by Jay Parini
I had not expected this displacement. We had settled into a good life in Corinth, and I would have liked to remain longer in that grand if complicated city. My medical skills, and my salve, had found an audience there, and opportunities for telling people about the Good News mounted day by day. But a number of influential Jews had taken against us after we made inroads into their tight community, attracting many Godfearers away from Sabbath worship altogether.
One could, perhaps should, observe the Sabbath and, the next day, take part in one of our gatherings. That much we explained to everyone, although Paul seemed increasingly less interested in the Jewish community or its observances. Less frequently now did he open his remarks in a new synagogue by saying, “I am Paul of Tarsus, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, trained under Gamaliel.”
“Tarsus is enough,” he said, when I asked about this.
The plan was to return to Antioch, laying over in Ephesus. The eventual trip to Jerusalem, with our famine relief in his possession, loomed heavily on Paul’s mind. He had been restless for some time, coming to a boil inside, less communicative than usual, frantic, sleepless, eager for the return of our Lord. I could hear him weeping in the night, and this was new. What troubled him so?
“It’s a matter of days before his coming in glory,” he would say, month by month, though each time he said it his voice weakened.
I didn’t say it again, but I knew that time meant nothing to God.
Ephesus had long been in my sights as an arresting city with a famous past, and I disembarked eagerly. Coming up from the busy harbor, we entered through the magnificent Gate of Augustus, making our way to the Jewish square in the eastern part of the city, where a large number of Godfearers could be found. Their hearty welcome buoyed us: Paul’s reputation had, from what I could tell, preceded him; in any case, he had no need to explain his origins or mission.
We walked into the city with a rare feeling of anticipation, as each of us had heard much about its glories. And certainly the Temple of Artemis proved equal to its reputation, a wonder of invention. More than a hundred pillars rose to the sun, a grand and serial display of organized light. We noted the intricate mosaic floor in many colors and the airy hallways, and I spent much of one day studying the images in statuary on pedestals representing Artemis Ephesia, the object of worship here. She was the great and generous mother goddess, with multiple large breasts as symbols of nurture. Here they called her “Our Lady of Ephesus.”
I should note that this Artemis bore no resemblance whatsoever to the popular goddess by the same name whom the Greeks adored: the sister of Apollo, the virgin huntress, with her narrow waist and tiny breasts. Artemis Ephesia was, perhaps, her mother, too: a goddess of fertility.
Her priests were eunuchs, castrated at birth, and so had nothing to fear from the sexual energies this goddess unleashed. In their yellow robes and glass beads, they presided over festivals that brought young men and women together under the temple roof to feed on the provender of animal attraction. Fertility was everything in these halls.
“It’s such a waste,” Paul said.
“Don’t disparage this goddess,” Prisca told him, “just because she is everything you are not.”
“Darling!” said Aquila, who often tried to curb his wife’s ungovernable tongue.
“Let her speak,” said Paul. “I don’t mind if she challenges me, as long as she smiles with her eyes.”
“I hope I do more than challenge you,” she said.
“You annoy me, too,” said Paul.
I could not fathom their relationship. It was as if he were her husband. Or wished to be her husband. Certainly Crispus had made any number of droll comments on Paul’s infatuation, and referred to Paul as “the holy virgin father.” Needless to say, I didn’t participate in such nonsense, knowing we must not make fun of each other, as this sort of palaver—though amusing in the moment—interfered with our mission.
Among the most eager of Godfearers in Ephesus was a quick-witted young man called Titus, a silversmith by trade who had recently come on business from Antioch and remained in this “city of silver,” as he called it. He knew of Paul and introduced himself to us as “a friend in Jesus.” Paul swept him into our fold, noting that Titus and Timothy had much in common.
“They could be brothers,” Paul said.
Titus, too, had curly hair with a coppery tinge, although he lacked the feline graces of Timothy. Nor did he have the same sharply sculpted features.
Paul focused on these young men, eager for their attention, flattering them, inciting conversations that seemed much too personal. I wished for him to remain avuncular, a presiding figure in our movement, with no human appetites or flaws. Great generals—Alexander, Pompey the Great—never indulged in such behavior, remaining aloof. A campaign was demanding, and we had embarked on a great campaign in the name of the Christ.
One evening as we sat in the colonnade, near the agora, Paul and I saw the four others of our company drift by in pristine white tunics: Prisca and Aquila, Timothy and Titus. Paul sighed and bit his lip.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked.
“We have lost our youth.”
“I never had mine.”
“Neither youth nor age matters, not anymore,” Paul insisted. “But I feel this longing at times. I want to go back to the beginning.” He put out his hands. “Look at my skin, how it sags, like bark on a dead tree. I find it difficult to turn because my back is sore. I think my vision is far less sharp.”
“Was it ever sharp?”
“Somewhat sharper, in any case.”
I had no gift for theoretical exposition, nor did I understand the principles of rhetoric, but I could see that he countered his own arguments at every turn. If neither youth nor age mattered, why grumble about these losses? The contradictions held on a larger scale, too. He would tell a gathering of the Way to heed the laws of Rome, not to make waves but accept the imperial authorities. “Break no laws!” he warned them. And yet he wished to bring down walls and rumble foundations. The civil authorities annoyed him, and he dismissed them readily. His ideas were naturally disruptive. Jesus was King of Creation, he would tell us. “He overturned the tables in the Temple courtyard.”
No Roman magistrate would find this kind of talk anything less than subversive, even treasonous. Paul created discontent wherever he went, as perhaps he must: The message of the Christ was disruptive, arguing for radical equality. Paul certainly refused to acknowledge that slaves had fewer rights than free Roman citizens like himself. His defense of the Christ often accompanied a denunciation of Mosaic Law: “It means nothing now. Jesus is the new Moses! We have a New Covenant with God!” Yet he remained a Pharisee, at least in name. “God’s laws are eternal,” he would argue, even as he dined with Greeks and pagans, women and slaves. I had frequently seen him eating meat of no specific origin, and I doubted the cooks who prepared it knew how any butcher had slaughtered it or where. Their servants would in any case have found the meat in the first place, and it might well have been sacrificed to some pagan deity.
Paul frustrated anyone who hoped for consistency.
“I follow the spirit, the Christ’s voice breaking in my heart,” he said when I tried to point out a contradiction in one of his letters.
“But consistency!” I said.
“The dead are consistent,” he replied.
He expected me to notice if he framed a memorable comment or aside, and to write it down. Often I felt like Cicero’s secretary, endlessly taking dictation, wearing out stylus after stylus. We required sheaves of papyri wherever we traveled, and these were expensive and easily fouled. And yet Paul didn’t care about money, often dipping into the funds he hoped to bring to Jerusalem within a year or so.
Once I put forward an objection to what we spent on writing materials, and he seized the stylus from my fingers.
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bsp; “Do you want to murder me?” I asked.
“I want you to take my dictation and to hold your tongue.”
“Do your words mean so much to you?”
“My life is these words, written by a stylus dipped in blood.”
How could anyone respond to that? What even did it mean? These tense moments between us were infrequent, or I could never have stayed by his side over many years. But it’s worth recording that his imperfections troubled me, that he could act in irrational ways, and that I prayed for guidance.
It was during our months in Ephesus that word came from Rome that Prisca and Aquila could return. Political attitudes toward the Way had shifted as the number of Godfearers in positions of civil authority had swollen, and many of these men and women attended gatherings. Junia, a leader of the Way in Rome, had written to Prisca telling her to come, suggesting they could safely rejoin their beloved community in the capital. She nearly begged for their help, and they decided to go, with Paul’s sad but genuine blessings.
“When the Lord gestures,” he said to them, “you must respond.”
We put them on a ship only a few days later and watched as they pulled away.
Paul wept openly that day, and even Timothy failed to comfort him.
“I’ll never see them again,” he said to me that night.
“Oh, you will. When you go to Rome.”
“I had a dream, a very evil one. They will never make it to Rome.”
I dismissed this roundly, though I could not avoid a rush of forboding. Paul could well be right.
* * *
News came in bursts, often unpleasant ones, and we soon heard that a number of disputes had arisen over doctrine in several of our communities, including Corinth and Macedonia. This intelligence puzzled and upset Paul, and he decided to send Timothy to those places as our emissary, once again risking his friend’s life. “You know the truth, Timothy,” he said. “Go now, for me. Be my voice in Corinth and Macedonia. Then rejoin us in Antioch when it’s possible. We’ll work together in the same field soon.”
Timothy looked unhappy, and I thought he might object.
“Don’t resist me,” Paul said to him. “We’ve done good work in these cities. It’s important that we don’t lose what ground we have gained.”
Paul’s ferocity and sincerity—lethal in combination—could overwhelm objections, and I never did see anyone who could stand up to him for long. Increasingly he believed that the Christ occupied his mind, and that he spoke with authority much as Jesus did. He acted boldly on every impulse, finding truth there, convinced of his rightness. This began to worry me, and I resisted his unrelenting presumption of authority. But he was a prophet, and one could not gainsay him. One had to accept that God had commissioned Paul for a purpose, and that the apostle could discern this purpose in his own soul, even when others doubted him at times.
We visited a few gatherings of the Way in and around Ephesus, and wherever we went Paul asked that money be put aside for the relief of famine in Jerusalem. The Collection, as he now called it, mattered to him greatly, and he sent a part of these donations by messenger back to Phoebe in Antioch. Paul would take this great gift to Peter and James when the amount was sufficiently impressive and, as he said, he would present the Collection himself, which would as he said “bind the two limbs of the Way, showing that we represented one body in the Christ.”
Ephesus held my attention. The public agora there was livelier than the one in Corinth, much of it devoted to the trading of silver. One could also buy or sell slaves, jewelry, tents, leather sandals, wine, or wool. An adjacent small square was devoted to pottery and cookware, and I liked especially to walk among these items, though the merchants frowned upon men taking an interest in such things, as the preparation of meals was a female task. Near the Bath of Varius, crowds gathered to witness magicians and sorcerers, who came reciting their chants, casting out demons, healing the lame and sick. For a price, they would meet any challenge, and I marveled at their wizardry, as when the withered stump of an elderly man’s hand unfolded like a flower in my presence, his fingers sprouting. How was this even possible? Was the Adversary at work here?
The abundance of sorcery in Ephesus interested Paul, who saw an opportunity.
“The spirit is surely at work in this city like no other place,” he said. “Matters are ripe here. The kingdom begins in Ephesus!”
I admired his optimism: always the first response from Paul.
Within days, he found a leatherworking shop owned by an articulate Jew called Abel, spending a bit of time there each morning, once again repairing sails, always eager to earn his keep and contribute to the community. As with Corinth, Ephesus offered a safe, deep anchorage for vessels from the world over. Old sails required constant patching, and new sails must be made. So this enterprise prospered.
Soon Abel was swept into the Way and baptized by Paul, and this inspired other Jews to consider the teachings of Rabbi Jesus. As one might expect, of course, there was dissent as well, and Paul’s manner of speaking, his love of this “strange rabbi from Galilee,” upset many Jews. Undercurrents of gossip and dissent began to ripple in the community, and these would soon create mayhem. It seemed that Paul, though himself a Jew, ran afoul of Jews wherever he went.
On the Sabbath we frequently attended the congregation of the venerable Rabbi Sceva, who had been trained under Gamaliel’s father in Jerusalem, long before Paul’s time. His seven sons, none of them young, had acquired the skill of exorcism, and this had proved a profitable enterprise for the family and the synagogue, as demonic spirits proliferated in Ephesus, causing a variety of afflictions—from loose bowels, headaches, ague, back ailments, and lameness to madness itself.
I had useful skills in healing, yet I could hardly compete with those who exercised power over evil spirits. I was reminded that Pliny had denounced exorcism and magic as a form of vanity, one that “compounded madness with further madness,” although I had seen with my own eyes the effectiveness of those who practiced the dark arts.
One day at the synagogue our worship was interrupted by a man with a mad daughter, whom he brought forward to the rabbi. Bound by ropes, she howled and raved about the devil, crying that she had copulated with him “a thousand times a thousand times.” Her language set my teeth on edge, and many in the congregation winced and asked the man to take her away. She bit her father when he drew near and refused to let anyone touch her. Her name, as we learned, was Hoglah.
The rabbi called his eldest son forward, and he stood close to the girl and bellowed, “Hoglah! Hoglah! I denounce the one who consumes your mind! Out of you, devil, out!”
She grew still, then shuddered, foaming at the mouth, choking and spitting. She fell to her knees, then struggled to her feet again. Then in a raspy voice that seemed to belong to the demon inside her she called out, “I know Paul, the apostle of Jesus, who stands among you. But you, Paul! Who are you?”
That the demon who possessed Hoglah knew the name of Paul created a shock of fear in the room. Rabbi Sceva and his sons were alarmed that Paul, by his mere presence in the congregation, had disrupted the exorcism of Hoglah, and (after they led the mad girl away) they discouraged us from observing the Sabbath among them. From that day forward we avoided this synagogue on the Sabbath, traveling to other congregations, some of them on the far outskirts of Ephesus. And we continued to meet with gatherings of the Way, which grew week by week as our stay lengthened, drawing Greeks and Jews together. It astonished me how quickly these added numbers and how faith in God, in the name of Jesus, blossomed.
Paul saw this, and it pleased him, but he itched to find a younger and more philosophically minded audience for his ideas, as in Athens, where his failure still troubled him. These ambitions (which I tried to discourage because they were the product of vanity) led him to the Lyceum, a school in Ephesus, with its long peristyle forming a sequen
ce of white pillars under a portico, with gardens at either side. There amid the anemones, asphodels, and poppies were small groups of young men who walked and disputed with their teachers in a way reminiscent of the Athenian school during the time of Plato.
The most popular and revered teacher in this city was Tyrannus, whom the Ephesians called “our Socrates.” He was a tall, dark-skinned Stoic, trained under Attalus, the teacher of Seneca, and known for his vast intellectual resources and droll charm. Tyrannus read literature in many languages and once had lectured to substantial crowds in Rome. The child of a Spanish father and Greek mother, he had made a fortune by attracting wealthy pupils in search of philosophic understanding from distant parts of the empire.
Wearing a white toga and straw sandals, he surrounded himself with admiring young men who gleefully absorbed his witticisms, asked him polite questions, and listened to his digressions on ethics or metaphysics in the shade of a tree. Out of curiosity, I visited the Lyceum on a few occasions and found Tyrannus entertaining and, frankly, eloquent. He had read Plato carefully, and in many ways created his own versions of the famous dialogues with his students. And he entertained novel theories about the universe.
I listened with some astonishment as he suggested that the sun blazed at the center of our heavens, and that we occupied a large rock that moved around this fiery object. It was a strange notion, even preposterous, but attractive to the students, who sought unusual explanations for the obvious. Tyrannus explained: “Think of this Lyceum as an example. I am the sun, the light. All of you whirl about me. You reflect my ideas, and quote me nicely or—in some cases—to ill effect. It’s a system, this arrangement of bodies; you glow reflectively in my glow. If I fade, you fade. It’s the same with the universe, only less amusing.”
One could not dislike this man, despite his self-absorption, and I urged Paul to attend his lectures. He did and came back with a definite view.