The Road to Bithynia: A Novel of Luke, the Beloved Physician

by Frank G. Slaughter

  Luke took the smallest trepan now and, settling the handle in his hand, pressed the cutting end against the skull just over the fissure. With a steady twisting stroke he turned the instrument and felt it bite into the bone. The faint odor of bone dust rose from the wound, and Luke saw the beads of sweat start out on Timothy’s forehead. But the young man kept his feet and cleared the wound of blood every time Luke removed the trepan.

  For a while there was no sound except the faint rasp of the instrument cutting through the skull. Then Luke perceived a slight change in the resistance of the bone to the trepan, warning him that he was entering the open space underneath. He removed the instrument and studied the wound for a moment, then, replacing it, turned the handle carefully until an opening had been made completely through the bony layer. Then he removed the trepan and washed the wound out very carefully with water and wine.

  A dark red fluid, half clotted and half liquid, was oozing through the trepan opening.

  “What is that?” Timothy asked.

  “It is blood which has accumulated here from the injury,” Luke explained.

  “Then you were right, Luke.”

  “Most natural phenomena have natural causes, Timothy. Aristotle and the old Greeks knew that, but we have lost sight of many of their teachings.”

  “She has stopped jerking already,” Silas reported.

  Luke had been so intent upon the wound that he had not been watching the girl. Now he saw that Silas was right. When the dark blood had begun to ooze through the trepan opening, the girl’s arm and leg had stopped jerking almost immediately, definite evidence that he had located the cause of the trouble.

  Working as gently as he could with the blunt end of the scalpel, Luke removed the clotted blood from beneath the skull around the opening and allowed the fresh bleeding to escape. When it had died away to only a slight ooze of blood-tinged fluid, he washed the wound out once more with oil and wine. Then he applied a dressing of the washed wool and bandaged it snugly into place.

  “She is conscious, Luke,” Silas reported with awe in his voice.

  The slave girl’s eyes were open, and she stared at him with a look of perplexity, as if she could not understand what had happened to her.

  “How do you feel?” Luke asked her.

  The girl’s lips moved in a low whisper. “They beat me.”

  “Yes, I know,” he told her. “But Lydia found you and brought you here.”

  Her hand went up and touched the bandage. “I feel different, like a weight was gone. What did you do to me?”

  “Your head had been injured. I am a physician, so I treated you.”

  Suddenly she seized his hand. “Will I be all right now?”

  “Yes,” he told her. “But you may still have the spasms that you had before.”

  “I don’t mind that,” the girl said. “My mother and sister had them too. My masters taught me fortunetelling,” she added. “They would beat me if I didn’t say the right thing.”

  As they were taking the girl to her couch Lydia came in, her face concerned. “The owners of this girl have gone to the magistrates,” she told Luke. “They are demanding that all of you be arrested.”

  “But she is going to be well,” Luke said confidently. “They will have no case against us when I tell how they beat her.”

  XII

  Trouble from the owners of the slave girl came quickly. Late that afternoon there was a tremendous hammering on the gate outside Lydia’s house, and a frightened slave returned crying that the Roman lictors demanded at once the persons of Paul, Silas, and Luke, having with them an order for their arrest issued by the Roman magistrate. There was no choice but to obey, and the three were taken into custody by four brawny lictors bearing the fasces, the ax surrounded by rods, which was the emblem of Roman civil authority. The rods, tied in a bundle around the long-handled ax that formed the center, were for the very practical purpose of beating those condemned by the court to be punished in that way, while the ax, freed in an instant by loosening the thongs which held the rods around the handle, was a formidable weapon in case of resistance.

  “With what are we charged?” Luke asked the chief lictor as they were being taken away.

  The man shrugged. “The warrant is issued by Aureliano, the magistrate, but I can tell you that it is in the matter of the slave girl who tells fortunes. Come along now and make no trouble.”

  Aureliano was a fat bored Greek in an obvious hurry to get away to his evening feast. He looked at the prisoners with evident distaste. “Are you Jews?” he demanded scornfully. Now that the Emperor Claudius had ordered all Jews out of Rome, lesser servants of the empire lost no opportunity to revile them.

  “Yes, we are Jews,” Paul said proudly, ignoring the fact that Luke was not a Jew. Luke could have claimed his own Greek nationality and his Roman citizenship as a bar to whatever unpleasantness Aureliano had in mind for the despised Jews. Or he could have pointed out his relationship to Theophilus and his friendship with Junius Gallio, now proconsul at Corinth. But he had never sought to escape any of the tribulations which had come to them on their journeys and he did not do so now.

  Aureliano spat into the cuspidor beside his desk. “Who speaks against these Jews?” he demanded.

  One of the owners of the slave girl stepped forward. “I do, most noble Aureliano. These men continue to make a great disturbance in our town. And they worship other gods and advocate practices which it is against the law for us Romans to accept or observe.”

  “Name your charges,” Aureliano ordered. “What law have they broken?”

  “This one—” he pointed to Paul “took away a valuable slave girl belonging to me. And he cast a spell upon her so that she no longer has the power of soothsaying.”

  “Is it true that you stole this slave?” Aureliano demanded of Paul.

  “The girl proclaimed us as what we are,” Paul said defiantly. “Servants of the Most High God. And when I cast out the devil which tormented her in the name of Jesus Christ, she followed us in gratitude.”

  “See!” the accuser cried. “He admits worshiping foreign gods, and inside the pomerium, too.” Paul had been trapped neatly. The worship of foreign gods inside the line where it was prohibited by imperial edict was a serious offense for which they could, at the very least, be beaten with rods by the lictors.

  Before Paul or the magistrate could speak, Luke stepped forward and said in flawless Greek, “I am a physician, noble Aureliano. The owner of the slave girl lies. He beat her, and she would have died had I not treated her by drilling the skull. You can see the girl and the wound from her treatment at the house of Lydia.”

  “You lie, Jewish dog!” the girl’s owner shrieked. “Many people saw this man—” he pointed to Paul, “cast a spell over the girl.” Several of those with them spoke up and confirmed the statement.

  Aureliano yawned. “I weary of all this. You Jews are always causing trouble; no wonder the emperor has expelled you from Rome. Take them away,” he barked to the chief lictor, “and beat them with rods. Then confine them to the jail, and if I find in the morning that these charges are true, they shall be beaten again.”

  “But you have only to go to the house of Lydia, the seller of purple,” Luke protested. “You will see there that I speak the truth.”

  “Take them away,” the magistrate ordered. “Let me hear no more of this.”

  To be beaten with rods before a crowd was the greatest possible humiliation for a Roman citizen. Luke could have saved himself from it still, as could Paul, by claiming their citizenship. But when Paul said nothing, Luke also remained silent, even when the lictors stripped them to the waist in the courtyard of the prison and began to lay on with the rods. Actually the beating was not so painful as the whipping by the Jews at Pisidian Antioch, for although the rods bruised and caused pain, they did not send flames of agony through the body as
did the whips in the hands of angry men. The three of them endured the pain stolidly, then were hustled into the jail and secured, Luke in one cell and Paul and Silas in another.

  No one brought them even a jar of water, and the cell was cold and damp. Shivering upon the hard bench against the wall that served also as a bed, Luke asked himself bleakly why he let these tortures be inflicted upon him when he could have stayed with Thecla in Ephesus. Glorying that he could suffer some of the things that Christ Himself had suffered, Paul had done nothing to prevent their sentencing and punishment. It was almost, Luke thought, as if Paul were himself playing the role of a messiah, the second great leader who would be next to Christ Himself if the earthly kingdom which he hourly expected to be established came to pass. He realized now just how right Probus had been in his shrewd estimation of Paul’s character. The apostle’s deliberate refusal to admit anything but a supernatural role in the death of Herod Agrippa, the besting of Elymas of Paphos, and now the healing of the slave girl, all fitted such a concept.

  Luke remembered, too, the day in Antioch when Paul had as much as admitted the belief in his greater right to wear the mantle of Jesus than Peter, after the apostle to the Jews had encouraged the split in the Church by siding for a short time with the Judaizers against Paul on circumcision and dietary laws. Was Paul really setting himself upon a high place where no true follower of the meek and lowly Nazarene should be? If Paul had indeed developed a conviction of his own role as a messiah, then Luke could no longer follow him, for he was deeply convinced that Jesus meant nothing like that for Himself.

  In spite of the hard couch, Luke finally fell asleep. Some time later the light of a torch shining in his eyes brought him awake. The jailer stood outside in the corridor, and with him a fat man who seemed very much disturbed. It was Aureliano, the magistrate, sweating and pale, although the night was cool. With his hands on the bars of the door he peered in at Luke. “Lydia, the seller of purple, has come to me,” he said. “She tells me you are a Roman citizen and the son of Theophilus.”

  “That is true.”

  The magistrate looked as if he were going to faint. “Why did you not tell me you were Roman citizens?”

  “You gave us no opportunity,” Luke reminded him, “in your haste to get the whole thing over with.”

  “And did you really cure the slave girl of fits by drilling her skull?”

  “Yes. I tried to tell you that yesterday.”

  “Unlock the cell,” Aureliano ordered the jailer. “Then go and let the other two out.”

  Here, Luke realized, was an excellent opportunity to impress upon the magistrate of an important city of Macedonia their rights as Romans. Word of it would be carried to other centers, and they would be less liable to summary arrest in the future. “Release them yourself,” he told Aureliano, “else I will report this matter to the Roman governor.”

  Aureliano started to puff up, then collapsed like a pricked wineskin. He took the keys from the jailer and went to unlock the other cell.

  It was a triumphant procession that marched through the streets to Lydia’s house, and a considerable crowd followed so that Paul had to remain outside and preach to them. Luke found the slave girl in excellent condition, her wound already beginning to heal. That night it was decided that they should move on to another city, now that the nucleus of a strong church was established in Philippi. But before he left, Luke had the satisfaction of knowing that the slave girl had been purchased by Lydia and would no more be injured by beating.

  When they joined a caravan the next day bound for Thessalonica, Paul and Silas traveled with the leader at the head of the party, while Luke, as usual, went to the rear to treat anyone who might fall out because of injured feet or illness. Shortly Timothy dropped back and joined him. Luke saw by the concern on the handsome youth’s face that there was something on his mind, but he did not question him until Timothy spoke of it of his own accord.

  “I have been talking to Paul,” Timothy said finally. “He insists that it was a real miracle that healed the slave girl, in spite of what you did.”

  Luke smiled. “It may have been. While a demon was surely cast out, the girl also had other physical problems. In any case, I have often suspected that God works through the hands of physicians to heal the sick.”

  “But why, when God can do anything Himself?”

  “God made the laws by which the world and the sun and the stars operate, Timothy,” Luke said earnestly. “I am sure He expects man to use those laws to help him live the best life it is possible for him to live. If sometimes natural events seem to fit into the pattern of our lives, while at other times they do not, it may be that God’s will is working according to a plan we do not understand, or that we are not living our lives in conformity with His laws.”

  “But Paul says we must only believe, not try to understand, God’s purpose.”

  Luke nodded. “I know Paul believes that we should have faith and believe there is a God and that Jesus is His Son, without asking for proof. But some, like you and me and millions who will come after us, are not satisfied with simple faith. We must seek the cause of what we see and convince ourselves that it is all simply an expression of the laws of God. In the end, however, I believe we are stronger than those who accept simply on faith, because we have found the ultimate truth that all things come from God and are produced at His will.”

  “But where do you find this proof, Luke?”

  “In the simple things, such as the hemorrhage which caused the convulsions of the slave girl. Or the triangles by which Aristarchus was able to measure the relative distances of the sun and the moon from the earth, and Eratosthenes to determine the size of the earth and prove that it is a globe. One advantage of my kind of faith is that it cannot flag, for it is based upon discernible truth and not subject to human fallibility.”

  “How can you explain life after death?” Timothy asked. “Is there any proof other than in faith?”

  Luke rubbed his chin. “I never really tried to put it into words before,” he admitted, “but I think there is. I suppose I would say that we give a part of ourselves to those we love and receive in return some of the soul of those who love us. Thus we can become immortal through the portion of our love that enriches the lives of others and lives on in them. I suppose you could call that the immortality of love, and I am sure that Jesus would be immortal in the hearts of those who receive His love through His teachings and who love Him, even if He were not the Son of God.”

  “Sometimes I think you understand Jesus and His way better than any of us, Luke,” Timothy said impulsively. “Better even than Paul and Peter and the others.”

  “I have tried,” Luke admitted. “And I think I do understand what He meant to teach us through His life.”

  “And through His death too?”

  Luke shook his head gently. “Not yet, Timothy. I can only see the meaning of His death now as Paul said once, as ‘a dim reflection in a looking glass!’ Someday, though, I hope to see it clearly. Then I shall know the whole answer to the question of why He came to earth.”

  XIII

  Luke had written to Thecla concerning their adventure in Philippi and had told her of their plans to go on to Corinth, one of the largest and most influential cities of Macedonia. At Philippi he had also learned the good news that his old friend, Junius Annaeus Gallio, had recently assumed the governorship at Corinth and had instructed Thecla to write him there in care of the governor.

  Gallio welcomed him warmly when they arrived in Corinth several weeks later, but even more welcome was a letter from Thecla:

  My Dearest Luke,

  After your painful experience in Philippi I was almost afraid to hear from you again, lest it bring news of more disaster. But now that you say you may soon be with me again my heart is filled with happiness and I pray daily to God for your safe return before much longer.

  Theo
philus is here and plans to take the baby back to Antioch with him as soon as the weather becomes more favorable. He assures me that, with Junius Gallio as proconsul in Corinth, you and Paul and the others will be in no danger of mistreatment such as you have already suffered in Philippi and the other cities. Theophilus would like for both of us to return with him and the baby to Antioch when you leave Macedonia, but I would not want to influence you in any way, for I know how you have longed to go into Bithynia. Still, Apollos Lucanus does need care, and if perchance you feel that we might remain with your foster father until he is a little larger, I would not feel that we were remiss in our duty, for Christ has told us to care for and cherish the little ones.

  Probus has fallen in love with the daughter of a respected apothecary here, and they are to be married within the next few weeks. They are very happy, and he plans to make his home here in Ephesus, where there is a good opportunity in that field.

  Being with little Apollos Lucanus, darling, and watching him grow, and especially seeing how much he is like your brother Apollonius, has made me realize something I never knew before, what a privilege it must be for a woman to become a vessel through which the things she loves in her husband can be preserved in their children. I have prayed to God to show me what is right, and I am sure now that the love and happiness the baby has brought to me are indeed a sign that there would be no sin in bearing your children. And since we know not the day nor the hour when Jesus will come, or indeed if He will actually come in person to reign over the earth, I wonder if we should delay any longer making a home together for ourselves and our children and showing others by our example the Way of Jesus.