King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (13 page)

The people grew nervous. Strange dreams were dreamed and visions seen, the most persistent of which were battles fought in the clouds between phantom armies. There was a sense of impending wonders with which the name of the Messiah was freely connected ; yet the kingdom was at peace, the harvests were abundant, the seasons equable, no remarkable news came from Italy, Egypt or the East.

It was announced that Prince Antipater would shortly sail to Rome, taking his father’s Will with him for the Emperor’s approval. His principal business would be to prosecute the case against Sylleus, who had by now been sent back to Rome from Antioch to be tried for his life. The prodigies, which had ceased for a while, began suddenly to increase both in number and strangeness : headless spectres, sudden fanfares blown from massed trumpets in the dead of night, a tall veiled woman seen walking along the Jericho road hand-in-hand with an ape.

The culmination of these wonders came one evening in the very Sanctuary of the Temple.

Zacharias, of the House of Zadok, was related to Joachim by marriage, his wife Elizabeth being the eldest of Hannah’s four sisters, two of whom had married outside the clan of Royal Heirs for lack of suitable husbands within it. Zacharias was the most conservative of all the elder priests in the Temple service, and one of the few men in Jerusalem who refused to be perturbed by the hauntings. “Either they are hallucinations,” he said, “or else some mischievous person is playing tricks on us. These things are not of the Lord, who declares his will openly and frankly ; a true believer has neither eyes nor ears for such apparitions.”

It was Zacharias’s day of ministration at the Altar of Incense. His was the eighth course of priests, the Course of Abijah, whose turn for duty
came round every second year in the eighth month, the month of the wheat harvest. Fasting, ceremonially clean, correctly robed, he entered the Sanctuary at sundown to dress the seven lamps of the golden Candlestick and offer sweet incense on the Altar, and remained there alone while the congregation stood outside in prayer. With delicate and practised gestures he trimmed the wicks with snuffers and filled the bowls with sacred oil to the brim. Then he fetched the cones of incense from a shelf of the ambry and laid them in a golden bowl ; prostrated himself and prayed ; raised himself up and with tongs set the cones on the glowing coals of the Altar ; sprinkled them with salt ; prostrated himself again, and again prayed, while the overpowering scent of the incense began to fill the Sanctuary.

The fumes spread to the waiting congregation outside and Zacharias heard the collect of blessing being sung by the choir of Asaph :

Truly thou art the Lord our God, the God also of our fathers ; our King, the King also of our fathers ; our Redeemer, the Redeemer also of our fathers ; our Maker, the Maker also of our fathers ; our Rescuer and Deliverer. Thy name is from everlasting, there is no God but thou. The redeemed sang a new song to thy name by the sea-shore. Together they praised and owned thee as their King and said : “The Lord shall reign, the Saviour of his people Israel.” …

The singing ceased and Zacharias knew that the evening lamb had been sacrificed and that its pieces were being burned on the Altar in the fore-court. Presently he must return there, pronounce the priestly blessing and accept the meat and drink offerings.

As he waited, calm and at ease, the perfect stillness of the Sanctuary was broken by a voice : a small voice, between a whisper and a pipe, like the voice of a sinner’s conscience.

“Zacharias !” it said.

Zacharias was aware that the voice proceeded from the Holy of Holies itself, which no man might enter but only the High Priest once a year ; the empty chamber where the God of Israel himself dwelt.

His heart gave a leap and he answered : “Here am I, Lord! Speak, for thy servant heareth !”—the archaic words in which, many generations before at Shiloh, the infant Samuel had replied when similarly summoned.

The small voice questioned him : “Zacharias, what things are these that are burning on my altar ?”

Zacharias replied, muttering : “The sweet incense, Lord, according to the Law that thou gavest thy servant Moses.”

The voice asked severely : “Is the Sun of Holiness a harlot or a catamite? Do my nostrils smell storax, hinge of scallop, frankincense, narthex, all smouldering together on coals of cedar-wood? Would you make a sweat-bath for the Sun of Holiness ?”

Now, the holy incense was compounded according to a very ancient recipe. It had been the custom of the priestesses of the Love-goddess Rahab, on the eve of the May love-orgy, to burn this incense in a hole
under the floor of the Goddess’s sanctuary. Each woman in turn would crouch for a while over the aperture in a close tent of seal-skin, until her skin sweated and drank in the scent and she became irresistible to her lovers. The ingredients were all of aphrodisiac virtue. Storax is the gum of a white-flowered tree resembling a plane, sacred to the Goddess Isis : the name is derived from the Greek word meaning “causing to lust”. Scallop is sacred to the Cyprian and Phoenician Love-goddess Aphrodite, who is represented in the myths as sailing across the sea in a great scallop-shell drawn by dolphins. Great quantities of scallops are eaten at Ascalon and Paphos at her love-feasts, and the hinge of the shell is a symbol of the sexual bond. Frankincense, which is brought from Southern Arabia and the African coast lying opposite, is a fragrant milky resin from the libanus-shrub—white tears mixed with red—and its fumes are credited with the power of inducing amatory eloquence ; moreover, the Phoenix is said to burn at Heliopolis on a pyre of frankincense twigs. Narthex is the giant fennel, the wand of office carried by Silenus, the goatish master of the Dionysian revels ; and in the pith of its stalk Prometheus is said to have hidden the fire that he stole from Heaven. The gum it exudes is of only a faint odour ; but in the holy incense the gums of the storax and frankincense compensated for this deficiency and also drowned the disagreeable stench of the scallop hinge.

Zacharias could make no reply, but knocked seven times with his forehead on the ground, not daring to raise his eyes. He heard sounds of the Curtain being drawn, and the ring of majestic steps approaching over the marble floor. There was a pause, and then a sudden hiss and splutter from the Altar. The steps retreated and Zacharias fainted away.

When he came to himself a few minutes later, he could not for a while recall where he was or what had happened. The lamps were still burning with a steady flame, but the fire on the Altar had been quenched. The hem of his robe was damp with the water that had trickled from the Altar-top. Fear surged back to his mind. He groaned and raised his eyes slowly towards the Sacred Curtain as if to reassure himself that his God did not hate him.

Worse was yet to come. Between the Curtain and the wall stood a tremendous figure clothed in robes shimmering like moonlight on a troubled pool. O horror! The head was that of a wild-ass with glaring red eye-balls and ivory-white teeth, and it was with gold-shod hooves that the figure hugged to its breast the sceptre and dog of monarchy.

From the mouth of the beast came the piping voice. “Be not afraid, Zacharias! Go out now and tell my people truthfully what you have heard and seen !”

Zacharias, half-dead with fear, shrouded his face in his robe. Then he knocked seven times on the floor with his forehead and went stumbling out to the fore-court, where everyone was wondering anxiously at his delay.

He shut the door behind him and stood panting. The cold air revived him. He stared wildly at the placid faces of his kinsmen and the musicians
of Asaph. He took a deep breath, and the terrible words that rose in his heart were : “O Men of Israel, hear me! All these generations we have unknowingly worshipped not the true God, but a Golden Ass !”

His lips moved, but no sound came from them. He had been struck dumb.

His kinsmen led him gently away to his own house, but one of them, Reuben, son of Abdiel, whose duty it was to take his place if he fell suddenly ill or became accidentally defiled, pronounced the blessing, accepted the meat and drink offerings and gave the signal for the evening psalm to be sung by the Sons of Asaph.

When the service was over and the priests and musicians had dispersed, Reuben entered the Sanctuary to see whether all were in order. Finding the fire extinguished and dirty water splashed around the Altar, he was astonished and alarmed. Had his staid kinsman Zacharias been overtaken by a sudden frenzy? His first thought was for the Course, which must not be disgraced. No one must know that the fire had been extinguished. With a silent prayer that what he was about to do might not be done amiss, Reuben hastily removed the wet cinders from the Altar, wrapped them in his cloak, relaid and rekindled the fire, and offered more incense with the customary rites.

As he was wiping the floor of the Sanctuary with a napkin the same horror seized him as had seized Zacharias, and the skin of his scalp began to crawl. For he suddenly noticed a wet track of hooves leading towards the Holy of Holics. He stared long at them. There could be no mistake. They were the hoof-tracks of a mule or ass. His mind was in a whirl. All that he could think was that Zacharias had been engaged in black magic and had summoned an ass-demon, one of the Lilim, who had put out the fire on the Altar. A demon of sorts it must have been, for where was the water-jar that had been used for quenching the fire? Zacharias had brought none out with him into the fore-court.

“Alas, alas !” Reuben cried. Casting himself on the floor he prayed aloud : “O Lord of Hosts, protect your servant! Seal the mouths of those that would question him. For I will never publish the disgrace of my House, unless I am required to do so on oath before the High Court.”

In the morning Zacharias was questioned kindly by the High Priest at an informal session of the High Court. Writing-tablets were set before him, but he put them aside, shaking his head. When asked whether he had seen a vision he nodded, and a look of such terror came into his face that the High Priest refrained from questioning him further. The Council recommended that he should leave Jerusalem and retire to his country seat at Ain-Rimmon, a prosperous village lying nine miles north of Beersheba. The inquiry was adjourned
sine die
, to Reuben’s great relief.

Extravagant rumours about what Zacharias had seen began to fly round the country, and the priests of the Course of Abijah consulted together to decide on an answer to the persistent questions that were being asked. Reuben did not attend the meeting, and in his absence the
Sons of Abijah decided that what Zacharias had seen must have been an angel who had given him surprising domestic news. For it had so happened that Zacharias on his return home to Ain-Rimmon was greeted with the news that his wife Elizabeth, who had been childless for more than twenty years, was about to become a mother at last. What was even more remarkable, when Zacharias had left Ain-Rimmon six weeks before, to attend the Passover Week at Jerusalem, he and Elizabeth had both been bound by a local obligation of marital continence, and during the previous thirty days had exchanged only chaste kisses. Her fidelity being beyond question, he could not conceal his astonishment, but took refuge in his dumbness and abstained from written comment. His kinsmen concluded that the vision which he had seen in the Temple was of an angel prophesying that the child which Elizabeth was to bear in her old age would be one of remarkable holiness ; and this was the story which they circulated in Jerusalem.

Elizabeth was embarrassed by the interest that her kinsfolk showed in her condition and retired to an inner room of the house whenever visitors called. The manor of Ain-Rimmon was a large, rich house with extensive orchards and vineyards watered by a spring formerly sacred to Rimmon, the Pomegranate-god. The worship of Rimmon had been swallowed up by that of Jehovah, who had taken over his titles and emblems, as might be understood from the little golden pomegranates, alternating with bells shaped like the opening pomegranate blossom, sewn on te vestments of the High Priest, and the large ones carved in marble on the columns of the Temple. But the country people remembered Rimmon ; they still celebrated a love-festival in his honour at the time of the spring budding of his beautiful scarlet blossom, when the Pomegranate King, his face coloured scarlet with the dye extracted from the shell and crown of the fruit, held a mock Court with the Queen of Flowers. This same festival, at which the celebrants wear masks and fanciful disguises, is observed to this day in the remoter parts of Galilee. The festival chants are collected in the Canticles ascribed to Solomon. One of them runs :

Let us go up to the vineyards,
Let us see whether the vines flourish,
Whether the tender grape appear
And the pomegranate bud forth.
There I will give thee my love.

The Greek mythographers relate that it was from the blood of the slain Dionysus that the pomegranate-tree first sprang ; for this reason the women of Athens abstain from eating the seeds of the pomegranate fruit at the festival of the Thesmophoria. In Cyprus, Dionysus is Adonis ; in Syria, Tammuz. By what title King Saul addressed the god of the sacred pomegranate grove at Benjamite Gibeah is not recorded ; but it is likely to have been Rimmon. For Rimmon is clearly the Canaanitish Dionysus, the lusty god of the year, incarnate in the Sacred King of the
year. He presides in glory at the budding of his scarlet blossoms, he is doomed to death by the ripening of his crimson fruit. After the Exile his name was purposely confused by the priesthood of Jerusalem with “Ramman”, the Thunder-god, a title of Jehovah. They absurdly interpreted the pomegranates sewn on the hem of the High Priest’s vestment as symbolizing lightning, and the bells with which they alternated as symbolizing thunder. But both were put there in honour of the God Rimmon and clashed merrily together as a charm against evil spirits.

It was whispered by Elizabeth’s servants that the mystery of the approaching birth was bound up with the love-festival of Rimmon ; for the seasons corresponded. They expected great things of the child.