The Branch

by Mike Resnick

  “It must wake them up during your sermons,” said Moore.

  “Oh, I dress a little more formally for work,” said Greene. “Actually, I’m going over to the Sky Links when I leave here.”

  “Surely you can’t swing a golf club in that,” offered Bernstein.

  “I keep a sweater and a set of knickers in my locker,” replied Greene, sitting down on one of the wooden chairs that were lined up in front of Moore’s desk. “Well, Mr. Moore, what can I do for you? Abe told me to bone up on the Messiah before I came, but as yet I have no idea what for, since I’m probably the last person you’d want to see about converting to Christianity.”

  “I’ve got some questions to ask you,” said Moore. He paused, staring at Greene again. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you seem awfully young to be a rabbi.”

  Greene shrugged and smiled. “Well, if it comes to that, you seem awfully young to be a criminal kingpin.”

  “I’m just a businessman.”

  “That’s not what the media thinks.”

  “Then why did you agree to see me?”

  “Why not?” Greene smiled again. “Somehow, I have a hard time envisioning your organization muscling in on the God racket.”

  Moore turned to Bernstein. “I like him,” he said approvingly.

  “That’s why I left my old temple and joined his,” agreed Bernstein.

  “Tell me, Rabbi—” began Moore.

  “Milt,” interrupted Greene.

  “Tell me, Milt, what kind of advice does a guy like you give to an old-timer like Abe?”

  “That’s what you got me down here to ask?”

  Moore shook his head. “Just curious.”

  “I tell him the usual crap about living a good life and worshiping the Lord,” replied Greene. “Then, whenever I think his guard’s down, I tell him to throw his son out of the house before he turns into a full-time deadbeat.”

  “Now, just a minute!” said Bernstein hotly.

  “Abe, the kid is twenty-four years old and he’s never done an honest day’s work. All he does is go skiing on your money. You’ve really got to put a stop to it,” said Greene, and Moore found himself agreeing silently.

  A secretary entered the office just then and handed Moore a sealed report telling him where Pryor had spent the night and estimating when he could be expected at the office. Moore opened it, read it over, and put it in a desk drawer. As the secretary left the room, he told her to make sure he wasn’t interrupted until his meeting with the rabbi was over.

  “Well,” he said, turning back to Greene, “shall we get down to business?”

  “Fine,” replied Greene. He pulled out a huge cigar. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Be my guest,” said Moore. “Abe told you that I needed some information, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Good,” said Moore. “Let’s start with an easy one: are you still waiting for the Messiah?”

  Greene laughed. “You mean, right this minute?”

  “It’s pretty unlikely that he’s going to walk in through the door while we’re speaking,” said Moore, resisting the urge to knock on wood. “I mean generally.”

  “Do you want a personal answer or an official one?” asked Greene.

  “Take your choice.”

  “Personally, no. Officially, yes.”

  “Okay, let’s keep it official for a while,” said Moore. “Assuming that in your official capacity as a rabbi you believe in the Messiah and the Messianic prophecies, why don’t you believe that Jesus was the Messiah?”

  “There have been about ten thousand books that address that very subject,” replied Greene. “Maybe I should just loan you a couple of the better ones.”

  “Could you condense them into a couple paragraphs for me?”

  “I’ll do better than that: I’ll give it to you in a single sentence. Jesus didn’t fulfill the Messianic prophecies.”

  “Almost four billion people think that he did,” said Moore. “Why?”

  “Some people are stupider than others,” replied Greene easily. “Look, the first thing you’ve got to understand is that the Messianic prophecies aren’t anywhere near as simple as the King James Version of the Bible would lead you to believe. Even before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know of three separate and distinct Messiahs that were expected by the ancient Jews.”

  “Three?” said Moore, surprised.

  “At least. Probably there were more. The word ‘Messiah’—which comes out as ‘Kristos’ in Greek, if you want to know how Jesus got his name—merely means ‘anointed,’ and anointed is what a king was supposed to be. The Messiah of the Jews was to be a king who would restore the race to its former glory, and of course Jesus failed to do this. In fact, the Jews were driven from Jerusalem in 70 AD, only forty years after his death, and didn’t reestablish themselves there for almost two thousand years.”

  “What else was expected of him?” asked Moore.

  “Not a goddamned thing,” interjected Bernstein.

  “Abe’s quite right,” said Greene. “The only thing the Messiah had to do was establish an all-powerful kingdom in Jerusalem.”

  “Just a minute,” said Moore. “I’ve been going over the Bible all night, and I’ve found a lot of other things he was supposed to do.”

  “No you didn’t,” said Greene, puffing on his cigar. “I told you that things aren’t as simple as the New Testament makes them sound. What you’re referring to are a number of signs by which the Messiah could be identified, but these were all preliminary. His only purpose was to establish a kingdom in Jerusalem.” He shook his head sadly. “I never could understand how so many people could worship a man who delivered the preliminaries and blew the big event—meaning no disrespect if you happen to be one of them.”

  “Then why is he worshiped as the son of God?”

  Greene shrugged. “Beats me. The Messiah’s only got supernatural powers in the New Testament; in the prophecies he was just a man. A very special man, to be sure, since he had to possess even greater wisdom than Abraham and David, but a man, nonetheless.”

  “Let’s get back to the signs for a minute. I was under the impression that Jesus had fulfilled them—riding into town on a white ass, being resurrected, and so forth.”

  “More smokescreen,” said Greene firmly. “There were hundreds of signs predicted in the books of the prophets and other ancient Hebraic literature. The white ass was mentioned exactly once—and even that was probably added a century or two after the Crucifixion to agree with prior events.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There hasn’t been an awful lot written in stone since the Ten Commandments,” explained Greene in amused tones. “The Bible was rewritten every generation or two, and usually changed to agree with the dominant beliefs of the period. As for the signs, his resurrection was never once prophesied. Don’t forget—his kingdom was to be here on Earth. Heaven was, so to speak, God’s domain.”

  “Then what signs would the Jews have accepted as proof of his Messiahship?” asked Moore in frustration.

  “The most telling sign would have been the establishment of his kingdom. I know it’s becoming repetitive, but setting up shop in Jerusalem is what being the Messiah is all about.”

  “Let me rephrase the question,” said Moore. “If the Messiah were to show up during your lifetime, by what signs—short of the establishment of his kingdom—would you know him?”

  Greene continued puffing on his cigar as he considered the question for a moment. Finally he looked up. “I think there are probably four signs that would be agreed upon by most Jewish scholars,” he answered at last. “First, he’d have to come from the line of David; second, his name would have to be Immanuel; third, he would have to come out of Egypt before establishing his kingdom: and fourth, he’d have to resurrect the dead.”

  “Didn’t Jesus fulfill those signs?”

  Greene laughed aloud. “He’s lucky if he’s batting
.250. Jesus is Greek for Joshua, not Immanuel. Nowhere is there any historical proof that he raised the dead. Nowhere is there any proof that he set foot in Egypt. And—”

  “Just a minute,” interrupted Moore. “The Gospels clearly state that he went to Egypt as a boy to avoid one of Herod’s bloodlettings.”

  Greene turned to Bernstein. “Do you want to tell him, Abe?”

  “Solomon,” said Bernstein, “read your history books. There were no bloodlettings under King Herod!”

  “Right,” chimed in Greene. “And if this mythical slaughter didn’t take place, I can’t see any reason to believe that Jesus had to escape from it.”

  “What about his descent from David?” continued Moore. “Matthew documents it, generation by generation.”

  “Pure bullshit,” said Greene. “Matthew made so many genealogical blunders that even the writers who codified it in his Gospel couldn’t tidy it up.”

  “For instance?”

  “For instance, he claims that Joram begat Ozias. But recorded history shows that there were four generations between Joram and Ozias, and that Ozias was actually the son of Amaziah. You know,” he added, “when you write a Holy Book, the very first thing you should do is make sure that it can’t be contradicted by the record. Matthew blew it.” He paused to relight his cigar, which had gone out. “His biggest blunder was trying to place Joseph, and hence Jesus, into the Davidic line. I know of no Biblical scholar, Jewish or otherwise, who can substantiate that little tidbit.”

  “So you’re saying that Matthew lied.”

  “Not necessarily. The damned thing was probably rewritten twenty or thirty times before the end of the Dark Ages. I’m saying that somebody lied. Which,” he added, “is perfectly understandable. They had to twist certain facts and fabricate other ones if the Gospels were to establish Jesus as the Messiah.”

  “And what is the Jewish view of Jesus?” asked Moore.

  “Mine, or the official one?”

  “Let’s keep it official.”

  “The prevailing view is that he was a good and intelligent man, one of many children of Joseph the carpenter and his wife, whose real name was Miriam, not Mary. It is assumed that he grew up somewhere in Galilee and—”

  “Why do you put him in such a broad area as Galilee?” asked Moore. “Why not Nazareth?”

  “Because there probably wasn’t a Nazareth,” replied Greene. “More likely the Nazarenes were a Jewish sect not unlike the Essenes. There were a lot of such sects around at the time, and his later career would certainly imply that he had taken his training with one of them. He was strongly influenced by John the Baptist, and took John’s cause for his own. He must have had some basic knowledge of herbal medicine, since he cured a number of illnesses—though of course we don’t believe that he cured leprosy or made blind men see.”

  “You also don’t believe that he brought Lazarus back from the dead?”

  “Of course not. Do you?”

  Moore shook his head. “No.”

  “Good for you,” said Greene. “Moving right along, we believe that Jesus chose his disciples from the lower classes because he himself came from that particular social stratum, that he led them to Jerusalem just prior to Passover, that he was outraged to see money-changing going on in the Temple, and that his subsequent actions caused such a disturbance that both Pilate and the Pharisees felt he must either be discredited or run out of town.” He paused. “And of course you know the rest. He was found guilty of treason and executed.”

  “And the resurrection?”

  “A fairy tale. But even if it were true, it wouldn’t signify his Messiahship in any way.”

  “And the Jews have been waiting for more than two thousand years since his death?”

  “Some of them have.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Moore.

  Greene grinned and leaned back. “I was hoping we’d get around to this subject, since I boned up on it before coming here. Did you think Jesus was the only man who claimed to be the Messiah and picked up a bunch of believers along the way?”

  “I had assumed so,” admitted Moore.

  “Well, assume again, Mr. Moore,” said Greene. “There were hundreds before him, and a hell of a lot after him as well. Back in the thirteenth century, a descendant of a noble Spanish-Jewish family named Abraham Abulafia convinced tens of thousands of people that he was the Messiah. In the early 1500s a dark, gnomelike dwarf named David Reuveni had so many followers convinced that he was the true Messiah that he was even granted an audience with Pope Clement VII.”

  “Really?” said Moore, surprised.

  “Wait,” said Greene. “It gets better. The most widely accepted would-be Messiah—including Jesus—was Sabbatai Zevi, a seventeenth-century Turk. He heard voices exhorting him to redeem Israel, and to fulfill the Messianic prophecies he went to Egypt, where he astounded half a million disciples by promptly marrying an internationally known prostitute.”

  Moore chuckled. “And that was the end of him?”

  “Not quite,” replied Greene. “He returned to Turkey amid rumors that he had a huge Jewish army hidden away in Arabia just awaiting his commands, and announced that he planned to depose the sultan.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The sultan offered him a choice: he could publicly convert to Islam, or he could be chopped to pieces—testicles and head first. He converted, and another Messianic hope bit the dust.”

  “Were there any more recent ones?” asked Moore.

  “There was Jacob Frank, a Russian, who declared that anyone could find redemption through purity, but that the true path was through impurity. He proceeded to enliven his pseudoreligious séances with sexual orgies, and was later excommunicated by the Turkish and Russian rabbis. He died in—when was it?—1791, I think. The last of the major pretenders to the Messiahship was Bal Shem Tov, who was born in the Ukraine at about the same time as Jacob Frank. He supposedly had a halo and performed miraculous cures, and by the time of his death in 1780 about half the Jews in Europe believed he was truly the Messiah.”

  He paused and stretched his arms above his head, then relaxed. “So you see, Mr. Moore, while having a Messiah one believes in is a unique experience to Christians, having one who doesn’t fulfill the prophecies is nothing new to Jews.”

  “So I gather.”

  “And now, Mr. Moore, I feel that I am entitled to ask you a question.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Who is your candidate for Messiahship?”

  “I don’t believe in Messiahs,” said Moore.

  “That’s a relief,” said Greene with a smile.

  “Why?” asked Moore. “Wouldn’t you like to see the Messiah before you die?”

  “Not really,” answered Greene. “The Lord, my God, is a jealous God, and not at all above flooding the earth or totally destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. If he’s got a Messiah in mind for us, I rather suspect that it will be a Messiah who rejects the power of love in favor of the might of the sword, and will burn the old kingdom down before erecting a new one on its ashes.” He paused thoughtfully. “No, if the Messiah ever appears, I for one hope that I’m peacefully dead and settled in my grave before that happy moment occurs.”

  “One last question,” said Moore. “Tell me about The Branch.”

  “Ah, yes—Abe mentioned that I should read Zechariah. It appears that Zechariah swiped Isaiah’s metaphor about a fresh branch coming forth from the withered Davidic line, although later it appears that he’s naming Zerubbabel as the Messiah.”

  “Did Zerubbabel fulfill any of Zechariah’s or Isaiah’s prophecies?” asked Moore.

  “Not a one.” He paused. “Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good! Then I can still get in nine holes before lunch. There’s a great little Hungarian eateasy two levels down from the Sky Links. Someday if you get a chance, you might—”

  “I already have,” said Moore. He got to his feet and escorted Greene to the d
oor. “Does your temple have any objections to receiving a donation from me?”

  “Probably,” said Greene. “If you feel that you must, why not give it to Abe and let him contribute it?”

  “I’ll do that,” promised Moore.

  Greene stopped in the doorway and turned to Moore once more. “Is your candidate batting better than .500?”

  “I don’t know,” said Moore. “But I sure as hell doubt it.”

  Greene left the office, and Moore walked back to his desk.

  “Well?” said Bernstein.

  “I was hoping he would shoot a few hundred holes in the idea,” said Moore, frowning. “Abe, what would you say if I told you that Jeremiah’s full name is Immanuel Jeremiah Branch?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Still, it’s just too farfetched to believe,” said Moore. “I like the mutant theory better.”

  “I was sure you would,” said Bernstein.

  “Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Solomon, when people come across something that is contradictory to their training and their experience, they tend to either ignore it or misinterpret it.”

  “Well, if you believe this Messiah crap, why aren’t you leading a bandwagon for Jeremiah instead of helping me plot to kill him?” demanded Moore.

  “There’ll be time for that later,” said Bernstein seriously. “Besides, it ought to be apparent to you by this time that no one is going to kill him.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Moore. “In the meantime, he’s only batting .500—his name’s Immanuel and he’s been to Egypt.”

  “By the way, I do have one little tidbit of information for you,” said Bernstein.

  “About Jeremiah?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you got here?” demanded Moore.

  “I wanted to wait until Milt Greene left.”

  “Okay. Let’s have it.”

  “I checked the results of Moira’s psycho-probe before Milt showed up this morning,” began Bernstein.

  “And?”

  “Jeremiah once told her that when he was seventeen years old he was swimming with a friend, and the friend drowned after suffering a stomach cramp.”