Now Abd Umar himself was involved in Palestine and he was finding it as perplexing as the long-ago Meccan had indicated: when the Arabs ventured into Tabariyyah following their conquest of Damascus they had met with little armed resistance, but the leaders of three different Christian churches had come bearing complaints one against the other so that brawling had broken out with loss of life. Spies had come to the caravanserai at Tabariyyah with reports that similar conditions prevailed in both Safat and Makor, while Akka was bitterly divided over which church had the right to collect money from pilgrims arriving from Rome and the west to visit the Sea of Galilee. At Damascus, of course, the contentions between the Christian churches had been disgraceful, and as a result of these confusions, plus the desire to keep Christian pilgrims visiting their holy places—for they brought much wealth—Abd Umar had begun to make a study of the Christians and their habits, gathering what information he could from spies and the leaders of churches in captured Damascus and Tabariyyah.
In this work he was encouraged by something Muhammad had once told him: “There are only three permissible religions—Judaism, Christianity and ours—and these are acceptable because each relies upon a Book which God has personally handed down.” He pointed out that the Jews had their Old Book delivered to them through Moses, while the Christians had their New called forth by Jesus Christ, but the Arabs had the Koran, and since the latter summarized the best of the preceding two, the former were no longer essential. On one memorable day Muhammad had told his companions, “You are to follow the traditions of the Jews and Christians span by span and cubit by cubit … so closely that you will go after them even if they creep into the hole of a lizard.” Later, when there had been much discussion of this teaching, the Prophet had predicted in Abd Umar’s hearing, “You will always find that our most affectionate friends will be those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ for they like us are people of the Book.” At Tabariyyah, after Abd Umar had halted the brawling among the various sectors of the Christian church, he had asked the priests to instruct him in their faith and he was relieved to find that what Muhammad had said was true: these Christians accepted three of the Prophet’s favorite predecessors, John Baptist, Mary the Virgin and Jesus Christ. In fact, he discovered that the Christians revered Mary almost as much as the Arabs did, and this was reassuring.
At the same time, however, he discovered that the Christian church was so badly split between Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian factions—regarding points of theology which he could not untangle—that any hope of reconciliation was impossible. He suspected that because of its hateful fights Christianity would soon wither like a rootless plant exposed to sunlight in a desert wadi, and it was his job to make the last days of the religion as pleasant as possible. At Makor he was determined to accord the Christians every courtesy, hoping that they would of themselves see their error and join Islam.
Was he arrogant in these assumptions? Not especially, for in those springtime years of Arabian faith, when leaders like Abd Umar had known Muhammad personally, Islam seemed a marvel of cohesion and order; when compared to the confusions that tormented the Christian church and the inadequacy that had overtaken the Jews, it had both commitment and direction, so that Abd Umar could be excused if he believed that the future lay with his kind. For the days had not yet come when Islam was to be shattered into worse schisms than even the Christians knew, but the great separation into hostile camps was even then building. Before Abd Umar was dead the saintly Ali, cousin of the Prophet and husband of his daughter Fatima, would be slain; his sons would be hounded into near-divinities around whom would rally many of the greatest minds of Islam and much of its propulsive power, forming a breach that would never be healed.
If Abd Umar had looked closely at his own religion he could have seen these strains developing, but like most religious persons of his day he was more concerned about the divisions that rent other religions than about the strife that would soon shatter his own, so as he pressed his troops toward the forest that separated him from Makor, he cautioned himself: Under no circumstances must we become involved in the quarrels of the Christians, for they will soon fall apart and join us.
Within the vanished walls of Makor the Christians waited. They were a sorely divided lot torn into four fragments which reflected the various schisms that racked Christianity in this period. Not even the loss of Damascus to the Arabs and the consequent halt of trade had inspired the sects to unite against their common enemy. The fall of Tiberias had ended the rich pilgrim traffic to Capernaum. And now it looked as if the approach of Islam would terminate Makor’s profitable trade in relics: each year several dozen thigh bones pertaining to St. Mary Magdalene were peddled to believers who carried them home to adorn small European churches, and the loss of this income could prostrate the town. But still the Christians quarreled.
Of course, the basic argument—was Jesus man-and-God-at-the-same-time as Egyptians argued, or was He man-then-God as those of Constantinople believed?—had long been settled precisely as Father Eusebius had foreseen: each side was wrong and all good Christians now acknowledged that Christ owned two complete natures, one forever human, the other forever divine, though the Egyptians still refused to abandon their contention and on it had constructed a separatist church. But with the problem of Christ’s physical nature thus solved to most people’s satisfaction debate was moved onto a higher level, for the problem which now tormented the church was this: Was the spiritual nature of Jesus human or divine?
In the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene, built nearly three centuries before and well known in Europe for the mosaics which pilgrims visited on their way to and from the holy places, a bishop reigned, appointed by the emperor in Constantinople and obedient to the desires of that imperial ruler. He was an ineffectual man who had at first tried to bring some kind of peace to Makor, but in making this attempt he had insisted upon the orthodox opinion that Christ had two separate natures, human and completely divine; but this doctrine was not acceptable to the simple-minded people of Makor, who knew in their hearts that Christ could have had only one nature, human and divine at the same time. So the two-nature bishop in his basilica preached the ideas of Constantinople to an ever-dwindling congregation, while in the ramshackle church east of the main gate the one-nature citizens worshiped according to the popular rites of Egypt. They were sometimes threatened by the bishop, who imported imperial troops from Constantinople, and when these soldiers appeared, the one-nature people filed meekly into the basilica to promise both the bishop and the mercenaries that they would henceforth accept the orthodox contention that Christ had two natures, but as soon as the soldiers disappeared they would go roaring back to their own church, shouting:
“The body of Jesus is one,
Holy forever.
The Mother of Jesus is God-like,
Holy forever.”
When this provocative song erupted outraged Byzantines would try to murder the Egyptians, so that Makor was often splashed with blood; but the schism could not be healed, nor would it ever be. Like the great split that was about to engulf the followers of Muhammad, this one between Egypt and the west would endure forever.
In addition to the Byzantine and Egyptian sects Makor owned two additional Christian churches, one supported by Rome for the use of its pilgrims coming from Europe and another for the strange Nestorians of the east, and between these two groups there was also frequent brawling, so that in this little village one could observe a microcosm of the theological anarchy that characterized the church in Asia: the Byzantines from Constantinople, the Romans, the Egyptian separatists and the Nestorians.
It was into this cauldron that one of the noblest emperors of Byzantium had recently tossed an attractive new theology. Heraclius was soldier, scholar and saint, and in the first of these capacities had recently defeated the Persian Chosroes to win back the True Cross, which had originally been discovered three centuries before by Queen Helena, and this accomplishment had made him the world’s p
remier Christian. So in his second character he studied the dissensions that threatened his church and was now ready as a saintly man to suggest an ingenious compromise acceptable to Byzantine, Roman, Egyptian and Nestorian alike, if only they approached his proposal with good faith. In those fateful years when the Arabs were stealing Damascus and half his empire Heraclius was busy developing his grand compromise, which reached Makor in this provisional form:
Eager to end the strife that mars our church, we have decided that there shall be no more argument as to whether the nature of Jesus Christ was one or two. The matter is unimportant and we hereby decree that regardless of how a man believes, he is welcome in our church. Forgetting the nature of Christ’s body, we hereby announce that He had but one will, which faultlessly represented the will of God. This is now the belief of all true Christians, for we have spoken.
The emperor’s edict was read at dawn one summer’s morning, and by nightfall three men were dead in the ecclesiastical rioting. In succeeding days the bishop wailed in his basilica, “There are two natures in Christ and one will. That is the law.” But the stubborn Egyptians countered, “There is one nature and two wills,” so that the emperor’s gesture, intended to bring conciliation, had brought only a new schism to agitate the community.
And so as Muslim troops approached from the east on that mighty conquest which would terminate the power of Byzantium in the Galilee, the citizens of that contentious area continued their bitter arguments over the nature of Christ, not realizing that they were engaged in an extension of the same argument that had agitated Makor in the days when the young Jew Menahem ben Yohanan joined the new church as Mark, and the debate was no more trivial now than it had been then: it was an effort to build a base from which Christianity could conquer the world. If one considered Jesus to be all man, His divinity was rendered meaningless, while the miracle of Mary as the Mother of God vanished; on the other hand, if one argued that He was all God, the significance of human redemption was diminished and the crucifixion could be interpreted merely as a device adopted by God to prove a point: no human suffering or agony need be involved. However, if a concept of Jesus could be evolved whereby His substance, His nature and His will could all be accepted as both divine and human, then Christianity would have acquired a subtle unifying principle upon which enormous structures of faith and philosophies of life could be built. It was in this historic battle over the meaning of Christ that the Christians of Makor were engaged, but the adroit proposal of Emperor Heraclius helped little, for within a few weeks of its reception pickets came from Tabariyyah with news that the Arabs were planning to capture Makor, and Ptolemais as well.
Now, as Abd Umar, the servant of Muhammad, led his squadron away from open fields and into the forests of the Galilee, he might be somewhat confused by the conflicting claims of Christians; but he was totally bewildered by the Jews, for he would never be able to understand why they had failed to accept Muhammad, and he approached this problem with love, for in any essential meaning of the word he could have considered himself a Jew.
As a half-Negro slave he had for a time been the property of one Umar, hence his name Slave-of-Umar, but that man had disappeared and he had passed into the hands of a robust, red-headed Jew named Ben Hadad, whose ancestors had wandered down from Palestine during those turbulent years when General Vespasian of Rome was crushing the rebellious Jews. Ben Hadad’s people had arrived in a caravan from the Galilee and had found a pleasing welcome in Arabia among the sand dunes and the white-walled cities. The Jews had lived alone, obedient to the Torah, and had gradually established themselves as traders, especially in Ben Hadad’s city of Yathrib, to be known in history as Medina.
Ben Hadad was a large, jovial merchant whose caravans had prospered and who had acquired, during a trip to Damascus, a portion of the Talmud brought there from Babylonia, and his possession of these sayings of the Jewish fathers had made him a kind of spiritual leader of his people; but he fell into no traditional category of rabbi, sage or teacher. He was an easygoing man who loved the hurly-burly of trade and who sent his adopted son, Abd Umar, into the desert with a caravan by himself at the age of eleven.
“Take care of the camels and God will take care of you,” Ben Hadad had said to the dark boy. “If a man asks for fifteen pieces, give him sixteen … if you expect to do business with him again.” Where the other Jews of Medina refused to engage in any work on Shabbat, Ben Hadad argued, “If my camels are half a league from home at Friday sunset, God Himself wants to see them properly bedded down.” He also taught Abd Umar, “If you abide for three days in the desert tending a sick camel, God will somehow repay you.” He was a man of forty-eight who had four wives and numerous children, but of them all he loved Abd Umar best, for the slave was quick and had the same love of good living as Ben Hadad. “When a young man goes to Damascus and fails to see the girls from Persia, he might just as well have stayed at home with the women packing dates.”
Better than most Arabs, Abd Umar appreciated how much of the Koran had come to Muhammad through the teachings of Jewish sages, and he approved when the Prophet, hoping to bind the old and the new into one force, made generous efforts to win the Jews to his side. Muhammad had nominated Jerusalem, the city from which he had ascended to heaven, as the locality toward which his followers must turn when they prayed; he had reassured his Jewish neighbors repeatedly that he like them was descended from Abraham—through Ishmael in his case; and he had incorporated into his religion all matters which the Jews held most precious: the concept of one God, the visions of Moses, the rectitude of Joseph, the glory of Saul and David and Solomon, and the practical wisdom of Job. To any intelligent mind the religion of Muhammad must be the logical next step in the growth of Judaism, and the Prophet waited for the Jews to join him. It was symbolic, perhaps, that when he fled from Mecca to Medina, it was the hospitable Jew Ben Hadad who first welcomed him coming through the Medina gate, and one of the first gestures Muhammad made in his new home was to invite Ben Hadad’s people to join him.
Why had the Jews refused? Why? Abd Umar often wondered, for he could recall the derisive manner in which his father, Ben Hadad, had laughed when Muhammad suggested that he lay aside the Old Book and accept the Koran. When pressed, Ben Hadad said, “I agree with you that there is only one God, but prophecy has ceased.” Argument had followed, and Muhammad was as persuasive a logician as any who had ever crossed Arabia, but the Jew had repulsed him with his rocklike faith: “The Torah is all we need.”
Abd Umar could recall the morning on which he said good-bye to Ben Hadad for the last time: he was twenty years old and about to start his caravan on a trip to Damascus when Muhammad and some followers launched a discussion under a nearby tree, and as he heard the inspired message that came from the Prophet’s lips he delayed the departure of his camels and listened, realizing for the first time that he—the dark slave of a Jew—was being summoned to a lifelong mission. He lingered far beyond the prudent time for starting, hearing with awe the revelations of the man from Mecca:
“When the sun is overthrown,
And when the stars fall,
And when the hills are moved,
And when the camels big with young
Are left by the wayside,
And when the wild beasts are herded together,
And when the seas rise,
And when souls are reunited,
And when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked
For what sin she was slain,
And when the pages are laid open
And when the sky is torn away,
And when hell is lighted,
And when Paradise comes near,
Then every soul will know what it has done!”
At the conclusion of this apocalyptic vision he had prostrated himself before the seer, crying, “I am your servant.”
“Not mine, but God’s,” the Prophet had replied, and at that moment Abd Umar entered into the covenant which had subsequently guided his l
ife, transforming him from a slave into a captain of the faithful.
In his new-found exaltation he had gone to Ben Hadad, saying, “Father, I’ve surrendered to the Prophet.”
At first the red-haired Jew had scowled, but then had said generously, “I hope you find comfort.”
“Will you join me?”
“No, there’s one God and for Jews He speaks through the Torah.”
The conviction of Ben Hadad’s reply caught his son off guard, but finally the slave understood. “You’re a leader, so you have to remain a Jew. But the others …”
“Will they join Muhammad?” The merchant laughed. “Son, we’re Jews because we believe certain things. None of the others will join.”
The Jew’s reply disturbed Abd Umar and he felt obliged to say, “Then this may be the last time I’ll take your caravan to Damascus.”
“Son,” Ben Hadad replied with humor, “I brought you up to be a man of God. In Damascus the Christians are men of God, too. So is Muhammad. We’ll all work together somehow.”
Yet Abd Umar’s prediction was correct. That was the last trip he would make to Damascus for the Jew, but how could one explain, even to himself, the reasons that had ended their relationship? In spite of every overture made by Muhammad, the Jews of Medina had remained obdurate. In Abd Umar’s absence they had even joined an enemy in war against Muhammad. They had ridiculed his Koran publicly and had cooperated with pagans in attempts to halt his acceptance, so on one dreadful day which the new religion would long try to forget, the eight hundred Jewish men of Medina were marched into the market place, led to an open trench and beheaded one by one so that their skulls and torsos pitched into the waiting grave. At the moment of death each Jew was offered his life if he was willing to answer one question correctly.
The Source: A Novel Page 74
