St Paul's Labyrinth

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  The water was rising, very slowly but undeniably. It flowed steadily out of the pipe in a smooth arc, splashing into the murky green puddle on the floor, throwing up foam and little bubbles.

  Judith pressed her back against the wall behind her, desperately trying to get as far away from the water as she could. But it was hopeless. It was already sloshing over the top of her little hill.

  She held the candle close to her chest, cupping her hand around it to protect the wildly flickering flame.

  She gathered her courage with a deep breath and stepped into the water. It was already up to her knees and so cold that her arms were covered in goosebumps. She waded to the door and although her fists already ached from banging on it, she rammed them into it again.

  What else could she do?

  She went back to the iron ring in the wall. The candle was too wide to fit into it, but she dripped candle wax around it as best she could and then forced the bottom of the candle into the ring. When she was confident that it wouldn’t fall out, she let go.

  She went back to the bed and threw the blanket and the mattress into the water. The mattress floated like an airbed, giving her a tiny glimmer of hope. If the water kept coming in, she might be able to float on it and buy herself a little more time.

  She took hold of the bed so that she could push it into the corner of the cell, next to the pipe that was still spewing out water. Then, like a karateka gathering strength for a kick with a loud ‘kiai!’, she screamed at the top of her lungs and lifted it up.

  She slipped, flew backwards, and landed on her back under the water. The bed landed on top of her. A moment later, she lifted her head above the surface, coughing and spitting out the water that had ended up in her mouth. It tasted of canal water. She recognised the taste from childhood summers when she and the other children in her neighbourhood jumped from the canal bridges into the murky grachten below them.

  After a lot of pushing and shoving, she was able to manoeuvre the wreck of the bed into the corner of the cell and lean it against the wall at an angle. She took off her blouse and shivered. Climbing up the bed was much more difficult this time. It threatened to topple over if she didn’t stay exactly in the middle of it.

  Eventually, she managed to get as close to the pipe as she possibly could. She started to stuff the sleeve of her blouse into the narrow opening, using two hands to force it in against the water that kept pushing the fabric back out. As the opening narrowed, the water pressure increased and spouted into the room with even more force. Judith’s fingers were stiff with cold and cramp, but when she had finally stuffed most of the sleeve into the pipe, the stream of water gradually slowed to a thin trickle that seeped through the soaked blouse.

  Judith breathed a sigh of relief and climbed down again.

  Without her weight to hold it against the wall, the improvised ladder slid back down again.

  She gingerly lowered herself onto the mattress to see if it would hold her weight but it was soon obvious that she was too heavy for the flimsy thing. She sank to the bottom of the water, and the two ends of the mattress stuck up out of it like a letter V.

  She stood up again, wrapped her arms around her upper body, which was naked now except for her bra, and fixed her eyes on the blouse in the pipe, as though she might keep it in place just by staring at it.

  The water level in the cell was no longer rising. But the pressure building behind the blouse soon became too much for the wall to bear. A wet patch had begun to form around the edges of the pipe where it emerged from the wall. It didn’t take long for the loamy clay to start coming away. Chunks of it splashed down, like slabs of ice falling from a melting glacier.

  She was struck by the ridiculous thought that she mustn’t cry because her tears would only make the water rise faster. And then, like a breaking dam, the wall burst open and the water flooded into the cell with even more force than it had before.

  She stood in the middle of the cell. How long would it take for this space to fill up completely? The water flowed so powerfully that the water level must be rising. But when she looked at the wall, there was no evidence of it getting higher. Even so, if someone didn’t come to help her soon, at some point she would be pushed up to the grate above her head and drown.

  She covered her ears with her hands to protect herself from the sounds of her own screaming.

  THE FIFTH VISION

  And behold, I saw the man … forty-eight years old, no longer the child of his father and mother, no longer belonging to this village or that, but become one with all the people. Who is his mother? Who are his brothers? All those who act in accordance with the will of his Father, the lord of light, are his brother, his sister, his mother.

  And his mission is successful. He has already made many disciples for the way. His story has become their story, the bread of his Lord is the bread of their Lord, the blood of his Lord is the blood of their Lord. In one fell swoop, his message has created division among the Jews, incited the anger of the high priest, and grown his followers to a number that already surpasses that of Jesus’ early disciples.

  And behold, some men come down to Judea from Antioch, saying that the brethren must have themselves circumcised as Moses commanded them. Paul and his brother Barnabas are consumed by rage. The pain he feels when urinating is a constant reminder of his humiliation, the mutilation of his manhood. His attack is aimed at the heart of this covenant. No one should have to suffer as he has.

  And they decide to go to Jerusalem.

  After fourteen years, he returns. They go to Phoenicia and Samaria to tell them about the conversion of the Gentiles, bringing great joy to all the believers. In Jerusalem, they are welcomed by the Apostles, the elders, and the rest of the community. Paul and Barnabas declare all that God has brought about through them. But some believers who belong to the sect of the Pharisees insist on the laws of their forefathers: the non-Jewish believers must also be circumcised and keep the law of Moses.

  And Peter is compelled by the Spirit and gets up and says: ‘God has made no distinction between them and us because he has cleansed their hearts by faith. Why are you putting God to the test by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?’ At this, all those assembled are silent, and they listen to Barnabas and Paul who tell them of all the signs and wonders God has done through them among the Gentiles.

  And hark, James gets up and says: ‘God has formed a plan to take from among the Gentiles a people that will honour his name. Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to tell them that they should abstain from things that are polluted by idols, and from fornication and from meat which still contains blood, and from blood itself.’

  And Paul and Barnabas go back to Antioch with a letter from the Apostles and the elders. Their mission is to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, while Peter and his followers will preach to the Jews. They take with them a letter containing the decision that no greater burden will be placed on the Gentiles than that which is strictly necessary: ‘Abstain from meat that has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, and from meat which still contains blood, and from unchastity. If you keep yourself from these, you will be doing what is good.’

  And hark, they read the letter to them in Antioch and the community rejoices at its encouraging words. Paul and Barnabas remain in Antioch teaching and preaching the message from Paul’s true Lord.

  And Paul sends his followers out as lambs in the midst of wolves. They take no purse with them, no bag, and no sandals, and he forbids them to greet anyone they meet on the road. Whatever house they enter, they must first say: ‘Peace to this house!’ Then they remain in that house, eating and drinking what they are provided, for the labourer deserves to be paid.

  And Paul thinks: I will reap the harvest that comes from the blood of my Lord. The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. He asks the Lord of the harvest to s
end out labourers to gather it in.

  I am the divine reaper.

  I am a Persian.

  36

  HELIODROMUS

  SUN-RUNNER

  Twenty-one years ago, spring 1994

  After his eighth fit, the visions stopped.

  He’d had the first vision after falling from his bike at Archeon. It had taken him completely by surprise. Seven more had followed. Much like dreams, he had never been able to tell how long they lasted. Time seemed not to exist when the visions came, as though the voice was speaking to him from another dimension.

  By the second or third time, he had learned to recognise the signs that told him that he was about to have another vision. Always in the evening and always when he was alone, in bed. Shortly before they started, he’d feel tingling in his hands and on the top of his head, and oddly, on the soles of his feet. His breathing would slow down and he’d feel as though he was slipping away. The sounds around him disappeared, like swimming below the surface of a perfectly calm sea.

  Then the light would appear, shining with an incredible brightness. The voice that spoke from it was neither male nor female. Tiny would lie as still as possible, afraid that the slightest movement would break the spell. Almost as unexpectedly as the voice had begun to speak, it would stop again.

  When the visions stopped, the priest did all he could to make them return. He lay on his back in bed, closed his eyes, and focused on breathing in and out. Sometimes, his fingers would begin to tingle and he would wait expectantly for something to happen. But he would wake the next morning without having heard the voice.

  The voice had told him a story, a story in seven parts, about the secret history of the Apostle Paul, full of insights into his life and work. They shone a brand new light on the story he knew, the story the world knew. How Paul’s thirst for revenge had led him to create a literary Trojan horse that had penetrated right to the heart of the Jewish community.

  Tiny had written the visions down and shown them to no one but Ane. Ane said that the visions were absolute proof that the Lord intended Tiny to be his successor. Tiny progressed with astonishing speed, working his way through all the grades while still performing his daily duties as priest and shepherd of his flock.

  The sixth stage, that of the Sun-Runner, was the last grade before he took over as leader of the group and became the Father. It was ironic that he would keep the title with which most of his parishioners already addressed him.

  To become a Sun-Runner, you had to separate yourself from your own people, your own background. You had to imagine yourself as being at one with the cosmos to which you were inextricably connected, and unwaveringly self-aware and self-assured, like a Buddhist monk, unaffected by the worries of everyday life. By doing so, you would become as steadfast as the sun in the sky. The sun never worried about whether it would shine or not. It just did.

  During his initiation, he had been made to lie in a stone sarcophagus, like someone waiting to be buried, until he saw a blinding light. The light had been so intense that he had been unable to see, but two other members had helped him out of his temporary coffin. A flaming torch was pressed into his hand and he was crowned with a wreath of golden leaves, like a halo.

  During this stage, he dedicated many of his sermons to preaching about the hundreds of references to light in the bible. About the people who roamed in the darkness and saw a dazzling light, about how God turned darkness into light, and rough places into level ground, about how those who walked in darkness and no longer saw the light could always trust in the name of the Lord. The metaphors were obvious of course; man had always been fighting a battle against darkness. Our fear of the dark was primitive, a fear that had never completely left us. Fear of unknown things lurking in the shadows that could reach out and grab you if you weren’t careful. His homilies about light always resonated with the people in the pews. Everyone had wrestled with darkness at some point in their lives.

  And of course, he preached about Jesus himself, particularly the Gospel According to John, full of metaphors about light and darkness. How light had come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. And Jesus, who said of himself: ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’

  That was how he had stumbled on the Ebionites, considered by many to be the earliest Christians, perhaps even the only real Christians. They still existed, albeit as a tiny group in the Middle East, but they had endured.

  He had read about them as a student, but had always seen them as more of a curiosity than anything else, something that had unexpectedly, perhaps even unintentionally, survived the storms of time. They were a little like the coelacanth, a fish that was thought to have been extinct for sixty-five million years but, to the amazement of evolutionary biologists, a live specimen had turned up in a trawler’s net in 1938.

  The Ebionites were Jews who had always followed Jesus. Not Messianic Jews, and so not so-called Jewish Christians, but Jewish in the same way that Jesus’ first followers and disciples were: they were circumcised, followed the dietary laws, upheld the rules set down in the Torah and so on. They called themselves ‘the poor ones’ – ebionim – after ‘the poor in spirit’ who would inherit the kingdom of heaven. They were Jewish in every respect, and regarded Jesus as their guide and teacher, but also as the biological son of Mary and Joseph. They were said to have their own version of the Gospel of Matthew which left out the story of the virgin birth.

  According to the Ebionites, when Jesus was baptised by John, God ‘chose’ him, so to speak, by virtue of him being the most righteous person on earth. He was the very first person to follow God’s law absolutely. Because of this perfect obedience to the law, he was justified and named Christ, the Anointed.

  According to the Ebionites, Jesus’ followers did not worship him, nor did they see him as their saviour. Jesus’ brother James continued the Christian movement after his death, but in the eyes of the Ebionites it was hijacked by Paul, the Jew who suddenly became a ‘Christian’. They called him a false teacher. The Dutch language version of the Ebionite Manifesto states:

  We declare that Paul of Tarsus should be considered a false teacher, who opposes circumcision, the mark of Covenant, and opposes G’d’s Torah, and in so doing has strayed from the Way taught by Yeshua, the anointed son of Miryam and Yosef.

  They write:

  We expose your Apostle as false; your testament as false; your society as false; your church, its rulers, your governments as false. Our allegiance and hope is to the G’d of Israel alone.

  They had their own gospel, the Gospel of the Ebionites, of which only a few fragments were still known to exist. Ironically, it was only because the early Fathers of the Church quoted so extensively from their gospel in order to refute it that anything had survived at all. The information that formed the basis for the Ebionites’ two-thousand-year-old claim that Paul was a heretic could be found in this gospel. They were right, Tiny thought, but they had no idea in which respect they were right.

  In his work Panarion, the Medicine Chest, better known as Adversus Haereses or ‘Against Heresy’, the Church Father Epiphanius of Salamis described no less than eighty heretic groups. The entire thirtieth chapter was devoted to attacking the Ebionites in a wide variety of ways.

  When Tiny read sections 8 and 9 of paragraph 16 in this chapter, his eyes were truly opened.

  16:8 Nor are they [the Ebionites] ashamed to accuse Paul here with certain fabrications of their false Apostles’ villainy and imposture. They say that he was Tarsean – which he admits himself and does not deny. And they suppose that he was of Greek parentage, taking the occasion for this from the (same) passage because of his frank statement, ‘I am a man of Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city.’

  The next paragraph was even more significant:

  16:9 They then claim that he was Greek and the son of a Greek mother and Greek father, but that he had go
ne up to Jerusalem, stayed there for a while, desired to marry a daughter of the high priest, and had therefore became a proselyte and been circumcised. But since he still could not marry that sort of girl he became angry and wrote against circumcision, and against the Sabbath and the legislation.

  The Ebionites said that Paul had converted not just once, but twice. He had first converted to Judaism in the hope that he might marry the high priest’s daughter. He changed his Roman name, Paulus, to the Jewish name Saulus or Saul. When he converted for the second time, to Christianity, it was from a desire for revenge because they had rejected him. From that moment on, he was known as Paul again. His parents may well have been Greek, but they had acquired Roman citizenship in Tarsus, probably for a considerable amount of money. When Paul was about to be flogged without trial after his arrest in AD 58, he could rightly ask the centurion: ‘Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who is uncondemned?’ When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune to tell them that they were dealing with a Roman citizen. The centurion said: ‘What are you about to do? This man is a Roman citizen.’ The tribune went up to Paul and asked him: ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ And Paul answered: ‘Yes.’ The tribune said: ‘ It cost me a large sum of money to get my citizenship.’ To which Paul replied: ‘But I was born a citizen.’

  Although the Ebionites had been right about Paul’s double conversion, they hadn’t known about the brilliant way in which he had avenged himself.

  Paul had reconverted to Mithraism, the religion of his ancestors, but he had disguised himself as a Christian to take revenge on the high priest and his daughter, and thereby on all Jews. By inserting the well-known story of Mithras into Christianity, he was able to expand the new Christian religion, and diminish the Jews.