The Damascus Road

by Jay Parini

  Setting off with fresh supplies, we trekked into the Galatian lowlands, arriving in Lystra late one evening. I noticed how anxious Paul seemed, looking around with a special alertness, ready for someone to recognize him. We made our way to Eunice, who seemed delighted to welcome us. In her spacious compound we slept on low beds in a wooden shed at the back of her garden, which teemed with cedars and aromatic bushes. Slaves brought us dinner on ceramic platters, which we ate outdoors beside a trellis covered with ferns and yellow roses. I watched Paul relax into the setting. He seemed happy that nobody had lurched at him or tried to drag him to the dump for stoning as before.

  We took great pleasure in Eunice, a brisk, intelligent woman who led her gathering with a sense of joy. Her late husband had been a high-ranking provincial governor, and she had brought a considerable dowry to the marriage. It occurred to me that so many leading figures in the Way, without whom our movement could not survive, were women of means, often with political influence. They were, almost to a fault, benefactors who wished to use their fortunes to improve the lives of those who had not shared in their good luck.

  With her coppery hair and somewhat wild-looking big eyes, Eunice held our attention. Her wry sidelong smile set her apart, as did her humor. She was adorned by layers of silver and brass necklaces and bracelets, so that when she moved she made jingling noises. Her dress billowed around her.

  “She carries her own tent,” Paul whispered.

  “A tentmaker would notice.”

  On our second day in Lystra, Paul addressed the gathering at Eunice’s request. It was the First Day, and she wished to show us the breadth and energy of her circle, which was composed mostly of former Godfearers, although she had attracted a number of outright pagans. Her sacred meal included readings, singing, and a variety of reflections. All listened keenly to Paul, asking questions late into the evening. The following day several of them came to the house and, to everyone’s surprise, asked to be baptized by Paul, who agreed, leading them to a nearby stream—the same one, it so happened, where he had bathed his broken body on his last visit to Lystra.

  A key member of the gathering was Timothy, Eunice’s self-possessed son, now in his early twenties. He took to Paul at once and insisted that the apostle baptize him that morning, though he had been a participant in the Way for a few years by now. He was a quick, rangy fellow with tight red-and-gold curls. His blue eyes were the color of wild hyacinth, and he held one’s gaze. He had a quick smile that engaged those around him.

  “I caught a glimpse of you when you last came to Lystra,” he said to Paul over dinner on our first night. “A remarkable entrance!”

  “You didn’t think I was Hermes?”

  I had not known Paul to engage in this kind of banter.

  Timothy grinned. “All of Lystra was agog,” he said. “Zeus and Hermes had condescended to join us.”

  “Everyone still talks about that visit, but I never understood the fuss,” said a woman who was sitting beside Eunice.

  “Paul healed a man with a withered leg,” Eunice explained. “He and his companion were taken for gods.”

  “It was only in the name of Jesus that I healed,” Paul said. “I would never dare to heal in any name but his, with the power of God.”

  “A crippled man could walk again,” said Timothy. “We haven’t had so many miracles in Lystra, not since that day. If word gets out, there is no telling who will visit us.”

  I liked him already, the way he teased Paul while remaining affectionate. It was good to see a confident young man without fear of his elders, willing to frame opinions and yet open to correction, as I sensed he was. No doubt his assurance derived from the gift of his position in the world. He was a fellow with connections, with purchase on the world. A slave or poor man could never speak so freely. And having a strong mother like Eunice must have played a role in his formation as well.

  That night, after dinner, Paul sat with Timothy in the garden on a bench under an umbrella pine, and I could see that he relished this contact with a younger man who obviously admired him. They shared a large jug of wine as twilight shifted into darkness and while household slaves circled the enclosure, lighting torches. From a distance I could feel the animation of their talk, whatever its subject, as Timothy employed an array of elaborate hand gestures, and Paul leaned in, nodding, his arms folded across his chest. This was, I thought, a fine tableau—almost like father and son.

  Wrapped in a wool cloak, I crouched by myself in a corner, inhaling as a bed of white flowers tilted their lovely scent into the crisp night air, and soon dozed off. In the middle of the night I nearly fell off my seat and, clumsily, slipped back into the room in our shed to sleep on a pallet beside Paul and Silas. I closed my eyes and prayed: “God, thank you for these people, all of them, and this chance to serve you.”

  The next morning, over a dish of yogurt and dates, Paul announced that Timothy would join us on the journey to Bithynia. “He’s got an uncle near Mysia,” Paul explained. “A villa on the Sea of Marmara. He says we’d be very welcome there.”

  At first I didn’t think we required a fourth companion, as it would make accommodations more complex. It had been difficult to fit the three of us into Paul’s tent on the nights when it rained, and four would never work.

  “We shall need another tent,” I said.

  Paul thought I was being foolish, and even Silas agreed. “You like it out under the stars,” he said.

  “Hailstorms are another beast.”

  “It makes good sense to have two couples,” Paul insisted, “so we can split into pairs when we enter a city. It’s a good strategy, and a further guard against thievery.”

  Silas liked Timothy, I could see, and this helped. He asked him about his family origins.

  “My father was a Greek, from Corinth,” Timothy said. “And I was never circumcised.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Paul said. “We have a new dispensation.”

  “To me it does,” said Timothy. “I want to belong, as a Jew.”

  Paul raised an eyebrow.

  “I hear that you often visit the synagogues first,” Timothy said. “You put yourself among Jews, who worship the true God. You know their language and customs. If they trust you, there is a start. They bring in Godfearers. The circle widens from this center. A good strategy.”

  “But circumcision is unnecessary,” Paul said. “We have an arrangement with the Pillars in Jerusalem.”

  “But will Jews everywhere trust me if they suspect I’m not one of them?”

  Paul shook his head sadly. He thought he had put the matter of circumcision to rest. But now it reappeared loudly, annoyingly.

  “I must do what God is asking me to do,” Timothy said. “I have prayed about this for many months. And I want to commit fully to the God of Israel. And to Jesus, who is the Christ.”

  “I do hear what you say,” said Paul.

  “That settles it,” Timothy said. “But I would like your blessing and want you to perform the rite.”

  “It’s not really my gift, you see—”

  “I have a very sharp knife,” Timothy said. “It isn’t difficult, from what I gather.”

  When Timothy left the room, I tried to dissuade Paul. “You might botch it. I have heard stories about how wrong this can go. A young man died in Antioch only last year, as you may know. He bled to death.”

  As a doctor, I had treated several Godfearers who came to me in anguish with their genitalia mutilated or inflamed, spewing green-and-white pus from the tip of the penis. I had to perform castration on one young fellow, removing the offending part altogether to save his life. Another poor man, in his mid-thirties, died in my care because he refused castration, and the agony of his passing did not bear description.

  “I know the risks,” Paul said, “and I will ask the Lord for guidance.”

  Th
e Lord must have spoken quickly, because in Timothy’s mother’s house the next day, we stood in a circle, five of us, all men—including me, a Greek! Timothy entered the room and looked shyly at us before he lay on a divan, as instructed by Paul, who lifted the white linen tunic to expose his genitalia in a profuse nest of reddish pubic hair. Timothy turned his head to one side, and I could feel his fear.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m a physician,” I said. “You should feel safe with me here.”

  It was a lie, however reassuring. What would I do if the boy bled profusely, as some did? Briefly I thought about stopping the procedure altogether by saying: “This is madness! The Pillars have spoken! There is no need!” But the occasion had its own momentum, and I could not summon the will to intervene. It would probably have meant nothing, in any case.

  Timothy’s pale stomach shone, as smooth as his thighs, and his penis was slightly swollen with expectation.

  Somewhat to my surprise, Paul knew exactly what to do. He put a cloth on the thighs, close to the groin, and removed the knife that Timothy had provided from its sheath, saying, “Blessed art thou, Almighty One and King of Israel. Thou hast commanded us in this deed. Blessed art thou, O Lord.”

  A burly textile merchant called Aaron, whom Timothy’s mother knew, sat in the honorary chair of Elijah, named for the angel of the Covenant, saying, “This is the Covenant of Abraham, our father.”

  Without hesitation, Paul reached for the shaft of Timothy’s penis with his left hand, in the action known as milah. With a single stroke of his right hand, he cut away the outer layer of the foreskin, which he had pulled tight. When Timothy shrieked, Silas gave him a piece of leather to bite on.

  “God, help me!” Timothy said, craning his neck to see a gusher of blood. The wound seemed to gape and stream, and the white cloth turned crimson-dark and wet.

  Paul, according to custom, bent forward and put the damaged penis in his mouth and sucked it clean. He kept it there, in his mouth, for a long time, allowing the flow of blood to subside. I winced to see the corners of his mouth drip with blood when, at last, he removed it from the site of the wound.

  At once he wrapped a piece of linen around the disfiguration and told the young man to hold to it tightly. This would staunch further seepage.

  “It’s still bleeding,” Timothy said.

  “That’s quite normal,” Paul said.

  But it was not normal. This could never again be normal, not in the age of the New Covenant. I could hardly believe that Paul succumbed to this request from Timothy, and that he had been willing to engage in a ritual that only a short while before he had roundly dismissed as inessential for admittance to the Way, even an impediment to our progress in the West. Any hope of gathering the Greeks into our fold would fail if we insisted on this sort of butchery as the price of entry.

  Timothy rebounded quickly, however, much to my relief. And showed no signs of being damaged by the experience.

  After a week of recovery for Timothy, we set off westward—Paul with a spring in his step, as he had escaped any real notice in Lystra apart from those in our circle, who had no wish to draw attention to the presence of a man who had been left for dead outside the city walls. I saw at once that Silas and Timothy matched well, being near opposites in disposition. And I considered myself a useful counterpoint to Paul, bringing forward a cool, commonsensical approach that balanced against his hot radical flame, which often torched the dry landscape around him.

  The idea that we should take the Good News into Bithynia consumed Paul at this point, though he had little knowledge of what lay to the north—apart from being aware that natives of Thrace had migrated into that province centuries ago and, by reputation, harbored a willful streak of independence that posed a threat to Roman dominance in the region. These poor farmers and shepherds apparently spoke a strange local dialect, and their rural villages would be lonely and bereft of culture, full of superstition and prejudice. How they would react to Paul, or to any of us, was hard to predict, but I began to worry about our encounters. Anything might happen.

  We continued northwest into the Galatian lowlands, pausing at Pisidia, which Paul had visited a few years earlier, and where he had struck up a friendship with a man called Adam, whose gathering of the Way had grown. We headed directly to Adam’s house, where he and Paul greeted each other as long-lost brothers.

  “It’s the nature of my life, and not a good thing, that I make friends but must abandon them so quickly,” Paul said. “Often I never see them again.”

  He and Adam walked into the lush countryside outside of the town, passing three days in each other’s company, and Paul presided over a sacred meal there and offered eloquent reflections on our mission. It seemed that Adam, though a rabbi by training, knew a good deal about Greek ideas because he had lived and studied in Athens as a young man. I knew that Paul would have liked to remain with Adam for some days, as their conversation enlivened them both, but Timothy urged us on, and we departed one morning with fresh supplies, even an extra donkey. I rarely felt again such buoyancy in myself or in the others.

  It was thrilling to cross the mountains that had risen for weeks in the middle distance, this jagged purple line that widened across the horizon. It had snowed at the higher elevations, and the air stung with a peculiar brightness. Sometimes a sharp wind blew up from below, and I was happy to have brought a heavy woolen cloak with a hood as well as leggings made from sheepskin. For his part, Paul seemed oblivious to the cold, or didn’t mention his discomfort. Nor did he do more than put on an extra tunic and socks.

  After long days of climbing, often along steep icy patches where the slippery path gave way on one side to precipitous drops and scree, we came down into a fragrant spring valley below the snow line, and I marked the wildflowers everywhere in profusion. Vast fields of them appeared in a variety of colors, like an audience with their eyes wide open. The earth itself softened, and we could hear a running stream, invisible but loud, with a cracking of stones. Then the sun hit us, its wide flat blade against our cheeks, and it felt almost too hot. It was as if we moved through several climates within hours.

  We camped in the valley by a black lake with a fringe of white stones like chunks of ice. And that evening, as the donkeys lay down in the wet grass, their big ears tilting forward, we slept in the lee of a cave. At midnight or so, Paul suddenly rose, stepping over us into the dark, and I sensed his urgency, although this puzzled me. What was going on? It was a night of a big orange-tinted moon, and in the distance wolves raised their howls on a great leash of sound, perhaps racing through evergreen forests.

  Or were these black spirits that were making such a racket?

  Worried about Paul and his apparent agitation, I followed him from a distance and discovered him standing by the water’s edge, in apparent conversation. Yet nobody stood near, even though he spoke in a heated way, gesturing. I could hardly intrude and waited by a clump of juniper, trying to listen.

  After he settled, and a long silence followed, I called his name.

  “What? You, Luke?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” I said, in the way of excuse-making.

  “Ah, nor I. But I was summoned.”

  “By whom?”

  “Gabriel.”

  “The angel?”

  “He is active in these parts. And insists that we divert our mission,” he said. “Avoid Bithynia! So he commanded, and without equivocation.”

  “But our plan—”

  “It’s easily aborted. We shall abort it, in fact. Go to Troas, Gabriel said. The gateway to Macedonia. The Greek world beckons, my dear friend. It’s beginning to make sense, all of this. We wander in the dark, then it’s light again.” He drew close to me, his face bathed in moonglow. “God has spoken plainly,” he said. “The angel urges us to go to Macedonia. They need us there. He had a man from Macedonia at his side. I am persuaded.”<
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  A man from Macedonia? What could this mean?

  It probably didn’t matter. I knew that Paul had convinced himself that we must follow this urgent plea from beyond, possibly from Gabriel himself. At breakfast the next morning, Paul explained our abrupt change of direction to Timothy and Silas, who both found it quite wonderful that God had sent a significant angel to speak with Paul. God obviously had our mission in mind and valued our work.

  “What did Gabriel look like?” asked Silas.

  “Dear Lord, such large green-blue eyes,” said Paul. “And he swept into my presence on gold wings.” He reached out his arms. “Such a wingspan!”

  “Gold wings!”

  Timothy said, “Gabriel appeared to the prophet Daniel, an interpreter of visions.”

  “A good memory,” said Paul. “You have studied the scrolls.”

  Paul saw me gathering my wits.

  “And what do you know of Gabriel, Luke?”

  “When Mary was in her sixth month, Gabriel came to her. This was in Nazareth, in Galilee. He terrified her, with those green-blue eyes, those brilliant turquoise eyes. And the wings! He said, Don’t be afraid. God has shown you his grace. You will give birth to a son, whom you must call Jesus. He will rule over the people of David. He will be the son of the Almighty God. His kingdom will come and continue.”

  “This is good,” said Paul. “You must write that down.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Silas asked.

  “Andrew told me.”

  As a disciple of the Lord, Andrew spoke with authority, although not everyone trusted his stories because he had a gift for the fabulous, a love of the extraordinary, even the peculiar. I explained to Silas and Timothy that I had begun to gather material for an account of the life and teachings of Jesus, and had already collected a good deal of material, including the sayings and many fresh parables that had animated his teaching. I’d talked at length to several disciples about his activities in Galilee and Judea, and had isolated—at least in my head—the stories I would use. (I loved dearly a tale about a wayward son who returned to his father after a long and wasteful absence, and who was greeted affectionately, as if nothing was amiss: a sign that Jesus would not leave anyone behind, even those who rejected him in life. And there was a parallel anecdote about a lost sheep that I knew I must include.) One day in the future I would speak to Peter and James about their experiences with Jesus, although I was not sure how much fresh information they could provide. James, in my view, was probably unreliable and prone to turn the story in directions that supported his own ideas.