Desire of the Everlasting Hills

by Thomas Cahill

  Does the New Testament conceive of evil only in terms of political and economic institutions? Jesus certainly saw evil as infecting social and religious institutions as well. His hair-raising excoriation in Matthew 23 of the scribes and Pharisees for their hypocrisy, vanity, and lack of sympathy for ordinary human beings must be understood as Jesus’s indictment of the socioreligious establishment of his time (and should probably be read faithfully at the dawn of each new day by today’s scribes and Pharisees, the members of the Christian clergy and religious orders). But evil also infects individuals physically (by way of disease and all the ills that the four horsemen bring) and morally. When Jesus tells Simon Peter at the Last Supper that “Satan will be allowed to sift you all like wheat,” he is thinking of the disciples’ coming cowardice and flight. These are, surely, not social or political but personal moral failures. But they are personal failures in a context of deadly political terror. How many people in any time, after all, will not break and run before the threat of torture and the pain of slow, excruciating execution? “But,” Jesus assures his friend the fisherman, “I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith not fail utterly; and, once you have recovered yourself, lend strength to your brothers”—once again, the social dimension of morality.

  From the time of John the Visionary (who may have written shortly after Nero’s death but is more likely to have written in the last decade of the first century) to the present day, the Book of Revelation has proved an insurmountable temptation to the twisted and the gullible. Religious leaders like Jerry Falwell are always finding hidden messages in this text and persuading their adherents of some “secret knowledge.” But such interpretations are always misguided and often at direct variance with what John meant to convey. To take the many delicate strands of this skillfully woven tapestry and reduce them to some literalist fantasy about the present or future (“666 are the initials of the UN secretary general”; “the world will come to an end in three and a half years”) is only to demonstrate once again the connection between fanaticism and simple-mindedness.

  Unlike Paul, who wrote in the first flush of the Jesus Movement’s success in gaining converts and spreading through Roman Eurasia, John lived to see in detail the brutal response of Nero and his successors to the movement. His Greek is the worst in the New Testament, often coming close to transliterated Hebrew/Aramaic. But if he lacks Paul’s linguistic skills, his rich imagination astonishes us still. If, living in a more dangerous era, he betrays more of a siege mentality than Paul,17 leading him to Maccabean visions of the eventual triumph of “the saints,” his political analysis is surprisingly close to Paul’s. Paul, too, speaks often of “princes” and “powers,” meaning the spirit-crushing political-economic complex that dominates human affairs and is inspired by the cosmic forces of evil (the powers “of deepest abyss”). If these Satanic forces imitate the style of the forces of good, taking over their vocabulary and ritual, they are incapable of unleashing anything but death and destruction on the world. Their moment of greatest triumph, the crucifixion, was also the beginning of their downfall. But in their exultation at killing Christ they were blind to the implications of what they had done. Those who are mature in the faith, says Paul, are able to speak “of God’s secret wisdom, hidden and destined for our glory before all time began [the wisdom contained in the heavenly scroll]. None of the powers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”

  People may be fooled by the dazzling displays of the “powers of this age”—which is also our age—into the fallacy of calling Caesar “Son of God.” They may be seduced or terrorized into the demonic liturgies of the Beast, mistaking him for the Savior and singing in sacrilegious imitation of heavenly worship, “Who is like the Beast?” But, in the end, the saints will triumph, gathered into “the new Jerusalem” through which courses the healing River of Life. In John’s vision, they will be “of a number so large as to be impossible for anyone to count, of every nation, race, tribe, and tongue”—finally separated out from all the demon-worshiping peoples with whom they were previously intermingled. Though they will have come through “the great tribulation,” they will stand in joy before God’s throne—the last remaining power—their “robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb.” The Voice will call out from the Throne of True Power:

  “You see, here God lives with human beings. He will make his home among them; they will be his people, and he will be their God, God-with-them. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness or pain. The world of the past is gone.… Look how I am making all things new.” …

  Then he said to me, “The End has already begun, for I am Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. To anyone who thirsts I will give the gift of water from the well of life. Whoever overcomes will inherit all this; and I will be his God and he will be my child.”

  1 There are three words in this saying of Jesus that present special difficulties. The word “Rock” (petros in the evangelists’ Greek, but kepha in Jesus’s Aramaic) was not a normal proper name, any more than “Messiah” or “Christos” was; but from this moment Simon became “Simon Rock,” as Jesus would become “Jesus Christ.” In English we translate petros as “Peter,” though the English (unlike the French “Pierre”) carries no special connotation. What Jesus means to build on this human rock is his ekklesia—in the evange-lists’ Greek—but the word he would actually have used was qahal, which has a long and distinguished pedigree, referring in the Hebrew Bible to the desert assembly of God’s People and, after their settlement, to their regular meeting, both a civic and religious occasion. The word is usually translated in English as “church,” but “synagogue,” which like ekklesia simply means a “gathering of human beings,” is probably closer to the flavor of Jesus’s original. “Hades” was the Greek underworld, where the souls of the dead led a shadowy, fitful existence. Jesus would have used the Hebrew-Aramaic sheol, which carries the same force. It is not clear that “hell,” the usual English translation, is what is meant, because Jesus’s sense seems to be not that evil will never conquer his assembly (which it has many times over) but that it will not know death.

  2 We should not overlook how closely these most basic of Christian rituals adhere to Jewish models. Proselyte baptism was practiced within orthodox (i.e., non-Christian) Judaism as early as the first century A.D., but rites of immersion for the sake of purification from sin are at least as old as the Book of Leviticus (see 15, 16:4, 24). That the rite of the Eucharist is a form of the Seder cannot be doubted, which of course makes the Missal a form of the Passover Haggada.

  3 Luke gives Paul’s profession as “tentmaker,” i.e., one who had skill in using special implements for making and mending tents, awnings, pavilions, and similar protections against sun and weather that were erected throughout Mediterranean lands at open-air markets, fairs, regional athletic competitions, etc. Since the materials were supplied by the customer, Paul needed only the tools of his trade (sickle, awl, needles, and waxed thread) to open shop in any population center. Paul was certainly not brought up to this trade as Jesus was to carpentry. Pharisees, who were members of the leisured class, shared with all the wellborn of the ancient world an abhorrence of manual labor. But we may presume that after his conversion Paul could no longer avail himself of the customary Pharisaical subventions and may even have been disinherited. By taking up a craft that was welcome everywhere, Paul was also less dependent on handouts from the communities he established.

  4 Paul might have been all right had he stuck to proselytizing Jews (since there was no law against Jews proselytizing one another), but the Roman citizens who brought charges were actually upset about something else: “It happened,” says Luke, who seems to have accompanied Paul on this trip, “that as we were going to prayer [at the Jewish prayer service where Paul would preach], we were met by a slave girl who had a Python-spirit [i.e., was an oracle] and made a lot of money for her m
asters by fortune-telling. This girl started following Paul and the rest of us shouting: ‘These men are the servants of the Most High God! They have come to tell you how to be saved!’ She did this day after day till Paul, exasperated, turned and said to the spirit [who possessed the girl]: ‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’ The spirit left her then and there. When her masters saw that there was no hope of making more money out of her, they seized Paul and Silas [another of Paul’s companions] and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities” (Acts 16:16–18).

  5 This language of “Father” and “children” creates translation difficulties. Abba is Hebrew/Aramaic not for “Father” but for a more familiar term of endearment, such as “Papa” or “Daddy.” It was the word Jesus used when addressing God in prayer. Paul then calls Jesus God’s “son” and us God’s “sons” by adoption. The wordplay is lessened by translating our status as “his children,” but it is preferable to “his sons,” which in English refers only to males. The Greek original—huioi—can refer to issue of both sexes, and there is no question that Paul means to include females.

  6 A summary of the Mosaic Law similar to Jesus’s is found in the Mishnah (the early rabbinic law code), which may have been circulating as early as Jesus’s day and on which he may have based his teaching. Conversely, Jesus’s teaching may have influenced the standard rabbinic formula. Note that Jesus quotes freely from the texts of the Jewish scriptures. “Love the Lord your God …” is the Sh’ma, Israel’s holiest prayer, found in Deuteronomy 6:5. “Love your neighbor …” is Leviticus 19:18. Both quotations are from the Torah, and therefore especially sacred. But Jesus quotes the first freely (the original has not “mind” but “strength”) and expands the meaning of the second (in Leviticus “neighbor” means fellow Israelite; in the gospels it means whoever falls across one’s path, i.e., every human being). Jesus, as was pointed out in Chapter Two, felt so at home in his religious tradition that he could adapt its texts with a certain freedom—in what is still typical rabbinical style. Paul probably felt he had a similar latitude in adapting the oral “texts” of the emerging Jesus tradition.

  7 This giving away of all one’s possessions is an allusion to Jesus’s hyperbolic advice, which is rejected by the rich young man we met in Chapter Two.

  8 The language is very reminiscent of Mary’s Magnificat.

  9 Within each of the larger communities of the Jesus Movement, such as at Ephesus and Rome, there were several subcommunities. Since there were too many Ephesian and Roman Messianists for a single meeting, each subcommunity would meet separately in some designated home to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. These clandestine meetings are the beginning of the “house-churches” of the Jesus Movement. Some of these houses will at length, after the legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century, be turned into public churches. Each house-church looked after its own affairs as best it could, and responsibilities (such as taking care of the poor and making arrangements for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper) rotated among those who could best take them up. The owner of the house—often a woman, such as Chloe—would have been the person who normally presided at the Lord’s Supper (or Eucharist, i.e., Thanksgiving). This was as close as the Messianists came to having a power structure.

  10 The symposion (or, in its English equivalent, symposium) was originally a wine-soaked banquet run on the assumption that much wine would elicit much truth from participants. See, for example, Plato, The Symposium.

  11 The Jews, more materialistic (in their thought and language, not in their lives) than the Greeks, had no ready equivalent of the Greek “soul.” If to eat the bread is to eat the body of Christ, to drink the wine is to drink his blood and therefore his Spirit—the blood being seen as the life, or spirit, of the body.

  12 Jews could react just as negatively to the uncircumcised as Greeks and Romans to the circumcised. As late as 1987, Philip Roth would write to Mary McCarthy, “I am still hypnotized by uncircumcised men when I see them at my swimming pool locker room. The damn thing never goes unregistered. Most Jewish men I know have similar reactions, and when … I asked several of my equally secular Jewish male friends if they could have an uncircumcised son, … they all said no, sometimes without having to think about it and sometimes after the nice long pause that any rationalist takes before opting for the irrational.”

  13 Of course, Jesus also has been at times viewed as homosexual because of his affection for various males (Lazarus whom “he loved”; the Beloved Disciple, who leaned against him at the Last Supper) or because of the presentation of Jesus as a sort of sexually ambivalent ghost in Gnostic literature. But, from the point of view of comparative cultural history, what is far more unusual about Jesus is his open affection for the unattached women of his retinue; and the interpretation of his affection for male friends as an indication of homosexuality almost always comes from northern European and North American sources, where open displays of physical affection by Mediterranean peoples are easily misunderstood. The sexual ambivalence of the Gnostic Christ points not to anything factual about the historical Jesus but to how far removed Gnosticism was from the authentic Palestinian roots of the Jesus Movement: it is impossible to imagine the ethereal “Christ”-figure invented by the Gnostics attracting crowds of down-to-earth followers in gritty first-century Palestine.

  14 The letters unquestionably written by Paul are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. Colossians and 2 Timothy are likely from Paul’s pen or written by him in collaboration with others. Despite some irregularities (and one big surprise in Colossians 3:18–4:1, q.v. 231ff.), these are largely in the spirit of the unquestionable letters. Ephesians is probably from Paul’s “workshop,” written by one of his companions in ministry, perhaps a woman. 2 Thessalonians was also likely constructed by a follower/followers of Paul. Titus, 1 Timothy, and Hebrews were all written decades after Paul’s death and, despite their use of his name in the hopes of assuming the mantle of his authority, contradict his theology, sometimes in an almost perverse manner.

  15 One of these cosmic disasters involves the falling to earth of a “huge star” named “Wormwood,” which pollutes a third of the rivers and springs of the world. This “prophecy” gave quite a turn to many Russians, not especially known in this century for their reading of the Bible. The Russian word for “Wormwood” is Chernobyl.

  16 The forty-two months (like the three and a half days during which the corpses of the two prophets were left in the street) is an indirect reference, which all educated Jews would have appreciated, to the three and a half years (or forty-two months) that the Abomination of Desolation was allowed to desecrate the Altar of Sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple. In John’s context, these numbers are not intended to be predictive of any set time but to betoken that the reign of evil has its limits (even though the limits may be unknown to us). Thus, also, does John give evidence of his extensive familiarity with Maccabean history and literature.

  17 John sees not only the power of Rome but the opposition of anti-Messianist Jews ranged against him. He calls these Jews, whose persecution of Christians had increased significantly since the time of Paul, “the Synagogue of Satan.” Though this term has sometimes been interpreted as an example of early Christian anti-Semitism, John is obviously himself a Jew who stands in solidarity with other Jews—except for those who have cut him off.

  IV

  The Gentile Messiah

  Luke’s Jesus

  PAUL’S LETTERS, written over a decade and a half (from about the year 50 to the mid-60s), are the earliest writings of the New Testament. But the four gospels contain extensive passages, especially some of Jesus’s teachings and the basic accounts of his trial and execution, that take us back to a time that clearly predates Paul’s letters. For these are transcriptions of oral traditions that were current in the years following the crucifixion and may be fairly undiluted recountings of what people heard and saw during the li
fetime of Jesus. Other passages, however, have been finessed to suit the view—or even the personality—of a particular evangelist or his need to frame his redaction in a certain way so as to communicate effectively with his intended audience. If Mark is the most primitive, often giving us what seem to be the very textures and odors of Palestine in the early 30s, and Matthew is the most Jewish, sometimes allowing his insistence on Rabbi Jesus’s Torah-faithfulness to blot out all other considerations, Luke is obviously addressing himself to an audience more cosmopolitan than Mark’s but with limited interest in the specifically Jewish questions that so concerned Matthew.

  In Paul’s letters, we see played out the conflict between Paul’s disciples and the Judaizing Messianists, who insisted that new non-Jewish converts take on all the obligations of a Pharisaic interpretation of the Mosaic Law. Though the Judaizing party remained an element in Christianity into the second century, it was ultimately unsuccessful for several reasons, among these the inherent complexity of its own program, the strength of Paul’s influence, and habits of mind and heart that made Greeks and Romans relatively unreceptive to the arguments of the Judaizers. In Luke’s Gospel, we see how, as the Judaizers dwindled and the gentiles took their place, the Jesus Movement adapted the kerygma—and did not adapt it—to the needs of its new audience, the Greco-Roman gentiles who, largely thanks to Paul’s exertions, began to fill its ranks.