Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Though a pious Jew was not permitted “to cut the corners of his beard,” there was no prohibition that he refrain from keeping that beard clean and combed and free of vermin. The beard was, by tradition, a holy thing. But the Nazarenes, in their placid disregard for the customs of their fathers and the Law, no longer groomed their beards and their persons, and to Saul they “stank highly.” When reproached by their fellows they tenderly quoted, “The soul is more than raiment,” thus implying that a man should not wash.

  Saul was an erudite man, a Pharisee, a citizen of Rome, a graduate of the University of Tarsus, familiar with the philosophies and poetry of the world, understanding of the history of nations, a traveler to far places. He had, by the mighty Grace of God, had a revelation. He had returned to Jerusalem, after the catastrophe of Damascus—that rainbowed, hot and fervid city—and after his sojourn in the desert—convinced that his fellow Nazarenes in the Holy City would be of more knowledge than the Jews of Damascus and other scattered places, and that they, so close to the past awesome events, would listen to him with understanding. Men near a volcano knew of thunderings and lightnings and the heaving of the earth and the roar of fiery rain.

  Many of the Nazarenes of Jerusalem, alas, had dwelt near the volcano and had not understood the giant voice they had heard; Certainly, they were a few, but Saul had not as yet encountered many of them.

  It was in vain that Saul told the Nazarenes he met in the Temple—who were more sedulous than their fellow Jews in their pious duties—that they were, most probably, misinterpreting the words of Yeshua of Nazareth. Had not God spoken sternly of the grasshopper who wasted the summer away and then expected the industrious ant to feed him, the ant who had worked the year? “He who does not work, neither shall he eat!” shouted Saul in anger. But the Nazarenes shyly informed him that they should “take no thought of the morrow,” and besides the unbelievers fed them, and so did the indulgent priests of the Temple.

  Saul had a dreadful inner vision of the total collapse of civilization and law and order and the Laws of God should the prevailing views of the Nazarenes spread among them all. Man was not only an eternal soul. He was a privileged denizen of this beautiful green and gold and purple world which God had made in His infinite love, and he shared his nature with the animals in the world, and had need of sustenance. The animals hunted and foraged diligently, and provided for their mates and their offspring. They built nests and cleaned caves; they marked their territories against invaders. They cared for their children and loved them and taught them stringently, so that they, in turn, could provide for themselves and their families. They cleansed themselves and groomed themselves strictly, that their health might be preserved. They lived by Law, given to their natures, and woe be to any who transgressed that Law! He surely died. Law applied to man, also, as a creature of this world.

  This analogy, presented to the Nazarenes by Saul, was met with pitying smiles. Was not man more than an animal?

  Saul was infuriated. The Lord had meant, surely, that they were not to destroy themselves and their tranquillity by fear of the morrow, for who knew what the morrow would bring? Perhaps death, perhaps greater duties, perhaps far calls to strange lands. A man, however, should certainly care for the problems and the duties of today! The Nazarenes gave him their wide shy smiles and merely shrugged, and stared at the skies, awaiting the Messias.

  Saul shouted, “If your fellow Jews did not give you bread and oil and meat and cheese and wine, who then would feed you?” They replied, in a gentle whisper, “The Lord.” “Not if you disobey His Law of work! Was He not a carpenter?” They answered, “That was only to display His humility.”

  Saul noted that the Nazarenes were making converts among the slaves of the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians and Persians and sundry others in Jerusalem, and he was dismayed that the perverted tenets of the simple were received with enthusiasm by those slaves The Nazarenes were assuring them that, as slaves, they were superior to their masters, yet they must submit in all meekness, for was not the Messias expected hourly, and would he not exalt them as kings, and masters, above their owners? Would He not clothe them in gold and heap treasures about their feet, and give them the rule of the world? Verily. Hearing this, Saul despairingly clutched the red hair at his temples. In short, the Nazarenes were propounding that all men must not attempt to improve their fate, that they must submit to slavery and degradation, and not acquire dignity and manhood. “Proclaim liberty throughout the world, unto the inhabitants thereof!” he shouted as Moses had shouted.

  His fellow Nazarenes said, “What is liberty?” and shrugged, and considered they had made a wise epigram.

  If their fellow Jews were exasperated with them and their softness and their lack of fortitude and industry and courage, Saul was even more exasperated. It came to him, with fury, that he must not engage them in learned conversation, for though they could recite the ancient prayers with the addition of the new, and could slowly point out Hebraic characters on scrolls, they were only “Amaratzim.” Did not God want able and intellectual and learned men among His servants? Saul would sometimes ask himself, wrathfully. And the reply came to him, “Indeed, for who then shall lead the people?”

  As the Nazarenes were only men, it came to Saul, and men by nature hated responsibility and labor and toil and sweat, they had seized on the new sect as an excuse for indigence, sloth, idleness and self-indulgence, and lack of pride. Oh, they had pride! he would rage. They believed that by doing nothing they would inherit the earth! In a vision he foresaw the enormous perversion of the words of Yeshua of Nazareth spread throughout the world, and he knew despair. What was he to do?

  “God,” he said, in his endless exhortations to the meek smilers, “speaks in mysteries and in symbols. You have simplified the words or the Messias into a code justifying your indolence and self-abasement and aversion for labor, and reliance on the charity of others, who smile at you. Yet, the Law remains: Man must labor for his bread with the sweat of his brow. The Messias reminded you that He had not come to break the Law, but to fulfill it. You degrade the Law! It is not enough that you believe in Him. You must follow His example, and He was a mighty Man, acquainted with anger, and with a terrible Voice. He did not sit in the Temple and do nothing. He worked and He labored. You have known Simon Peter, and Tames and John, and others of His Apostles and disciples, and though they go abroad among the people and preach they also earn their own livings. Have they abjured you to sit here, among your stenches and the remnants of baskets of charity, and watch for the coming of the Messias? No, they were called to labor in the world. Get you hence, you idle, you perverters of the Word!”

  Finally, in spite of their docile smiles he saw hatred in their eyes. Moreover, his fellow Jews who had not accepted the Messias became annoyed at his exhortations among them. “Are you not he who persecuted our brothers?” they asked him. “Did you not bind and imprison them? Are there not widows and bereft mothers and weeping sisters and brothers who suffer because of you? Are you a spy of the Romans? Once you were full of fervor against these Nazarenes. Now you preach to them! You are a man of moods and inconsistencies, and we are charitable to say only this of you. We do not trust you, Saul of Tarshish. Depart from among us. We have shut our ears against you, and will not hear you, for a man of passion is suspect, and he who blows cold one day and hot the next is to be doubted of his sincerity.”

  Why had the Messias revealed Himself to him, if only for this failure? He was failing among his own people, and his failure was beyond encompassing. It was useless to say, “I was wrong, and I was blinded. But God gave me His Revelation, which I would reveal to you in love and in joy, for my heart yearns over you, and I would give you the words of His Salvation. Let us reason together, for He has said, ‘You are the salt of the earth; if the salt lose its savor’ how then shall the bread of life be eaten? What man would partake of it? Hearken to me, for through you, as He has said, comes His Salvation. ‘Salvation is of the Jews.’ That He has said, a
nd will you not listen, my people?”

  But the Nazarenes feared him, for he exhorted them to labor as their Lord had labored, and they did not wish to labor, and the Jews hated him for his former persecutions and did not trust him.

  Once the more extreme of the Zealots and the Essenes had alarmed their fellow Jews for their open and useless attacks on the Romans, which resulted in punitive measures against the more moderate. Now a fresh alarm seized them. Some Nazarenes, thinking they were emulating the divine Savior, deliberately incited the Romans by choking the streets of Jerusalem with their supine bodies, in mute protest not against oppressive laws but because the Romans were not eagerly embracing the new Jewish sect. They said, “If the Roman become a Nazarene, then will he partake with us of the fruit of peace, the wine of amity, and all men will embrace each other, and when the Lord returns—as soon He must—He will discover a world awaiting it; full of lovingkindness and songs.”

  On the other hand, when taxgatherers sought them those few who had some coins, or whose tolerant family supplied them with a pouch, gave the taxgatherers not only the due exacted, but more, with meekly tender faces, forgetting that the Lord had despised such bureaucrats as the lowest of men, needful of all the mercy divine justice could give them. When their exasperated brothers demanded of the Nazarenes why they did this dangerous thing, they replied that the Lord had bidden them to give the thief who stole their purse their cloaks also. The lesson of the parable was lost on them. They adhered only to the word, but not to the subtle substance, and this Saul found most intolerable of all.

  The Romans lost patience in Jerusalem. They dragged away those unresisting men and women who clogged the streets with their prone or supine bodies, and thrust them into prison, and many of the imprisoned rejoiced in what they considered their martyrdom and implored that they be put to death as their Lord had been put to death.

  Without avail, Saul cried to them: “The Messias would have you live and labor for him more strenuously than ever before, but you weak cowards seek what He would have you avoid in good conscience! Has He not said that the harvest is heavy but the laborers are few?”

  To Saul, the Faith was far more menaced by laughter and sloth and ridicule than by any possible sword wielded by the vexed Romans. The new procurator had mimes parody the Nazarenes, and the new legate in Syria wrote his colleague in amusement about these creatures, yet warned that they must not be permitted to disrupt orderly procedures and civilized life. Hearing of this, Saul felt shame for his fellow Nazarenes. They had forgotten that a Man had lived among them, with manly attributes. They thought of Him as a submissive and womanish Savior, who wished them to be as inert as themselves.

  Therefore, Saul was confronted by the two opponents: His fellow Jews who distrusted him and so rejected him, and some of the Nazarenes, his fellow Jews also, who thought him a savage fellow who had none of the charity of the Lord is his soul, and who harangued them with smarting words and called them pusillanimous and informed them that while awaiting the Second Coming they must bestir themselves and earn their own bread.

  Saul, once certain that the Revelation on the road to Damascus would solve all his inner storms and impatiences and despairs and angers, now found himself assailed by fury and impotence, and by practically everybody. He was sure in his soul that God had ordained a path he must take—but where was that path? If no one listened to him, then better he speak to the jackals of the desert and the wild ass and the vulture!

  He was beside himself. “Where shall I go, Lord?” he demanded with more passion than reverence, and awaited a reply. His powerful soul could not bear the waiting. The self-identity he had always known was more vehement than ever. His love for reality had increased, and now that he knew the Great Reality of the Messias it seemed incredible to him that none listened to him in Jerusalem, but avoided him as a violent man. Abandoned, he brooded alone in the Temple.

  Chapter 36

  SHEBUA BEN ABRAHAM had died while Saul had lingered in the deserts of Arabia. Rabban Gamaliel had died before his return, and so had the noble Roman lady, Clodia Flavius. David ben Shebua was now a rich and elderly man, as judicious and moderate as always. The sons of Shebua, Simon and Joseph, had embraced the new sect, but with a sturdy earthiness which Saul respected and understood. (However, they did not embrace him, for they remembered his passionate nature and now he seemed more passionate and dogmatic than before, and did they not have trials of their own and did they not, now in their old age, desire peace and the leisure to contemplate the Messias, and perform their religious duties? Their purses were open to their fellow Nazarenes who were in distress. They believed, not with wild exultation, but with common sense. Their souls were muscular and without incoherence. They were not enamored of Saul, their nephew, nor did they like his appearance at their houses in the rough garb he preferred, not in emulation of humility but because he disdained luxury.)

  Therefore, there was left to Saul of the house of Shebua ben Abraham only his sister, Sephorah, whose husband had sickened and died but a few weeks ago. “We are a house of mourning,” the lovely Sephorah said, weeping, “but those we loved died in the knowledge of the Messias, and they now rest in His bosom.” Her children were gentle young things of no particular intellect, except for Amos ben Ezekiel, who had been raised from the dead by the Messias, and it was to this young man, now nineteen years of age but still unmarried that Saul turned in his distress.

  Amos was of a kind if adamantine spirit, quiet in speech, determined in action, just, reverent, devoted and patrician. Once decided upon a way, he could not be moved from it. He listened to Saul’s impassioned diatribes against his fellow Jews, both Nazarene and unbeliever, with calm detachment. With something of his grandfather, David’s, objective amusement—which he did not display, however—he understood exactly why Saul had been rejected, but no more than Saul did he know what the older man must do. “God will enlighten you concerning His Will,” said Amos, trying to gentle that most ungentle man. To which Saul replied, “I have been seeking His will since I was born, and He has still not informed me! Am I to waste my life among fools or hostile men, who will not listen?”

  “He will tell you,” said Amos. Saul was about to burst out in imprecations when he saw Amos’ golden eyes, shining like coins, and radiant, and it came to him in wonderment that Amos’ words had suddenly struck on his hot heart like a cool cataract of healing water, and he said, “You are only a youth, with hardly a beard, and I am your uncle, and I know the world and have had a Revelation. Yet, something mysterious tells me that you have spoken words of wisdom, and I have sinned in my impatience.”

  Amos sighed. His uncle had always been excessive in emotion, though paradoxically he was a man embedded in reality. Was his fault that of an inability to endure fools gladly, or at least suffer their existence? All men were not called to arduous service. Why did Saw believe they were? He, Amos, had his own plans, which he did not divulge to Saul.

  Saul’s encounters with Simon Peter had not been the happiest of events. Simon Peter, a brawny fisherman, was not of Saul’s subtle and colorful mind. He was as stubborn as Saul and frequently as obdurate, and often their voices had risen to acrimonious heights. Peter had explained his own vision that in the sight of the Lord there were no “common” men, nor unclean, and that he must not reject those among the Gentiles who came to him for learning and teaching and baptism. Saul had said with scorn, “But how obvious that is! Once I, too, despised the Gentile and avoided him, as an infidel and heathen, but I know—not through a vision such as you have had—but with intelligence, that God is the Father of all men. I did not need a vision!”

  This offended Peter. Had Saul seen the Messias in the flesh? Had he—walked with Him in the dust? Had he witnessed His crucifixion? Had the Messias imparted to him wondrous things over many days? (John had said, and truly, that if all that the Messias had said and done it would fill “many books.”) Saul claimed to have seen the Messias on the desert, and Peter did not doubt this f
or an instant. But first he had persecuted the followers of the Messias as no Roman would persecute them. Who had slept with the Messias and broken bread with him, but Simon Peter? Had not he, Peter, washed the feet of the Messias? Had not he walked with Him for forty days after He had risen from the tomb? Yet this Saul of Tarshish, this Pharisee, this man of Greek and Roman knowledge and worldly ways, this man of haughty intellect, appeared to believe that he had more understanding of the Messias than those who had dwelt with Him! It was very vexatious.

  Through Peter Saul had also met the umbrageous brothers, John and James ben Zebedee. They, like Peter, were industrious men acquainted with labor and toil, and somewhat younger, though all were young. However, they were more of Saul’s own spirit, fiery, sometimes inclined to excesses of speech and gesture, unyielding and full or temper. Peter considered Saul’s anger against the docility of many of the Nazarenes sinful, and urged him to look upon those who labored as diligently as ever, or more, and did not sit in the Temple purlieus in slothful attitudes with upturned and useless palms, not overly clean. He also told Saul that a man could not entirely blame the Jews for not accepting his teachings, because they feared and distrusted him.