Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [57]
Of course the men never stopped demanding to know, What was this baptism? And what did it mean? Teachers and scholars joined us, young men on horseback passed us. We came upon groups of the King's soldiers who'd been to the river and had only good things to say of it, and even bands of Roman soldiers headed to the river from Caesarea stopped to share a drink of wine with us, or take a bit of pottage and bread.
The Romans were curious about this strange man drawing crowds to the riverbanks. They spoke to us a little wearily of it; yet they too wanted to see the man in camel skin who stood knee-deep in the Jordan offering a purification. After all, they said, they had their own shrines back home here and there, and their own rites, just as we did. We nodded to this. We were happy to have them sit for a while or take a morsel of food before they hurried on.
Scholars sat in circles in the evening, reciting the Scriptures as to this great matter of purifying oneself in the waters of the Jordan. They spoke of the prophet Elisha and how he had sent Naaman, the Leper, to bathe seven times in the Jordan. “But the prophet did not baptize him,” one of the scholars said. “No, not himself, he did not, but told the man to bathe.”
“And remember,” the Rabbi said quickly one evening, “that the Leper was scornful of the prophet, was he not? Scoffing at him, yes, remember, and angry that the prophet didn't even come out to him but sent him to do this—and what, I ask you, what indeed came to pass?”
Often the subject came up: we were celebrating our recent victory in Caesarea? The Rabbis and Pharisees spoke of this, and so did the soldiers. The Rabbis pointed out, in strong terms, that the place to give thanks to the Lord was not on the riverbank but in the Temple, the Temple which had been so grossly defiled by the approach of Pilate's ensigns. No one disagreed with this.
And when the Roman soldiers inquired, Were we having a joyful time of it because the Governor had stepped back from his position, they weren't particularly quarrelsome or concerned, only wondering, Why are so many people going to see this man, people from north and south and east and west, people even from the Greek cities of the Decapolis?
Indeed, sooner or later, almost everyone had something to say as to the sheer size of the throng headed for the river.
“Are we so tired and hungry for a true prophet after hundreds of years,” Jason asked, “that we up and leave our houses and our fields and set out at the mere mention that a man might bring us some new wisdom, some special consolation?”
“Has it really been four hundred years,” asked his uncle Jacimus, “since a prophet has spoken or are we simply deaf to the prophets whom the Lord sends? I can't help but wonder.”
Inevitably men quarreled over the Temple. They quarreled over whether or not the Temple was too Greek, too huge, too filled with books and teachers and money changers, and crowds of gaping eager Gentiles, always being warned to stay out of the inner courts, always being threatened with death if they did not obey the laws, and as to the priesthood, Joseph Caiaphas and his father-in-law, Annas, well, men had plenty to say on that matter as well.
“One thing is clear as to Caiaphas,” my uncle Cleopas interjected whenever he could. “The man's withstood the political currents a long time.”
“You say that because he's your kinsman,” came a rejoinder.
“No, I say it because it's true,” said Cleopas, and quickly he rattled off the names of High Priests come and gone, including those once appointed by the House of Herod and later by the Romans.
This question of the Roman appointment of our High Priests could start a regular battle. But there were enough older men to quiet the hotheads, and even Hananel spoke up once or twice to put down with contempt any talk of purifying the Temple as the Essenes so longed to do. “That,” he averred, “is idle talk. It is our Temple!”
All my life I'd heard this sort of argument, these musings. Sometimes I followed the thread. Most of the time my mind drifted. No one expected a word