Gone to the study of the law! Dan said, as he walked up and down the
room, glancing often into Joseph's letter, for it figured to him the
Temple with the Scribes meditating on the law, or discussing it with
each other while their wives remained at home doing the work. So do
their lives pass over, he said, in the study of the law. Nothing else is
to them of any worth.... My poor boy hopes that I shall forgive him for
not returning home after the Feast of the Passover! Does he suspect that
I would prefer him indifferent to the law in Magdala, rather than
immersed in it at Jerusalem? A little surprised and shocked at the
licentiousness of his thoughts, he drew them into order with the
admission that it is better in every way that a young man should go to
Jerusalem early in his life and acquire reverence for the ritual and
traditions of his race, else he will drift later on into heresy, or
maybe go to live in cities like Tiberias, amongst statues. But why do I
trouble myself like this? For there was a time before I had a son, and
the time is getting very close now when I shall lose him. And Dan stood
swallowed up in the thought of the great gulf into which precarious
health would soon pitch him out of sight of Joseph for ever. It was
Rachel coming into the room that awoke him. She too! he muttered. He
began to fuss about, seeking for writing materials, for he was now
intent to send Joseph a letter of recommendation to the High Priest,
having already forgotten the gulf that awaited him, in the pleasurable
recollection of the courtesy and consideration he received from the most
distinguished men the last time he was in Jerusalem--from Hanan the son
of Seth and father-in-law of Kaiaphas: Kaiaphas was now High Priest, the
High Priest of that year; but in truth, Hanan, who had been High Priest
before him, retained all the power and importance of the office and was
even called the High Priest. Dan remembered that he had been received
with all the homage due to a man of wealth. He liked his wealth to be
acknowledged, for it was part of himself: he had created it; and it was
with pride that he continued his letter to Hanan recommending his son to
him, saying that anything that was done to further Joseph's interests
would be a greater favour than any that could be conferred on himself.
The letter was sent off by special messenger and Joseph was enjoined to
carry it himself at once to Hanan, which he did, since it was his
father's pleasure that he should do so. He would have preferred to be
allowed to pick his friends from among the people he met casually, but
since this was not to be he assumed the necessary reverence and came
forward in the proper spirit to meet Hanan, who expressed himself as
entirely gratified by Joseph's presence in Jerusalem and promised to
support his election for the Sanhedrin. But if the councillors reject
me? For you see I am still a young man. The innocency of Joseph's remark
pleased Hanan, who smiled over it, expressing a muttered hope that the
Sanhedrin would not take upon itself the task of discussing the merits
and qualifications of those whom he should deem worthy to present for
election. The great man purred out these sentences, Joseph's remark
having reminded him of his exalted position. But thinking his remark
had nettled Hanan, Joseph said: you see I have only just come to
Jerusalem; and this remark continued the flattery, and with an impulsive
movement Hanan took Joseph's hands and spoke to him about his father in
terms that made Joseph feel very proud of Dan, and also of being in
Jerusalem, which had already begun to seem to him more wonderful than he
had imagined it to be: and he had imagined it very wonderful indeed. But
there was a certain native shrewdness in Joseph; and after leaving the
High Priest's place he had not taken many steps before he began to see
through Hanan's plans: which no doubt are laid with the view to impress
me with the magnificence of Jerusalem and its priesthood. He walked a
few yards farther, and remembered that there are always dissensions
among the Jews, and that the son of a rich man (one of first-rate
importance in Galilee) would be a valuable acquisition to the priestly
caste.
But though he saw through Hanan's designs, he was still the dupe of
Hanan, who was a clever man and a learned man; his importance loomed up
very large, and Joseph could not be without a hero, true or false; so it
could not be otherwise than that Hanan and Kaiaphas and the Sadducees,
whom Joseph met in the Sanhedrin and whose houses he frequented,
commanded his admiration for several months and would have held it for
many months more, had it not been that he happened to be a genuinely
religious man, concerned much more with an intimate sense of God than
with the slaying of bullocks and rams.
He had accepted the sacrifices as part of a ritual which should not be
questioned and which he had never questioned: yet, without discussion,
without argument, they fell in his estimation without pain, as naturally
as a leaf falls. A friend quoted to him a certain well-known passage in
Isaiah, and not the whole of it: only a few words; and from that moment
the Temple, the priests and the sacrifices became every day more
distasteful to him than they were the day before, setting him pondering
on the mind of the man who lives upon religion while laughing in his
beard at his dupe; he contrasted him with the fellow that drives in his
beast for slaughter and pays his yearly dole; he remembered how he loved
the prophets instinctively though the priests always seemed a little
alien, even before he knew them. Yet he never imagined them to be as far
from true religion (which is the love of God) as he found them; for they
did not try to conceal their scepticism from him: knowing him to be a
friend of the High Priest, it had seemed to them that they might indulge
their wit as they pleased, and once he had even to reprove some priests,
so blasphemous did their jests appear to him. An unusually fat bullock
caused them to speak of the fine regalement he would be to Jahveh's
nostrils. One sacristan, mentioning the sacred name, figured Jahveh as
pressing forward with dilated nostrils. There is no belly in heaven, he
said: its joys are entirely olfactory, and when this beast is smoking,
Jahveh will call down the angels Michael and Gabriel. As if not
satisfied with this blasphemy, as if it were not enough, he turned to
the sacristans by him, to ask them if they could not hear the angels
sniffing as they leaned forward out of their clouds. My priests are
doing splendidly: the fat of this beast is delicious in our nostrils;
were the words he attributed to Jahveh. Michael and Gabriel, he said,
would reply: it is indeed as thou sayest, Sire!
Joseph marvelled that priests could speak like this, and tried to forget
the vile things they said, but they were unforgettable: he treasured
them in his heart, for he could not do else, and when he did speak, it
was at first cautiously, though there was little need for caution; for
he found to his surprise that everybody knew that the Sadducees did not
believe in a future life and very little in the dogma that the Jews were
the sect chosen by God, Jahveh. He was their God and had upheld the
Jewish race, but for all practical purposes it was better to put their
faith henceforth in the Romans, who would defend Jerusalem against all
barbarians. It was necessary to observe the Sabbath and to preach its
observances and to punish those who violated it, for on the Sabbath
rested the entire superstructure of the Temple itself, and all belief
might topple if the Sabbath was not maintained, and rigorously. In the
houses of the Sadducees Joseph heard these very words, and their crude
scepticism revolted his tender soul: he was drawn back to his own sect,
the Pharisees, for however narrow-minded and fanatical they might be he
could not deny to them the virtue of sincerity. It was with a delightful
sense of community of spirit that he returned to them, and in the
conviction that it would be well to let pass without protest the
observances which himself long ago in Galilee began to look upon with
amusement.
A sudden recollection of the discussion that had arisen in the yard
behind the counting-house, whether an egg could be eaten if it had been
laid the day after the Sabbath, brought a smile to his face, but a
different smile from of yore, for he understood now better than he had
understood then, that this (in itself a ridiculous) question was no
more serious than a bramble that might for a moment entangle the garment
of a wayfarer: of little account was the delay, if the feet were on the
right road. Now the scruple of conscience that the question had awakened
might be considered as a desire to live according to a law which,
observed for generations, had become part of the national sense and
spirit. On this he fell to thinking that it is only by laws and
traditions that we may know ourselves--whence we have come and whither
we are going. He attributed to these laws and traditions the love of the
Jewish race for their God, and their desire to love God, and to form
their lives in obedience to what they believed to be God's will. Without
these rites and observances their love of God would not have survived.
It was not by exaggeration of these laws but by the scepticism of the
Sadducees that the Temple was polluted. If the priests degraded religion
and made a vile thing of it, there were others that ennobled the Temple
by their piety.
And as these thoughts passed through Joseph's mind, his eyes went to the
simple folk who never asked themselves whether they were Sadducees or
Pharisees, but were content to pray around the Temple that the Lord
would not take them away till they witnessed the triumph of Israel,
never asking if the promised resurrection would be obtained in this
world--if not in each individual case, by the race itself--or whether
they would all be lifted by angels out of their graves and carried away
by them into a happy immortality.
The simple folk on whom Joseph's eyes rested favourably, prayed,
untroubled by difficult questions: they were content to love God; and,
captured by their simple unquestioning faith, which he felt to be the
only spiritual value in this world, he was glad to turn away from both
Sadducees and Pharisees and mix with them. Sometimes, and to his great
regret, he brought about involuntarily the very religious disputations
that it was his object to quit for ever when he withdrew himself from
the society of the Pharisees. A chance word was enough to set some of
them by the ears, asking each other whether the soul may or can descend
again into the corruptible body; and it was one day when this question
was being disputed that a disputant, pressing forward, announced his
belief that the soul, being alone immortal, does not attempt to regain
the temple of the body. A doctrine which astonished Joseph, so simple
did it seem and so reasonable; and as he stood wondering why he had not
thought of it himself, his eyes telling his perplexity, he was awakened
from his dream, and his awakening was caused by the word "Essene." He
asked for a meaning to be put upon it, to the great astonishment of the
people, who were not aware that the fame of this third sect of the Jews
was not yet spread into Galilee. There were many willing to instruct
him, and almost the first thing he learnt about them was that they were
not viewed with favour in Jerusalem, for they did not send animals to
the Temple for sacrifice, deeming blood-letting a crime. A still more
fundamental tenet of this sect was its denial of private property: all
they had, belonged to one brother as much as to another, and they lived
in various places, avoiding cities, and setting up villages of their own
accord; notably one on the eastern bank of the Jordan, from whence
recruiting missionaries sometimes came forth, for the Essenes disdained
marriage, and relied on proselytism for the maintenance of the order.
The rule of the Essenes, however, did not exclude marriage because they
believed the end of the world was drawing nigh, but because they wished
to exclude all pleasure from life. To do this, to conceive the duty of
man to be a cheerful exclusion of all pleasure, seemed to Joseph
wonderful, an exaltation of the spirit that he had not hitherto believed
man to be capable of: and one night, while thinking of these things, he
fell on a resolve that he would go to Jericho on the morrow to see for
himself if all the tales he heard about the brethren were true. At the
same time he looked forward to getting away from the seven windy hills
where the sun had not been seen for days, only grey vapour coiling and
uncoiling and going out, and where, with a patter of rain in his ears,
he was for many days crouching up to a fire for warmth.
But in Jericho he would be as it were back in Galilee: a pleasant winter
resort, to be reached easily in a day by a path through the hills, so
plainly traced by frequent usage that a guide was not needed. A servant
he could not bring with him, for none was permitted in the cenoby, a
different mode and colour of life prevailing there from any he ever
heard of, but he hoped to range himself to it, and--thinking how this
might be done--he rode round the hillside, coming soon into view of
Bethany over against the desert. From thence he proceeded by long
descents into a land tossed into numberless hills and torn up into such
deep valleys that it seemed to him to be a symbol of God's anger in a
moment of great provocation. Or maybe, he said to himself, these valleys
are the ruts of the celestial chariot that passed this way to take
Elijah up to heaven? Or maybe ... His mind was wandering, and--forgetful
of the subject of his meditation--he looked round and could see little
else but strange shapes of cliffs and boulders, rocks and lofty scarps
enwrapped in mist so thick that he fell to thinking whence came the
fume? For rocks are breathless, he said, and there are only rocks here,
only rocks and patches of earth in which the peasants sow patches of
barley. At that moment his mule slid in the slime of the path to within
a few inches of a precipice, and Joseph uttered a cry before the gulf
which startled a few rain-drenched crows that went away cawing, making
the silence more melancholy than before. A few more inches, Joseph
thought, and we should have been over, though a mule has never been
known to walk or to slide over a precipice. A moment after, his mule was
climbing up a heap of rubble; and when they were at the top Joseph
looked over the misted gulf, thinking that if the animal had crossed his
legs mule and rider would both be at the bottom of a ravine by now. And
the crows that my cry startled, he said, would soon return, scenting
blood. He rode on, thinking of the three crows, and when he returned to
himself the mule was about to pass under a projecting rock, regardless,
he thought, of the man on his back, but the sagacious animal had taken
his rider's height into his consideration, so it seemed, for at least
three inches were to spare between Joseph's head and the rock. Nor did
the mule's sagacity end here; for finding no trace of the path on the
other side he started to climb the steep hill as a goat might,
frightening Joseph into a tug or two at the bridle, to which the mule
gave no heed but continued the ascent with conviction and after a little
circuit among intricate rocks turned down the hill again and slid into
the path almost on his haunches. A wonderful animal truly! Joseph said,
marvelling greatly; he guessed that the path lay under the mass of
rubble come down in some landslip. He knew he would meet it farther on:
he may have been this way before. A wonderful animal all the same, a
perfect animal, if he could be persuaded not to walk within ten inches
of the brink! and Joseph drew the mule away to the right, under the
hillside, but a few minutes after, divining that his rider's thoughts
were lost in those strange argumentations common to human beings, the
mule returned to the brink, out of reach of any projecting rocks. He was
happily content to follow the twisting road, giving no faintest
attention to the humped hills always falling into steep valleys and
always rising out of steep valleys, as round and humped as the hills
that were left behind. Joseph noticed the hills, but the mule did not:
he only knew the beginning and the end of his journey, whereas Joseph
began very soon to be concerned to learn how far they were come, and as
there was nobody about who could tell him he reined up his mule, which
began to seek herbage--a dandelion, an anemone, a tuft of wild
rosemary--while his rider meditated on the whereabouts of the inn. The
road, he said, winds round the highest of these hills, reaching at last
a tableland half-way between Jerusalem and Jericho, and on the top of it
is the inn. We shall see it as soon as yon cloud lifts.