The Road to Bithynia: A Novel of Luke, the Beloved Physician

by Frank G. Slaughter

  “Good.” Luke released her hands. “Now creep inside and stay there, no matter what happens.”

  “You will come?”

  “Yes, we’ll come.” He turned to Paul, who was standing beside the parapet staring back toward Probus’s house. Already the forms of running men could be seen through the trees as the mob converged upon the river. “Over the side quickly,” Luke told the apostle. “We don’t have much time.”

  Paul stared at him a moment, his eyes dull and uncomprehending, then at Luke’s urging he climbed over the parapet. Because of Paul’s short stature Luke had to lean far over the ledge in order to lower him into the mouth of the sewer. From her position inside the cloaca Thecla took Paul by the knees and helped him to the underwater platform that marked the mouth. When Paul was safely inside, Luke dropped over the edge and into the water, landing upon the stones with a jarring thud. By the time he, too, was safely hidden, the first of the crowd reached the riverbank.

  Although it was May, the water was cool, for the excess from the Roman aqueducts bringing water from cold mountain springs spilled over into the sewers. The passage was not so foul as Luke had expected, however, because such a volume of water flowed through it, but the smell was still fetid enough almost to nauseate them as they crouched inside and listened to the shouts of the mob overhead. It apparently never occurred to any of the mob to look for them inside the cloaca, for no one clambered over the parapet. Had they done so, however, the three fugitives would still have been safe, for only a few yards inside it was too dark for them to be seen.

  Demetrius and his henchmen did not stay near them long. Luke heard the leader order them to divide and search along the riverbank. But they could hear the voices of people passing along the street from time to time, so they were afraid to climb out of their dank refuge. At Luke’s suggestion the three of them tried to keep the circulation stirring in their bodies by moving about in the water, but the chill gradually penetrated deeply through them. And as the hours passed, Luke was more and more worried about the danger of this exposure to Thecla. Once or twice they heard the creak of oarlocks and sails, but it was only fishermen moving along the river and, once, a cargo galley beating its way upstream.

  As the tide began to rise, the level of water in the cloaca grew higher, and Luke knew they would have to leave soon or be drowned. Through all this Paul had said little. He seemed to be in the grip of a profound depression of spirit, similar to the one which had seized him following their near death at Pisidian Antioch. Luke could sympathize with his reaction. For knowing Paul and his fierce pride in being the apostle to the Gentiles, he understood what a shock it must have been to be forced to escape the fury of a mob through such an ignoble route as one of the cloacas of the city in which he had made his greatest success.

  Shortly after dusk a boat came along the canal with a lantern in the bow casting a fitful circle of light before it. Luke crept to the mouth of the sewer and looked out. The boat was rowed by a single figure, and he considered attempting a sudden attack upon it when it came closer, hoping to commandeer a way of escape for them. But when the light came closer he recognized Silas straining at the oars against the incoming tide.

  “Silas!” Luke called. “Over here!”

  “Luke? Where are you?” There was profound relief in Silas’s tone.

  “Here in the mouth of the cloaca. Paul is with us.”

  “Thank God!” Silas said fervently. “I was afraid that all of you had drowned.”

  “We would have been taken by the mob,” Luke explained as he seized the bow of the boat and maneuvered it into position against the mouth of the cloaca, “but fortunately I found this sewer in time.”

  Thecla and Paul crept out, and Silas helped them over the side. Luke came last. “How did you know where to look for us?” Luke asked when they were safely aboard.

  “Probus told me you were going to try to escape in a rowboat down the river,” Silas explained. “But I had to wait for darkness before coming to look for you.”

  “Has the mob quieted down?”

  Silas nodded, his face grim. “After what happened at Probus’s house, the recorder sent troops to arrest Demetrius and his henchmen.”

  Thecla voiced the question that was in all their minds. “What was it, Silas?”

  “Probus tried to delay the mob, and in their anger they turned upon him.”

  None of them wanted to ask the next question, for Silas’s manner left little doubt of the answer.

  “Probus is dead,” Silas said at last. “I got to him a few minutes before the end, long enough to learn that you three had escaped to the river.”

  Stunned by the news, none of them could speak. In the silence Silas took the oars and began to row downstream, away from the city. Finally Luke said, “He sacrificed himself to save us,” and his voice broke in a sob, for he had loved Probus. Thecla put her hand into Luke’s to comfort him, but strangely enough it was Paul who voiced the thought which gave them all the most solace in the loss of their friend.

  “I heard John repeat these words of Jesus once,” the apostle said simply, “‘Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.’”

  IV

  Thecla was sitting in the garden of Lydia’s house in Philippi when Luke came in carrying a letter from Timothy. They had come here with Paul after the riot in Ephesus had resulted in the death of Probus and so nearly cost them their own lives. Luke had been worried that the long immersion in the cold water at Ephesus might bring on a recurrence of Thecla’s illness, and so at Philippi he had asked Paul to let them stay behind so Thecla could rest in the warm sun of Lydia’s garden. Paul had been gone for several months, collecting contributions from the churches to be carried to Jerusalem to relieve the famine, which was reported as becoming more acute daily. In the meantime Luke resumed the work which he had left off at Philippi when they had been thrown in prison and beaten on orders of the Roman magistrate.

  Thecla looked up and smiled when Luke came into the garden. He stooped to kiss her, and she put her hand to his face and pressed his cheek to hers in a little gesture of endearment which they both loved. Once or twice lately Luke had wondered if her cheeks were not pinker than they should have been but had told himself that it must be from the sun rather than a recurrence of the fever which he had come to fear as a warning of the trouble she had suffered in Antioch.

  “Philippi agrees with you, dear,” he said. “I have never seen you more beautiful.”

  “Lydia will not even let me lift a hand for myself,” Thecla protested. “I shall grow fat with nothing to do.”

  “Perhaps we will be moving on soon,” he told her. “This letter is from Timothy.”

  “Read it to me!” Thecla cried. The young man who had been with them in Lystra and Iconium was grown to manhood now and had become a strong staff upon which Paul leaned heavily. Timothy wrote:

  Paul has asked me to write you, for he is very busy gathering alms to be carried to Jerusalem. And indeed I should have written you before, thanking you both for saving Paul from the mob in Ephesus, as should all who love Jesus. He has told us what you did and how Probus died to save him.

  We have been in Greece for the past three months, but the Jews there plotted against Paul, as they have in other cities, so we are traveling now by way of Macedonia to Troas, where we hope that you and Thecla can join us to go on to Jerusalem. Paul has been very much disturbed by letters which have come from the churches in Galatia, telling that they have been visited again by the false prophets who claim to come from James in Jerusalem. In addition they tell of the visits of some Jews who have been sent out by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, seeking to weaken the faith of the Galatians. At first Paul thought of going by way of Galatia, in order to visit the churches, but now he has decided to write them a letter which I am copying, setting forth all that has happened in the controversy over circumcisio
n and eating unclean foods, and how he was given the message from James and the elders to the Gentile brethren, of which you already know. He thinks now that more can be accomplished against those who seek to undermine his work if we go on to Jerusalem with the gifts for the poor which we have been collecting and which are now a considerable amount, hoping to convince the Jews there that we should all work together in the service of God.

  We plan to reach Troas about two weeks hence and hope that you both will join us there. Thence Paul wishes to go to Miletus, so that he can confer with the Ephesian elders before sailing for Syria. Paul is in good health and bids me give both of you his greeting and his love.

  Yours in the service of Jesus,

  Timothy

  “Why do the Judaizers still try to hamper Paul’s work?” Thecla cried indignantly.

  “Some sincere people think Paul is wrong about many of the things he teaches,” Luke explained. “Perhaps some of the confusion arises because nobody has gotten together in one form all that we know about Jesus and what He did and said.”

  “Why don’t you do it, Luke?”

  Luke smiled. “I am a physician, not a writer.”

  “I kept the letters you wrote to me when you were in Antioch and I was in Iconium,” she said, smiling. “Don’t ever tell me that you cannot write.”

  “But I was writing to the one I love,” he reminded her. “That makes a difference.”

  “You love Jesus,” she said seriously. “And you would be writing about Him. Sometimes I think you love Him more than any of us, Luke, even though you never knew Him. And I am sure you come nearer than anyone to understanding what He means to the world.”

  “I will think about it,” Luke promised. “Mark may be writing such an account already; he knows the story well. Shall we join Paul in Troas or sit here in the sun at Philippi?”

  “We will go to Troas, of course,” Thecla said promptly. “I told you I was getting fat here.”

  At Neapolis, the Aegean port of Philippi, Luke and Thecla were fortunate in finding a ship sailing for Troas the next day, a journey of from three to five days across the upper part of the narrow sea. The day after sailing they raised the towering peak of Samothrace, the Monte Santos of the old Greek mariners, and a few hours later the larger island of Imbros. As the ship rounded this island, the mouth of what seemed to be a great river opened to the east and a strong current gripped the vessel, setting southward.

  “Do you recognize that?” Luke asked Thecla, pointing to the distant opening in the east.

  “It should be the Hellespontus,” Thecla said. “Am I right?”

  “Yes. But what lies beyond it?”

  “The Propontis and then the Pontus Euxinus. See how well I know my geography?” Then she grasped his meaning and her face sobered. “Bithynia,” she said slowly then. “It is the water route to Bithynia, but the current of the Hellespontus is carrying us away from it.”

  “The current of our lives,” he reminded her gently. “It is setting in another direction, or we might be going to Bithynia even now.”

  “Are you disappointed, Luke?”

  “Disappointed?” For a moment he did not go on, then he said, “No, I think not. I wonder,” he added thoughtfully, “how many people are lost fighting against the very current which eventually would take them where they wish to go, perhaps even to Bithynia.”

  “Then you think God is sending us to Jerusalem?”

  “Do you?”

  She nodded and drew close to him, seeking his hand with hers. “Does it scare you sometimes, Luke? I mean to think that something over which you have no control is guiding you, just as the current has taken control of the ship?”

  Luke smiled. “When I was younger, I sometimes felt as if I had to rebel,” he admitted. “But now I am sure that God’s purpose is best for us.” He put his arm about her. “This is a new adventure, dear. We should be looking ahead, not backward.”

  “I know,” she said. She clung to him, and as he held her close he felt her tears upon his cheek. And as he watched the mouth of the Hellespontus disappear behind the rocky outcropping of Cape Helles, his own throat filled, for he knew that Thecla was wondering if she would ever see Bithynia.

  Paul and the rest of the party were already at Troas when Luke and Thecla reached the ancient capital of the Trojans. Luke was quick to see the change in Paul, for he was by no means the same man who had preached so forcefully to the crowds in the lecture hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus. Paul had been depressed, as had all of them, by the death of Probus and the ignominy of his forced escape from Ephesus. But this was something different, as if a sense of impending disaster had come over him since Luke had left him and the others at Philippi. As soon as he could Luke took Silas aside and spoke to him about it.

  “I have noticed a change,” Silas admitted. “I think now it came when we reached Corinth and Paul saw how the church there had been split by the Judaizers.”

  “Have they crossed over into Macedonia?” Luke asked in surprise. “I thought they were active in Galatia.”

  “There seem to be two distinct movements now,” Silas said. “One is the same group which has fought us ever since Paul began his missions to the Gentiles, teaching that they cannot be accepted into the Church of Christ unless they obey the Jewish laws of diet and are circumcised. The others are from the Sanhedrin and teach that Jesus was not resurrected, but that His body was stolen from the tomb by His followers to make Him appear divine.”

  “But surely the Christians in Macedonia would not believe them?”

  “Only a few listened,” Silas admitted. “But those who claimed before to have come from James now claim to come from Peter. Some of the Macedonian churches have split up into factions, one group calling themselves followers of Peter and the other of Paul.”

  This was bad news indeed, for with Paul going to Jerusalem, the old controversy between Paul and Peter might flare up again. When Luke told Thecla of it, her eyes filled with tears.

  “It breaks my heart to look at Paul now,” she said. “But it must be more than just the trouble with the churches. Do you suppose God has revealed to him that he will be killed in Jerusalem?”

  “Jesus knew that He would be crucified,” Luke said. “And the Sanhedrin would certainly welcome an opportunity to kill Paul. But we are probably overconcerned,” he continued. “Paul has had troubles before and survived them.”

  “I am glad you are with him, Luke. He needs you.”

  “He needs us all, dear,” Luke said. “Paul is fighting for the Way of Jesus, in which we all believe.”

  “Must men always fight over their beliefs? Even Socrates drank the hemlock rather than recant his convictions.”

  Luke smiled. “We can hope that all men will one day believe in Jesus, dear. Then there will be no need to fight over their beliefs. But when men are no longer willing to fight for them, the world will be lost.”

  V

  During the long voyage to the Syrian coast Paul became more like himself. It was like the old days when Luke, Paul, Barnabas, Probus, and Mark, an eager group of evangelizing Christians, had sailed to Cyprus. Thecla, too, was enjoying the voyage. Watching her as she stood in the bow with the warm summer wind blowing through her hair, Luke found himself hoping that he was wrong in worrying because the flush in her cheeks seemed more than the sun alone would have caused.

  At Tyre, where the ship put in to unload, the Christians warned Paul again about the enmity of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, but the apostle laughed it off and insisted upon going on. Talking privately to the leaders of the Church there, Luke and Silas learned in what a state of ferment the Jews in Jerusalem really were over Paul. They blamed him, more than anything else, for the decrease in attendance at the temple of Jews living in other cities of the empire, as well as the resulting loss of revenue to the priests and the merchants of the city who profited by the visit
s of pilgrims to the great religious festivals. This bitter hatred against Paul had prompted the sending of the proselytizers who had been following him in Galatia, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia, trying to wreck the churches which he had established so successfully in those provinces.

  Leaving Tyre, the party came at last to Caesarea, where they planned to stop for a short while before going on to Jerusalem. Luke and Thecla lodged with Paul and Timothy at the home of Philip, who had been one of the original Seven at the time of the persecution which had brought about the martyrdom of Stephen. His daughters and Thecla were fast friends from her former visit here, when she had escaped death at the hands of Herod Agrippa. Luke, as usual, went out to care for the sick. In the evening Thecla would come to his surgery and they would walk back to Philip’s house along the seashore in the gathering shadows of evening, or sit upon the great stones of the mole which formed the harbor, watching the water surge endlessly against the barrier.

  One afternoon, however, they took a route through the city and climbed the empty tiers of seats in the great amphitheater until they could look down upon the arena where Thecla, tied to the back of the young bull, had waited for death under the claws of the lions. “I wonder what would have happened to me that day if you had not been able to bribe the old man to guide you over the mountain, Luke.”

  “Herod might still have died,” Luke pointed out. “Probus and I were sure his anger at Agabus actually killed him, but there must also have been a tremendous excitement for him in being called a god by the people. That might have helped to bring on the attack that killed him.”

  Thecla’s hand crept into his. “I have faith,” she said, “but just the same I am glad that you got there that day.” She hesitated, then went on: “Would you mind much if I didn’t go with you to Jerusalem, Luke?”

  “I thought you wanted to go.”