“How so? Ali merely gave me a sample for Draco. I would expect no less from any visitor who happened to have a useful potion.”
“Once I discovered the danger the new formulation of the substance posed and the fact that Ali had it, the wheels, you could say, began to turn. That coupled with the realization that it was probably he who, in one disguise or another, represented at least half of the people who’d been tracking for us the last several days. Remember, too, he said his brother Achmir had been murdered recently. When and where, I wondered. Finally, Jacob, with his newly functioning eyes, described his attacker, too well, it seems. Ali nearly killed him too, you know.”
“I didn’t know. I congratulate you, and as you are naturally more skeptical than I, it makes perfect sense. While I think of it, why did Ali even come back when he could have been away and clear after that first day?”
“I believe he had not completed his business in the city, there were the guards to be gotten rid of and he needed to return as someone else to do that. That would explain the fire at the store and the second death as well—tidying up.”
“It seems like a lot of trouble. You’d have thought he would have had a neater plan to start with.”
“You would. He overplayed his hand, it seems. Posing as a priest got him past the guards, but he did not have to kill them. Once they’d realized what they’d done, they’d have disappeared into Thrace or Edom, or some such distant place rather than face the wrath of the Sanhedrin and the Lord. And he killed his accomplice.”
“He had to have had one?”
“How else carry a body into the Temples disguised as four or five omers of grain, except with a coconspirator? What I don’t understand is how, or from whom, the killer discovered the intricacies of our rituals. How did he know about Yom Kippur or to tie a rope on the ankle, for example?”
Loukas’ face reddened, and he fixed his gaze on the tiles. “That would be me, I’m afraid. I told you we exchanged information, not just medical. He told me he had an interest in learning about our culture. That’s what he called it—our culture. So, over several cups of the wine he brought me, I told him what I knew.”
“Not to worry, my friend. If not you, he would have learned it from someone else and perhaps in a less hygienic way.”
“I am sorry to have ever brought that man into our circle, Rabban. I must be a better judge of character in the future.”
Gamaliel poured the last of the wine into their cups and sighed.
“Do not distress yourself, Loukas. Men are deceived and betrayed by their friends all the time. Think of David, and his sons and his friends. My student, Saul, read from Kings when I asked him to parse the mystery. He quoted the part about Joab’s deception. Joab, the king’s faithful all, turned on him and rallied to Absalom.”
“I suppose you are right, but I wish it weren’t so. So the prefect has what he needs?”
“After some persuasion which involved a branding iron, Ali confessed to Pilate that he intended to do away with the Egyptian’s trade in hul gil. As we heard, the Egyptian syndicate had got hold of plants from Khorasan and competed, too successfully, with his group.”
“It seems so ridiculous that people should die for a pain killer. Any fool who tried it would immediately see the danger and avoid it afterwards.”
“I am afraid you give people too much credit. In a despairing and hurting world, anything that offers a person a moment’s release will be snapped up by the suffering like children after honey cakes. Pilate understands that. Remember, the legionnaires stationed here are not from Rome nor are they Romans. The Roman legions, the elite troops, remain on the Italian peninsula, honored and admired. The men who serve here and elsewhere on the dusty fringes of the Empire, are mercenaries. Their lot is only marginally better than ours. The drug would have the same appeal to them as it would to us. More importantly, were it to take hold, Pilate would have troops that could not function. That, in turn, would encourage rebels to more violence, which would be completely unacceptable.”
“What will Pilate do now?”
“I expect when he is satisfied his people can’t terrorize anymore information from Ali and what’s-his-name—”
“Aswad Khashab.”
“Yes, Aswad. When he is done with that pair, he will crucify them. Then he will notify his counterpart in Egypt who will deal with the poppy growers out there, and finally he will try to seal that northern border.”
“Will he succeed?”
“With the crucifixions, certainly. The rest, probably not. There are some things, persons, events, or in this case a drug, which when they insinuate themselves into history, change its course, and their influence is rarely reversed. This opiate, this sap of the poppy plant, will curse this world to the end of time. It will be like your wild mustard, spreading and choking out everything in its path.”
“That is not a very optimistic notion. There have been plagues, volcanoes, and disasters of every sort throughout history. Rome cannot last forever. The Great Alexander is but a dim memory, the pharaohs, gone and soon forgotten.”
“Yes, but not your geometry and not our Lord. We must trust to the things that are absolute and true to bear us up against those that are deceptive and false. Evil will always be with us, Loukas, but so will Ha Shem.”
“If you say so, Rabban. I admire your faith and long for some part of it. Perhaps someday I will find it, but, alas, not today. And, now what will you do?”
“What will I do? First, I will finish this very fine wine and then I shall return to my home. Benyamin will feed me my evening meal and scold me for taking so many risks—we could have been killed you know. I will sleep the night through without dreaming, and tomorrow I will resume my studies and tend to my students. All this I will do with a fervent prayer to Ha Shem that I will not see the high priest for at least a month, the prefect again ever, and murder, should visit this place once more, will not involve me in any way, shape, or form.”
Notes
For those readers who have already experienced Gamaliel and his detective skills in The Eighth Veil some of these notes will be repetitious. For new readers, I hope they help clarify some of the complexities of life in Jerusalem during the first half of the First Century. They may be, as the little girl in the story once said, “It’s more about penguins than I really wanted to know.” If so, skip this part.
Primary Characters
Caiaphas, Yosef bar Kayafa; high priest of the Temple 18 CE to 36 CE. Although removed from office by Caligula, he saw his sons succeed him in the office later.
Gamaliel, Gamaliel the Elder, Gamaliel I: Served as the rabban (chief rabbi) of the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of Israel. While believing the Law of Moses to be wholly inspired, he is reported to have taken a broad-minded and compassionate stance in its interpretation. Gamaliel held that the Sabbath laws should be understood in a realistic rather than rigorous fashion. He also maintained, in distinction to his contemporaries, that the law should protect women during divorce and urged openness toward Gentiles. Acts 5:38–39 relates that he intervened on behalf of Saint Peter and other Jewish followers of Jesus.
Pontius Pilate, prefect (governor) of Judea appointed by Tiberius and recalled in 36 CE by the Emperor Caligula.
Procula, one of the names traditionally given for Pilate’s wife. The other is Claudia; and occasionally she is called Claudia Procles or Claudia Procula. She appears briefly in Matthew’s Gospel as having had a dream or premonition and warning Pilate not to persecute Jesus.
Yeshua ben Josef, Jesus of Nazareth.
The Cord around the Ankle
It is generally acknowledged among scholars who pay attention to this sort of thing that the practice of tying a cord around the high priest’s ankle when he made his annual entry into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement is a myth. The story surfaced several centuries after
the destruction of the Temple in 70CE. The idea behind the alleged practice held that a cord would assure that the body of a person struck down by an angered or displeased God could be retrieved without running the risk to a second, prohibited person, who would have to enter to retrieve it. Scholars maintain there is no scriptural evidence to support the practice. And since the Torah contains such great detail about everything that was to happen on that day—dress, rituals before, preparations, rituals afterward, etc., it seems inconceivable that the practice would have been left out of the instructions. To my mind, that is not much of an argument, but then I do not make my living parsing Torah. We shall never know the source of the myth, but as with most folklore, there is usually a kernel of truth in them somewhere.
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur, also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe). Yom Kippur is the tenth day of the month of Tishrei. The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt.
Once a year on Yom Kippur, the high priest would enter the Holy of Holies. First, he would prepare himself with ritual cleansing and then don a blue ephod (a narrow poncho-like vestment which extended to about his knees). Bells were affixed to its hem. He also wore a white linen tunic. In addition he carried a bowl of sacrificial blood, and incense would be burned to limit his ability to gaze on the Presence. While he was in the Most Holy Place, people waited outside. Some assume the bells were the means by which those in attendance could be sure the high priest still moved about. Others argue that the blue ephod with the bells was shed before entering. Whatever the case, when the high priest emerged intact, a shout of joy rose up from the people. The Lord had accepted the sacrifice and their sins were forgiven. The high priest would announce, “Your sins are forgiven” and utter the Name. The people would probably shout the Shema: Shema, Israel, Adonoi elohenu, Adonoi Echad or Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
Measurements
Volume
An omer is an ancient Israelite unit of dry measure used in the era described here. It appears in the Bible as an ancient unit of volume for grains, and the Torah mentions as being equal to one tenth of an ephah.
The ephah was defined as being 72 logs, and the log was equal to the Sumerian mina.
Distance
Amah (Amot): the biblical cubit or 48.0–57.6 cm. Nearly two feet: Latin=cubit.
Ris (stadium pl. stadia): 128–153.6 meters, or 139–167 yards.
Mil (Milin): a mile 960–1152 m 1049–1258 yd. Time to walk a mil is 18 minutes. Roman tradition has it at one thousand paces (thus mille or mile).
Kohen or Kohanim
Hebrew: kohen pl. kohanim, is the Hebrew word for priest. Jewish kohanim are traditionally believed to be of direct patrilineal descent from Aaron, the brother of Moses. The status kohen was first conferred on Aaron and his sons. During the forty years in the wilderness and until the Temple was built in Jerusalem, priests performed their priestly duties in the portable tabernacle, a tent surrounded by a wall of fabric panels.
The noun kohen is used in the Torah to refer to priests, both Jewish and non-Jewish, such as the priests of Baal. During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, the kohanim performed the daily and holiday sacrifices. They were assigned to a cohort and there were (at least) thirty-eight such groups which took turns serving at the Temple. Obviously some time might pass between their calls to function as priests.
Speaking the Name
Orthodox Jewish custom prevents a person from saying the name of God. The pronunciation of the Hebrew tetragrammaton, YHWH, which designates the Almighty, is sometimes pronounced Yaweh (I Am), Jehovah, or some other circumlocution. Even today, orthodox Jewish literature and web sites will print God only as G*d. Because our protagonist, Gamaliel, would have been at least as orthodox as modern-day practice, the term Lord, or the Lord, or Elohim, is used instead of God in order to make this distinction. Sometimes a greeting would be even more circumspect, and the person initiating it would merely say “Greetings in the Name, or just “The Name” (Ha Shem).
The Temple
Herod the Great began building the Temple in use at the time this story is set in 19 BCE. It replaced the temple built by Zerubbabel after the return from exile which, in turn, was erected on the ruins of that built by Solomon. That temple had been sacked and burned by Nebuchadnezzar years before. Most scholars assume it was an attempt by Herod, who was half Idumean, to appease the Jews, but certainly not a genuine desire to glorify God. Rather, he built a memorial to himself and to convince his counterparts in Rome, Alexandria, Athens, and elsewhere, that he could equal or surpass anything they might devise.
To avoid the workmen profaning the temple during its construction, Herod had priests trained as stonemasons and carpenters to serve as his Bazal’el or Temple workmen.
It is reported that the rabbis at the time (and subsequently) continually praised the Temple’s splendor, but never mentioned that it was built by Herod.
Reading and Writing
Hebrew is written right to left. There are two things the reader should know:
There are no numbers in Hebrew (or Greek or Aramaic, for that matter) so a writer wishing to itemize would have to adopt Arabic numerals (with no zero), Roman numerals, or use the letters of the alphabet in order.
There are no vowels in the Hebrew alphabet (although there are consonantal vowels—but that is another matter.) Ancient texts assumed the reader knew the traditional pronunciation of the words as they appeared in context. For example:
trn lft th nxt crnr
Turn left at the next corner can be easily read. And it would be assumed that readers of Hebrew then could insert the correct vowel sounds in the words and sentences.
After the Exile, the ability to figure out the correct pronunciation seemed to have been lost, or the language became more complex. Either way, the practice emerged of making diacritical marks in various locations on the individual letters, which dictated the correct pronunciation.
These marks are called neqqudot.
To recycle papyrus, a sheet would be sanded and repolished. If the job were not done carefully, a bit of ink might be overlooked and when a new word was written, a mark might be introduced which could easily change the meaning of the word.
Hours of the Day
A day was divided into twenty four hours—twelve for daylight, twelve for night. Day began at sunup and ended at sunset. The hours were of indefinite lengths depending on the season, shortest in the winter, longer in the summer, but noon, when the sun stood at its zenith, was designated the sixth hour. As there could be no similar reference point at night, the phases of the moon being variable, the night hours had no time divisions except rough notations. Midnight might be described as the night’s “sixth hour,” but when it occurred would necessarily vary with the speaker and his or her sense of the passage of time.
Miscellaney
Ba’al-Zebuwb: Ba’al or Baal = Lord, is generic. All divine beings would be Baals. The addition of zebuwb or zeebub= flies. Thus Ba’al Zebuwb means Lord of the flies. In this case the reference is to Satan.
Bitumen, (pitch): a generic term referring to flammable brown or black mixtures of tarlike material, derived from petroleum. It is found in quantity near the Dead Sea and is used for a variety of purposes, not the least of which is cosmetic. If you have ever visited the Dead Sea, you will recall seeing people smeared with a black substance. If you were one of those people, you know that after washing off the application, your skin feels like silk for the rest of the day.
Gehinnom: a valley outside Jerusalem where garbage, trash, offal, and waste were dumped. When the rains came much of it
would be washed eastward toward and finally into the Dead Sea.
Hul gil: opium or one of its derivatives. The history of opium is fascinating and scary. I will not attempt to capture it here. It is enough to know that poppy pods have been found in the Neolithic caves. Over time, the cultivation of the plant became more sophisticated and the ability to process the sap equally so. Thus, the sedating (and addictive) effects increased remarkably.
Mikvah (pl. mikva´ote): a ritual bath. Orthodox Jews cleanse themselves periodically by immersion in the bath. Some ascribe this practice as the forerunner of the baptismal practice instituted by John the Baptizer.
Minyan, ( pl. minyanim) in Judaism refers to the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious meetings and worship.
Nomenclature, I heard from a few readers who expressed their disapproval of the practice of delineating the pre and post Christian eras with the notations, BCE and CE. Why the change from BC and AD? The latter annotations represented the notion that the Christian era began with the birth of Jesus (anno domini) and the years prior to that time were before Christ (BC). But we now know that Jesus had to have been born sometime before the Death of Herod the Great, and we know for a certainty that date to be no later than 4BCE (BC). Since the Jesus could not have been born before Christ, the notation has been changed. The use of BCE (before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) are now pretty much standard practice. Not everyone is happy about that.
Shepherds: In the world of work at this time, a shepherd was considered to be one of the lowest occupations available to a man, just above beggar, which adds poignancy to the story of David, the shepherd who became King, and the tradition that a heavenly host first announced the nativity of Jesus to shepherds.
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