures

2010-03-09T10:08:00.002-05:00

A single cry of mourning and desolation went up from the Trans-Tiber for every single Jewish home had at least one person missing. In fact, some families rejoiced if only one of its members had been dragged off to Nero’s circus on the Vatican. The congregation gathered in the synagogue from early morning till late at night praying and chanting psalms for the martyrs agonizing in the cellars and crypts of the arena.

A ring of Jewish wives, daughter, mothers, and sisters lingered by the walls of the circus. Their grief broke out in passionate gestures and in a high wailing that tore its way through constricted throats and quivering lips. Hands were lifted frantically to heaven, imploring the compassion of the Almighty. Some women tore their clothing and threw ashes on their heads. Others beat their breasts with clenched fists.

In a wider ring around them the Roman masses, dressed in festive attire with garlands on their heads, enjoyed these preliminaries to the great entertainment to come.

Meanwhile the circus was filling with people, aristocrats as well as commoners. They all brought plenty of food and wine, either from home or from the many booths set up on the Vatican, for it would be a long and thrilling spectacle. One day wouldn’t be enough for all the blood and victims needed to compensate Rome for its calamity.

Never before had so many human victims been prepared for a single spectacle. The crypts were jammed with “Christians” to provide a wide variety of entertainments. The Roman mob licked its chops in anticipation of seeing tender children who could offer no resistance, and strong men making frantic and futile efforts to escape or to defend themselves. There would be old people shrinking from the jaws and fangs of the animals.

The latecomers lamented that they would have to sit in the outer ring and wouldn’t be able to hear the bones crunch.

The women were no less feverish than the men, pushing through the crowd just as furiously and threatening to scratch out the eyes of the men and women who jammed the entrances. The ushers could not maintain order. The struggle carried the mob right up to the very walls of Caesar’s loge. Some scuffles took place as patrician slaves cracked skulls right and left to clear a path for the litters.

At last the gigantic circus was so filled that the gates had to be closed leaving only those who were too late to get in and the ring of wailing Jewish women outside.

Once the movement ceased, some sort of order was restored, and the spectators settled as best they could into their places, a sea of white togas, garlanded heads, and half naked bodies. Caesar lolled on his throne surrounded by his intimates, while Poppea, swollen with pregnancy and shamelessly uncovered, sat at his side. A squad of Praetorians, resplendent in silver breastplates and horned helmets, guarded the imperial loge, under Tigellinus’ command.

Because of the heat Nero had dropped his toga and sat comfortably in his light tunic, which was considered an act of disrespect toward the people. But Nero didn’t have the discipline to submit to physical discomfort even if he was trying to woo them. His wreath, so carefully arranged by his slave, had already slipped to one side of his head, as though he were already drunk. The smell of sweaty flesh rising from the imperial loge was as heavy and sickening as that which rose from the masses jammed into the tiers.

In another disappointment Nero did not stage any formal demonstration. He just sat slumped on his throne like a resting butcher. He did lean over now and then to whisper something to a member of his suite and he threw kisses to people in other loges. Only Poppea, half-naked though she was, seemed disturbed by this utter lack of dignity.

The procession of victims that always preceded a spectacle of this kind to whet the appetites of the spectators, also fell short of expectations. The men, women and children who were driven into the arena at the point of a spear came out wailing and lamenting. Only Jew-Christians would have the nerve to spoil such a great festival in this way. Even the men made no effort to display the courage proper to those who were about to die in the presence of Caesar. The highly disgusted Romans saw only a pitiful mob of miserable Jew-peddlers who refused to play up the occasion.

The ones who’d been dressed up in animal skins, such as lions, foxes and sheep, wouldn’t even respond with the expected behavior. In short, the sacrificial procession was a miserable failure, due to the lack of public spirit by the Jews. Only the women made a certain contribution, for having been stripped naked, they struck a most amusing pose as they tried to cover their private parts with their hair or their hands.

And when these half-crippled tatterdemalions were driven past the imperial loge, they didn’t even have the respect to look up at Caesar. Instead, they just muttered to themselves words that the mob couldn’t make out due to their own uproar.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” they said, their voices becoming firmer as they went along. “He makes me lie down in green pastures.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.”

This was the armor they wore as they advanced into the place of death, and it worked wonders for them. They saw tranquil meadows beyond the abyss of death. And on the meadows they saw one with open arms, saying, “Come to me, all you who suffer and are heavily burdened.”

The murmur grew stronger and it swelled into a chant that became audible over the obscene uproar of the circus.

“I hope for you, O God. I commit my spirit into Your hands.”

Tigellinus, sitting in Nero’s loge, bit his lips. The filthy Christians had spoiled the parade. He just knew that they’d deliberately done this to disgrace him. So he signaled the overseers in the arena, and they drove the victims back into the vaults.

Lucan said, “A flock of sheep would have shown more courage, O Caesar.”

But on the other side Petronius said, “No, the trouble is they show too much courage. They have the courage to ignore even you, O Caesar.”

In any case, it was time to get down to the day’s business. Caesar gave the sign, the trumpets blew a fanfare, and the cage doors holding the wild beasts were opened.

The first to be released were a herd of wild oxen. As they moved out from the shadow of the circus wall, they were bewildered, blinded by the sudden light, and irritated by the tumult. The audience gasped in delight, however, for they saw that a woman had been loosely tied to the horns of each ox. Their white bodies flashed as the sunlight struck them. And even in this extreme danger, the women were still contorting themselves in shame, trying to cover their nakedness with their hands.

The beasts were roused from their stupor as the women’s hair fell across their eyes. They started rearing, stamping, and flinging themselves about wildly trying to rid themselves of their human cargo. One by one, the women were thrown into the air. A scream, an unintelligible outcry, and the body was lifted into the air again, but this time on, not between, the horns of the ox. The body quivered, and the blood spurted. The smell of fresh blood sent the beasts into a frenzy, so that they pranced and circled with their impaled victims, snuffing the hot steaming air. Again the bodies were thrown down on the sand and lifted up, and what had been, just a few moments ago, a human being, was now a mass of ripped and trampled flesh, covered with splashes of red.

The audience rose to its feet, applauding wildly, and a great roar of salute to Caesar rolled across the arena.

A few moments later the attendants charged in and herded the oxen back to their cages. Half a dozen carts were rolled in, and the bodies were thrown into them pell-mell. Fresh sand was scattered over the red patches, and the second spectacle began.

The doors to the prison vaults were opened and a gang of slaves drove out a group of men, women, and children covered with animal skins fastened around the shoulders tightly enough that they couldn’t be thrown off. Some were standing; others were forced to crawl. Some of the women held infants to their breasts. The horrible, motley group shrank back, but the whips fell on them and they moved forward in a confused mass.

Again no face was turned toward Caesar. Again the strange infuriating chant rose from the assembly, “Though I walk through the valley. . .” The slave attendants tried in vain to scatter them apart by lashing their faces, but they would not scatter, nor would they approach the imperial loge. They clung together, a compact mass, chanting psalms.

Who can fathom the secret of such souls? Who can penetrate to the mystery wrought by God in His elect at that moment? Only one who has been touched by God’s grace and who has rested in the shadow of His love can understand how God lifted His chosen ones to Himself and in that moment transformed their earthly anguish into heavenly glory. For they no longer saw with the eyes of flesh, they no longer knew what was taking place around them. Translated into spheres inaccessible to us, they were beyond the reach of mortal evil.

Successful in this last test, they walked out into the arena to see Christ even before their eyes closed in death. He came to them and stood before them with open arms; he drew them up to him on the cross, so that their sufferings might mix with his and they might become one with him.

Though their bodies shrank from death, their souls were filled with bliss.

“I rejoiced when they said to me, Come let us go to the house of the Lord.”
“Hallelujah! Praise the Lord, praise Him all servants of the Lord!”

The gates of the cages were pulled back, and a pack of wild bloodhounds emerged. They’d been starved over the last few days and they bounded toward the human group huddled at the center of the arena and then paused for a moment, a few steps away. They lifted their muzzles, sniffed, and emitted a long howl.

That was the moment the men and women clinging together saw Christ distinctly and unmistakably in front of them.

“Christ is with us!” one cried. “I see him!”
At once a dozen voices rose around her, “I see him too!”
“Lord, lord, take us to you!”

This burst of excitement startled the bloodhounds. Their throats moaned and they paused. The spectators rose in one mass, astounded by the picture. Men, women and children were singing and the beasts were hesitant in front of their prey. Then one of the bloodhounds crept forward, sniffed, and closed its jaws suddenly on a piece of goatskin covering a child. It’s nostrils quivered at the smell of the uncovered human flesh and, as if stung by an arrow, it reared and flung itself with fangs and claws on the little one.

That was the signal; in an instant the spell was snapped. The howling, baying pack dashed forward, the skins were ripped down, and wild canine jaws closed on human flesh. The victims did not struggle. Their flesh was ripped, blood burst forth, and all that was heard were those strange words so terrible in Roman ears.

“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
“O Lord, take us to you.”

During the blood bath, something happened that took the crowd’s breath away. As the bloodhounds tore the victims apart, a man was putting up a fight! But he wasn’t fighting for himself. Kneeling on all fours, he was shielding a little child with his ripped flesh. He held the child with one hand, and with the other, as well as with a foot, he was trying to beat off the bloodhound’s attack, while edging his way toward the side of the arena. But strangely, the bloodhound seemed intent on the child rather than on the protecting adult. It kept pushing its muzzle under the man’s belly, to get at the white flesh of the little one. The man somehow managed to twist and squirm and push so as to keep himself between and beast and the victim.

This spectacle aroused a mixture of emotions in the Romans. There was suspense as to the outcome, of course, but there was also a strange feeling of pity, utterly out of keeping with the event. The bloodhound finally fastened it jaws on the man’s leg and began to drag him backwards. When they reached Caesar’s loge, the dog stopped and the eyes of tens of thousands of spectators were riveted to the scene. The man was ripped from head to foot and the blood streamed from a hundred wounds. But with a last conscious effort he was still shielding the infant.

A mother offering this mad and hopeless resistance to the inevitable probably wouldn’t have drawn as much attention. But that a father should display this desperate love, this tenderness at the gates of death, was strange and somehow moving.

And the spectators lifted their thumbs, and shouted to Caesar, “Let him be!”

But Caesar didn’t give the signal of the upturned thumb, and the man in the arena came to the end of his strength. With bloody claws and dripping fangs the dog thrust and snapped at the infant, ripping the man’s limbs. One last snap of the jaws overturned the man, and the dead child rolled into the sand. The bloodhound dragged it off.

The man lay motionless and was taken for dead. But suddenly he stirred, and stemmed his gashed elbows against the ground. He couldn’t struggle to his knees. He only managed to lift his head, and to make a signal toward Caesar’s loge with one hand.

Then, in a loud, clear voice, he called out, “Tigellinus! The child you rejected is now with the lord!”

Tigellinus recognized Antonius, his slave.

Then he dropped into the sand again, murmuring, “Lord, take me to you!”

Attendants cleared the hounds from the arena, carried out the remnants of the dead bodies, and sprinkled new sand on the ground to make ready for the third spectacle.

And so it went throughout the day. Group after group of human beings, pack after pack of wild beasts, until the mob became bored. It was always the same, men, women, children, blood, prayers, roaring, claws, fangs. The hot sun beat down, and the stink of dead meat and of living perspiring flesh hung in the air. It was just too much.

But then all of Nero’s enterprises went this way, lacking proportion and producing the opposite of the intended effect. Besides, the Christians wouldn’t fight. They just prayed and let themselves be eaten. The spectators might as well have been watching a group of butchers at work. People were nodding off and many would have gladly slipped away, but they were afraid of the countless spies scattered throughout the circus. It wasn’t safe to be lacking in the proper enthusiasm at a great spectacle generously arranged for the Roman masses by Caesar. But after each spectacle the applause became lighter; no roars of salutation rolled toward the imperial loge.

Even Nero himself was bored. He didn’t move though. He just lay there perspiring, his thick flesh oozing out of his tunic. Petronius had used up all his prepared jests, trying to keep up Caesar’s interest, and he was racking his brain for something to say. In his soul he cursed Nero for this interminable, monotonous, unimaginative slaughtering of Jews. Even Poppea, for all her cold, insolent bearing, was weary to the soul. Her attendants kept pouring perfumes on her to drive away the stink of blood and perspiration. But most disgusting to her was the nearness of the imperial carcass. And Nero himself would have been glad to call a halt, but he felt obscurely that the longer he sat there, the more he suffered the dreary, bloody spectacle, the more completely he would erase from the Roman minds their original suspicion of his guilt.

Once again his gross and stupid strategy miscarried. For as the masses became over sated with the slaughter and their restlessness increased with the long day, their attention and resentment swung from the arena to the emperor. There was nothing left to hate in the miserable Christians for even the dulled, brutish hearts of the Romans were touched by the spectacle of so many women and children being fed to the wild beasts.

Some even dared to whisper to their neighbors, “Is this how criminals die? Could these kind of people set fire to a city?”

If not for the presence of Tigellinus’ men, such remarks would have been made more loudly and grown into a demonstration. But his men were everywhere. So the people feigned enthusiasm, and in their hearts they wished that Nero and Tigellinus were the ones in the arena instead of the Christians.

The signal finally came to stop the spectacle. The mob dashed out of the circus as furiously as it had dashed into it, stopping at the food booths to snatch up the reeking sausages and stuff them into their mouths, washing them down with gulps of sour wine. And here came Nero moving through the crowd with his suite, determined to show the Romans that he was with them on this day. Petronius, who’d been cursing him in his heart for the hideous and revolting show in the arena, cursed him even more heartily for being compelled to take part in this demonstration of democratic sentiment.

This was by no means the end of the great punishment, for a double row of crosses stretched along the middle of the campus on the Vatican hill, and a human form was nailed to each one. The bloody limbs of the victims were steeped in oil, and the crosses were heavily overlaid with wax. The crucified ones had already been suffering on them throughout the day, but death was not to be granted to them until nightfall.

At dusk the human torches were kindled. Then, at one end of the alley of blazing bodies, Nero appeared in his chariot, wearing a red tunic, the symbol of Jupiter. An attendant at his side held up the imperial eagle of Rome. Tigellinus, dressed in green, Nero’s color in the races, flashed a white cloth, and Nero tugged at the reins.

The white horses started forward, and the imperial chariot sped down the alley between the blazing crosses. A wail of pain accompanied him down the flickering alley.

An old Jew, hanging on one of the first crosses, cried out, “Father in heaven, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

And down the long course of fiery crosses the cry was repeated, “Father in heaven, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

The old Jew gathered enough strength to raise his voice again, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!”

And again down the double line of torches the cry rang out, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!’

Even this last spectacle failed to cleanse Nero from the suspicion that he had set fire to Rome. The impression left on the masses had nothing to do with the guilt of the Christians. It centered, instead, on the picture of a man crawling around the arena on all fours, keeping his body between the fangs of the bloodhound and the infant he protected.

And the exhausted Romans asked, “Did infants also set fire to Rome?”

“What do you think, Petronius,” asked Lucan, “did infants too set fire to Rome?”

“The children suffer for the sins of the fathers,” answered Petronius.

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you hear what the slave called out to Tigellinus? And didn’t you get the meaning? Tigellinus set fire to Rome, and his child was therefore thrown to the beasts.”

This bitter witticism was repeated and became very fashionable in Rome.

“What? Infants too set fire to Rome?”
“The children suffer for the sins of the fathers.”

And everyone knew who and what was meant.

15 - The Great Trial

2010-03-08T13:08:00.002-05:00

Antonius, the stable boy slave of Tigellinus, endured every form of torture the ingenuity of the Romans had devised. The bones in his hands, arms, and legs were cracked one by one between the claws of iron pincers. His skin was torn, strip-by-strip, from his quivering flesh. His fingernails were pulled out from the roots one by one, and his flayed feet were held over a slow fire. He no longer looked human but was reduced to a bundle of raw, blistered flesh.

And yet for all that, he still wouldn’t reveal what he’d done with his master’s child. A fellow slave had betrayed him under similar torture, and now Tigellinus himself directed and witnessed the torturing of Antonius, while two physicians ensured that he remained alive and sensitive to pain. When he fainted, the torture was relaxed and he was nursed back to consciousness with drinks and unguents. He was promised his freedom if he would confess that he’d turned the child over to the Christians to use its blood for their mystic rituals. But Antonius kept his eyes and his lips closed.

In the fiery ring that rotated around his head, Antonius saw a great stairway rising from earth to heaven. At the top Christ floated in the midst of luminous blue clouds, his arms stretched out to the slave, who was rising heavenward with agonizing steps. Antonius was seeing the reality of what everyone had been telling him, that “Christ waits for all who suffer for him.” Every pang was now dear to him. The deeper the claws of iron crushed into his flesh, the hotter the flames under his crippled feet, the nearer he knew himself to be to glory.

Antonius could feel the cool touch of the marble steps, which then softened and became blue clouds that wafted him toward the outstretched arms. He floated higher and higher and the radiant figure drew nearer and nearer. Now he was in the very middle of the inmost blue that surrounded his savior, a bright fiery blue that did not burn but soothed and healed and filled him with bliss.

Antonius lifted his arms, and all his being was filled with one desire, one thirst, one cry, “Take me, lord, take me to you!”

Tigellinus was stupefied as he looked at the ripped carcass of the slave. His attendants were equally amazed. They couldn’t understand what they’d never seen before, that a slave could endure such tortures and not betray his kind.

The comfort of death was not granted to Antonius on this day. Instead he was saved for the arena.

Other slaves, of course, did not show the same fortitude. Some needed only to see the flagrum and they recanted in terror, confessed their association with the Christians, or anything else that their tormentors wanted to hear. They “revealed” that there was a day of judgment coming when a rain of fire would pour down from heaven, to sweep away the sins of mankind.

Aha! So the believers in Christ had set fire to Rome to fulfill the prophecies.

Some slaves told of secret meetings of Christians, where unity with the godhead was achieved by “eating his flesh and drinking his blood.” What else could this mean but that Christians truly did eat human flesh and drink human blood?

The same scenes took place in other households. Torture was applied to any slave suspected of association with the Christians; the same “proofs” of Christian guilt in the burning of Rome were obtained everywhere.

The Roman masters planted suspicion widely and nourished it skillfully, so that the cry to condemn the Christians would come from the people rather than from the rulers. Agitators even visited the homeless. They said that they themselves had heard Christian fiends confessing to the torching. They said that the torch carriers seen on the first night of the fire had been identified as black-bearded Jews. Slowly the widening ring of accusation spread.

“You see how the fire began at the Porta Capena, where the Jews have lately settled, and ended at the Tiber, where they have their old settlement? The Jewish quarters alone were untouched by the fire!”

Thus were the Christians linked with the Jews. Day by day the tide of popular resentment set in toward both. The people cried out for vengeance. Only blood could wipe out the unspeakable guilt. Only the wild beasts of the arena could carry out the punishment.

Then when the temper of the masses had been roused to the right pitch and turned in the right direction, the first public measures were taken.

The Jews could see the darkening storm clouds. Their good fortune at escaping the fire now turned out to be an immeasurable calamity. And as they watched the inevitable approach of the day of wrath, they did what Jews have always done in times of great trial; they assembled in their synagogues, they fasted, and they recited psalms.

* * * * *

Even though assembling together increased the danger of detection, the Christians gathered in their usual places of prayer, in the synagogue courts and in homes. They also chanted the Jewish prayers from the Psalms.

Now, more than ever, they all felt the imminence of judgment day. The signs of prophecies spoken by Peter and Paul had been fulfilled. The heavens had rained down fire, Rome-Babylon, the city of sin, was leveled with the dust, and above its ruins Messiah/Christ would shortly appear.

Many Christians claimed to see special signs in the heavens: new stars blazing up in the night sky, a fiery sword suspended above the city and great comets appearing, pointing toward Rome. Some claimed they saw the clouds opened, revealing the heavenly sanctuary and hosts of angels gathered around Christ.

The lord was coming; the long awaited event was about to happen!

Two conflicting moods appeared among Jews and Christians. There was panic and hope, terror of death and expectation of salvation, the judgment of Nero and the judgment of the lord. Some saw a ravening beast coming from its cage in the arena, while some saw the savior descending from heaven. Some felt they were sinking as the ground gave way under their feet. Others were being lifted to the glory of heaven.

But in all this confusion and vacillation they were aware of one single desire. “Whatever happens let it happen soon!”

They were also aware that the two extremes did meet at a certain point. The terror of death was the portal to eternal life. The last evil on earth heralded the beginning of the reign of eternal justice. Therefore they didn’t hide themselves but met together to confront the danger and the hope.

In the chapel that adjoined the synagogue court in the Trans-Tiber, the Christians gathered in the evening and lit their lamps. The women brought cakes of bread, and Peter sat down and broke bread with them. The cup was filled and passed around, and when all had drunk, Peter lifted his hands and spoke.

This time he didn’t tell them of the life and death of the lord, as he normally did. Instead he recited a chapter of the Psalms in Hebrew, and after each verse the congregation repeated it in Greek.

“As the hart pants after the living streams,
So my soul pants after You, O God!
My soul thirsts for the living God.
How long before I see the face of my God?”

As the responsive murmur rose from the chapel, a band of soldiers, led by a centurion, appeared. The men were armed. Their shields and helmets shone in the night, their swords swung at their sides. No one turned to greet them. The murmur of prayer continued without interruption.

The centurion strode forward, and the worshippers, lifting their eyes, saw that it was old Gabelus, of the Praetorian Guard.

“Come with us,” Gabelus said to Peter. “It’s time.”

Peter rose, not sure what to do.

“Tonight,” said Gabelus, “they will come for all of you. The command has been issued to arrest the Christians.”

The elder Andronicus addressed Peter, “You must go, Simon. The congregation needs you. Go with them.”

Peter accepted the decision.

“I leave the congregation in your hands, Andronicus. Lead them to the cross, where he waits for them. It’s his desire that we have our part in his pain and that our blood be mixed with his, in order that we may be one with him.”

“For his sake we will endure everything,” answered the congregation, and the prayers were resumed under the leadership of Andronicus.

Gabelus and his men led Peter across the bridge and through the city to the district of the Via Appia. They hid him there in the house of Hermas, near the catacombs.

* * * * *

The command had indeed been issued to the police and the Praetorians to arrest all Christians, whether they were Jews or non-Jews in whatever household they might be found. But the line between Jew and Christian was so faint that no one was sure where one ended and the other began. Among non-Jews the task was simple. If a slave admitted to being a Christian, he was immediately taken. But the Christian Jews looked like any other Jews. They spoke the same language, worked side by side, and observed the same Sabbath ritual. The same books could be found in all Jewish homes.

Now a non-Jewish Christian could easily clear himself of the charge by calling on the names of Jupiter and Apollo and throwing a pinch of incense on their altars, or on those of the deified Caesars. But all Jews, Christian and non-Christian, refused to call on the names of their gods, or to offer incense on their altars. The police and the military therefore arrested them indiscriminately, on the assumption that anyone who denied the gods of Rome must be of the hated sect.

* * * * *

The Roman courts were always heavily overloaded even in normal times. But with the mass arrest of “Christians” anything like an orderly judicial procedure became utterly impossible. The judges had neither the time nor the informational background needed to question each individual intelligently. Nor was the public mood one that encouraged such care and discrimination. All day long the judges sat in the basilicas on the Forum, and hour after hour new batches of prisoners were brought in. There were men and women, Jews and non-Jews, young and old, dragged from the homes of patricians or from the Trans-Tiber and Via Appia quarters.

The procedure became automatic.

“Who are you?”
“I’m a Christian,” was the answer in most cases.

This was equivalent to a confession of complicity in setting fire to the city.

Occasionally a case might take a few minutes.

A young man of noble appearance was brought in, having been taken in a raid on a Christian chapel. The young man wore a toga, so he was a freeman and probably from a patrician family.

“Who are you?” asked the judge.
“I’m a Christian.”
“Who are your parents?”
“I have no parents. My father is the Lord of the world, my faith is my mother.”
“What is your occupation?”
“I am a slave of Christ.”
“What land do you come from?”
“I’m a stranger on this earth, a wanderer, until I go to my heavenly homeland.”

A mother and child were brought before the judge and answered similarly.

An elderly Jew who’d been dragged out of his home appeared before the judge.

“Do you believe in Christ?”
“I believe in a Messiah whom God will send to free us and all the world.”
“A Christian, like the rest,” said the judge, curtly.
“But I’m a Hebrew, and my faith is sanctioned by the law,” protested the Jew.
“Throw incense on the altar of the divine Augustus!” commanded the judge.
“I do not recognize Caesar as a god. My God is the one only God of Israel, and Him alone I worship.”
“A Christian, like all the others!” repeated the judge, impatiently.

Slaves weren’t even brought to court. Their “trials” took place in the slaves’ quarters, and their purpose was not to obtain a confession, since suspicion itself was tantamount to guilt, but the names of other Christians. And whether the torture yielded the desired result or not, the trial ended in one of two ways. Either the slave died under the torture, or else he was carried off and thrown into the cellars of Nero’s private circus on the Vatican hill.

In this way Nero prepared a spectacle for the masses such as Rome had never seen before. It would be a gigantic bloodbath that he hoped would be remembered through the ages.

14 - In Search of a Scapegoat

2010-03-07T13:26:00.002-05:00

Nero was content. For once his beastly nature was sated. Rome had served as the model for his great ode. Now Rome lay at his feet like a ravaged, brutalized woman. He set about at once to save what was left of her, or more accurately, to deflect suspicion from himself. He was seen everywhere, taking personal command of the legionaries who demolished rows of houses in the immediate path of the fire with battering rams. The order was finally given to open the sluices of the aqueducts, which had remained shut during the conflagration for some mysterious reason. The destruction was finally halted.

For nine days the fire had raged, and a vast part of Rome had been converted into a glowing pit. Only those quarters on the outer ring were completely unscathed, including the Via Appia and the Trans-Tiber, where most of the Jews lived. The Tiber acted as a barrier and not a single house was touched. Also the precincts containing the great empty palaces of the Campus Martius and the Forum were untouched. Four precincts in the heart of the city, the most densely populated, were completely gutted, while six were partially demolished when the fire brigades tried to clear a wide space around the flames.

The heart of the city was a vast, glowing oven, covered with the ruins of fallen walls and roofs, which buried whatever and whoever remained behind. The people who had managed to escape crowded the streets of the other precincts, making passage and communication all but impossible.

And here comes Caesar as the tenderhearted father of his people. He had the great Campus Martius, with its baths, gardens and temples, opened to the homeless. He even placed his own gardens, palace, and circus on the Vatican heights across the Tiber, at the service of the city. As soon as they could enter, tens of thousands of slaves were set to work clearing the ruins, and carrying the ashes and rubbish in sacks, baskets and carts to the banks of the Tiber. All available ships were mobilized to bring stores of grain and olives up the river from the port of Ostia and then remove the huge heaps of refuse to be dumped into the open sea. Each day Nero visited the people, who wandered among the ruins of their former homes hoping to save some remnant of their possessions, or to identify the charred bones of their loved ones. He called up a profusion of tears over the misfortunes of his people. He even went so far as to lift homeless orphans in his arms, so that Rome might see to what depths Caesar had been moved by the universal calamity.

Nero promised the people a new city the like of which no ruler in the history of the world had ever bestowed on his subjects. It would be a city of glorious, wide streets, of great, regular houses of a certain, limited height, with wide facades, and in every house there would be a supply of fire-fighting equipment. As the first token of his intentions, Caesar ordered his treasury to extend credit to every citizen who was prepared to start rebuilding his home, and a tax was laid on every province of the empire to finance the reconstruction. Engineers and architects were called in, and great quantities of fire-resistant stone were brought in. Nero promised to build a vast ring of colonnades, baths, theaters and circuses.

And of course, there was his “Golden House” that would stretch all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, combining his palaces on the two hills.

Nero worked feverishly with the architects and engineers. Hundreds of thousands of slaves were rounded up and set to work and order was gradually restored.

But there was a problem.

The Roman populace was mournful and unresponsive. They no longer cared to watch the antics of their ruler with gross good humor. They no longer acted content with “bread and circuses,” and they openly applauded the mimes and rhymesters who mocked the imperial criminal. Rome was no longer what it had been.

Oh they listened to the words Nero offered and they accepted the gifts he gave, but they said nothing. Everywhere Caesar was, the people looked away. He shed his tears in vain. Even his promise to arrange a performance of the mighty poem “The Destruction of Troy,” in which he’d immortalized the catastrophe, failed to move them.

The people refused to be whipped into a mood of enthusiasm, for they were certain that it was Caesar, and Caesar alone, who was responsible for Rome’s destruction. It was no secret that Caesar had always dreamed of a new Rome, and of a “Golden House” to immortalize his name, and hundreds of people had seen and now testified of the men running around the city throwing lighted torches into the stores of the Circus Maximus on the eve of the fire’s outbreak. And word soon got around that Nero had posted himself on the summit of a tower on the Esquiline and chanted his ode.

And so the Romans turned to the gods. The corrupt and cynical masses underwent a religious revival, and the temples were suddenly filled with worshippers, especially the Vulcan temples. The Sybilline books were consulted for the significance of the disaster, and Roman matrons renewed the practice of bringing offerings to the Capitoline Jupiter and to the other gods. It was clear that Rome had averted its face from Caesar and turned it toward the gods.

Nero couldn’t hide from the truth; something had happened to the soul of the Roman people. Words and gifts alone wouldn’t take away the memory of the nine days of horror. The screams of dying children still rang in the people’s ears, and the nights were haunted by memories of themselves and their dear ones running back and forth in panic between the blazing ends of narrow streets.

A scapegoat was needed.

And where better to find a scapegoat than among that element of the Roman population that was the weakest, the most alien, and the most despised?

“The Jews, who blaspheme our gods, and refuse to take part in our religious festivals!” said the poet Lucan, a long time enemy of the Jews. “They despise us and refuse to worship Caesar. They have a horrible and mysterious religion, a god who nobody sees, and who demands they sacrifice their happiness, and even their lives, to him. They let themselves be sacrificed like sheep for the sake of their god. Would it be any wonder if their god commanded them to destroy the city of their enemies?

“Have you noticed how many candles they light on the seventh day? Doesn’t that prove their god is a lover of fire? And how about the fact that not a single Jewish home was destroyed by the fire, but stopped dead on the banks of the Tiber? Not only that, it didn’t even go in the other direction, along the Via Appia, where the Jews have settled recently. The people of Rome will easily understand that these aliens are the only ones capable of committing such a crime.

“And what about their talk of a certain ‘Christ,’ who has supposedly appeared as their liberator? Who is this ‘Christ,’ and what does he threaten?”

Lucan pointed to the number of Roman temples destroyed in the fire as additional proof that only the godless Jews could have perpetrated the crime.

* * * * *

When Nero called together the council of his intimates to discuss the question of finding a scapegoat, he also invited old Seneca.

Ever since Nero freed him from the consular office, Seneca had clung to his private life, spending his days either in his city home or at his country estate. He gave himself completely to his studies, and was engaged in a final, desperate search for the essence of the divinity he’d never been able to find among the gods, but that he believed could be found in the laws of nature. He was working on a thesis in which he compared the laws of nature with the laws of ethics. He discovered that there is not only an imperative logic of cause and effect in natural law, but also a higher logic that provides a counterpoise to evil. This brought him to the threshold of that faith he never entered.

“We believe,” he wrote, “that we are in the temple of nature; but the truth is we still linger in her corridors.”

Though he never crossed the threshold, his new perceptions did influence his character. Near the end of his life, he actually began to live in closer accord with the principles he’d so long proclaimed in his letters. He overcame his lust for worldly possessions, he abandoned the pursuit of wealth, and he lived the life of a Nazarite, eating only bread and water. His only wish was to be forgotten by Nero and by Nero’s shameful world, so that he might dedicate himself to his studies without interruption. In this he was disappointed, for Nero demanded his presence in the council on important occasions.

At the secret council that discussed the question of the scapegoat, Nero asked Seneca for his opinion.

“I consider,” said Seneca, “that the Jewish faith in an invisible god, and their blind devotion to him, is something fit for slaves, but unworthy of freedmen. Nevertheless, their faith is legal and has had the sanction of all the greatest Caesars. They’ve lived in Rome since time immemorial, and can be found in every part of the empire. The people are in daily contact with them in a hundred ways. And though it’s true that people make fun of them, it’s also true that many have begun to imitate them and visit their synagogues, both here and in the provinces.

“It won’t be easy to convince the Romans that people whose shops and stores are in the rich streets of the Campus Martius, and on the Via Sacra, and who are spread in all precincts of the city, would set fire to Rome in an act of self-destruction. Besides, persecuting the Jews here might start a rebellion in Judea, and riots in other parts of the empire. Nor would it be off the mark for me to say that one cannot wipe out the evil deeds of others by committing evil deeds oneself.

“Nor, Caesar, can one cleanse oneself of guilt by accusing the innocent. It is only by good deeds that we can cleanse ourselves of our own guilt. Therefore I relinquish the greater part of my possessions to rebuild Rome. And it is my advice that all present do likewise.”

The old philosopher looked calmly at Nero as he uttered these words.

Caesar was dumbstruck. He tried to speak, but all that came from his mouth was the tip of his tongue. His short, fleshy neck expanded, until it resembled a huge goiter.

But Seneca was at peace. A patient smile settled on his hard, granitelike features. His eyes were filled with a fresh, steady light. For the first time, he overcame the fear of death and said what was in his heart rather than what Nero wanted to hear.

“Tigellinus!” exclaimed Nero, his voice hoarse with rage. This told the courtiers that Seneca’s end had not yet come, for if it had, Nero would have smiled softly instead of showing anger.

Tigellinus began in a pious, restrained voice, “The calamity fallen on the city of our gods is so great that only you, O Caesar, were able to fittingly lament it in your immortal ode. The gods are aghast at the destruction of their temples, and they cannot be placated, O Caesar, by prayer and sacrifice alone. Who knows what greater calamity awaits us if we do not placate them with the act of vengeance they want?

“Rome is sick and angry. Rome is thirsty for the blood of those who have reduced her city to ashes. This act of horror can be atoned for only by a greater act of horror. The only way to win back the favor of the gods is to find the guilty and visit on them such punishment as will satisfy the gods. The Romans must see torn flesh, bleeding and burning in an act of retribution.

“You, O Caesar, must show honest Romans that you will not stand by indifferently when they clamor for revenge. You must appease Rome and the gods by a judgment that no Caesar before you has ever carried out. There must be great spectacles, at which all the punishments rained by Pluto on the daughters of Danaus are rained down on those who are guilty of Rome’s destruction.

“And who are the guilty? Surely not all the Jews. I agree with Seneca. We can’t take an entire people and throw it to the beasts. We can’t ascribe guilt on a religion sanctioned and legalized by a line of Caesars. That could indeed cause riots.

“But who says all Jews are guilty of burning Rome? Certainly the rich merchant of the Campus Martius or the Via Sacra wouldn’t give his own shop to the flames. There are certainly decent Jews, who’ve adopted our manners and our civilization.

“But there are masses of poor Jews on the other side of the Tiber who are called ‘Christians,’ after a certain criminal, Christ, whom Pontius Pilate put to death. Do you know what the name ‘Christ’ means? It means ‘the anointed one.’ The fanatical Jews believe that this Christ is a king and Caesar. They believe that he rose from the dead, and that he will soon return and ascend a throne of judgment. And do you know who he will judge? You, Nero. He will judge you and me, and anyone who doesn’t believe in him!”

A burst of laughter came from the assembly, partly of derision and partly of relief. Tigellinus waited, then continued, “This Christ is their Caesar, O Nero, not you. And as if that criminal fanaticism weren’t enough, they try to bring others down to their level. Roman slaves are infected with this disease, including some of my own. They don’t think of themselves as slaves. They insist on knowing their own children and creating their own families. They avoid work on the Jewish Sabbath, and they disobey any commands that are contrary to their ritual. They have only one Dominus, Christ.

“Search well, all of you. You will find the pestilence among your own slaves. Worse, I’ve heard that there are Roman matrons, wives of patricians, who are tainted with the criminal superstition. I have reason to believe that the wife of a certain senator, who shall remain nameless, has accepted their faith. And that’s not all! The legionaries have also been corrupted. There are slaves, freedmen, and legionaries in your house, Nero, who worship Christ rather than you. They meet secretly at night and celebrate mystic rites. They bow before an ass’s head and eat human flesh. They drink the blood of slaughtered infants. I have this on the authority of my own spies.

“It is they who set fire to Rome at the command of their god. They are to blame if our gods have withdrawn their favor from us. I’ve already ordered that my Christian slaves be put to the torture, so they may reveal the names of their fellow conspirators. The courts will do the rest.

“Rome demands revenge, O Caesar. The gods demand revenge! The whole world demands revenge against the enemies of mankind! And your hand, O Caesar, shall be uplifted to give the gods, and Rome, and the world, that which they demand!”

Nero rose from his chair, went over to Tigellinus, and kissed him resoundingly on the mouth.

13 - Day of Wrath

2010-03-06T11:29:00.001-05:00

A few days after the magnificent banquet thrown by Tegellinus, he arranged for the entire city to witness Caesar’s departure from Rome when he set out for his summer palace at Antium. The procession was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. The Roman masses, especially the poorest of the plebes, saw the grandeur and wealth of the emperor streaming out into the country.

No one could count all the senators, generals, patricians and matrons, carried in their litters as they followed the glittering chairs of Nero and Poppea. There were many freedmen with their overseers, chamberlains and staffs of servants. Who could count the bathmasters, hairdressers, perfume mixers, masseurs, wardrobers, cooks, waiters, butlers, and wine tasters? There were hordes of slave musicians with their instruments.

And of course, the dancers, actors, comedians, clowns and mimes, many famous throughout the empire, weren’t left behind either. And as these went along they danced, they tumbled, and they caricatured the great of Rome, including some of those actually in the procession. They sang, made obscene jests, and uttered their vulgarities against the aristocracy. Some even dared to hint at Caesar himself, alluding to one who’d sent his own mother and stepfather into the nether world. One imitated a woman floundering in the water, Caesar’s attempt to drown Agrippina. Another lifted an invisible drink to his lips and contorted himself in mimic agony, mocking the death potion that Claudius had finally been made to drink. The mob howled with glee.

Behind the mimes came the freaks and cripples, some more animal than human. They hopped on one leg or crawled on all fours. The more grotesque the creature, the more the mob strained to see them. From roofs and niches ragged spectators shouted encouragement, and spasms of merriment passed like waves across thousands of brutal faces. And after the freaks came the animal fighters, the men reserved for battle with wild beasts in the arenas, leading chained lions and tigers.

The procession lasted several hours. The front was already entering the Via Sacra when the end was at the Equiline hill. It poured through the Forum and into the Via Nova, past the Circus Maximus, winding about like a huge serpent. Nero wanted all of Rome, and particularly the poorest sections, to see him and hail him on that day. He kept on blowing kisses to the mob with his stumpy fingers, and the mob answered in a delirium of joy. The mob was so happy to see all these things, that it even applauded the long procession of asses that provided the milk for Poppea’s daily baths.

* * * * *

A few days later, on the night of July eighteenth, in the year sixty-four, according to our reckoning, fire broke out in the oil and flour depots among the houses of the thickly populated area around the Circus Maximus.

Now there was nothing remarkable about a fire in Rome. Indeed the city had a fire brigade, for the maze of streets was filled with flammable material. Whenever a fire broke out, police, soldiers, and even nearby citizens were called on to help in localizing it by razing the adjoining buildings.

But no one tried to stop the fire on this night. On the contrary, many witnesses later reported that they had seen certain individuals running through the alleys with lighted torches and throwing them into the houses. The fire spread with lightning speed, feeding on stores of oil, grain, and rope. A dense, choking cloud of smoke burst from the flaming houses, so that it became impossible to get to the center of the fire.

Soon other fires began to appear from various corners of the area. No one tried to stop the men running with the torches, for they acted like men who’d received instructions from the authorities. The billows of smoke became so heavy that it was impossible to even get to adjoining houses to demolish them and create a space around the conflagration. The population could only flee from the asphyxiating flames.

In an incredibly short period of time, the fire leapt across into the Circus Maximus. The immense structure was empty and there was plenty of flammable material there from wooden materials of all kinds to hay and straw for the animals, as well as multitudes of masks and costumes for the actors. Everything fed the fire, and the flames sprang higher and higher, so that within an hour or two the whole vast building was a roaring inferno, from which waves of intense heat spread out in all directions.

One wave rolled toward the lower slopes of the Aventine hill, where a number of granaries immediately flamed up, the fire leaping through alley after alley of flimsy and dilapidated houses of Rome’s poorest inhabitants. A second wave threw itself mightily on the Coelian hill, while a third wave flung itself up the slopes of the Palatine hill.

The fire did meet with some resistance there in the massive buildings erected by several generations of Caesars. There were temples that had been standing for centuries. But the resistance was only temporary. Continuously fed from below by inexhaustible stores of fuel, the fire grew in volume and intensity until even metal gates and railings melted. With a triumphant roar it hurled itself across to the military barracks and the stables of the German mounted auxiliaries, seizing building after building.

After their initial hesitation, the fire brigade and police did what they could to pull down row after row of buildings, but they could no more have stopped the advance of the flames than they could have held back the tide at Ostia. Millions of sparks and tongues of flame simply blew across the spaces they created. The buildings behind the firefighters would begin to burn and no sooner did they level these than the buildings on the farther side were already beginning to glow. With the heat and blinding smoke on all sides, the fire fighters lost their sense of direction. Exhausted, bewildered and choking, they simply fell at their posts, like insects sucked in by a candle flame.

For three days and nights the fire raged until the whole vast area of three precincts, among the most populated in Rome, had been converted into a fiery sea. The city of Rome was covered with a dense cloud of smoke by day and illumined by lurid flames at night. When the fire came to the banks of the Tiber, the flames suddenly stopped and changed direction. Instead of moving from the Palatine hill into the Forum, where it would again have encountered some resistance from a group of massive stone buildings, it mounted the sirocco wind that set in and turned toward the Esquiline hill, and like a beast licking its prey, began to lick the houses on the lower slope.

The flames had to work harder at the stone buildings on the hills and overcome them one by one, but in the valleys there was no such resistance and the fire could spread effortlessly and joyously, covering the dense labyrinths with a thick pall of flame and smoke. It seemed like the fire was a living thing with a conscious will of its own.

The valley that meandered between the irregular slopes of the Aventine and Coelian hills was a particularly choice tidbit. The twisted stairways, niches and narrow alleys set up a series of draughts. The foundations of the houses were rotten, the walls supported by countless wooden buttresses, dry as kindling. The cellars and lower floors were filled with moldering refuse, rags, and smashed furniture, to say nothing of the store of house fuel in each cellar.

Many of the inhabitants, having waited until the last moment, were caught in the fiery trap. Mothers snatched their little ones to their bosoms and tried to escape over the rooftops. But most of them never made it, for somewhere on the third or fourth floors the wooden stairways gave way under them. Some people jumped through windows to be dashed to death on the glowing street or buried under collapsing walls. The men snatched up as many of their most precious possessions, the tools of their trade or most valuable pieces of merchandise, and fought their way into the street.

The pavements were cluttered with tools and merchandise made of cloth and leather, as well as bundles of sandals and furniture. These not only burst into flame under the showers of sparks, they also prevented the people from escaping, so that those who did manage to get into the open found themselves running like insane things in a circle of flame from which there was no escape. The young, the old, the sick, some running, some crawling, some being carried, collapsed while fleeing. There was no way to know where the next sheet of fire would burst out. People on the upper slopes tried to run down into the valleys; those below tried to make their way to the upper slopes. Wherever they turned, the implacable beast confronted them. Fire just seemed to rain down from heaven and to burst upward from the earth.

Men and women went mad, either with screaming panic or with dumb paralysis, for the fire seemed to develop hypnotic power to draw people into its blazing heart. Some of them might have escaped, but they became victims of a self-destructive panic or of a horror that robbed them of the will to act. Some scurried about insanely with no plan at all. Others sat on their bundles of household goods with faces devoid of all intelligence or feeling, and waited for the destruction to reach them.

Some actually threw themselves into the flames. Women, tearing themselves out of the grips of the men who tried to hold them back, went racing back into houses to try to rescue their little ones. Some merchants and artisans, seeing their life’s accumulation of possessions or the means of their livelihood in the flames, ran into the roaring ovens to perish. Some stood around laughing hysterically, or crying out to the gods or against Caesar, before giving themselves to the fiery death.

Survivors were camping in the streets, for even in places where the fire hadn’t reached, no one dared to stay indoors. It seemed the gods had condemned Rome to a fiery destruction, and they had no way of knowing if their house would be next.

The untouched areas were literally jammed with people, not just freedmen, but with thousands of slaves who weren’t just homeless but without masters as well. Without a place to report to or someone to give them commands, they just wandered aimlessly through the jammed streets. Rumors circulated that Caesar had ordered that Rome be burned so that not one stone would be left on another.

There was no feeling of unity among the people of Rome, being made up of races, tribes, and nations, both civilized and barbaric, from every part of the empire. The slaves in particular, whose lives had been nothing but labor and punishment, had only hatred in their hearts for their masters, and many took this opportunity to help themselves. There was also a vast underworld criminal class, for whom the hour of chaos was the hour of harvest. Its members now swarmed out freely from their hiding places and a wave of criminality followed the wave of fire. The wretched victims who escaped with little bundles of food or household goods weren’t safe in the streets, and countless murders took place, often for just a handful of food. Even the houses of the rich were defenseless.

The “Pax Romana” that kept a world in order collapsed at the heart of the empire.

On the sixth day, the still unexhausted fire surrounded the entire Esquiline hill, and reached the palaces of the aristocracy, including one of Nero’s. Patricians lived on the summit of the Esquiline, among theaters, temples, and ancient monuments.

A frightened Tigellinus sent word to Caesar to return to Rome at once. He called out the Praetorian Guard and had them use battering rams against a ring of buildings to clear a space on the Esquiline. This succeeded in holding the fire back, but not before it destroyed many famous national monuments, including the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. Even the palace that held the masterpieces brought to Rome from Greece was destroyed. Many statues lay in fragments among the fallen and shattered columns. Precious vessels of Corinthian bronze, ancient Greek vases whose sides were adorned with bas-reliefs by the old masters, were now either shapeless masses of metal or heaps of shard. Among the blackened remnants of ivory stools and couches were scattered the ashes of rare manuscripts, silk carpets and hangings imported from Persia and India. And in the midst of this smoking chaos there hung the faint odor of Oriental unguents and perfumes, the immense collection of toilet articles that were the pride of Sabina Poppea.

The belly of Caesar’s house had been ripped open, like the belly of the pig on that festive night in the Agrippa gardens, and its contents scattered abroad.

Caesar finally returned to Rome to find that the fire had indeed dried up the swamp of poverty and ugliness at the foot of the Palatine, but it left the swamp on the farther side of the Esquiline, the Suburra, in all its foulness. At the end of the sixth day, when it seemed the flames had been brought under control, they suddenly broke out anew. This time the place of origin was in the gardens of Tigellinus, which bordered Caesar’s gardens on the side leading toward the Suburra.

Once again mysterious men were seen running through the streets of the slums bordering on the Circus Maximus, throwing blazing torches, soaked in oil and flax, into the houses of the poor. This time the conflagration wasn’t as sudden or as furious, but it was better prepared and more solidly founded. Step by step it proceeded down the slopes of the hill until it reached the cramped homes of the Suburra, where it found an immense accumulation of fuel. It spread swiftly, roaring from street to street, until it joined hands with the fire on the Via Sacra, where the great shops and magazines of the rich merchants were still blazing. Thus the Esquiline hill was surrounded on three sides by an immense sea of fire.

Standing on the summit of a watchtower that had remained unscathed in the central area of the Esquiline, Nero looked down on the capital of his empire transformed into a blazing pit. He could hear the desperate screaming from the trapped population of the Suburra. He could even make out, by the lurid sheen of the flames, tiny individual figures scampering about like poisoned mice. In any direction he looked, there was fire, only fire. Rome was roasting like a sacrificial beast on an altar.

Caesar put on an actor’s robe, covered his face with an actor’s mask, took up his harp and broke into ecstatic song for the benefit of those who were with him, improvising his “Destruction of Troy.”

“Your song is worthy of the model, O Caesar!” said Petronius, indicating the burning city with a wide gesture. “The world will forever remember both.”

12 - Nero

2010-03-05T14:42:00.002-05:00

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus became – a bride. He – or she – put on the rose-covered veil of a virgin and went through the long and complicated ceremony of marriage with one of his liberated slaves. This included the blessings of Apollo’s and Aphrodite’s priests and the sacrifice of a suckling pig. And the place of honor among the guests was reserved for Sabina Poppea, his wife.

This wasn’t the first time Nero had gone through such a marriage, in the full presence of the Court, including the council of ministers, the commandant of the Praetorian Guard, and the highest military figures of Rome. Some time before this he’d “married” another man, but on that occasion the other man had been the bride. This launched a jest among the wits of Rome that would no doubt have meant death to repeat, which said “How great would it have been for Rome and the world if Nero’s father had taken such a bride.”

Some people at the second wedding observed that Nero made a better bride than groom, for with his great fleshy bosom he looked more like a heavy widow than an Augustus. His hairdresser also found it easier to arrange his hair in girly ringlets. Indeed it was when Nero was in his manly mood that the hairdresser suffered. No way could the smooth, oily skin, the round flesh and full lips be manipulated into a suggestion of masculinity.

And the feminine effect was heightened whenever Caesar opened his mouth for his mouth, which his flatterers assured him was the noblest ever heard by human ears, was that of a capricious and affected woman.

The court poets recited a collection of excellent odes that said that Aphrodite herself was smitten with envy over the beauties of the “bride.” Of course they had to be careful to include a number of blemishes in the poems, so that the meter and metaphors would not compete with Caesar’s own songs. Petronius, that arbiter of taste and master of obscenity, put everyone, including Tigellinus, to shame with his flattery.

All in all, the spectacle was thoroughly in the spirit of the time, for Rome was worthy of Nero, and Nero was worthy of Rome.

It took a certain degree of resourcefulness and inventiveness to keep Nero in good humor. Chariot races were all well and good, but Nero was easily bored. He’d had his fill of gladiatorial shows and of course he was always the winner in the chariot races. He needed triumphs of a more difficult kind, for as Muses began to push out gladiators and the ringing harp drowned out the drumming of horse’s hoofs, every member of Nero’s entourage was suddenly expected to become an expert in the arts.

Patricians and senators had always thought it beneath a Roman’s dignity to have an opinion on a statue or a poem. But suddenly it was a matter of life and death to be able to speak like professors. So they sent to Athens for the most intelligent slaves and the most admired works of art. Rome became the repository of the treasures of the Greek temples, and the culture of Greece was elevated to the status of a fashionable craze. To be able to quote the Odyssey and the Iliad in the original was now almost indispensable for anyone seeking social distinction.

A plague of poets and reciters broke out in the imperial city, and one might hear classic verses quoted anywhere Romans assembled, in the baths, restaurants and barbershops. And it all stemmed from the master of Rome. Nero wanted to be a poet, therefore every Roman had to be at least a critic of poetry.

In fact, Nero was forever threatening to leave the capital of the empire and to settle in the capital of culture, Athens. He complained that Romans were incapable of appreciating his immortal works. When he appeared in the arena, their enthusiasm, he said, seemed to be lacking in proper warmth. Only the Greeks would understand what his spirit brought to the world. And Nero actually toured the provinces like a strolling player, to win the plaudits of his subjects. When he recited in the arena in predominantly Greek Naples, he was given such a thunderous reception that he complained at the comparative coolness and doltishness of the Romans. He started to talk of a great triumphal round of performances with a climax reserved for Athens.

Unfortunately for Tigellinus, he didn’t have even the slightest rudimentary skills when it came to literary taste. His learned slaves perspired greatly in trying to teach him a few ready phrases, but he could never remember them at the right moment. But Tigellinus had other ways of winning Caesar’s favor. On this day, for example, the commandant of the Praetorian Guard arranged a great banquet in honor of the “bride.” The banquet was to be held at the artificial lake in the gardens of Agrippa.

The banquets Tigellinus arranged put every other form of entertainment to shame. Exotic foods from the farthest corners of the world, game fish and fruit out of season, dishes no one had ever tasted before were Tegellinus’ substitute for literacy. And the banquets were always prepared so lavishly that the remains could be distributed to thousands of citizens in the name of the imperial master. Furthermore, Tigellinus spent a great deal of time subsidizing corn imports in Nero’s name, distributing vast quantities of oil and wine, providing magnificent spectacles, and seeking out the most skillful gladiators and largest herds of wild animals, so that Rome might make merry and applaud Caesar.

Besides arranging banquets, Tigellinus hired many “clients” to bring the cheers of the masses to Nero. So as he passed through the streets of Rome in procession to the banquet, Nero was stopped by a huge delegation of “clients” hired by Tigellinus for the occasion. The people threw themselves before his sella, stretched their hands to him, and babbled hysterically, “Apollo, don’t leave us! What will we do without your music?”

“August Caesar, Rome languishes for the sound of your voice!”

“The gods have given you to us, Apollo! Sing for us!”

Nero was touched by the demonstration. His thick lips settled on a smile as he looked out over the prostrate mass of supplicants. Poppea and his other wives, of both sexes, looked at him imploringly. It seemed that Apollo had been conquered.

But the satisfied smile did not last long, for part of the procession’s path took it through the foul, narrow alleys of the Suburra. It was summer in early July, and the day was hot, the air heavy. The windows of the high apartment houses were black with spectators, who waved veils and kerchiefs at him. But there were no roses or other flowers to counteract the stale, fetid air here. There was no wind on this day, and the foul, standing air enveloped the parade. Caesar’s face became contorted with disgust. The smell of putrefying meat and fish rose thickly from the cellars, mixed with rancid odors from oil, vegetable and vinegar. The hot sun had also done its work on the human bodies, the mattresses in the apartments, and the heaps of garbage outside.

Nero thought about the “Golden House” he wanted to build, a huge edifice to link his palace on the Esquiline with that on the Palatine. Here he would assemble the costliest works of Greek art. He would build a giant amphitheater for the performing arts. It would be greater than anything any Caesar had ever before attempted. But was it to be built over a garbage dump?

The Suburra had to be uprooted. All the narrow, filthy streets of Rome had to be leveled with the ground. A new city had to rise from its ashes, eternalizing his name and filling unborn generations with incomprehension at his achievements. Let the centuries know the inexhaustibility of his talents and his divinity. It was his duty to transmit his inspiration to the world.

His attendants sprinkled him with perfume and dropped precious oils on his skin, but it was all in vain. Nero wanted to retch, and the quivering didn’t stop until he’d been carried into the Agrippa gardens. The sour, sick look on his face warned his courtiers that Nero was in a foul humor, and dread fell on them. Each one trembled for himself and looked for ways of making himself scarce.

Caesar was given to rapid changes of mood, however, and a few minutes after being carried into the riot of colors and the voices of laughter and joy that filled every corner of the gardens, the smile reappeared on his heavy lips and his fleshy jaw was lifted from the womanish bosom.

He perked up even more when he discovered what entertainment Tigellinus had arranged for him. A flotilla of barges covered with thick tapestries, decorated with garlands, and linked to each other with silk ropes floated on the artificial lake. Rows of wooden booths were erected on the lake shore containing the wives and daughters of the emperor’s suite sitting or laying in suggestive poses, a combination of imperial splendor and gross vulgarity particularly suited to the imperial taste.

Crocodiles floated on the surface of the lake, ready to pounce on anyone who should make a false step and fall into the water. For another element in Nero’s favorite amusements was that of danger – to others. Tigellinus knew that Nero would love to see someone tumble off a barge into the waiting jaws of a crocodile, and in any case, it would be fun to see the spectacle of terrified slaves who had to bring the dishes to the barge from their small boats. The reptiles, their appetites whetted by the smell of food, swam after the boats and set them rocking.

The girl dancers who had to perform on narrow ledges running around the barges were pale with terror, and the guests, reclining on couches at their tables, laughed drunkenly at the antics of the slaves and dancers. The laughter rose into a shout of excited merriment when an unhappy girl slipped and fell into the water with a scream. A huge pair of reptilian jaws closed on the white body, and the water was stained red.

The food was rich and greasy. Boat after boat unloaded cargoes of roast white pheasant from remote provinces, huge boiled lobsters holding smaller marine animals in their claws, like shrimp, crays, and starfish. Finally a whole table was transported to Nero’s barge. It contained a pig still in its skin, amid green leaves and miniature bushes. Tiny pigs were laid around the larger animal in sucking poses.

Sabina Poppea half lay and half sat at Nero’s side. She was in an advanced stage of pregnancy and did everything to show it off. Like the animal brought to Caesar’s table, she had her long, heavy breasts uncovered, the nipples painted red to bring out the pallor of her skin. Her brown eyes, cold and motionless, were fixed contemptuously on the distance. Her amber colored hair was woven into thick plaits coiled like a crown on her head. The heavy golden ornaments on her throat, ears, and arms, and the great uplifted curve of her body, suggested the white marble statue of Helen, with whom she identified herself. No muscle quivered on her face. It was as if she, not Nero, were in control of her destiny.

But then Nero lifted up a huge carving knife and slit the belly of the pig, out of which tumbled a mass of tiny sausages, and a sudden flicker of terror passed across Poppea’s eyes. As the guests reached out and grabbed for the delicacies, she had the frightful thought that some day Nero would do to her what he’d done with the pig, plunge a knife into her and scatter her vitals on a table. She shuddered from head to foot.

* * * * *

Afterwards, when the clusters of torches were lighted on the barges and the guests visited the booths on the edge of the lake, Nero remained in the company of his favorites. Tigellinus approached him on bended knee and begged him to sing for the entertainment of the company. Nero categorically refused. His face was clouded again, like when he went through the Suburra earlier.

“No one in Rome loves me,” he exclaimed in a melancholy, womanish voice.

“No one loves you?” cried Tigellinus in horror. “Command me, my Caesar, and at a word I will throw myself to the crocodiles.”

Tigellinus immediately realized he might have just uttered his own death sentence, and all the blood drained from his face.

Fortunately, Nero paid no attention to the offer, much to the disappointment of Petronius. Nero only grimaced sourly with his thick lips, drew down his eyebrows, and let his eyes sink into the surrounding folds of fat.

He said, “If you Romans loved me, you would know what I desire and I wouldn’t have to say it.”

The courtiers looked at each other in bewilderment. They opened and closed their mouths without saying anything, until finally, wrinkling up his eyes even more than before, Nero exclaimed, “Rome stinks!”

The courtiers stared back with consternation. Apparently Nero disliked Rome. They knew what happened to a man Nero disliked. He only had to indicate dislike, had but to lift up his little finger, and a soldier would appear. No instructions were needed. It was enough for Nero to have expressed displeasure. But what in the name of Pluto was to be done if it was Rome that Nero disliked? The courtiers were tongue-tied. Even the quick-witted Petronius was at a loss for words.

Tigellinus was the first to come to.

“Rome would rejoice to go up in flames for your sake, O Caesar. Rome longs to burn for you! Rome will burn for you!”

The fleshy folds retreated from Nero’s face. A spark of triumph lit their watery depths. Nero put his hand heavily on Tigellinus’ shoulder.

“See! This is the only friend I have in Rome!”

This was clearly Tigellinus’ day. He had scored a great victory over his enemies.

Petronius, the craftiest and most gifted of the sycophants, stood off to the side, observing Tigellinus’ triumph. The vicious smile died on his lips. He put on an earnest look, struck a pose, and stretched out his hand to Nero.

“Now I see it! Now I understand! What is Homer’s description of the burning of Troy? For you, O king of poets, the gods have reserved the greatest of all songs of flame. You will be the singer, and Rome, the queen of cities, will by your model!”

Nero rose from his couch, approached Petronius, and kissed him on the mouth.

Petronius shot a triumphant, crooked smile at Tigellinus.

11 - Babylon

2010-03-04T12:14:00.002-05:00

Paul’s words to Antonius that, because he saved a soul Jesus would reward him by conferring on him the privilege of sharing his own suffering, sank deep into the new believer’s heart. From that day on he lost all fear of physical pain. He didn’t go out of his way to incur punishment, of course, but neither did he seek to avoid it by dereliction of his faith. And since he was determined to make no secret of his faith, he soon began to be singled out among the slaves of Tigellinus by his odd behavior.

One day a fellow slave, much older than Antonius and a worker in the same stable, incurred the displeasure of his master. An overseer saw that Gloria, one of the master’s favorite horses, had been too closely tied by the tail so that it became restless and unmanageable. The offender, Colon, a Corinthian slave, was led out to be punished.

Now there was a certain system of punishing slaves. The younger ones, capable of many years of service, were handled with care. They suffered, but not in a way that would make them unfit for service. With an old slave, it didn’t matter if his bones were broken and he was crippled for the few remaining years of his life. So Colon was stripped of his sackcloth shirt, the iron collar was closed around his neck, and the powerful slave with the flagrum, the massive, bone-breaking whip, was summoned.

Then something happened that was never heard of before. Antonius, trembling and covered with sweat, came running, and threw himself at the overseer’s feet. He was the guilty one, he declared. It was he who tied the knot too tightly and too high on Gloria’s tail. He was the one who ought to be punished.

It didn’t quite work out the way he’d hoped, for the puzzled overseer decided to punish both slaves, so Colon’s bones were broken and Antonius’ flesh was cut with the light lash. But this was the queer behavior that attracted attention to Antonius.

Antonius was not only young, and a willing worker, he was also well-built, with a powerful chest, narrow hips and powerful thighs. So he was often coupled with healthy slave women to bear a strong, new generation of slaves. He’d obeyed without question with no concern over who the woman was and without the slightest interest in the result of the coupling. Slaves weren’t allowed to have “families.”

But now it began to be noticed that Antonius was failing in his duty as a breeder and that he wouldn’t couple when admitted to a slave woman. But this wasn’t the worst of it. After being punished several times for his dereliction, Antonius did attach himself to a certain slave woman, but only to her. He expressed his determination to know who his children were and he acted as if he had a right to create a family of his own. When the woman gave birth, Antonius asserted that he was the father, and on several occasions he was caught in secret meetings with his mate, who brought the child out for him to see.

Not that this was the first time some slave had shown this tendency to exclusive preference and had made the attempt to build up a family relationship. But the application of the whip, or even the threat of it, had been enough to cure them of such notions. The child would also be taken away from the offending woman and given to another for nursing. Thus most mothers forgot who their offspring were and didn’t even know who they were nursing in the general confusion of the slave quarters.

Antonius’ obstinacy in the face of the lash was a direct and dangerous threat to the whole system. It started to affect other slaves and their breeding partners. The privilege of family was only for freedmen, and for slaves to attempt such a thing was nothing short of rebellion.

After a while it was noticed that the slaves taking part in this conspiracy had other practices in common. They seemed to have created a sort of brotherhood with a system of secret signs used to reveal themselves to each other. They might make certain gestures, or they might draw a rough symbol of a fish or an anchor on the ground.

This, then, was no accident. It was the manifestation of a cult.

Furthermore, it became known that many of the suspected slaves met together in the evenings, either in the courtyard or in the slave quarters, sang strange songs and uttered strange names. Most amazing, they were sometimes caught exchanging a kiss of greeting. Along with these bewildering and irritating manifestations of secrecy, there was a perceptible downturn in the number of pregnancies. Sometimes a couple that had been thrown together for breeding purposes was caught kneeling side by side and murmuring the name of a secret god by the name of Christ.

Inevitably these things were found to be connected with the Jews, those people who were the butt of Roman satire for wasting one day in seven by closing their shops and assembling in their synagogues. But now, “the day of the Jews” seemed to have crept into Tigellinus’ household in some incomprehensible manner. Every week on that day certain slaves were missing, and many of those who were in their quarters evaded their tasks and went about murmuring the name of Christ under their breath.

The attempt to put down this unprecedented form of revolt began with a series of scourgings. This had no affect. The punishment was received without complaint, and the slaves went on working quite faithfully at their daily tasks. But on the seventh day the same laziness manifested itself, the same disappearances took place, and throughout the week there was the same avoidance of the indiscriminate couplings.

This infection wasn’t peculiar to the slaves of Tigellinus’ household, nor even to just the slave class. Rome suddenly woke up to the fact that “the day of the Jews” had taken hold of great numbers of slaves and soldiers. Every seventh day there was a general movement toward the Jewish quarter in the Trans-Tiber, where slaves and soldiers were seen loitering around the synagogues.

It was one thing for freedmen and women to visit the synagogues; this had always gone on. But these were whole groups of slaves slipping away from their work on “the day of the Jews” and mingling with soldiers on the bridges leading to the Jewish quarter.

Upon investigation, it was discovered that this new, more earnest, and more malevolent form of Oriental fanaticism was a particular sect called “Christians,” who derived their name from a certain Jew criminal, Chrestus, who was put to death by Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. According to the sect’s superstitions, this Chrestus had risen from the dead and become the liberator of the Jews. Anyone who joined the sect, Jew or non-Jew, accepted the unclean practices and base beliefs of the Jews as their own.

Even though legal, the Jewish religion had never enjoyed the respect of the Roman world. The masses made it the butt of a special type of humor, and aristocrats and philosophers despised it. Even their “clients”, who spent their days gossiping in the baths or in the porticoes of the Campus Martius, aped their employers and toadied to the plebs by their attacks on the Jews. Pamphleteers, taking their cue from Apion the Egyptian slanderer, invented the most fantastic stories regarding the nature and appearance of the Jewish God. Whatever was repulsive and degrading in the minds of the mockers they attributed to the Jewish religion. They were incapable of forming even the faintest conception of the ethical contents of Judaism.

And now that this “Christian” sect had come out of the Jewish religion, all the ignorant spitefulness and obscenity was transferred to them. But there was a tone of malevolence in the new attack that had previously been absent. As long as the Jewish religion was confined to the Jewish quarter, it was simply derided as a grotesque curiosity. But as soon as it stepped across the threshold of the synagogue and into the “households” in its new “Christian” form, it ceased to be merely grotesque and became sinister. It mattered little in Rome if an occasional freedman chose to make himself absurd by sneaking into a synagogue to hear a Jewish preacher, or even imitate the observance of the seventh day. But it was intolerable that the indulgence of Roman law should be exploited by the Jews to spread a theory of equality and liberation among the slaves in the name of this Chrestus. What else could this be called but revolt?

The fact was that Christian agitation had penetrated to countless households, disturbing the relationship between slave and lord, encouraging a fantastic conceit among the former and limiting the authority of the latter. The very speed with which the agitation was spreading indicated, moreover, that in the case of Chrestus the Romans were confronted with a demonic manifestation of power that they interpreted according to their own hideous immorality. As the number of Christians grew, the slanders spread about them by the pamphleteers became correspondingly more horrible.

* * * * *

Vestian Suberus was a typical “client.” Born a slave in one of the provinces, he won the favor of his master with flattery and unnatural vice as a youth. He was set free, adopted, and then made the heir of his owner, who died of poisoning shortly afterwards. Suberus sold the estate and moved to Rome.

Driven by his ambition for a political career, he hid his servile origin with a set of false documents and sought to bribe his way into an official appointment. He kept a rich home, bought handsome slaves, entertained lavishly, and bought frequent gifts for Caesar’s favorites. He also hired a claque of clients and in every other way conducted himself like a patrician. But he underestimated the ferocious competition of the capital. He not only spent his fortune in the hunt for office but went into debt and almost became a slave again. Somehow he managed to avoid that and was left with two hungry, half naked slaves. Finally he lost even these two at dice.

He moved with his wife, whom he treated like a slave, into the top floor of a foul half-ruined apartment house in the Suburra. He had no children to burden him, for he threw any that were borne to him into the gutter or into the Cloaca Maxima.

He did, however, mange to save his “toga,” the emblem of his status as a freedman, and used it to find employment as a client with a rich patrician. Early each morning he put on his toga, which his wife kept carefully in repair, and hurried to his lord’s house to wait with the other clients to form part of the procession that accompanied him through the streets. For this he received six to ten sesterces a day, depending on the employer’s mood, and an occasional length of cloth for a toga. He was also entitled to the baths and spectacles as a freedman and to the daily quota of bread and wine distributed occasionally by Caesar or by some patrician currying favor with the mob.

Suberus spent much of his time in the amphitheater, where fights between gladiators or between condemned criminals and wild beasts often went on for days at a stretch. It wasn’t the sight of disemboweled men that drew him there; his eyes were fixed on the elderly women, matrons and widows who found a last thrill for their jaded nerves and shriveled flesh in the combats. Nor was he alone in this quest. A host of charlatans and ruffians frequented the arenas in the hope of attaching themselves to one of the wealthy female spectators. But even here, Suberus couldn’t sustain the competition. In vain did he whisper passionate words into unresponsive and sometimes literally deaf ears.

Vestian Suberus was no longer young. His eyes were rimmed with red, his cheeks puffed up, his limbs flaccid. He moved slowly, his belly sagging under his toga. All day long he watched younger men stalk the matron he was stalking and he knew he didn’t stand a chance. Late in the afternoon, weary with the fruitless vigil, he would go to a free bath. Then he would remember that there was a hungry wife waiting for him at home, a wife who was quite capable of emptying the chamber pot on his head if he came home too late. So he would turn toward the Suburra, spend a few sesterces on a piece of putrefying meat, and bring it home for supper.

One day Suberus sat before the great façade of the Baths of Agrippa in the Campus Martius in the company of a handful of “freedmen” like himself, the scourings of the city. The conversation turned, as it did so often, to the barbarous Oriental cult of the Christians that was making such inroads among the slaves.

“And do you know what they do at their mysterious meetings in the synagogues?” Suberus was saying, repeating what he’d heard in his employer’s domus the day before. “They bring in an infant, cover it with flour, make a gash on its body, and let the blood run into a beaker. Everyone sips the blood and smears their privates with it. It’s how they unify themselves with their god.”

“No, no,” said another idler. “That’s not the Christians. It’s the Jews who do that. They have a Temple in Jerusalem with a place that only their High Priest can enter once a year. For a whole year they keep a Greek in that room, and push food in there for him to eat. At the end of the year, the High Priest kills the Greek, then passes out the flesh to be eaten. I heard this from Apion when he was here in Rome.”

The speaker was a learned freedman who wrote pamphlets for his employer and painted posters that were put up at night on the walls of the Forum buildings.

“The Jews worship an ass’s head that they keep in the Temple,” added a third.

“The Christians do that too.”

Not to be outdone, Suberus said, “Christians, Jews, they’re all the same. They have all the same superstitions and some new ones besides, worse than the old. You know what they do at their secret meetings, men and women both? They strip themselves and –“ here Suberus leaned over and whispered in his neighbor’s ear, not because he was ashamed to say it aloud, but because he knew it would titillate the curiosity of the others.

His neighbor burst into laughter.

“You know what the worst thing is?” cried one. “I heard that neither Christians nor Jews ever reject a child, even a cripple! They raise them all. It’s one of the reasons they’re crowding us out of the city.”

“They’re not all like that,” said one. “I know some Jews who have businesses here on the Campus. They dress like Romans and talk like Romans, and even go to the amphitheaters and circuses. They wouldn’t do such things.”

“Oh sure, some of them are civilized; they’ve learned some of our manners. I have Jewish friends, and they’re just as good as we are. But the poor Jews over there,” he said as he jerked his thumb toward the Trans-Tiber region, “what they do in the secret synagogues, homes and courtyards! Have you ever been in the Jewish quarter when they observe their seventh day? What a smell! Nothing but onions, garlic, and sour wine. It’s enough to poison you. And who knows what goes on behind those curtains, by the light of their lamps and candles? I can believe just about anything of them.

“And mark this. The Christians are always among the poorest Jews, fanatical foreigners who keep their Asian ritual as if they were still at home in Judea.”

“It’s a wonder Caesar’s tolerated this evil danger so long,” said the pamphleteer, earnestly. “You know what? I’m going to write a new pamphlet on this very subject, and read it out in the Forum and in the baths, for anyone to hear. I tell you, Rome must be saved from the Jews, and soon, or it’ll be too late.”

* * * * *

Spring was approaching on light, fresh wings. First a mild wind blew from the south, dissolving the veil of gray from the face of heaven. Then the earth became young with a green blossoming. Willows shook in the little garden of the house of Hermas, out on the Via Appia, among the mausoleums of the great, not far from the Jewish quarter. Paul’s congregation assembled there now that he, Aquila and Priscilla were gone, and Hermas had been placed in charge.

Old Simon Peter was there standing in a ring of the faithful to tell them, as he always did, stories of the time he served Messiah. His heart was heavy for whenever spring came he remembered the sufferings of the lord. But this spring he was even sadder than normal, for he was troubled with deep forebodings, as if his spirit was warning him of dread trials about to descend on the congregation of Rome.

This morning he told them about the time he and his brother Andrew were mending their fishing net by the bright shore of Kineret in the homeland when they saw their savior approaching. He beckoned to them with his right hand, saying, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” They followed him from that moment on. And here was old Simon, still a fisherman, and they of the congregation were God’s fish.

He also told them of that spring day when out of fear he watched the lord from behind a wall in that narrow little street bearing the cross on which he was to die. The lord’s white robe was blood-spattered and streaked with the sweat of his anguish.

“Jesus did not put the cup away from his lips, and so every believer must be prepared to drain it again and to bear his cross and to let his blood be shed.”

Then he spoke of the frightful day approaching that would herald the second coming.

“The day of the lord will come like a thief in the night. The heavens will dissolve with fire, and the foundations of the earth will melt! Beloved brothers! Prepare for that day, and be diligent to be found faultless, that peace may be with you. Be ready for the time of the great witnessing, when you will testify for the lord!”

Evening came, and the shadows fell on the breathless group of men, women and children clustered under the hanging willow branches. When Simon’s voice ceased, his listeners were afraid to move. It was as though the dread day was about to dawn and even a whispered word would hasten its coming.

10 - With Jews a Jew

2010-03-03T14:51:00.001-05:00

Paul’s liberation was the beginning of a new dedication. That morning he felt like an eagle released from a cage. There was not a moment to lose. The congregations of Ephesus and nearby cities were waiting for him. He hadn’t yet been to Laodicea and Colossae, and he’d written to Philemon to prepare a lodging for him. And what about his beloved Galatians and Philippians, who were so faithful? Hundreds of faithful soldiers were waiting for him.

Paul immediately assembled all his workers: Timothy, Mark, Luke, Priscilla and Aquila. A great new enterprise was to be launched, for Paul had learned that a sect of false and narrow pietists had risen in Asia Minor that sought to convert the faith of Christ into a rigid Nazarite and ascetic discipline, a variety of Hassidism. They rejected the world altogether, denied themselves wives, and did nothing but fast and pray in solitude, transforming the universal appeal of the faith into a spiritual privilege of a handful of adepts. To Paul this new tendency in the congregations was even more dangerous than the assault of the Gnostics. He felt that only his intervention among the congregations could check the tide of the wild pietists, and he needed all the help he could get.

Titus was already in Crete, and Aquila and Priscilla were about to leave for Ephesus. Timothy would follow later to help them strengthen the congregation, choose leaders, and purify the spirit. But first Timothy had another task to perform.

Paul was sending him to Jerusalem with a letter to the congregation there. With the martyrdom of James, Paul would send an offer of peace; an attempt to make whole what had been split, to reassert the common bond of blood.

And so, ready to leave Italy from the port of Puteoli, Paul dictates his letter to the Hebrews.

In the letter Paul refers back to what he learned at the feet of Gamaliel. He reviews the Torah from Genesis on, weaving quotations from it and the prophets into the letter, making use of the methods he learned in the school of his youth, interpreting the verses according to the tradition of the Pharisees. The tone of the letter is Jewish. No one but a pious Jew who had never departed from the tenets of the traditional faith could have written it. He doesn’t use the second person, but the plural first: not “you,” but “we.” He is no longer at odds with his brothers. He does not abrogate the Torah. On the contrary, it is through the power of the Torah of Moses that he would win them to Christ.

He addresses himself to their imagination and fantasy. He knows what sanctity attaches in the mind of Jews to the High Priesthood, and he would make an eternal priest of Christ. Christ is descended in the flesh from Abraham himself.

“He didn’t take on himself the nature of angels, but the nature of Abraham. Therefore it was fitting for him to be the equal of his brother in all things, that he might be a compassionate and faithful High Priest before God, who forgives the sins of the people.”

“For as he alone suffered so he is able to help others who are tried in him.”

He speaks tenderly of the fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as of Moses and the prophets, and even of the Torah. He adorns the letter throughout with quotes from the Torah.

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. . . . I will give my Torah in their midst, and I will write it on their hearts, and they will be my people and I will be their God.”

He sees Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the sacrifice. He compares him to the Holy of Holies in the Temple, but all Jews enter it, not just the High Priest.

Thus he speaks, “a Jew to Jews.” And like a prophet of consolation he evokes the great and glowing hope beyond the night of trial, terror, and anguish. He brings the Jews to Christ, not by threats and gloomy forebodings as he has done before, but by putting the glory of the High Priest’s robes on Christ, the robes he wears on the Day of Atonement when he enters the Holy of Holies to win forgiveness and reconciliation for the Jews.

“Jesus Christ has come in order to be a High Priest in the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect sanctuary, not made by human hands. Neither by the blood of bulls and goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies us for the purity of the flesh, how much more shall we be sanctified by the blood of Jesus Christ, who through the Spirit offers himself without spot to God? How much more shall we be sanctified, and purged from dead works, to serve the living God?”

Toward the end of the letter Paul adds, “Whoever he loves, he disciplines,” and he reminds his fellow Jews of the saying of Hillel, “Follow peace and holiness with all men, without which no man shall see the Lord.”

He exhorts them to renewed observance of the Abrahamic practice of hospitality.

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for some have thereby entertained angels unaware,” an allusion, striking deep into Jewish memory, of the encounter between Abraham and the angels of God.

He tells the people of Jerusalem of his longing to see them again and implores them to pray to God that he might be “given to them” speedily. He ends the letter with the news of his liberation. He doesn’t do this in open language, but rather indirectly, knowing he will be understood.

“Know that our brother Timothy has been set at liberty,” he writes.

But he knew they were well aware of the saying of the Pharisees, “That which the rabbi is, the pupil is also.” If Paul the teacher was imprisoned, so was his pupil; and when Paul was set free, so was his pupil.

Having finished the letter, Paul entrusted it to Timothy, who had learned the holy language in his childhood days, and Timothy set out for Jerusalem. Then Paul gathered his companions about him and took ship for Asia Minor.

09 - Sabina Poppea

2010-03-02T10:55:00.001-05:00

Sabina Poppea was the granddaughter of Sabinus Poppeus, a Roman governor of many provinces and much honored by Caesar. Poppea’s mother had been a famous beauty of whom many countless odes had been written by the poets of her time. Poppea inherited her mother’s stately figure, rosy, luminous skin, and her magnificent crown of copper colored hair, which her slave hairdressers had a special way of shaping in cunningly wrought waves and hollows that caught and hid the sunlight in a strange translucent play.

There were two features of Poppea that made men crazy and drove women into paroxysms of jealousy. Those were her slender, towering throat and her dazzling skin. She heightened the effect of the latter by constantly bathing in donkey’s milk and by the use of exotic oils and balsams prepared and applied by a large staff of experts.

As a teenager, Poppea married and disposed of two husbands and inherited a huge fortune from each. Her wealth, added to her beauty, made her the most famous and most desired woman in the imperial court.

Poppea’s ambition was every bit as magnificent as her beauty. She aspired to be the wife of Caesar, not in name alone, but in power as well. So the first time she met him, she showed that she was not easily won, although she knew she’d overwhelmed him with her beauty. She played, she encouraged, she retreated. She flirted with Otto, the handsome young prince, right in Caesar’s presence. And she let Caesar understand that if he wanted her for a wife, he’d have to rid himself of his mother, the ambitious and scheming Agrippina. She even ridiculed him for remaining tied to his mother’s apron strings and for compromising his dignity. She threatened to leave Rome, and go to some distant province, so that she wouldn’t have to see his humiliation. In the end she had her way, and Nero put his mother to death.

But even then the wedding didn’t happen right away. Even though Seneca consented to the suggestion that Nero divorce his wife, to whom he owed his throne, old Burrus, the commander of the Praetorian Guard, couldn’t permit Nero to cast away Octavia, the daughter of Claudius and granddaughter of the mighty Augustus. Poppea conspired with Tigellinus and Burrus was poisoned.

Nero then divorced Octavia, which caused a storm of resentment among the Romans, who respected Octavia as the representative of the glorious Julian line. And Seneca moved to his country estate to dedicate whatever remained of his life to his studies and to the famous moralistic letters he wrote to his friends. Faenius Rufus and the infamous Tigellinus took over the reins of government.

Banishing Octavia was not enough and Poppea didn’t rest until she sent Octavia into that banishment from which there is no return. Twelve days later, Poppea came to the palace as Nero’s wife, accompanied by her five hundred donkeys, the providers of her baths.

One of the odd things about Poppea was that she had a queer inclination toward monotheism, and even flirted with the Jewish God of Jerusalem. Roman matrons in general were currently under the influence of the priests of Isis, who were as numerous in Rome as in their native Egypt. And this ordinariness was precisely why Poppea attached herself to the Palestinian deity. For her it was a mark of distinction, like her baths of donkey’s milk and her exotic perfumes. She got a perverse pleasure from her attachment to the universally despised monotheism of the Jews.

Not that she had any intention of actually making the Jewish God the dominant principle of her life, of course, or to accept any moral responsibility. Poppea had only one worship, her own beauty, and one morality, her dominion over Caesar. Her body was her temple, and she the high priestess. She prayed to her white skin, her large, almond-colored eyes and her copper-colored hair. She would rather die before these objects of adoration lost their magic. Her flirtation with the Jewish God was only an expression of her boredom.

There was enough of it, though, to allow certain Jews to exploit it for the benefit of some of the prisoners who rotted in Caesar’s prisons.

One day, a Jewish actor of Rome brought a young aristocrat of Jerusalem, a member of the priesthood, to Sabina Poppea. The young man had a thorough and worldly education. He spoke excellent Greek, was acquainted with Greek literature, and had taken to writing history. He’d asked for the introduction in order to plead for three priests who’d been sent to Rome as prisoners by the Proconsul Felix. His elegant speech, sprinkled with many quotes, greatly impressed her, and she decided that she could learn everything about the mysteries of the Jewish God and the services in His famous Temple from this man. So she took care of the business he’d asked, and began peppering him with questions about life after death, a known feature of the Jewish religion.

The young man confirmed that the Jews believed that each person would rise from the dead in the same form he had in life. The thought that she could arrange to be resurrected in the beauty and charm she alone possessed deeply interested Poppea. So she decided it would be a good idea to please the Jewish God. She felt she’d gotten off to a good start by her intervention on behalf of the three priests. She also saw to it that the young aristocrat, whose name was Josephus, not leave the palace empty-handed. She made a mental note to issue instructions that her body not be burned when she died. And she decided to obtain a couple of Jewish priests to form part of her suite and accompany her, with her other attendants, when she passed through the streets of Rome.

But that was about as far as she could go. It just wasn’t her style to be bound up with obligations, penalties, or discipline of any kind. Her dream was to become the “Helen of Rome,” with a temple of her own, in which worshippers would offer sacrifice after her death. She certainly couldn’t openly ally herself with a people who were universally ridiculed in the theaters and circuses and were the butt of every satirist and pamphleteer, who were said to worship an ass’s head and to waste one day of every seven in meaningless idleness, and who refused to touch pork.

But she liked the part about resurrection, and so whatever service she could render to this God, without too much effort, she would do. There was the freeing of the priests, the presents to the visitor, and the occasional favors to the Jews, such as purchasing cosmetics and balsams from the Jewish women. What more could be expected of her?

On another day, two Jewish balsam sellers stood before the great lady as she sat back luxuriously on her couch. Her white skin filled the room with a subdued luster, overlaid by the glow of her hair. Countless vases and phials, of bronze, silver and glass, filled with the essence of Oriental plants were ranged about her. The instruments of her toilet, scissors, tweezers, and files of every shape, lay on a table, while a row of hair curlers glowed in a brazier. A staff of naked slaves attended her under the direction of her chief masseuse. The utmost care had to be taken to cause her no physical pain while attending to her beauty. The slightest twinge brought immediate retribution, usually in the form of glowing tweezers applied to the skin of the clumsy slave. And if Poppea happened to be in a less gracious humor, she might condemn the sinner to the crocodiles.

While some of the slaves worked on her hair, weaving it strand by strand into cunning folds, others applied layer after layer of salve on the white skin, then removed it and poured on precious oil. One specialist was occupied with Poppea’s eyebrows, another with her breasts, and others with her fingernails and toenails. Egyptian slaves behind curtains produced soft music. Other slaves laid out tunics, veils, and sandals that Poppea would wear to that night’s banquet.

Suddenly, Poppea’s face clouded over, and her delicate rose-white face turned to crimson. She reached over and thrust the prongs of a pair of tweezers into the breast of the slave who was manipulating her eyebrows. Without a word, she closed the tweezers with all her strength. The slave turned white, but uttered no sound. Her knees gave way, and she fell to the floor. Two African slaves came forward and carried her away. Poppea didn’t even look around. She only signaled to the two Jewish women to speak.

“Great lady!” said one. “This oil I bring you today is pressed from a secret plant that grows only in one part of the world, the wilderness of our native Judea. Only our priests know the secret of extracting its essence. One drop of this oil, mixed with salve, brings a sunlight brightness to the skin. There is not a queen anywhere in the world to whom this oil has been offered before. Today, for the first time, we received a few drops direct from Jerusalem. I mixed it with salve and I bring it as a gift to our great lady.”

The speaker, Dark Hannah, who was known to many Roman matrons, bowed low before Poppea.

Then her companion spoke, “And I have brought you O Empress, a balsam pressed out of a cactus plant that grows in our land. The cactus is as hard as granite, but it cannot be ground, for in grinding it loses its virtue. It must be beaten softly for three months, until the oil comes out on its own. The oil is called Helbonah, and it is treasured more than precious stones. Queen Bernice is the only one who has had the use of it till now, and she had it only in tiny measure. We had the cactus sent to us from the Holy City, and we beat it for three months.”

Poppea signaled to her slaves, who took the phials from the women.

“Try them out,” she commanded.

A drop from each phial was poured into a slave’s hand, which was rubbed and warmed, to bring out the aroma of the salves. Then the hand of each slave in turn was brought under Poppea’s nose. She seemed pleased.

She ordered that the Helbonah be applied to her skin at once, and while she was being thus administered to, the Jewish women took courage and bowed again. Stretching themselves in the manner of slaves was forbidden by their religion, so they merely inclined their heads, and bowed from the waist down.

Dark Hannah spoke, “Everywhere in Rome and throughout the world the great lady’s graciousness and goodness is spoken of as much as the beauty that has won Caesar’s heart. Loveliest of women, you who has the key to Caesar’s heart, we come before you to beg your clemency on behalf of a holy man, a messenger of God, who has been held prisoner in Rome for two years. The man is innocent of any crime and has committed nothing against the laws of Caesar or against the laws of our God.”

“Why was he brought to Rome, then?” asked Poppea.

“Great lady! The High Priest placed him under arrest for believing that the dead rise again. The priests do not believe in the resurrection, but all our rabbis do.”

“Why wasn’t the man judged in Judea, according to the laws of the land?” asked Poppea. “Why was he sent to Rome?”

“The man is a Roman citizen, and he appealed to Caesar. His name is Paul, and he is an apostle of Jesus Christ.”

Poppea paused. This was interesting. A Roman citizen had appealed to Caesar and had been kept in chains for two years without a hearing. Two years! Just because Caesar was too busy singing his own poems to his own music.

Poppea was the only person in Rome who could dare to speak the truth to Nero, and later she brought up the case to him.

“Augustus, Tiberius, and Claudius,” she said, “considered it a point of honor to try those who appealed to them in person. But this man has waited two years for justice, and my Caesar has done nothing for him.”

Thus was Paul’s appeal to Caesar finally answered. Well, not by Caesar himself, for he couldn’t tear himself away from his more important occupations despite Poppea’s reproach. A deputy heard the case in the palace of justice on the Forum.

Every lawyer brought “clients” to a trial with him to applaud his words in an attempt to influence the judges. These claques might consist of a regular group of clients or of men hired for the occasion, and they usually filled the hall. But Paul had no lawyer. So on this day, the hall was empty. Besides Paul and Caesar’s deputy, there were two advisers and secretaries.

Since the High Priest had not only failed to send a formal accuser to the trial, or even advise any Jews in Rome about Paul’s crime, the deputy’s only source of information was the report submitted by the one-time procurator, Festus. So Paul defended himself exactly as he’d done before Felix, Festus, and Agrippa.

He’d never offended against the laws of Rome or those of the Jewish faith, a faith that was sanctioned and protected by the Roman Empire. “But this I confess. I serve the God of my fathers according to the ways of my sect. I believe all that is written in the Torah and in the prophets.”

Then he added, “The only difference between them and us is that we say that Christ has already come. As to the resurrection, my sect agrees with the learned men and lawgivers of Israel. They too believe the dead will rise from their graves.

“It’s only the Sadducee sect that has persecuted me. The Pharisees in the Sanhedrin found no fault with me, neither did King Agrippa when I defended myself before him in Caesarea. King Agrippa declared me innocent, and he said to Festus that I might have gone free. But I’d already appealed to Caesar by then.”

The tribune acting as Caesar’s deputy that day had a great contempt and disgust at the mention of the barbaric cult of the Jews. He also regarded Paul as a maniac, much like Festus had. And he felt that it was a great defect in the Romans to have extended the tolerance of their laws to the Jewish faith and to have encouraged the follies of a cult that preached a resurrection, a Christ, and destructive practices that he knew were slowly penetrating into the homes of the Romans by way of the matrons of the city.

But the law was the law. It was only his job to administer it. So that same morning Paul was set free.

For nearly five years he’d been a prisoner in chains. Now his dispute with the Jews was at an end.

08 - As A Beloved Brother

2010-03-01T15:04:00.001-05:00

After he delivered the child into safekeeping, Antonius found himself incapable of returning to his master. The exaltation that had carried him started to ebb away, and he was once again seized with terror at the thought of what he’d done. In committing this first exercise of free will, he had dared to destroy the huge discipline that had governed him since the day he was born. His faith was too young to provide him with the confidence of experience. He’d broken with ancient custom and deep-seated habit, but he didn’t have a new custom and a new habit to replace them. He wandered through the streets and when evening came, he found himself in the Suburra.

The Suburra was a low lying area between two hills and was the refuge of Rome’s human debris, her poor and sick, criminals and escaped slaves. It lay near the Forum and the elegant Via Sacra, and was, in a sense, the human Cloaca Maxima, the drainage of Rome’s misery, crime, and disease. The streets were narrower here than in any other part of Rome. The tall houses shut out the sky and passages led from house to house, creating a vast, impenetrable labyrinth, with caves, niches and secret places. The lowest dregs of society swarmed like moles in the underground of the Suburra. The diseases they brought flourished in the dirt and stench of their refuge. Very rarely did a ray of sunlight penetrate to the narrow streets, and the earth underfoot was damp, for when rain fell it didn’t drain away but soaked into the soil and accumulated in the cellars.

At night the district was extremely perilous. Murder and robbery lurked in the darkness. The houses, built of cheap material, were dilapidated, and fragments of roofs and walls tumbled into the street. The lower floors were supported with flying buttresses, under which the “merchants” kept their stores. The top floors were often nothing but gaping ruins, where families lived like wild animals in the midst of exposed rafters and heaps of rubble and brick.

The police dared not venture into the Suburra at night, and an escaped slave found it easy to hide there indefinitely if he found the means of sustenance. And a Roman slave had learned to live on very little, on decaying vegetables and occasional crusts. Sometimes escaped slaves formed little bands. They would send out scouts to signal the approach of the carts rolling in from the countryside before dawn. A regular assault would take place and masses of provisions of grain, fruit, and even sides of beef, would be taken away.

Antonius knew of the Suburra and its hiding places, so that night he found a niche in a cellar where six other slaves also made their home. When Antonius entered, they neither welcomed him nor rejected him. They didn’t even interrupt their conversation, which consisted mostly of gross jests and insults.

After a while they turned their attention to the newcomer. They called him a few names, such as “Mercury’s messenger,” the good news bringer, the messenger of Fortuna, and carrier of the horn of plenty. They also addressed him as Nero’s cupbearer. Then they came up to him and searched his clothes to see if he had any money. But they found nothing on him but his robe of sackcloth, so they turned away and picked up their conversation.

“If the guards catch me,” said one, “I’ll say I’m a murderer. Then they’ll throw me to the beasts. That’s better than being a slave.”

“Me too. I know what’ll happen if I go back to my master. I’ll be killed and quartered and given to the fish in the pool. Why shouldn’t I amuse people in the arena, instead?”

“What do you care who eats you, fool, the fish or the beasts?”

“Maybe so. But I’ll tell you what. Whoever catches me won’t have it easy. A dozen lives for mine, I say.”

“The same for all of us. I keep my sesterce tied around my neck, for Charon.”

“You’d do better to spend it on wine as long as you can drink. Don’t you know the old boatman takes no slaves on his ferry? Slaves must stay on this side of the Styx, so they can be reborn as animals.”

A voice came from the corner. “Slaves have no gods.”

“True. In our domus the slaves are put out before the sacrifice. They say Apollo is offended when a slave is allowed in the temple.”

“I know a god who came down to earth and suffered the death of a slave to redeem all men from sin,” called out Antonius.

Amid laughter, several voices answered, “A god who died like a slave? What kind of god is that?”

“He’s the god of all men and knows no difference between slave and free. All who believe in him are brothers.”

“Slaves, too?”

“Slaves too. Those of us who believe in him sit at the same table in a common bond of love. We all become one in him.”

“Even slaves, you say?”

“Slaves and freedmen become brothers in him.”

“Then what are you doing here with us?” asked a mocking voice. “Why don’t you go to your brothers?”

Antonius thought about this. Why didn’t he go to his brothers, and hide among them?

“Well said,” he answered, at last. “Tomorrow I’ll go to my brothers. I know one who will receive me.”

“Tell us, who are these brothers, who will hide slaves from their masters?”

“My brothers are Christians. Each one who believes in this god calls himself a Christian.”

“Christian?” someone repeated. “What’s the name of the god who makes all men brothers?”

“Jesus Christ.”

One of the men came closer to Antonius.

“Did you say Jesus Christ?”

In the darkness Antonius could just make out a wild, hairy face and two swollen red eyes. A hand, heavy and shapeless, like the paw of some primitive beast, fell on his shoulder.

“I know that name.”

“Where did you hear it?”

“In the house of my master, Philemon, in Colossae.”

“Was your master a Christian?”

“Yes. A man came to our city and told my master of the new god, and my master was baptized.”

“And yet you ran away from him. Was he harsh?”

“No! I stole money from him and ran away to Rome. I always dreamed of being a freedman. Now I live in this hole, and I’m scared to death to leave. You know what they’ll do if they catch me.”

“Your master will forgive you.”

“What? A master forgive a slave for stealing? Never. He’ll cut my hand off.”

“But if your master is a Christian he’ll forgive you, I say. The God of the Christians says we must forgive each other just like He forgives us.”

“No!” said the other, obstinately. “A thieving slave is not forgiven.”

“Christ forgives all who pray to him. And your master will forgive you and take you back.”

“I’m not a Christian.”

“You will become one.”

“I can’t be a Christian. I’m a runaway slave and a thief.”

“Anyone can become a Christian. Christ accepts all who come to him.”

The man’s voice changed. “I know. I just can’t bring myself to do it. I would have gone out to find the Christians already if I wasn’t so afraid of being recognized.”

“Christ sent me to you. Tomorrow I’ll take you to Christ’s messenger.”

* * * * *

Before dawn the next morning, two slaves appeared before Paul’s house on the Aventine hill. One of them was ragged and filthy, his feet caked with mud, his hair falling wildly over his face, and his eyes timid. The other, younger, cleaner, and his sackcloth still whole, was surer of himself. Timothy hadn’t met Antonius, so when he came to the door and asked them who they were, they simply told him they were slaves who’d escaped from their masters. Antonius said he was a Christian and he told the story of why he escaped from his master. Onesimus, hearing Antonius’ confession, told the story of his crime and his escape from Colossae.

The soldier on guard that morning was a brother Christian, so Timothy brought Antonius and Onesimus in. Paul recognized the stable boy he’d brought into the faith, but then he amazed the other man by describing Philemon, the very master Onesimus had fled from. Paul asked Timothy to wash Onesimus, feed and clothe him, and take him to Priscilla.

Once that was done, Antonius told Paul of his “crime” of refusing to throw the infant into the Cloaca Maxima, his flight from his master, his meeting Onesimus, and his decision to seek the counsel and aid of the apostle.

Paul listened to the end, then kissed the young slave, and said, “My beloved son, Antonius, you’ve found favor in the eyes of Christ. He was the one who guided you from the beginning, so you might save the infant and thereby be led to save another soul, Onesimus. Your portion in Christ is great, and he has set a greater reward aside for you.”

“What is my reward?”

“To suffer for Christ.”

Antonius turned pale. But Paul held his hand and went on, “You will return to your master’s house and fall at his feet and beg forgiveness for having been gone this long.”

“And the child?” asked Antonius, trembling. “What should I say about the life I wouldn’t take?”

“You should say nothing. Your master wanted to kill the child, so it is no longer his. You adopted the child in Christ. Therefore, he’s yours, and is a child of Christ in the spirit.”

“They’ll cut my body to pieces with the whip,” said Antonius, and he shook with fear.

“The lord will be with you, and he will save you from their hands. And as for the lashes you’ll receive, that’s nothing in the service of Christ. When they scourge you, think of what Christ suffered for you and think of them as lashes shared with him. You will feel yourself bound to him forever. Go, my son, and endure your suffering like a freedman in Christ, a true Christian.”

His heart strengthened, but his flesh still shrinking, Antonius returned to the domus of Tegellinus and did as Paul asked. He appeared before his overseer, threw himself on his knees, and begged forgiveness for his absence of that night.

Even though he was only a stable boy, Antonius was a willing and useful slave. Therefore, he wasn’t condemned to the heavy lash, whose thongs were so loaded they broke bones. He was given the lighter lash, which cut flesh, but left no crippling effects. And he was only given thirty lashes. As the blood streamed from his naked back, Antonius thought of the suffering of Christ, and he felt the words of Paul come true. In his agony, he felt the union of his spirit with Christ, and not a moan or whimper escaped his lips.

That day Antonius the stable boy was the only free man in the princely establishment of Tigellinus.

Two weeks later, Onesimus again appeared before Paul, a new man inwardly and outwardly. His hair was cut and combed, his chin shaven, and his body decently covered. During the two weeks he was with Aquila and Priscilla he gave himself to Christ and was received into the brotherhood of believers.

Paul called for papyrus and writing implements, and with his free right hand, he wrote a letter to the master of Onesimus, Philemon of Colossae.

“I plead with you for my son Onesimus, who became a believer under my care. He was useless to you in the past, but now he is useful to both you and me. I would have kept him with me to serve me in my bonds in spreading the gospel, but I wouldn’t do this without talking with you first so that you wouldn’t feel you were being forced, but could do it of your own free will. And maybe it was necessary for him to leave you for awhile so that you might accept him forever, no longer as a servant, but as a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, in the flesh and in Christ. Therefore, if you count me as a partner, accept him as you would me, and if he has wronged you, or owes you anything, let it be written on my account. I, Paul, have written this myself. I will repay it. Prepare a lodging for me, also, for I trust that through your prayers I will be given to you.”

A slave had fled from Philemon. Paul returned him, a brother.

07 - Antonius the Stable Boy

2010-02-28T11:13:00.002-05:00

Tigellinus, the criminal condemned and pardoned, and now the favorite of Nero, owed his good fortune to his skill as a horse trainer. Nero passionately loved horses and often participated in chariot races, and appointing Tigellinus as stable master was considered a high honor. But Tigellinus had higher ambitions. He wanted the highest position under Caesar – commandant of the Praetorian Guard. Once old Burrus was put out of the way, Tigellinus, with Poppea’s help, realized his dream.

Among the stable boys under Tigellinus was a simple lad named Antonius, one of hundreds of unskilled servants and slaves who performed the menial work. His food was poor, his clothing shabby. In winter he walked through the slushy or muddy streets on his errands wearing a thin tunic, with arms and legs exposed, and no covering for his feet.

One day some comrades invited Antonius to visit Paul, and Paul led him to Christ. So the slave in the flesh became free in the spirit. After his baptism, he ate the common meal at Priscilla’s house as an equal with freedmen. This made him aware that he actually had a will of his own and could think for himself. The human beast acquired a human dignity that none of the more privileged slaves of Tigellinus had.

It was a custom in Rome that whenever a son was born to a Roman freedman, regardless of whether it was born to his wife or to a slave, the new-born child would be laid at the feet of his father. If the father adopted the child, it was brought up with the other children of the household. If he rejected it, the child was done away with. This usually meant that it was thrown into the Cloaca like a newborn puppy or kitten.

One morning, Tigellinus was having his wiry body, and his muscular arms and legs, bent by much riding, massaged by his slaves, while one of his servants was helping him memorize a poem in which Nero was being likened to Orpheus. The overseer of the house entered, and announced that Tigellinus’ beloved Egyptian slave-concubine had given birth to a son.

After the massage, Tigellinus sat in his library with the tiny infant lying on a sheet before him. Its red hands and legs were lifted in the air, its face was puckered, its mouth open in a long wail, and its eyes were closed. But even before the child was brought in, Tigellinus’ knew what he would do. Now that he had risen to the first position in the empire under Caesar, he wanted no more of his bastards cluttering up the place. He was planning to take a new wife, and he didn’t care to burden her with the upbringing of another offspring of one of his slaves.

Therefore he turned away from the infant, looked angrily at the overseer of the house, and muttered through thin lips, “Expose it!”

The infant was taken away, and the order to have it drowned was given, not to one of the educated slaves, but to the stable boy Antonius.

Now it never occurred to Antonius to disregard or challenge the order, for there was nothing unusual about it and he was committing no crime. On the contrary, the only crime would be disobedience to the order, for which he could be thrown to the wild beasts.

Human life was of such little value in Rome that when some valuable horse was thrown and trampled by the other horses during a race, there was no thought for the rider, but only for the irreplaceable racer. The Romans were long accustomed to gladiators shedding blood in the arena by killing each other or by slaves thrown to wild beasts. The sight of a human’s death brought no pity. This was the world in which Antonius had been brought up.

So as he threaded his way through the streets of Rome toward the opening of the Cloaca Maxima at the foot of the Capitoline, where the great sewer emptied into the Tiber, bearing this tiny bundle of life wrapped in a sheet in his arms, he was barely conscious of his mission.

But as he approached the opening of the Cloaca Maxima, feeling the warmth of the quivering, wailing infant, he suddenly remembered something Paul had taught him.

“God has compassion on all men. He sent his Son down to suffer torment and death, so that he might redeem all mankind with his blood. And they who believe in Christ must be like him, ready to sacrifice themselves, even unto death, for their fellow men. They must love their fellow men even as Christ did, in order to be one with him.”

Antonius stopped dead. Paul had made him the equal of all believers. Antonius believed that he must act in all things as Christ would have acted. He remembered other words of Paul.

“Every man is born in the image of God, and all men are made of the same flesh.”

“Born in the image of God!” thought Antonius, in sudden horror. “This is a child of God, and it is my brother. It belongs to Christ, and it is my brother.”

Antonius resolved to disobey his master’s order. He would not throw the infant into the waters of the Cloaca Maxima. He would carry it to the other side of the Tiber, and he would leave it in an orphanage maintained near the synagogue. The women there would receive it and care for it.

But as soon as he came to this resolve, he was seized by a great fear. What was this? He had decided? But a slave cannot decide. A slave has neither will nor soul. He wasn’t his own man, he was the instrument of his master. His mind revolted from the dastardly deed, but what could he do? In his mind, he saw the overseer, the iron collar, the arena. He saw the great fish swimming in the basin in his master’s garden, its huge, slimy jaws, with their double rows of teeth, opening for him. He remembered a slave, who though Tigellinus’ favorite, had been thrown to the crocodiles.

No, he dared not have a will of his own. He was a dumb slave, the instrument of the will of another. And covered with the sweat of his conflict, Antonius reached the sewer’s opening.

The Cloaca Maxima was one of the greatest engineering feats of the Roman world. From ancient times it had been emptying the filth and refuse of Rome into the Tiber. This included not just garbage, but gladiators, criminals, and rebels taken in battle, brought to Rome to show off its triumph, then beheaded and thrown into the sewer, to feed the countless tuna fish breeding in the waters of the river.

The banks of the Tiber were also places of refuge for the poorest of Rome’s citizens as well as for its sick. When Antonius came there with his wailing burden, he saw, lying on the stones, many vagabonds, ragged, hungry, and verminous.

“If Caesar were only as generous with his bread for poor citizens as the nobles are with their bastards for the fishes!” one vagabond was saying.

Antonius stood paralyzed at the wide, black entrance of the Cloaca. The waves beat outward from the dark interior, bringing a sickening odor. Filth, rags, and animal carcasses floated on the surface. Antonius tried to detach the warm bundle from his body, but he couldn’t. There was a violent agitation in his heart, and his limbs trembled.

Suddenly he jumped back from the sewer. He thought for sure that he saw his own body floating on the miasmal waters. He felt himself about to be thrown in.

Then he cried, “Jesus, help me,” and he sank to his knees, clutching his burden. “What was I about to do? I almost threw myself into the black hole. But it was you, Jesus, who rescued me. I would have thrown both our lives into the water, but you saved me, and made me part of you.”

He pressed the infant close to him, bent down to the earth, and murmured, “Thank you, Jesus, for saving me and this little one from the mouth of the pit.”

In comparison with the horror that was just averted, all the other horrors, the lead-loaded lash, the beasts of the arena, the crocodiles, all melted into nothingness. Assurance flowed back into Antonius’ heart. Whatever happened to him, Christ was waiting on the other side to receive him with outstretched arms. He, Antonius the stable boy, would be one with Christ for the torments he suffered for his sake. He knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that what he was doing was good and right and proper. He knew he could do nothing else. No longer was he a slave without a soul, a dead implement for the fulfillment of another’s will.

Yes, his body was at the mercy of his master, but his soul was free in Christ. And like any free man, he could now do what he knew was right.

Antonius walked with swift and certain footsteps away from the Tiber and toward the Aventine hill. The house he’d visited there on occasion at night, stealing away from the slave dormitory, was where the ones who taught him the meaning of brotherhood in Christ lived. Priscilla and Aquila had welcomed him into the companionship, and a man who had personally lived with, eaten with, and learned from Christ was sometimes there telling stories about spreading the gospel through the world. Antonius knew that in this house, his tiny charge would be received.

When Priscilla received Antonius at the door, her look of astonishment only deepened when she learned why he was there. She thought she’d seen everything. But this was the first time that a slave had come, bearing his lord’s offspring, which he had saved from death at the peril of his life. But once her first astonishment was past, she thought, What could be more natural? Antonius was bringing a soul to her, a little one to be raised up in the faith of Christ instead of being given to the waters of the Tiber.

Priscilla was already overburdened with the tasks of the congregation, so she couldn’t take the little one herself. Plus, she and Aquila were preparing to move to Ephesus at Paul’s request, and they couldn’t very well take a newborn infant on such a perilous journey. So Priscilla decided to put the child into an orphanage until she could find some god-fearing woman of the congregation to give the child to. There were two such orphanages, one founded by the Jews many generations before, and one recently opened by the Christians. Priscilla veiled herself, and with characteristic impetuosity, hurried along with Antonius across the Sublicius Bridge.

The synagogue stood among the narrow, tortuous alleys of the Jewish quarter, among the houses packed with Jews and poverty. Around the synagogue were a schoolhouse, a ritual bath, and a hospice. Nearby there was a hall, an annex, which had been turned into an orphanage. It consisted of a single large room with an earthen floor and rows of benches around the walls. Here the good and pious Mary, aided by the sisters of the church, had installed the orphanage. And here the son of Tigellinus, the mightiest man in Rome after Caesar, was left, to be cared for with other orphans and to be given to some Christian woman for a Christian upbringing.

06 - One Family in God

2010-02-27T17:25:00.002-05:00

The little apartment on the Aventine hill became a beehive of activity after James’ death as Paul vigorously renewed his efforts. Messengers came in and went out to the Christian congregations of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, and Paul, who couldn’t go in the flesh, went in the spirit through his letters. Among his staff of assistants, John Mark became more than just a fellow worker, for there was much in him that reminded Paul of Barnabas. Justus, too, became part of the organization.

Paul prepared to send letters to Ephesus by the hand of Tychicus, recently arrived from Asia Minor, and to Colossi by the hand of Onesimus.

In these letters Paul’s spirit is calmer and more clarified than in previous letters. They lack the bitterness and bursts of anger that marked the letter to the Philippians. Paul is no longer thinking of his personal enemies. His thoughts, in so far as they are concerned with opposition, are directed against the general enemies of the faith, the “philosophers” and misleaders, the Gnostics, the aesthetes, and “choice spirits,” who would make Christ a privilege for the “inner circle,” the initiated and educated, who teach that Christ couldn’t have died, since Christ was not a man, but was composed of pure spirit, his whole life just a series of symbols, intelligible only to the trained mind.

Paul saw this approach to the faith as an attempt to change Christ into a philosophical concept, like Stoicism was among the Greeks and Romans. But Christ was not a symbol or a series of symbols. He was not a “philosophy,” or the “Logos” for the cognoscenti. Christ was and is the flesh and blood of faith for all, the universal redemption. Every man is buried with Christ and every man is resurrected with him through faith in the work of God. In the faith every man shares Christ’s triumph over death, not symbolically, but in the flesh. By the death and resurrection of Christ, every man who accepts the faith is released from the laws of nature that govern the world, because he is no longer of the world. He is part of the order of heaven; he has died in Christ to the order of the world.

“Why do you think of the laws as if you were of the world? If you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God. For you are dead, and you are hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, you will be revealed with him in glory. Therefore put to death those things that are of the earth, such as whoredom, uncleanness, lust, base desire, idol worship. . . .”

The conquest of death and the linking of the self with Christ became clarified in Paul’s mind after James’ death. Like Peter, Paul too envied James’ ascension, and he longed to be with Christ in heaven. But he regards the present part of his sojourn on earth as more important than any previous part. In these critical days Paul understands that his present task is to prepare Christians for a great trial, the like of which will require every resource of faith. Every believer has to be made to feel that he is one with the body and soul of Jesus and therefore ready to abandon all earthly possessions and being. He has to act as though there is nothing more to expect from this world, as though all hope and expectation are bound up with the world beyond the grave.

So he writes to the Ephesians, “It is our peace that has made one out of two and has thrown down the dividing wall. Through his flesh Christ has destroyed the enmity of the Torah, which consisted of laws and commandments so that out of two men he might make one new in himself, and bring peace. For through him both Jew and Gentile have access to the Father in one spirit. Therefore you are no longer strangers and converts, but sons of the house in the family of God.”

Paul has begun to find his way back to God, Whom he’d lost for a time, because of his love for Christ, his zeal for his mission, and his bitterness against his enemies. After he asks the Ephesians not to be oppressed “because of my sufferings for you, which are a glory,” he tells them, “Therefore I bend the knee to the Father of Jesus Christ, in Whom all the families in heaven and on earth are named. . . . And it is one God and Father for all, One Who is over all and in all.”

In no other letter does Paul work so hard to inscribe the Ten Commandments in the hearts of the believers, as in the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. Although he absolves them of the laws and commandments as such, since they have the fulfillment of them in faith, yet they must live on earth, and life on earth is sinful. So they must have guidance and rules. One principle he would plant forever in the lives of the Gentiles is the purity of family life, so he talks about the bodily union of man and wife in a holy bond.

“Be obedient to one another in the fear of God. Wives be obedient to your husbands as to the lord, for the husband is the head of the wife. . .”

Here is a man who has never known the happiness of family life, having bound himself to lifelong celibacy for the sake of his mission, and yet he recognizes the mysterious bond that holds man and wife in a sacred bond of body and soul with trembling awe. The sacred purity of the Jewish woman, which tradition has passed down from mother to daughter, is his guide in the rule of family life for the congregations of Christ.

From his youth he remembers the lessons from the rabbis, “The husband who loves his wife more than his own body, and honors her more than he honors himself, peace shall dwell in his tent.”
And, “The Shechina, the Presence, dwells between husband and wife.”

And so he exalts family life to the level of high worship of God.

“Husbands, love your wives! As Christ loved his congregation, and sacrificed himself for it, so shall you husbands love your wives even as your own bodies.”

And in the spirit of the Pharisees, who said, “He that honors his wife honors himself,” Paul writes, “He who loves his wife loves himself.”

“As Christ is to the church, so is the husband to the wife, the limbs of his body, his flesh, his bone, even as it is written, ‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall be one body.’”

All his longing for pure love is in the words, “Children, heed your parents in the lord.”
“Honor your father and your mother, which is according to the commandment, that it may be well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

Indeed, for all his abrogation of the law and the commandments, the directives he addresses to Jews and Gentiles are taken almost word for word from the commandments of Moses. They were hammered out again in the school of Paul’s rabbi, Gamaliel, and now Paul sends them forth again from the gates of Rome. He nourishes his congregations with milk, and supports them in the first steps they take into the new life.

“Put aside deceit and lying, let brother speak truth to his brother, for we are all members of one another. . . . He who is inclined to steal, let him steal no more, but let him work and do good with his hands, so that he may have something to give to the needy. . . . Let no evil talk come from your lips, but only what is good and an aid to improvement.”

He bids servants obey their masters in fear and trembling. “You know that the good you do shall be returned to you by our lord, whether you are servants or masters. . . . And you that are masters, deal thus also with your servants, be not harsh with them, for you know that your lord is in heaven and he is no respecter of persons.”

And in the same vein does he enjoin the Colossians too.

Toward the end of his letter to the Ephesians this new spirit in Paul sings with the tone of the Psalmist himself. Gone is the bitterness and resentment. Gabelus, the faithful soldier, and the men he brought with him had contributed something toward this change. Caesar’s legionaries, in their helmets and shining bronze breastplates, had thrown themselves at his feet, begging to be taken into the faith. This gave rise to an image in Paul’s mind of the believer with the weapons to repulse the assault on his faith, not with physical weapons, but with arms and armor that would never rust.

“Put on the whole armor of God,” he writes, “that you may be able to stand firm in the evil day. Gird yourselves with truth, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. Above all grasp the shield of faith, and set the helmet of salvation on your head, holding in your hand the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

He labors hard and long with himself in order to create the image of the armed believer. In a sense all his life has been a preparation for this creation. He’s made many detours; he’s erred and blundered. But in the end his feet are on the true path. Others may have found it more easily, but Paul did find it, step by painful step.

“The old is dead, and the new man has been born.”

Paul sent his messengers out with these letters to the four corners of the world. Epaphroditus, having recovered his health, went back to the Philippians, Tychicus returned to Ephesus and Onesimus to the Colossians. Remaining at Paul’s side were the faithful Aristarchus, John Mark, Justus, and Timothy.

And so he sat in his hired house on the Aventine, the hand that was chained to the guard lifted up in a proclamation of freedom and redemption for the world. It was lifted up for the liberation not only of the slave, but of the freedman too. This was the universal freedom of God, beyond the law of man. No Caesar on his throne, no evil in the hearts of men, should ever abrogate it. From his prison house Paul conferred on all men a new and irrevocable citizenship in the name of Christ.

05 - Peter in Rome

2010-02-26T09:21:00.001-05:00

There were many Jewish legends that had to do with the founding of Rome. One said that when King Solomon took Pharaoh’s daughter as his wife, the angel Gabriel came down from heaven, lifted a mass of ooze from the bottom of the sea, and set it down where Rome was to be founded. Another said that when Jereboam set up the two calves, the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, were born, in order to dissuade the Jews from going to Jerusalem. The Jews looked on Rome as the rod the Lord had appointed to punish Israel for its sins.

But Rome was also connected in the Jewish mind with salvation as well. This city of sin, this new Babylon, was considered to be not just a fiery furnace of trial, but was also the gate of redemption, for according to another legend, Messiah sat at the gate of Rome, among beggars, waiting for the sound of the trumpet of liberation. On that day Moses would come out of the desert, and Messiah would come to meet him from Rome.

Rome and Jerusalem. Each was built on the ruin of the other. Out of the heart of destruction would blossom the fruit of salvation.

This was why Peter eventually went to Rome, to wait in the lion’s den for Messiah.

Like Paul, Peter had also traveled through far-off cities and provinces. He left Antioch sometime after Paul, and took John Mark with him. They climbed the Galatia hills to Cappadocia, then went across the mountain country to Pontus of Bithynia, where Paul had not gone. They founded congregations in Asia Minor, reached the seashore and sailed to Rome. There, in the Jewish quarter in the Trans-Tiber, they discovered a congregation of Christians and settled there in one of the houses around the courtyard of the synagogue named in honor of the just emperor Augustus.

Ships unloaded cargoes of vegetables, wood and grain each day on the farther bank of the Tiber where hundreds of Jews had their booths and shops, selling clothing, fish, and spices. A horde of children played around every shop, getting underfoot while their parents dragged bundles and crates of merchandise from the ships to the booths. There was constant noise as merchants competed and quarreled, swearing by the Temple in Jerusalem that their goods were the best and the cheapest. It was a city within a city, Jerusalem in the heart of Edom.

But when the Sabbath came this stretch of the bank was silent, the shops closed, the booths empty. Wisps of straw and vegetable leaves lay scattered about. Every window in every Jewish home was adorned with garlands of flowers and leaves in honor of the Sabbath. The air was fragrant with the odor of cooked fish and of the spiced foods that were an endless source of amusement for the Gentiles. For that matter, everything Jewish was a matter for satire and burlesque among the mimes and actors of the circuses, but the Jewish Sabbath above all. The pamphleteers made a great point of the imbecilic Jewish habit of losing one day in seven, which was given up to utter idleness. The Jews, moreover, were incomprehensible in their treatment of children. Infanticide was quite unknown among them, and every child, every single one, was brought up.

The Jews paid little attention to this endless mockery. “Let the Gentiles laugh to their hearts content,” they said.

On the Sabbath morning the Jews assembled in the synagogues, prayed, listened to the reading of the Torah, and drank up the words of their prophets thirstily.

The Christian congregation in Rome was now so large that they had a separate place of worship within each synagogue. After they performed the services and repeated the prayers with all their fellow Jews, omitting no detail, they gathered for the special service of their own. They had their common meals, held meetings of their own, and collected money for the widows and orphans. Officially they belonged to the Jewish community, and they made no attempt to separate themselves. They simply had their own additional customs.

Pious Gentiles were invited to their gatherings on condition that they accept baptism. When the group became large enough, it acquired an acknowledged position in the Jewish congregation.

Now Simon didn’t come to Rome to mend and reinterpret the faith. His God was perfect and complete. Who was he that he should seek to penetrate into the mystery of God? He was an unlearned fisherman, and not the scholarly “brother Paul”, who was so hard to understand. His God was the God of faith, to whom man in his loneliness clings with all hope. It was this simplicity that brought many poor laborers to hear his sermons, and there was a new spark of growth when the simple fisherman came with his warm speech, his winning manner, and his charming parables.

“We serve and adore but one God, the Creator of all the worlds, and we observe his laws, the first of which is, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and might.’ Man is created in the image of God. Therefore we must glorify God by sharing our bread with the hungry and our clothes with the naked. We must visit the sick, extend hospitality to the stranger, and ransom him that is in captivity. As God has called you to be holy, so shall you be holy.”

And to the Gentiles he said, “Be as obedient children, and not as before in your lusts. For you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible gold and silver, but with the dear blood of Messiah, who is as a lamb without blemish. You are born anew, not through corruptible seed, but through the word of God, which lives and is everlasting. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is as the flower of the field. The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the word of God abides forever. Therefore put off from yourselves all evil and falsehood, all flattery and envy and evil speech. Desire the pure milk of the Word, like new-born children, in order that you may grow.”

After preaching and praying, Peter would visit one of the Jewish homes, where the Sabbath meal was spread on the table, and sit with the family and eat in the joy of God. They also thanked God for this special privilege of the holy Sabbath, on which they dedicated their bodies and souls to Him.

Thus Peter lived his simple life among the Jews of Rome. He seldom left the Jewish quarter, preferring to sit in his house praying, repeating psalms, or recounting again and again the deeds of the righteous Messiah to his helper, Mark, who carefully wrote it all down. Or else Peter would sit in his chair and receive all who came to him, Jew and Gentile, speaking to them in all kindness and gentleness.

One time a rich matron came to see Peter to hear about the faith. This made him quite uncomfortable, as did many things about the giant city that he regarded as the source of all abomination. He had little faith in Roman matrons, for their belief in their gods had always been a self-indulgent thing, and they were always willing to hear of any new Oriental god, not just Messiah.

Simon considered Rome to be a drunken harlot, a painted Babylon, full of witchcraft, whoredoms and idolatry. But he was convinced that it was from this place that Messiah would come a second time, “suddenly, and as a thief in the night,” and he would ascend the throne to judge the mighty of the world.

So while the great power of Rome, her palaces and temples, her slaves and legionaries, her nobles and rulers, filled Peter with dread, he knew that Messiah would sweep away this blot with a fiery broom. He often preached about “the great judgment day,” and prophesied of the dark end of the imperial city. He had visions of a rain of fire coming down from glowing clouds.

“In that day the heavens will dissolve and the foundations will melt, for we shall yet have the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, where we will live in righteousness.”

This was Peter’s message to the people of Rome, and it brought fear and trembling to many. Jew and Gentile learned that the messenger from Jerusalem was foretelling the end of the world, the destruction from which only the believers, they who had taken baptism in the name of Messiah, would be saved.

As this message of doom spread throughout the city, there were many who came to seek salvation. So the congregation grew from day to day, among Jews and Gentiles, and everywhere among the poor, the slaves and the oppressed, they spoke of the doom that was approaching.

* * * * *

Simon knew that Paul was in Rome in chains, a prisoner in his own home, and that he was spreading the gospel to the Gentiles on the other side of the Tiber. He couldn’t understand the special doctrine that Paul preached, nor did he wish to. Who was he to scrutinize the intentions of God? God was to be feared, not scrutinized. And though he knew that Messiah had to suffer as part of his mission of the redemption of mankind, Peter preferred to remember him as his beloved rabbi, the just man, the chosen one. But he also knew that the spreading of the gospel through Caesar’s household was not a bad thing.

Peter found himself more and more longing to be in the presence of his rabbi. He hungered to be with him in heaven, to see his white, shimmering robe, and to hear his sweet voice. But he also remembered the prediction that he would have to drink the same bitter cup Messiah had. But Simon was a weak man, and he trembled just thinking about the torment. He wanted that day to be far off, if it ever came at all. Sometimes, though, the longing to see Jesus made him almost think he was willing to go through the fiery circle.

One day a man from Jerusalem came to visit. His name was Jesus Justus, and he was of the Greek Jews. He brought dreadful news.

“After many years of waiting and scheming, old Annas’ youngest son, whose name is also Annas, paid a huge bribe and became the High Priest. He immediately cut the Pharisees out of the Day of Atonement service completely. He started a new form of service that’s entirely Sadducee. Well, you can imagine the bitterness that caused in the rabbis and scholars. They’re more bitter than ever.

“But it gets worse. Festus left for Rome and the new Procurator wasn’t there yet, so the High Priest was the only ruler in the land. He took advantage of that to seize James in the Temple courts, and have him stoned to death. There was no investigation or trial.

“When the rabbis and Pharisees heard about the stoning, they got a delegation together and made John son of Zachai their head. They went to King Agrippa and told him they were going to bring a charge against Annas, even before Caesar. King Agrippa deposed the High Priest immediately. He was only High Priest for three months, but on the very day he was deposed the leaders of the Pharisees broke into his chamber and tore the lobe of his ear, so that he’d have a defect and be unfit for the priestly office.”

Peter said nothing, so Justus continued, “James died as a saint, for the sanctification of the Name. The holy congregation of Jerusalem is orphaned.”

Simon’s first reaction at the dreadful news was a bit of envy that James had been gathered to Messiah and he was like one left outside when a friend enters the house. But this feeling was quickly replaced by dread. James was the one person he leaned on, someone who was to him what Joshua was to Moses. In matters of doctrine, in all that had to do with the law, James had been his right hand. Who would he lean on now?

But once the horror of the news broke through to his heart, he knew he really needed someone to cry with. Suddenly he felt his heart being drawn to the great apostle to the Gentiles, who’d started so many congregations, and who, even in chains, was still spreading the gospel. All at once the division that kept them apart didn’t seem so important. What did this or that interpretation of the faith signify by comparison with the work that needed to be done? Simon thought of the quarrel he’d had with Paul in Antioch, and realized he couldn’t even remember what it had all been about.

He called John Mark.

“Please take me to the chained apostle to the Gentiles, to Paul.”

Simon, John and Justus passed over the bridge into the center of the city and made their way to the Aventine hill, near the Porta Capena, and having found the house, climbed the narrow stairs to Paul’s lodgings.

The apostle to the Jews and the apostle to the Gentiles fell on each other’s necks, and for a long time they said nothing.

Paul listened to the recital of the fearful incident in Jerusalem, and when Justus finished, Paul looked at Peter and said, “I guess this makes you the leader of the Jewish congregation. I’ll help in any way I can.”

“Ah, brother Paul,” answered Peter, “whom the lord has appointed to bring the gospel to the Gentiles, you are the one in chains. Please, let me leave John Mark to help you in your work as a seal of our brotherhood.”

04 - Ringing of Chains

2010-02-24T15:46:00.001-05:00

From the Porta Capena of Rome the Via Appia continued through the countryside, lined on both sides with monuments and mausoleums of the mighty dead. Nymphs and fauns had their homes in the swampy fields and caverns of volcanic stone. Here the Romans heard the singing of sprites and the murmur of gods, and they saw the shadows of demons stealing across the wastes.

It was in this part of Rome that a new Jewish settlement had sprung up.

The reason for building this new quarter was that the Jews didn’t burn their dead like the Romans, but placed them in caskets on natural or hewn-out shelves in caverns. The volcanic stone of the land around the Via Appia was soft making it easy to honeycomb with twisting passages and to cut out shelves in the walls. At the same time these catacombs were strong enough so as not to collapse and bury the tombs.

The Jewish community in the Trans-Tiber was so overcrowded that many Jews had moved away and lived among the Gentiles on the lower slopes of the Viminal Hill near the filthy Suburra. But with the new quarter and a proper burial ground, the Jews moved there, even though it was a bit of a distance from the heart of the city. The settlement developed rapidly and was soon swollen with Jews from every quarter.

The animosity Paul found in Rome from the non-Christian Jews did not surprise him. What did surprise him was the discovery that two Christian parties had formed. Most of the Jewish Christians were under the influence of James, whose word carried as much weight in Rome as it did in all the other Jewish communities of the Diaspora. Even later, when Peter came to Rome, he disdained to greet the apostle to the Gentiles.

So despite the fact that he was a prisoner in his own home, Paul set out to create his own congregation of Christians. He tried to win anyone he came into contact with, including the guards, and he sent out the men who’d come with him to win new believers, as well as the Christians here who’d remained faithful to him from the days of Corinth.

Among his followers Priscilla stood out as his greatest help. As always, she kept watch over him as a mother over her child. She prepared his meals, comforted and strengthened him, and assured him that any day now he’d be brought before Caesar and set free. She organized visits of groups to his home with the help of Timothy and Luke.

Luke was a help to him as a healer, too. The sedentary life forced on Paul had an adverse affect on his health, and Luke did what he could to strengthen him with medicinal herbs and roots.

Paul was especially strengthened by the conversions he saw in Caesar’s household, the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard. Old Gabelus brought to his new God all the military discipline, obedience and devotion he’d once lavished on Caesar. In Priscilla’s household, he found the intimacy and brotherly spirit Paul promised him, and in his gratitude he did his best to widen the circle of the “family.” He sought out men in the cohort that he judged to be most likely to accept the new faith, and he brought them secretly to Paul’s house whenever the guard happened to be one of his own soldiers. He also did what he could to assign men of the right spirit to this special duty, who could be influenced by Paul. When the matter was not in his hands, he recommended men of mild character, and he often slipped in a word of reminder that the prisoner was a Roman citizen, adding that he was a man of influence in high circles.

Before long Gabelus and Eubulus had soldiers in their cohort who were either of the faith or strongly inclined toward it. But these two soldiers were also in and out of the palace talking up the new faith to the cooks, bakers and butlers. Servants of Caesar’s household would steal through the Porta Capena at night to Priscilla’s house where the common feasts were held. Soldiers and slaves exchanged the “kiss of peace.”

But the ten cohorts stationed at the Praetorian barracks were changed daily, so Paul often found himself in the care of a rough, unmanageable soldier. He’d be chained again and had to bear the soldiers’ company for twenty-four hours, accompanying him even when he went to answer the call of nature. Worse, the soldier would drag Paul wherever he went, including the foul public comfort stations, where men and women sat side-by-side, indulging in the grossest and most revolting jests. The soldiers often took special delight in mocking Paul’s Jewishness, imitating his gestures, interfering with his prayers and defiling his food by throwing a piece of pork into it. Occasionally, a soldier of the baser sort would compel the prisoner to witness frightful obscenities, and when Paul would close his eyes and whisper a prayer to God for release from the torment, the soldier would burst into brutal laughter. At night, when Paul’s devotions disturbed the soldier, he’d be elbowed in his side and told to sleep.

These were times he reminded himself over and over that he was an apostle to the Gentiles and that he did not belong to himself. He’d forfeited his privacy to be chained to another, for good and evil, in order that he might bring salvation to that other.

And so Paul discovered a new demonstration of grace and was strengthened.

Paul withheld his message from no one. No matter how cruel and base his keeper, no matter how revolting his conduct, Paul strove mightily to forget his own individuality, and to dedicate himself to understanding the other person in order to find any spark that could be kindled into the flame of faith. He stopped thinking of men as good or bad, believers or unbelievers. He thought of them only as ignorant or enlightened, and the most ignorant could be enlightened if only the proper way could be found. There was not a singe guard whom Paul did not seek to win over to the faith.

Besides soldiers, Paul was able to witness to acquaintances that Luke made in his capacity as a physician. Some of these were scholars, readers, and secretaries. Timothy spoke with strangers in inns, restaurants, and barbershops, and there were many Roman matrons in Priscilla’s circle who could be converted.

And so two Christian communities grew side by side. One was mostly Jewish, with a sprinkling of Gentiles who’d either converted to Judaism or at least kept “the commandments of the sons of Noah,” according to the long ago ruling of James. The other was made up chiefly of servants of Caesar’s household, soldiers of the Praetorium, slaves, and freedmen. They gathered around Priscilla’s house on the Aventine hill.

The river Tiber divided the two communities.

* * * * *

It was early morning in Paul’s house. Loud street noises floated through the “windows,” which were stopped up with sackcloth and other rags because of the chill. Children’s voices in a school on an upper floor could be heard reciting the alphabet, and the sound mixed with the ringing hammer of a nearby smithy. The screams of a quarreling couple nearby competed with Paul’s voice. The smoke from the stove of a sausage maker in the next apartment penetrated into the room, for the walls were full of cracks and the ceilings were faulty.

Paul lay on the bed that was his only piece of furniture. A long chain connected his wrist to that of a hairy, bearded soldier who sat at the window and shouted down to passersby of his acquaintance. This particular guard was a Corsican, whom Paul had met for the first time that morning. He wasn’t of Gabelus’ cohort, and he’d never heard of Paul before, but he was a kindly fellow, and he’d been surprised and softened when Aristarchus offered him a pitcher of new wine. He sat now with the pitcher between his knees. Whenever he lifted his arms to greet someone or to bring the pitcher to his lips, he tugged at Paul. Except for this thoughtless gesture, he didn’t disturb the old man.

Paul was weak and weary, his hands blue and swollen. His face was ashen, his cheeks pendulous, and the tear-sacs below his eyes unnaturally large. Only his thick eyebrows bristled with a strange liveliness above the pale shimmer of his eyes.

Luke stood next to him, ever calm, ever at peace. His black, well-kept beard and hair were streaked with gray. His mantle fell in careful folds around his body. With strong, skillful hands he massaged the flabby skin of his teacher, the face, throat, and chest. He’d also prepared a special drink of fig juice mixed with herbs.

The two were having a lively discussion about Luke’s attempt to write a gospel account of the life and deeds of Christ. They’d been doing this each morning for some time now, Luke reading the few paragraphs he’d written the day before, and Paul asking questions and offering suggestions.

For example, when Luke quoted Christ as commanding his disciples not to go to the Gentiles, or to the cities of the Samaritans, but to the lost sheep of the House of Israel, a startled Paul demanded, “Who put those words into the mouth of the lord?”

When Luke replied that Matthew had written them, Paul responded, “Maybe in another context, but to me the lord said, ‘I will send you to the Gentiles.’ He is the master of all men, and he came to bring redemption to Jew and Gentile alike.”

Another quote Luke had gotten from Matthew said that if you greet only your brothers, how are you better than others? Don’t the Gentiles so? To this Paul said, “That’s just a comparative statement. The Gentiles are not sinners. They’re just unborn children of the faith, and someone not born cannot be a sinner.”

Thus Paul’s influence on Luke’s gospel regarding Israel’s relation to the Gentiles. And to emphasize that Jesus’ mission extended to all mankind, he had Luke carry Jesus’ genealogy back beyond Abraham, where Matthew had ended, to Adam, the first man.

While Paul was busy with this, Timothy came in. The years the young man had spent with Paul in voluntary imprisonment, as well as his concern about the fate of the congregations of Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, had aged him greatly. His tall, slender figure had acquired a stoop. His face was yellow in the framework of his lustrous, black beard, and many wrinkles had gathered on his forehead. He wanted to write or visit the congregations, maybe take Luke with him.

Paul had sent Titus to the infant congregations, but what was one man? Besides, he didn’t want to burden Paul with his desire, for a messenger would need money for the journey, and he and Paul both knew that the funds of his congregation were low.

As if to confirm his thoughts, Aristarchus and Priscilla appeared together in the doorway with a small pot of grits and honey talking in low voices, and Paul knew why. Priscilla had sold their last bundle of goat’s hair to pay his rent. There was nothing left in her house to sell. Her husband’s looms were idle because they didn’t have the money to buy raw material. The situation was dire. Paul’s congregation was made up of soldiers, slaves and the poorest freedmen, and he suddenly felt that he was a burden to them. If only his hands were free! As old as he was he would sit at the loom again and earn his own bread. But his hands were literally bound. Where would help come from?

But no sooner did that thought enter his mind than he turned from it in shame. Didn’t he believe in the lord Jesus Christ? The lord had reduced him to this condition, and the lord would not turn his life to nothingness. Hadn’t he brought him to Rome, a prisoner in chains, because he intended great things with him?

Suddenly he called Timothy over.

“Titus should be sent to Crete,” he said. “It’s a gross and ignorant people, but there is a field ready for Christ. A strong hand is needed, and Titus is the man for it. It would be well to send Tychicus back to Ephesus, for Ephesus too is important. Many congregations have been founded in that area. You will go there. And you,” – he turned to Priscilla – “you and your husband must give up your house here in Rome and return to Ephesus. We must strengthen the hands of the new congregations.”

“And what of the congregation here?” asked Timothy.

“There is only one congregation and one Christ. The new Gentile believers will have to turn to the other side of the Tiber and become part of the Christian congregation over there, so that the two congregations may be united. Let the barriers between Jew and Gentile be broken down. Let all belong to the single congregation of Christ!”

Priscilla nodded and said, “Just yesterday the new believers met for the first time with the Jewish Christians and exchanged the kiss of peace.”

“How many of them were of Caesar’s household?”

“Thirty-six legionaries, brought by Gabelus and Eubulus, and upward of a score of the servants of Caesar’s household, freedmen and slaves.”

“I bend my knee before the Father of my lord Jesus Christ.”

“But what is to be –“

“Priscilla, my sister. God has spread the seed from Rome to Ephesus. In every city there are congregations, and they will help in the completion of God’s work.”

“And who will look after you in your chains?”

“He who has looked after me all these years. The congregations are more important than I.”

Meanwhile little Aristarchus stood by Paul’s bed holding the pot of grits and honey, and muttering, “Wouldn’t it be better, after all, for the apostle to eat something?”

Paul turned to him, and with his free hand took a few spoonfuls of food, sighing, “Will I be allowed to ever again see the children I’ve won to Christ? If only these hands weren’t chained. I would fly to them.”

“They will be free, they will surely be free. How often have you been in danger, and how often has the Lord rescued you! For the Lord needs you for His work.”

So Aristarchus babbled eagerly, as he held the pot of grits.

“I must give up this hired house, and return to my cell until I’m called before Caesar,” said Paul.

“God forbid!” Aristarchus shouted. “What do you mean by such words?”

“But where will we get the money to pay for these lodgings?”

“We’ll find it somewhere!” answered Aristarchus. “You have more important concerns. The Lord knows our needs. Surely someone will come from one of the congregations. And if no one does, we’ll talk to the Christians. They must remember the words, ‘Don’t muzzle the ox that treads the corn.’”

“No, not from the Gentile believers. They are children of the faith, and children must receive, not give,” said Paul. “Cross the Tiber. Speak with the believers who are our brothers in Israel. They’re grown in the faith, and they carry the burden lovingly.”

“However it happens,” answered Aristarchus, “it’s not for you to worry about. We’ll do what must be done, and God will be with us.”

These words were barely out of his mouth when a stranger appeared at the door, dressed in a Macedonian mantle. The man’s face and robe were covered with dust.

“Is this the house of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles?”

And looking toward the bed, the man waited for no answer, but came forward and bowed deeply, saying, “Peace to you, my rabbi and my lord! I’ve just arrived from Philippi and I bring greetings from the holy congregation in Jesus Christ. They’ve heard that you are in bonds and wish to send help to you through me. They’ve heard that you are in need, and this is an offering, made in love, from the congregation of Philippi.”

And the man placed a small sack of money at Paul’s feet.

Immediately Paul motioned to Aristarchus to bring a pitcher of water and wash his hands and feet. Aristarchus then helped him up from his bed and placed his tunic and black mantle over him.

Washed and dressed, Paul sank to his knees and murmured, “Father of all living things, I’m not worthy of the grace You’ve manifested toward me. May Your Name become known to all the peoples of the world through the redeemer You’ve chosen. May Your name be sanctified in all the world, and may Your spirit come on all people. May all people make a covenant in You and be bound through the grace of the redemption You sent to the world through Your holy servant, Your chosen son. For all comes from You, and all returns to You, the Holy One of Israel.”

Then Paul arose, sat on the bed and listened to the report brought to him by Epaphroditus of Philippi. Then he set about his plans with renewed energy.

He had Epaphroditus go out into the city to find any Philippians he could in the streets, shops, and inns, and preach the gospel to them. He rejoiced with Aquila and Priscilla, who were now relieved of their monetary anxiety.

And to top it all off, Tychicus and Onesimus arrived from Macedonia, and Demas came from Thessalonica the very next day. Paul’s house was once again transformed into a lively center for the uncircumcised Christians of Rome. Day after day the word went out to slaves and freedmen. Before long Paul had a little chair brought in, and sitting there, sometimes bound to a soldier, and sometimes with hands free, he taught from morning to night, winning souls to Christ.

Paul began to dictate a letter to the Philippians to Timothy. He always opened his heart in his letters, speaking without reserve, but to the Philippians, who’d always come to his aid when he was in need, like a mother to her child, he wrote with special feeling and unashamedly told of the heaviness of heart that he suffered because of his bondage, and of the faith that triumphed over it.

“I want you to know that what has happened to me has only served to spread the gospel. Even Caesar’s household knows that I am in chains because of Christ.”

“For me Christ is life, and death is gain. . . . I’m torn between two paths: I long to go be with Christ, but for your sakes it’s necessary that I remain in the flesh.”

And after explaining what having the “mind of Christ” meant, and that “every tongue should confess that Christ was lord to the Glory of God the Father,” he goes on.

“Be pure and spotless, children of God without stain. . . . Let me have pride in you in the day of Christ, so that I have not labored in vain. And if I should offer myself as a sacrifice for your faith and service in God, so shall I rejoice in his hope with you.”

He writes that he is sending Timothy to them, “for there is no one after my heart who will care for you in complete devotion. Others have tried to serve themselves, but he served with me in the spreading of the gospel as a son serves his father. . . . “

He still hopes to see the Philippians with his own eyes, but he also remembers those who are trying so hard to hinder him in his work. “Beware of the dogs!” he cries.

He talks about his Jewish origins, as he does in other letters. “I am a Jew of the Jews, of the Jewish tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, according to the law.”

But now he’s ready to give up everything for Christ, “so that I may no longer have my own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is of faith, the righteousness which is of God through faith.”

In his eagerness to emphasize faith, he even counts as loss what he had once counted as gain. “Yea, I count everything a loss that I held before the great knowledge of Christ my lord, for whom I have given up everything.”

But Paul is also human and in his bitterness he speaks of his former belief as utterly worthless. Certain tones in the letter also betray the discomfort of his chains, a human discomfort his spiritual libation cannot wholly overcome. But these are nothing more than spots, which he regrets passionately, and he can’t help revealing them in his letters, though again and again, he rises to heights of which he alone is capable.

“And now, brothers, whatever is true and honest and just and pure, whatever is of good report, and whatever is praised, set your heart on these things.”

In a surge of love and gratitude he says, “I do not speak to you out of want, for I have learned to be content with what I have. I know how to suffer want and how to conduct myself in plenty. I can do everything with the help of Christ. But you have shared with me in my affliction.”

It so happened that a young Tuscan was Paul’s guard on the day he finished his letter, a new man he’d never seen before. When he had taken over the prisoner from the previous guard, the young soldier kneeled down and cried, “I know you’re a holy man, and are sent by God. I know that it is for Jesus Christ that you’re in chains.”

“How do you know the name of Christ? Did Gabelus or Eubulus send you?”

“No. It’s well known on the Palatine hill, and everywhere in Caesar’s household they call on it,” said the soldier. “Take me, I pray, into your faith.”

Paul knelt down by the side of the soldier who was his keeper, and, lifting up their chained hands to heaven, called out, “See, O Lord! These chains You placed on my hands ring our Your praise and Your glory among men. I thank You for them!”

03 - Disputation

2010-02-20T10:56:00.002-05:00

Thus Paul was granted the privilege of living in private quarters, under the watchful eye of a soldier, until his trial. These quarters would have to be near the barracks on the Palatine hill, since his guard was changed daily, so his friends rented rooms for him in a lodging house on the Aventine hill, on the other side of the Circus Maximus, not far from the home of Priscilla and Aquila, who took on the responsibility of the apostle’s care.

The first thing Paul did was to contact the heads of the Jewish community of Rome. He was concerned that rumors that he intended to lodge a complaint with Caesar against the Jews may have spread. So he sent Aristarchus and Timothy to bring the elders of the synagogue to him since he was confined under guard in his house.

The elders had indeed heard of his arrival, but most of them didn’t know who he was. They only knew that a Jew was a Roman prisoner, and any time such a Jew was brought to Rome, they considered it especially meritorious to rescue him whenever possible. So a number of elders accepted the invitation and came to find out exactly what the charges were against him and how they could be of service.

Paul had aged greatly during his imprisonment. For more than two years he’d been deprived of his liberty, and for a man of such a restless spirit this was even more exhausting than the wild journeys he’d taken. He was used to traveling long distances and attracting people like a magnet. Now he was reduced to conducting his enterprise as best he could from within the four walls of a prison, chained to a single individual and passing countless days under the careful watch of a guard, who accompanied him wherever he went. He was tired and his nerves were frazzled.

Some of Paul’s guards were like Julius had been, sensitive enough to respond to his message and the warmth of his personality. The wall of suspicion between Jew and Gentile broke down, hostility turned to friendship, and with some, Christ became the common bond between prisoner and keeper. But there were others whose dull, hardened souls allowed no response to Paul’s faith and magnetism. Sometimes Paul’s prayers and meditations awoke only anger or derision in the creature he was chained to.

The latter caused Paul to cling more closely to the one who was the reason for his bondage. For Christ was not just the source of his life and the center of his being. He was both his tormenter and his liberator. In Christ, he had sinned, and in Christ he’d been redeemed. Though he’d sunk to the level of a murderer, he’d been raised to the level of spreader of the gospel to all men. Jesus was no longer just the intermediary between man and God, the “holy servant” who was to bring all mankind under the authority of God. Paul now went a step further.

“Every knee in heaven and on earth and under the earth shall bend to the name of Jesus.” Every tongue should acknowledge that “Jesus Christ is lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Thus he gave to Christ the place that his Jewish tradition had reserved for the One Whose Name may not be uttered, the God of Israel. Only in the double nature of Jesus could man unite with God and become part of Him through his human aspect and nature. God was close, intimate.

“You can love Him with your human nature. You can quench your thirst in him. You can become filled with the love of God, and through your faith in Christ you become part of him who is himself divine.”

These meditations on man’s relationship to Christ were the sources from which Paul derived strength in his loneliness. Love for Christ consumed him like a burning fever. But his body was worn down to its skeleton, and his bones protruded through the withered skin on which the poisonous air of his prisons had cast a yellow sheen. His throat became stringy. The pear shape of his face became more accentuated, his hair thinner, his cheekbones more prominent. His thin, bony hands were restless. They seemed forever to vibrate, like stringed instruments plucked by a passing finger.

The head of the Jewish delegation that came to visit Paul was Zadoc, the rabbi of the Synagogue of the Hebrews. He had the official title of interpreter of the law. As such he was the spiritual leader of the Jews in Rome. He was born in Jerusalem and had been a disciple of John Zachai, the head of the Pharisees. Not being a Christian, he didn’t know much about the prisoner or his dispute with the Jews. He saw only a Jew in bondage, chained by his right hand to the left hand of a Roman soldier. He listened to this “captive child amid the Gentiles.”

“Men and brothers, I have nothing against the customs of our fathers. God forbid that I would have anything to accuse my people of. I was delivered a prisoner into the hands of the Romans. They heard my case and would have set me free, for they found nothing in me worthy of death. But when the messengers of the High Priest brought charges against me, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar. Therefore I’ve sent for you, that I might talk with you, because it is for the sake of the hope of the Jews that I’ve been bound with this chain.”

The eyes of Zadoc became moist as he listened to “the captive child.” Like Paul, his beard was pointy and gray, and his earlocks trembled when he spoke.

“We received no letter from Judea about you, and none of our brothers recently arrived have given any evil report about you.”

A member of the delegation threw in a word, “Indeed, we’d like to hear from you about this sect against which so much is being said.”

“That’s true, but they also speak against all Israel everywhere, not just this sect,” interjected another.

“Yes, the house of Jacob is shamed and humiliated,” sighed the rabbi.

“But it’s precisely this sect that is spoken against everywhere that I want to talk to you about,” said Paul.

“Then we will schedule a day and meet again, and you will talk then.”

So a day was set. And as the rabbi was about to rise, he added, “If you have need of anything, we will help you.”

“No, thank God,” answered Paul. “God has graciously sent a pious couple to me, who are of the sect, and who live not far from here. Their names are Aquila and Priscilla. She prepares kosher food for me and brings it here. And my faithful companion” – he pointed to Aristarchus, who was sitting modestly in a corner – “attends to my needs, as do the other companions who came with me. As for any other needs, I trust in the Lord.”

On the appointed day the rabbi of the Synagogue of the Hebrews came to Paul’s lodgings with the sages of the community of Rome. Representatives of other synagogues came as well. For a whole day Paul sat in discussion with them, declaring his doctrine of Christ, which Christians accepted and which he preached to Gentiles as well as to Jews, for Christ, he said, had come to throw down the wall between Jew and Greek, and to make them as one.

Now the sages knew that the Torah is divided into two parts, the first being rules and regulations, and the second being applications, that is principles and edification. As long as Paul talked about the first part, even though it digressed from traditional teaching in some respects, it was founded on the Ten Commandments, so the listeners found little to dispute in it. It derived from the Jewish body of law Paul had studied under Gamaliel.

He taught on women obeying their husbands, husbands loving their wives and not dealing harshly with them. He taught on children honoring their parents and on parental compassion toward their children. He even enjoined servants to be obedient to their masters and masters to deal justly with their servants, “for all of us have one and the same Lord in heaven.” He warned them against idolatry and fornication, for “the children of God must be without stain.”

The doctrine Paul preached to the Gentiles made a favorable impression on the listeners. Indeed, they saw the hand of God in his preaching of a messenger sent to save the Gentiles from the depths of uncleanness or, as Paul said, “to put off the old man, who is corrupt by lust, and to put on the new man, who is created in the image of the God of righteousness and in true sanctity.”

But when Paul reached the second part of his discourse and spoke of the principles of the faith behind the regulations, when he placed at the center of the doctrine not the God of Israel, but Christ, they took offense. And how could it be otherwise? What new authority had come to replace the authority of Moses?

So a passionate dispute broke out between Paul and his listeners, the kind of dispute that Jews, and only Jews, who had poured out their blood for the faith, could have conducted. The air became hot and charged and the ceiling seemed ready to take fire. Bodies trembled and fingers were thrust out, as if to point at invisible texts. They quoted the Pentateuch, they called on the prophets, and they fought over the interpretations of texts. They no longer listened to Paul, even going so far as to stick their fingers in their ears and shake their heads violently.

But Paul was not a man to be put off. The hotter the debate, the more insistent he was that they hear him out. And in the end, he forced them to listen to his conclusions.

“Until Christ came,” cried Paul, “there was no one to come in direct contact with God, not even Moses, who talked with God through a veil. God was God, man was man. God appeared only in a likeness, and men spoke to him through a cloud. Only with the advent of Christ, who in his nature is both deity and a being of flesh and blood, did man and God become united. Thus we are drawn into intimate union with God directly, and not through a veil. The man who believes in Christ is no longer guided by laws and commandments; he’s guided by a higher power, by the spirit of God, which is in him through his faith in Christ. Faith becomes man’s guide. It’s his law and commandments. It makes him a son of Abraham, circumcised or not. Jew or Gentile, man or woman, freedman or slave – all are lifted up to divinity through faith in Christ.”

What Jew could listen to such things from the mouth of another Jew? The assembled scholars were astounded, even as others had been.

“The God of Israel is single and alone!” cried one. “No one, and I mean no one, can approach Him, not the fathers, not Moses, not anyone!”

“Not the fathers and not Moses,” agreed Paul, “but Christ can, for he is part of deity.”

Up to this point, Zadoc had been as fiercely active in the debate as anyone. But when he heard Paul repeat these words, the strength went out of him. His eyes flooded and his face took on an expression of deep sorrow. When he spoke, his voice trembled.

“’What is man, that You are mindful of him,’” he began. “We are dust and ashes. Who can be lifted up to God? Only Gentiles believe that a king can become a god, and that they can sacrifice to him. We Jews know only one God. He who appeared to Moses and said, ‘I am that I am.’ All the rest is emptiness. It is for this faith that we’ve endured torture and death. We are mocked in the theaters and circuses, and treated like dust in the streets. Everywhere the flood threatens to carry us away.

“We have only one to hold onto, God. We have only one word from Him, the Torah. With king David we say, ‘I trust in God and will not fear the deeds of man.’

“If you take the Torah to the Gentiles and teach them the Ten Commandments, if you plant the fear of God in them and the love of good deeds, we say, ‘Blessed be the work of your hands.’ We will pray that God crown your labor with success. But if you say that we must relinquish the Torah of God for another authority, then you’ve said too much. Continue your work with the Gentiles. Leave the Jews to the law of Moses!”

Though trembling with impatience while the rabbi spoke, Paul kept himself in check. But finally he could listen no more.

“Oh, how just were the words of Isaiah when he spoke these words to our fathers, ‘They will hear, but not understand. They will see, but they will not know!’

“Now be it known to you, that the salvation of God is sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear!”

“Let the Gentiles accept your salvation, for they have no other. But we have the salvation given to our fathers and preached by the prophets. Let the Gentiles accept your salvation as we accept ours. Then it will be said of them also, ‘O stiff-necked people! They hear but do not understand, they see but do not know!’ And when that happens, you will know that their salvation is a true one, and will endure, even as ours is true and endures. If the salvation you preach is a true one, then God will bring us together with them. There is no true salvation without God.”

And with these words most of the delegation left. But a few remained behind with Paul.

2b - Paul Before Seneca

2010-02-17T16:07:00.001-05:00

Paul was brought to Seneca chained to a legionary. From his judgment seat Seneca briefly inquired into the nature of the crime on which the apostle had been arrested.

“It’s for the hope of Israel, which I preach, that I’ve been thrown in chains,” answered Paul.

“The hope of Israel?” asked the consul, frowning. “To revolt against Rome and conquer the world? Is that why your countrymen imprisoned you?”

“Yes, conquest of the world,” answered Paul, “but not through revolt against Rome. Rather through the savior and redeemer God has raised through Israel, to bring the world under the rule of the one living God of Israel.”

“I’ve heard that the people of Israel believe that they alone worship the one living God, and that their Temple is the one place on earth where the God of the universe lives,” said Seneca, with a faint smile. “But this is the first I’ve heard of a savior and redeemer sent for the benefit of the whole world. What conceit! Couldn’t the God of the universe find some more fitting people to raise a redeemer for mankind than this barbarous Asiatic-Syrian-Palestinian horde? If He’d at least chosen us Romans, or let us say the wise Greeks. . .”

“God chose Israel because it is the Jews alone whose forefathers recognized the one living God. We have worshipped Him from ancient days,” answered Paul.

“This too is the impudent conceit of an impudent people,” said Seneca, contemptuously. “All of us recognize and pray to the one living God of the universe, not just Jews. The gods are only agents, intermediaries between ourselves and the one God of the universe.”

Paul was astounded, not so much by Seneca’s views, but by his daring in expressing them. He cried out, “O Seneca! How near you are to salvation! But it’s not the gods who are intermediaries, but the chosen Christ, the man-God and God-man, Jesus of Nazareth. He was sent down to earth by God in the likeness of man to be intermediary. He alone acts between us and the one living God, his Father.”

Seneca was suddenly interested, and the philosopher in him awakened. Not the gods, then, but a man-God had been appointed as the sole intermediary between man and divinity. He signaled to Paul to continue.

Paul knew this man’s reputation, and all his old longing to win the high representatives of the Greek-speaking world over to the faith came to life.

“Who and what are we, O Seneca, with all our wisdom and achievements? How far have these carried us? Can these break the iron ring of our earthly destiny? For all our lofty thoughts that carry us into the highest heavens, don’t we remain just crawling things subject to the laws of nature like every other earthly creature? How can we, with our created intelligence and emotions, achieve what we are not, the Creator? But God our Father has compassion on man. He has desired to lift him out of the chain of all other created things and to bring him nearer to Himself. Therefore He breathed a soul into us, which is part of us, and that awakens the longing for divinity in us.

“But the soul can only give us the thirst for divinity, as it has in you, O Seneca. It cannot give the actual drink. Therefore God took a part of His divinity and confined it in a man. And He sent this man down to earth, giving him all the nature of man. And He made him endure all the physical sufferings of man that he might bind himself to us and purify us of our earthly, beastly nature with his blood and tears, and lift us up with him. God is a portion in Christ. Thus we too are a portion in Christ. For Christ partakes of both natures, and we who believe in him are thereby bound through him to God. Christ alone is the bond between man and God, and there are no other gods besides.”

Seneca listened attentively. He had little use for any of the many religions that poured into Rome from the Orient. To him they were no better than the star-gazing Chaldeans, with their snake-charming and soothsaying and all their other superstitions.

But this struck him as entirely different. There seemed to be some philosophic perception in it. He couldn’t deny that faith acquired a universal appeal through a medium that shared both human and divine natures. Seneca was courageous and consistent in these thoughts, even if he kept them to himself. He didn’t shrink from truth, wherever he found it. But as a Roman he couldn’t understand how God could choose the lowest of the low, the Jews, as the dwelling place of His spirit. Not even a king of the Jews, a Herod brought up in the Roman court, was chosen. Instead, one who had died the death of a slave.

To Paul he said, “It’s all well and good that the God of the universe is filled with love toward man, His creature, and He wants to see man happy, joyous, and above all free in him. So why did God choose to incorporate His nature in a man who suffered and was killed? Why not choose one of the great one’s of the earth?”

“O Seneca!” cried Paul. “How do you measure greatness? With God’s measure or man’s? Are they great who debase humanity with the power that chance has placed in their hands? Or are they great who lift up the human species by their heroic deeds, in which they pour out their blood?

“Christ had the power to put away the bitter cup; he didn’t have to drink it. But he took on himself the death of a slave for all of us, and for all who will come after us. This is who you show such contempt for. He went down to the lowest rung of hell to lift out the last of us who’ve been thrown into it. Not in his heavenly garb alone does Christ shine for us. He shines in the royal raiment he won on earth, and stands before us as an example, bidding each of us bear his cross in love and humility and gratitude toward our Father in heaven.”

But still the great philosopher couldn’t see it. Divinity for him was wisdom, the path in the midst of chaos, the thread in a lightless maze. Without it man falls into primeval confusion. Intellectual perception is man’s perfection, whether it leads to the earthly or the non-earthly. But this man was talking about something higher than intellect, something that would burst the bonds of intelligence.

This Seneca dreaded. If divinity were united with the intellectual perfection and harmony of a Socrates, he could accept it. But it terrified him to think that it could be united with goodness instead. Goodness was the god of the weak, who had need of it. It wasn’t the god of the mind. Truth was accessible only to the intelligence.

After a pause he answered, with a serenity that imparted a suggestion of alabaster to his face. “Your God has settled in the man of pain, not in the man of mind. Such a man cannot strive to divinity of his own free will like the man of mind can, but he is under the compulsion of a destiny prescribed for him long in advance. And as the God of suffering, he’s the God of those who suffer. He’s a God for slaves. They’ll find consolation and comfort in Him to help them bear their fate and to inspire them to obedience to their lords. From that point of view, I see no objection to the spreading of such a faith among the slaves of Rome.

“But beware of spreading this faith among the Romans. You can go.”

With that Seneca rose from his seat and walked out to the litter waiting for him. He ordered the carriers to make haste, for the Jewish prisoner had broken in on his routine, that is, on his discipline and intelligence, and he’d spent more time with him than he’d intended.

On the way to the Palatine Seneca busied himself trying to come up with new words of adulation to greet the compositions that Caesar would undoubtedly have. But his mind kept coming back to the conversation with the man who would sooner or later appear before Caesar.

“Spiritual barrenness paralyzes the intellect, and fruitful thoughts make it alive,” he meditated.

A dreadful boredom spread over his features.

“I don’t know which death is easier, Nero’s poison, or his mediocre verses.”

He decided in favor of poison.

Later, when he met up with Burrus, he brought up his conversation with Paul. “The faith he preaches is a good one for the slaves. It’ll make them more obedient. That makes it a good thing for the state. But his doctrines are not ones that freedmen will accept.

“By the way, you might be interested in what he has to say about a second life in a world to come.”

And Seneca smiled into the face of the old soldier, who was also under the shadow of Caesar’s disfavor.

“And mark this, Burrus, that second life is not for sages and philosophers. It’s reserved for old soldiers like you.”

“If there is a Nero in Pluto’s world, then let the man keep his second life,” muttered Burrus into Seneca’s ear.

“No, he’s not there. But you’ll find a certain dead slave, who is the lord of the other world. His name, hang on a second, I just had it. I think his name is Jesus Christ.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard soldiers in the Praetorium call on it,” answered Burrus.

“Really? Then the Jews have already been active here in spreading his faith,” said Seneca. “Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe he is a danger to the state.”

Then he added, “No, no. It’s a faith that only the wretched and enslaved will accept. Never will the free Roman bow to it.”

And with these words he decided Paul’s fate for some time to come.

2a - Rome

2010-02-16T17:42:00.002-05:00

It’s easier for a man to die for his principles than to live by them. In this respect Seneca, the great Stoic philosopher, was no different than any other man. His philosophies, which he taught in his many letters to his friends, were doctrines of discipline, modesty, and contentment, but his life was one of unrestrained luxury.

But, living in Rome under Nero, the great Seneca, lying by his lovely young wife Paulina in their ivory bed with the gilded corners, knew no rest, and when he awoke in the morning out of his fitful sleep, it was invariably with a headache.

It wasn’t the fear of death that robbed him of sleep, not even after Nero had fallen completely under the influence of the cruel and cunning Tigellinus and of the depraved Sabina Poppea. For Seneca’s Stoic philosophy taught that death was just the beginning of a new and purified life. But his life was utterly devoid of personal values. So while he was certain that the spiritual part of him was assured of a great future, his personal life was bound up in this world. Indeed, while he consistently denied the significance of this wretched, earthly episode called life, he devoted himself with much skill and success to the accumulation of wealth, as if he expected to live forever.

But now that he stood on the brink of death, Seneca experienced emotionally what he’d proclaimed only in principle before. How foolish, he thought, to accumulate a fortune of vast estates and farms, costly furniture and art, all scattered throughout the empire. None of it mattered now that he expected the visit from the centurion who would bring him the imperial decree of death at any moment. He’d waited until his life was as insecure as that of other Roman nobles and citizens before he understood in his heart what he knew in his head when he wrote to a friend, “Not the count of days builds a long life, but their use in making a man his own master.”

At a banquet in the imperial palace just yesterday Seneca offered all his estates and palaces to Nero in exchange for release from his responsibilities as Consul. He begged to be allowed to retire to the country, to devote his remaining years to contemplation and study. Nero turned the occasion into a theatrical performance. His smooth round face took on a tinge of deep red. His watery blue eyes overflowed, his thick, swollen neck trembled, and his bosom heaved in the stress of his emotions.

“Seneca,” he said, in a sickly, gentle voice, “you guided my infant steps in the path of moral law and natural wisdom. You inducted my manhood into the ways of rulership. I ask you, what would the world say if I sent you away from my side? Would they not add this to the list of my cruelties? How can you be so unheedful to the good name of your friend?”

Then Nero leaned over, embraced him, kissed him, and promised him many other estates. But Seneca saw the familiar, deadly glitter in Nero’s eyes. He also saw the twitching grin of anticipation on Tigellinus’ lips, and the characteristic, cynical smile on Petronius’ face. Poppea tried to stop herself from giggling, but failed. They all knew the decision was made. Nero had smiled and spoken in the same emotion filled voice and with the same trembling neck when bidding his last farewell to his own mother. He’d uncovered her bosom, and said, chokingly, “These are the breasts that suckled me.” Then in all love, he’d conducted his mother to the foot of the villa and handed her into the boat that was to be her hearse.

This was an infallible sign with Nero. Whenever he became sentimental, whenever his eyes filled with tears, he was contemplating some frightful deed, so that by now every exhibition of tender emotion on the part of his pupil affected Seneca like the stench of a dead rat.

All night Seneca waits for the centurion to knock on his door. But the night passes, and no message comes, and in the morning he sees the hideous day before him. He will have to dress, wrap himself in his toga, so that the folds fall just so and no other way, not too perfectly, so as not to show up his master. Even in speech Seneca has to be skillful, but not too skillful. His phrases have to serve as a foil of his master’s phrases, but not seem to compete with them. In his bearing, in the appointments of his house and in the elegance of his banquets, he must always lag behind the imperial comedian.

Now he must proceed to the palace and become part of the hysterically flattering mob of courtiers who crowd around Nero, each seeking to outdo the other in outrageous eulogy of Nero’s verses and Nero’s performances on the lyre. If only those verses were frankly bad, and reflected some of Nero’s character! But Nero’s poetry, like his voice, is neither good nor bad. It’s commonplace. His poems are like stagnant pools in which countless bodies had bathed. They are an inspiration into decay.

The slaves finish massaging Seneca, for twice a day he submits his aging, swollen body to the masseurs, whose strong, skillful fingers awaken a fleeting sensation of youth in him as they rub costly oils into his flesh. Slave girls come in and anoint and perfume the flesh, spreading Oriental balsam on his skin with delicate fingers and working it into the pores, so that the skin blossoms and sings. He looks down at his body and it looks to him like a vessel about to be trampled. He tries unsuccessfully to summon the principles and rules of the Stoic life to his aid.

While all this is happening, Seneca follows his normal routine of dictating his moralistic letters to his friends. He writes to his friend Lucius “On the Welfare of the Body and the Neglect of the Soul,” warning him against preoccupation with bodily needs, and advising him to pay more attention to the needs of the soul. “Hasten to return from the body to the soul, and discipline yourself in her day and night.”

But none of these distractions allow him to get rid of the persistent thought that his body, which is receiving so much attention, is to have its functions prematurely suspended. It might happen today, or it might happen tomorrow.

The masseurs and slave girls pass Seneca’s body on to the hairdresser, for Nero is particularly finicky about his hair. Nero’s heavy, copper-yellow locks have to fall in certain designs on his fat neck and low forehead. And if Caesar is finicky about his hair, then his couriers can be no less so. The Syrian hairdresser and his assistants do what they can to soften the lines and pouches on Seneca’s face that the restless night has accentuated. And while the features are being fondled and smoothed out, and little beauty spots are being place on them, he listens to the reports of his estate managers.

He lays and listens to the long reports on his granaries and farms, his loans at interest, and his slaves. Here and there he interjects a question. Wouldn’t it be better to sell this or that harvest now? Did they have too large a stock of produce in the granaries?

When he completes the session with the directors, other slaves dress him, draw a tunic of Persian silk over his body and throw a heavy woolen toga over that. A highly specialized task, this is only performed by special slaves, “folders”, who are trained in this art. Properly “thrown”, the toga keeps its straight up and down folds all day.

Once the majordomo, reviewing the total effect of the hairdressing and the folding of the toga, expresses satisfaction with his lord’s appearance, the doorkeeper, who is chained to the corridor wall like a dog, throws open the heavy cedar doors.

* * * * *

Seneca’s city residence was surrounded by gardens large enough and beautiful enough to arouse even Nero’s jealousy. They contained exotic plants from all over the world. Long rows of pillars, made of Italian and African marble, ran parallel to the alleys of fantastic trees. There were basins set like jewels under overhanging trellises and surrounded by many-colored jasmine. Parrots, peacocks, and doves were kept in the gardens, and countless statues of gods and goddesses, athletes and flute players, peeped out of ingeniously planted thickets. Long lines of oleander bounded by thick bushes sheltered the residence from the noises and unpleasant odors of the streets.

As soon as Seneca came out of his house, men of every age appeared from between the pillars within the garden, crawling men in woolen togas, each trying to get as near as he could, pushing others out of the way. With outstretched hands, fawning smiles and bodies bent double they called out to him.

“Hail, patron!”
“Hail to you, lord!”
“My lord! Your appearance is like Jupiter!”
“No, not like Jupiter! Like Apollo!”
“Like neither, I say! Like Mars!”

One who fancied himself a philosopher, cried out, “Is this how you praise our lord? With commonplace words in stupid flattery? Leave such flatteries for the ignorant. For our lord’s appearance is like that of Plato, and no other.”

Seneca turned with a smile to the last speaker. “And who flatters you, Atonis? Is there anyone left to cringe before you?”

“Aye, my lord, my wife flatters me,” answered the philosopher.

Seneca laughed. “True, in Rome everyone flatters and is flattered.”

This group of people was Seneca’s claque, or groupies as we might call them today. For however much his better nature revolted from the all-encompassing corruption he saw in Rome, he could not, he would not as a Consul, dispense with their services. Like every Roman politician he kept a large staff of them. He paid them a few sesterces more than other patrons and was a little more generous in providing them with wool for togas. But he did this more for his own honor, than for any altruistic reason.

He was also different from other patrons in that he tried to pick his men from among the more intelligent sort, like obscure authors, unsuccessful dramatists and poets. He did pick ordinary clients as well, so that he might be certain of reaching every level of the populace. He was compassionate toward them, especially the “philosophers”, for Seneca saw himself as nothing more than a philosopher-client of the emperor.

“Clients, nothing but clients,” he thought. “That is what the Romans have become. As these are the clients of the ‘mighty,’ so we, the ‘mighty’, are the clients of the one patron of Rome –Caesar.”

The slaves with the litter waited at the foot of the broad flight of marble stairs in front of the house. Seneca disliked the ordinary litter, which he deemed only fit for women. He preferred the two-seater, one for him and one opposite for his secretary, who took down dictation or read to him. This morning, however, Seneca traveled alone.

A procession formed, led by Negro slaves in loincloths, who carried long, silver-tipped staves, to break a path through the crowds. Behind them came the younger clients in their togas, whose duty was to shout loudly, “Make way for the lord Seneca, the Consul.” Seneca’s most intimate servants, his secretaries, managers and other favorites, crowded around the litter. The older clients, who followed behind, had the honor of talking loudly about the great merits of their patron so that all bystanders could hear. Some of them proclaimed their own verses about Seneca’s achievements in education and literature. Others chanted about his great plans for the welfare of the Romans, how he would bring down the price of bread and arrange gigantic spectacles in the arena at his own expense. The whole procession was surrounded by a double row of slaves with pointed sticks and ox hide whips to keep the plebs at a respectful distance.

The wide gates swung open, and the procession poured into the street.

Seneca lived in the Vicus Patricius quarter, between the Viminale and Esquiline hills. Like all patrician palaces, it was surrounded by narrow, dirty streets, in which every foot of ground was needed for the swarming populace. Stone houses rose five and six stories on either side, so that the lower apartments were in perpetual darkness. Patricians and plebeians both lived there, thrown together like herrings in a barrel.

Tiny shops, booths, and work stalls were on the ground floor, with the display of goods on the street so that even the narrow passage between the houses was only partially open. Some of the ground floors were used as warehouses and an odor of decaying meat came from the shops, mixing with the odor that escaped from the open sewers.

The patricians, house owners, or their most important tenants lived above the shops in apartments whose rooms were fairly large, and had windows covered with cloth curtains. In the topmost floors, reached by narrow, twisted lightless stairs, were the smallest rooms inhabited by the poorest citizens. In order to earn part of the rent, they subleased rooms, or parts of rooms, to lodgers. Thus, on these floors there were large families crowded into rooms that were nothing more than open holes. The sole furniture was the bed, on which the family slept at night and ate its meals by day.

Along with smoke from three-legged braziers and the sour smell of unwashed linen, or of garbage the residents were too lazy to carry down to the sewers, there was a perpetual tumult of shouting, quarreling, and laughing, mixed with hammers ringing, millstones grinding, and steam whistling. But for the most part the rooms were used only at night for sleeping. During the day the inhabitants were all out on the streets.

The procession soon entered the Suburra, Rome’s gutter, and marketplace of the poor. A veritable babel of tongues was heard here from slaves and freedmen who visited the movable wooden booths stocked with every imaginable variety of merchandise. Sackcloth coverings for slaves could be found next to silk Persian shawls, although the latter were most likely stolen. The huge casks of wine that the dealers had to keep in the open, for lack of space, would surely have been broken or emptied by the rabble, were it not for the guards who were stationed at close intervals in the market with whips in hand.

A strange mixture of many races filled the Suburra. A red-haired Briton and a black-haired Gaul dragged a load of planks across the market. Blond Germans, bent double like beasts, carried a block of marble on a wooden frame.

In one corner sat a woman of Judea, her face covered with a black sackcloth veil, her stock of balsams and cosmetics in a basket in front of her. A Chaldean stargazer nearby offered to read people’s horoscopes, while next to him a snake charmer blew into his flute while the heads of the snakes swayed before him in the basket. Over here a crowd was betting on a cockfight and over there a dice game was in progress. A drunken legionary was dragging a whore by the hair out of the door of an inn.

And high above this sea of labor, sweat, and drunkenness floated the litter of the mighty Seneca.

Next the procession turned from the Suburran gutter and swung through an alley into the opulent and resplendent Via Sacra

Here, the richest shops and business houses of Rome displayed their wares for the aristocracy just a few steps from the Suburra. There were gigantic pearls the size of hazelnuts, as opalescent and transparent as Poppea’s skin. There were precious stones flashing in all the colors of the rainbow and vessels of ivory overlaid with Corinthian bronze. There were shirts and tunics of Sidonian linen and Persian silk, and drinking cups of rare and costly Phoenician glass. There were also marketplaces for the sale of beautiful slaves, young athletes and Egyptian flute players with lithe bodies.

The Roman aristocracy strolled through the Via Sacra, always accompanied by its suites of freedmen and slaves. They purchased rare, exotic fruits and flower wreaths, wines and honeys, for their nightly banquets. Men did most of the buying for the households and where a woman was seen, it was usually a matron carried in her litter, her face and lips painted, her hair built into a towering coif, her fingers and headdress adorned with jewels, and her dress drenched in perfume. She too had her attendant suite of slaves who brought along her favorite pets, the parrots, apes and trained wild animals.

For the first time Seneca seemed to actually see the frightful contrast between the human swamp of the Suburra and the boundless luxury of the Via Sacra, abysmal slavery and immeasurable self-indulgence virtually in contact with each other! But wasn’t this physical condition symbolic of Rome’s spiritual condition? A government whose legal system was based on a supreme concept of justice was headed by a Caesar whose nightly pleasure it was to seek the entertainment of lust and cruelty in assaults on his own citizens! A Caesar who was a tyrant, whose chief minister was a robber, whose consort was a whore, and whose nearest kindred spirit, the “arbiter of elegance,” was a pornographer.

Clearly, justice and law, the foundations of government, were not enough to sustain a moral system, for government was only an accumulation of human efforts, and a Nero-Caesar had become the government. Seneca understood that whatever the moral convictions issuing from the philosophic system, they lacked the power to impose themselves and be transformed into action. They lacked the voice of ultimate authority.

“My moral system,” he confessed, “has led to no obligation in my personal conduct. Rome’s gods have everything, and they can bestow everything on mankind – everything except righteousness. Who can give Rome a God of righteousness?”

Among other matters that day, Seneca found the case of one “Paul, born in Tarsus, a Roman citizen: appeal to Caesar in connection with alleged transgression of the law of his faith, the faith of the Jews, said law being under the protection of Rome.”

Appeals to Caesar by Roman citizens were considered matters of honor by the emperors ever since Augustus, and were taken very seriously. They attended the trials in person and often examined the person who made the appeal personally. But Nero was not like his predecessors. The tedium of trials for the honor of Rome was not for him. He had more important matters to attend to. Even now, he was closeted in one of the palace chambers proclaiming one of his thunderous poetical compositions at the top of his voice to a group of actors. Tonight at the banquet, he would inflict the same torment on his guests, who would compete with each other in groveling praise of the imperial buffoon. Seneca knew all this. So he asked Burrus, the commandant of the Praetorium, who was in charge of the appeals, what had been done in the case of the man Paul.

“He’s only a Jew,” he told Seneca. “I’ve had too much trouble with the Jews.’”

“But he’s a Roman citizen,” said Seneca to the old general, “and he’s appealed to Caesar. The man’s committed no crime against the state. As a Roman citizen, he’s entitled to his trial, and he must be treated with every consideration.”

“Then the man must be judged by Caesar himself.”

“True, Burrus, but you know as well as I that if he has to wait that long, he may rot away in prison. Caesar has other matters to attend to. We can make an investigation, and at least find out the nature of the accusation. And if he’s no danger to the peace of the state, I see no reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to take up quarters elsewhere, under guard, of course, until his case comes up.”

“I know nothing about these distinctions in crime, Seneca. Do you want to talk to the man?”

“I am interested in the man because he is a Roman citizen,” answered Seneca. “Let him be brought to me.”

01 - Out of Strength Comes Forth Sweetness

2010-02-15T14:01:00.002-05:00

Whenever a Roman soldier returned from a distant frontier, there was nothing he looked forward to more than to scalding and steaming his body in the splendidly appointed baths constructed by Agrippa especially for the guards, overseers and soldiers around Caesar on the Campus Martius near the Parthenon. There were other baths sprinkled throughout the city, of course, for next to bread and circuses the Roman populace loved its steam baths most. The rich had their private thermal chambers, while the poor received a regular distribution of metal checks or tickets that admitted them to the public baths. Even slaves had similar institutions.

After surrendering his prisoners to the local guards, Julius went off to the thermal baths of his barracks.

Such a visit could take the better part of the day, for these were not simply bathhouses. There were hot and cold basins, steam rooms, and rubbing rooms where the attendant used a bronze currycomb to set the blood in circulation. There were also game rooms and dining rooms where the bathers assembled to eat, drink and gossip.

After his body was thoroughly steamed, rubbed, and anointed, Julius went to lie down on a couch. A number of legionaries lay nearby, members of the Praetorian Guard. They were talking about the strange lot of prisoners that had just arrived from Judea.

“By Jupiter!” said Eubulus, a broad-boned, mighty figure of a man, a Macedonian member of the Palace Guard. “I hear these men won’t touch anything but the nuts and figs they brought with them. They won’t taste any of our bread, wine, or meat. They spend all their time singing or muttering prayers to their gods. I also heard that most of them are priests from their Temple in Jerusalem.”

Eubulus was of the Ninth Legion, which had just returned from an expedition sent to repress an uprising in Britain. His cohort had distinguished itself in the campaign, and had been transferred to the Praetorian Guard, stationed near Caesar’s palace, as a reward.

“The Jews are a queer people,” interjected a Galatian legionary. “They worship a god no one’s ever seen. When I was in charge of some of them, they kept me awake all night bawling hymns. Not even the lash stops them. You’d think they were freely worshiping in their own Temple rather than being prisoners.

“You know they built their God a Temple of pure gold, and he won’t even let them put his image in it.”

“It’s not just that, they won’t let anyone bring Caesar’s image in there either. I was in a detachment bringing Caesar’s statue to them. They threw themselves down in front of us and would have let themselves be killed before they’d let us through. Some of them even were killed. When Petronius saw he’d have to kill them all, he backed off.”

This came from Old Gabelus, who had served in Judea under Petronius.

“So how does their God reward them for all this? Are they rich or powerful?” someone asked.

“They’re the poorest of the poor, the weakest of the weak,” answered Gabelus. “Their God treats them like slaves. I never knew anyone more feeble or helpless. Everyone spits on them. Surely you’ve seen our actors lampoon them in the circus.”

“So why do they cling to this God of theirs?”

“Because they believe that they will be rewarded in another world for their devotion,” said Julius. “This world means nothing to them. This life is just a trial of suffering and humiliation, so they can be with their God in heaven in a second life.”

“And who are you, brother, that you know the mysteries of the Jews so well?” asked Gabelus.

“My name is Julius. I just got back from Judea with that batch of prisoners.”

“Julius of the Augustan Legion?” asked Gabelus, enthusiastically. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. You say you just got back.”

“Just today. There was a prisoner of some importance, too, Paul by name.”

“Oh, I’ve heard of him,” said Eubulus. “In Philippi many people have converted to the Jewish faith. And it’s true. They sacrifice everything for the sake of the next life.”

“You can talk to him if you want to know more,” said Julius. “I delivered him to Caesar today. He’s a marvelous man. He filled my mind with thoughts of his God.”

“Is he a priest in the Jerusalem Temple?”

“That I don’t know. But he is Jewish, like the priests,” answered Julius.

“One of your soldiers says he saved your men from shipwreck,” said someone, curiously. “Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true. I don’t know who or what he is, but there’s a demon or spirit in him, that’s for sure. He’s definitely in communion with the gods. He told us that only the ship would be lost, but not a hair of our heads would be touched. And that’s just what happened. We’d all given up hope in the storm. He was the only one who remained calm. I don’t know what would have happened to us if it weren’t for him. And he says it was his God that saved us all through him. Of that I’m sure.”

And Julius added, “But that’s nothing! You should see the miracles he performs by the power of his God. I saw him myself heal a dying man with nothing more than a look. I also saw a viper wind itself around his arm and he just grabbed it with his other hand, tore it loose and threw it into the fire. Like I said he’s got a demon in him for sure.

“Oh, a magician, then!”

“I don’t know where he gets his power, but he gets it from somewhere.”

“So why is he here? What crimes has he committed?”

“It’s about their faith. Agrippa, the Jewish king, heard the man plead his cause, and said the man hadn’t committed any crime. He would’ve set him free, but the man appealed to Caesar. Did I mention he’s a Roman citizen?”

“A Roman citizen!” exclaimed several legionaries at the same time.

“By birth, no less. His confinement in Caesarea was honorable. Festus gave him some liberty, and I was told to be considerate to him. Let me add that he was an honest prisoner. He behaved loyally. Not once did he give me any trouble,” said Julius.

* * * * *

That evening Paul was placed in the custody of Eubulus. He was exhausted after the long, perilous journey. His endurance was not what it used to be. Eubulus, impressed by Julius’ report, didn’t insist on chaining himself to Paul. So Paul was alone in his cell. Here in Rome, his companions from the journey were not allowed to visit, but they didn’t go far. They walked back and forth outside the walls of the Praetorium.

For the first day of his confinement Paul ate nothing, since the food offered was unclean. He was also too exhausted to pay much attention to his new guard. He slept through the first and second nights, and it wasn’t until he awoke the third morning that it dawned on him that his hand was not chained to a keeper. He wasn’t even chained to the wall. A legionary sat in another corner of the cell, his massive head sunk in meditation.

“Friend,” asked Paul, “are you my guard?”
“Yes, prisoner.”
“What is your name, legionary?”
“Eubulus.”
“Eubulus. A fine name. Do you speak Greek?”
“From birth.”
“Where were you born, my friend?”
“Philippi, in Macedonia.”

“Philippi,” exclaimed Paul, obviously pleased. “A fine city, and a famous one. Do you know Lydia, the seller of purple?”

“Who doesn’t? I’ve been away from Philippi for a long time, fighting in Gaul and Britain. But I still remember Lydia. She had a good name among us when I was a boy.”

“She is my sister,” cried Paul.

“Your sister!” cried the astounded legionary. “You were born in Philippi?”

“No, I’m a Jew from Tarsus, in Cilicia. And yet Lydia is my sister. For we who believe in the one living God are bound, as brothers and sisters, in the faith, through the savior God sent for all of us, Jesus Christ.”

“What do you mean?” asked Eubulus. “You have a father and mother as I do, do you not?”

“You speak of our earthly life. In our heavenly life we’ve neither father nor mother, sister nor brother. But all who believe in Christ are of one family, brothers and sisters through his blood. He’s given us heavenly life, and we are born into the faith.”

“Who was this Christ you’re talking about?”

“Not was, but is. He is here with us, even though you don’t see him. You may not be of my faith, but you’re already no stranger to me. Your goodness makes you my brother.”

“You must tell me more of this later. But I see you haven’t touched your food. I know that you Jews won’t eat food prepared by someone of another faith. We do have three of your priests here in the Praetorium. I’ll have some of their fruit sent to you.”

“It’s true I don’t eat the bread of strangers,” admitted Paul, “but I share the bread I have with my brother. And what is pure for my brother is pure for me too. For all is pure that comes from the pure. Come, brother Eubulus, we will break our fast together.”

Paul sat down next to his keeper, and they divided the bread and olives and water mixed with sour wine between them.

While they ate, Eubulus said, “There’s a friend of mine here among the legionaries, an old soldier, Gabelus. He was stationed in the land of the Jews since the days of Caligula. He told me that the Jews wouldn’t allow the image of Caesar into their Temple and refused to worship him as a god.”

“To Caesar we render the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. God alone is divine, and we worship only Him. Caesar we serve.”

Eubulus was silent as he meditated on the distinction.

After a while he said, “Hear me, stranger. I’ve been told you’re an intimate of the gods, and I’d like for you to do something for me. I fought in Britain with an old friend, Aurusus Sevantus. The Britons surrounded us in the battle, and rained spears on us. I was wounded and Sevantus pulled the spear out of me and bound up my wound. There was a second attack and we stood back to back with our shields in front of us. Then the enemy gathered to one side, and Sevantus placed himself in front of me and took a spear through his chest. I would have given my life for him, but when the retreat sounded he was dead, so I left him there.

“Could you pray to your God that he take Aurusus Sevantus to him in heaven, together with the believers? You’re a pious man, and I’ve heard your God holds you in great regard. Pray to him for my friend Aurusus Sevantus.”

“O, good Eubulus! You’ve already prayed to my God the best of all prayers, the prayer of devotion and friendship. I know that my God, who sees the secret thoughts of all men, has heard your prayer, even before you said it.”

“What? He would listen to me, a stranger?”

“Because of your love, you are not a stranger to my God. You’re as close to Him as I am. For all of us are one blood in His sight.”

Eubulus was confused. The apostle’s words were meaningless, for he couldn’t understand a faith that reached out to strangers and made them brothers of the believers.

So he asked, “And those who don’t know each other are brothers and sisters?”

“Anyone, whether of my flesh and blood or not, whether I know him or not, no matter where he is, if he believes in Jesus Christ we are bound in brotherhood.”

“Even if you’re a free man, and he’s a slave?” persisted Eubulus.

“Among us who believe in our lord, there are no free men and no slaves, for we are all free in God. We belong to each other.”

“No, no, these are things impossible to understand,” said Eubulus, bewildered. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. You expect me to believe that I, a soldier of the Ninth Legion, am the brother of the wild, barbarous, fiery-haired Britons who rebelled against Rome, and who we brought captive here to become beasts of burden? Such a man is my brother? Or the German, or the black African slave? Only Romans are brothers, for we worship the same Caesar and the same gods.”

“But isn’t the wild, barbarous red-haired Briton made of the same flesh as you? When you plunged your spear into him, didn’t he bleed? When you took away his wife and children, didn’t you see pain written on his face? The wild Briton, the German, the African are all as you are now, ignorant in the knowledge of God. But bring them this knowledge, that one God made all of us and that God sent His savior on earth to redeem us all through his suffering, and in that instant they become our brothers in the faith.”

Eubulus shook his head. “You say, then, that all who believe in God become members of one family, brothers and sisters, even though they don’t have the same father and mother, even if they’re of different races, born in different lands, is that it?”

“It is so, my son.”

“Hear me then. I have friends here, old Gabelus, who I mentioned, and Lucius and Sadonius. I’ll bring them to you and have you talk to them like you did to me, so that we all may become brothers in your God. Will you do this?”

“Bring them this evening, and any one else of your comrades.”

Eubulus was strangely moved. He didn’t know what to say.

After a while he said, “What would you have me do for you?”

“You’ve already done the greatest thing one brother can do for another. The Lord has comforted me because of you. But if you would like to do something for me, there are friends of mine walking back and forth outside the gates. You’ll know them easily enough. One’s a short man, yellow beard, big eyes. Tell them, ‘Out of strength comes forth sweetness, and out of the mouth of the lion the voice of God.’”

That night Eubulus brought his friends into Paul’s cell. Like him they were all part of the Praetorian Guard as a reward for long years of service as soldiers. He, Gabelus, Lucius, and Sadonius had campaigned in many lands, and borne themselves valiantly.

Paul could their read faces by the weak light of the oil lamp in his cell. Gabelus was earnest. His cropped hair stood up like bristles, his beard was gray, his back, neck and shoulders were scarred. His eyes were brown. Lucius, much younger than he, was no less earnest, but his blue eyes were fresh and lively, and his lips were sensitive. Sadonius, who held himself more in the shadow, seemed to be a silent, thoughtful man.

First Paul asked each man where he came from. He was familiar with all the provinces and cities they mentioned.

And he praised their military records too. He praised their faithfulness, their courage, and their devotion to Caesar.

“When our lord was here, he said, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’”

And he assured them that there was a reward for faithfulness.

“But Caesar is not a god. He’s a man, just like we are. There is only one God in heaven, and He first made a covenant with the Jewish people. Then He had compassion on all men, and sent His son down in the likeness of a man and made a covenant with all men through him.”

Then he told them of Jesus Christ, how he’d lived on earth and taught men to live in truth and honesty, to love one another, and to help each other in the hour of need. All men, he said, were soldiers of Christ.

“We are comrades, and we must not hate each other, but rather share our bread with each other. We must even forgive our enemies who’ve sinned against us, and we must pray to God to turn their hearts to goodness. Christ set the example for all of us, for though he was the Son of God and had power, he let himself be bound like a sheep, and he died in torment on the cross so that we might be purified through his suffering.

“Then he rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds of people. He also showed himself to me, and sent me to take his gospel to the world. This Jesus will come down from heaven in the near future, and he’ll sit on the throne to judge all men. The dead, too, will be raised, for those who believe in him are not really dead, but alive in Christ and are with him in heaven. And then will begin the life of righteousness on earth.

The soldiers listened in silence. Gabelus in particular had been thinking about the foundations on which his life had been built. He’d been a faithful servant to Caesar since the day he took his oath. He’d submitted proudly and readily to the disciplines and hardships of his calling, the endless marches, the climbing of mountains, the wading through swamps, the struggles with men and beasts. He had many scars to prove it. He helped to put down rebellions among the Gauls, Germans and Britons. For him Caesar was god, and to him and to Rome he had given his life. When his time came, Charon would find the coin placed in his mouth to pay his fare across the Styx to the cypress-covered Elysian fields. There the old soldier would meet his Emperor, Claudius, and would enter his service once more.

But now he had doubts. He’d witnessed the obstinate devotion of the Jews when they refused to admit Caesar’s image, and he could never forget that they were the only ones who understood that mad Caligula had been no god, but had been a disgrace to mankind.

It was the same with the new emperor, Nero. Gabelus himself had helped raise Nero to the purple after Claudius’ death. But now it was known that Nero had had him poisoned. After that he killed his own mother, the daughter of the beloved general, Germanicus. The whole Praetorium had shuddered at that incredible crime. But that was just the beginning! One faithful general after another was executed. Nero rejected the gentle Octavia, of the noble line of Augustus, and took a slave woman to his side, and after her a vicious harlot. Gabelus had been horrified to learn of Octavia’s death.

Now there wasn’t a single Roman citizen who could be certain that he wasn’t on the black list. A Caesar who liked to disguise himself at night like a robber captain, and lead a band of ruffians to attack his own citizens! A Caesar who was not ashamed to wrestle with gladiators in the arena! A Caesar who surrounded himself with flutists and guitarists, and recited his own poetry in the palaces and circuses like a cheap actor! What had become of the reign of law and order that was the pride of Rome? Where was the justice and honesty that he, Gabelus, was ready to give up his life for? And how much deity could there be in a Caesar who was known as a beast, a murderer, a matricide?

Suppose this simple Jew is speaking the simple truth? Suppose God alone is divine and the Kingdom of Heaven will be instituted by the new Caesar, Christ, the Son of God? For such a Caesar, immortal and divine, for such a kingdom, eternal and just, a man could give his life. Only such a Caesar could reward the soldier for his faithful service with a second life beyond the Styx.

Ah, what a pity that he came to this notion so late in life, after giving his best years for the old Caesar, and so little was left for the new.

But as if reading his thoughts, Paul answered him, “It’s never too late to come to him. He was with you before you knew him. And before you knew his name, he shed his blood for you, and bore the cross for you, that you might be saved.”

Glory to the new Caesar, thought the old soldier, to Jesus Christ! I swear by my honor as a soldier that from this day on I will be faithful to him, live for him and die for him! For he alone is worthy of the inheritance of the Caesars on earth.

And as old Gabelus was moved to these thoughts, so too were his friends. So when morning came to Paul’s dark cell, the apostle had with him four of Caesar’s soldiers who swore eternal faith to the Caesar of heaven and earth, Jesus Christ.

35 - Shipwreck

2010-02-14T13:13:00.003-05:00

It generally took some time to collect a large enough number of prisoners to make a regular shipment. This one contained many Jews, taken by Felix in his raid against an Egyptian “Messiah” on the Mount of Olives. The weaker rebels had been killed off, while the stronger were being sent to Rome to fight wild beasts in the arena. There were also leaders of robber bands who infested the highways of Judea, and others who, like Paul, were to be tried by a Roman court. Those who had already been sentenced to death were heavily chained and guarded by legionaries.

The entire contingent was under the command of an Italian centurion by the name of Julius, of the First Augustan legion, with headquarters at Caesarea. Julius was personally entrusted with the prisoner Paul.

Paul said his goodbyes to the representatives of the congregation of Caesarea, to Phillip and his daughters, and to the other believers who’d served him so devotedly during the two years of his imprisonment. Luke, who’d gone to Jerusalem, returned with a small sum of money the congregations collected for him. Paul had already sent Tychicus and Trophimus to Ephesus. With the special permission of the procurator, who became even more kindly disposed to Paul after the visit of Agrippa and Bernice, Paul was permitted to take Luke, Aristarchus, and Timothy with him on his journey. Timothy would later be sent on to Ephesus. Titus was already in Corinth.

Julius, of course, was told that Paul was a Roman citizen going to the capital to stand trial before Caesar. He also knew that the prisoner was a man of some importance, since he’d appeared at an open hearing before the royal couple. The procurator indicated that he would do well to treat the prisoner with consideration. And of course Paul made it his business to win his new guard’s friendship.

Julius was an honest and faithful soldier, a typical Roman legionary, ready to lay down his life in the execution of his duty, the kind of man whose discipline and devotion Paul respected. Paul talked much about the faith, and though he didn’t succeed in converting him, Julius was softened toward his prisoner and became interested in his fate.

Paul was given privileges not granted to the other prisoners. In the hot July nights he was allowed to sleep, together with his friends, on the upper deck of the wretched, foul-smelling little ship that made the first leg of the journey from Caesarea to a port in Syria. And when the ship touched at Sidon Paul was allowed to go into the city, under guard, to visit his friends. The little congregation there had been told that Paul would pass that way and a delegation was waiting with useful gifts, a mattress, a warm cloak, and a supply of kosher food. Luke was given some medicinal oils and wines.

It wasn’t until they reached Myra, in Lycia, that the centurion found a strong, roomy ship, which was carrying a cargo of Egyptian wheat, linens and pottery to Italy, along with a group of merchants. Julius transferred his prisoners and his detachment of soldiers to the new ship, for the rest of the journey.

As soon as he set foot on the Alexandrian ship Paul began to acquaint himself with the merchant travelers and the sailors. Some were believers, and many had heard of Paul. As an experienced sea traveler, Paul could talk the language. He could speak intelligently with the crew, the chief helmsman and even the overseer of the ship’s slaves.

During the first few days out of Myra the ship traveled slowly through a level, shining blue sea. The air was calm and the ship hugged the coast, to take advantage of the land winds. Paul was free to move about, and he circulated everywhere. He went down to the lowest holds where the condemned prisoners were chained to the side of the ship in noisy, tiny cells close enough that they could hear the roaring of the tigers and lions that they would have to fight in the Roman arena.

Paul spoke to these condemned men about the divine help sent down for all men through Christ. Some of them had heard this before. In fact, some were Jews who were guilty of trying to hasten Messiah’s coming. But others were hearing of Christ for the first time, and they took with them a name to call on when they felt their lives ebbing out between the jaws of the wild beasts.

Paul also spoke with the sailors and with the slaves who sat chained to the oars. He talked to the officers, the passengers, and even the soldiers. He never ceased preaching the salvation of Jesus Christ.

In the evenings, when Paul and his companions sat down to their common meal, a group of soldiers, sailors, passengers, and resting slaves gathered around them to listen in thoughtful silence to the prayers and hymns the strange man and his friends sent up to the heavens toward their invisible God.

So the ship moved forward at a leisurely pace, hungry for the wind, until it reached the island of Crete. There, at a port called Fair Havens, not far from the city of Lasea, they dropped anchor, and stayed awhile.

The High Festivals of the New Year and the Day of Atonement came along. Paul and the other Jewish believers on the boat observed the fast rigorously. They prayed as a congregation, and transferred themselves in thought to the services in the Temple.

Now the Jews generally considered the Day of Atonement to be the end of the sailing season. Sea travel would be dangerous after that, and no Jew would set foot on a boat if he could possibly avoid it. But the captain decided to proceed with the journey and to turn the ship toward the Adriatic. Hearing this, Paul sent word, warning him that sailing on would endanger everyone on board as well as all the valuable cargo.

Julius, who was eager to end the journey and to be rid of his responsibility, let himself be persuaded by the captain, who considered Fair Havens too small and uncomfortable to pass the winter in. He wanted to at least reach the livelier port of Phoenix, on the other side of the island. He had two hundred and seventy-six people on board to be fed and provided with water, as well as the wild beasts in the hold. He argued that he would run short of supplies in Fair Haven.

So the ship turned westward.

At first a moderate south wind filled the brown sails. But before they were within sight of Phoenix the sky suddenly darkened, and the sea began to heave. The darkness became so dense that it was impossible to see a fathom’s length in any direction. A wind of typhoon strength, the Euroclydon, suddenly burst on them, and threw the ship about as if it were an oyster shell. The sails flapped violently and threatened to tear apart. The sailors clambered up the masts and furled the sails, and everyone helped to pass strong ropes around the ship’s frame as the waves threatened to crack it apart. So the ship drove before the wind, without sails, helmsman, or rowers, rising on the dizzy crests of the waves and plunging into the troughs. At any moment it could smash into a thousand fragments, for they were still close to the shore of Crete. Sky and sea were invisible, and the ship felt like it was rolling over in the vast, dark jaws of a wild sea beast.

After two days had passed this way, the sailors and passengers began staggering from the holds to the deck and throwing a good part of the cargo overboard, precious sacks of grain intended for the citizens of Rome. Then they began to throw even the tackle overboard, followed by the costliest part of the cargo, the delicate pottery, the bronze vases and the phials containing Egyptian balsams. But the storm raged on, and the days passed until everyone lost count, for in effect if was one long black night, and one long, furious struggle with the wild sea beast.

Ashen blue mists swirled around the ship, as if to contain it within a circle of death and despair. The ice-cold waters flew with a metallic ringing against the walls, hammered at the deck, lifted the whole ship, and threw it down again into the depths. The sailors held on tooth and nail to the sides of the ship. Passengers and beasts were hurled from side to side. They rolled around among pails, bundles of rope, sacks, and vessels. The roaring of the imprisoned beasts was heard from below, mixed with the screams of the condemned criminals.

Then there came a time when the ship found herself in the middle of a treacherous and suspended calm, as though the waves, defeated in their purpose, were in sinister consultation. The sea was flat, but it seemed to be sinking to a lower level, the ship with it. Then the prow began to rise, higher and higher, and the ship began to spin. Suddenly the thick mist broke apart, and a vast wall, green like jade, frozen, and suspended, appeared on one side. To the unspeakable horror of the passengers, the ship seemed to be driving straight for the green wall. The prow rose one or two degrees higher, it cut into the wall, but near the summit, and a thousand torrents descended on the deck. The ship’s timbers groaned from end to end, but they held. And scarcely had the first wall been pierced than a second appeared behind it.

Thus it went, day after day. The air in the cabins was heavy with a thick, salty odor. The travelers, unceasingly seasick, were choked with their own vomit, and could not touch food. Their own bodies had become repulsive to them, and they were filled with revulsion at the sight of each other, at the smell of each other’s unwashed and befouled flesh, and the contact with each other’s limbs. They no longer called on their gods, for they were exhausted, too exhausted to care about living. Here in the belly of the wild sea beast, all were in the same boat, captives and captors, slaves and freedmen. And they were united in one frantic desire, to escape from this interminable horror, either through rescue or through death.

The captain lost all authority, and the sailors were on the lookout for land. They moment they saw it, they planned to throw themselves into the water. The soldiers discussed whether or not they should kill the prisoners if the ship broke apart, in order to escape responsibility for them. The prisoners knew this, but they didn’t care. Their only thought was that if death were coming anyway, let it come swiftly.

And in the middle of all this spirit of despair, hatred, and murder, one man alone kept his self-control – the apostle.

He had not been saved from the judgment of the High Priest so that the sea could swallow him. No sir! Besides, he’d been shipwrecked three other times in his life; and three times he’d been saved. Not only would he be saved a fourth time, but he had a vision assuring him that all his fellow passengers would be saved as well, for his sake.

So it was natural, considering the condition of everyone else, that the one who remained calm became the leader. He was set apart. Even in their lethargy they could see it in his bearing, self-assurance and faith. And at the right moment, he went through the ship, saying to one group after another, “Fear not, not one of you will be lost.”

And to Julius and the ship’s captain he said, “If you’d listened to me when I warned you about leaving Crete, this wouldn’t have happened. But don’t worry! I’ve been assured that only the ship will be harmed. No man’s life will be lost.”

The centurion Julius and the captain stared at Paul in a daze.

For fourteen days the ship rode the storm. And shortly before dawn on the fifteenth day, they felt the ship begin to ride more evenly. The swell no longer seemed to come from the lowest depths of the sea, but was rather a surface agitation. The helmsman dropped the lead, and read the marks on the rope by the light of the lantern. Twenty fathoms. So they weren’t far from shore. A little later, they dropped it again. Fifteen fathoms. Now they knew that not only were they in the vicinity of land, but that they were moving toward it. In the darkness, they couldn’t tell if it was a beach or a cliff, or even savage rocks scattered under the surface of the waters. The storm was still heavy enough to dash the ship against a submerged needle of rock, and crack it like an eggshell.

So the captain gave the order to drop anchor and wait until daylight. But the sailors secretly made for the rescue boat, and began to launch it. Paul, who was standing nearby, knew of their plot and found Julius to advise him of what was afoot.

“They can’t be allowed to leave the ship!”

The soldiers rushed over and cut the davit ropes, so that the boat couldn’t be lowered into the sea. They also surrounded the sailors.

At the same moment dawn began to break, a gray light stealing through the same mists that had engulfed them for two whole weeks. But Paul was not dismayed.

“We will surely be saved,” he announced, with infectious faith. “Be of good heart, take some food, and strengthen yourselves for the last effort.”

He himself set the example. He took a piece of bread, made the benediction, and praised God loudly, “Because You have saved us from the rage of the sea.”

And as the people grouped around him, amazed, he assured them again that not a hair of their heads would be touched.

“And now,” he said, “let’s throw anything overboard that’s not tied down.”

The order was obeyed. Sailors and passengers spread through the ship and brought up on deck whatever of cargo, tackle, and vessels there was still aboard. The ship was virtually stripped.

But the mist still hung like a heavy curtain on every side, veiling sky and sea. It dissolved very slowly, and only in part. They could see they weren’t very far from the entrance to a natural basin. The captain commanded that the mainsails be unfurled. Perhaps the winds would drive the ship in the harbor. The anchor ropes were cut and the ship was abandoned to the wind, for it was impossible to steer.

And the wind did begin to carry the groaning vessel toward the harbor entrance. Bursts of water washed over the deck, but the ship seemed to hold her course naturally for a while. But then an underswell turned her prow, and suddenly they felt the keel scraping on a sandy bottom. The stern swung right and left, battered by waves, while the forecastle gyrated in the grip of the sands. Then their greatest fear happened. The ship began to break up in the middle with a fierce cracking of timber.

From the upper deck sailors and passengers began to jump into the shallow water. Word spread rapidly among the soldiers that it was time to kill the prisoners, lest any escape. But what about Paul, the one who was behaving more like an officer than a prisoner? To Julius, it was unthinkable that any harm be done to him. He wasn’t a convert, but he did believe that everything Paul predicted would surely happen.

“Open the cabins!” he ordered. “Let the men out! Let them jump, and those who can’t swim can hold on to planks.”

There was a wild scrambling up from the hold, and down the rope ladders hanging over the ship’s sides. Some carried planks, while others, trusting to their strength as swimmers, went down into the sea. In a few moments the waters were filled with bobbing figures. One by one the men were thrown on the sandy beach on the island they would later learn was Malta.

They all lay there, exhausted, wondering about this man Paul. Was he a good spirit or an evil spirit? Was he a prophet of good things, or a sinister magician, to be dreaded?

Later that morning, when the islanders were attracted to the shipwreck, they too would have reason to wonder. Like all primitive people they were suspicious of strangers, equally ready to kill or to rescue. A fire was lit, so that the sailors and passengers could dry themselves, and Paul was gathering fallen twigs and branches of the cypress trees rooted near the shore. Suddenly a cry rang out, for a viper had attached itself to Paul’s hand. To the superstitious natives, this was a sure sign that the man was a murderer, for it was their belief that when a murderer fled from justice, he was pursued by a snake, which never failed to catch up with him.

“A murderer!”
“An evil spirit!”
“Beware of him!”

Paul remained calm. He watched the snake as it wrapped itself on his arm. With his free hand he seized the viper by the head, and held it away from him. The thick coils tightened, then began to unwind, and Paul quickly threw the reptile into the fire.

This caused a different shout to go up. “No! Not an evil spirit! A good spirit! One sent to us from heaven!”

And the islanders crowded around him, open-mouthed with admiration. They begged him to come to their huts, to heal their sick. Before long word spread to the authorities, not just about the snake but about how he’d rescued a shipload of men. The governor of the island, having a sick father, sent for Paul, and Paul healed the old man.

So for the three months that Paul remained on the island, he was treated more like a deity than a human being.

* * * * *

Winter passed, and a mild, early spring breathed over land and sea. Ships sailed past Malta, and one of them dropped anchor in the port. The two twin figures of Castor and Pollux were carved on its prow, and it was on its way from Thessalonica to Rome. The centurion boarded his prisoners, and this time the passage was smooth. They sailed the short distance from Malta to Sicily, rested for three days in Syracuse, then made their way through the narrow straits between Rhegium and Messina, into the southern end of the Tyrrhenean Sea. A steady wind carried them to Puteoli, the port of Rome, by Naples.

There was a large Jewish community in Puteoli, and the offices and warehouses of the Alexandrian grain dealers were there. There was also a little congregation of Christians, the ones who helped Phebe carry the apostle’s letter to the Romans. Word soon spread that the apostle himself was in their midst, in chains, on his way to be tried before Caesar, and a delegation came down to the boat to greet him. By now Julius was so accustomed to the unexpected where Paul was concerned, that he was not at all surprised at this.

It was necessary to stay in Puteoli for seven days so that both soldiers and prisoners might rest and arrive in Rome in good condition. Julius allowed Paul to go into the city, in the company of a legionary and to spend the seven days among his friends. At the end of the week, Paul promised the believers that he would return to them a free man.

Julius assembled his prisoners, and the long convoy set out on foot for Rome, a distance of three days. On the third day they came to the Via Appia, which ran from Brundisium all the way to the capital. The breath of Rome’s greatness could be felt long before they got there. The road broadened and villas sprang up on either side.

A mile out of Rome’s boundaries they paused at a way station. The prisoners were fed and given water to wash their hands and feet. They spent the night there, and resumed the march in the morning. Paul marched at the head of the procession chained to Julius. Luke and Aristarchus walked behind them, carrying Paul’s baggage. As they walked they saw monuments and mausoleums. Carriages passed in both directions. Finally they came to the Appian Forum, and a small delegation was waiting there for Paul. He recognized Priscilla standing in the middle of it, and she had her arms stretched out to him.

At long last he was in the Eternal City! At the Inn of the Three Taverns the elders of the community, under the leadership of Junius and Andronicus, were waiting for him.

* * * * *

In the early spring a damp mist rose from the swampy fields on either side of the Appian Way, and the mists of the marshland mixed with those that rose from the Tiber.

Through the milky whiteness that lay on the city shone the palaces and columns crowning the hills of Rome. Paul, in the company of his friends, went with the procession of prisoners and soldiers as far as the Porta Capena. He was a curious sight in the midst of his loving and enthusiastic followers. Beards and tongues wagged, eyes shone, and hands gestured. As the parade moved on, Paul’s entourage grew larger as men and women came to join it. A Roman patrician, reclining in the litter his slaves carried down the Appian Way, looked out at the spectacle of a Jewish prisoner accorded this strange reception at the gates of the city of the Caesars. He couldn’t help but think, “It seems that the conquered Jews have come hither to conquer the conquerors!”

And they were not wrong.

END OF PART TWO

34 - For the Hope of Israel

2010-02-13T00:59:00.002-05:00

Convinced that Paul was a Roman citizen by reason of his birth in Cilicia, the Procurator Felix placed him under guard in the courtyard of the palace of justice that Herod had built in Caesarea, and waited for his accusers to arrive from Jerusalem.

He also learned that Paul had gone to Jerusalem at the head of a delegation, bringing a great donation of funds for Jerusalem’s poor. Obviously, then, this man was of high importance in his sect. Possibly he was a man of wealth, or perhaps he had access to the wealth of others. He was a prisoner to be valued then, according to the means he could command for his ransom.

Ananias personally followed a few days later, along with a Sadducean interpreter of the law to prepare the indictment. It was quite unusual for the High Priest to involve himself in such a matter, but it became his personal ambition to see Paul condemned after the case was taken out of his hands.

Felix, a freed slave whose soul would forever remain slavish, was one of the worst rulers ever sent to Judea by Rome. Josephus called him “a man of unrestrained lusts, and extraordinarily cruel.” A non-Jew of the time said, “He was a freed slave of the Emperor Claudius, and carried out his master’s orders with slavish baseness.”

This was the man, loathed by the Jews for his persecutions, whom Ananias was willing to cower before. “Under your power,” said Ananias to Felix, “we have lived in peace, and have received many benefits. Each of us renders thanks to you, mighty Felix.”

Through his lawyer the High Priest requested that the Procurator release into his custody “the man who has introduced dissension and tumult among the Jews of all the world, the man who sought to desecrate the Temple, so that we may judge him according to our laws after Lysias the Tribune snatched him from among us.”

With the assurance that nothing could happen to him before he went to Rome, Paul stood before the Procurator and answered boldly, “In the way of the Nazarenes that they call heresy, and of which they accuse me of being the leader, I serve the God of my fathers, and my faith is everything that is written in the Torah and the prophets. And I cherish the same hope they cherish, that the dead will rise again in the resurrection, the just as well as the unjust. And when I stood before the Sanhedrin I said likewise. I am being persecuted now for the resurrection.”

Now it certainly wasn’t in Felix’ nature to release a prisoner of means without a handsome return. So he told the High Priest that the trial would be put off for some days, until he could obtain further details from the tribune, for this was a Roman citizen, and it would be proper for him to be judicious.

So Paul was turned over to a centurion, with instructions to afford the prisoner as wide a liberty as possible, and to permit his friends to have access to him at all times.

The centurion was answerable for the security of the prisoner with his head. Therefore, even though Paul was free to come and go, within certain limits, the officer had himself chained by his left hand to the right hand of his prisoner, so that he accompanied him everywhere, to his couch and to his meals. If he thought that his prisoner was a flight risk, the centurion was free to chain him to the wall.

When Paul saw that he would be chained to the guard, he resolved at once to win the man over, and perhaps even convert him to the faith.

Lying in his prison that night, side by side with his keeper, Paul suddenly started, tugged at his chain, and woke up his companion.

“What is it?” asked the centurion.

“I desire to pray to my God.”

“Now, in the middle of the night?” asked the astonished centurion. “Augustus’ temple is closed, and we have no images of gods here in the prison to kneel before.”

“The temple of my God is never closed,” answered Paul. “He doesn’t live in a house made by human hands. He lives in my heart. We don’t see him with the eyes of flesh, but we see and feel Him at all times in our hearts. He alone guides our actions.”

“Ah, yes, the invisible Jewish God.”

“No, sir, he is not only the Jewish God. He is your God, and my God, and the God of all men. For we all come from Him and we are all created in His image.”

“How can that be when I’ve never brought him an offering?”

“Before you knew Him, He had already chosen you. He chose you and won you by His love for you.”

“What love can He have for me, a stranger who doesn’t know him, and has never brought him an offering?”

“No man is a stranger to my God. And God doesn’t give His love in exchange for offerings. God gives His love freely because we are His children.”

And Paul, sitting in the darkness, chained to his keeper, told him of Jesus Christ, of his death, which he took on himself of his own free will so that all men, including this “stranger,” might be redeemed from sin, and brought to eternal life in God’s Kingdom.

The centurion had heard about this Jesus and knew people, Greeks as well as Jews, who believed in “the Son of God.” But Paul explained it in a way that went straight to the Roman’s heart. They talked through the night, and before dawn, Paul’s keeper accepted this faith that promised rest for his soul.

Prison walls didn’t keep Paul from continuing his work. The delegates from the provinces came to Caesarea to comfort him, although in reality, it was he who strengthened them. He asked them to return to their native cities and make the foundations of the faith firmer. He did keep Luke with him, who was now completely absorbed in his writing of the record, and of the account of “things as they happened in truth.” Aristarchus of Thessalonica also insisted on staying to minister to the apostle.

There are certain people who have no light of their own, but who can be flooded with light from without. Aristarchus was such a man. From the moment he met Paul, he was filled with a sacred awe for the apostle’s work, and was willing to offer himself up in unreflecting sacrifice to the teacher. Aristarchus was a man of subtle intuitions, sensitive to Paul’s unspoken needs. He would stand at the prison gates all day begging the soldiers to let him in until they relented. He became not only Paul’s servant, but also his messenger to the believers in Caesarea. Paul often found himself deriving new strength from the presence of this simple man whose shining eyes reflected the light of an unquenchable faith. It was as if his work shone more steadily in the eyes of his servant than in his own heart, making a constant light in the cell.

Among the Jews of Caesarea the Christians were especially numerous, and there was a great spirit of love and devotion among them. They did all they could to lighten the burden of Paul’s imprisonment. Phillip’s daughters prepared kosher meals that Aristarchus brought to him. Paul’s friends visited, as much as Felix allowed. They came not only to serve him, but to ask his counsel on the affairs of the congregation. From his place in prison, Paul sent messengers out to various communities, in response to their questions. This way he spread the faith in prison just as he had in freedom.

The centurion he won over even let him leave the prison occasionally, in the company of a guard, to attend the common meals at Phillip’s house. But Paul took advantage of this privilege sparingly, so as not to imperil the centurion’s life.

Felix’s Jewish wife Drusilla had been brought up strictly in the faith, for her mother was under the influence of Rabban Gamaliel, who often visited the palace of her father, King Agrippa the First. Her father had betrothed her to an obscure Asian prince, whose faith she’d also accepted. But Felix had stolen her heart, and now she was living with this Gentile, when she was really the wife of another. Her conscience weighed on her heavily, and the touch of Hasmonean blood in her veins, of which she was inordinately proud, gave her mind no rest.

Felix often had Paul brought to his own palace, the luxurious building of white marble Herod had constructed. Drusilla loved to hear the apostle speak of the hope of her people and of the dream that had become reality.

Yet whenever the apostle confronted her, she felt his glance pierce the secret place of her heart, uncovering her regret and shame. And as if to sting deeper, Paul spoke of the righteousness, purity, and modesty that faith in Christ imposed on all people, all things she had transgressed against. How much righteousness was there in her husband’s conduct of state affairs? How much purity and modesty was there in their common life?

As she listened to the apostle, her face became pale, and her eyes fell. Her heart hammered within her. The apostle sat before her like a prophet revealing her hidden thoughts. She was seized with dread when Paul spoke of the last day, when Christ himself would ascend the throne of judgment, and every soul would be called to account.

And the dread in Drusilla’s heart touched an answering chord in the heart of her husband. But it wasn’t Christ that Felix was thinking about. He dreaded the day when he’d be called to account for his misdeeds before Caesar in Rome.

Sometimes at night, Drusilla would dream about Judgment Day and wake up screaming. Her husband trembled, too, thinking of the complaints that poured into Rome from the Jews, Samaritans, and other people. But the guilt feeling would only cause him to stop in the middle of a conversation with Paul without allowing him to finish.

“I have no more time now,” he would say, a bit hastily. “Perhaps another day.”

In spite of Felix’s conscience, or perhaps because of it, he would have turned Paul over to the High Priest a long time ago were it not for the thought of possibly squeezing a bag of gold from the apostle. He was tired of the man’s presence, but he always heard the ringing of gold dinars behind the reproachful words. So days and months went by until two years had passed.

Then Felix was indeed called to Rome to give an account of his stewardship.

Festus, who was a more typical representative of Roman legalism, replaced him. For Festus only the law existed. No feelings, no opinions of his own, ever intruded on his literal understanding of the law. His body was as inflexible as his spirit, a bronze image, polished and adorned in a silver breastplate and a row of glass medals.

Festus’ first act as procurator was to visit Jerusalem, the capital, and to receive a deputation of representatives from the Jews, headed by the High Priest. Among other things, the High Priest presented a petition demanding that Paul be finally released to him for judgment according to Jewish law. During the two years of Paul’s confinement the High Priest’s servants had accumulated statements from several hundred witnesses about his illegal activities. But Festus, a true Roman official, would not deliver up a man, especially a Roman citizen, without having heard both sides of the story. So he told the High Priest to come to Caesarea, where he would hear both the accusers and the accused.

In Caesarea, Festus called for an open trial. He took his place on the judgment seat, and had Paul brought in. The representatives of the High Priest presented many witnesses to make their charge.

Paul simply answered, “I have transgressed neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the Temple, nor against Caesar.”

Festus’ duty as Rome’s representative was to follow the law of the land. This included assisting the High Priest in carrying out the judgment of the Jewish court, but it was the latter’s business to judge cases of transgression against the Jewish faith. Since it was evident that this was a strictly Jewish affair, Festus really only had one option.

He addressed Paul, “Will you go to Jerusalem and be judged there before me?”

Paul was silent for a while. A thousand thoughts flashed through his mind. Christ had assured him that nothing could happen to him in Jerusalem before he went to Rome. The Pharisees saved him at the first trial and would try to save him again at the second. And he worried about the possible riots that could ensue if he went to Jerusalem, was found guilty, and escaped the ultimate punishment.

So Paul decided to avoid the Jewish court and deliver himself into the hands of Rome. True, he’d always been reluctant to use his Roman citizenship, and had even reproved the Corinthians for submitting their disputes to other than Christian courts. But in this case he decided that he would rather put his head into the lion’s mouth with no assurance from Christ as to what would ultimately happen to him in Rome.

So he answered clearly, “I have done no wrong to the Jews. If I have done anything worthy of death I am ready to die. I appeal to Caesar!”

There was silence in the judgment hall. The prisoner had decided his own fate. Festus and his legal expert whispered together. A citizen of Rome had called on Caesar’s name, and no one could try him now except Caesar himself.

Festus answered, “You have appealed to Caesar, to Caesar you will go.”

* * * * *

To a fanfare of trumpets, a parade of legionaries, and a floating sea of banners, King Agrippa, of Galilee, Perea, Caesarea Philippi and other provinces, approaches the audience chamber of the palace. Dressed in the white silver-threaded robe of royalty, his tiara on his head, he is accompanied by his sister Bernice and a great suite of attendants.

Bernice is no less famous than her brother. Formerly Queen of Chalcis, and still Queen of Cilicia, she is famous for both her beauty and her wealth. Her dazzling white skin shines through the thin veils of black that she wears because of her Nazarite vows. Poets in Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Rome have sung of her flaming, golden hair that cascades over her veils. Her throat is straight and slender like a column of alabaster, and she walks with swaying, rhythmic steps that bring out the suppleness of her young body. She approaches the judgment throne on her brother’s arm between two lines of legionaries and officials, and takes her place by the side of the judge. It’s as if a goddess has come down from an Athenian temple to mingle with men of flesh and blood.

The princess is in the flower of her womanhood, being barely thirty years old. She’s already buried two husbands, one of whom was her uncle, King Herod of Chalcis. It’s also been rumored that there is more than just natural affection between this brother and sister. It’s said that the King gave her in marriage to King Palema of Cilicia to silence these rumors. It seems that in order to win her, the unhappy Gentile had himself circumcised, but he’d barely carried out the operation when Bernice left him and returned to her brother, reckless of the opportunity this would give for the repetition and strengthening of the slanderous rumors concerning her relationship with her brother.

Having been brought up in the highest Roman society and endowed with a deep understanding of beauty in literature and art, Bernice couldn’t trade her cultured brother’s company even for the crown of the rich province of Cilicia. She lived in her brother’s palace and shared his royal functions. So it was now that she came with Agrippa to the palace in Caesarea.

The King was on Paul’s side even before he spoke a word. Just the fact that the High Priest was the accuser made Paul innocent in his eyes. There was a bitter struggle between King and Priest, who were jealous of each other’s powers. It was for this reason that Agrippa expressed the wish to hear Paul in person after learning of the case.

This was an opportunity Paul had long dreamed of, for he had no less desire to speak to the mighty than he had to speak to the poor and enslaved. As an outsider to the hatred that Roman oppression inspired in the Jews of Palestine, he never had a problem preaching the gospel to officials or military men in the cities of the Diaspora. But it wasn’t even a question here of trying to win a Gentile. This was Agrippa the Jew he was about to talk to, and in the language of the Jews, the language of promise and hope, of the resurrection, Christ, the Torah, and the prophets.

“And especially because you are expert in the problems and customs of the Jews, I ask for your patient hearing.”

Then Paul began the story of his life, from its first days in Jerusalem. He told of his persecution of Christians in Jerusalem, how he went to Damascus for the same purpose, and how he was intercepted by the vision. He told of the voice that asked him in Hebrew, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Then followed the story of his conversion, how he who had been a persecutor became an advocate of the hope of Israel.

“And here I stand until this day, and testify before great and small, and I say nothing but what was said by Moses and the prophets, that Christ would suffer and be the first to rise from the dead, and he would be a light to Israel and to the Gentiles.”

A savior of Israel who should be a light to Jew and Gentile? Who ever heard of such a thing? This was too much for Festus and, forgetting his dignity, he burst into a snort of laughter and cried, “Paul! You are mad! Much learning has made you mad.”

“No, most noble Festus, I am not mad. . . . The king knows of what I speak. . . . King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you believe.”

Agrippa was listening attentively. He was much too much the Roman aristocrat to ever entertain any hopes for the independence of his people, and his Herodian heritage placed him on too high a level to sympathize with the nationalist longings of the Jews. The best he could do was to occasionally risk the displeasure of Caesar by pleading their cause against the decree of some high Roman official. Encouragement of the national dream of independence would be outright rebellion. However, he was not indifferent to those Messianic hopes and traditions Paul now touched on. Something awakened in him, and he had to call on his courtly training to sound as if he were on Festus’ side rather than Paul’s so as not to betray his emotions in his answer.

And so with a good natured smile, he spoke half kindly and half ironically, “Paul, you almost persuade me to become a Christian.”

Bernice, the daughter of a pious mother, was even more deeply touched by Paul’s words than Agrippa. She often took some Nazarite vow or other in remorse that followed a sin, to diminish the luxuriousness of her life. She was sometimes seen entering the Temple to bring an offering. She loved her people more than her brother, and she had a deeper insight into its spiritual being and its moral values. She often talked of these things with her learned protégés. Paul’s words made her uncomfortable now. Her lovely blue eyes were flooded with a strange light, and her breath came and went restlessly.

Paul could see immediately the effect he produced on the royal pair. He answered Agrippa’s words in a similar tone, “I would to God that not only you, but all who hear me, might be even as I am. Except for these chains.” And he raised his bound hands.

A little later the royal pair stood with Festus in a corner of the hall, consulting as to what they could do for the prisoner. Agrippa would have gladly taken Paul under his protection and rescued him from the High Priest. What a blow that would’ve been for the House of Annas!

“The man has done nothing whatsoever that calls for death or even chains,” he said with a sigh. “He should even now be set free, if he hadn’t appealed to Caesar.”

But the appeal to Caesar had been made, and there was nothing that could be done. Paul would be sent to the place he desired to go – to Rome!

33 - Song of Luke

2010-02-12T10:44:00.001-05:00

While Paul was confined in the fortress, the Gentiles he’d brought with him from the provinces wandered about the city like lost souls. Except for Luke, that is. Luke had come to Jerusalem with a definite purpose in mind, and he spent his time gathering and writing down everything he could learn from first-hand witnesses about the life, deeds, and sayings of Christ while he was on earth. He went about this business in his quiet, Gentile way, spending much time with the Christian group of James, who was still considered untouchable when it came to persecution of the saints.

Luke met with Matthew and wrote down all the material he’d gathered, either in notes or in memory. Matthew had exercised great care in setting down all the doctrines and parables he had heard from Christ.

Luke was also fortunate enough to come across a “family letter,” or genealogical table, which had been preserved and continued in the family of Christ for many generations. These “family letters” were the most precious possessions among Jews; more important even than economic or social standing when it came to arranging marriages. Christ’s family records went back to King David, and David’s lineage was universally known to go back through Boaz and Ruth to Judah and Jacob, the patriarch. Luke and Matthew both set down Christ’s ancestry, but Luke went further. He wanted to collect as many details as possible about the circumstances of Christ’s birth.

Matthew’s record of Christ’s birth was based on reports already in wide circulation among those who’d been close to him. These reports bore the characteristics common to the beginning of all great prophets, like Moses and Samuel, that the great one had always been dedicated to God “from his mother’s womb,” for example. But Matthew, like John Mark, was less concerned with these details than with Christ’s words and deeds. Following Jewish custom, they emphasized their teacher’s doctrines and acts, writing down his parables with the utmost accuracy.

Luke the Greek brought the longing for beauty he’d learned from his worship of the gods to his faith in Christ. What he longed for was the personal touch. He wanted to know more about the extraordinary woman to whom the Holy Spirit had appeared, announcing that she would bear a son in a supernatural fashion such as no other woman had ever experienced. Luke longed to penetrate the mystery of his creation. The information he got from Matthew was inadequate to meet that need.

Christ’s mother was dead, but fortunately her sister Susannah was still alive and living in the great house of Barnabas’ sister Mary. She was very old, and white as a dove, her body no longer seeming to be of flesh, but more like the delicate fiber of a plant, transparent and spiritual. She was confined to a couch swathed in white linen, waiting for the fulfillment of her heart’s desire, to be called to the lord’s side in heaven, and to join her own who were now with him. The women of the house tended her in awe, and listened closely to her stories, many of which had to do with her sister and the birth of Christ. Matthew had written down some of it, but not all, for he considered many details as having no importance. Not so with Luke.

So the Greek grammarian sat at the foot of Susannah’s couch, his soul filled with the longing for the beauty of the gods he’d abandoned, and put down every word she spoke on a scroll of papyrus. Susannah spoke, or rather whispered, in Aramaic. An interpreter translated into Greek, and Luke wrote diligently.

“I remember it all clearly, as if it were yesterday. We lived together, the whole family, in a single courtyard. My sister Mary was still at home. She helped in the vegetable garden and with the flock. She was already engaged to Joseph, the carpenter. And on that day my husband was working in his vineyard, and my mother was at the brook, washing our clothes. It was noon, and the sun was bright and hot. It was very quiet. I was outside when I saw my sister coming out of the house. Her face was white and she came toward me like a frightened deer, and fell down, trembling. I asked her what was wrong. And she answered that a wondrous thing had happened to her.

“‘I sat in the house at the loom,’ she said, ‘weaving my bridal dress. There was no sound except the loom, and I was thinking that if my first child were a son, I would dedicate him to the Lord, like Hannah. Suddenly I saw an angel standing in front of me. He said to me, “Greetings, you who are full of grace, the Lord is with you. You are blessed among women.” I was so afraid I said nothing. Then he said something to me that I can’t tell any living person.’

“Well later, after the thing happened, we found out what the angel had told her, that she would conceive in her virginity and bear a son, and that the Lord would give him the throne of David.

“Then right around the time the child would be born, Joseph had to report to Bethlehem, his family’s home, for the census decreed by the government. They told me about it later. It was a bright night, and a dusting of snow had fallen. My sister and her husband were in the street, for there was no room for them in the inns, which were filled with strangers from all cities who were all there for the same reason.

“My sister began to feel her first pains that night, so her husband ran out and found a group of shepherds not far from the town, and they had him bring her and put her in a stall where they kept the newborn lambs. That was where she had her first child. She wrapped him snuggly in strips of cloth, and laid him in a trough, and her husband helped her. Everyone had abandoned them, but God helped them. He sent an angel, who stood before them and said, ‘Fear not, for I bring you news of joy to all people.’ And soon it was like the heavens opened above the stable where my sister lay with her little one, and legions of angels came down from heaven. There was great singing for the child, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill to men.”

At the foot of the couch, Luke was caught up in the vision of the opened heavens. He pictured a golden stream of angels pouring earthward. They held harps and stood in a circle around the newborn child. And the words of the old woman rang in his ears, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and goodwill to men.”

Luke could write no more. He sat motionless, his writing implement at his feet, and his eyes staring into the distance. Something was happening in his soul. Something was dying and something was being born. He heard the words of Paul ringing in his ears, “Christ has become the inheritor of the gods. The myth of Hellas is dead, and the myth of the lord has begun.”

32 - Pharisee and Son of A Pharisee

2010-02-10T11:51:00.003-05:00

Jerusalem soaked up the spirit of revolt like a sponge soaks up water. Tyrants both foreign and domestic drove the people into a state of desperation. One result was the appearance of assassins in the Temple courts who carried daggers under their cloaks. Later they would be called “Sicarii,” and they had no problem slipping up to a victim and assassinating him right in the middle of a crowd. Since the Temple priests considered it an unspeakable horror to find any kind of stain on the marble floors, especially blood, they were outraged whenever a dead victim was found after the crowds had dwindled.

There was plenty of blame to go around for the conditions that produced this form of revolution. Between the foreign tyrants, the Roman Procurators, and the Jewish tyrants, the Herodian dynasty, and the bought-and-sold High Priesthood, the masses were squeezed like olives between the stones of a mill. Taxes, levies, and decrees all combined to starve the body and humiliate the spirit of the Jews. Only the last, desperate, and impossible hope of revolution was left to the people.

Many “seers” and “Messiahs” circulated among the masses, provoking them to futile, disorganized outbursts of violence. And as these increased, so did the brutality of the repressive measures taken against them. In the attempt to break the Jewish spirit, the legionaries were ordered to strike right and left without distinction to age or sex.

But instead of reducing the people to terrified apathy, these retaliatory measures only whipped them into more frantic determination.

To make matters worse, while the masses were sinking to a level of indescribable poverty, individuals of the High Priesthood were accumulating enormous fortunes as tax farmers and speculators. And this was on top of their normal income from the tithes, which they increased beyond any measure contemplated by the Mosaic Law. The people were desperate for political independence, but whenever reasonable people tried to talk about the cruel realities of the situation, they were drowned out by the wild cries of the Zealots. Some of the latter were honest patriots who were incensed and unbalanced, and they were used as cover by assassins whose murderous instincts found expression in the call to rebellion against Rome and the Herodian dynasty, regardless of what the practical consequences might be.

In those days the High Priest was a certain Ananias, of the hated house of Annas. By intrigue, bribery and collusion with the Procurator Felix, a man who didn’t hesitate to use the Sicarii for his own purposes, Ananias remained in office longer than any of his predecessors. But the High Priesthood had fallen into an abyss of corruption long before him. The “Sons of Annas” had changed the office from the pride and glory of its people to its greatest shame, and Ananias made himself one of the richest men in the country. The priesthood had sunk so low that even the High Priests themselves no longer called on the “Holy One of Israel” by that title. Instead of the simple word “God” they used an indirect allusion, “Lord.”

Only the Pharisees understood the condition of the country and the profound danger that confronted it. But they had no power. The masses were under the influence of the Zealots, and beyond the rabbis’ control. Gamaliel was dead, and the only spiritual leader among the Pharisees who enjoyed some measure of respect from the common people was Rabbi John. He saw more clearly than anyone else the catastrophe that was drawing close, and he tried to shift the spiritual center of gravity from the Temple to the prophets, from priestly regulation to moral principles of grace and love. Not bound to physical things that could be destroyed by the enemy, these were principles and values the people could take with them into exile when the worst came. He taught groups of young scholars in the tradition of Hillel, which concentrated the meaning of the Jewish law in the one ancient phrase, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In the midst of all of these things was a deep and passionate yearning for God. The humiliated soul of the people turned to the eternal Source, and it was like they had the mood of Job’s faithfulness in disaster. Prophets arose who said that the days of the Temple were numbered. In unearthly language they warned the people that the fiery sword that God held over the head of Jacob was about to descend.

So what was there left to do for the children of Israel but use their last energies to fasten ever more tightly to the God who had so often saved His people of old? A religious fervor took hold of Jerusalem and Judea, and a renewed piety and faithfulness to the traditions and ancient rituals. In those days they were ready to suffer death for even the minutest details of the religion. All the national passions and moral values, the heritage of the fathers passed down across countless generations, mixed in a fierce jealousy of faithfulness.

And this fervor was not confined to Palestine. It spread like a tide across the entire Diaspora, and the number of pilgrims from foreign lands grew to immense proportions. It was as though they feared that if they didn’t go to the Temple now, they would never have the opportunity again. And when they came, they brought the love and promise of the Jews from all over the world to swell the flood of longing, hope, and revolt in the Holy City. They also brought deep bitterness against any attempt to uproot the last of their hopes. And they directed this rage at the one who was preaching that the law and tradition of Moses had been abrogated.

No wonder the Jews of Asia were filled with hatred of him who openly preached this destructive doctrine in the synagogues.

Ananias the silversmith came to Jerusalem with some other Ephesians to redeem his first-born son for five silver shekels. Shortly after arriving they saw Trophimus in the Court of the Gentiles standing with a group of Gentile Christians gazing in awe at the gates of Corinthian bronze. Ananias recognized him as one of the Gentiles Paul had persuaded that even though they were uncircumcised, they were true sons of Israel.

A few moments later the Ephesians saw a group of Nazarites coming out of the ritual chamber. Wait a minute. Who is that one, the third in line, walking with his head bowed? Isn’t that Paul?

“Hey! That’s Paul over there, the one who provokes the Gentiles against the Jews, and tells Jews they don’t have to be faithful to the Law of Moses.”

“I don’t believe this. He’s taken Gentiles into the Temple. I just saw Trophimus. He says he and his like are the true sons of Israel!”

“I’m from Corinth, and the Gentiles there also claim to be the true sons of Israel. They tell us we’re sons of Ishmael.”

“That’s the work of Paul, all right.”
“And he dares to show himself in the court of God’s House!”
“With Nazarites, no less?”
“Men of Israel, help! This is the man who preaches against our people everywhere!”

There were many other Jews there from Macedonia, Galatia, and Achaia who had accounts of their own to settle with Paul because of the dissensions he’d introduced into their local synagogues. They heard Ananias shouting and gathered around him.

“He brought uncircumcised men into the Temple! He’s desecrated the Holy Place!”

Other men came running from other parts of the court because of the shouting, not knowing what was going on.

“Gentiles have desecrated the Temple!”
“Who? Where?”
“They brought bones of the dead into the court!”
“Who? Samaritans?”
“No! A Jew! One named Paul!”
“He disguised some Gentiles as Nazarites and took them into the chamber!”
“Death! Kill him!”

And in an instant Paul was lifted up and was being carried out of the court. The bronze gates behind him clashed closed. Heads, beards, glaring eyes, clenched fists poured along with the procession. Wild voices were raised.

“To the stoning field!”

Like a flicker of lightning passing through his mind, Paul thinks of Stephen being carried away in exactly the same manner, and with the same wild cries. He sees the angel sunk half way in the heap of stones. He’s being carried toward the same pit. Is this a sign from heaven? In the same instant he thinks of the saying of Hillel, “Because you drowned another, you too will be drowned.”

But what about his mission to Rome?

Meanwhile, on the balcony of the Antonia fortress, a Roman sentinel sees the riot. He raps his sword on his bronze shield. Outside the court, not far from the gates, a guard of Roman legionaries is stationed under the command of a centurion. The sound of the sword on the shield is relayed from sentinel to sentinel until it reaches the tribune Claudius Lysias, who is in charge of maintaining order on this day.

A command is passed to the centurion outside the court. Instantly the guard is in motion. It passes into the court and confronts the mob carrying Paul to the stoning field. Paul is seized, and the chains he’d seen in the vision are placed on his hands.

The legionaries lift Paul up onto the shields, out of reach of the howling mob, and carry him in the direction of the Antonia fortress.

But Paul’s mind is clear. These people who are ready to tear him limb from limb are still his people, and they need salvation. So on the steps of the Antonia fortress Paul speaks to the tribune – in Greek!

“May I have a word with you?”

The tribune stares at him, amazed. He had taken this wretched, wounded Jew to be a rebellious barbarian, one of the rabble, and here he is speaking to him in Greek!

The tribune asks, “Aren’t you that Egyptian who led a band of rebels in the wilderness recently?”

“No! I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of a famous city!”

In his bewilderment, the tribune gives Paul permission to speak to the Jews, and Paul, whose tongue has saved him in many a perilous situation, lifts his hands to the raging mob. Paul is one of those people who can arrest a crowd with a gesture and a look. The crowd quiets down, and Paul addresses them in Hebrew.

“My brothers!”

“Hebrew! He speaks our language! Shh!”
“Let’s hear what he has to say!”

“I’m a Jewish man,” cries Paul, “born in Tarsus. But I was brought up in this city, and I sat at the feet of Gamaliel.”

The words are like magic, for the name of Gamaliel is greatly respected.

“I am learned in the Torah, the law of our ancestors.”

In the utter silence Paul teaches the mob at length as though they are a class at the feet of a rabbi. He tells them of his life and how he had persecuted the Christians. He tells them of his vision on the road to Damascus. But as he reaches this part of the story, the crowd senses trouble and becomes restless.

Then they hear Paul say, “Messiah declared to me, ‘Go, for I will send you to the Gentiles,” and the tumult breaks out again.

“It’s a lie!” they scream. Messiah never told you to go to the Gentiles!”
“Death! Stop his mouth with sand!”

Some in the front row throw off their upper garments, just like the witnesses who’d stoned Stephen.

The tribune thinks, “If the people hate him so, he must be a robber.”

He orders his men to carry Paul into the fortress. Two heavy blocks are fastened to his chains. They are stained with blood, and human hair clings to the clots. They are the blocks to which criminals are bound for execution. Paul’s hands are thrust through the rings of the blocks. Two soldiers stand over him, their heavy whips soaked in vinegar. His clothes are torn off him. And for the first time Paul appeals to his rights as a Roman citizen.

“Do you dare scourge a Roman citizen without a trial?” he cries.

The tribune stares back stupefied, and asks, “A Roman citizen? I paid a great sum for my citizenship.”

“I was born a Roman citizen,” answers Paul.

“Untie him!” says the tribune.

And to Paul, “If this is so, you shall be examined by your own Sanhedrin, that they may discover what the people have against you.”

And he orders that Paul be turned over to the Sanhedrin for examination.

* * * * *

The Sanhedrin no longer sat in the great Chamber of Hewn Stones in the Temple. It was now in a room in one of the “shops” of the Sons of Annas on the Mount of Olives. Indeed, many of the old institutions had disappeared by this time.

The struggle between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, between the rabbis and the High Priesthood, had reached an indescribable degree of bitterness. There was a continuous dispute between the two groups over the minutest details of the Temple ceremonies. But the priests controlled the Temple service itself, and they did everything they could think of to flout and discredit the Pharisaic tradition. Since the Pharisees were entitled to representation on the Sanhedrin, the sessions were transferred to the shops of Annas to try to discourage them from attending.

When Paul appeared before the Sanhedrin, Ananias came to preside in person even though he normally had a lower official represent him.

As Paul looked around the chamber, he saw an assembly predominated by priests and Sadducees. But the Pharisees were still represented, and some of them he knew well. They’d been fellow students of his under Rabban Gamaliel. They sat clustered around their leader, the gray Rabbi John. A flood of memories rose in Paul’s heart and for a moment it seemed as if he was still one of them, a disciple of Gamaliel. Therefore when he was called on to open his defense, he didn’t use the prescribed formula, “My lord the High Priest,” but addressed himself instead to his “companions”, the Pharisees.

“Men and brothers!” he said, “With a pure heart I have walked before God.”

The heavy, sagging face of the High Priest flushed, and his eyes flamed. He glanced at the guards, and one of them came forward and struck Paul across the mouth.

Paul’s half-closed eye glared at the High Priest, and he said, “God will strike you, you painted wall! You sit in judgment over me according to the law, and you have your servants strike me contrary to the law.”

Indeed, this man could accurately be called “a painted wall.” He had no distinguished bearing or earnest appearance like those who’d gone before him. This was a blown-up man of flesh. Ananias was widely known as a heavy eater and drinker, a type far more common among the Romans than the Jews. There were many stories about his appetites, and he looked the part. His belly was bloated, his cheeks hung down, and his eyes were encased in flesh. His servants did their best to cover his repulsive body with clothes that would hide its shapelessness, such as costly silks and fine linens of Sidon. His Syrian hairdresser worked hard to impart some kind of seemliness to his beard and features. But it was in vain. The oil applied to his skin wouldn’t sink in, but glistened on the surface. So he sat there, “a painted wall.”

But Paul’s savage outburst shocked his one-time companions, and they cried out, “You insult the High Priest of God?”

Paul immediately regretted his outburst. He’d gone too far, even under provocation. Here he stood as a stern disciple and observer of the law, and he had allowed himself to be provoked into breaking the law. For no matter who occupied the throne of the Priesthood, he was still “the Elder of Israel,” the representative of the unbroken line of Aaron, called to speak for this people in the Holy of Holies.

Therefore he controlled himself, made obeisance, and gave the only excuse he could, “I did not know, brothers, that this was the High Priest. Indeed it is written, ‘You shall not curse an elder of the people.’”

The assembly quieted down. And having thus appeased the Pharisees, Paul turned to them a third time, “Men and brothers, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, and I am accused of preaching the hope of the resurrection.”

When the Sadducees heard the word “resurrection” they jumped as if Paul had repeated his insult to the High Priest.

“Now we hear it from his own mouth,” screamed one of them. “The man goes around preaching about resurrection, angels and spirits, and we let our people listen to him.”

But a Pharisee cried in response, “We find no evil in this man. If a spirit or an angel has talked to him, we won’t fight against God.”

Then the High Priest who had brought the supreme office in Israel to the lowest level of contempt said in a loud voice, “If these are your words, then you are all deniers of the faith and blasphemers in Israel. You believe in alien gods.”

Now old John rose to his feet, and the assembly fell into silence.

“My lord High Priest,” he began, calmly. “The doctrine of the resurrection is not alien. For it is written, ‘The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ And it is also written, ‘The dead shall not praise God.’ Thus it follows that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead. And therefore we see no evil in what this man has done. With the permission of the High Priest, let this man be set free, without any accusation, and let us not deliver a just man into the hands of the Gentiles.”

Once more tumult broke out in the assembly. The High Priest saw that he was about to be robbed of his prey. He turned to the Sadducee scribes in the room to get Scriptural quotes with which he could answer the arguments of Rabbi John with equal authority, but his hirelings had nothing to say. Voices on both sides grew louder, and the session became chaotic.

The tribune, standing at the head of a detachment of legionaries outside the room, heard the tumult. Being responsible with his own life for that of a Roman citizen, he issued orders for his men to break in. Immediately Paul was seized and led back to the Antonia fortress.

So the incident came to a close.

But the High Priest wouldn’t let it rest there. The Pharisees had stopped him for the moment, but there were other ways of achieving his purpose. He knew there were plenty of people whose hearts were aflame with hatred for Paul. And if necessary, well, he’d used the Sicarii before. He certainly wasn’t above using them again.

One night Paul had a vision while in the Antonia fortress. In the vision Christ declared to him, “Inasmuch as you have witnessed for me in Jerusalem, you shall also witness for me in Rome.”

A few days after his failure at the trial, the High Priest instigated a conspiracy against Paul. But in order to carry it out, it would be necessary to have Paul brought out from the fortress where he was held for safekeeping. Therefore the High Priest asked the authorities for a second trial, stating that he wasn’t satisfied with the first investigation. Once Paul was being led through the streets, it was his hope that a “people’s judgment” would be executed on him, as it had once been executed, with the help of Paul himself, against Stephen. If not, the Sicarii waited in the background.

The conspiracy, having been brought about unskillfully and in haste, was overheard by Paul’s nephew, his sister’s son, and he brought word of it to his uncle in the fortress. Paul sent him to tell it to the tribune, who was weary of the whole affair. Unwilling to bear the responsibility any longer, he decided to send Paul away. He ordered a detachment of two hundred foot soldiers, accompanied by horsemen and other auxiliary troops, to transfer Paul to the Procurator of Judea, Felix, who was in Caesarea, and to deliver his official report on the incident.

31 - Granite Between Millstones

2010-02-09T00:22:00.002-05:00

Once again Israel assembled in the House of God from cities all over the Diaspora, from Galatia, Macedonia, Asia, and Achaia, as well as Babylon, Damascus, and all the cities of Palestine. The streets of Jerusalem were crowded with men and women, old and young. The Palestinian Jews carried their baskets of vegetables, fruit, and grain, for this was the eve of Pentecost, when Israel brought their first fruits of garden, field, and vineyard to the Temple of the Lord.

On this particular Pentecost, another offering was brought to the Jews, delivered to the upper chamber in the wall of David, where Christ had eaten his last meal. It was an offering from the Gentiles, to testify to their faith in Christ.

Paul introduced the Gentile messengers to the saints of Jerusalem.

James came forward to greet them with outstretched arms. His mantle, though of poor material, was white. His face was pale, his beard silvery, and his hair long and snow white. For all the poverty of his clothing, his bearing was as though he were robed in the clothing of the High Priest.

He greeted the Gentiles, “Blessed be you who come in the name of the Lord.”

Peter was not in Jerusalem at the time, so John, one of the lord’s closest disciples, occupied the seat next to James. He looked old, his skin furrowed by the plow of time, his body frail, almost transparent. His face was wrinkled from brow to chin, and a sad longing radiated from him, for he longed to be where his brother was, with Messiah.

Matthew, the old tax collector, was there along with others, whose names rang mystically in the ears of these believers from afar, like Jude the lord’s brother, and Simon the zealot. And there were those younger and unknown, but near to the disciples, and already leaders in the congregation.

Paul introduced Sosipater and the other seven delegates, who each bowed low before the elders and placed bags of coins at their feet, coins that the Gentile believers, as well as Jewish ones, had donated for the poor saints of Jerusalem. Some of these copper coins and silver drachmas represented the sacrifice of some slave, the bread he had taken from his own mouth, an offering to a strange people who had once been hated and despised, but had now become part of Christ.

James lifted his hands to heaven and praised God for the miracle worked among the Gentiles. Matthew translated the prayer from Aramaic to Greek, but it was hardly necessary, for the words passed from heart to heart across the language barrier.

Afterwards James led the delegation down into the courtyard, to meet the simple brethren in the faith. The entire area in front of the David wall was covered with tents and booths, ramshackle structures of branches, rags, and leaves. The poor and the sick were in these improvised shelters, skeleton-like men and women, half-naked, and surrounded by skeleton like children. The dregs of Jerusalem’s misery were gathered in the courtyard, for it was known that the Jerusalem believers were distributing bread and figs for the starving. Perhaps even clothing for the naked would be available.

There were professional beggars and idlers mixed in with the truly needy, for James had no requirement that anyone who wouldn’t work shouldn’t eat like Paul did. If someone asked for food, he asked no questions. The men of the congregation brought the provisions and the women cooked. The poor sat at table and partook of the common meals.

No one picked and chose who they sat next to, so as often as not they might be sitting next to someone who had an infectious disease. No one was so low, unhappy, or broken that James would think of discriminating against him. All dipped their hands in the common dish, and no one shrank from contact with another.

The Gentile visitors were quite uneasy about this. Everything they’d ever learned screamed against it. But sit with them they did.

Their food that evening was a little piece of bread, a handful of olives, and a sip of wine from a clay pitcher. The assembly was very quiet and earnest, as if the lord had just left them and the impress of his shadow were still on the wall. It wasn’t a meal so much as a religious service. After eating, the disciples again recalled the actions and sayings of Messiah. Matthew was the popular speaker on this evening, since he spoke Greek, and he told about the things Messiah taught them on the Mount of Olives.

“Before he came down to eat his last meal with us, he said to us, ‘In the day when the son of man comes back in glory, he will sit on his throne. And all the nations of the world will be brought to him, and he will make fences around them, like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left. The king will say to those on his right hand, “Come and inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you since before the beginning of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was thrown into prison, and you came to me there.”’”

And Matthew continued, “In that day the ones on his right hand will reply, ‘Lord, when were you hungry, and we fed you? When were you thirsty, and we gave you a drink? When were you a stranger to us, and we took you in? Or naked, and we clothed you? And when did we see you sick or imprisoned?’ Then the lord will answer them, saying, ‘Of a truth, when you did it to the least of my brothers, you did it to me.’

“Then he will turn to those on his left hand and say, ‘Begone from me into everlasting fire, and let Satan and his angels have dominion over you, for I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink.’”

Then James, feeding off of Matthew’s words, nodded piously and added, “Every gift is from above and comes from the Lord of light, in whom there is no change and no shadow of turning.”

Then he taught them, “When you fulfill the law of the king according to the words, ‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you do right. But if you play favorites, you do evil, and will be punished even as the evil are punished. For he who keeps the whole law, and yet fails in one matter, will be as one that failed in all.”

Paul, seated among the companions, knew whom James meant with those last words.

* * * * *

The next morning, when Paul came to visit James, he found him seated in a corner, his form rigid, his face bloodless, his eyes stony. The hollows in his cheeks had deepened overnight.

When James saw Paul he became even more rigid, and began to speak in a thin, lamenting voice. “Saul, Saul, the cry of the Jews goes up against you. God have mercy on you. How dare you lift up the ax against the roots of Israel? Don’t you know as well as I that Israel has been chosen to be His eternal witness, until the end of the world? But it is your desire to destroy Israel in the name of the Lord!”

“Destroy Israel?” echoed Paul, astounded. “I assure you that wherever I went, I brought the gospel first to the Jews. But they’ve stopped up their hearts, and have become more stiff-necked than ever, just like the prophets said. I’m hunted as a beast of the field because of my love for Christ in carrying the gospel to the Gentiles.”

“I thank God for Jewish obstinacy over our faith!” cried James, ecstatically. “Your zeal for the lord makes you blind, Saul, if you don’t see the holiness of Israel’s obstinacy. For instead of the promise, instead of the hope of Israel, instead of the highest consolation, Messiah of Israel, you bring a sword. For you’ve broken with Israel, abrogated the commandments, and uprooted the tree of Israel. You seek to plant it in Gentile soil. You’ve chosen the path of temptation and failure, Saul.

“You see, there are thousands of Jews who believe in Jerusalem, but they are also zealous in the law. They’ve heard that you teach those Jews who live among the Gentiles that they can abandon the Law of Moses, and that they should give up the circumcision of their children.

“So what can we do? The people will surely assemble against you, for they know you’re here.”

“So you want to take the Lord of all the worlds and close him into the four narrow walls of Jewish law?” asked Paul. “Would you make God an appendage of Israel? He’s the Lord of the whole world. He sent Christ to deliverer all mankind. Faith has created a new brotherhood among men. The lord binds them into a single family. They become children of God in the faith, not in the laws and commandments!”

“Woe to the ears who must listen to such words,” wailed James, shuddering from head to foot. “Who dares to say that we want to confine the Lord of the world in the four narrow walls of the law? The Lord of the world is ‘He That Is.’ You can add nothing to the word, nor take anything away from it. All else is idolatry.

“And what are we? We are nothing but wretched things, filled with temptations and failings. Our hearts are filled with lusts, and chaos surrounds us. In the middle of this chaos God was gracious to Israel and set guides and markers for him. That alone made us the elect people. That alone sustained in us the longing for Messiah, which is the hope of Israel for the sake of the whole world. And only Israel has paid the full price. Only Israel, no one else. And you would take the rights God has given to Israel away from him, and give them away to others?”

No one knew better than Paul that the heart of man is filled with evil desires, and that in the chaos God had set guides and markers, which he, Paul, had been trying to take to the Gentiles. Was it just to say that he was trying to take away the rights of Israel?

In pain and anger Paul retorted, “If it’s true that I’m trying to take away the rights of Israel, then what am I doing here in Jerusalem? I know full well of the danger to me here. Is that what you call uprooting the hope of Israel? And when it comes to the law, am I not an observant Jew, just like you? I observe all the laws and commandments.”

James paused. He was moved by Paul’s cry. He rose stiffly from his place, came over to the apostle, and took his hand.

“If what you say is true, brother, heed my advice, and do as I tell you. There are four men among us who have taken a vow. Take these four men and purify yourself with them. Pay the fee for the cutting of their hair, so that everyone may know that what has been said of you is false, and that you keep the laws and commandments of the Torah.

“As far as the Gentiles are concerned, we ourselves have written that they need not observe all our commandments, but that they must only refrain from bringing sacrifices to idols, from practicing whoredom, from shedding blood, and from eating the meat of strangled beasts.”

(Now whenever a Nazarite reached the end of his vow, he had to pass through a purification of seven days. During that time he withdrew from other Nazarites into a special chamber reserved for this purpose in the Temple. He avoided all impurities. When the time of purification was over, he was free to bring the sacrifice of expiation to the Temple. This was called “the cutting of the hair.” And it was a custom in Israel that a man of standing would come to the Temple to pay the “fee” for the cutting of the hair of a poor Nazarite, that is to say, the cost of their purification and their sacrifice.)

Paul did as James asked. He locked himself with the four Nazarites in the special chamber of the Temple to prepare for the offering of the sacrifice. He did this to show that he was not separated from the body and community in Israel, even though the forces he’d set in motion threatened to do it for him. He was striving to fuse two Pauls into one person, Paul the Jew and Paul the Greek. He’d brought one externalization of himself, the Greek converts of the far-off cities, to confront the other externalization, the saints of Jerusalem. But what was taking place within him was not a fusing. It was rather as if he were being ground between an upper and a nether millstone. And it wasn’t a handful of seeds that was being ground. It was a rock, as hard as the millstones themselves. Only an equal love of Greek and Jew could have produced this phenomenon, Paul.

And though he was a Greek with the Greeks, inside Paul remained the complete Jew, with the Jew’s feverish restlessness. He was burning to cleanse himself of the sin he’d committed in bringing division into the fold. He wanted to win pardon for the bitter words he’d spoken in sorrow and torment, words often torn from him by sheer contrariness and born of the impulse to provoke. In isolating himself for seven days in the chamber of the Temple, he was hoping to make a final accounting with his soul.

The delegations Paul had brought with him were lodged with a certain believer, Mnason, a native of Cyprus who had settled in Jerusalem and had a spacious house.

During the day the Gentile visitors wandered around the area, went up to the Temple, and visited the Court of the Gentiles. They weren’t allowed to go beyond that, and they couldn’t help but feel the barrier that lay between them and the Jews. In fact, just outside the gates of Corinthian bronze that led to the Court of the Women there was a sign warning that any Gentiles who went through that gate would bear responsibility for the death they brought on themselves.

They knew that accepting Christ didn’t make them Jews as long as they were uncircumcised. But they could see the joy on the faces of the Jews as they took their first fruit offerings though the gates. They also felt the astonished looks they received from Jews they ran into from their native towns who recognized them.

Trophimus in particular had an inner need for service in a Temple, as he had been raised that way. He believed that through his faith in Christ he had become, in essence, a son of Israel. In his eyes the Temple that Christ himself had worshiped in became his own temple. He felt that he should have the right to go through the bronze gates with the stern inscription. Hadn’t Paul told him that he was circumcised in heart and spirit?

Fortunately some of the others could see what he was thinking by the look on his face, and they were able to persuade him away from doing such a thing, warning him that he would be risking his life.

Unfortunately some other Jews nearby overheard their conversation and saw an opportunity. A story immediately began to spread that Paul, the man who was dissuading the Jews from loyalty to the Law of Moses, had brought Gentiles to the Temple and had encouraged them to go into the forbidden area. The fact that Paul and Trophimus had indeed been seen together a few days earlier lent credence to the rumor.

Meanwhile Paul remained in the Nazarite chamber of the Temple. He and the other Nazarites lay on the marble, each man in his own corner, and they confessed all the sins they’d committed before the time of their vows. In the early hours of the morning they plunged their bodies into the water of the ritual bath. Afterward they went into the Court, speaking to no one, but kneeling down and concentrating their thoughts on prayer. Their food consisted of green vegetables and water. They drank no wine, nor was any oil permitted on their skins.

Thus it went for seven days. Four of those days had passed. On the fifth day Paul came out of the chamber with the other Nazarites, his heart filled with contrite thoughts, and his spirit bowed before God.

30b - I Also Am an Israelite

2010-02-08T00:30:00.001-05:00

So now Paul was finally ready to go to Jerusalem to talk to the saints and perhaps stand trial before the High Priest. He sent the delegations that had been collecting funds for the saints of Jerusalem on ahead to Troas. There was Sopater from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, and Timothy. There were also Tychicus and Trophimus from Ephesus.

When he arrived in Troas he sent them on to Assos, but he himself made the brief journey on foot, because he wanted to revisit the journey he’d made so long ago when he first brought the gospel to these parts. It was the post-Passover season, and spring was pouring out its benediction on the countryside.

When he got to Assos, Luke and the deputation were already on board waiting for him. They sailed to Mitylene, and then to Kios, not far from Ephesus. Paul didn’t want to visit Ephesus, or to spend any time in Asia, for he was anxious to arrive in Jerusalem in time for Pentecost. When they got to Miletus, Paul sent messengers to Ephesus asking the elders of the congregation to come to him, that he might say farewell to them, as he had said farewell to the communities of Troas and Philippi.

Paul’s last words to the elders of Ephesus, carefully recorded by Luke the physician, were very moving, as he opened his heart. “I’m going to Jerusalem, bound in the spirit, without knowing what waits for me there, except that the Holy Spirit has been with me in every city, foretelling suffering and chains. But I don’t care, and my life wouldn’t be dear to me were it not that I still hope to end the work I’ve taken on myself in joy. I have no regard to myself, but I have regard to the sheep whose shepherd the Holy Spirit has made me. . . . I fear that wolves will steal the flock after I leave. . . . I commend you to the grace of God. . . . You know what these hands of mine have done for my needs and for the needs of those who go with me. I’ve taught you that we must so work as to support the weak among us with the labor of our hands, and you must ever bear in mind the saying of Jesus Christ that it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

They fell on his neck and cried because of the indication that they would never see his face again. And on the day of his departure they accompanied him to the ship.

There were many ships sailing from Upper Asia Minor to the coasts of Phoenicia in those days. A great stream of supplies flowed south into Tyre and Sidon, and colored stuffs from the two cities came north. Paul and his company boarded a ship heavily loaded with freight. They sailed directly for the Phoenician coast, passing Cyprus. At Syria, where the ship unloaded, Paul and his companions went on shore. A company of Christians of Tyre came out to meet them, and Paul stayed with them seven days.

The faithful of Tyre, with their constant communication with the not too distant city of Jerusalem, knew even better than Paul the danger he was heading into, and they did everything they could to talk him out of going. But Paul would not be persuaded.

On the eighth day, they sailed again while the congregation of Christians knelt on the shore and prayed for him as his ship moved southward to Ptolemais. They stayed just one day there, and then made the short journey to Caesarea to visit the home of Philip, the one who had been the first to carry the gospel to the Gentiles. Philip lived with his four virgin daughters who were gifted with prophecy, the oldest of them being Zipporah.

Paul and Zipporah hadn’t seen each other since that memorable day many years before when he’d gone to her house in Jerusalem to take her father prisoner. She had thrown a reproach at him that day, telling Paul that he was a respecter of persons, and had favorites. But it wasn’t true, and he had spent years proving it. But she also had disproved the words he once spoke to her when he bitterly told her that she would throw away her gift of prophecy in order to take a husband. She had dedicated her life to prophecy. In those days they had both been young. Now they were both old.

The years had taken a lot out of Zipporah. She was little more than skin and bones, with gray hair, and a body covered with sackcloth. But then she smiled, and there was no doubt that it was she.

* * * * *

Paul was not as close to Luke the physician as he was to his other two co-workers, Titus and Timothy. When Paul met him, Luke was already a grown man, one trained in the wisdom of the Gentiles, knowledgeable of land and sea, as well as deeply versed in Holy Scripture, albeit only in translation. As powerful and harmonious as he was in body, broad shouldered and a tranquil face as of poured bronze, he was no less harmonious in bearing. There was no visible break in him, no scar of the passage from his Greek gods to the one living God. Paul had accepted him as a sign from heaven, the fulfillment of the vision of the “man of Macedonia.” He also saw Luke’s excellent qualities immediately. He had calmness, consistency, and endurance to go with his tactful management of people. Plus there was his training, his mastery of medicine, and his knowledge of languages. All these gifts proclaimed him a valuable helper in the work. Thus, even at the beginning, Paul had left Luke to direct the affairs of the congregation in Philippi. But he didn’t know the man well at that time.

He got to know him a little better in Corinth, when, after his second letter to the Corinthians, he visited them to restore order among the faithful. But it wasn’t until the journey to Jerusalem that Paul found the opportunity to gain intimate insight into his companion.

Luke well knew Paul’s opinion of the Gentiles, an opinion frequently expressed and in unmistakable language. There was the passage Paul had dictated in his letter to the Romans, for instance, that the Gentiles thought they were wise, but were really fools. They exchanged truth for lies and worshipped the creature rather than the Creator. So God abandoned them to their lusts. Luke had great love and devotion for Christ, but saw no need to reject his great heritage of Greek culture. He sought to rescue those glories that could be rescued from that old world and transplanted to the new faith. And he was deeply wounded by Paul’s bitter mockery of the Gentiles. Nor was Luke’s feeling for the Jews proportionate with his love for Christ. He had accepted their heritage, because it was permanently bound up with the faith. But he could not warm up to this people, and in his heart there was an uncontrollable longing for the harmony of the pagan world. Therefore he was always seeking a mixture of the old world with the new.

These things came up for discussion with Paul one day.

“The Gentiles,” he said to Paul, “don’t worship stone and wood, not really. The gods are only symbols of perfection and harmony. So it’s really the Creator they bow down to. In adoring beauty they pay tribute to the eternal truths found in that beauty. The gods are only demons who’ve taken possession of the images and who’ve marred the beauty and perfection the great masters have portrayed in the imagery.”

As Paul listened, he thought of the vision he’d had at the book burning in Ephesus as well as his conviction that Luke was the fulfillment of the vision of “the man of Macedonia.” Therefore he answered Luke as he had answered the visionary figure at the book burning.

“Christ has inherited the gods of the Gentiles. The highest perfection, love, is realized in him. Christ is the fulfillment of all harmony, for in love there is everything.”

That evening in Caesarea, when Paul and his companions broke bread with the believers in Philip’s house, Luke brought up the subject of why Paul insisted on going to Jerusalem. None of the others could understand his stubbornness either. The deputation Paul was leading consisted of men who were well-established citizens. Some even held positions of responsibility in their respective provinces. They’d sacrificed everything to their faith in Christ. And now Paul was leading them to Jerusalem, where they didn’t know what might be waiting for them, while the apostle himself was forever filled with dark forebodings.

Suddenly Zipporah appeared in the doorway, and all eyes turned to her. Her eyes glittered, and her gray hair fell wildly over her shoulders. She was carrying a little phial of Syrian glass with a long thin neck in her frail little hand. Silently she approached the apostle, and slowly she turned the delicate phial, mouth downward, over his hands. The drops of clear oil came out one by one, like tears glistening in the quiet lamplight.

And Zipporah said, “I anoint your hands for the chains that await them.”

Paul grew pale, but then a smile passed unevenly across his lips. He did not answer.

Then an even stranger thing happened. The door was thrown upon and a wild looking man with stormy hair and fiery eyes came in. This was the prophet Agabus, who wandered from community to community, one day in Jerusalem, another in Antioch. His appearances had come to be interpreted as a promise of evil things to come. He would predict disaster, and then vanish, and sickness, famine, evil decrees, and death would inevitably follow. He came in like a demon in a storm, rushed up to Paul, took off his sash, and bound his own hands with it.

Agabus then said, “So shall the Jews in Jerusalem bind the owner of this sash.”

The others at the table were terrified. Everyone started begging him not to go to Jerusalem. Luke spoke up, “Wasn’t it you who said that though you knew Christ in the flesh, now you know him no more in the flesh, but in the spirit? Isn’t the spirit everywhere, wherever the name of Christ is mentioned? So why go to Jerusalem? Why can’t you make Antioch, or Corinth, or Ephesus, or even Rome itself the new Jerusalem?”

“What is Christ?” asked Paul hotly. “Is he a husk of grain to be carried away by the wind? Is he a seed carried into the wilderness? God forbid! He is the fruit from the tree of Israel, rooted in the earth of Zion. Christ is the fulfillment of the promises given to our fathers. He is the vindication of the prophets. He is the son of David, who came to judge the world from Mount Zion. Help came to the Jews first, then to the Greeks.”

“But, Paul, don’t you see that chains wait for you in Jerusalem?” they cried, literally. “Don’t you see you’re going to your death?”

“What do you mean with all this crying and breaking my heart?” said Paul, summoning anger to his aid. “Surely I’m prepared to be thrown in chains, and yes, to die there in the name of the lord Jesus Christ.”

He said this abruptly and with such firmness of conviction, that the others stopped trying to persuade him. They only said, “Let the will of God be done.”

And the next day they packed their belongings and set out, in the company of other believers, for Jerusalem.

30a - I Also Am an Israelite

2010-02-07T19:27:00.003-05:00

As soon as Paul appeared in Corinth, all was forgiven, and everything that had been held against him was forgotten. The community was uplifted by a great wave of love. Whatever harshness he had spoken was accepted as the sign of his devotion.

There were some who feared Paul, for it seemed to them that he could annihilate with the power of his look. Others remembered only the sweeter, tenderer words he spoke. As to those who denied Paul’s authority, they too were carried away by the congregation’s enthusiasm. They trembled at the new strength Paul showed, and their opposition melted.

Paul knew what arguments were needed for various groups. To the Jews he pointed out that he lived under the discipline of the Law of Moses, perhaps more so than they did. But to the Gentiles who’d been won by the messengers from James and were trying to live under the same law, he said flatly that taking on the burden of Jewish discipline was all in vain. So he was a Jew among Jews, and a Greek among Greeks. But in everything he strove mightily to maintain the unity of the congregation.

Aquila and Priscilla were no longer in Corinth, but Paul made his home with Gaius, and it was from there that he dispatched his letter to the congregation in Rome.

The letter to the Romans was more difficult to write than even the letters to the Corinthians. Weeks and months passed while he dictated and re-dictated to a certain Tertius. It was his desire to re-state and expand his doctrine of Christ as he had received it, revealed it in many cities, and expounded it to Apollos. In a hard exact style, with fine, hairsplitting distinctions of definitions, he set down his thesis, or rather, his interpretation of his mission. First he repudiates sharply the pretended wisdom of the Greeks.

“Claiming to be wise,” he says, bluntly, “they were fools. They changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. So God gave them up to vile perversions of lust. . . . they became filled with unrighteousness, whoredom, greed, malice, with unnatural lusts and unmercifulness.”

He goes on to make it clear that the Jews who had the law, but didn’t live according to the law, were no better than those degenerate pagans.

“There will be tribulation and anguish on everyone who does evil, the Jew first, and then the Greek. But glory, honor, and peace is given to everyone who does good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, for God does not play favorites. He will punish the Gentiles who sin even though they don’t have the law and he will punish the Jews who sin by the law.”

Then Paul says something that almost sounds like it could have come from James.

“For it’s not those who listen to the law who are justified before God, but those who do according to the law.”

But, “You call yourself a Jew, and feel secure in the law, and boast of God. . . . For it is not outwardly that one is a true Jew, but inwardly, circumcised in the heart and spirit, not in the flesh.”

Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes further and abrogates the law in precise terms, even for the Jews.

“By the deeds of the law no one will be justified in God’s sight, for the law only gives knowledge of sin. But now God’s righteousness is manifest without the law, the righteousness that is by the faith of Christ.”

Christ personifies righteousness. It follows then that faith in Christ is the essence of the law, that is, of justification, which is the opposite of sin. And Christ is the only one who can bring salvation from sin, for it is through the law that we become sinful.

“The law awakens in man all manner of lust, for without the law sin is dead. . . . For though we know that the law is of the spirit, I, the man, am sold in my body to sin. . . . For I know that in me, that is, in my body, there is nothing good. . . . I have the will, but have not found my way to goodness. . . . I see another law in me, warring against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the sin that is in me.”

In these sentences Paul unfolds the tragedy of man’s inner struggle over his own destiny, for he sees man as the arbiter of his own destiny. Therefore he looks into the depths of his own heart, and cries out over man’s fate.

“Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

He looks around him, like a swimmer in a dark sea, who sees a single ray of light to guide him. That ray of light is Christ.

“Therefore as by one man’s disobedience condemnation came on everyone, so by one man’s obedience justification came for all. . . . And all who were baptized in Christ, were baptized into his death. For he that is dead sins no more. . . . We are no more in the flesh, but in the spirit.”

Only by the power of faith can man break the chains of his own destiny, hammered and laid on him by his own lusts. What is impossible for the law to accomplish becomes possible through the spirit.

“When Jesus Christ is in you, your body is dead to sin and alive to righteousness. . . . And they that are led by the spirit of God are the children of God. You have received the spirit of children, by which we cry Abba, Father!”

Then, with the logic of a true Pharisee, Paul proceeds to demonstrate that the law had lost its validity not only for the Gentiles, but for the Jews too.

“The law has dominion over a man as long as he lives, even as a woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. Therefore, my brothers, you have become dead to the law by the body of Christ, and you should be wed to another (to the living Christ in the spirit) who arose from the dead.”

Throughout this long letter Paul again lives through all the torments of his own life. He clearly sees how he isolated himself from the traditional Jewish way and condemned himself to loneliness. He struggles bitterly between his longing for Christ and salvation on the one hand, and his natural affection for his people on the other. He fully understands that the knife he lays at the root of Jewish law is also laid at the root of his relationship to his people. But his love for Christ is stronger.

“Who can separate us from Christ’s love?” he cries. “Neither height nor depth, nor any creature, can separate us from God’s love, which is in our lord, Jesus Christ.”

So has Christ come for the Gentiles alone? In the streams of blood that flowed from Christ’s body to free man from the law and bring him into the grace of faith, is there not one drop shed for his own people, who suffered the torment of Christ and had conjured him down from heaven by their longing?

In agony, Paul asks himself who can fathom the depths of Christ’s heart? Is there not a corner for his people in it? This thought gives him no rest. In the sea of love Christ poured out on mankind, there must be enough water for Israel too. So he labors, in pain and frustration, longing to bring the whole world into the grace of Christ, and finding himself confronted by the obstinate will of the Jews.

In this labor he develops a fiery impatience that blinds him to the sense of justice, moves him to a sharp intolerance, and poisons his understanding of those who oppose him. In his letter to the Romans he expresses all his love, but also all his scorn, toward his own people. He alternates between benediction and malediction. One moment he rejects Israel like a broken pot. The next moment he exalts Israel as a precious vessel that alone is worthy of containing the oil of anointment for Christ. For Israel’s sake Paul is prepared to make the highest sacrifice of himself. He would destroy not only his body, but his very portion in Christ if only Israel will accept it for herself.

“I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers in the flesh, who are Israelites. Theirs is the adoption and the glory and the giving of the law, and the service of God and the promises. Theirs are the fathers from whom Christ came according to the flesh.”

He couldn’t have said anything higher of his people. And though he has just deprived them of the inheritance, saying, “Not all that are of Israel are Israelites, not the children of the flesh are the children of God, but only the children of the promise,” he now cries, “Brothers, it is the wish of my heart, it is my prayer to the God of Israel, that they be helped.”

But there is something in the way.

“Israel, who followed after righteousness, did not attain righteousness, because he sought it not by faith but by the works of the law. . . . For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe.”

But, “Do I say, then, that God has cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people who He knew from of old.”

And, “If their fall has meant the raising up and enrichment of the Gentiles, how much more should the world profit by their fulfillment? . . . Perhaps I will move those who are of my flesh to imitate me, and some of them may be saved. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what will the receiving of them be but life from the dead? For it the root is holy, so will the branches be holy.”

And to the Gentiles he says, “Don’t gloat over the branches (the Jews). Remember, you don’t bear the root, the root bears you. If you say, ‘The branches are broken off, so that I might be grafted in.’ True, they have been broken off by unbelief. . . . but if they do not remain in unbelief they will be grafted in again. . . . For if you were cut off from a wild olive tree (heathendom), and were grafted into a good olive tree, contrary to your (pagan) nature, how much more will the natural branches be again grafted into the good olive tree (Christ)? This is no mystery, my brothers. Blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.”

God purposely withheld Israel from acceptance of Christ until the Gentiles caught up with the Jews in God’s election!

“But Israel will be saved, as it is written, ‘There will come out of Zion the deliverer, and will take away the ungodliness from Jacob.’”

The apostle’s inner struggle is deep and bitter. It’s like he’s tearing at his own flesh, and the blood streams from him, not from his people. Faithfulness to the Gentiles, passion for Christ, and love of his own people are all at war in him, and the strongest of the three is his passion for Christ. In the last torment of his separation from Israel he cries out to the Gentiles, “According to the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the father’s sake, for the gifts and appointments of God are without recall.”

“And though you are free from the law, you are under the law of righteousness.”

Paul is proclaiming a new law for the congregation of Christ, a law rooted and blossoming in the fields of Jacob. The law of the prophets grows where he has uprooted the Law of Moses. The law is boundless, for its source is love, which is in Christ. Its deeds are boundless, for the law is not judgment, but grace. It’s like the sun in heaven and the dew at night. Salvation has been given freely, through the grace of God.

In the spirit of Christ, and in harmony with what he had taught in the byways of Galilee and the narrow streets of Jerusalem, Paul the Jew addresses himself to the Romans, “Therefore, brothers, I beg you by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God. . . . For as we have many members in one body, and all members do not have the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and are all members of one another. . . . Be kind to one another, with brotherly love, each honoring the other before himself. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. . . . meet the needs of the saints, and practice the virtue of hospitality. Bless those who persecute you and do not curse them. Do not repay evil with evil.”

And in the spirit of Christ, he said, “As far as it is within you, live at peace with all men. Take no revenge on anyone, and leave no room in yourself for anger. . . . If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. In doing so you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not let evil overcome you, but overcome evil with good.”

And he continues with words that he’d undoubtedly heard from his teacher Rabban Gamaliel, for they were of the essence of the tradition and school of Hillel, “It is briefly comprehended in this saying, Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Toward the end of the letter he advises them of his plans to go to Jerusalem and begs them to pray for him that he might be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea and be able to come visit them.

Then he adds certain commendations and greetings. “I commend to you our sister Phebe, a servant of the church at Cenchrea. . . . receive her in the lord and assist her in whatever business she asks of you. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in the work of Jesus Christ, who have laid down their necks for my life.”

* * * * *

Slaves were forbidden to send communications to each other, so generally, when a family of slaves was broken up on the slave market, its members lost track of each other. But the slaves who had entered the congregations of Christ were able to re-establish contact through the congregations. Members of the Christian community maintained a close relationship with each other, so whenever a believer moved or traveled from town to town, he would carry news and messages with him. Through this constant flow of information brothers and sisters, parents and children, long separated, were able to communicate with each other.

It was also a habit of Christian congregations to send letters of introduction when a believer was moving from one town to another. Phebe had a great desire to go to Rome, for she had children there. One was a slave, and the other had been set free by his master for his performances as a gladiator. So when Phebe asked Paul for a letter of introduction, he thought it would be a good idea to send the letter to the Romans with her. Phebe was an elderly woman, of heavy build, and thick stumpy feet. Paul took the roll of papyrus, wrapped it in a linen cover, and using his own girdle, he bound the cover to the woman’s body, and told her to not allow herself to be separated from the scroll either by day or by night.

The journey itself took many days. Phebe lay on many decks, and slept in dangerous places, but she never undid the girdle. She went from ship to ship, from port to port, until she reached Puteoli. From there she went on foot to Rome, and arriving in the great city, found the Synagogue of the Hebrews on the right bank of the Tiber. She met a Christian there who led her to Aquila and Priscilla’s house. Only then did she unroll the girdle from her body, and deliver the letter into the hands of the congregation.