by Guy Stagg
In an instant Bernard was bellowing. ‘Bring them here! Bring them right here!’
He charged off to get changed. ‘You’re about to see a whole load of dogs being sick.’
Minutes later a jeep pulled up outside the bungalow, carrying three Alsatians and a young man with a fretful expression. Bernard, now dressed in dungarees, herded the dogs into the garden, fed each one an emetic, and stood around with arms crossed, waiting for them to throw up. Occasionally a dog would whimper, but none of them retched.
I went inside to pack, yet I could still hear my host’s voice in the garden, interrogating his friend and shouting at the Alsatians: ‘I don’t want anyone eating anyone else’s vomit . . . No vomit? Nobody’s been sick? . . . You’re definitely having your stomachs pumped.’
When I went outside again, the dogs were being ushered towards the clinic.
‘Leaving?’ Bernard asked. ‘I thought you were staying for weeks.’
I explained that I still had 130 kilometres to walk.
‘But we haven’t finished your Zionist education!’
I said that I was sorry.
‘Don’t forget what I taught you. Don’t ever forget what I taught you.’
I promised to remember.
‘Now shake my hand.’
We shook hands. Then he hurried inside to rescue the dying dogs.
The rest of the day I walked barefoot along the beach. At first the air was clear, and twenty-five kilometres away I could see the shining towers of Tel Aviv. Later the air hazed and the neat geometry of the scene – sea and sand, earth and sky – lost all focus. I hiked one hour, two hours, three, my surroundings changing so slowly that I seemed barely to be moving. I was hoping to walk without hurry, patient as a saint after ten months on foot, but tramping over the cushioned ground, I soon became bored. My back was blistered from where the rucksack rubbed, the skin beginning to peel. Sunlight shone off the burning sand, and the waves shuddered beside me.
That afternoon I came to a nudist beach. There was no notice, only a dozen naked bathers arranged on the sand. Middle-aged men strutted on the shore, and a couple eased into the water with gasps of laughter. Farther on, an old man slept in the shade, his body wire-thin but for the pot belly he cradled in his arms.
Afterwards the beach disappeared, the coast collapsing to form a cliff of rock and a causeway of broken boulders. A sign sent hikers off the sand on a four-kilometre detour, but I was barely halfway to Tel Aviv, so I clambered onto the boulders and kept hiking.
Sometimes the causeway was level, creating a path of even-packed rubble. Sometimes it was jagged and I had to edge forwards with arms open wide, as if balancing on a tightrope. Sometimes the water gurgled between my feet and I imagined the tide coming in, lifting me off the tightrope, out into endless space. To my left the cliffs rose sheer; to my right the sea stretched away without seeming to touch the sky. Ahead the shoreline was crooked, making it impossible to see how far the landfall lasted. Yet I kept peering forwards, eyes stinging in the spray thrown up from the waves. I passed boulders black with water. Pebbles glinting with salt. Shells like sharded porcelain and gravel gritting the sand. Sheets of sunlight tremored over the water, as the afternoon sun bleared.
An hour later I was back on the sand, hiking into the marina town of Herzliya. It was six o’clock. Tel Aviv was ten kilometres away. My ankles felt feeble, my knees collapsed, but I could glimpse the dim mass of mixed industry on the city’s rim, as well as the distant high-rises like blinking ladders of light.
As I walked the final length of beach, tragic colours filled the sky. People were out jogging and surfing, but nobody noticed the quiet apocalypse going on above. To the west burnt pieces of evening hung over the horizon – yellow and orange, ember and flame – while the clouds to the east were smothered in purple smoke. In front of me the blue sand was ribbed with shadows. When the wind dragged across the beach, it caused dustings of sand to shift from one rib to another, creating a web of white powder that quivered at my feet, as though the surf had drifted in off the sea and floated onto the foreshore.
When I reached Tel Aviv, night was burying the city. A park ran parallel to the beach, leading into the harbour. Playground rides were propped on the sand, the wind shaking the swings and twisting the merry-go-round.
An Orthodox family had gathered in one corner of the playground. The father’s head was bowed, one hand clamping down his black fedora, the other hand holding his frock coat together. When the coat-tails flapped out behind him, his figure was exposed, slight as a charcoal sketch. The mother wore a long skirt and a woollen jacket, hair blown hectic over her face. She was kneeling to play with her daughter, yet when the child ran away she did not give chase, her eyes turned towards the sea. Meanwhile the daughter ran forwards with flailing arms, willing the wind to lift her. But no matter how high she jumped, she could not quit this earth.
What was the verse from Isaiah that Or’s father urged me to remember? They that wait on God shall renew their strength; they shall put forth new feathers like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not hunger. And then there was Bernard’s warning from last night: We will destroy the world before we give up our home. Was it fear that made them talk this way? Or the belief that Israel must hold onto Jerusalem until the end of time? According to the Book of Isaiah, before the world ends the Messiah will lead the Jewish people into an age of peace and justice. As they assemble in the Promised Land, the Temple will be rebuilt and all nations recognize the God of Israel. This is why, when the crusaders set off from Europe, they hoped to restore the Temple and so cause Christ’s return. And why, when Christopher Columbus journeyed across the Atlantic four centuries later, he was not planning to discover a continent, but to spark the Second Coming.
Although Columbus’s first voyage has traditionally been explained in terms of trade – accessing the valuable spice markets in the East by establishing a new route to Cathay – that was not how the explorer understood his journey. For him, Jerusalem was the true target.
When raising funds for his voyage, Columbus argued that a western route to Asia would allow European armies to outflank the Caliphate, and that the riches of the Indies could fund future campaigns in the Holy Land. True, he was playing on the imperial fantasies of his patrons, but only because they coincided with his own pious sense of purpose.
The logbook from Columbus’s first voyage shows how he fitted his journey into the crusader tradition. In the prologue to the published version – a rough copy of the original made by Bartolomé de las Casas and nicknamed the Diario – Columbus presents himself as a missionary, travelling to the Indies to convert the native population. While at sea he more closely resembles a monk, keeping the canonical hours and celebrating mass each Sunday. During times of danger the whole crew become pilgrims, vowing to visit Europe’s major shrines if they survive the journey. They even stop midway across the ocean to look for the phantom isles visited by Brendan the Bold, whose Navigatio Columbus consulted before leaving.
Once the crew make it over the Atlantic, more and more of the Diario is devoted to the search for gold. A sort of prophetic geography was at work here. Solomon built his temple using treasure from Ophir, a lost region that Biblical scholars placed in India. According to one alchemical theory, the heat of the tropics intensified the process through which base metals matured into precious. Columbus was confident that, if he could locate the treasures of Ophir, he could finance the retaking of Jerusalem. As he claimed in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, written shortly before his return to Spain: ‘In seven years from today I will be able to pay Your Highnesses for five thousand cavalry and fifty thousand foot soldiers for the war and conquest of Jerusalem, for which purpose this enterprise was undertaken.’
But Columbus’s journey was more than just an ambitious scheme to fund a final crusade. It was also a necessary step to bring about Judgement Day.
In order for Christ to return, the whole world had to be converted. Th
is meant the globe must be mapped and every civilization taught the Gospels. And time was running out, because Columbus believed the world would end in 1656.
This argument was put forward in El Libro de las Profecías, a commonplace book that he assembled between the third and fourth voyages to the New World. It provides a commentary on various quotations culled from the Bible and the Church Fathers, as well as a range of classical and medieval authors. The opening pages summarize its purpose: ‘Here begins the book, or handbook, of sources, statements, opinions and prophecies on the subject of the recovery of God’s Holy City and Mount Zion, and on the discovery and evangelization of the Indies and of all other peoples and nations.’
The book’s apocalyptic timetable drew on three sources. First, St Augustine, who claimed Creation would last for seven millennia. Second, Joachim of Fiore, the twelfth-century theologian who argued that history would enter its third and final stage some time around 1260. Third, Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, a fourteenth-century astrologer who totted up the years between Adam and Christ, subtracted the total from seven thousand, and concluded the apocalypse was due in 1656.
Columbus also believed the discovery of the West Indies was one of the events preceding the Second Coming. Several passages in the Libro suggest that finding new islands was a prophetic sign. Taken together, they imply that the Americas were revealed as the final step in a cosmic plan. It was not some happy accident, but a moment of providential history. Like those crusader knights who sought God’s hand in every stage of their campaign, Columbus became convinced that heaven was on his side.
The explorer often referred to his discoveries in Biblical terms. Soon after his death, the Spanish historian Francisco López de Gómara did the same, calling them ‘The greatest event since the creation of the world, excluding only the incarnation of Him that created it’. This was the kind of exalted rhetoric that accompanied the conquest of Jerusalem. Its target had shifted from east to west, but the sense of divine endorsement remained the same.
Such language helped turn the Age of Exploration into an Age of Empire, justifying both commercial exploitation and military conquest. The natural resources uncovered in the Americas were seen as heavenly rewards, while the new civilizations were vast invitations to evangelize. And the campaigns fought against native populations became holy wars.
Before long, the ranks of sailors, traders and missionaries filled with ambitious young men united by a sense that they were performing God’s work – the same young men who once filled the ranks of crusader armies.
For all I had learnt about the crusades, I still struggled to understand that righteous blindness – reading divine intention into the turmoil of history. However, the following evening I visited the Baptists’ Village and met one of its modern manifestations.
I reached the village at dusk. All afternoon I had hiked east from Tel Aviv, by the banks of the Yarkon River, and after twenty kilometres came to a spread of bungalows bordered by a chain-link fence. A young man called David said I could camp in the orchard at the centre of the village. Its orange trees were flooded with light from a nearby baseball field, where a game was being played between two teams of teenage boys. As I pitched my tent, I heard the umpire calling strikes.
David came back a few minutes later, carrying a tray of sandwiches. He was tall, slim, soft-spoken and smiling, like those gentle figures I had met in dozens of monasteries.
We sat at a picnic table together, my host asking questions: how long since I left, how far I had come, and how it felt to be a few days from finishing. This last question I failed to answer, because I did not know if I would be glad to reach Jerusalem, or whether anything was healed by walking all this way. So I said that perhaps I would keep going; perhaps the pilgrimage would never end.
David began talking about himself. He explained that he came to Israel a decade ago, after his family emigrated from Georgia. When I asked how he ended up here, he told me that the village was once owned by an American branch of the Baptist Church, but was now an informal headquarters for Israel’s Messianic Jews.
‘Messianic Jews?’
‘Jews who believe Jesus was the Messiah.’
‘Like Christians?’
‘We believe in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Both the same.’
‘I see,’ I said, but I did not see.
‘When the Jews were offered the Messiah, they turned him down. Christianity became the religion of the Gentiles and the Chosen People suffered many years of hardship. But, when the Jews accept Jesus, it will bring a thousand years of peace to Israel.’
After I finished eating, David showed me the village office. Inside there were racks of leaflets printed with a cross at the centre of a six-point star. As David made tea he explained that missionary work was forbidden in Israel and that many Israelis were suspicious of Christianity – the reason none of the village buildings looked like churches. However, people visited to use the sports facilities and conference facilities, or sent their children to the summer camp. And, if they wanted to find out about Jesus, there were classes and study groups every day.
‘Does the Baptist Church pay for all this?’ I asked.
David looked embarrassed. ‘Some people think Jesus will not come again until the Holy Land is in Christian hands. But, if the Jews are taught that Jesus was the Messiah, maybe—’
‘Maybe the world will end?’
My host sniffed, smiled, said nothing more. Moments later he hurried outside, claiming that there was somebody who wanted to meet me.
Once David was gone, I flicked through the leaflets. One or two were in English, containing a mix of Old Testament prophecies, Gospel parables and the odd verse from the Book of Revelation. What a curious place! A tiny slice of the Bible Belt transplanted to Tel Aviv. Then David was back, accompanied by a scruffy man in green overalls, his white hair wisping loose from under a red cap. Before greeting me or introducing himself, the man asked: ‘When were you saved?’
I did not understand the question.
He tried again: ‘When did you accept Jesus as your personal saviour?’
I was not sure that I had.
He looked alarmed. ‘Listen, you can walk from here to China, walk the whole world round, but if you haven’t accepted Jesus, it won’t matter one bit.’
The stranger’s name was Stan. He was an American, but had lived in Israel for decades, working as the village handyman.
Standing in the doorway, Stan lectured me on the path to salvation. ‘You could be a good friend, good husband, good son. You could work hard at your job and volunteer all your free time. You could be the best dad ever, but if you haven’t accepted Jesus, you’re down here—’ He motioned towards his shin. ‘I’m no saint, but no matter how many times I mess up, I’ve let Jesus into my life, so I’m up here—’ He gestured at the ceiling. ‘I know I’m going to be saved.’
When I asked Stan why he wasn’t troubled by divine justice – all those hard-working husbands condemned to hell – he repeated the line: No one comes to the Father except through me. Then he started talking about the afterlife. ‘Imagine your hand strapped above a candle. Imagine the skin turning pink, turning red. Imagine it blistering, going black, your whole arm shaking. But the skin grows back every time it burns away, so no matter what you do, the pain will never die.’
Next he talked about heaven. It sounded even worse. ‘I’ll be there. David’ll be there. We’ll be laughing and high-fiving and praising Jesus all day long. And if we see you there we’ll jump around like crazy, because we’ll know you accepted him too. You accepted Jesus as your personal saviour.’
David stared at the ground, nodding his head without saying a word.
I asked Stan if he ever had doubts. Never, he said. He remembered when he was a boy, just seven years old, sleeping in a bunk bed that he shared with his brother. Even though the mattress was small, he would press up on one side to make space for Jesus. It was an innocent love, he explained. An innocent, childlike
love. He had never lost it. Never once in his life had he doubted his love for Jesus. ‘Tomorrow you might be run down on the road, killed dead by a truck. Tomorrow you could see angels stepping out of the sky and every one of us raptured. Eternity with the flames in hell, or eternity with the Saviour in heaven – for me it’s a no-brainer.’
Listening to Stan speak, I felt exposed, as though my pilgrimage was just playing at faith. But I also felt disappointed, because if this was conviction, I wanted no share in it. Yet the more he talked – ‘You coming here wasn’t an accident. You meeting us, you learning about Jesus: that wasn’t a coincidence!’ – the more I wondered if his certainty was something different from faith, was in fact its opposite.
It was getting late. While David switched off the lights, Stan gripped my shoulder, saying: ‘Two days’, three days’ time, when you’re done walking, just remember you haven’t reached the real Jerusalem yet. That journey hasn’t even started.’
David escorted me back to my tent. The air was cool, and he rubbed his hands to keep warm. As we crossed the village, I asked whether he had always been a Messianic Jew. He replied that, even though his family were Jewish, his childhood was secular, and when he applied for aliyah he unthinkingly gave Christianity as his religion. The embassy corrected the mistake; the application was successful; he moved to Israel and was promptly converted.
‘I was a normal teenager. I wasn’t interested in religion. I didn’t know anything about the Messiah, until one day I read the Gospels and learnt that Jesus was tortured for me, that he died for me. Afterwards my whole life changed.’
‘How?’
‘Do you know The Pilgrim’s Progress ?’
‘Of course!’
‘At the beginning, the pilgrim has a burden on his back. The burden is so heavy he has to leave his home, his family, just to be free. But only when he finds the true way – then his burden falls off. No more sin. No more death. That’s how it was for me.’