Fifth Gospel: A Novel (Rosicrucian Quartet) Paperback

by Adriana Koulias

  Body, soul and spirit; male and female; in one human being!

  His heart soared with enthusiasm! How simple and graceful! How elegant it was! He sat forward, stumbling over his words, asking in an excited fashion if Jesus would remain in his academy, telling him of the many things they could explore together, and the possibility of his advancement. Forgetting he was a rabbi, he laughed with joy and let all his feelings come out. But when he was finished he noticed that Jesus had said nothing, and that his head was bent downwards. He admonished himself then, for being too hasty, too forward, too brash and forceful, and wondered if he had trampled on the sapling in search of the water jug.

  ‘I thank you,’ Jesus said, raising his head again, ‘but I will not stay, I must leave here and go in search of knowledge.’

  Gamaliel’s heart sank. Perhaps he had not known how much he loved his friend until that very moment. ‘Leave here? But Jesus, the Sanhedrin is the greatest centre of knowledge in the world!’

  ‘That may be…but it does not expound the knowledge I seek.’

  ‘What knowledge are you after?’

  ‘Forgive me, master Gamaliel,’ he said, looking at him. ‘but you have always told me to be frank with you and so I will be frank. I will tell you that your logic and codes are fine and beautiful, your laws and regulations shimmer and glitter, and yet…they die away to nothing in my ears. They die away because behind them there is no experience. They are,’ he searched for the words a moment, ‘only shadows of the truth…forgeries.’

  Gamaliel was slighted – forgeries! He felt the blood rise to his face. ‘Listen to me, Jesus! Do not mock the tradition of Israel, which was given to us so that we, the chosen people, might prepare for the Messiah!’

  ‘I am not mocking it,’ Jesus said. ‘I am only telling you the truth as I know it.’ His coloured eyes held Gamaliel’s as he spoke, ‘Tell me, what hinders the coming of the Messiah?’

  Gamaliel was flustered by this directness and looked away. ‘You know as well as I that there must first come repentance and good works…’

  ‘Repentance and good works?’ Jesus asked with raised brows while beneath them those tranquil eyes were a-fire. He stood and walked to the porches. ‘Is that what Elijah tells?’

  Gamaliel was annoyed that his friend was so querulous a mood, and said harshly, ‘No…Elijah…tells that He will come when His voice is heard!’

  Jesus began to pace the terrace, his body full of nervous activity. ‘Yes! He will come when his voice is heard...but where are the ears that can hear it over the rabbis quoting their quotes?’ he paused in his pacing to give Gamaliel a sideways glance, ‘Your teachings have dulled your ears and have fashioned eyes that are trained only on kings, and priests arrayed in resplendent robes, only on those who sit on thrones, or in the cool shades of the Temple courts. How will your ears hear Him and your eyes recognise Him if He comes among the poor and the lowly, or if He is seen speaking to gentiles and idol worshippers?’

  Gamaliel watched him a moment before making his voice cool and laconic, ‘When He comes to us we will know Him because we have the words of the prophets in our ears; those who tell us how to recognise Him!’

  Jesus took this into consideration. ‘Then you will not know him in your heart, is that what you say? You will only know him if he fits the image you have made of him in your mind?’

  Gamaliel, confounded, replied, ‘It is in the way of young men that they desire to know everything for themselves, in their hearts. But you must be satisfied with what those who came before you have left you, those who could still hear the voice of God. You will travel the world and you will not find a man who can teach you to be a prophet.’

  Jesus stopped his pacing to look at the sky. ‘For that I need no teacher…’ he said, ‘what I need is someone who can help me understand what I already see and hear!’

  Gamaliel raised his brow. ‘What did you say? Are you telling me that you can hear the voice of God? That you think you are a prophet?’

  Jesus closed his eyes, and let the meagre sun wash over his face a moment. ‘He speaks to me, and there are times I near understand it…times when I think I know what He says…’

  ‘What does he say?’ Gamaliel was breathless for his answer.

  Jesus looked at him. ‘He tells me…that we have forgotten our Fathers in the heavens.’

  Gamaliel took this in. He searched in his repertoire of answers for something that would make him seem wise and helpful but found nothing. After a moment, he settled for this,

  ‘If what you say is true, you should stay! You can teach others to hear the voice…in time, your teaching itself will make you wise, wiser than me, wiser even than my grandfather before me, for you will teach from experience!’

  Jesus shook his head, wincing as if Gamaliel’s words were hurtful. ‘No! Stop! Don’t you see? I will be no greater and no wiser! I will become a dead man like you are becoming! Dead…’ He pointed to the Hall of Polished Stones, ‘like those men in the Sanhedrin who use cheap tricks and enchantments, incense, sacrifice and song to deceive the people and themselves!’

  He reined in his temper then, and his face grew soft. The man who spoke now was so different that even his face appeared to have lost its dark shadows. ‘Forgive me master,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean to insult you. Just the opposite, I am grateful to you for helping me to understand that mine is a different destiny and that I must find a place where I can live it.’

  Gamaliel was slighted and wounded…perhaps also a little envious. ‘I have listened to you throw in my face everything that I hold dear, everything that sustains our people!’ he said, quietly, angrily. ‘I hope your soul is not falling into heresy, for if you speak like this to others there is no telling what the priests will do. They can unmake a man with just one word!’

  Jesus considered this and blinked and nodded, as if he were fixing these words to the nub of his heart. ‘The priests may unmake me and perhaps they will, that is true, but they can never unmake the truth. That, rabbi, is imperishable!’

  He turned to go, and Gamaliel stood, for he realised, despite his anger and hurt that he was losing his friend. ‘Our paths may be different ones,’ he called after him, ‘I grant you that, Jesus! But must our friendship be over? I would like it to be renewed one day…if by then you still love your teacher.’

  Jesus paused, and his voice was gentle over his shoulder when he said, ‘I do love you, rabbi, but I love truth more.’

  With that he was gone, leaving the young rabbi looking after him, dazzled and puzzled, full of wonder and woe and confusion, as if he had seen the sun at midnight, or the stars poking out of a midday sky. What should he think of such strange and shocking words, spoken so mightily by the young Jesus of Nazareth? If they were true then all his life, which had so far come to pass, and even that which was yet to come, had been, and would be, founded on an untruth, on a falsehood. Such a thought could have made Gamaliel sink to his knees had the marble floor not been taken from under him!

  He consoled himself, with the thought that Jesus might be of the lineage of David and a fine student, but in the final analysis, he was only a youth full of notions. He was not a teacher or a prophet – he was not a priest or a king. Still, such words, such words…

  This uneasiness lingered in Gamaliel’s heart for many years before he would understand it. In that far off time he would be standing upon the same spot, but he would not be puzzling over the student full of despair who was walking away into the spring afternoon, he would be marvelling in recognition of a man who was not a student, or a teacher, not a prophet, a king or a priest, but the hope of all Jews and the consolation of all Israel.

  12

  SALOME

  The house was clean swept, the bread was made, the lamps were filled and burning, the bowls were laid out for the modest repast that simmered aromatically in the hearth and Salome, having a rare moment to herself, went out of the house to watch the sun sink into its bed.

  From behind her ca
me the comforting sounds of the young men washing for the evening meal, the bustling of Mariam and her daughters, and Mariam’s sister-in law, the wife of Joseph’s brother, Cleophas. But for now, Salome was alone with the long view of the hills and dales of Galilee and the stars poking out of the sky, speaking their silent language, one to the other. And she was so taken by this celestial spectacle of twilight that she did not hear Jesus come to the low stonewall and sit beside her.

  So well known to her was the sound of his voice that Salome did not flinch or jump or feel startled when he said, ‘You are gazing at the kingdom of heaven, Salome. Do you feel it descending into your heart?’

  Salome’s name meant peace and it was peace she felt when she looked to her favourite – the reason why she had followed her beloved Mary, who was now dead, to Nazareth those many years before. She put a hand to his face and he did not mind it for she had long been his nurse and that hand, once so malformed, had nurtured him through illness and health and raised him through the various stages of his youth.

  She narrowed her eyes to look at him and made her voice practical, ‘You like to see into the hearts of others, Jesus, which is a fine gift…but you hold your own thoughts close to you…so that even I cannot see them.’

  He acknowledged this with a nod of the head. ‘Yes and it is a strange thing to me also, Salome. Strange and yet familiar! When I am working with my father and my hands are busy,’ he looked at them, ‘I feel like I am one man: I think I know who that man is, this son of a carpenter…but when I am with myself, when I gaze at my thoughts, I find that I am a different man. I find myself full of memories of things that I have not seen or heard or felt! I am a stranger…even to myself.’

  Salome had a gift of second sight which ran in all the women of her family, and so years ago, after the death of Yeshua, she had seen the reason for the change in him, which even Jesus himself did not seem to understand. She had waited for him to find a quiet space in which to speak with her.

  ‘You are full of restlessness Jesus, I sense it, and I also sense that you will soon leave because of it…the question is, where will you go?’

  Jesus looked at her with surprise. ‘Well…you have surely read my mind! As you know, this village is small and has never supported us. And father is too unwell to travel in search of work…so I am of the mind to go alone this year.’

  Salome passed a hand over her face. ‘You see? I had guessed it! Promise me you won’t venture outside the land, where my forefathers once dwelt…you know that in those places you will find only darkness. Even the dust under your feet will be unclean on your return and all will think you defiled. The dirt of those places is like death and putrid things to a Jew. Will you seek to bring death home, so that men will have no traffic with you?’ She looked at him, to make sure he had taken it in and he matched her gaze with his own steady eyes.

  ‘How should I concern myself with men whose view of the world is narrowed?’

  This was his other self, the one full of defiance!

  ‘What do you hope to find in that wider world beyond your homeland?’

  ‘A teaching that is true, that can help me to understand why everything is falling into ruin. This, I shall not find here in Nazareth.’

  ‘You know,’ Salome said, ‘my mother once told me a story about a mule who wandered the world looking for the source of a wonderful perfume. One day the poor thing realised that the perfume came from a twig of jasmine caught behind its ear.’

  ‘When did the mule realise it?’

  ‘Not until the jasmine was already dead and withered, and had fallen to the ground.’

  Jesus nodded. ‘And the meaning of the story is that I will go in search of something I already have, something right behind my ear, is that it?’

  ‘That is it, for certain,’ she said.

  ‘Even so…I must go,’ he told her cheerily. ‘I am a stubborn as a mule!’

  She paused a moment, listening to the ring left behind by his voice. ‘Yes…yes,’ she confirmed it, ‘so you are…I know…and that is what I told my mother, and if I hadn’t wandered the world I wouldn’t be here with you this night. You see…all is as it should be.’ She looked at him. ‘Have you told your stepmother?’

  He gave her a sideways glance. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ she chided. ‘You mustn’t be unkind to her. Her life has been a puzzle. Take a moment to think on it. First she loses a husband, then she loses her son, not long after that her other son moves into the Nazarite order to live a solitary life. Of the two youngest children, one has fallen into the lap of the zealots and the other is too young to help her. All of them have disdained their stepfather’s trade as something beneath them. Since your father’s illness, you have been her handhold in the world…how must she lose you too?’

  ‘I do not see how I am her handhold,’ he said.

  ‘Well, let me tell you that over the years, in all that time you were coming and going from Jerusalem, I observed her sadness each time you left.’

  He looked at her. ‘She never seemed full of joy each time I returned. I appear to cause her pain no matter what I do, if I go, or if I stay…it is all the same,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘That is because she is troubled, Jesus. The love that grows in her heart for you, does not sit well with the memory of her dead son, and so she stows it away like a seed awaiting its season…’

  Jesus was long quiet, until it seemed his breath near stopped. ‘Then I shall let it germinate while I am searching for wisdom,’ he said.

  ‘For how long will you search?’

  ‘As long as it takes to find it, or else to realise there is none to be found. In the meantime, perhaps her heart will mend if she sees me less.’

  Salome held back her tears for she remembered how she had missed him herself when he when he was away at the Temple. ‘And mine will break…for I fear I will not live to see you come over that rise again, my heart’s child!’

  He laughed in the purpling light. This was Jesus now, the one who could laugh.

  ‘But you will Salome! You will see many things yet, even before others see them, you will see them!’

  She nodded her head with resignation. ‘Yes, yes…I suppose you are right…in my family women live long years…I will be alive to see many things…that is what I am afraid of,’ she said to him, and fell to watching the sky.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said to her, ‘Things will be what they will be, despite your worry.’

  She smiled to herself. ‘Yes I know they will and still, it does not prevent me from worry.’

  He put an arm around her shoulders and she felt his warmth. And thus they remained together, united in fellowship until noises reached them from the house and the spell was broken.

  13

  SUN HERO

  Gaius Cassius was blindfolded and cold, holding a dagger in his mouth. In the stillness, he sensed the movement of his blood, the intake of his breath and the turning of his heart. He did not know where he was or how long he had been here, only that his stomach gnawed with hunger and the dagger was making cuts on his lips and tongue.

  He told himself,

  Harness your mind! Soon you will rise not Gaius Cassius the Roman, but Gaius Cassius the Sun Hero, a representative of Mithras. You will taste honey on your tongue and feel the warmth of the sun on your shoulders and you will be given to eat of the bread and given to drink of the blood.

  First, however, he had to pass the test.

  This was the sixth degree. Men had died in the attempt.

  ‘Roman!’ The voice rang like a bell, coming from all directions. ‘Ascend the ladder!’

  He knew there were seven rungs. Each represented a stage achieved. In years past, he had climbed to five rungs, now he must climb them again, and add a further rung.

  He climbed the first and second rungs. He had swum across a fast moving river for the first and had jumped blindfolded over a burning fire for the second. For the third, he had climbed a steep mountai
n and had become a member of the sacred militia of the Invisible God Mithras.

  He put a foot now, tentatively, on the fourth, and it was not where it should be. His head spun and he felt the pull of the abyss below. He slowed down his breath for that was how he had achieved the fourth degree, by harnessing the air in his lungs. He pulled himself up to the fifth rung, by bringing rhythm into his blood and heart; this ability had once earned him the title of Roman.

  He was aware now, that he had come to the sixth rung and the trial he must undergo to achieve the sixth degree. He must recognise the bull and kill it, with the ancient weapon he carried.

  Hunger, pain, darkness, all seemed immense to him. That great yawning hole below beckoned him to fall into its waiting mouth. But death, he told himself, only frightened weak minds. Worse than death was to lose all rank and honour.

  Suspended, he heard a beast. It would be an ugly creature full of instincts and passions and it would topple him from his ladder. The beast snorted in the darkness. Slow and careful, Cassius took the dagger from his mouth and grasped the hilt of the weapon, while holding tight to the ladder. He brought it to his chest and felt the cold tip sharp against his skin. He felt his heart, beating against the steel in rhythmic strokes. The muscles of his hand and arm strained against the bones, strained to hold the knife still, strained not to let it go. His jaw clenched and unclenched. He took an in-sweep of breath and let it out and took it in again and held it, listening for the animal that would soon come. When the earth began to tremble he only had a moment. Then, as he lifted the weapon, between the upward arc and the downward thrust, a doubt tore through him.

  There is no bull! You are not holding a dagger. This is a test of your discernment; good from evil, truth from untruth…and this is an untruth!

  The world shook beneath him and disclosed a crack in the matrix of the ritual and into it he fell, into the cavity, into the abyss of his body.