St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  ‘But wasn’t their distrust caused more by the fact that Paul had first persecuted the Christians and then joined them?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Listen, Peter, the whole idea of Paul as a persecutor of Christians … there wasn’t even any such thing as a Christian in those days. In the Book of Acts, Paul describes the lives of the Followers of the Way, as Jesus’ disciples were called. He says that they all met in the temple together, faithfully, every day. In the temple! Just like all the other Jews. Nobody stood in their way. They followed Jesus as their teacher just like other people followed other rabbis.’

  ‘So what about the trip to Damascus?’

  ‘Paul’s? So, he falls from his horse, sees a bright light, and hears a voice – depending on which of the three or four versions of the story you read – and thinks it must be Jesus … It’s a clever piece of historical fabrication. Jesus’ followers meet together every day in the temple in Jerusalem without being arrested. There doesn’t appear to have been any conflict at all, but we’re to believe that Paul went all the way to Damascus to prosecute Christians? This was in the year 32 or 33, not long after Jesus’ death. There were only a handful of his followers left in Jerusalem. How many do you think there would have been in Damascus by then? And anyway, it really wasn’t up to Paul. He had no authority to arrest anyone there. And then? So let’s say he arrested “all those Christians”,’ Awram drew quotation marks in the air with his middle and index fingers. ‘What then? Would he have dragged them all the way back to Jerusalem to hand them over to the Romans? Those Romans would have seen him coming! As far as they were concerned, the problem had already been dealt with when they crucified Jesus. Were Jesus’ followers harassed by the Romans after his death? Were they made to leave Jerusalem and spend their lives on the run? No, they all carried on living in Jerusalem and came together …’ And now Awram slammed his hand flat on the table with every word. ‘… every single day in the temple.’

  ‘So what’s—’

  ‘The whole story is nonsense. The Romans left them alone, the other Jews, the ones who didn’t follow Jesus, they left them alone too. But Paul went to Damascus … He probably did make that journey, but for another reason. Maybe he was a messenger, delivering a letter. Who knows?’

  Peter opened his mouth to say something, but then thought better of it.

  ‘And what many people don’t realise,’ Awram continued, ‘is that Paul waited three full years after his so-called “conversion” to Christianity before he went back to Jerusalem. Three years! Surely, after such a life-changing experience he would have been eager to go back to see the people who had known Jesus personally? But he waits three years, goes back and stays with James for two weeks, and meets Peter, but no one else. Wouldn’t you think he’d stay as long as possible so that he could meet as many of the people who had known Jesus as he could? But no, he stays for two weeks, hardly speaks to anyone, then leaves and doesn’t come back for another fourteen years.’ Awram took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow.

  ‘Where has Fay got to?’ Peter thought out loud. ‘She should have been here by now.’

  He had called her more than twenty minutes ago. To distract himself from his growing nervousness, he decided to continue the conversation with Awram. ‘But as a Pharisee, a law scholar, it would have been logical for Paul—’

  ‘Paul a Pharisee?’ he said cynically. ‘No man, don’t be ridiculous. That’s just another myth. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny at all.’

  ‘But what about his famous words? How do they go again? That he was circumcised on the eighth day and was one of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews and, in regard to the law, a Pharisee? He was born a Jew.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Awram said, unimpressed, ‘and studied under Gamaliel and thoroughly trained in the laws of the ancestors.’

  ‘Yes! That!’

  ‘But those are all his words, his testimony,’ Awram said, sounding tired. ‘Really, I’ve had this discussion so many times. And whenever I do, I ask the same question and no one can answer it: can you show me a single conflict between the views of the Pharisees and the so-called new ideas of Jesus? This Gamaliel, this doctor of the Pharisee law, he’s the one who defends the Christians in Acts. Here …’

  He got up and went over to the bookcase to get a bible. He flipped furiously through the pages until he found the scripture he was looking for.

  ‘Listen, Acts, chapter 5, verse 33 to 42 … It’s right there. What I find so infuriating is that it’s all so clear. For goodness sake, you don’t have to spend years studying to be able to see it, but everyone just parrots what everyone else has said. Here, it says that the members of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Court, explode in anger when the Apostle Peter and the others tell them that they intend to carry on telling people about Jesus, even though they’ve been forbidden to do so. And then old Gamaliel gets up to defend them and says:

  So in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them – in that case you may even be found fighting against God!

  He slammed the book closed and put it on his desk. ‘And Paul apparently studied with him?’ he said fiercely. ‘With this Jewish scholar who is actually the only person speaking up for Jesus’ followers? And then Paul is supposed to have persecuted the very Christians that his teacher had just defended? The alleged hatred that the “Jewish” Paul had for Christians isn’t explained anywhere, and it would make even less sense if he really was Gamaliel’s pupil. I don’t believe it at all. Paul, this fake Pharisee, only ever quotes the Old Testament from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is full of errors. A true Pharisee would never have done that. Because obviously they read the Tanakh in Hebrew. And Paul even quotes scriptures that no one has ever been able to find in any of the Jewish literature. In 1 Corinthians he writes: “… that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures”. But twenty centuries have passed and nobody has found the passage where that’s written. The Messiahs had to meet many conditions, dozens of them – and Jesus doesn’t meet a single one, by the way – but the vicarious suffering and rising from the dead on the third day in order to finish the job at an undetermined time in the future? That’s not one of them. Judaism doesn’t have the concept of the need for a saviour, the idea is blasphemous. Like Jesus, we believe that anyone who comes to God in faith and repentance will be given absolution. Human sacrifice isn’t necessary. Jesus never said that he would suffer instead of others, that he would take their sins upon himself …’

  He wiped his brow again. ‘A pupil of the great scholar Gamaliel, my eye!’ He laughed bitterly. ‘It would be like saying that you’d studied with Sartre, but then fought people with whom Sartre had no problem, and only quoted his work in English because you don’t speak French.’

  ‘But this all suggests that there was conflict, doesn’t it? The disciples were forbidden to talk about Jesus, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but every “so-called conflict” …’ He drew quotation marks in the air again. ‘… between Jesus and the scholars that we read about in the New Testament is actually the conflict that Paul had with the Pharisees, after Jesus’ death. The Gospels were written after Paul had won the argument with the original followers about how the good news should be spread. Paul’s conflict with the Jews, both the Pharisees and the first council, appears in the New Testament as a conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. As I’ve already said, there was room for Jesus alongside conventional Judaism. My Father’s house has many rooms.’ Awram stopped, as though he wanted to tell Peter something else but wasn’t sure that he should.

  Peter looked at the clock.

  ‘Fay’s been on her way for almost half an hour,’ he said anxiously. ‘Something must have happened.’

  ‘I want to tell yo
u one more thing,’ Awram said, ‘then I’ll stop talking. You should consider the possible consequences of all this: Paul wasn’t a Pharisee, wasn’t Gamaliel’s pupil … And that’s not all.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘I’m convinced that Paul wasn’t even a Jew. He was a Greek. Epiphanius quotes the Gospel of the Ebionites …’ He shook his finger to emphasise the importance of what he was about to say. But he didn’t get the chance to say it.

  The doorbell rang in the hall downstairs.

  Relieved, Peter got up to put on his coat. He walked out to the landing.

  Out of habit, Awram went to the window to see who was at the door. ‘Wait!’ Awram called out to Peter, who was hovering at the top of the stairs. Awram turned away from the window and looked at him intensely. ‘The police are at the door.’

  17

  Saturday 21 March, 12:55am

  ‘How did they know I was—’ Peter gasped.

  The bell rang again, for longer this time.

  Awram tapped on the window and waved at an officer who was standing next to the police car. He pointed to himself and then down at the street to indicate that he would come to the door.

  ‘Hurry,’ Awram said to Peter, who was still on the landing. ‘There’s a door downstairs that leads to the dormitory next door. Go through it, walk down the hall and leave by their front door. But wait five minutes. I’m sure they’ll be gone by then.’

  They went down the stairs. Awram pointed at the door that led to the student dorm. ‘Because you’re Mark and Judith’s friend. Their friends are my friends,’ he said in parting.

  As Peter closed the door to the dorm behind him, he heard Awram open the front door and greet the policemen with a friendly ‘shalom’.

  Peter found himself in a long corridor with two doors covered in posters and postcards. There were two toilets at the end of the corridor, and since he had to wait anyway, he took the opportunity to use one of them. He sat down and took the paperback book with the note from Song of Songs out of his pocket.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ he muttered. He opened the book at the place where the note was, and began to scan page 42. Then he read page 43. Neither of them appeared to contain any hidden messages. He read the quotation on the note again.

  Its posts are silver, its canopy gold; its cushions are purple.

  It was decorated with love by the young women of Jerusalem.

  The text about the canopy had brought him here, and that had led to the photograph of Niobe, the weeping rock. Hubris, loss, grief and death … Nevermore … battling your carnal nature, freeing yourself from your inner demons …

  What was going on? How had he, of all people, ended up being involved in this? And Judith … Where was she? What if something terrible had happened to her?

  He flushed.

  Why was Fay taking so long to arrive? Where was she?

  He went to the front door. As he reached for the handle, he heard a door open in the corridor.

  A boy in old-fashioned striped pyjamas stepped into the hall. He looked half asleep; the creases from his bedsheets were still on his cheeks. At first, his sleepy gaze was fixed on the screen of his phone. The soft blue glow lit up his face. But then he saw Peter and froze. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, his voice trembling slightly. He held his phone in both hands, almost as though he thought it could steady him.

  ‘I was just visiting Awram,’ Peter replied at once. ‘I work at the university … I needed to discuss something with him.’

  The boy narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Do you live here?’ Peter asked, trying to sound genuinely interested.

  ‘Why are you going out this way?’ the boy asked with remarkable politeness. ‘Were you really on your way out?’

  ‘Awram couldn’t find the front door key,’ Peter answered. He was starting to feel anxious now. This conversation was taking too long. ‘You know what he’s like, absent-minded professor. He said it would be all right if I went out this way instead.’ He opened the front door to show he was telling the truth, then turned around to say goodbye as calmly as he could. But before he could say anything, the boy took a photograph of him.

  ‘I’m calling the police,’ the boy said firmly. He went back to his room and locked his door behind him.

  When he got outside, Peter swore under his breath. He looked nervously to his left. The police car had already gone, but who knew how soon it would be back if the boy really did call the police.

  Before he’d even reached the corner of the street, something caught his eye. Someone was standing under the trees by the entrance to the Van der Werfpark.

  Peter stopped cold. He began to raise his fists, ready to fight.

  ‘Here,’ the person whispered, waving their right arm wildly like someone greeting a long-lost relative at Schiphol airport.

  Peter took a few halting steps towards the figure under the trees. They stepped out from the shadows and stood in the pool of light cast by the streetlamp. Now Peter could see who it was.

  Fay.

  Peter ran over to her. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said urgently. ‘Why didn’t you come to the synagogue like we’d agreed?’

  ‘I got held up, sorry. I couldn’t find the key … I wanted to show you something. I tried the number you called me on but it went straight to voicemail. Then when I got to the synagogue, there was a police car outside …’

  ‘The phone’s battery died. Sorry.’

  Peter looked into Fay’s face. She was about the same age as him and had an unmistakably Slavic appearance. Her parents were Czech and had fled to the Netherlands during the Prague Spring, bringing the teenaged Fay with them. Her husband had died from cancer shortly after the birth of their daughter Agapè. Although her tremendous grief was etched on her face, she was still a beautiful woman.

  Peter had only met her a handful of times, but they had clicked straight away. He had once joined one of the guided tours she gave of her department. Fay turned out to have a gift for taking a seemingly insignificant artefact and telling her audience a long, fascinating story about it from memory. She could draw so many lines of history together around one little vase or tiny pin, that her audience would wonder why it hadn’t been given a more prominent place in the collection.

  ‘Is something wrong, Peter?’

  He was still on his guard, but he knew he had no other option than to let Fay in. She was the only person who might be able to help him now.

  ‘Which key were you looking for?’ he asked. ‘And what did you mean when you said I was looking for a soldier?’

  ‘Slow down, Peter. You seem very jittery.’

  ‘A lot has happened. Sorry. But—’

  ‘I was looking for the key to get into the museum. We can go via the Papengracht entrance,’ she said as she walked into the park. ‘What’s happened to Judith?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. She’s gone. I have to find her. There are clues that I … What are we going to do in the museum?’

  ‘Does the name Mithras mean anything to you?’

  ‘Erm … no, not much I’m afraid. I know it’s the name of a god from one of the mystery religions. One where you had to be initiated before you could join … is that the soldier you meant?’

  ‘Yes, it was a soldiers’ religion. Or at least one that was very appealing to soldiers. Mithraism was a huge rival to Christianity until the Roman Empire made Christianity its official religion at the end of the fourth century. Today’s Christians could just have easily been Mithraists. There was very little difference between them. But Christianity won, and history is always written by the winners, so now we’re Christians.’

  Peter felt a chill go through his body. It was like listening to his old tutor, Pieter Hoogers, again.

  ‘Mithraism has been declared historical myth and Christianity has become historical fact.’

  ‘The difference being,’ Peter said, ‘that Jesus really existed and Mithras didn’t.’

  ‘We don’t know that for ce
rtain, but my point is that we’ve decided that exactly the same rituals and stories are myth in the case of one religion and fact in the other. It’s like telling children that Sinterklaas is real, but Father Christmas isn’t.’

  ‘But … the soldier?’

  They walked briskly out of the park and then along the Rapenburg canal. It was completely deserted at this time of night.

  ‘Oh yes, right! So, when you told me about following the black raven and the Quintus ravens and the bridegroom under the chuppah, the penny dropped. Raven, bridegroom … soldier.’

  Peter looked at her, perplexed.

  ‘Mithras had seven stages of initiation, because in those days they only knew about five planets – Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury – plus the sun and the moon, making seven. At each stage, there was a different ritual. After you’d completed it, you achieved a new grade within the order, with new rights, but also new responsibilities. That’s how you progressed.’

  Is all this a sort of initiation ritual, Peter asked himself. Is that why I’m doing this? Am I supposed to prove my worth? ‘You’ve been chosen,’ Raven had told him.

  They went over the Doelenbrug and onto Houtstraat which led to the Papengracht. Before long, they were standing outside the museum’s staff entrance. Fay opened the door and disarmed the security system. There was a short beep, and then they closed the door behind them.