Luke was already inside the room before he realized its use. Sickened by what he saw, he stopped short at the door, for somehow he had managed to stumble into the room below the walls where the dead were dragged from the arena to await the carts which hauled them away. The slashed body of the retiarius was there, and the gladiator upon whom the crowd had turned thumbs down, the traditional signal by which one not favored by them was condemned to death. The mangled bodies of the people who had been thrown to the lions were piled to one side, torn almost beyond recognition. He was turning away when he heard a low whispered word, “Christos.”
Startled, Luke bent over the mangled bodies. Somewhere in the pile there must be life, and as a physician he could not leave until he was sure that person was beyond help. Then he saw the lips of the young man who had fought the lions move slightly and knelt beside him to feel the pulse. It beat faintly under his fingers, and as he knelt there he saw the dying man’s lips move again. “Lord . . . lay not”—he could barely hear the whispered words— “this sin to . . .” Then the pulse under Luke’s fingers faded away, and he saw the dying man’s lips go slack.
Luke got to his feet slowly and thoughtfully. He had heard those words before, from the lips of Stephen as he lay dying outside the walls of Jerusalem. Was it purely coincidence that he should hear them again deep beneath the theater of Antioch, from the lips of a man who had been torn to death by lions because he refused to disavow the Galilean in whom he had trusted? Or was it another of those strange coincidences which seemed to occur in his life?
“What do you do here, my son?” a deep voice asked behind him. Startled, Luke turned quickly to face the newcomer. A big man stood in the door. His robe was coarse and cheap, and his massive head was crowned with red hair and a red beard, while a calm majesty shone from his eyes.
“I—I was seeking the way out and stumbled into this room,” Luke explained. “I am a physician and stopped to see if all were beyond help.”
The big man came into the room and stood looking down at the group of bodies, his eyes warm with compassion. “I came to comfort the dying,” he said, “but I see that I am too late.” And then, as if it were an afterthought, he said, “My name is Barnabas.”
The name meant nothing to Luke, but there was something familiar about the other, something strangely reminiscent of another man whose size had been distinctive, a man named Simon Peter. Then he realized what it was. Barnabas had the same look, the same calm majesty which Peter possessed.
“Cletus was my friend,” Barnabas said, kneeling to close the dead man’s eyelids with gentle fingers. “I thought I heard his voice as I came into the room.”
“He was praying,” Luke explained, “‘Lord . . . lay not this sin to . . .’ He died with the sentence uncompleted, but I think the rest of it would have been ‘their charge.’”
Barnabas looked up at him, his eyes bright with interest. “How do you know that? Did you ever hear those words before?”
“Yes. From the lips of a man named Stephen outside Jerusalem.”
Barnabas got slowly to his feet, but his eyes never left Luke’s face. “What is your name, my son?” he asked.
“I am called Luke, a physician.”
The red-haired man smiled. “I know of you from Simon Peter, Luke,” he said. “Wait a moment. I must pray for our friends.” He raised his eyes, as if he were looking to someone above him, and when he spoke his voice had the same note of assurance that Luke had heard in Saul’s voice when he had prayed for Apollonius. “Lord, we commend to Your tender mercy the souls of these our brothers and sisters who have died in Your service, trusting in the promise of eternal life which You have made to all who believe and trust in You. Amen.”
Barnabas turned to Luke. “You had better go,” he said. “That passage there will take you to the street; it is the one used by the death carts. I will return through the dressing rooms of the gladiators who are my friends.”
“But why—?” Luke would have liked to stop and talk to Barnabas about Simon Peter.
“Petronius is persecuting those who follow Jesus,” Barnabas interrupted. “It is better if you are not seen with me.” Then he smiled. “Be patient, Luke; the plans of God mature slowly. We will speak another time of Simon Peter and the purpose of God which has brought us together here this day.” Then he was gone.
By following the directions of Barnabas, Luke found his way safely out of the stadium. But as he walked home through the streets he was troubled by a strange feeling that he should have followed the red-haired man. He had felt that same desire once before, he remembered, when he had watched Saul of Tarsus disappear into the desert from a hilltop beyond Damascus. And with it now went a strange conviction that some force beyond his knowledge had taken control of him, the same force, perhaps, which had gently pushed him aside as he had knelt beside Apollonius with Saul and the others in the home of Ananias at Tarsus.
Book Three: The Christians
And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
(Acts 11:26)
I
Theophilus returned from Tarsus after a month. Not only had he given his blessing to the marriage of Apollonius and Mariamne, but he had stayed for the ceremony as well. He brought other news, too, particularly about the spread of the Nazarene faith in Tarsus and Cilicia and the decision of Junius Gallio to recommend that all provincial governors cease, for the time being at least, persecuting the followers of Jesus.
Luke continued to be busy with his medical practice. Largely confined to the richer people of the city, it earned a great deal of money for him but did nothing to stimulate his zeal, since his work consisted largely of treating the effects of overeating, drinking, and debauchery, or administering potions to relieve the headaches of women whose major activity for a day was dressing for the evening banquet. More and more Luke had been troubled by the same sense of dissatisfaction and depression which had driven him with Probus to the taurobolium and afterward to the games, in a vain search for something which would ease his mind and give him some purpose. But he had found none, and now, as he stood in his room on the second floor of the palace of Theophilus and watched the lights go on in the city this spring evening, he wondered if he would ever again feel the thrill of searching for knowledge and using his skill to save lives instead of pleasing those who sought his advice.
A knock on the door broke into his thoughts. When he opened it, the nomenclator, a slave who announced guests, informed him that the apothecary, Probus Maximus, waited to see him downstairs. Luke hurried across the atrium to embrace his old friend. “I thought you had forgotten me, Probus,” he said happily. “We see so little of each other these days.”
“So long as you prescribe well and I compound the proper medicines, our paths do not cross very often,” Probus admitted, smiling.
“I am glad they crossed tonight,” Luke said. “What brings you here?”
“A friend of yours needs medical help.”
“A friend? Who?”
“He was once called Saul of Tarsus, but lately he has adopted the Latin name Paul.”
“Saul of Tarsus!” Luke exclaimed. “What is he doing in Antioch?”
“He has been teaching here for several months,” Probus explained, “with Barnabas and some others. I think you know Barnabas.”
“Yes. I met him after the games. But how do you come to know these people, Probus? And why were you sent for me?”
“I thought I told you I have been operating a small apothecary shop on the Street of the River for several months,” Probus said, “dispensing medicines and treating disease as best I can. There are few physicians in the slums, you know.”
“Have you been giving your services to the poor?”
Probus grinned. “Let us say rather that I have been robbing the rich, treating bald heads, to buy medicines for those who cannot afford them.”
�
��You are a fraud, Probus,” Luke said, laughing. “Where is your philosophy of living only for today?”
The apothecary looked pained. “My prayer had always been, ‘Give me that which I deserve.’ Naturally, since I give to the poor, I deserve more from the rich. If you were more familiar with mathematics, my boy,” he added with an impish grin, “you would understand that such things work out according to the law of inverse proportions as propounded by the Pythagoreans.”
“This is no time for one of your lectures,” Luke said, smiling. “I will get my medicine case and we will visit my friend Saul—or Paul, as you say he prefers to be called now.”
Across the bridge from the insula they turned westward along the winding street that followed the south bank of the Orontes, just beneath the older wall of the city. The houses, many of them mere hovels, were packed closely together, and the street teemed with poorly dressed and often emaciated people. The elegant and cynical Probus Maximus seemed more than ever out of place here, and finally Luke’s curiosity led him to ask, “How did you get interested in the people below the river, Probus?”
“As a philosopher I am interested in men, Luke, wherever they be, and were I to limit my observations to the rich who come to my shop across the river, I must shortly conclude that man is no better than the animals, who also gorge themselves on meat and crawl away to sleep it off, although they are considerably more sensible in matters of drink and animal pleasures. Down here I see man facing the elemental forces of hunger and sickness, and even of nature when earthquakes shake the city, as they so often do.”
Luke nodded. “I have thought the same things,” he admitted.
“Here on the Street of the River,” Probus continued, “a philosopher can find some hope for the human race. Look yonder!” He pointed to where a blacksmith could be seen through the open front of his shop, plying the treadle that pumped his bellows and kept the coals glowing in his forge. “There is the best blacksmith in Antioch, perhaps in all the world, although he welds only iron bands for carriage wheels and sharpens cutlery for housewives. Yet he is as proud of being a good blacksmith as you are of your diploma from the temple at Pergamum, Luke.”
Across the street Luke noticed a shop with a painting of a beautiful iris displayed in the window, its blue-tinted throat as graceful as any Grecian column, its colors so naturally lovely that at first he thought it was really a living flower posed against an empty frame. The colors and the artistry would have demanded a high price in shops across the river. “That flower you are looking at,” Probus said, “was painted by an old man whose limbs are so gnarled by age and the ague that he can hardly move his hands an inch at a time. He could paint for kings and emperors and yet he chooses to half starve down here so that poor people may see in his paintings things they would otherwise never know.”
They stopped before a house which was somewhat larger and in better repair than the others. It stood next door to a large, circular-domed building which Luke remembered from his childhood as a synagogue. “This is the house of Barnabas,” Probus said. “Paul is here.”
A group of boys were playing in the dirt, and as Luke and Probus stopped before the door one of them jumped up and spat a single sneering word, “Christian!” It was obviously a term of insult, for the rest now leaped to their feet and began to dance about in the jeering manner of children the world over, chanting, “Christian! Christian!” very much as a Persian might have said, “Dog!”
Probus flushed with anger, and seizing a stone from the street, threw it at the boys shouting, “Scum! Rabble! Be off with you!”
Amid this hubbub the door opened and Luke saw Barnabas standing inside. He shook his head gently at the apothecary in reproof at his anger. “Those who listen to the sneers of children, Brother Probus, will have no time for the music of the heavens,” the big red-haired man said, and gave Luke his hand. “I have been looking forward to seeing you again, Luke. But first you had better see to Paul. I believe his fever is rising.”
The house was old but clean. Neither its furnishings nor the surroundings gave any impression of luxury, yet Luke sensed here a certain assurance, a feeling of peace which he remembered feeling in no other house in Antioch, not even in the palaces of Theophilus and the legate Petronius. Paul lay on a couch in a back room, his cheeks burning with fever and his eyes very bright. He breathed quickly, but with no cough or effort, and Luke judged the increased respirations to be from fever alone. “I remember telling you in Tarsus that our paths would cross again, Luke,” the sick man said in greeting. “But I did not know it would be so soon.”
It seemed to be a clear-cut case of intermittent fever, probably tertiary, with rigors accompanied by debilitating sweats every other day. The fever would burn itself out in time if there were no complications, Luke knew, but would return again and again. He gave the patient a powder to help bring on the sweats and lower the fever, and promised to return the following day.
In the front room Barnabas and several others besides Probus were gathered around a small table, talking and munching spiced cakes with the sweet wine that the Jews seemed to love. Barnabas introduced two of them as Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, who, he said, had grown up with Herod Agrippa, now King of all Judea and the surrounding provinces. The third man was a tall Negro called Simeon Niger whose ears were slit in the traditional mark of slavery. Seeing Luke’s eyes upon his mutilated ears, Simeon said proudly, “Yes, Luke. I have been a slave, but Christ set me free. My master was present when Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem; afterward he became a believer and gave all his slaves their freedom. As a physician you know it is a simple matter to burn the slits with a hot iron so that they heal almost without a scar and then no one would know I had been a slave.” He lifted his head. “But so long as my ears are slit every man can know the power and mercy of Jesus to free man.”
Barnabas said easily, “You see we are an odd company, Luke. I, a Jew, was a merchant of Cyprus; Simeon, a slave; and Lucius, a scribe. Manaen could have been chief steward to Herod Agrippa, who now oppresses our brothers in Jerusalem. Probus has a fine apothecary shop above the river. Yet we all work together here in Antioch in the cause of Jesus Christ.”
“What are you going to do about those children, Barnabas?” Probus asked. “They shouted ‘Christian’ at Luke and myself when we came in.”
“We were discussing that today, Probus. I know of nothing that we can do.”
“But they are insulting you.”
“Christ was insulted more than once,” Barnabas said mildly. “Do you have any suggestions, Luke?”
“I had never heard the word before,” Luke admitted. “What does it mean?”
“Literally, I suppose, it would be ‘follower of Christ.’ The children have heard their parents shouting it as an insult directed toward us, so they are not to be blamed. Perhaps I should explain something to you,” Barnabas continued. “Some time ago Simon Peter, upon whom the mantle of our Lord has descended, received a vision in which he was instructed to tell the Gentiles of Jesus and to baptize any who believed, admitting them to full fellowship in the Church of Christ. Unfortunately, many orthodox Jews, particularly the Pharisees, believe that admitting Gentiles to the synagogues and the fellowship is breaking the ancient laws set down by Moses. They do not yet understand that Jesus came to make the grace of God free to everyone. We here in Antioch have been foremost in preaching to the Gentiles, and so there are those who seek to revile us and stop our work. ‘Christian’ is the term they have chosen as an insult to us.”
“But it is not an insult,” Luke protested. “You are really followers of Jesus and therefore ‘Christians.’ If you openly call yourselves by that name, then their insults will mean nothing.”
Barnabas was obviously impressed by his reasoning. “I never thought of that before,” he admitted. “What say you to this?” he asked the others.
Simeon spoke first. “Luke is right. We should b
e called ‘Christians’ for the same reason that I keep my ears slit, because we are proud of our faith, not ashamed of it.”
The others agreed. “It shall be so, then,” Barnabas decided. “The disciples shall be called ‘Christians’ first in Antioch.” He turned back to Luke. “We were planning to leave in a few weeks for Jerusalem, taking help to our starving brethren there. Do you think Paul will be well soon?”
“He has had such attacks before,” Luke said. “This one should subside in a few weeks.” He went on to ask a question which had been in his mind since Probus had come to the palace. “Why does he call himself Paul now, instead of Saul?”
“Paulus is his Roman name,” Barnabas explained, “since he is also a citizen of Rome. As Saul of Tarsus he was active in persecuting those who followed Jesus, and there are still many who remember him in that role, so it seemed better to use his other name.”
“I remember how much trouble he stirred up in Damascus,” Luke agreed.
Barnabas smiled. “There will always be trouble where Paul goes, Luke. The Spirit burns in him with too hot a fire not to scorch others, but many of us believe that just such a fire is needed now. Perhaps Paul may be the very ‘pillar of fire’ described by our ancient prophets to lead the world to God again through Jesus Christ.
The Road to Bithynia: A Novel of Luke, the Beloved Physician Page 18
