Читать книгу Victor Serenus - Henry Wood - Страница 3

In an ancient city, late in the afternoon of a warm day in early autumn, a little procession was winding its way through the narrow crowded streets. The calm, measured pace and solemn countenances of the group plainly indicated its character as a religious ceremonial. Slightly in the lead were two priests, of such official and dignified mien that they appeared as though they knew the God of Israel face to face. It was as if the little Hebrew band, in threading a great throng of Gentiles, were laden with the accumulated weight of all the traditions of the Chosen and Circumcised since the time of Abraham. The reverberation of every sandal, as it struck upon the well-worn pavement, proclaimed, as loudly as words, “We are separate.” Even the flocks of pigeons that were in the air seemed to hover over the moving column, as if to lend the gleam of their white wings to its stately rhythm.

The priests wore tall turbans of cup-shaped form, and were clad in long robes having broad borders decorated with a deep fringe, and gathered about the body with an ornamented girdle. Broad phylacteries, square in form, were bound by thongs, one upon the forehead, and one upon the left arm, each containing inscribed passages from the Law. They also wore embroidered ephods covering the back and breast, held together on the shoulders by brooches of onyx stones richly set in gold, and fastened below by a black band garnished with jewels. Their hands were crossed upon the breast, and eyes turned toward heaven.

Following just behind the priests were men and women in costumes such as were usually worn in the synagogue, which indicated that they were returning from a sacred service. At intervals the low, monotonous tones of a religious chant, or some soft rendering of passages from the Mosaic ritual, might have been audible to those in the near vicinity. They formed an embodied fragment of that long line of the faithful, who forget not the patriarchs and the lawgivers, and whose eyes are always turned towards Jerusalem and the Temple.

In the arms of one of the women was a young infant, and around this least personage there seemed to gather an interest which showed that whatever the nature of the service just concluded, the babe must have been the central figure. The fond glances of the women and evident attention of the men plainly revealed that thorough satisfaction which comes from holy duty well performed.

The city of Tarsus was the place, and the time about the middle of the first decade of the Christian era. Tarsus was a great commercial metropolis. It was located in the midst of a broad, fertile plain which mainly made up the province of Eastern or Flat Cilicia, as distinguished from Rugged Cilicia which bordered it on the north and west. The prolific soil, central location, and peculiar physical configuration, all tended to give it great political importance. Leading from the great plain through the high barrier of mountains which sweep from the coast irregularly around it are two passes, one leading up to the interior of Asia Minor, and the other giving access to the valley of the Orontes. It was naturally the meeting-place, and on the highway of trading caravans and military expeditions. Through this richly historic country, Cyrus marched to depose his brother from the Persian throne. It was on this plain that Alexander gained his decisive victory over Darius. Here have since been encamped the great hosts of western crusaders, and indeed, from the early dawn of history, this plain was the theatre of great events and conflicts, which had much to do with the shaping of empires, and the progress of the world’s civilization.

The cold and rapid river Cydnus, fed by the snows of the Taurus range of mountains, flows through this fertile country; and Tarsus, the capital of the whole province, which was “no mean city,” was located upon its banks. Its coins reveal its importance during the period between Xerxes and Alexander, and also while under Roman sway, when it was dignified by the name of Metropolis. Strabo says that in all that relates to philosophy and general education it was more illustrious than Athens or Alexandria. In the main it had the character of a Greek city; and the Grecian language, literature, and philosophy were generally cultivated. But there were also many Romans, Hebrews, Persians, and Syrians, with a sprinkling of other tribes and peoples, such as characterized an Oriental metropolis. On its busy wharves were great piles of merchandise, surrounded by groups of merchants and traders in many costumes, and speaking a variety of dialects.

It was one of the most important epochs of history; a time when colossal personalities and events were stamping their impress upon the destiny of races and nations. The shores of the Mediterranean formed the heart of the world’s civilization; and Roman militarism, legality, and control were permeating and compacting that great empire, east and west. The Greek and Hebrew were important but subordinate elements in the human conglomerate of that eventful period. Various and unlike races were commingling; their customs and even their religions were shading into each other, and their languages becoming considerably interchangeable. The Roman represented law, government, conquest, and dominion; the Greek the more subtile ideals of philosophy, art, and intellectuality; while the Hebrew, intense and tenacious, was unconsciously laying the foundation, through his religious zeal, for the coming spread of Judaism’s great outgrowth, rival, and successor, Christianity. His hard religiosity and punctilious ceremonialism were not perceptibly softened even by close contact with Grecian poetry and idealism. Even Roman jurisprudence on the one hand, and idolatry on the other, could not penetrate them. As a rule, the various tributaries to the great current of human history in its evolutionary course gradually mingle, each adding something of its own hue to the common volume, but the Hebraistic economy was the rare exception. Its oil would not mix with the general water of other systems.

At the particular time with which we are dealing, general peace prevailed. There was one of those alternations of calmness which intervene between the fierce storms of racial conflict and religious strife and persecution.

The Jewish procession, small in numbers, but important in spirit and destiny, threaded its way through the winding thoroughfares, attracting but a passing glance from the cosmopolitans which made up the multiform currents of every-day life in Tarsus. At length it halted in front of a family residence in the better part of the Hebrew quarter, into which one of the priests with the father of the child entered, followed by the mother with her young son in her arms, while the others dispersed. The babe, Saulus Paulus, was forty days old, and, in conformity to the Jewish ritual, had been taken to the synagogue for the prescribed presentation service.

Before leaving the household, the priest tenderly took the child in his arms to give him a final blessing. Raising his eyes toward heaven, he seemed to feel a spirit of prophetic inspiration. With his right hand upon the head of the child, he reverently presumed to lift the curtain which veils the future, fervently exclaiming,—

“Son of Abraham, scion of the tribe of Benjamin, and heir of Benoni! The living blood of the Covenant flows in thy veins! Thou shalt wax strong, and be learned in all that pertaineth to the Law! Thou shalt be a tongue of the God of Jacob, and many shall tremble when thou speakest! Thou shalt be a defender of Israel, and bring judgment to the Gentiles! Thou shalt open thy mouth and utter mighty things that are hidden from the Greek and Roman! Thou shalt sorely vex the enemies of the Circumcision, and bring them to naught! With holy zeal shalt thou pursue them”—

Then his visage became fixed, and he was like one in a trance. A voice, not his own, seemed to use his lips. “I behold—judgment—defeat—darkness! The uncircumcised prevail!”

Abdiel, the priest, trembled like an aspen, and upon coming to himself, declared that he had seen a disturbing vision.

The ancient Judaism accepted no compromise, and bowed to no defeat. When surrounded, and even almost submerged, by prevailing idolatry, polytheism, and heathenism, like a bow temporarily bent, it at length sprang back, and regained its original integrity. It was a casting in rigid form of a conglomerate of truth and error, righteousness and pride. It loathed other creeds and philosophies, and its Deity was limited by a racial boundary. It was a political theocracy.

Phariseeism, which was the leading element of Jewish religiosity, was a compound of spiritual pride, exclusiveness, and intolerance. Missionary effort among other nations was not thought of because they were not worth it. God was the God of Israel. The Chosen People felt that they had a monopoly of the divine favor, and they proposed to keep it. But the teaching of the ancient seers and expounders of righteousness, originally good, had become incrusted with a superficial formalism, and all vitality had left it. Even the Mosaic Law and the later sublime poems and religious compositions, though constantly and formally recited, were loaded down with traditions, and had become a complex system of polished dry bones. Notwithstanding the discipline of previous dispersions and captivities, such was the spirit of the Chosen People during the earliest years of the Christian era.