by Gregg Loomis
"Only if we're dealing with prose."
''You think this is poetry?"
"Could be one of the seven meters of lyric verse, yes." Francis smiled. "Perhaps you've forgotten that there are seven classic meters, or feet, of Latin lyric verse, anapest, or short-short-long."
"Which this isn't."
"And dactyl, or long-short-short…" Francis looked at Lang with a mocking grin. "Surely you were aware of the structure of Latin poetry."
"Don't you guys have to take a vow of humility or something?"
Francis reached across the table to fill Lang's glass. "Okay, okay, so it probably isn't poetry." He put the pitcher down and examined the paper again. "We've got a clear verb with ibit -someone, third person, commands."
Lang sipped from his glass. "Good bet it's the emperor. They tend to command a lat."
"Problem is, what? He commands an accusation? He could make his own." ''A synonym would be indictment. Suppose he orders the physical indictment, the writing be… what?"
Francis adjusted his glasses as though the move would make the language intelligible. "Only other verb is sepelit, bury or entomb."
Lang was staring at his copy, beer forgotten. "Orders the indictment be entombed? Makes no sense. Let's take the easy part, rexis iudeaium, clearly 'king of the Jews.' "
Both men looked up, meeting the other's eyes. "Christ?" Lang asked. "Wasn't that what they put on the cross, a sarcastic title given a condemned man?"
"True, but I'm not so sure it was totally sarcastic," Francis said. "In fact, why don't you take a look at that?"
"How?"
"Friend of mine, professor of Judaic studies at Emory."
Lang's glass stopped en route to his mouth. "Emory? Thought that was a Methodist school. They got Judaic studies?"
"Apparently so. Leb Greenberg and I speak on the same program occasionally. One of those ecumenical things where a Jew, a Catholic, and a Protestant speak on some of the same agendas about freedom of worship and how Americans tolerate all faiths. We had a Muslim imam, a Shiite. He quit when we wanted to add a Sunni"
So much for the feel-good of freedom of religion. "So," Lang asked, his glass resuming its journey, "what can Professor Greenberg tell us?"
Francis was contemplating his glass, clearly estimating if there was enough beer in the pitcher to fill it. "I'd like a background on this 'King of the Jews' thing from a non-Christian view. It might help us correctly translate Julian's inscription."
Still turning over the existence of a department of Judaica at a Methodist school, Lang asked, "Any reason you can't ask?"
Deciding a compromise was in order, Francis poured the pitcher's contents evenly into both glasses. "I think so. Although Leb and I get along fine, I think he'd be a lot more candid about a Jew's historical point of view with you than with me. I'm a priest; you're half heathen anyway."
"Nicest thing you've ever said," Lang was motioning for the check, "conceding I'm only part heathen."
"Don't let it go to your head."
Lang lost the flip of the coin for the tab, an act that had become merely ceremonial. Francis always won.
Lang suspected the priest had special help.
Outside, Francis stopped to admire Lang's new car, its black paint glistening under the streetlights. ''A Mercedes? I thought you like those little German toys, Porsches. This one even has a backseat."
Lang had not told him of the need to acquire new wheels, a car not quite so conspicuous as the destroyed Porsche, a highly visible, unique-sounding turbo cabriolet. There must have been hundreds of Mercedes just like this one in his neighborhood.
"CLK convertible." He opened the door and inserted the key. "Watch."
Pushing a button made part of the trunk flip open as the windows automatically receded into the doors. The top lurched upward and stopped.
"Pretty clever," Francis observed. "Now, what do you do to make it go all the way down?"
Lang pushed the button again. No response.
"Good question."
Both men stared at the car as though expecting it to solve the problem itself. At the price still visible on the sticker, not a totally unrealistic expectation.
"There's a MARTA station a couple of blocks away," Francis finally volunteered. ''You can't very well drive it with the top sticking straight up."
"Why do I get the feeling buying the extra warranty was a good investment?" Lang muttered. "Help me manually raise this thing in case it rains."
The top wouldn't go up, either. They left the car there, an expensive steel-and-chrome box with an open lid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DeKalb County, Georgia
Emory University
Two days later
Lang parked the Mercedes between an SUV with fraternity Greek letters on the rear windshield and a Toyota with a bumper sticker that proclaimed, "Harvard: The Emory of the North." He was facing a quadrangle of leafy oaks. Two marble-sided, red-tile-roofed buildings on each side, one at each end. He checked his written directions and his watch. He had taken a circuitous route to ensure that no one had followed, but he was a few minutes early and it looked like he was in the right place.
Curious as to the existence of a Judaic studies program at a Methodist school, he had called up a catalog on the Internet, learning that the institution also had a Holocaust studies program. Searching further, he had pieced together an interesting history.
In the late 1950s, Emory's college had been a small and relatively obscure institution, serving basically as a minor league training ground for the university's regionally prestigious medical school. Liberal arts degrees were frequent consolation prizes given to disappointed doctor-aspirants.
A little-known professor of theology, Tom Altizer, changed that perception. He announced his theory that God was dead. Not departed, not disinterested, but dead, deceased, gone to wherever the Lord of Heaven might go.
Members of the Theology School faculty tripped over their academic gowns in a stampede to have the university's lawyers review Altizer's tenure contract.
Somehow the national media got wind of the story, slanting it to show the diversity of thought possible even at a small Southern, church-operated school.
Altizer became the most famous name associated with Emory since a man named Holiday, a nineteenth-century grad of what was to become the Dental School, went West for his tuberculosis, and teamed up with the Earp brothers at a dusty corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
Overnight, Emory became a touchstone of Southern academic liberalism. Students from other regions of the country began applying, particularly those who could afford the Ivy League schools but whose grades could not gain admittance. Some actually came to study something other than premed. Many were Jewish. Forgetting Altizer's heresy, the university added courses in women's, black, Latin American, and Asian studies, embracing all diversity of thought.
As long as it was politically correct diversity of thought.
Lang had also read the professor's curriculum vitae. Son of Dutch Jews, he had spent part of his childhood in a series of Nazi death camps. After the war, he had immigrated to Israel, where he studied Hebrew history at several universities and gained a scholarship to Oxford. There he had completed his postgraduate work in Judaic-Christian thought and taught, before moving to Atlanta to be with his married daughter and a number of grandchildren. He had published several books, the titles of which were in Yiddish or Hebrew and unintelligible to Lang. Many of his articles, however, had English titles, although Lang had heard of few of the publications and assumed they were journals largely serving those who must submit to the academic imperative of publish or perish.
Another look at his watch told Lang he would be right on time. Opening the car door, he withdrew the ignition key. Immediately, the car's theft alarm squawked, a wail Lang was certain would filter into every classroom on campus. Reinserting the key did no good, nor did cranking the engine.
Defeated, he looked around to make sure no one cou
ld identify the perpetrator of such a racket and slunk away like a thief in the night.
Leb Greenberg was a small man with a strong handshake and brown eyes that sparkled as though he had a joke he was about to share. Other than the yarmulke from under which sprigs of gray hair sprouted, he could have been anyone's favorite grandparent.
"Thank you for seeing me, Professor," Lang said as he stepped across the threshold of a small office.
"Leb, please," he said, indicating Lang should sit in one of two uncomfortable-looking chairs arranged in front -of a desk. "All day, it's Professor Greenberg this, Doctor Greenberg that, usually complaints about grades.
Let us skip the honorifics, shall we?"
Lang recognized a British accent, one without the dropped h's, the voice of the upper class. He often wondered why everyone who had lived in England, no matter how briefly, adopted that enunciation.
Greenberg sat behind a desk empty of clutter other than a cup and saucer and a stack of papers Lang guessed was a manuscript. "Francis tells me you're interested in a specific bit of ancient Jewish history as it might relate to Christianity. Wouldn't say exactly what."
He glanced down at the cup. "Oh dear, forgive me. I was just having tea. Might I pour you a cuppa?"
He lifted an electric coffeemaker from behind the desk.
"Sure, thanks."
Agency training. Sharing a meal, a beverage, increased whatever bonding· might take place. Defectors from Communist regimes had been more likely to share information with debriefers who joined them in eating and drinking.
The professor produced another cup and saucer, one not matching his own. "I'm afraid you'll have to settle for concentrated lemon juice, no milk, no sugar."
"That's fine, thank you."
Lang watched his cup fill with a liquid as dark as coffee and took an experimental sip. He fought back a gasp. The stuff was tart enough to make his teeth itch.
"Specially blended for me," Greenberg said proudly. "I get it through a merchant in Beirut." Lang had never previously viewed Lebanon as a terrorist country. Licking his lips in pleasure, Leb sat back in his chair, arms behind his head. "What can I do for you, Lang?"
Somehow mollify the taste of this tea that was sour enough to pucker his mouth like a green persimmon.
But Lang said, "Francis and I were looking at a Latin inscription, fourth century. It referred to a 'king of the Jews,' the title put on Christ's cross. I always thought it was derisive. Francis wasn't so sure, said you might have some historical thoughts on the matter."
Leb was silent for so long, Lang thought perhaps he didn't hear. Although the professor was looking straight at him, Lang was certain he saw something else.
Finally, he sat up, his hands cupping his tea as though to keep it warm. "I think you can understand the problem here. We Jews have a very different perception of the Christ and of the Gospels of your New Testament. That difference frequently leads to misunderstandings. For two millennia it led to the shedding of blood. Ours."
Lang put his cup on the desk. "Leb, I'm seeking history, not a religious argument."
The Jew smiled. "In many ways, that's unfortunate. We Jews dearly love to argue points of religion and law among ourselves." He grew serious. "Exactly what is it you think I might know?"
"King of the Jews. Was Jesus a king or was he simply being mocked?"
Leb offered the coffeepot to Lang, who declined a refill, before concentrating on refilling his own cup. "I can give you historical fact. You have to supply your own spiritual significance."
"Fair enough."
Leb held his cup in both hands, gently blowing across the top. "Let's start with Judea of the first century. It wasn't the pastoral place the Gospels might lead you to believe. Instead, it was a defeated country, seething with an undercurrent of nationalism. Most Jews of the day were less than fond of the occupying Romans. Think France 1940 to 1944.
"There were basically three political groups: The Sadducees, the wealthy landowning class who profited from Roman occupation, somewhat like the collaboteurs in France during World War Two" Then there were the Pharisees, priests and those who stuck to the strictest Jewish law. Then we have the Zealots, those who intended to restore the Promised Land to its intended inhabitants. You may recall these folks fomented the rebellion that resulted in Rome leveling the temple and sacking Jerusalem in seventy or seventy-one C.E., only thirty, thirty-five years after Christ's death."
"The siege of Masada?"
"Yes, that was the last battle, the Little Big Horn of ancient Israel." Leb took a long sip, his eyes fastened on something Lang couldn't see. "Except the nine hundred plus Zealots killed themselves rather than surrender. Anyway, at the birth of Christ, many Jews were looking for a man from God, a man to deliver them from foreign rule just as the Maccabees had a hundred years before and Moses centuries earlier."
''A messiah," Lang volunteered.
Leb nodded slowly. "Perhaps. But remember, Lang, messiah simply means 'one anointed' in Hebrew. The Greek word christos means the same."
The professor took another sip, placed his cup on the desk, and continued, still gazing at something Lang was sure was far away. ''Your Gospels tell us Christ was of the House of David. That would be the royal family, the equivalent of the English Windsors."
There was a pause.
''A potential king born in a stable?" Lang asked.
Leb shook his head slowly, not moving his eyes. ''A stable, perhaps. Luke says so, but Matthew tells us Christ was born an aristocrat in the family home in Bethlehem. In fact, he also tells us Christ was of royal blood, a direct descendant of Solomon and David. Pretty heady stuff, a legitimate contender to the throne of a united Jewish State.
"Luke has the birth attended by poor shepherds, Matthew by kings from afar. John and Mark are silent on the subject. But then, your Gospels weren't contemporaneous accounts. They were written anywhere from sixty years after the crucifixion to nearly a century later, probably taken from other accounts. Hardly an assurance of accuracy.
"At any rate, no one tells us much about Christ's early life other than a single account of a young man arguing with elders in the temple. When we next see Christ, he is at a wedding in Cana, a very fancy wedding where so much wine is consumed, more has to be brought in. Or created. The first miracle."
Leb inspected Lang's barely touched tea. "Don't like it?"
"I was so interested in what you were saying, I forgot about it." The 'professor smiled. "Perhaps you are a capable lawyer, Lang, but a very poor liar."
"Okay, so it's a little… unusual."
Leb poured the contents of Lang's cup into his own. "An acquired taste. Now, we were talking about…?"
"The wedding at Cana."
"Oh yes. Not only is there copious amounts of wine, but Christ and the hostess order servants about. Unlikely someone would presume to command another's domestics, so we could conclude it was Christ's wedding and a rather big affair at that, not the marriage of peasant stock but of aristocracy.
"I also think it's worth remembering that Matthew's Christ 'comes not to bring peace but with a sword.' " Lang sat up in his chair. "I hadn't realized the Gospels were so different." Leb snorted. " 'Different'? They're in irreconcilable conflict! I can imagine the reason why the early Christian church chose those four diverse versions of the life of Christ."
''And that would be?"
"Because the others available were either more diverse or mentioned something the Church didn't want known." ''Any idea what?" Lang was fairly certain the man had a very clear idea.
Leb held up a conspiratorial finger, a professor in the midst of a lecture. "Let's continue and see if we can't reach the same conclusions together.
"We know Christ spent a great deal of time traveling with supporters and lecturing to crowds. I submit the Gospels' version of what he had to say is less than accurate."
He held up a hand to stop Lang's question. "Let's move on to the end of his ministry, to that Passover where he was c
harged as a criminal and crucified. First, as you as a scholar of ancient history know, crucifixion was punishment reserved for subversives, enemies of the State."
"But wasn't a thief crucified next to Christ?"
"So we're told. But I submit, the Gospels were written for a Greco-Roman audience, not Jews. Even back then, the stubbornness of Jews in their religion was a given. Facts were changed so it appeared the Jews were responsible for the death of the Messiah, a fiction from which we Jews have suffered for two millennia. Who might or might not have died next to Christ is mere speculation with a strong editorial slant. Witness: The council of Jewish elders, the Sanhedrin, supposedly originally condemned Christ on that Friday night. In other words, the most respected Jews in Jerusalem broke Sabbat by meeting after sunset on a Friday in flagrant violation of Jewish law. Not only that, those men had the absolute power to condemn a man to death by stoning.
"In short, had the Jews wanted Christ dead, they were perfectly capable of executing Him themselves.
"Further, as you no doubt know, someone who had earned Roman enmity wasn't usually buried but left to rot on his cross as a reminder to others who might harbor seditious thoughts."
Lang sat still, considering what he had just heard. "So, Leb, it's your guess that Christ's message wasn't all peace and love?"
The professor shrugged apologetically. "I have no hard facts, of course, but I can make the following surmises if I may…"
"Please."
"First, Christ was of royal blood, if not the direct heir to the throne of all the Jews. Second, he came along when the Roman province of Judea was seething with a rebellion barely under the surface, one that, in fact, broke out shortly after his death. Third, his message was sufficiently disturbing to the colonial powers that he was tried for treason and executed, his actual title on the cross. Finally, his followers saw an opportunity to press their leader into the Messianic mold, thereby aggrandizing themselves. No matter what evidence finally surfaced, the Church wasn't going to back down: Christ was the long-promised son of God who ruled through His Holy Church. To admit he was basically a revolutionary was unthinkable. Think more Lenin than Gandhi. The early Church fathers cocked us a snook."