Gospel (6 page)

“And misogynistic,” said the sister.

“You see, Paul, like Jesus and John the Baptist, was a Nazirene. No, not someone from Nazareth—that is a willful misunderstanding of the Greek.
Nazairaos
is what Paul claims for himself, formed like
Pharisaios,
the Pharisee party.
Acts
itself in 24:5 says the Nazirenes are a sect…” The rabbi looked in a Bible he had pre-prepared during dinner. “Paul is characterized as
a ringleader of the sect known as the Nazarenes.
Now, can any of you gathered here think of one ancient movement named after the hometown of the founder? Of course you can't. It's a fact Christians hate to face, but Jesus and Paul are members of a historical Jewish movement.”

“An interruption, Rabbi,” asked Father Basilios. “If Jesus was not a Nazarene, meaning ‘from Nazareth,' where was he from?”

“From Bethlehem. Jesus could never have been accepted to the degree he was if he wasn't one of David's descendants. Remember, tradition says Elizabeth lived in Ein-Kerim, outside of Bethlehem, where
your
Orthodox brethren, father, and the Roman Catholics both have shrines for the Visitation. That makes Mary's Visitation believable. Does anyone here honestly think Mary, pregnant, took a danger-filled hundred-mile donkey ride from Nazareth to Ein-Kerim, across the deserts of Samaria, a hated province, to see her cousin in Nazareth as Luke would have us believe? Ein-Kerim isn't ten miles from Bethlehem, that's more believable.”

“And you think,” asked Dr. Gribbles, making fast progress through stacks of crackers, leaving crumbs down his front, “Jesus and Paul and John and James the Brother were all of a failed purist sect called Nazirenes.”

“
Nazir.
Hebrew for ‘separated, special, consecrated.' The Nazirenes or Nazirites were ultra-observant and ascetic. Plus, the movement—like Jesus' ministry and Paul's—included women. It's all in Torah,
Numbers
6. A Nazirene had to avoid wine, avoid corpses—even if your mother or father died you couldn't come near the corpse. Remember Jesus saying that he who would follow him can have no mother or father? He snaps at his mother Mary when she asks to see him,
Who is my mother? Woman, what have you to do with me?
So that explains the antifamily elements in Jesus. Also, the hair. A Nazirene, once consecrated and shaven, had to keep his hair long, like John the Baptist is described.
Judges
13:7 tells how Samson is consecrated a Nazirite, and sure enough, when his hair is shorn God allows him to fall to his enemies.”

“But,” objected Dr. Whitestone, “how do you explain Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead if he was supposed to avoid corpses?”

“Neither
Matthew
nor
Mark,
the earliest gospels, include that miracle. I think it's odd Jesus raises someone from the dead and Mark doesn't find that showstopper worthy of mention. It's a legend that got edited in in Luke's time.”

The rabbi smiled as he turned pages in
Acts.

“Want more evidence that Paul was a faithful Nazirene? Turn to
Acts,
which is brimming with inconvenient evidence for you guys.” The rabbi donned his reading glasses: “Paul says in
Acts
26:5,
according to the strictest party of our religion I have lived as a Pharisee.
Sounds like a good Jewish boy to me. Then, as Torah directs, at the end of his consecration Paul fulfills the Nazirene rites laid out in
Numbers.
Sister, would you read 21:23 for me?”

Sister Marie-Berthe read the passage: “The elders of the Jerusalem Christians tell Paul, I'm reading,
take these men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you but that you yourself live in observance of the Law.”

The rabbi: “Read a bit further down, Sister.”

“Then Paul took the men and the next day he purified himself with them and went into the Temple, to give notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for every one of them.”

The rabbi: “This is a Nazirene purification ceremony. Back to
Numbers
6:18.
Then the Nazirite shall shave his long hair, the sign of his vow of separation. This shall be done at the entrance of the Tabernacle.
You get the idea?”

“An inconvenient fact for you, Rabbi,” Father Basilios noted. “The Nazirenes forbade all alcohol. The prophet Amos, does he not tempt the Nazirenes of his day with wine? So explain
Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake,
which Paul writes in
1 Timothy.
Jesus' Last Supper involves wine, he turns water into wine, et cetera.”

The rabbi smiled. “Paul didn't write
1 Timothy,
I think the Last Supper is an addition of the 200s—remember, it doesn't even appear in your
Gospel of John.
The water-into-wine shtick isn't mentioned in
Mark, Matthew,
or
Luke
so it's latter-day, and in any event, Nazirenes could drink when they weren't in their period of consecration.”

“What,” began Father Beaufoix, “if I grant you that John and Jesus and Paul sprang from a sect called the Nazirenes. What does that prove?”

“It proves,” said the rabbi happily, “that the historical Jesus and the Christian Church at Jerusalem never intended to scrap Judaism, but rather wished to enlighten the Gentiles as they thought was their mission. The Law was never to be discarded.
Matthew
5:17,” he quoted,
“Do not think I come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, et cetera, For truly I say unto you, until heaven and earth shall pass away not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law
 … Most of Jesus' ministry is to Jews, and of course there's
Matthew
10:5, when he sends out his people saying
Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans,
but go to the lost sheep of Israel.”

The vicar said, “That was merely a phase of the ministry. Later Jesus did command his followers to go out among the world.”

“Yeah, in those trumped-up resurrection passages I've never believed were genuine. How do you explain that the Twelve after Jesus' death are
not
preaching to the Gentiles? James is still attending the synagogue, right? Paddy, am I mistaken about this? Read the reaction of the disciples after Jesus ascends to Heaven from
Luke.
”

O'Hanrahan turned to the end of
Luke:
“The disciples
returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple, praising and blessing God.
”

The rabbi looked content. “This doesn't sound like a group that is rebelling against the Law. But then Paul starts his travels, starts having his visions. It's Paul that takes this ultraobservant sect and turns it into a new world religion. Paul invents Christianity.”

O'Hanrahan concurred, “And the Jerusalem Church, those closest to the historical Jesus, hated Paul for it. Yes, Peter and Paul made peace according to
Acts,
but until the 300s there was a Jewish Jesus Cult, the Ebionites, that reviled Paul and thought he'd ruined everything. Do you remember the smattering of anti-Pauline texts quoted by Clement?”

Father Beaufoix volunteered, “Particularly Epiphanus's discussion of the Cerinthians.”

Lucy observed O'Hanrahan glare at the Dominican.

“For 300 years,” the rabbi continued, “before a church with the Emperor Constantine's gestapo to suppress the competition, the Early Christian Church is divided on Paul, the Jewish Christians finding him an innovator and self-promoter—the Paul, in other words, most modern Christians acknowledge. I submit, ladies, gentlemen, that it is
you
who for the last 1800 years have followed the wrong vein, followed doctored-up gospels and bogus Pauline letters, and that it was the Ebionites of the early centuries who best followed the tradition of the true Jesus, a rabbi and rebel Pharisee. Every one of you, excepting Dr. Abdullah … is in heresy!”

Amid the outcry, he went on provocatively:

“And it hasn't been the same for the Jews since! Dear God above, if you can save your Chosen People from one thing, deliver us from epileptics! Paul, blinded on the road, and we got the Christians. Mohammed, falling on the ground in a fit, and we got the Moslems. Have mercy!”

Dr. Abdullah announced above the din, “Of course it is offensive, you must realize, to attribute Mohammed's vision to epilepsy.”

“Dr. Abdullah,” pursued the vicar, Dr. Whitestone. “Who is to say epilepsy isn't a receptivity to the greatest of spiritual gifts? Might epilepsy not be God's way of making a prophet?”

“I apologize,” said the rabbi, before the discussion was sidetracked, “for any offense, my friend.”

Paul's role as defender of the Jewish faith raged on and Lucy excused herself to a small ladies' room to throw water on her face. I am not going to drink this much again, she told herself. And I ought to really try to make a point somewhere in this discussion. It would impress Dr. O'Hanrahan and maybe he wouldn't think I'm such a dolt. Of course, I could say something stupid and prove I
am
a dolt. She soon slipped back in her chair.

“Well, for my money,” said Sister Marie-Berthe, “I could stand to lose a few of the bogus books attributed to Paul.”

The men stirred, anticipating the drawing of battlelines.

“I love Paul,” said the sister. “Rabbi Hersch defends the Paul of
Acts of the Apostles,
but I will defend the Paul of the Letters. The real Paul. Not the chauvinist in those Deutero-Pauline letters, although the insertions, I'll admit, were made by someone in a Pauline school. I suppose we better see if we can get agreement that
Romans
is the real Paul.”

There was assent all around.

“Good,” she said, thumbing through her Bible, the New Revised Standard Version with its sexism removed. “And can we agree that the epistle of
Timothy
is not the real Paul? No serious scholar these days, surely, would defend
Timothy
as true Paul.”

The archimandrite quietly said, “I'm not sure you or our esteemed Jewish friend will get me to admit any canonical letter, even a Pastoral, isn't inspired scripture, sister.”

She pursued her point: “Do you as a scholar,
Pater,
think the author of
Timothy
and the author of
Romans
are the same?”

“No, I do not.”

“The real Paul,” the sister continued, looking in her Bible, “wrote in
Romans
16:1,
I commend you to our sister Phoebe, a deaconness of the church at Senkrae that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints.
A direct contradiction to
Timothy
2:11,
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent.
So being a deaconness, contradictorily, is forbidden. You can tell the Crusty Old Bachelor Fathers were getting scared at the liberating implications of Christianity.”

Lucy kept drinking her glasses of water. Her head hurt already but she had demoted her roaring-drunk down to tipsy-drunk.

“What, sister, do you intend to do…” asked Father Basilios, thumbing back, “about
1 Corinthians
14:34?” He read: “
The women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but be subordinate, even as the law says.
And so forth.
For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.
Surely you think
1 Corinthians
is Pauline, don't you?”

“Yes, but not that passage. It was added at the time of
Timothy
—”

“You can't just pick and choose what suits you, now.”

“Father, may I refer you in the very same letter to 11:4.
Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head.
This you see? Paul in the same epistle refers to women prophesying, which is presumably out loud, and not silent. Your later passage is an interpolation courtesy of the Crusty Old Bachelor Fathers. I would hope, just as no one takes too seriously Paul's edicts on head-coverings, that we could also put aside his sexism, which is just as quaint.”

More irrelevancies ensued concerning ridiculous Early Church prohibitions. O'Hanrahan took the occasion to lean over to whisper to Lucy. “I don't suppose you come bearing more financing from Chicago, do you?”

Lucy realized the lure of Mammon might keep the lines of communication open. “Perhaps. It depends on what you're doing. And what you'll tell me.”

“Too many people know already what I'm doing,” he said, “and I have no intention of getting betrayed again.”

“Did Gabriel betray you?”

“Yes. And I'm not going to talk about it.”

The servant appeared at Lucy's side again, weary with the water pitcher; Lucy motioned for her to fill it up again.

She found herself staring at Sister Marie-Berthe. International scholar. Holding her own with, well, Crusty Old Bachelor men not unlike the old curmudgeons who wrote the Pseudo-Pauline letters. Where were you when we needed you back in the 100s and 200s? Lucy wondered.

(There were plenty of Marie-Berthes, We assure you.)

“Typical male thing to say,” the sister said to the Anglo-Catholic Dr. Gribbles, who had been baiting her on whether female priests were allowable. “Jesus travels with women, ministers to women, liberates women. Suddenly with the invention of the Christian commune, and later the nunnery, a woman can free herself from being a male possession.” Hoping to draw in Dr. Abdullah, with an eye to skewering Islam for its treatment of women, the sister asked, “Islam was liberating for women in the same way at first, is that not so, Dr. Abdullah?”