I, Saul

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  As Saul’s years of schooling continued at the feet of Gamaliel, Luke saw the young man grow into an exceptional intellect powered by a fanatical confidence in his own views. When Rabban Gamaliel informed him he was “becoming a man with whom no one can argue, indeed who intimidates any who question you,” Saul accepted it as the ultimate compliment. “That my mentor saw this as a character flaw and counseled me to become more diplomatic did not dissuade me. I felt empowered, knowing I was right and that I could state my case with such force and intellect that no one could hope to prevail over me. My goal became to become the youngest leader among the elite Jews of Jerusalem.”

  Saul’s account of young love came as a colossal surprise to Luke, as Paul had never mentioned that he had been close to marriage. His writings showed that he had found himself in ferocious competition academically and athletically with both Gamaliel’s son, Simeon—also a prodigious scholar—and another young man, Ezra, whose aim was to become a priest.

  That triumvirate with similar goals and intellects should have become fast friends, but it soon emerged that the other two resented Saul and could barely abide his presence. Not only did he prove overbearing in theological discussions, but he also turned every leisure activity, every sport, into a personal competition. And because of his athletic ability and robust physique, he prevailed in every physical contest.

  From his adult perspective, Paul wrote, “I never neglected to lord my superiority over my two rivals. I was still taken with Simeon’s sister, Gamaliel’s daughter Naomi, and seized every opportunity to shine in her presence. I either invented arguments wherein I could impress her with my knowledge, or if she happened to watch us playing at any sport, I competed with all my strength.”

  That seemed a good place for Luke to set aside the manuscript and steal a few hours’ sleep, but a glance at the next line persuaded him to keep reading.

  When finally I succeeded in turning her head by outrunning her brother and Ezra, she approached shyly, brilliant eyes and smooth dark skin rendering me speechless for once. “May I talk with you,” she said, “when you have time?”

  I wanted to tell her and the world that I had all the time she needed and that there was nothing I’d rather do than have an excuse to gaze at her.

  But, desperate to impress, I calmly said, “How is this moment right now? I have worn out those two gentlemen, who are no challenge anyway. They’ll have more fun without me.”

  Naomi sat on the ground. “That is what I wanted to talk about.”

  I dropped near her and lay on my side. “You enjoy my speed, my ability?”

  She seemed shy and looked off into the distance. “You are impressive, Saul, in everything you do. Running, leaping, talking, even just walking. You have passion, as if you are on your way somewhere.”

  “I am,” I assured her, prepared to tell her my plans. She had to know her father, as well as his vice chief justice, Nathanael, were already urging me to think about beginning my rabbinical life in some administrative role under the Sanhedrin.

  “Simeon tells me you have more of the Scriptures memorized than most of the other students,” Naomi said, “even ones who have been at Hillel for years. He says sometimes you can quote a passage faster than even my father.”

  “The truth is I have memorized more than all the other students,” I said, “and it isn’t that I can sometimes quote a passage more quickly than your father. It’s always. You can ask him.”

  “I don’t doubt you. Father is impressed with you, but you know that.”

  I nodded. “If I may be frank, Naomi, I care more about what you think of me.”

  “Do you really?” she said, looking directly into my eyes, which compelled me to sit up. “Or do you just want to know you have yet another admirer?”

  In my naïveté, this strangely emboldened me! I told her, “If you admired me, I would not care what anyone else thought.” I watched for the delight this was bound to bring her.

  Instead, she challenged me. “So if I began a passage, you could complete it for me?”

  I had to chuckle. How much time would a female spend memorizing the words of God? “Anything you know I certainly know. Try it!”

  Naomi said, “‘Let another man …’”

  “‘… praise you!’“ I said. “The Proverbs of Solomon! ‘Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.’ Correct?”

  “Yes,” she said, rising before I could even assist her. When I leapt to my feet, she stared at the ground and said quietly, “That you know the words but not the wisdom they contain is no surprise.”

  She had done it again—rendered me speechless. Still in my teens, I knew the history of the Jews, all the kings and kingdoms, good rulers and bad. I knew our lands, our sacrifices, our rituals, our laws, and not just in part but the whole. Already I was qualified to lead a congregation and instruct them in the proper ways to conduct their lives. Yet this fetching young woman dared say I knew the words but not their wisdom?

  As she walked away I stood transfixed, wondering what a man has to do to impress a woman. I had outrun her brother and his friend. I was the top scholar at Hillel. I had finished the passage she cited before she reached the fourth word. Yet she insults me? I could only watch as Ezra ran to greet her. He looked nervous and immature. Yet as they chatted she smiled at him, even gently touched his shoulder!

  My entire walk home I was consumed, not by what she had said—I hadn’t even thought that through. No, I could not get my mind off her obvious affection for Ezra! He was a competent enough student, but he was awkward and rarely serious. Clearly he was enamored with Naomi, but who wouldn’t be? And she had plainly engaged him, encouraged him.

  That may have been the first time I allowed myself to be distracted from my studies. Naomi had invaded my mind. Over and over I relived our brief conversation, bewildered that I had failed to impress her.

  For the sake of accuracy, I must admit I lost track of how many times I went over the encounter in my mind before finally falling asleep that night. I woke before dawn, as usual, and something about walking in the crisp air allowed the truth of the proverb to reach me.

  I had been so focused on failing to impress Naomi and then tormented by how happy she seemed with Ezra that I had entirely missed her point—the wisdom of the proverb, not just the words I had memorized.

  “Let another man praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.”

  To Naomi this was not just an answer to a challenge. It had been her message to me! How was it possible a student as accomplished as I could prove so ignorant?

  More importantly, why was it I felt so compelled to praise myself? Because so few others did? Was the praise of Gamaliel himself not enough?

  I was suddenly overwhelmed with shame. Not only did my peers not compliment my successes, but neither was the object of my longing impressed with me. Why? Because I praised myself. I knew the Word of God and claimed to obey it to the letter, yet somehow I had not applied the pithy sayings of Solomon to my own life. I had not obeyed them as Law.

  During my prayers that morning I asked God if this was why I had never enjoyed the kind of friendship with Him that the great patriarchs of the Bible had. Was this why we did not converse? I believed He heard my every prayer, but why had I never heard Him?

  I did not hear Him that morning either, though I asked forgiveness for violating the Law. And I determined that I must follow the proverbs with the same vigor as I did the rules for sacrifices. Only now, with the benefit of years, do I see that I did not become humble, did not become kinder, more thoughtful, or more compassionate. I became determined. I would not praise myself, not because of what that revealed about me, but because the Scripture forbade it. And because Naomi would be watching, I could scale the last barrier between me and her affections.

  Luke stood and stretched. It would be futile to sleep now. Besides, he had to find out what became of his old friend and Naomi during Saul’s rem
aining years at Hillel.

  Somehow the young rabbinical student, by the sheer force of his will, succeeded in keeping quiet about himself and his achievements. He remained the first to answer any question, and he was no less aggressive on the fields of play, but he stopped taunting his opponents and bragging.

  Naomi did notice. Once she even told Saul she had heard someone else praise him. Thrilled as he was, Saul did not insist she expand on what she’d heard. However, he still frequently saw Naomi and Ezra together.

  Luke continued reading, fascinated.

  It was not easy to compete for her affections while suppressing that part of me that wanted to argue that I was the better man. Could she not see it? Ezra was nice enough, but he was not accomplished. Did Naomi not want the attention that would come from a relationship with the man everyone knew and talked about—especially now that I was not talking about myself?

  Eventually I prevailed. It was not easy, becoming more active and obvious in my pursuit of her while still stifling my ego to remain obedient to the Law. Perhaps Ezra saw he was unable to compete and stepped aside. For whatever reason, Naomi gradually found more time for me.

  Within a year, as I neared graduation, we were in love and everyone knew it. Many said she was good for me, made me quieter, less arrogant. Only I knew the truth. Inside I was a cauldron of frustration, battling my true nature to remain obedient to the Law and to keep Naomi’s heart. She had a calming influence on me only to the extent that I would do anything to keep us together.

  Gamaliel himself allowed that the “obvious infatuation with my daughter has not seemed to negatively impact your scholarship. Do you see a future together?”

  “I would be honored to become a member of your family,” I told him.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Saul.”

  But I longed to make Naomi my wife. She was not only beautiful, but she was also a woman of deep character— kind and humble and eager to serve others, not because the Law required her to, but because that was her nature. She was an obedient woman of God for motives I did not possess.

  I burned to consummate our love, and the only hindrance to formally pursuing her upon my graduation from Hillel was my focus on establishing myself among the Pharisees of Jerusalem. By now the puppet high priest, Annas’ son, had been replaced by Annas’ son-in-law, Joseph Caiaphas. Annas himself remained the real power behind closed doors.

  With Gamaliel and Nathanael cordially competing for my services, I enjoyed allowing them to try to outdo each other in securing me for their staffs. While it might have been more advantageous to my climb to a station of influence to immediately begin working for the man I assumed would become my father-in-law, eventually he and I both thought better of it. “We will have plenty of time together if you accept a position with Nathanael,” Gamaliel said, “and we will avoid any suspicions of nepotism.”

  Naomi was too genteel to press me toward marriage, though often on our long solitary walks we discussed our future home and children, as well as my plan to become the rabbi of a large, influential synagogue. I think she liked the idea of our settling in one place eventually, because my role for Nathanael took me all over Israel on various assignments. I could not bring myself to tell her that from almost the first week of my new job I realized I would never be content staying in one synagogue.

  I loved everything about the Great Sanhedrin, from the sound my sandals made as I strode through the long dark corridors, to the beautiful harmonies of the all-male choirs whose chants and songs greeted the sunrise and announced the sunset. They practiced throughout the day, so the ancient temple and the Sanhedrin’s meeting place, the Hall of Hewn Stones, reverberated always with rich, deep melodies of praise to the one true God.

  The haunting strains should have prodded me to a deep sense of private worship, but I had by now given up on knowing God. My father and my rabbi from Tarsus had been right. I could not hope to have the same standing with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that those patriarchs enjoyed. We would not converse. He was unknowable, and the best I could do was, in essence, to worship His words, His Law.

  If I had been exacting on orthodoxy as an obnoxious teenage scholar, now I was entrenched. There was no middle ground with my doctrine and theology. I took every word of the Holy Scriptures literally and demanded that even the most tolerant disciples of Gamaliel try to prove me wrong. Not only were they unable, but almost daily I succeeded in exposing their arguments as soft and self-centered. Even Gamaliel wearied of my fundamentalism and warned that marrying myself to such a rigid standard might threaten any future I hoped for as a member of the Sanhedrin.

  And this was no Lesser Sanhedrin of twenty-three members who sat in judgment over every other city. No, this was the Great Sanhedrin, in which sixty-nine members sat under Gamaliel and his lieutenant, Nathanael. To even dream of becoming a member of such an august body, I had to be diligent, resourceful, hardworking, and impress all the council members. Plus I would have to be married. My educational credentials were a given, known to all.

  The council of seventy-one met when matters of national import arose, like war or political insurgence or an appeal from a lower court, or when the Lesser Sanhedrin could not come to a verdict. Such meetings convened in the hall that had been built into the north wall of the Temple Mount, half inside and half outside the sanctuary, giving access to both the temple and the outdoors. I had learned at Hillel that it was the only part of the temple complex not used for ritual purposes, and thus it was constructed with stones hewn by iron implements.

  Both Gamaliel and Nathanael occupied offices within the complex, and I was assigned a tiny alcove near the vice chief justice. I spent little time there as I did his bidding. Nathanael sent me scurrying all over the Temple Mount and the city, as well as to other cities, researching, interviewing, fetching documents, whatever he needed.

  I was busy, excited, fulfilled in my role, especially when Nathanael, and at times even Gamaliel, used me as a confidant and sought my opinions. While both continued to counsel me against rigidity, they still sought my input and often used it. When either the Lesser or the Great Sanhedrin met, I stationed myself out of sight but within earshot and smiled when I heard either of them quote me without acknowledging their source. That was all right. My day would come.

  Naomi grew more distant the busier I became. When we were together, often at the end of a very long day, all I could talk about was what I was doing. I sensed sadness in her when months flew by with no change in our status. My own sister had long since married and had begun a family. But what could I do? I was special assistant to Nathanael, and his needs and wishes became my priority.

  I served in this role for years, establishing myself as the person to go to when a member of the Sanhedrin wanted to influence either of the top two men. I was the most accessible, and the most knowledgeable, and I developed a reputation as one who was ever present, hardworking, and dependable. No one questioned my devotion to the Law.

  But everyone, including her father, questioned my devotion to Naomi—something of which my former rival would take advantage.

  35

  Baiting the Hook

  PRESENT-DAY ROME

  SUNDAY, MAY 11, 8:30 P.M.

  Augie might as well have punched Sofia in the stomach. From the look on her face, his recitation of what her father had told him destroyed her lifelong worship of the man.

  The pain in her eyes made him wish he hadn’t had to tell her. She looked like a four-year-old who had just learned the truth about Santa Claus.

  Trikoupis had been Sofia’s rock. She often talked of how she admired him, looked up to him, considered him a model of class, sophistication, and, most of all, honesty. She adored him.

  “Let me borrow your phone,” she said as they headed back to the Terrazzo.

  He knew she wouldn’t compromise him with her dad, but she was dialing a number she didn’t have to look up. She put it on speaker.

  “August?” her mother
said.

  “No, Mom, it’s me. Just borrowing his phone.”

  “Is he in Greece, Sofia? Surely you’d have said something if you were going to the States.”

  “I met him in Rome.”

  “Rome! How nice! Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Daddy knew.”

  “He didn’t say a word! What is it, a surprise? Do you have news?”

  “What more news could there be, Mom? You know we’re engaged.”

  “No, I just thought, I don’t know, that you set a date or something. Just don’t tell me you’re eloping. We’ll travel as far as necessary to be there for your wedding.”

  “No, just checking in. Wanted to tell you my phone broke, so if you need me, call me on Augie’s” She read off the number.

  “So what’s going on in Rome?”

  “Augie’s here on business, and you know it’s less than a six-hundred-mile flight for me, a little over two hours.”

  “Give him my best.”

  When they finished talking, Sofia leaned over and let the phone slip into Augie’s shirt pocket. “So, one of the three of you is lying,” she said. “My money’s on Dad.”

  That sounded flippant considering how devastated she had to be. Augie said, “You know she’s going to ask him why he didn’t tell her you were in Italy.”

  “I hope she does! I’d like to see him answer that. Let him squirm.”

  “Wow.”

  She looked miserable. “Just like Dimos doesn’t care about anything but his share of the take, my dad doesn’t care what I think about it. Nothing—not even his love for me—is going to get in the way of this deal.”

  Back at the hotel Sofia booked her own room three floors below Augie’s suite, then joined him and Roger.

  “I had to lie to Dimos,” Roger said. “He showed up just after you left.”