  Almost overnight Jerusalem had been transformed. Through the long drought of the summer months the ancient city had grown more drab with the deepening of fine dust upon its houses, its public buildings, and even upon the resplendent Temple itself. But now, with the coming of autumn and the annual great Feast of Tabernacles, Jerusalem had bloomed into a veritable forest of greenery. As far as Claudia could see from her perch high on a balcony of the Tower of Antonia—down into the adjoining Temple area, along the terraced rise of Mount Zion, southward to sweltering Ophel and beyond the always smoking gehenna of Hinnom’s vale to the bluffs above it on the Bethlehem road, and eastward past the Brook Kidron and the Garden of Gethsemane up the slope of the Mount of Olives—stretched an almost unbroken canopy of green boughs now beginning to wilt. Balconies, roof tops, the grounds about the Temple walls, every unfilled The Feast of Tabernacles, Tullia had explained to her mistress, was the Hebrew festival marking the end of the harvesting season and the early beginning of the rains. It was an occasion of national thanksgiving to Yahweh, one that commemorated the Israelites’ years of wandering in the desert wilderness where, after their escape from Egyptian bondage, under the leadership of their great law-giver Moses, they had dwelt in booths—they called them tabernacles—made of branches hastily woven together. “And to this day,” Tullia had concluded, “in accordance with the instructions in our sacred writings, every Jew during the Feast of Tabernacles must leave his house and for eight days live in a hut made of the branches of pine or myrtle or olive or palm.” The festival occasion, she further pointed out, was one of rejoicing for Yahweh’s deliverance of His children from slavery and His establishment of them in their promised land. To honor Yahweh, the celebrants would offer sacrifices each day and follow a prescribed order of worship and praise and thanksgiving. These ceremonies, Tullia declared, were carried out in great dignity and with reverence. Nothing she had ever seen in Rome, the maid was certain, would excel them in pageantry. “Mistress,” she pleaded, “why don’t you move from the Palace of the Herods for a day or two to the Procurator’s apartment in the Tower of Antonia? From there you could look down on the ceremonial rites being performed at the Temple, and no one would need know that you were watching. And though it would have no interest to you as a service of worship, it should prove entertaining in the same way that the theater in Rome is diverting.” “It might be amusing at that,” Claudia had agreed. “And there’s nothing else to do in Jerusalem anyway. But how is it, Tullia,” she asked, and her expression clearly revealed her puzzlement, “that you know so much about these festival customs? Even if your forebears were Jewish, you were brought up in Rome, and surely you couldn’t have learned all this at the synagogue on Janiculum Hill.” “But, Mistress, through the years I have read our sacred scriptures, “I know little about Israelites or their Yahweh, and I care less about either”—she smiled—“except for you, and I have never considered you a Jew except perhaps by blood. But as for loyalty, by all the gods, little one, I know you are loyal to me, just as your mother was to mine. All this Yahweh and Temple business, though, confuses rather than interests me. To me it seems the sheerest nonsense. How could any being worthy of being called a god appreciate the sight of poor cattles’ throats being slit; how could he enjoy the smell of warm blood and broiling fat? Certainly it nauseates me.” “I have wondered that myself, Mistress,” Tullia answered. “But I believe He is pleased because we are seeking to please Him, even though our form of worship may not be too pleasing. Do you understand me, Mistress?” “Yes, but I believe still that your worship is nothing more than superstition, just as our worship of the innumerable Roman and Greek gods is superstition. But”—she reached over and gently pinched the slave girl’s cheek—“I’ll do as you suggest; I’ll venture to watch the ceremonial at the Temple, and you can tell me what they are doing.” So they had gone up to Antonia and from the balcony had watched the busy movement of the priests and the assembled throngs, many of them pilgrims returned from every province in the Empire, as these earnest Israelites performed the traditional rites of the ancient festival of worship. On her first morning, Claudia had arisen early and had stepped out onto the balcony. The sun was just lifting above the Mount of Olives, but already the Temple was astir, and pilgrims in their many colored robes were swarming into the Court of the Gentiles, the nearer Court of the Women, and the other more sacred precincts permitted to them. In their hands they carried leafed branches. Claudia stared in rapt fascination at the spectacle below. As she leaned out over the balcony, she scarcely heard Tullia’s footsteps approaching behind her. “Good morning, Mistress.” “Good morning,” Claudia replied, turning to greet the girl. She pointed downward. “You were right about this offering much in the way of entertainment. It’s nearly as good as our Roman games.” Tullia laughed. “Who knows, perhaps you, too, Mistress, may become a convert to our ways.” “Hardly.” Claudia shook her head with a wry smile. Then she turned and looked thoughtfully down again at the bustling crowds in the Temple courts. “There’s one thing in particular, you know, that I can’t understand about the Jewish religion, little one.” The half-smile had been replaced by a perplexed frown. “Unless I’m mistaken, the Jews contend that their Yahweh is all-powerful, that he’s the only god there is, and that he rules over all peoples; yet they call him the God of Israel and seem to believe that he has no interest in anyone else. Down there, for example”—she pointed toward the Temple—“there are signs warning foreigners not to enter, under pain of death, certain of the sacred places. How do the Jews explain that? It seems to me that they make their Yahweh a sort of tribal god, one having less authority even than our Jupiter. If Yahweh is the god of all the world, how can the Jews claim him as exclusively theirs? And on the other hand, if he is the god and father of all peoples, doesn’t that make all peoples brothers?” She shrugged. “I see little sense to ... all this.” She broke off with a quick sweep of her hand toward the procession of priests and pilgrims moving down the slope toward the waters of Siloam. “They do say that such is the teaching of Jesus, that our Yahweh is the father of all peoples, even the pagans who have never heard of Him, that....” “Jesus?” “The Galilean. The carpenter, Mistress, of whom the Prophet John declared himself to be the forerunner, you know. He’s been teaching down there at the Temple; he came up from Galilee, though he wasn’t here at the beginning of the feast, it was said. The priests are bitter toward him, especially Annas and Caiaphas and the Temple leaders; they say he is corrupting our religion.” “Hah! Annas and Caiaphas talk of corruption! I should think they wouldn’t have the nerve. But have you seen this Galilean, little one?” “No, Mistress, but I should like to. They say he speaks with great charm and clarity.” “By the gods, I would like to hear him myself. He’s the one, isn’t he, who Cornelius contends healed his little servant boy? Maybe we could prevail on him to do some other feats of magic.” “But his followers, so I hear, deny that he works magic. They say he does such things of his own power and authority, as the Messiah of God.” “So Cornelius believes, according to Longinus; he thinks the Galilean is a man-god and that he really healed the little boy, but Longinus wasn’t that naÏve. I wish Longinus were here to see the carpenter and hear his discoursing; I’d like to know his opinion of the man.” But Longinus was not in Jerusalem. Cornelius had failed in his promise to bring the centurion to the Feast of Tabernacles. Hardly a week before they were to leave Tiberias, Cornelius had received a message from Longinus saying that the Prefect Sejanus had sent him instructions to board ship at Tyre for Antioch, where he would have business with the Legate Vitellius. What the nature of the business was, Cornelius told Claudia, had not been revealed. Nor had Longinus indicated how long he would be away. Had she known he would not be in the Judaean capital, Claudia told her maid, she herself would have remained in the provincial capital on the coast. That would have given her two weeks of freedom from Pontius Pilate, at any rate, for Pilate, with a maniple of soldiers and a retinue of servants, had come up with her to the festival and would probably remain in Jerusalem until the final ceremonies were completed and all the withered booths had been removed. In late afternoon the Procurator’s wife ate an early dinner, and as the sun dropped behind the western walls, she stood again with Tullia at the balcony’s parapet and looked down upon the animated movement within the Temple’s courts. “See, Mistress!” Tullia pointed. “They all carry unlighted “Yes, Bona Dea, I agree it will be different. And in Jerusalem, Tullia, you’re different. I do believe I’ve never before seen you so excited.” The service began with a great company of priests and Levites alternating in the antiphonal chant of the Psalms and other sacred Hebrew scriptures. Then, as the shadows lengthened and the quick murk of descending night began to envelop the vast edifice and the thousands massed within it, one of the priests, bearing a long lighted taper, moved through the Court of the Priests and down the steps to the Court of the Women. “Look, Mistress! See the priest carrying the lighted taper,” Tullia said, her enthusiasm mounting. “With it he will light the great candelabra.” The advancing priest paused. “Arise, shine!” his voice suddenly rang out, “for thy Light is come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee!” Deliberately, with all eyes upon him, he lighted first the central candle in the great stand, and then as quickly as he could with the uplifted long taper he touched the flickering flame to each of the three on either side of the central one; when he had finished his task before the first great candelabrum, he crossed with measured tread to the other and lighted it. As he touched the last candle and the flame caught, a great welling up of excited, triumphant song was lifted to the two on the balcony above, one the pagan daughter of Roman emperors and the other, her slave maid, daughter of ancient and buffeted Israel. “What does the song mean, Tullia?” Claudia asked. “It seems to have a tone of triumph, of victory. Yet how can the people of Israel boast of their victories, if that is what they are doing?” “It is a song of triumph, Mistress,” she replied. “It speaks, like the Feast of Tabernacles itself does, of the days when our fathers First came the Levites. In procession they passed the flaming candelabra, and as each man came opposite the blazing, darting fire, he mounted the steps, lifted high his torch, and touched it to the flame. Soon the torches of the Levites, followed by those of the pilgrims, had transformed the entire mountain of the Temple into a blaze of fire. For a long moment, silent, Claudia stood at the balcony’s parapet and studied the procession of torchbearers; their voices, raised in song, filled the night. “It’s amazing,” she said finally. “I’ve always thought that the Jewish religion had no joy in it; I thought it was the worship of a stern, vengeful, morose god who was quick to punish any violator of his strict and senseless laws, who demanded bloody sacrifices and fasting and permitted no indulgence in pleasures. But these Jews seem to be having a grand time, almost as though they were devotees of Isis or Moloch.” “Yes, but without the orgies of Isis and Moloch,” Tullia explained. “Many persons who are not of our faith do have that opinion of the God of Israel. But we believe that although He is stern and demands that we uphold His laws, He is also a loving God who wants His people to be happy. Some will be dancing here as long as their torches burn, Mistress.” “Well, you may stay out and watch them as long as you like, Tullia, but I’m going to bed.” “One more thing, Mistress,” the slave girl asked. “If I may, I should like at sunrise tomorrow to slip down into the Temple courts for the early service.” “Of course, little one,” Claudia smiled. “But be careful. And perhaps it would be best if you made no mention of being in the Procurator’s household.” |
|
