Even if the Holy Place up on the hill isn’t wholly authentic, there’s no denying the deep sense of time and place to be found back in the amphitheater standing exactly where St. Paul and his disciples stood in the famous riot scene in Acts 19 onwards. The city’s silversmiths, led by Demetrius, accused Paul of destroying their trade in religious knick-knacks by his outbursts against false gods in general and Artemis in particular. The assembly degenerated into a riot and St. Paul wisely decided there and then to finish his three-year stay in the city; exit stage left pursued by a mob.
Standing on that spot in the amphitheater today one also has a feeling of standing on a crucial point of Christian history, the point where thirty years after Jesus’ death the new religion, as propagated by its brilliant advocate Paul, had gained enough critical mass to be unstoppable. The silversmiths’ riot against Paul’s effectiveness in Ephesus was a metaphor for the Jewish rabbis’ and Roman pontiffs’ concerns at the success of this new egalitarian, inclusive religion which threatened their respective authorities throughout the Empire.
They found Paul was particularly dangerous because he was a high-born Hellenistic Jew and a Roman citizen, the former by family tradition and the latter by virtue of having been born in Tarsus, a Roman city, now in south- eastern Turkey, which had been granted special status due to its efficiency in paying its tributes to Rome. This unusual combination gave him access to the highest reaches of Jewish power in Jerusalem and the freedom to travel anywhere in the Empire he chose - and with the full protection of its law. He was also a born troublemaker and leader, a charismatic orator and collector of followers, with that particularly Jewish trait for not sitting on a fence when more challenging options are available either side of it. If he were alive now he would not just be an illegal settler in the West Bank but their architect, ringleader, advocate and spokesman too. He believed - and belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy even in a person with less developed consciousness; with Paul’s level of presence prophecies found themselves self-fulfilling one after another.
The story of his enthusiastic persecution of the early followers of Jesus, and his conversion by the spirit of Jesus on the way to Damascus in about 33 CE, when he was around 23 years old, are well known. By the time he reached Ephesus for the second time, the time of the silversmiths’ riot twenty years after his conversion, his message had changed to a marked degree, and it is largely this message that we call Christianity today.
At the time of Paul’s conversion the followers of Jesus, the apostles, were preaching, as Jesus had done, to fellow Jews. Paul chose instead to use his privileges as a Roman citizen and his knowledge of the Greco-Roman cultures to preach to the polytheistic Gentiles, whom he considered to be not just a larger audience but also more in need of his new Messiah-based creed. Whereas the original apostles in Jerusalem were continuing to preach Jesus’ essential message that “the Kingdom of God is among you” - a Buddhist, indeed a Perennial Philosophy message open to re-interpretation with each uninitiated telling - Paul concentrated not so much on the message of Jesus’ life but on His death and resurrection - and how furthermore these were divinely ordained, thereby fulfilling God’s covenant with Abraham and so then expiating all the sins of mankind. Paul’s religion has been well called Crosstianity.
Even without Paul’s powers of persuasion and perseverance, his message was the right one at the right time. Whereas Jesus’ Jewishness meant that His message was delivered by the apostles around Jerusalem was easily bogged down in internecine debate and persecution, Paul’s version of His message to the polytheistic and superstitious Gentiles of the eastern Empire was a message of egalitarianism, forgiveness, hope and redemption. For those inclined to monotheism it was far simpler to adopt Paul’s new creed of a saving Messiah than to learn the complexities of Judaism with its Covenant Law, its inbuilt racial doctrine and its semi-esoteric rites of diet and circumcision. Paul’s message cut through all these carefully planted obstructions: baptism was as meaningful as circumcision, faith in salvation through the Christ as Messiah was equal to any amount of knowledge of arcane Mosaic laws. If all this was problematical to observant Jews it was easily accepted by Gentiles with no knowledge of Jewish tenets. It was Paul who first proposed that Jesus was the Son of God; again an idea hard for Jews to accept, but perfectly reasonable to a Greco-Roman audience used to the mythological interbreeding of gods and humans. The result of all this is that the Christianity we know today is decidedly Pauline and at some distance from the original Jewish teachings of Jesus: the Jesus of history is a very different person from the Christ of faith, and the less importance one attaches to the former the easier it becomes to love the latter. As Cardinal Bousson famously put it: “Saint Paul put the Christ in Jesus Christ,” or as Mark Twain concluded - albeit from a completely unrelated non-Pauline angle: “If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be - a Christian.”
This Thursday afternoon in the grand amphitheater of Ephesus in mid-April there are Christians a-plenty and as one ruminates on matters Ancient & Modern, one only has to wait an hour so to for another pilgrim tour to pass through. The writer is a great fan of hiring guides, hiring Fergusons as I must learn to say but in the case of Ephesus - and other concentrated sites - there is a better way of having one’s Ferguson and eating him. The technique is to park oneself at a stop on the tour route and wait. Pretty soon another group will appear and one can just listen in on a squatter’s rights basis. When the one you are listening to has finished one can just amble over to the next stop to await the Ferguson that follows.
The format for guided tours is the same in many ways as it was for Mark Twain and the New Pilgrims. A local guide - now a Turkish polyglot rather than John Turtle Wood - explains the historical context of the site. All the New Pilgrims in the amphitheater that day would have known the biblical context off by heart, but today it is explained for them by a second guide, their tour leader - as often as not the preacher from the organizing sect.
I think I have a glimpse of St. Paul preaching at Ephesus earlier this after- noon. A tour group - yet another tour group - arrives for what I suppose will be the usual five-minutes-and-move-on shtick about the amphitheater in any one of a number of languages. And so it is, for the usual five minutes. Then one of the tourists, a large man in his mid-fifties, clean-cut and open necked, with “Cummins, J.” on his lapel, stands up, and faces the others his arms held aloft. In his right hand is a black Bible; he never opens it - he doesn’t have to. “Brothers. Sisters. Fellow believers in the Savior.” His voice is strong and clear, mid-Western, deep but not loud. “You know why we are here. This is the very spot. The true word of St. Paul had so shaken the unbelievers that there was an uproar - some say a riot. Acts 19, verse 23, right to the end.”
He then recites Acts 19, verse 23 right to the end. It is a mighty impressive performance, all the better for being slightly underplayed, no thumping and gnawing and gnashing of teeth, but a sincere man doing what he thinks - and for him knows - is right. He then takes the group from the stalls to the stage, and sets one man aside to be Demetrius and tells him to read the first few verses - the ones accusing Paul - and two other men to be St. Paul’s companions (St. Paul having fled) who stood as accused in Paul’s stead. The other members of the group are told to be Ephesian artisans siding with Demetrius, and told to cry “Great is Diana of the Ephesians” at the preacher Cummins, J.’s prompting. The preacher is to be the Roman adjudicator, who in Acts calms the crowd and dismisses the case as the court is secular; a truly Roman approach to this troublesome new sect of quarrelsome Judaism.
By now a considerable crowd of other tour groups have stopped tour grouping and stand either on stage with the Ephesian mob, or on the stone seats nearby. Without any element of self-consciousness Cummins, J. then conducts the throng in Acts 19, verse 23, right to the end. First he quiets the crowd. Then he gives “Demetrious” his own as yet unopened Bible and tells him to read t
he accusatory verses; which “Demetrious” does. Then the crowd, by now a small mob, chants “Great is Diana of the Ephesians” and he keeps the howling running for a good minute or two. Next he stands up, quiets the crowd again and recites - no need to read - the final verses.
But the real coup de théâtre comes at the end. As the hubbub is dying down he raises his arms and looks to the sky. I have no idea what he is going to say or do, but I follow his arms up high and see two large birds, almost certainly vultures. Without a pause he says: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they mount up with wings of eagles; they shall run, and not be weary and they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah forty; thirty-one.” The writer isn’t one of the Lord’s flock, but has to say that if St. Paul was as good as Cummins, J. - and I’m sure he was even better - and if he stayed in Ephesus for three years - and we know that he did - it’s no wonder that Demetrius and the Jews and the Romans were pleased to see him run out of town, and equally dismayed to see so many converts he had left behind. Today St. Ferguson of Ephesus may have converted one or two more.
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Less than one hundred and fifty years ago Mark Twain, the New Pilgrims and the Sinners headed back to the train station, the New Pilgrims’ pockets filled, as was their wont, with fragments stolen from the site just visited. Settling down on the train they were “rudely disrupted by an Order - from Constantinople no less - to disgorge the contents of their pockets forth- with. Outrage followed; and abuse of their Mohammedan hosts followed the outrage. What typical hatred of Christians and Christianity! Do they think we are common thieves? Do they not recognize esteemed and genteel collectors? A New Pilgrim grabbed the Order and saw it bore the stamp of the British Embassy in Constantinople. It was a disgrace, if typical and predictable, to be insulted by the Ottomans; but to be treated as criminals by a representative of the Queen caused horror and mayhem.” Mark Twain tried to calm them, pointing out “the same precautions would have been taken against any travel- ers, because the English Company who have acquired the right to excavate Ephesus, and have paid a great sum for that right, need to be protected, and deserve to be.” Pockets were emptied with reluctance and weariness and the hubbub receded.
Later, back in his stateroom on the Quaker City, Mark Twain opened his journal with the words: “This has been a most stirring day.” Same for me, my friend, a most stirring day. The Holy Land tour is on!
1 Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins. Mark Twain’s Notebook
2 There is nothing more awe-inspiring than a miracle, except the credulity that can take it at par. Mark Twain’s Notebook
3 It all began with Adam. He was the first man to tell a joke - or a lie. Adam was not alone in the Garden of Eden, however, and does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the first woman, and Satan, the first consultant. Notebook 1867
2. Beirut
Mark Twain arrived in Beirut - and the Holy Land proper - on Tuesday 10 September, 1867. The Excursionists arrived “in the wildest spirit of expectancy, for the chief feature, the grand goal of the expedition, was near at hand - we were approaching the Holy Land! Such a burrowing into the hold for trunks that had lain buried for weeks, yes for months; such a riotous system of packing and unpacking; such a making up of bundles, and setting apart of umbrellas, green spectacles and thick veils; such a critical inspection of saddles and bridles that had never yet touched horses; such a cleaning and loading of revolvers and examining of bowie-knives; such a half-soling of the seats of pantaloons with serviceable buckskin; then such a poring over ancient maps; such a reading up of Bibles and Palestine travels; such a marking out of routes; and morning, noon and night such a general raising of the very mischief, was never seen in the ship before!”
If one could transport Mark Twain forward in time to any of the cities he had visited on his way to Beirut - to Gibraltar, Marseille, Genoa, Naples, Athens or Istanbul, he would be able to tell us immediately where he was.
Beirut, on the other hand, would be completely unrecognizable. What was once a sleepy coastal town, barely one-up from a fishing village and even then one of the least significant ones in the Holy Land, is now a fully blown commercial experience. Nearly two million humans endeavor tirelessly, swaggering from deal to deal; patience is a pre-war memory, the relentless sound of endless car horns is punctuated only by high revving earthmovers, short-tempered cement mixers and the bepp-bopp-bipp-bupp of PIN numbers on a spending spree. Beirut is not for the faint of heart, nor for the light of wallet, nor for one of Life’s amblers or ramblers.
What distinguishes Beirut from other ports on the Levant are its wonderful surroundings, the dramatic setting in which the city nestles. From the bar on the 27th floor of the Four Seasons Hotel you can see Mark Twain’s point: that Beirut must have been “a beautiful city” with an “upland that sloped gently down to the sea; and also at the mountains of Lebanon that environ it.” Now only the undulations remain, each one covered in countless concrete blocks going nowhere in particular. All ways inland out of the city require a steep climb up the slopes of Mount Lebanon, the name not of a particular mountain but of the dramatic range that runs north to south down the country’s spine - a range that was providing sanctuary for the fleeing Christians of Greater Syria in Mark Twain’s time and now entertains skiers in the winter and viniculture in the summer.
The harbor where Mark Twain “bathed in the transparent blue water that rolled its billows about the ship” is now the Levant’s major deep-water container port, and outside its striding breakwaters a dozen huge behemoths await their turn to unload their cargoes of cement and oil, consumer trinkets and designer stopgaps. The behemoths leave Beirut noticeably higher on their boot lines: Lebanon’s exports are of mind and body, not bore holes and night shifts.
At first sight Beirut was not the most obvious staging port for the Holy Land tour. In 1867, fifty-three years before the League of Nations granted the French4 a mandate to create what would later become Syria and Lebanon, Beirut was a minor harbor along the Levantine coast. Tripoli, just to the north, was the Ottoman rulers’ favored port, and with Raymond de Saint-Gilles’ vast crusader castle overlooking it and the incomparable Crac des Chevaliers nearby, one with far greater Christian significance. Just south of Beirut are Sidon and Tyre, with their Phoenician histories and biblical references. The most obvious Holy Land tour staging port would have been Acre, with its large natural harbor and recollections going back to the sixteenth century BC, and with much better proximity to the major New Testament sites which the Excursionists planned to visit.
So why did the New Pilgrims choose Beirut? The answer lies in Evangelical Protestantism. By the early 1860s the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had established a Protestant mission in Greater Syria headed by Dr. Daniel Bliss. Bliss was a remarkable man, who not only developed the church just outside Beirut, but also a boarding school, a hospital and then a teaching hospital which went on to become the world-renowned American University of Beirut (AUB). (Bliss’ great-great-great-great-great- great grandson, Peter Dorman, is President of the AUB and a living archive on all matters Bliss.) During his frequent fundraising trips to New York Dr. Bliss met Henry Ward Beecher, the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims preacher behind the Holy Land tour and himself an active member of the ABCFM. As Beecher was organizing the Excursionists’ itinerary at a time when he himself was planning to be the tour leader, it was only natural that he would want to meet his foreign mission partner, Dr. Bliss, here in Beirut.
The one hundred and twenty Excursionists had decided en passage that when they reached the Holy Land they would divide up into a dozen, more manageable, groups - groups reflecting their fitness and ambition. The toughest group would form a proper caravanserai and take an arduous three- or four-week route into the heart of the Holy Land; the averagely able would try to survive a night or two at camp at a time before re-joining the Qu
aker City, while the most sedate group would content themselves with day tours from the mother ship, and they would all meet up a month or so later in Joppa, now Jaffa, a suburb of Tel Aviv in Israel. Mark Twain, being one of the youngest on the tour, as well of course as being a working journalist sent specifically to cover the tour, elected to join the tough guys’ tour. The main problem, as they foresaw it, would be logistical. As Mark Twain wrote: “We knew very well that Palestine was a country which did not do a large passenger business, and every man we came across who knew anything about it gave us to under- stand that not half of our party would be able to get dragomen and animals. At Constantinople everybody fell to telegraphing the American Consuls at Alexandria and Beirout to give notice that we wanted dragomen and trans- portation. We were desperate - would take horses, jackasses, cameleopards, kangaroos - anything.”
On arrival in Beirut Mark Twain made a special effort to visit the US consul in the Levant, Jeremiah Augustus Johnson. He wrote that: “We have never been much trouble to a Consul before, but we have been a fearful nuisance to our Consul at Beirout. I mention this because I cannot help admiring his patience, his industry, and his accommodating spirit. I mention it also, because I think some of our ship’s company did not give him as full credit for his excel- lent services as he deserved.”
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Innocence and War Page 6
