by Jay Parini
The life of Jesus meant so much to me, but it would take some effort to convince Paul that knowing the details of this life actually mattered.
“Jesus emptied himself of himself,” said Paul, repeatedly. “He shows us the way to God. He died so that we might live. Do we need to know more? Are the details of his life relevant?”
“I want to know about his childhood,” Silas put in. “I believe he worked with his father. Was he a stonemason or leatherworker?”
“Or a joiner?” Timothy said. “He would have framed houses. That is what I have imagined, though I know nothing. One hears rumors.”
Paul squinted at me. “What interests me is the Holy Spirit and its activities, here and now, in the name of Jesus.”
“Why Macedonia?” I asked, just to alter the course of this conversation, which had begun to trouble me.
“And why not?” replied Timothy. “I’ve always wondered about Athens.”
“And what have you wondered?” Paul asked.
“I think of Plato, in the Academy. What a vision!”
“Socrates, the great teacher,” I said.
Paul grew intense, as we had struck one of his favorite chords. “I’ve read Plato’s work carefully, especially the Dialogues. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to encounter such holiness of thought. He was the first follower of the Way.”
I found this impossibly strange and pointed out that Plato had lived many centuries before Jesus. Where was the chronology here?
“Jesus was alive then, even before Plato. When I think about body and soul, and how they complement each other, this point was made by Jesus as well as Plato. Certainly Plato understood everything as a reflection of God on earth in his time. Jesus arrived in fulfillment of these ideas, the divine Logos, though in human form.”
This was peculiar and adventurous thought, if incomplete. Paul was following a path that would in due course enable him to speak plainly to the Greeks, who knew nothing of Abraham and Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, or the Tree of Jesse. I often marveled at how the Greek and Hebrew worlds had evolved in such distinct ways, separated only by a short expanse of the earth’s surface.
Silas said, “Jesus was a Jew.”
“We’re all Jews,” said Paul.
“More or less,” I responded, having neither been raised a Jew nor circumcised.
Timothy said, “I’ve cast my lot with Israel.”
In his most diplomatic fashion Paul said, “God smiles on this affiliation, these affections, I’m quite sure. But he calls us into Greece now. The Way is wide, and it’s opening on the western flank. One day the emperor himself will bow down, calling Jesus his Lord and the Christ.”
This was speculation, and in the wrong company could lead to death, as it was broadly subversive, a challenge to the authorities. But it pleased me to sit among such friends, my companions on this journey, and to think about the conversation and debate that lay ahead of us. The idea that Gabriel would bring a man from Macedonia to stand by Paul’s side continued to puzzle me, of course, especially as the man apparently said nothing. Yet I did my best to restrain my skepticism. With Paul, it never paid to question things too closely.
Chapter Twelve
PAUL
It’s the problem of visions: They glisten, splash their thunder with bolts of light, flash and fade. But is there any truth or reality in them? Why had Luke not seen the angel, the luminous Gabriel, nor the man from Macedonia? Certainly the angel spoke in a distinct voice, so loud I nearly covered my ears.
Luke feigned approval of the diversion from Bithynia to Macedonia. He did so, I think, for the sake of Timothy and Silas, knowing that young men adore visions. They dream dreams, and these dreams possess a near-corporal reality for them. And they live in the afterglow of these visions for months or years. I, on the other hand, was hardly a youth by any standard of measurement, and yet I had no doubt that God continued to seek me out, to send messengers, and to court my attention. I could have but didn’t touch Gabriel’s face, terrified that my hand would blaze, my fingers burn like twigs on fire.
Too often I felt like a leaf, my body fragile, scarcely a suitable container for the spirit that seethed in me. I was hungry for the real life beyond this fleshly existence, these pale rags hanging on a crate of bones.
I knew I must accept whatever awaited us in Macedonia, and without fear. God had willed me in this direction. And the Almighty provided a ship for us, a three-masted merchant vessel that carried us with our two donkeys to the port of Neapolis, where (after a night’s layover on Samothrace) we landed late in the morning. The West had arrived!
An eerie, enchanting music played in my head as we disembarked.
“What are you humming, that wonderful tune?” Timothy asked.
“It’s something I hear,” I said.
My companions, however admirable, didn’t quite hear or see what I could hear and see. I seemed to live with one foot on this good earth, the other in that heavenly country beyond our ken, a place discovered more usually in inklings, moments of anticipation, omens, oddments of thought or feeling. And I had nothing like a deep confidence in these encounters or thorough understanding of their name or nature.
If anything, I felt like a beginner. A beginner in the spirit world.
* * *
Neapolis, this tiny fishing village in Macedonia, surprised me by its expansive and busy harbor, where we inquired after the whereabouts of a synagogue, assuming one could be found in this region. We were directed to an old man selling pieces of fine purple cloth from a stall by the docks.
He looked at me with keen attention.
“Jews?”
“We are Jews,” I said.
“My employer is a Godfearer, Lydia. Go to her. She knows all the Jews in Philippi,” he said. “Her business is flourishing.”
“What is her trade?”
“Purple dye.”
I knew this profession well, as my father had a friend who had been a purveyor of this rare and precious color, the hue of kings and emperors. It derived from a species of snail, which fishermen along the coast of Macedonia brought to her shop by the thousands in wooden barrels. As I would learn, Lydia and her workers extracted the dark violet dye from the mucus of a gland, an intricate process that involved piercing the shells with a needle. The mucus flowed with a milky shade, but when combined with vinegar and salt and left to dry in the sun, the purple tint emerged. And the effort paid off handsomely, as this dye sold widely through the empire, more expensive than gold or silver. Lydia’s purple, many would say, had a peculiar radiance of its own, shading into deep violet-red at times.
The old man sent us to Philippi, several miles north of Neapolis. “You will like her hospitality,” he said. “Your mission will interest her.”
“Do you trust this man?” asked Silas, whose suspicions were beginning to wear on me. Did he not trust the Holy Spirit to support our efforts?
“He is probably an angel,” I said. “Angels are everywhere.”
We set off with our donkeys toward Philippi, arriving in the city as the evening sun cast a hash of shadows on the streets. It was the dinner hour, and we could smell roasted meat coming from doorways. With surprising ease, we found rooms at a public inn near the marketplace, an expense we could hardly afford but our younger companions suggested it, as this sort of accommodation was a novelty. It was often better to accede in small matters, thus keeping our companionable spirit afloat. Travel was burdensome enough without having to contend with abrasive feelings.
Philippi impressed with its grand colonnade, its open sunny spaces, its abundant natural springs. I had rarely seen such a mix of vegetation, with flora fed from the water that rushed belowground, out of sight. My eye was drawn to Mount Pangaeus in the distance, with its skirt of yellow clouds and spiky peak.
“I like it here,” Silas said.
This unleashed Timothy, who opened his drawer of knowledge. “The city was named by Philip of Macedon,” he said, “the father of Alexander.”
Silas never liked displays of information. “Why don’t you become a guide?” he asked.
“Shut up,” said Timothy.
I didn’t like to see the boys squabble, not over petty things. Unity was all. But I held my tongue, and soon this ripple of tension passed. I worried, however, about the likelihood that we could maintain a sense of harmony for long, even though we had done quite well thus far. Pettiness is the plague of groups that travel as one, and discord always begins with small matters, minute cracks in the porcelain bowl that widen into fissures and weaken the larger structure. The object must crumble.
The next day was the Sabbath, and we heard that Lydia and her friends met at a nearby river, the Gangites. It was a well-known gathering, where Lydia led weekly prayers on a flowery bank. We followed the river north from the city and found a dozen women and two men in prayer beside the running stream, one of the women standing with her skirt raised to her knees in a bed of watercress. Without saying anything, we sat among ferns, cross-legged, lifting our palms to heaven.
A black buffalo hulked alone in the shallows, drinking, as Lydia’s strong voice carried through the trees. Her spangled dress and copious purple head scarf set her apart.
“You are strangers,” she said, coming toward us when she had finished her prayer, “but welcome. Are you Jews or Greeks?”
“I’m Paul of Tarsus, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, trained at the school of Gamaliel in Jerusalem. My friends are Jews as well.”
Luke didn’t accept my sweeping inclusion. “I was a Godfearer, in Antioch. Almost a Jew, but a Greek.”
“I’m from Judea,” said Silas. “But I follow a special rabbi.”
Only Timothy felt no need to explain that he had recently been circumcised and simply offered his name.
“Can you recite from the scroll?” she asked.
I launched into a long passage from Isaiah, by memory. And this opened her eyes: I was not an imposter. She smiled, and her circle drew around me eagerly when I had finished, whereupon I took this as my first opportunity in the West to speak of Jesus.
“We come with news from Jerusalem. My younger companion, Silas, has mentioned our teacher. Rabbi Jesus has arrived in this world, the Christ.”
“He is the Christ?”
“A great teacher, with a new truth. And yes, the Christ himself. He is among us now.”
“Here?”
“He is always present. Crucified under Pontius Pilate, he died in terrible pain. But he rose again after three days.” I paused. “It was a glorious resurrection, and we shall rise in him, all of us, Jew and Greek.”
This confused them, I could see. And Lydia gave their hesitation voice: “A man who is crucified can really be the Christ?”
“He is the Christ, here before and after.”
This passed over their heads, drawing puzzled expressions, so I took another approach. I had only begun to learn what to say in these circumstances and what to hold back. The release of knowledge in the right order, in appropriate quantities, was key. And I must always find a language appropriate to the moment, one that took on the hues of the local surroundings and lodged where it must, in the listener’s heart.
“Jesus received his powers from God, as do I, and you as we,” I explained. “Each of you on this riverbank in Philippi is a child of God, empowered by him. Jesus opens the way to God, because that way involves suffering. We all suffer terribly, as part of what it means to live.” I looked at each one slowly. “Haven’t you all?”
“My husband died—a very young man at the time,” Lydia told us.
I could feel anguish in the expression of that sentence.
“I’m sorry for you, Lydia,” I said. “But what the cross means, for me and for you, is that suffering leads to resurrection. It’s not a hole. And the fact of resurrection changes everything.”
I could feel the spirit talking, not me, Paul of Tarsus. I became his vessel, and he moved my tongue, figured my words. I was astonished by what I said, the cascade of metaphors, phrases, and images that tumbled from me, effortlessly. “Every suffering soul draws closer to God by praying in the name of Jesus, the beautiful one, who has shown us the face of God by his pain. His pain becomes our pain. His relief is our relief.”
Timothy spoke after me, and he was eloquent, talking about the Kingdom of God and how we worked to bring it forward. I had made the right choice to bring him along. And I knew that his beauty enchanted the women, who gazed at him attentively as he talked, with the light of his hair like a halo in the morning sun. The spirit whirled around and through us, and that very day I baptized everyone in the river that flowed into Philippi. I poured the icy water over their heads, saying again and again in a strong voice: In the Christ, there is neither male nor female, neither slave nor free man, neither Jew nor Greek. I saw that the idea of “neither male nor female” delighted Lydia, who quite rightly regarded herself as representing a new spirit and time.
That night, at her invitation, we adjourned to her house. It doesn’t suffice to call this a “house,” as it was an array of buildings on the river, a dozen structures, which included offices, workshops, and storage areas. She invited us to occupy a cottage by the water, putting three slaves at our disposal, and told us over a dinner of many courses about her early days in business after the death of her husband. Through trial and error, she had perfected her process of extracting dye from mollusks, and this was her “very own secret.” She had obviously prospered in this commercial venture.
It mattered, she said, that Philippi had a special status, and those who owned property or businesses here could work without taxation by Rome. The city had been rebuilt by Augustus, she explained, calling to mind the Battle of Philippi, where Mark Antony and Augustus (then Octavian) had defeated Brutus and Cassius, the slayers of Julius Caesar. “We have been designated as ius italicum,” she said. “This imperial exemption has allowed me, as a woman, to create my wealth and live independently, without legal interference.”
This was a city of many gods (including the Greek gods), emperors, and Egyptian deities such as Isis and Serapis, Lydia said. Innocent Silas found this shocking. “We are among pagans!” I smiled, telling him to think of this as an advantage. “The spirit is awake here, opening doors.” Lydia agreed, saying that she would happily finance our work in Macedonia.
“God will reward you,” I said. “There’s no time to spend your fortune, not in the years that may never come. But a greater fortune awaits us all: the return of the Lord.” I noted that few of us in that room would undergo death in the usual way. “Death itself will die,” I said.
That evening we met Isola, a willowy, sad-mouthed girl with prophetic powers who was owned by Lydia’s influential neighbor, Abas, who had a seat on the city council. Lydia said Isola had proven invaluable to Abas, as people would pay astonishing sums for the use of her gift of foretelling the future.
The girl lingered, standing beside us as we finished our meal, watching us eat. Perhaps fifteen years old, she had the miles-long stare of the mad, her eyes cindery, sunken below the skin, orbs that looked inward, not outward. Her skin had a mossy cast, while black hair tumbled in clumps to her waist. A sour smell pushed us away from her.
“It’s quite uncanny, even unnatural, what she does,” said Lydia.
At this, Isola stepped near to me, too close for ease. The odor of sweat in her filthy dress appalled me, and I disliked seeing her stained toenails and mud-splashed ankles. Her battered shins were indecently exposed. Silas sat beside me, and the girl’s hand touched his cheek below the eye, drawing a line to his chin with her thumb, and he stared back at her in revulsion.
“You will die by the blade of a dull ax,” Isola said to him. “Your skull will crack in t
he dust. The birds will devour your eyes and pick clean your bones.”
This was definitely not the sort of thing one said to Silas, who rose, trembling. “Get away from me! Take her away!”
I grabbed her shoulders with both hands. “Look at me, Isola.”
She stared up at me with mindless intensity, her lips apart. I flattened the palm of my right hand on her forehead, pressing into the bone of the skull.
“Kneel, Isola,” I said.
She obeyed, still looking up at me.
“You will die by the blade of a dull ax,” she said.
“Me as well, then?”
She nodded, and I realized she could see with unusual clarity into the future, and I did not doubt the truth of her observation. Nor did I care.
“You are possessed by demons,” I said. “Do you wish to remain like this?”
She wept, shaking her head.
“In which case, Isola, repeat my words: God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“Let us repeat. God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“God, my Lord in heaven, take away these demons.”
“Do you believe in God’s power to accomplish this?” There was no response. “Answer me, Isola. Your life depends on your response.”