Chapter from Rich's and my new novel, THE TWO-DAY WAR
Είμαι άλφα και ωμέγα
A few days after the crucifixion of Yeshua ben Yoseph ha Nazareth, whom the Greeks called “Jesus,” Yoseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man who had loved the young rabbi and who provided a tomb for Rabbi Yeshua’s body after the crucifixion, set sale for Wales on a ship leaving Haifa on the coast of Judea. Yoseph’s daughters wanted him out of Judea - it wasn’t safe for anyone there who had known the late rabbi. Because Yoseph was the one who had donated a tomb for Jesus’s body, the Romans would want to question the old man. It was too dangerous for him to remain in Yudea. He had holdings in the tin mines in Wales - the source of his considerable wealth - and his daughters got him aboard that ship, which was bound for the British Isles and Wales.
The ship, the Aphrodite, cast off around dawn. An hour or so before then, three men carrying a wooden box came to the quay and asked to see the purser. They told the purser, a tall, somewhat morose-looking man named Brom, with iron-gray hair and a voice much the same shade, that they had a gift for one of the passengers - for Yoseph - and wanted to have it taken aboard. The purser insisted on opening it, to make sure it wasn’t contraband or anything else illegal. A simple wooden box with a lid, perhaps 8 feet long by 4’ wide and 3-4’ deep, it was made of cedar and other types of wood that resist rot, insects, and other things that would otherwise shorten its lifespan (a sort of built-in, natural pesticide and fungicide). The box was painted light blue with bright yellow trim, and had obviously been made by a master carpenter.
The box contained numerous items, some articles of singular beauty, together with others that seemed merely utilitarian, and some that left him puzzled:
There were a carpenter’s tools, some quills, a sealed ink-pot, and a few household items such as a skillet and a leather bag meant to hold wine, the sort of useful things that anyone might have on hand. There were also bundles of parchment on which were written various texts from Torah and related materials, probably not uncommon among scholarly Jewish men.
There were also some things that made the purser gasp at their beauty:
A prayer-shawl made of lamb’s wool, light as a cloud, the sort any Jewish male would wear to synagogue or the Temple.
A skullcap, probably of leather, but possibly knitted or crocheted of lamb’s wool.
Tefillin, the little leather boxes Jewish men attach to their sleeves when going to synagogue or temple, each containing a piece of parchment on which is written appropriate texts from Torah.
But then there were the ones that seemed oddly out of place, ostensibly common housewares and cutlery which, however, had each been wrapped with exquisite care in scarlet silk embroidered all over with delicate series roses, flying white, golden-beaked cranes, sharp-toothed green dragons, and odd, monocerotic creatures of a kind he was unfamiliar with. The cloth alone would have been worth a fortune - and it had been used to wrap utterly common things anyone could buy dirt-cheap in any marketplace. Why?
A cheap pottery mug and plate of the sort that could be purchased in any market-place, and were in fact bought by the score by innkeepers and owners of taverns for use by their customers. With the mug and plate there was also an inexpensive knife of the sort used by customers of such inns and taverns to cut their bread and meat, and a cheap spirit-lamp used to provide light while dining or, later, in a rented room above the dining room of the tavern or inn, also available in any marketplace and bought wholesale by tavern-owners.
He would have dismissed that part of it as sheer craziness, if not for an aura of . . . something, something powerful and strange, emanating from them. He had seen such things before, common, perhaps heavily damaged things that could be found in some households in the Empire and, more often, in public religious shrines, things that had been directly involved in things that had shaped the course of the Empire, or were even said to have been given to men by the Gods, or had belonged to the Gods. A long spear, its blade old and corroded, its wood scarred by termites, kept in a temple in Sparta and revered by Spartans as King Leonidas’s own spear, which he had used against the Persians during the battle of the Hot Gates. A sword, in much better shape than that sad-looking spear, but still very old, kept in a private chapel on the grounds of Emperor Augustus’s own personal estate, believed to have been left behind after the Battle of Lake Regillus by Castor himself - or so he had been told by his brother, an imperial courier, who had sworn he’d seen and even handled that sword while at the Emperor’s residence some years ago to deliver a message of state there. And there were the little household treasures, those watched over by a family’s Lares and Penates, that were considered divine, or at least given to members of the household by the Gods because of the circumstances in which they had been discovered by household members: the skull of an old rooster whose crowing once alerted the family to a fire ranging in the sheds behind the main house in time for them to put the fire out and save the house; a long carving-knife used by a servant girl to maim and, ultimately, kill a burglar who had broken into the main house, intent on theft and rape of any vulnerable women therein, before he could do any harm; a blanket that the man of the house had caught up and used to cushion the fall of his toddler son from a second-story window, thus saving the child’s life. All such Brom had seen with his own eyes, touched with his own hands, had the same sort of invisible but powerful, almost tangible aura that the mug, plate, carving-knife, and spirit-lamp in the box did.
The purser, a native of Gaul who had long since become a Roman citizen, could understand the prayer-shawl, the skullcap, the tefillin, and the notes on parchment - his passenger was a Jew, and these things were obviously his cherished possessions. The tools and some housewares also wouldn’t have been out of place in a Jewish household, especially one belonging to a carpenter, the one who had likely made that lovely box. But why the cheap tableware wrapped in exquisite scarlet silk, and what was that strange aura around them? Were they souvenirs of something? Why did the men who had brought the box to the ship want him to have them? And who had made that lovely box, its sides, top, and bottom planed and polished until they were like satin under one’s fingertips, made of the best wood, and painted those lovely shades of sunshine and sky on a perfect day?
Ah, well, who cared? The old man wanted, even needed the box and its contents, and they were certainly nothing that could have been a danger to the ship. Or the Empire, for that matter. “Pass,” he said to the men who had brought the box, quickly scrawling a note on a tag, then running a cord through a hole in one end of the tag, looping the cord, tag and all, around the box, and tying it closed. “Just make sure it’s properly stowed, so when we depart, it won’t break loose and become a danger to anyone.”
Nodding and murmuring effusive, polite thanks, the Yehudim asked if they could talk with Yoseph, for whom the box was intended, before they left. “Yes, of course,” the purser told them. “Here,” he said, getting up from his desk on the top deck, “I’ll show you where his cabin is. Come with me.”
With the three men following him, the purser made his way down a stairway to the deck just below. Turning left at the bottom of the ladder, into a long corridor, he told the Yehudim, “Here, go down this corridor to the last door on the right. That’s his cabin, right behind the ship’s prow and over the bow. His daughters made sure he would be staying where there’s plenty of fresh air, and the smell from the privy, which is at the stern of the ship, wouldn’t reach him.
“When you’re done talking with him, come back up on the top deck - I’ll show you down the gangplank, or, if I’m not available, any of the sailors on deck will. But don’t take too much time - we are leaving at dawn, and the captain will not be happy at any delays. All right?”
Again murmuring thanks, the three Yehudim walked down the corridor, toward Yoseph of Arimathea’s cabin. The purser, turning back to the stairway, made his way back topside.
Some twenty minutes later, the Yehudim returned, minus the box. Their leader, or, at any rate, the one who seemed to be in charge, a youngish, auburn-haired man named Mattithyahu dressed in a light-brown robe, told the purser, who was back at his desk up top, “We should be on our way. Could you show us out?”
“Of course,” said the purser, laying down his quill, with which he’d been making out the ship’s inventory. “Come with me . . .”
Soon the three Yehudim were back on shore, headed off who knows where to do who knew what, and the purser was back at his desk again. Half an hour or so later, as dawn light sprayed golden radiance across the horizon and began to climb the sides of the ship and her masts, Captain Herakles called for the crew to raise anchor and set sails, and gave the signal to the tugs that would shepherd the Aphrodite out of the harbor and into the Inland Sea. Once away from the Levant and standing out to sea, it would head for the narrow bottleneck at the far western end of the Middle-Earth Sea that served as its only outlet. Once through the western straits and well beyond the coast of the Hispanic peninsula, it would turn to starboard and sail north, headed for the British Isles. With luck, the Goddess Who had graciously given Her great name to the ship would see them to safe port in Wales - She was, after all, daughter of the sacred sea-foam formed from Father Sky’s genitals, cut away from Him by His ambitious son Kronos, and knew the oceans as few other deities did. So the chances were good that they would safely reach port in the British Isles.
But did they? We don’t know. There is scholarly speculation in periodicals as august as Biblical Archeological Review that they did, and that Yoseph of Arimathea and the box given to him by the three Jews just before he Aphrodite sailed did indeed reach safe haven on Yoseph’s estate in Wales. But what were the contents of that box, that they were so precious?
The prayer-shawl, kippah, phylacteries, and the parchment containing various verses from the Torah had very likely been the property of Yeshua ben Yoseph ha Nazareth, which he had worn and used in life. As for the box itself that contained them and the other items, clearly it had been made by a master carpenter - and who more likely than Rabbi Yeshua himself, following in his father’s footsteps. But why the articles wrapped in silk? Someone had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to obtain the gorgeous wrappings, then used them as wrapping for common, ugly things that any innkeeper might keep on hand.
Consider those four items: a spirit-lamp (fire), a mug (water or watered wine), a knife (air), and a plate (earth) -- four things actually handled by Jesus himself at his last meal before his trial and crucifixion. Legends of the Holy Grail say that it comprises four things: a wooden wand or staff, which can burn, and is thus associated with fire; a chalice for water or wine; a sword, made of steel from meteoric iron, hence coming from air/space; and a plate, to hold a Communion wafer. The objects of the Holy Grail were supposed to be made of rich materials, covered with jewels, and otherwise fabulous in nature, but it is the Holy Spirit within them that is the true treasure, and the physical materials don’t really matter. Out of very humble beginnings grew that great legend, but the Spirit associated with the humble beginnings - the mug, plate, knife, and spirit lamp used by Jesus himself at the Last Supper - made them priceless, worth infinitely more than anything the greatest emperors might have owned.
And as for the rest, which could have included quite a few things more, they, too, had belonged to that young rabbi, now so terribly dead. Jesus’s disciples, grateful for the gift of a tomb for their Master’s body, wanted Joseph of Arimathea to take charge of the box and all in it as he sailed away to Wales. The objects would be far safer with him than they would be anywhere else.
The box went on board, and when the ship sailed, the objects went with it, and with Joseph.
Did the ship reach Wales safely? That isn’t known - that would have been a long, dangerous journey. There could have been storms. But if the ship made it to Wales, then the box would have been offloaded there, and, probably, stored in some safe place.
And if it all really happened, and the box finally reached Wales, where is it now? Assuming it reached safe harbor in the British Isles, that’s a good question. For one thing, in spite of the fragrant wood of which it was made, termites and time would likely have done terrible things to that box, not to mention some of its contents. The box might have been enclosed in metal to protect it, or buried deep in one of the ancient tombs of the pagans who inhabited the island long before the Romans came, or both. It could have been taken elsewhere - but where? Maybe to Europe, but only after a long time. Maybe even, eventually, to America. Or to the Vatican, more than a millennium after Jesus’s death, there to be stored in the vaults below the Vatican.
And today it could still be there. Much of it might be dust, but some of it might have survived time and the elements, particularly if those to whom the care of that box and its contents knew how to protect them, say, wrapping the knife in oiled cloth to keep it free of rust, or encasing it all in lead, or filling the entire box with cedarwood chips and sawdust, etc.
It’s time for that box and its contents to reappear. The world, so terribly battered and fouled, needs it desperately. For the clock is now only a few short minutes away from midnight, its hands advancing relentlessly, and the Angel of Death leers over the Earth and all she holds, grinning at the banquet he is soon to feast on . . .
A few days after the crucifixion of Yeshua ben Yoseph ha Nazareth, whom the Greeks called “Jesus,” Yoseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man who had loved the young rabbi and who provided a tomb for Rabbi Yeshua’s body after the crucifixion, set sale for Wales on a ship leaving Haifa on the coast of Judea. Yoseph’s daughters wanted him out of Judea - it wasn’t safe for anyone there who had known the late rabbi. Because Yoseph was the one who had donated a tomb for Jesus’s body, the Romans would want to question the old man. It was too dangerous for him to remain in Yudea. He had holdings in the tin mines in Wales - the source of his considerable wealth - and his daughters got him aboard that ship, which was bound for the British Isles and Wales.
The ship, the Aphrodite, cast off around dawn. An hour or so before then, three men carrying a wooden box came to the quay and asked to see the purser. They told the purser, a tall, somewhat morose-looking man named Brom, with iron-gray hair and a voice much the same shade, that they had a gift for one of the passengers - for Yoseph - and wanted to have it taken aboard. The purser insisted on opening it, to make sure it wasn’t contraband or anything else illegal. A simple wooden box with a lid, perhaps 8 feet long by 4’ wide and 3-4’ deep, it was made of cedar and other types of wood that resist rot, insects, and other things that would otherwise shorten its lifespan (a sort of built-in, natural pesticide and fungicide). The box was painted light blue with bright yellow trim, and had obviously been made by a master carpenter.
The box contained numerous items, some articles of singular beauty, together with others that seemed merely utilitarian, and some that left him puzzled:
There were a carpenter’s tools, some quills, a sealed ink-pot, and a few household items such as a skillet and a leather bag meant to hold wine, the sort of useful things that anyone might have on hand. There were also bundles of parchment on which were written various texts from Torah and related materials, probably not uncommon among scholarly Jewish men.
There were also some things that made the purser gasp at their beauty:
A prayer-shawl made of lamb’s wool, light as a cloud, the sort any Jewish male would wear to synagogue or the Temple.
A skullcap, probably of leather, but possibly knitted or crocheted of lamb’s wool.
Tefillin, the little leather boxes Jewish men attach to their sleeves when going to synagogue or temple, each containing a piece of parchment on which is written appropriate texts from Torah.
But then there were the ones that seemed oddly out of place, ostensibly common housewares and cutlery which, however, had each been wrapped with exquisite care in scarlet silk embroidered all over with delicate series roses, flying white, golden-beaked cranes, sharp-toothed green dragons, and odd, monocerotic creatures of a kind he was unfamiliar with. The cloth alone would have been worth a fortune - and it had been used to wrap utterly common things anyone could buy dirt-cheap in any marketplace. Why?
A cheap pottery mug and plate of the sort that could be purchased in any market-place, and were in fact bought by the score by innkeepers and owners of taverns for use by their customers. With the mug and plate there was also an inexpensive knife of the sort used by customers of such inns and taverns to cut their bread and meat, and a cheap spirit-lamp used to provide light while dining or, later, in a rented room above the dining room of the tavern or inn, also available in any marketplace and bought wholesale by tavern-owners.
He would have dismissed that part of it as sheer craziness, if not for an aura of . . . something, something powerful and strange, emanating from them. He had seen such things before, common, perhaps heavily damaged things that could be found in some households in the Empire and, more often, in public religious shrines, things that had been directly involved in things that had shaped the course of the Empire, or were even said to have been given to men by the Gods, or had belonged to the Gods. A long spear, its blade old and corroded, its wood scarred by termites, kept in a temple in Sparta and revered by Spartans as King Leonidas’s own spear, which he had used against the Persians during the battle of the Hot Gates. A sword, in much better shape than that sad-looking spear, but still very old, kept in a private chapel on the grounds of Emperor Augustus’s own personal estate, believed to have been left behind after the Battle of Lake Regillus by Castor himself - or so he had been told by his brother, an imperial courier, who had sworn he’d seen and even handled that sword while at the Emperor’s residence some years ago to deliver a message of state there. And there were the little household treasures, those watched over by a family’s Lares and Penates, that were considered divine, or at least given to members of the household by the Gods because of the circumstances in which they had been discovered by household members: the skull of an old rooster whose crowing once alerted the family to a fire ranging in the sheds behind the main house in time for them to put the fire out and save the house; a long carving-knife used by a servant girl to maim and, ultimately, kill a burglar who had broken into the main house, intent on theft and rape of any vulnerable women therein, before he could do any harm; a blanket that the man of the house had caught up and used to cushion the fall of his toddler son from a second-story window, thus saving the child’s life. All such Brom had seen with his own eyes, touched with his own hands, had the same sort of invisible but powerful, almost tangible aura that the mug, plate, carving-knife, and spirit-lamp in the box did.
The purser, a native of Gaul who had long since become a Roman citizen, could understand the prayer-shawl, the skullcap, the tefillin, and the notes on parchment - his passenger was a Jew, and these things were obviously his cherished possessions. The tools and some housewares also wouldn’t have been out of place in a Jewish household, especially one belonging to a carpenter, the one who had likely made that lovely box. But why the cheap tableware wrapped in exquisite scarlet silk, and what was that strange aura around them? Were they souvenirs of something? Why did the men who had brought the box to the ship want him to have them? And who had made that lovely box, its sides, top, and bottom planed and polished until they were like satin under one’s fingertips, made of the best wood, and painted those lovely shades of sunshine and sky on a perfect day?
Ah, well, who cared? The old man wanted, even needed the box and its contents, and they were certainly nothing that could have been a danger to the ship. Or the Empire, for that matter. “Pass,” he said to the men who had brought the box, quickly scrawling a note on a tag, then running a cord through a hole in one end of the tag, looping the cord, tag and all, around the box, and tying it closed. “Just make sure it’s properly stowed, so when we depart, it won’t break loose and become a danger to anyone.”
Nodding and murmuring effusive, polite thanks, the Yehudim asked if they could talk with Yoseph, for whom the box was intended, before they left. “Yes, of course,” the purser told them. “Here,” he said, getting up from his desk on the top deck, “I’ll show you where his cabin is. Come with me.”
With the three men following him, the purser made his way down a stairway to the deck just below. Turning left at the bottom of the ladder, into a long corridor, he told the Yehudim, “Here, go down this corridor to the last door on the right. That’s his cabin, right behind the ship’s prow and over the bow. His daughters made sure he would be staying where there’s plenty of fresh air, and the smell from the privy, which is at the stern of the ship, wouldn’t reach him.
“When you’re done talking with him, come back up on the top deck - I’ll show you down the gangplank, or, if I’m not available, any of the sailors on deck will. But don’t take too much time - we are leaving at dawn, and the captain will not be happy at any delays. All right?”
Again murmuring thanks, the three Yehudim walked down the corridor, toward Yoseph of Arimathea’s cabin. The purser, turning back to the stairway, made his way back topside.
Some twenty minutes later, the Yehudim returned, minus the box. Their leader, or, at any rate, the one who seemed to be in charge, a youngish, auburn-haired man named Mattithyahu dressed in a light-brown robe, told the purser, who was back at his desk up top, “We should be on our way. Could you show us out?”
“Of course,” said the purser, laying down his quill, with which he’d been making out the ship’s inventory. “Come with me . . .”
Soon the three Yehudim were back on shore, headed off who knows where to do who knew what, and the purser was back at his desk again. Half an hour or so later, as dawn light sprayed golden radiance across the horizon and began to climb the sides of the ship and her masts, Captain Herakles called for the crew to raise anchor and set sails, and gave the signal to the tugs that would shepherd the Aphrodite out of the harbor and into the Inland Sea. Once away from the Levant and standing out to sea, it would head for the narrow bottleneck at the far western end of the Middle-Earth Sea that served as its only outlet. Once through the western straits and well beyond the coast of the Hispanic peninsula, it would turn to starboard and sail north, headed for the British Isles. With luck, the Goddess Who had graciously given Her great name to the ship would see them to safe port in Wales - She was, after all, daughter of the sacred sea-foam formed from Father Sky’s genitals, cut away from Him by His ambitious son Kronos, and knew the oceans as few other deities did. So the chances were good that they would safely reach port in the British Isles.
But did they? We don’t know. There is scholarly speculation in periodicals as august as Biblical Archeological Review that they did, and that Yoseph of Arimathea and the box given to him by the three Jews just before he Aphrodite sailed did indeed reach safe haven on Yoseph’s estate in Wales. But what were the contents of that box, that they were so precious?
The prayer-shawl, kippah, phylacteries, and the parchment containing various verses from the Torah had very likely been the property of Yeshua ben Yoseph ha Nazareth, which he had worn and used in life. As for the box itself that contained them and the other items, clearly it had been made by a master carpenter - and who more likely than Rabbi Yeshua himself, following in his father’s footsteps. But why the articles wrapped in silk? Someone had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to obtain the gorgeous wrappings, then used them as wrapping for common, ugly things that any innkeeper might keep on hand.
Consider those four items: a spirit-lamp (fire), a mug (water or watered wine), a knife (air), and a plate (earth) -- four things actually handled by Jesus himself at his last meal before his trial and crucifixion. Legends of the Holy Grail say that it comprises four things: a wooden wand or staff, which can burn, and is thus associated with fire; a chalice for water or wine; a sword, made of steel from meteoric iron, hence coming from air/space; and a plate, to hold a Communion wafer. The objects of the Holy Grail were supposed to be made of rich materials, covered with jewels, and otherwise fabulous in nature, but it is the Holy Spirit within them that is the true treasure, and the physical materials don’t really matter. Out of very humble beginnings grew that great legend, but the Spirit associated with the humble beginnings - the mug, plate, knife, and spirit lamp used by Jesus himself at the Last Supper - made them priceless, worth infinitely more than anything the greatest emperors might have owned.
And as for the rest, which could have included quite a few things more, they, too, had belonged to that young rabbi, now so terribly dead. Jesus’s disciples, grateful for the gift of a tomb for their Master’s body, wanted Joseph of Arimathea to take charge of the box and all in it as he sailed away to Wales. The objects would be far safer with him than they would be anywhere else.
The box went on board, and when the ship sailed, the objects went with it, and with Joseph.
Did the ship reach Wales safely? That isn’t known - that would have been a long, dangerous journey. There could have been storms. But if the ship made it to Wales, then the box would have been offloaded there, and, probably, stored in some safe place.
And if it all really happened, and the box finally reached Wales, where is it now? Assuming it reached safe harbor in the British Isles, that’s a good question. For one thing, in spite of the fragrant wood of which it was made, termites and time would likely have done terrible things to that box, not to mention some of its contents. The box might have been enclosed in metal to protect it, or buried deep in one of the ancient tombs of the pagans who inhabited the island long before the Romans came, or both. It could have been taken elsewhere - but where? Maybe to Europe, but only after a long time. Maybe even, eventually, to America. Or to the Vatican, more than a millennium after Jesus’s death, there to be stored in the vaults below the Vatican.
And today it could still be there. Much of it might be dust, but some of it might have survived time and the elements, particularly if those to whom the care of that box and its contents knew how to protect them, say, wrapping the knife in oiled cloth to keep it free of rust, or encasing it all in lead, or filling the entire box with cedarwood chips and sawdust, etc.
It’s time for that box and its contents to reappear. The world, so terribly battered and fouled, needs it desperately. For the clock is now only a few short minutes away from midnight, its hands advancing relentlessly, and the Angel of Death leers over the Earth and all she holds, grinning at the banquet he is soon to feast on . . .