Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  After a moment he said, “I have lost many I loved to the Romans. But I know that it is appointed for men to die once, as you have said, yourself, Saul of Tarshish. What matter when a man dies? Is life so beautiful, and so desirable, that we must strain all measures of juices from it, even from the seeds and the rinds and the gall, as women strain the juices of citrons or pomegranates? Let us not yearn for the pulp and the bitterness of the refuse, greedily like goats, unwilling to put down the cup. The sweet first juice is enough.”

  This seemed to Saul to echo the very words of his old teacher, Aristo, for they had a cynical overtone and a faint hint of laughter. But looking at Simon’s gnarled face, and the dark deep sorrow in his eyes, Saul knew that he spoke out of wisdom and not in jest. Still, it was not consoling, and Saul soon took his leave. He journeyed to Jerusalem in a small car rented from an inn in Joppa, and on the way to the beloved city he brooded and thought.

  His sister’s house, where Sephorah’s husband and her husband’s father had been born, and all her own children, was like a rescue to Saul, like a loving refuge. Sephorah’s once bright hair was almost as white as his own, and her grandchildren stood about her like saplings around an old parent tree. She embraced Saul with tears and laughter, and he found the kisses of the little ones pure and endearing, and many of the scars he carried on his soul became smooth and halted their aching.

  “We are no longer young,” he said to Sephorah, as they wandered in the calm and lovely gardens he remembered and paused by the very bench on which he had sat and wept dolorously when a youth, to be found there and comforted by his father, so long dead. Here he had crouched in anguish in the spring, and it was spring again, the Pentecostal Season. Nothing had changed except himself and the human world. Nature and nature’s law went their way indifferently, as heedless of man as the clouds, themselves, and as remote.

  “We are not old, unless we desire to be,” said Sephorah, and her wrinkled face was sweet. “I feel in my heart that I am still a girl, joyful and expectant, eager for each newly minted day, and love is still ruler of my heart.” She touched his hand gently, remembering how many he had lost, and how weary and dusty was his way, and how misunderstood, and how full of danger and wretchedness. But still he was Saul, her brother, and his eye still held passion and steadfastness, and his spirit shone forth, and so flesh was nothing.

  He told her of the letters he had received from his cousin, Titus Milo Platonius, the Praetorian general in Rome, for no longer did he believe that all women were superficial and light and trivial and unable to understand important matters. He saw a maternal wisdom in Sephorah’s golden eyes, which were immortally young and gay, and the intrepid valor of her soul, and he thought to himself that she resembled their dead father whom he had so misjudged.

  “Milo,” he said, “is most unhappy in Rome under the domination of that vile Commander of the Praetorian Guard, Tigellinus, who is his superior officer, and who, at the instigation of the wife of Caesar, Poppea, murdered the old Commander, Bursus. Ah, there is a wicked woman, truly the harlot of Babylon, for did she not incite Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus to murder his mother Agrippina, out of jealousy and fear of the mother’s influence? Tigellinus hates Milo, and Milo does not fear death, but his soldiers love him and so Tigellinus refrains from still another murder—though it may not be for long. Alas, that men like our cousin are becoming more rare each day, and rarer still are men like his father, Aulus. Milo is a reproach to the Roman court, and to Nero, for he is a man of virtue, and a Christian, though others do not know this. Can we not induce our cousin to return to Israel, where he was born, and on the night the Messias was born? He is old, too, but indomitable. If he remains in Rome he will surely die.”

  “I have written him so, also,” replied Sephorah, “but he answers that his duty is in the city of his fathers, for is he not a Roman as well as a Jew?” She sighed, and smiled. “How he danced at my wedding! And how he drank!” She thought of the days of her girlhood and it seemed to her that it was the dream of another and not herself, and she had heard of it only by rumor. “Why do you not visit him, Saul, and implore him to return to us for at least a space?”

  “I? Visit Rome?” Saul was incredulous. “That seat of vice and infamy and murder, of luxury and terror and unspeakable lewdness, of crime and degeneracy? God forbid!”

  “But Simon Peter is there,” said Sephorah. “Did you not know? He left but a month ago, for the Christian community in Rome is in disarray. The Roman populace has taken a dislike to the Christians of whom they tell vile lies and of whom they make the wickedest accusations. Jew and Christian—they are equally hated in Rome and are the jest of the people, who complain that Claudius Caesar had once expelled the Jews but Nero permitted them to return. I hear he is a most vicious and decadent man, for all his youth, and one wonders why he allowed the Jews to resume their home in Rome and regain a measure of their property.”

  “Perhaps,” said Saul with gloom, “he wishes to make of them a scapegoat as have other rulers in other nations.” His words, even to himself, seemed incredible, and then a cold wind touched him between the shoulder blades and he shivered. He said, “I knew Peter had gone to Rome. We never loved each other, for each of us believed that our way was the only way,” and Saul smiled. “But, in His Name we were reconciled, in spite of Mark who never loved me, either.”

  Sephorah took his browned and calloused hand in hers and said, “My brother, you are as easily hated as loved, for never do you falter and your opinions are inflexible, and your judgment, alas, is usually correct.”

  Now Sephorah, sighing again, spoke of Jerusalem and of the people, whose despair increased hourly. The new procurator, Felix, hated the Jews even more than had Pontius Pilate, and conspired with the High Priest and his minions to oppress and steal from the people and to break their spirit. What they had endured under Pilate was nothing to what they endured now, for their own priests had turned against them, and plotted against them and reduced them to fearful anguish. They were robbed of their last substance in taxes, to be sent to Rome, and to support the Temple which the priests profaned by their very presence. The priests imposed enormous tithes even on the destitute, and woe to that man and his family if the money was not forthcoming on demand. Now assassins, nameless, roamed through the purlieus of the Temple, and left blood and dead bodies behind them, and no one knew what vengeance they were executing, whether on the worshipers or on their oppressors. It was said that King Agrippa was responsible, that he wished to reduce his people to the status of slaves, in order to please the Romans. Still others said that the assassins were Zealots or Essenes, and that they were revenging the insult to the Temple. And still others said they were Christians, or Nazarenes, as they were still called in Jerusalem, young men intent on overthrowing the government of Felix and of Rome, and of King Agrippa.

  “I only know we all live in terror,” said Sephorah. “The people pray to God in one voice, for deliverance from their tyrants, Jew and Nazarene together, and the longing for God in the hearts of our poor people is an agony. They see the priesthood living in luxury on the money stolen and wrested from them and see those closest to the High Priesthood reveling with the Romans in the most indecent of orgies and celebrations, and in blood spectacles in the circuses and in licentious plays at the theater.” When the people periodically could endure no more there were mysterious murders of both Jewish priests and Romans, and then there were accusations that the excessive Zealots had accomplished these crimes, and the Zealots were hunted out and crucified and the people subsided in renewed terror and were quiet for a time. “Never was our people and our nation in so desperate a plight,” said Sephorah.

  Saul gazed at the tender blue sky and then at the pink almond blossoms and the flowering palms and pomegranates and he thought how beautiful was the world, and how immeasurably evil was man, who created murder and hatred and ruin and ugliness out of his own heart, and delighted in the pain of the innocent and in their oppression
, and made victims of his brothers. For him had the Messias come and had given up His blameless life!

  “It is well, perhaps, that I have returned,” said Saul. “I was commanded so, in a vision, but I am only one man and neither the Jews nor the Christians will hearken to me, here in my own nation and among my own people. I do not know why I am here. It is in the Hands of God, for I do not know where I must start and what I must say!”

  He contemplated the modern world of blood and plunder, of monstrous Caesars and faithless priests, of debaucheries and wars, of hatred among the peoples, of despair and tears and terror, of mindless rage and cruelty, of exploitation and slavery, of imprecations on the weak and the glorification of the strong. Surely the world he had known as a youth had not been so wicked! Surely it had not been so depraved and heartless! It was as if the Messias had never been born, and that the legions of hell now ruled the earth.

  Surely, he said to himself, when this age passes there will be peace and kindness among men. The present would pass like a direful dream, and future ages would bask in the sun of the Messias. For that, he worked and hoped and prayed. “And there shall be war no more.” Nor would there be enmity and malice and lust and fury and hatred. All would pass, and men would rejoice in the new and celestial dispensation.

  Chapter 50

  “THE great renegade has cursed us again with his presence,” said the Jews of the city.

  “The man who persecuted and imprisoned us has returned,” said the Nazarenes.

  “The troublemaker,” said the priests in the Temple, “is amongst us again, and what will he plot now, that Zealot?”

  “He admonished and repudiated us,” said the young Zealots and the Essenes, “though once he pretended to love us, so say our fathers. Has he returned to massacre us?”

  Even the Roman procurator, Felix, spending the pleasant springtime season in Caesarea by the sea, heard of Saul of Tarshish, whom he called Paul of Tarsus. The news was brought to him by old soldiers who remembered Saul, and by many of the truckling priesthood. “He caused grave dissension in Jerusalem and throughout Judea,” said the soldiers, “and his people hated him and reviled him, a Jew, himself.” “It is he who has aroused the Nazarenes, or Christians, throughout Asia Minor and Europe, itself, against the rule of Rome,” said the priests. “He has caused riots and upheavals and blasphemies wherever he has trod. It is whispered that he is a member of the Zealots and the Essenes, who live but to destroy.”

  “If all detest him,” said Felix indolently, “why has someone not murdered him before this?” He thought the situation amusing, and dismissed Saul from his mind.

  In the meantime, Saul walked the streets of his city, wherein he had not walked for many years. He lingered in the walled space where he had first seen the Messias with His Mother, and he sat on the bench where he had sat and gazed at the empty bench opposite him. He wandered in the marketplace where he had heard his name called in that thunderous, masculine voice, “Saul! Saul of Tarshish!” He entered the Temple at an hour when it was not very crowded and stood on the very spot where he had felt the Presence of the Messias. He left the city for the wilderness where the youthful Zealots had been executed, and where Christ Jesus had comforted them, and they had known Him though others had not. He stood on the crossroads where he had heard the Messias address the Scribes and the Pharisees and the common people. He walked on the way the Messias had walked, with His cross, to the place of His shameful murder. He visited the tomb which Joseph of Arimathaea had given for the Messias’ body, and from which He had risen. He went to the mount where the Messias had ascended to Heaven, and to the cave where His child—Mother had given Him birth.

  And he marveled, with a marveling as new as if he had just heard it, that God had actually been present on these sacred spots, had deigned to be born as a Man, with all man’s humiliations and animal functions of the body, with all humanity’s common pains and griefs and hungers and yearnings. Saul touched the earth the sandals of Christ had touched, and said to himself, “Surely this is a holy place.” Man, himself, had become holy through the Holiness of his Redeemer, though he merited nothing by his own efforts. Human life was holy because One had taken on the flesh of mankind, had redeemed man from sin and death. Sometimes, in contemplation at these places Saul would be seized by a rapture which held him immobile and trembling for moments at a time, and people passing would stop to stare at his illuminated face and wild fixed eyes, and would smirk at the sight of this workingman with his long tunic the color of the red earth, and his leonine white mane, and his strange appearance. But Saul, consumed by love and the passionate desire to see the Messias again, could only think, in the rapture: “Oh, surely men will never forget that He lived and walked in Israel and died here, and will forever hold this little land sacred and inviolate!”

  And there were occasions when he felt no rapture and no hope, for all about him was confusion compounded by confusion, where men should be brothers in joy and delight and not mortal enemies. Sometimes it seemed to him that Israel was a cup from which poured violence, bewilderment and murder among brethren, and surely, he would say to himself, this was the greatest of all blasphemies, for Israel was holy beyond all other holinesses, and her people prophets. That there should be contentions, rivalries, disputes, hatreds, rebellions and betrayals in this holy land was an affront to God, Who had so blessed her through the ages and had protected her, and had given her His only Begotten Son. “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my eye be blinded and my right hand be withered!” Saul repeated from the prophets, and his heart would swell to bursting and his eyes would run with tears.

  It was growing more and more incredible to him that the new Church could be rent by doctrinal disputes, narrow little interpretations, self-glorification, anger, repudiation, dissent and quarrelings which led to actual violence, for the Way was so plain and simple. But then, he would also think, we are only men, if redeemed, and we carry into the Holy of Holies our imperfections and our vices and our egotism, alas. Often we will not surrender our souls and our lives to Him, to Whom they belong, because to do so would rob us of the delicious sins we love so much.

  His soul wept for his beloved people and his beloved land, the seat of prophets and heroes, the halo of revelation, the holy mountains, the sacred earth, the land above all lands which had been so blessed, and he remembered that the Messias had wept also and for the same country.

  I have been commanded to return here, he thought, yet I do not know why, for none will listen to me, either Jew or Christian, and I am accursed of both. I linger, waiting. In the meantime he played with Sephorah’s grandchildren and walked in her gardens, and meditated impatiently, and sorrowed.

  Then one Sabbath eve, he was urgently moved to go to the Temple. He arrayed himself in his meager finery, his heart shaking, and put on his best plain sandals and his prayer shawl and his phylacteries and curled his earlocks. He came upon Sephorah sitting in the atrium with two of her grandchildren, and when she looked at him it seemed to her that he had a grave and unearthly aspect, and she rose dumbly and stared into his eyes. He took her in his arms and kissed her forehead, and suddenly she clung to him and still could not speak. But she felt his sorrow, deep and speechless. He put her from him and left the house with his head bent, for he knew that never again would he see his sister.

  “Saul! Saul!” she cried after him, regaining her voice, and she ran to the portico. But he was far down the street and did not answer her. The red sunset had inflamed the mountains, the streets and the skies over the city, and it was as if a conflagration was devouring them all. Sephorah could not even weep. She put her hands to her mouth and she watched until her brother disappeared, then she leaned against a column and prayed and now her tears came. She began to shudder. She saw that the dull red shadows from the sky cast black shadows on the earth, and she remembered the prophecies that the Temple would be destroyed and Israel rendered desolate, and it was all mingled, in her quaking mind, with the image of her brother
and the prophets, and woe filled her heart and it appeared to her that the whole world was burning.

  If the Christian elders and deacons had been wary of Saul, and had consulted with him only briefly on a number of occasions, at night, and stealthily, and if the Jews had fearfully avoided him both as a “heretic” and an alleged and violent Zealot who would bring fresh trouble on Israel, and if they had all hoped that his presence would not be known to the Romans, they had reason for dismay, thousands praying that he would depart and leave them in peace. The Roman garrisons and officers were well aware of his presence, and spies, encouraged by the High Priest, Ananias ben Nebedaeus, knew each step he took and with whom he conversed. The High Priest was determined that Saul cause no more upheavals in Israel. He felt a particular hatred for this aging Pharisee, a personal hatred, for he had learned of Saul’s contempt for the decadent High Priesthood and his denunciations of it in many cities. The Sanhedrin knew of his presence. If Saul sometimes had heard shufflings in the night, and had uneasily felt the eye of an enemy upon him during the day, and had seen shadows cast, he had attributed it to his imagination.

  The priests knew that Saul, the pious Jew, would not long refrain from visiting the Temple, and they knew that he had a way of addressing the worshipers in synagogues, as was permitted by the Law. So, they kept a zealous watch on him, and on the night he dressed and began to walk to the Temple all were alerted, and in particular the Roman garrison which had been warned that Saul was dangerous to Rome. As he walked unhurriedly in the scarlet twilight he saw that others began to walk beside him too, in the crowded streets, men in cloaks and hoods, but he thought no evil. They were only Jews bent on his own mission, to worship at sundown, and on the Sabbath. That his death had been determined upon by the High Priesthood would have seemed the wildest absurdity, had it been communicated to him. He hated no man, except liars and hypocrites and evil-doers, and even for them he prayed each night with tears and hopes, that their hearts would be changed and their souls redeemed.