The Damascus Road

by Jay Parini

  Stephen wore a white tunic under a scarlet cloak and stood with his arms outstretched, his hands lifted.

  “It’s Isaiah come back!” I said to poke fun. Aryeh looked at me with satisfaction, and one or two of his friends laughed.

  “If Stephen isn’t careful,” said Aryeh, “he will float away to heaven.”

  I laughed perhaps too loudly, and heads turned toward us. A thin man with a red beard glared at me. Was he not someone I had seen before? Perhaps a visitor to Gamaliel’s school? How was the Jesus sect attracting such a range of people, some of them quite respectable? It worried me that so many intelligent and devout Jews could find this man and his ideas plausible. They apparently failed to realize how dangerous this was, that the Romans would seize on any chance to make us look ridiculous and round us up. Wasn’t the Antonia Fortress already filled with Jews?

  Stephen’s tone darkened as he began to talk about the Jews in terms that worried me: “We have heard the prophets from centuries ago, and how they spoke about the coming of the Christ, the Righteous One, a man whom God would anoint. But I tell you now: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth. He is living among us, though crucified. He is alive!”

  “Not so much,” said Aryeh, winking at me. I responded with a smile and a shrug. The poor fellow was mad, alluring but mad.

  I said, “Stephen is alive.”

  “Not for long,” Aryeh replied.

  At this point Stephen told us an astounding story. He claimed that Jesus, during his “years of wandering and teaching in the countryside,” had accepted a cup of water from a whore at Jacob’s famous well near Sychar, in Samaria. This wicked woman had taken any number of men into her bed. Not surprisingly, her own tribe in Samaria had rebuked or shunned her.

  Could any man with self-respect, a spiritual leader like Jesus, speak to a whore, accepting water to drink from her filthy hands?

  Jesus told her to bring her husband to the well, but she insisted she had no husband.

  Jesus apparently knew she lied. “You have five husbands,” he told her.

  “The Lord Jesus could see into her heart,” said Stephen.

  The Nazarene explained to her that God was spirit and that the hour of his kingdom would arrive any day. Everyone would be called into the presence of God, the living and the dead as well. Jesus told her that no one would ever again feel thirst, as he had supplies of water that she could scarcely imagine.

  “Sir, give me this water,” she said to him, trembling.

  She understood that the Christ stood before her, Stephen explained.

  A young man shouted a question from the crowd: “Did Jesus teach the Law of Moses?”

  Stephen paused, then told us that Jesus had overturned Moses, preaching a “New Covenant” between God and his people. “The old world must pass away,” said Stephen. “Everything must change. You must change!”

  “He’s insane,” Aryeh said. “And wicked as well. He must pay for this wickedness. Blasphemy!” He looked at me hard. “Do you hate him as much as I do?”

  “I hate him,” I said.

  “We should kill him.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Death is the right response to blasphemy, as the scriptures say.”

  I could feel a peculiar and pleasurable sense of righteous power, and believed at this moment that Stephen posed a danger for all Jews. He threatened the fabric of our lives. And those who wished to defend our cause must show an alertness, a readiness to kill for whatever was true and good.

  Aryeh quoted from David: “When he shall be judged, let him be condemned, this wicked man. His prayer itself has become a sin.”

  This Jewish sorcerer, Jesus, apparently considered himself a god of some kind, and many regarded him as a king, a rebel hero, another Maccabaeus.

  And that was dangerous.

  “Jesus will restore our kingdom,” Stephen told his audience.

  Approval rippled through the air, a cool admiring wind that stirred the leaves of attention in this small forest of onlookers. And I myself found Stephen appealing as a speaker. He had an ease that surprised me, with a clear eye and bright, calm demeanor: Hardly the booming orator or mad zealot I’d been led to expect. His voice carried the crowd and caught the ear.

  I did wonder privately about the risks of killing the followers of Jesus. Already we had Jews fighting Jews, one sect denouncing another. Slaughter might not always work to our advantage. But Aryeh was not alone in fearing Stephen and his message, and within days the Temple Guards seized Stephen on religious grounds for spreading false teachings, and—worse—for blasphemy. I found myself uncertain, afraid to put a foot wrong, and minding my words. This was a dangerous moment in Jerusalem.

  As Jews, we had survived for many centuries under perpetual siege but only because of our steadfastness and vigilance. Now the Romans wished to see us disappear or walk with our eyes to the ground, obedient, even subservient. I knew we must not provoke a violent response from the Romans, who would eventually—as had our enemies for millennia now—move elsewhere. The land of Israel belonged to God’s people, the Jews.

  * * *

  When I came home late, Hadar was sitting in her chair by the door, as ever waiting for me. She made a cup of linden tea, and we sat in the garden under a flaming torch, and I told her about our encounter with Stephen, including his peculiar story of the woman at the well.

  “Perhaps this man, Jesus, had an open heart,” she said.

  “What is open?”

  “Without preconceptions. He accepted this woman with many husbands as a human being, one of God’s own.”

  “She rejected God.”

  “But God didn’t reject her. He rejects nobody.”

  I didn’t know what to make of Hadar’s surprising comments. Either the Law of Moses had been established for all time—the single rule of morality, unwavering and eternally true—or it had not, in which case chaos would prevail. God had spoken to Moses with absolute clarity, once and forever. And Moses had come down from Mount Sinai bathed in a terrifying gold light, as if touched by God himself. And so Torah must not be overturned. I felt I must do whatever I could to stop this evil from rooting in our soil.

  Hadar didn’t quite share my affection for Aryeh. “He is a decent young man,” she said, “but perhaps headstrong and limited in certain ways. Be very careful, Paul. Violence will never help any cause.”

  I understood her point, yet I agreed with Aryeh that those who worshipped this false Christ should be weeded out. They blasphemed God, and the punishment for blasphemy was death by stoning. “Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord, the people shall stone him, according to Leviticus,” I said to Hadar.

  “Don’t be so sure of yourself,” she said. “Our God is a forgiving God.”

  It was easy to dismiss this thought because Hadar was a woman. Could one trust a woman to make hard choices?

  I arrived the next morning at the Temple in time to find Stephen kneeling on the steps, with his wrists bound. He had apparently given himself up without even trying to resist—a fact that disgusted me in itself. Did he have no self-regard? The guards surrounded him now, with Aryeh in control. He explained to the mob—suddenly silenced in anticipation—that a brief trial had produced a sentence. The Court of Elders decided that Stephen would be buried to his neck in sand, in the usual manner, outside of the walls of Jerusalem. The guards would crush his skull with stones. (I had seen any number of these executions since my arrival in Jerusalem, but always stood apart, not wishing to look too closely.)

  A gathering of Roman soldiers watched us from a distance, their swords drawn. They didn’t want a riot, as one could never tell where violence of this kind might lead. But it was impossible for them to intercede in Jewish affairs, which they didn’t, I suspect, even understand. A judgment had been rendered by the Temple authorities, who had appropriate jurisdiction in cases like this one. This o
utspoken Jew would be stoned to death by other Jews.

  Our ways puzzled them.

  “Come with us,” said Aryeh, taking me by the arm.

  I kept telling myself it made sense to rid our city of any man who threatened the Law, who preached the power of a Christ figure who stood above others, even the Romans, a rabbi whom some of his followers considered a son of God when (as we knew) only the emperor could lay claim to this title.

  A throng followed the execution party, gathering into a frenzied mass at Golgotha, with its stench and aura of fear. I had always avoided coming anywhere near these grounds. Several crosses stood nearby, with vultures pecking away at the loose guts of the unfortunates who hung there, probably thieves, most of them dead for days.

  A cross was a feast of carrion, and the sky above us darkened with black wings.

  It didn’t take long for the guards to pack Stephen up to his shoulders, pushing the dirt around his neck carefully—a collar of sand. The victim assumed a passive manner, never asking for mercy, not begging for a reprieve, saying nothing. His face settled into an angelic softness, and I could detect no fear in him. Death clearly did not intimidate Stephen.

  A young man in the tunic and belt of a Temple Guard approached with a heavy stone, ready to strike. Before he began his deadly work, he said, “Have you anything to say, Stephen?”

  “Thy will be done,” replied the victim.

  The crowd cheered as the guard heaved the stone at Stephen’s skull, ripping away skin but not quite doing the job. Another followed, and the poor man’s brow caved to the blow. His features dissolved in a mash of blood and bone.

  “It’s your turn,” said Aryeh, handing me a stone.

  My hands trembled, embarrassingly, as I stepped up to the spot. Did I really want to do this? Could I even avoid it?

  I hurled the stone with everything I could muster, crushing the skull in a way that would end Stephen’s misery at once, though I hoped he had lost his senses already. Aryeh followed suit, casting another large stone, and soon there was nothing but splinters of bone and blood in the sand, with ragged bits of flesh and brain within a small circle beyond the pit. An eyeball lay to one side, dislodged and staring.

  Feeling removed from this world, a ghost of myself, I walked back in the direction of the city, my eyes on the ground, its sparse grass and gravel. The city walls loomed ahead of me. An old man passed me leading a goat, and he looked at me hard, even through me. I glared back at him. My head spun, and I stopped to gather my wits, to breathe. I grabbed a post by the road to steady myself. What had I done?

  “Paul!”

  The voice startled me. It was Gamaliel who walked toward me. He was larger than I remembered: tall and broad-shouldered, a vast hoary presence. I looked up into his face. What was he doing here?

  “Paul, my son…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  He hesitated, then he said, “You know, I’ve been reading a collection of the sayings. The words of Jesus. Do you know them?”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  But I knew the followers of the Way quoted from these sayings at their gatherings and regarded them as holy words.

  “You should study them. There is more wisdom there than I would, at first, have suspected. Truth lives in this language, I’m quite sure of it. Study them.”

  Study the words of Jesus? Did he say that to me? Was this not the foremost scholar of the Hebrew scriptures in Jerusalem, a man whose commentaries had traveled far and wide? Wasn’t this the man whom my father worshipped like a god, sending me here to sit at his feet?

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “We should meet one day for a talk, and soon,” he said. “I believe that the Messiah may have arrived in our midst, and we have failed to recognize him.” His lips quivered as he spoke, and his eyes widened. He opened his hands to the heavens, quoting from David’s Psalm: “Teach me your way, dear Lord, that I may walk in the truth of your words, for I am afraid.”

  I was afraid myself.

  When I looked back toward Golgotha, the crowd had already begun to scatter, while three or four vultures fed on the remains of Stephen, dipping their beaks into the pool of his skull. A few bystanders, perhaps followers of the Way, lingered and would probably fetch his remains and bury him.

  “The soul is eternal,” Gamaliel said.

  I had never been less happy with myself, or more confused.

  “Will you come to visit one day soon?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course. I will come.”

  I went back to my room at Hagar’s house, and my unease, even my fury, grew day by day. I tried to convince myself that I had behaved correctly, and allowed myself to blaze with anger, as in Exodus, where it says: Let me alone so that my fury can flame, and I will burn in my righteousness, and destroy those who worship idols.

  It was good, I told myself, and the right thing to destroy those like Stephen, blasphemers who worshipped false gods. God was God, the Almighty One, the circle and center. He would allow no other gods before him. He wished us to destroy those who pretended otherwise. I would, I said to myself, become a warrior for God. I would defend him with all my strength.

  It felt good to express my hatred of the Way in the company of Aryeh and his comrades, and they suggested one day that, with the blessings of Caiaphas, the high priest of the Temple, I should go as their emissary to Damascus, where the Jesus circle had increased quite dramatically in the last few years and threatened to spread to the far ends of Arabia. They would send me there with two guardsmen as guides and companions on a mission of denunciation. I would warn the Jews in that city about this false Messiah and explain the dangers.

  And so we moved into the desert beyond Jerusalem on the road to Damascus one morning in the middle of summer.

  It would take a week to get there, stopping by the roadside at well-known watering holes, sleeping under palm trees to avoid the worst heat of the day. I had in my possession a letter from Caiaphas, which I would deliver to the synagogue. It allowed us to find and arrest key members of the Way of Jesus in Damascus. We could not arrest everyone, but if we took away the ringleaders, this movement would wither and die.

  * * *

  It was on the fifth day of our journey that the midday sun began to swell in the sky, even to pulse, a fist of light clenching and unclenching. I had never encountered such heat and light before, nor had my comrades, and we paused to drink water from an oiled leather sack. Never having spent much time in the desert, I shrank as the white sands whipped suddenly around me, stinging my cheeks and forehead like sand flies. I covered myself with a hood, eager for shade from the sun and whirling dunes, but this only made things worse, and I found it nearly impossible to breathe and groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” asked one of my companions.

  “I feel quite dizzy.”

  I got down from the donkey to walk with a sense of anticipation—much as a field of corn will whisper and tingle before a burst of rain. After only a short while a sandstorm blew up, wrapping a white sheet around our small caravan, forcing us to the ground. We understood the dangers of these unexpected storms, which could bury a man in less than an hour. The most experienced of my comrades said we must get to the floor of the desert and wait out the storm in a prostrate fashion.

  As I lay flat against the ground, the earth itself began to tremble while the storm passed beyond us. Now a hard blue sky rang out like an anvil stung with birds. And a brassy sound like a chorus of trumpets filled the air as if to announce the arrival of a king or prince. The sky then reddened, a vermillion blaze.

  The others lay on the ground, still covered, but I rose. I could feel an opening in the heavens. And I felt drawn, opened, emptied of myself.

  A voice boomed: “Paul! Paul! Why do you persecute me?”

  “Who speaks?”

  “Jesus.”

&n
bsp; Was the voice beside me? Was it above or below?

  “What do you want of me?”

  “Everything, Paul. Follow me. Follow…” The voice dwindled.

  “Where? Who are you?”

  Did I hear trumpets? Did the sky crowd with angels?

  Time passed, with nothing forthcoming.

  I cried out, “Speak again!”

  No answer came. I looked around to see what my friends made of this conversation, as the sky pressed on me, turning white and hot.

  One of my fellow travelers, a young man named Jarib, rose from the ground, taking my hand, asking what troubled me. He was a sympathetic fellow, and I could sense his distress.

  But I could not see him.

  “I am blinded, Jarib,” I said. “Did you hear anything? Jesus has called to me from the heavens. You heard him!”

  “I heard wind and sand.”

  Another man agreed that the wind had been loud, “a wolf’s voice in the desert, rising on a leash, a howl of anguish.” The sand, he said, “scraped along the ground, a grating noise.”

  “It was Jesus the Christ,” I said. “He called to me. He asked me to follow him.”

  This produced only confusion, a feeling of dislocation, even fear. They could not understand what I said to them. Was I not on my way to Damascus to punish those who followed the Nazarene?

  “Jesus is not the Christ,” Jarib said emphatically. “The desert can play tricks. The wind and sand, the swirl. It’s easy to lose one’s bearings.”