Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Only that in man which dies not possesses verity, for it is given of God, blessed be His Name, and the sinful soul is redeemed from death and hell by its great Lover, its Savior, who died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, our absolution, our reconciliation with God, the Father, and our eternal life beyond these little, dark and broken shores we call our home.”

  Stephen raised his long and aristocratic hands and his look kindled with love and passion and fervor on the listening men, and he said, “His peace I bring unto you, as He brought it to us, the Warrior of Israel, the Holy One of Israel, Who from the ages was promised to us who awaited Him, the Redeemer of His people, our Lord and our God!”

  Saul could contain himself no longer. His whole body, his very flesh, appeared to him to gather to itself enormous strength and fury, and he advanced through the throng as if he walked alone and there was none in his path. He reached Stephen ben Tobias who looked at him with a sudden and flashing smile of recognition, and Stephen made as if to speak and he half lifted his hand, desirous of touching the other man. But Saul seized a burning brand on the altar, and he shook it in the face of the priests then struck the altar with it in one violent movement. Sparks flew. The priests recoiled. The crowd craned and murmured, knowing this intruder.

  Saul raised his roaring voice and he shouted to the priests, “Do you dare stand there and not protest the words of this blasphemer who has told you that our Temple will be destroyed and our holy city? Who would destroy them? This fellow and his followers, these so-called Nazarenes, these cultists, these heretics! It is not enough that they have brought contention and bitterness and hatred between brethren in this sacred city and in our holy land. No! They have brought fear to us, the hard attention of the Roman. They have divided us, confused us, caused us to commit the sin of blasphemy and doubt, to look with derision on all that we hold holy, to flout the prophets, to weaken our resolution, to dissipate our strength through controversy and quarreling. They have brought us far from our God with lying preachments. They have set house against house, until there is not an hour but what anger erupts and men strive with each other. They have imitated through Satan miracles and prodigies, for the confusion of simple minds and the desecration of all that is holy.

  “And, what are they?” cried Saul, turning from the priests now and facing the people, who were murmuring loudly and pushing against each other. “Base creatures, degraded creatures, superstitious and ignorant creatures, who question the Law and the Book!”

  He paused and Stephen’s voice rang out clear and firm. “This is not true, Saul of Tarshish, and you speak falsehood whether you know it or not! We do not destroy the Law nor seek to change it, but to proclaim its fulfillment in the Person of the Redeemer of Israel, the Messias of God. He has made a new Covenant with us—”

  Saul struck him fiercely on the cheek, and when Stephen involuntarily stepped back a pace Saul advanced on him and struck him again. The synagogue was immediately filled with shouting and imprecations and the altar fire caught wild and glittering eyes.

  Saul looked at them. His breast rose and fell with his uncontrolled emotions and his despair and hatred. “Who will testify now against this fellow, this traitor, this apostate Jew, this Hellenist imbued with the paganism of the Greek and all their heathen philosophies? Who will go with me to the house of the High Priest, where the Little Sanhedrin is now called, and witness against this man, our enemy, the enemy of God, Himself, blessed be His Name?”

  His eyes were blue lightnings; froth appeared at the corners of his mouth. He visibly shook with his wrath. “Men of Israel!” he cried. “Do you wish the anger of God to descend on us again, that we go whoring after strange cults and blasphemous lies and the idolatry of a miserable Nazarene? What good can come out of Nazareth? Woe unto you, men of Israel, men of the holy city, that you have listened to this heretic! Should the very stones you stand on rise and smite you to your death, it would be little enough punishment. For, in this place, dedicated to God and His worship, you have permitted a rascal, a thief of your souls, to speak to you without protest. Woe unto you!”

  It seemed to his now affrighted listeners that he was as large as a statue, filled at the core with fire, that he possessed strange attributes, and was a prophet, for he stood in the light of the altar like a red-haired Moses prepared to destroy the Tablets of the Law because of their sins. His countenance was terrible. His eyes, they thought, were frightful in their power and intensity, as they roamed their faces.

  Then a man shouted, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God! And against this holy place and the Law! For we have heard him say that Yeshua of Nazareth will destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us!” (Acts 6:13-14)

  The man turned to those near him and exclaimed, “Who will stand I with Saul of Tarshish and witness against this Stephen ben Tobias, that he may be punished for his crimes against us, and against God?”

  Hands flung themselves into the air and a great shout rose, and I Saul looked upon the congregation, then looked with a malignant smile at Stephen ben Tobias who had folded his hands under his prayer shawl and whose lips were moving in silence.

  “Seize him, then, men of Israel, the faithful of God!” said Saul, I “and we will take him to the house of the High Priest, Caiphas, and before the Little Sanhedrin, for a judgment.”

  The crowd erupted into the street, tossing those who awaited outside as a sea tosses sticks, and they were led by Saul ben Hillel who I was like a raging storm. The centurion looked upon him and said I in a low voice to his men, “Then is not of our affair. Nevertheless, I let us follow where they go.”

  Still, he glanced with some compassion on the torn and bleeding Stephen ben Tobias, the patrician, who was being half carried and half dragged, away from the synagogue, followed by the screaming land cursing mob. The centurion thought of the mobs of Rome of whom even Caesar Tiberias lived in fear, and who now really ruled the city and distorted the voice of law and reason with their howls land their demands, and who devoured the flesh of the industrious and the manly to satisfy their base appetites and who shrieked for bread and circuses, for beans and for housing and benefits they had not earned, and dared to call themselves Romans! The centurion shook his head, and with a melancholy countenance he motioned to his men, and stepped into his chariot and followed Saul and Stephen and the wrestling and sweating mob. He obeyed his orders, given to him by Pontius Pilate.

  The High Priest awaited the arrival of Saul and his prisoner, and so did the few members of the Little Sanhedrin, hastily summoned. Caiphas said, “This will surely be the end of Stephen ben Tobias, for I know this Saul of Tarshish, and he is a man of vengeance and will of a certainty deliver us of the blasphemers.”

  “I know the house of Tobias,” said one judge, his eyes resolutely on the marble floor of the hall and his expression inscrutable. “Let us hope that house does not exert its own vengeance.”

  “I have heard that they have secretly denounced their son, Stephen,” said another judge. The others sighed with relief. The judge said, “They would not lift a hand either to help or avenge him, for he impudently exhorts them to give their riches to the poor that they might have salvation!”

  The others laughed faintly. One said, “If only there were an end to this foolish cult!”

  They heard a discordant sound of huge tumult approaching the palace and the High Priest said with distaste, “The mob, once more. How I detest them!” He sat on his gilded chair and brooded and waited, and he thought of Stephen ben Tobias in the hands of that savage rabble and shuddered.

  The captain of Caiphas’ guard rushed into the hall, his sword drawn, and crying, “Lord, there is a huge mob outside the gates, clamoring to be received by you, and with them is one Saul of Tarshish, who demands admittance with his prisoner, Stephen ben Tobias! And with them also is a Roman officer and some legionnaires!”

  Caiphas said, “Admit Saul of Tarshish and his prisoner,
and the witnesses against the prisoner, but none else, no, not even the Romans, for this must be a seemly trial and not a heathen circus.”

  “Unlike the trial of Yeshua ben Joseph,” added a judge, and Caiphas turned to him sharply but the judge’s face was bland. Nevertheless, Caiphas fumed, thinking of Rabban Gamaliel and Joseph of Arimathaea and the defected priests of the Temple. A few moments later there was a scuffling and a howling in the portico and muffled shrieks, and then Saul hurled himself rather than ran into the hall, and he was like a tempest crowned with fire, and behind him rushed a dozen men beating one in their midst and kicking and reviling him. Their garments blew with their vehemence and their feet slapped the marble like brutish applause.

  Caiphas rose and lifted his voice in anger, gazing at Saul who had paused before him, “Are these animals or are they men, Saul ben Hillel, that they swarm before me like swine? Where is their decorum in this company of the Sanhedrin?”

  “Lord,” said Saul, answering him in the deliberate Latin he spoke, “forgive them, for they are inflamed by their fury that this blasphemer dared exhort them in their very synagogue, where they were peacefully at prayer, and offer up blasphemies to offend their ears.” But he turned and spoke in a loud hard voice to the witnesses and they stared once at him with restlessly gleaming eyes, breathed heavily, then flung their prisoner at the feet of Caiphas.

  Stephen ben Tobias was hardly conscious and bleeding from several small wounds in his face and on his arms. His amber head, so crisply curled and shining, lay on the marble floor, dabbled with blood, and his arms and his long and elegant hands were stretched before him. Now a deep silence suddenly filled the chamber and the judges in their chairs craned to look upon this scion of a celebrated house, and some knew him and bit their lips and looked aside, and some were curious. Caiphas closed his eyes briefly. He opened them to regard the disheveled witnesses in their many colored garments and he saw the lust to kill on their dark and bearded faces and he thought, It matters not to them what this man has done not done, or whether he blasphemed or not, for what do cattle know of blasphemy? They only wish to kill him. When will this horror end? Why has Israel been cursed with another new and militant beet?

  He said to Saul, “Is the prisoner dead or only fainted, and can he aroused to answer to the charges?”

  “Request wine for him, lord,” said Saul, still speaking in Latin. “He is not dead.”

  Caiphas clapped his hands and when a slave appeared he ordered wine. Then he hesitated. He loathed Saul as he loathed all contumacious and turbulent men for they not only vexed his mind but disturbed his digestion. In some manner, deftly and with all too human a dexterity, he had shifted the blame for the origin of the persecution of the blasphemers and cultists from himself to Saul, and at times considered himself a sorely distraught man who desired only peace. So, to ease the spasm within him and to annoy Saul and perhaps even to insult him, he said to the servant, “Bring also a chair for this prisoner and some water and towels for his wounds, and serve the wine in one of the suitable goblets, for this is Stephen ben Tobias of a distinguished house in Israel, and not a workman from the Street of the Tentmakers nor a peasant from the vineyards.”

  Some of the judges, with pardonable pleasure, saw that Saul’s face swelled and that he bit his lip until a bead of blood appeared upon it. But he stood rigidly in silence, like an image of himself, and stared over the High Priest’s head at one of the high windows through which fell the strong pale sunlight. His countenance had turned gray, his mouth was livid.

  The servant helped assist Stephen to his feet and into a chair drawn before the judges and the High Priest and Stephen fell against the back, his pallid face the face of a dead man, his eyes closed, his cheeks bleeding. Great bruises were already appearing on his flesh and on his throat. But even these, and his poor garb, could not diminish his patrician aura. When the wine, in a superb Alexandrine goblet, was pressed gently against his lips he swallowed it slowly, drop by drop, and a faint color returned to his handsome face. Then he looked at the High Priest and said, “Caiphas.”

  “Yes, it is I,” said the High Priest. “It is an evil day when a scion of a noble house is caught in blasphemy, Stephen ben Tobias, and arrested like a common felon and brought before members of the Sanhedrin. Speak, Stephen, what have you to say for yourself, what denials do you wish to make?”

  Stephen appeared to ponder, not moving those open lustrous eyes of his from the High Priest. At last he said, “So He was brought, like a common felon and judged, and I feel no shame. I am overjoyed that I can imitate Him.” His cultured voice grew stronger instant by instant, and then, incredibly, he smiled. He turned in his chair and looked at Saul, who moved his head stiffly in his direction and returned his gaze.

  “Long have I wished to dispute with you, Saul of Tarshish,” he said, “for we are men of the same breed, and I have prayed to reason with you.”

  “Reason with me now,” said Saul in his loud and bitter voice, “for you have betrayed what is best in Israel, the obligation of a man of an illustrious house to set an example to his people. You have behaved indeed as a common felon, as a cheap and rowdy blasphemer, a low fellow creating unrest out of mere mischief, and exposing our people to danger, and to the wrath of God.”

  Before Stephen could answer him Saul raised his hand peremptorily, and said, “But what are you, Stephen ben Tobias, but a Hellenist, an apostate Jew, who cannot honor the faith that has guarded Israel through the centuries because he knows little or nothing about it, its history and its saints and its prophets! No, rather, you have idly embraced false gods and evil philosophies, and have been easily led into error and blasphemy. I am prepared,” said Saul, for his heart was filled with an unfathomable pain, “to have you confess that you have I sinned out of ignorance, and out of lack of knowledge, and not out of I conviction, and perhaps only to amuse an effete self.”

  The judges glanced at each other in amazement, and the mouths of the heaving witnesses fell open, for the formidable Saul of Tarshish had offered the prisoner an escape so that he would suffer, perhaps, only a few lashings and then be released.

  Saul did not understand even himself, and all the complex emotions, wound one within another like many threads rolled together, which had impulsively moved him to suggest to Stephen how he could avoid the punishment of a true blasphemer, and so receive only a flogging and short imprisonment. Perhaps it had been Stephen’s name and house, or perhaps the beauty of his face and the openness of his look, and his youth, for he was younger than Saul and only on the threshold of full manhood, and in some manner he reminded Saul of the boy, Amos, his nephew. He had seen that at the very altar in the synagogue, even in his rage.

  It was possible that Stephen, with that keen insight which had come to him lately, understood all this, and his eyes welled and darkened with compassion, as if he, not Saul, was the accuser and the judge, and Saul the victim.

  Caiphas said quickly, “Confess, Stephen ben Tobias, that you have been in error, not out of conviction but out of ignorance, as Saul of Tarshish has—accused.”

  But Stephen did not turn to him. He continued to contemplate Saul, and now a deep excitement filled his eyes and the sweetest of smiles curled his Grecian lips. He rose slowly and feebly from his chair, then stood beside it, his hand upon it to support himself. Then it was that he looked at the judges and began to speak in his seductive and enchanting voice.

  I have been accused of being an apostate Jew, with little knowledge of our sacred history and the saints and the prophets, and therefore inclined to misinterpretation and error. But, lords, this is not true.”

  He glanced strongly at Saul and said, “There is a worse betrayal even than that of a friend or a kinsmen, or a people, and that is betrayal of God, blessed be His Name, and the betrayal of His truth.”

  He turned to the judges and said, “Lords, hearken unto me and tell me then in all justice if I am a Jew ignorant of the history of our people.”

  He embark
ed then on a long and eloquent dissertation on the history of his people and the saints and the prophets, and now there was no sound in the chamber at all but his compelling voice and no gesture but his moving and graceful gesticulations, and even the witnesses did not shuffle their feet and Caiphas and the judges listened in astonishment, and Saul, himself, in spite of his efforts, could not glance away from that glowing face near him.

  There was not an event, however obscure, how far away in the clouds of time, that Stephen did not relate, and it was as if he were telling an absorbing story which none had heard before. He spoke of Abraham and Jacob, and Joseph and Moses and Aaron and Solomon and David, with precision and deep knowledge. He had the cultured man’s genius for assembling facts and presenting them logically, with no vague hesitations or uncertainties, but with absolute order and incisiveness. Moment ran into moment, and time into time, and all were held by his voice as if held by his hands. (Acts 6 and 7)

  He came to a halt. It was understood that he had not finished, but he looked smilingly at the bemused judges and waited. Saul, too, seemed to be under a spell, and his face was wrinkled and drawn.

  Then Saul said, “A witness against you, one of those present, has declared that you have said, of the Temple, ‘Yeshua ben Joseph of Nazareth will destroy this place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.’ What have you to say in answer?”

  Stephen, again only addressing him, replied: “It is written in the Scriptures: ‘Solomon built Him a House. “Howbeit the most High dwells not in temples made with hands—saith the prophet.” “Heaven is My Throne and earth my footstool. What house will you build Me?” said the Lord, or what is the place of My rest? Has not My hand built all these things?’ The Messias has told us,” said Stephen, his voice deepening, “of these things again, reminding us that gilded houses made for God may be pleasing to man’s reverence, and therefore to God, but men can pray and be heard in the open fields at their labor, and in their secret places and not only in the synagogues and the Temples, and in their beds, and alone. These He said, and I have repeated them, and like Him, I have repeated the words of Solomon, for we have forgotten them, as men always forget the words of God and prefer to listen to their own desires.