Excerpt
From the Sword
CHAPTER ONE
The Tenth Day of Nisan, the Jewish Year 3790
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
He remembered the softness of her black hair. How he enjoyed rubbing strands of it between his thumb and forefinger when she rested her head beneath his chin. How her warm breath tickled the hairs on his chest as she slept.
Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
Her hair smelled of hyssop and garlic from cooking supper. She insisted on washing it before they lay together, but he would have none of it. To him, she was as fragrant as the most expensive jar of balsam sold in Jerusalem.
O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; and by night, but I have no rest.
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“Would you kill for the Almighty God, Saul, son of Noah?” a gruff voice asked from behind him in Aramaic, the language of the common man.
Saul thought in Greek, the language spoken in his native city of Tarsus, near the southeast coast of Asia Minor. His Greek name was Paul, and that was the name by which he had been called until two years ago, when he came to Jerusalem to study Pharisaism, one of the three rival denominations of Judaism.
As a child, he had learned the Scriptures in Greek, but by the time he came of age, he had learned the languages of his ancestors, the spoken Aramaic and written Hebrew. This made him a Jew among Greeks in Tarsus, and in the Holy City, to his chagrin, a Greek among Jews.
Such was the dilemma for the Jews in the Diaspora. Through periods of conquest, deportation, and migration, the people of Israel had scattered throughout the known world. As a consequence, they were outsiders in their new homes and outsiders once they returned.
The High Priest’s question jarred him from his brooding. Lost in the Greek world of his thoughts, it took him a moment to comprehend the question, and what felt like a lifetime to find the answer. Rather than respond, he looked east.
Beyond the knotted streets of Mount Zion, the brilliant white marble façade of the Temple gleamed in the late afternoon light of early spring. Its monumental platform shone like a wall of gold. The Temple, the largest religious structure in the Roman Empire, was God’s only true dwelling place on earth. On a clear day like today, the Temple could be seen for miles like a snow-capped mountain.
Within its crenellated walls, Jerusalem was divided into three ‘cities’: the affluent, modern Upper City on Mount Zion to the west, the venerable, ancient City of David on the southeastern hill, and the squalid Lower City in the valley between. The Temple Mount rose from the north end of the ancient city as it had since King David relocated the Tabernacle there over a millennium ago.
Standing on the flat roof of the House of Caiaphas, the High Priest’s urban palace, Saul squinted past the Temple Mount to the Mount of Olives. Thousands of Passover pilgrims were making their way to the Temple from Bethphage, Bethany, and other towns, villages, and hamlets farther east. It was customary for Jerusalem’s population of two hundred thousand to swell to over three hundred thousand during Passover. Many pilgrims were on foot, but one was riding a donkey, surrounded by a cheering throng waving palm branches.
“Would you?” asked Joseph bar Caiaphas, the High Priest. He was a Greek speaker like Saul, but he communicated in Aramaic in the guise of a man of the people.
Saul glanced back. “Yes, your holiness,” he said unsteadily. The words seemed to have been spoken by someone else, said from a distance. The Lord commanded that man should not kill, but He also commanded that ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.’ As such, Saul knew he had no other choice. For the Lord, he would kill and be killed.
“You see as I see,” Caiaphas said, stroking his gray and black beard. Having retired for the day, Caiaphas had dispensed with his beautiful, priestly vestments in favor of fine purple robes and white linen that were befitting for a man of his wealth and stature. “The rabble-rouser from that dustbowl, Nazareth, who preaches the coming of the Kingdom of God as if he was not the son of a Roman’s whore and a cuckolded carpenter.”
“Just another false prophet in a land teeming with false prophets. We haven’t had a true prophet in over four centuries.”
“No, my dear Saul, he’s much more than that. Jeshua bar Joseph, or as you Hellenists call him, Jesus—”
Saul snapped his head around and glared up at the High Priest. “I’m not Greek. I’m of the nation of Israel. Like you, I was circumcised on the eighth day and am a Hebrew of Hebrews—”
Caiaphas waved him off. “Yes, I know, you’ve said it many times. Of the tribe of Benjamin, and as to the Law of Moses, a Pharisee.”
“Yes, I’ve advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries, educated by the great Pharisee Gamaliel.”
“My foil,” said Caiaphas with his lips curled into a sly smile. “I being a Sadducee, your old master’s teaching conflicts with mine.”
“So it does.”
“Nevertheless, you’re now in my service. Why is that?”
Saul turned away. The sting of tears surprised him.
#
But I am a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and despised by the people.
All who see me sneer at me; they separate with the lip; they wag the head.
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“It would have been a boy, no?” Caiaphas asked.
“Yes,” Saul said in a near whisper. My son. My beloved Sarah.
“We know that the Lord our God judges on earth. Pharisaic teaching is wrong. There is no afterlife, no resurrection. For we are dust and to dust we shall return. The Lord rewards according to righteousness, as He has done with me. And He punishes the wicked. Why did the Lord punish you?”
Saul swallowed hard. “I don’t know.”
Caiaphas sucked his teeth. “To lose a young bride and son? It had to be substantial. The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be shortened. He has spared your life so as to afford you the opportunity to make amends, but you must decide if that is what you wish to do. The choice is freely yours.”
“I’ll do what I must in zealousness for God,” Saul said flatly.
“Good. Good.” Caiaphas smiled and pointed to his far left with a bejeweled forefinger. “Look west and tell me what you see.”
Saul squinted and peered into the distance. “An imperial procession led by the governor, Prefect Pontius Pilate.”
To the cadence of drums, a column of Roman cavalry and foot soldiers wielding weapons, shields, banners, and eagle standards marched through a swirling cloud of dust toward the Holy City. It had become standard practice for the Roman governor of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea to be in Jerusalem during the major Jewish feasts to stave off trouble. He would reinforce the garrison stationed at Fortress Antonia, which lay adjacent to the Temple Mount’s north wall, because there often was trouble at Passover, a feast celebrating liberation from Egypt, Rome’s imperial predecessor.
“Now compare that to the Nazarene’s entry into the city.”
Saul scanned back to the east as Jeshua and his supporters entered Jerusalem through the eastern wall to the welcome of a cheering crowd. Instead of a war horse, he rode a donkey, and the military trappings of shield and sword were replaced with palm branches and cloaks laid out to cover the road. Hymns of praise countered the Roman soldiers’ military cadence.
“Don’t you see?” said Caiaphas. “His followers proclaim him to be the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One. Now he’s making a mockery of Rome in a subtle, but powerful way. Do you remember your Zechariah?”
The Prophet Zechariah had ministered five hundred years ago, after the Babylonians conquered the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. When the exiled Judeans were permitted to return to their homeland, Zechariah spurred the people to rebuild the Holy City and the Temple, and foretold the coming of a divine king.
The verses came to Saul and he looked back. “Yes. ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; he is just and endowed with salvation. Humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be cut off, and he will speak peace to the nations.’ ”
“Very good. Rome conquered the world by war, but this Nazarene invokes Zechariah as if the very notion of war could be conquered.”
“A king of peace,” mused Saul.
“A king contrary to Caesar and any notion of the Messiah we believe will come. He has drawn many followers with his lofty words and magic tricks. Rome will intervene eventually, but on its own terms rather than ours. At the height of blasphemy, the Nazarene has preached the unthinkable. That he’ll destroy the Temple and in three days raise it up. Every Jew knows that is an assault on God and us as a people. What are we without the Temple? What are we without the Lord? Rome does not need an excuse to wipe us off the face of the earth and only the true Messiah in His glory can deliver us. This Jeshua is but one man, and is it not expedient that one man die for the people so the whole nation does not perish?”
“What are you suggesting, your holiness?”
“You said you would kill for the Lord.”