The Source

by James A. Michener

  “The body of Jesus is one,

  Holy forever.

  The Mother of Jesus is God-like,

  Holy forever.”

  When this provocative song erupted outraged Byzantines would try to murder the Egyptians, so that Makor was often splashed with blood; but the schism could not be healed, nor would it ever be. Like the great split that was about to engulf the followers of Muhammad, this one between Egypt and the west would endure forever.

  In addition to the Byzantine and Egyptian sects Makor owned two additional Christian churches, one supported by Rome for the use of its pilgrims coming from Europe and another for the strange Nestorians of the east, and between these two groups there was also frequent brawling, so that in this little village one could observe a microcosm of the theological anarchy that characterized the church in Asia: the Byzantines from Constantinople, the Romans, the Egyptian separatists and the Nestorians.

  It was into this cauldron that one of the noblest emperors of Byzantium had recently tossed an attractive new theology. Heraclius was soldier, scholar and saint, and in the first of these capacities had recently defeated the Persian Chosroes to win back the True Cross, which had originally been discovered three centuries before by Queen Helena, and this accomplishment had made him the world’s premier Christian. So in his second character he studied the dissensions that threatened his church and was now ready as a saintly man to suggest an ingenious compromise acceptable to Byzantine, Roman, Egyptian and Nestorian alike, if only they approached his proposal with good faith. In those fateful years when the Arabs were stealing Damascus and half his empire Heraclius was busy developing his grand compromise, which reached Makor in this provisional form:

  Eager to end the strife that mars our church, we have decided that there shall be no more argument as to whether the nature of Jesus Christ was, one or two. The matter is unimportant and we hereby decree that regardless of how a man believes, he is welcome in our church. Forgetting the nature of Christ’s body, we hereby announce that He had but one will, which faultlessly represented the will of God. This is now the belief of all true Christians, for we have spoken.

  The emperor’s edict was read at dawn one summer’s morning, and by nightfall three men were dead in the ecclesiastical rioting. In succeeding days the bishop wailed in his basilica, “There are two natures in Christ and one will. That is the law.” But the stubborn Egyptians countered, “There is one nature and two wills,” so that the emperor’s gesture, intended to bring conciliation, had brought only a new schism to agitate the community.

  And so as Muslim troops approached from the east on that mighty conquest which would terminate the power of Byzantium in the Galilee, the citizens of that contentious area continued their bitter arguments over the nature of Christ, not realizing that they were engaged in an extension of the same argument that had agitated Makor in the days when the young Jew Menahem ben Yohanan joined the new church as Mark, and the debate was no more trivial now than it had been then: it was an effort to build a base from which Christianity could conquer the world. If one considered Jesus to be all man, His divinity was rendered meaningless, while the miracle of Mary as the Mother of God vanished; on the other hand, if one argued that He was all God, the significance of human redemption was diminished and the crucifixion could be interpreted merely as a device adopted by God to prove a point: no human suffering or agony need be involved. However, if a concept of Jesus could be evolved whereby His substance, His nature and His will could all be accepted as both divine and human, then Christianity would have acquired a subtle unifying principle upon which enormous structures of faith and philosophies of life could be built. It was in this historic battle over the meaning of Christ that the Christians of Makor were engaged, but the adroit proposal of Emperor Heraclius helped little, for within a few weeks of its reception pickets came from Tabariyyah with news that the Arabs were planning to capture Makor, and Ptolemais as well.

  Now, as Abd Umar, the servant of Muhammad, led his squadron away from open fields and into the forests of the Galilee, he might be somewhat confused by the conflicting claims of Christians; but he was totally bewildered by the Jews, for he would never be able to understand why they had failed to accept Muhammad, and he approached this problem with love, for in any essential meaning of the word he could have considered himself a Jew.

  As a half-Negro slave he had for a time been the property of one Umar, hence his name Slave-of-Umar, but that man had disappeared and he had passed into the hands of a robust, red-headed Jew named Ben Hadad, whose ancestors had wandered down from Palestine during those turbulent years when General Vespasian of Rome was crushing the rebellious Jews. Ben Hadad’s people had arrived in a caravan from the Galilee and had found a pleasing welcome in Arabia among the sand dunes and the white-walled cities. The Jews had lived alone, obedient to the Torah, and had gradually established themselves as traders, especially in Ben Hadad’s city of Yathrib, to be known in history as Medina.

  Ben Hadad was a large, jovial merchant whose caravans had prospered and who had acquired, during a trip to Damascus, a portion of the Talmud brought there from Babylonia, and his possession of these sayings of the Jewish fathers had made him a kind of spiritual leader of his people; but he fell into no traditional category of rabbi, sage or teacher. He was an easygoing man who loved the hurly-burly of trade and who sent his adopted son, Abd Umar, into the desert with a caravan by himself at the age of eleven.

  “Take care of the camels and God will take care of you,” Ben Hadad had said to the dark boy. “If a man asks for fifteen pieces, give him sixteen … if you expect to do business with him again.” Where the other Jews of Medina refused to engage in any work on Shabbat, Ben Hadad argued, “If my camels are half a league from home at Friday sunset, God Himself wants to see them properly bedded down.” He also taught Abd Umar, “If you abide for three days in the desert tending a sick camel, God will somehow repay you.” He was a man of forty-eight who had four wives and numerous children, but of them all he loved Abd Umar best, for the slave was quick and had the same love of good living as Ben Hadad. “When a young man goes to Damascus and fails to see the girls from Persia, he might just as well have stayed at home with the women packing dates.”

  Better than most Arabs, Abd Umar appreciated how much of the Koran had come to Muhammad through the teachings of Jewish sages, and he approved when the Prophet, hoping to bind the old and the new into one force, made generous efforts to win the Jews to his side. Muhammad had nominated Jerusalem, the city from which he had ascended to heaven, as the locality toward which his followers must turn when they prayed; he had reassured his Jewish neighbors repeatedly that he like them was descended from Abraham—through Ishmael in his case; and he had incorporated into his religion all matters which the Jews held most precious: the concept of one God, the visions of Moses, the rectitude of Joseph, the glory of Saul and David and Solomon, and the practical wisdom of Job. To any intelligent mind the religion of Muhammad must be the logical next step in the growth of Judaism, and the Prophet waited for the Jews to join him. It was symbolic, perhaps, that when he fled from Mecca to Medina, it was the hospitable Jew Ben Hadad who first welcomed him coming through the Medina gate, and one of the first gestures Muhammad made in his new home was to invite Ben Hadad’s people to join him.

  Why had the Jews refused? Why? Abd Umar often wondered, for he could recall the derisive manner in which his father, Ben Hadad, had laughed when Muhammad suggested that he lay aside the Old Book and accept the Koran. When pressed, Ben Hadad said, “I agree with you that there is only one God, but prophecy has ceased.” Argument had followed, and Muhammad was as persuasive a logician as any who had ever crossed Arabia, but the Jew had repulsed him with his rocklike faith: “The To rah is all we need.”

  Abd Umar could recall the morning on which he said good-bye to Ben Hadad for the last time: he was twenty years old and about to start his caravan on a trip to Damascus when Muhammad and some followers launched a discus
sion under a nearby tree, and as he heard the inspired message that came from the Prophet’s lips he delayed the departure of his camels and listened, realizing for the first time that he—the dark slave of a Jew—was being summoned to a lifelong mission. He lingered far beyond the prudent time for starting, hearing with awe the revelations of the man from Mecca:

  “When the sun is overthrown,

  And when the stars fall,

  And when the hills are moved,

  And when the camels big with young

  Are left by the wayside,

  And when the wild beasts are herded together,

  And when the seas rise,

  And when souls are reunited,

  And when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked

  For what sin she was slain,

  And when the pages are laid open

  And when the sky is torn away,

  And when hell is lighted,

  And when Paradise comes near,

  Then every soul will know what it has done!”

  At the conclusion of this apocalyptic vision he had prostrated himself before the seer, crying, “I am your servant.”

  “Not mine, but God’s,” the Prophet had replied, and at that moment Abd Umar entered into the covenant which had subsequently guided his life, transforming him from a slave into a captain of the faithful.

  In his new-found exaltation he had gone to Ben Hadad, saying, “Father, I’ve surrendered to the Prophet.”

  At first the red-haired Jew had scowled, but then had said generously, “I hope you find comfort.”

  “Will you join me?”

  “No, there’s one God and for Jews He speaks through the Torah.”

  The conviction of Ben Hadad’s reply caught his son off guard, but finally the slave understood. “You’re a leader, so you have to remain a Jew. But the others …”

  “Will they join Muhammad?” The merchant laughed. “Son, we’re Jews because we believe certain things. None of the others will join.”

  The Jew’s reply disturbed Abd Umar and he felt obliged to say, “Then this may be the last time I’ll take your caravan to Damascus.”

  “Son,” Ben Hadad replied with humor, “I brought you up to be a man of God. In Damascus the Christians are men of God, too. So is Muhammad. We’ll all work together somehow.”

  Yet Abd Umar’s prediction was correct. That was the last trip he would make to Damascus for the Jew, but how could one explain, even to himself, the reasons that had ended their relationship? In spite of every overture made by Muhammad, the Jews of Medina had remained obdurate. In Abd Umar’s absence they had even joined an enemy in war against Muhammad. They had ridiculed his Koran publicly and had cooperated with pagans in attempts to halt his acceptance, so on one dreadful day which the new religion would long try to forget, the eight hundred Jewish men of Medina were marched into the market place, led to an open trench and beheaded one by one so that their skulls and torsos pitched into the waiting grave. At the moment of death each Jew was offered his life if he was willing to answer one question correctly.

  “Will you forswear your religion and join us?”

  Ben Hadad laughed at the question and his head rolled one way while his body tumbled another.

  That day seven hundred and ninety-nine Jews rejected Muhammad; only one saved his life by converting, and when the tragedy had ended, two facts were clear: Jews were not going to join the new religion, but it was impossible to execute them all. They were good farmers and they were needed on the land, so a grudging truce was arranged: if they behaved themselves they could cling to their Book, but they would have to pay higher taxes and would no longer be free to move about.

  To demonstrate his own willingness to forgive, Muhammad took recourse to a dramatic gesture. When the sickening massacre was over and repentance was in the air he moved among the five or six hundred Jewish women who had been made widows that day and selected a beautiful girl whom Abd Umar had known well, Rihana, a merchant’s wife, and the Prophet married her. In the next year, when he was forced to execute another rebellious Jewish leader, he married that man’s widow as well, the gracious Safia, and with his two Jewish widows he had lived amicably, depending upon them to mitigate the opposition of the Arabian Jews.

  As Abd Umar’s soldiers were riding through the Galilee forest their captain reviewed these gloomy memories, and the trees, to which the Arabs were not accustomed, depressed both him and the troops and he recalled that mournful day when he had returned from Damascus to find that Ben Hadad had been slain. He had run to the long grave to honor the good Jew who had taught him so much and there he had reflected: Of every ten boys I played with as a child, nine are buried in that grave. The weight of ugliness he had experienced that day would never leave him; it moved with him through the Galilee.

  His attention was taken from these matters, however, when the road through the forest opened to display a view of the surrounding hills, and on one, where Safat hung like a star in the sky, the Arabs could see fires burning. They watched with strange emotions: their brothers had reached the town, but they were destroying it in the manner that was to be forbidden in the future. A soldier said matter-of-factly, “Abu Zeid got there.”

  Abd Umar turned brusquely in his saddle and snapped, “The days of fire have vanished.” After staring again at the rising smoke he added, “We’ll take Makor with none of that.” As he urged his camel back into the gloomy forest, rain began to fall and he knew that the transit of the swamp would be difficult, but he thought not of these immediate matters; his mind remained focused on that afternoon when he had first seen the long grave of the Jews. It was there, at the place of death, that he had become the kind of man he was now: willing to fight and a courageous leader, but a man who would never condone vengeful killing.

  Within the mean and narrow streets of Makor, Jews awaited the ominous coming of Islam. They knew of the fall of Damascus and the capture of Tverya, their once-sacred city on the lake, and they shivered, for this was the season of storms, when rabbis added to their prayers a phrase giving thanks to God for having sent the rain: “You, O Lord, are mighty forever. You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall.” Once more a third of Makor’s population was Jewish, and in the surrounding valleys were many additional families working their farms, for the Jews still preferred rural life to the business ventures in town, where money matters remained in Greek hands. But these Jews were allowed to play no significant role in the Christian town, for Constantinople had laid down the rule that no new Jewish buildings could be started nor improvements added to those already standing. Furthermore, even if a synagogue were in existence, it must not compete in either height or appointments with Christian churches in the same community, and since the Nestorian minority in Makor could afford little, the synagogue was truly a hovel.

  Nor was the Jewish deficiency expressed only in externals; the bewildered rabbi who led the community was as bedraggled spiritually as his synagogue was physically. He was neither an old man wise in the traditions of Palestinian life, nor a young scholar imbued with the inner potential of the Talmud; he was merely a forty-year-old man subservient to the Byzantine majority and a blind adherent of the legalistic formulations of the Talmud. He was a kind of moralizing bookkeeper who considered it his job to keep his Jews obedient to the civil law of Constantinople and the religious dictates of the Talmud. In the long history of Judaism there would be many such rabbis, and in spite of them the religion would survive, but a real rabbi, like Akiba, who faced with Rome the same problems that the Makor rabbi faced with Byzantium, and who in the process enlarged the whole scope of Judaism, making it nobler than it had been when he received it, would have been appalled at the pettiness of mind that characterized the local rabbi. Only one favorable comment could be made of the man: he was no worse than the Christian priests who served this little town during the death throes of the Byzantine empire in Palestine.

  Where had they come from, these Jews of Makor? Following the gener
al expulsion of 351, when Tverya was laid waste and the compilation of the Palestinian Talmud brought to an end, in each remote valley a few rural families had survived, and when the fury was over, these remnants began to assemble in towns like Makor, where they formed ineffective groups lacking both funds and leadership. Once or twice every decade some Jew of Ptolemais or Caesarea, where the communities were strong, would make the long trip to Babylonia, where the center of Judaism now lay, to refresh himself as to what was happening among the leaders, and he would return to explain to neighboring villages the decisions that Babylon had recently handed down. And occasionally a ship from Spain would bring some wandering scholar on a visit to the holy places of Judaism, and he would report to the gape-mouthed Jews of Makor on the wonders of Europe.

  In this year of crisis, when Islam was on the march and when only a unified land could hope to withstand the assault, their foolish rabbi had sorely split his community over an incident so timeless that it could have sprung from the scroll of Genesis. Like most of the classic tragedies of the Torah it began simply: There were two brothers. One married a beautiful wife. The other did not.