Knights of the Black and White

FIVE

What Stephen remembered most about his uncle, Sir William St. Clair—and it amused him, as always, that this should be the first thing to spring into his mind even after so many years—was that he seemed too young to be an uncle. Uncles, Stephen had always supposed, were on a par with fathers, members of an older generation and therefore beyond the understanding of young men of his age. This particular uncle, however, had been his father’s youngest half-brother, born to Stephen’s aging grandfather and a new, young wife who had replaced Stephen’s long-dead grandmother. And the truth was that Sir William St. Clair deserved to be remembered and respected for much more than his astonishing youth, for he was the natural successor to his own father, the austere and distinguished Sir Stephen St. Clair who had landed at Hastings with William the Bastard in 1066.

More than any of his several brothers, William possessed and used all his father’s attributes—his massive stature and strength, his charm and wit, his intelligence, and his unparalleled skill with every imaginable weapon. He had ridden to the wars against the Seljuk Turks in Outremer at an early age and had earned himself a fearsome reputation for valor and prowess, before being struck down by a Seljuk arrow in a minor battle near Damascus, after which he had lain out in the desert for a day and a half before being found by Cedric, his loyal attendant, who had brought him home to Christendom after a long convalescence.

Their journey from Outremer had been long and slow, and they had landed eventually in southern France, where William had made his way to Champagne, to visit his seldom-seen cousin Count Hugh, arriving by coincidence just in time to attend the Raising of his never-before-met nephew Stephen, who was no more than three years his junior. William had every intention of returning home to England eventually, he said, but for the time being, he was content to remain in France, eating and drinking in the sunshine and building the strength back into his huge body.

Stephen liked him from the moment they met, and he knew the liking was mutual, although at first he had found his uncle’s natural exuberance and his outspokenness to be disconcerting. In his soldiering days, he had quickly learned that the best way to deal with the constant shouting of his fellow knights was simply to keep to himself as much as he could, and once his companions had uncovered his disapproval of them, he had had no difficulty in keeping to himself constantly. He had no desire to avoid his uncle William, however, and so he soon grew inured to the loudness and ebullience, finding it oddly pleasing after a while.

On the day of the argument that had made such an impression on Stephen, Sir William had taken a blow from a practice sword on his injured shoulder, and he was still pale and pinched about the mouth when Stephen walked in to where he was sitting with the Count, sharing a jug of wine in front of a roaring fire. It was already late on a wintry afternoon, and an unusually cold day for that part of France. Two hours yet remained before dinner in the great hall, and normally Sir William would still have been out in the practice yards and the Count would have been busy with his clerics, tending to accounts. Sir William’s shoulder injury had changed all that, however, and both men were enjoying the respite from routine. The Count waved Stephen to a chair near the fireplace, inviting him to help himself to some wine, and when the younger man refused and remained standing, the Count tilted his head sideways and asked, “What’s wrong? You look unhappy. Did you wish to speak with me?”

Stephen shrugged. “Yes, my lord, but it can wait. I did not know you were with Uncle William. I’ll come back later.”

“No, we will talk about it now, because I suspect it has something to do with your studies on the Order, and if that is the case, then William’s opinions will be every bit as valid as mine. Is that what this is about?” He saw Stephen’s nod and responded with one of his own. “So be it, then, what are you worried about?”

“It’s … it is difficult to …”

“No, it’s not. It never is, once it boils down to being truthful. You’re simply afraid of it. Come on, spit it out.”

“I’m having difficulty believing what I’ve been told about Saint Paul.”

Neither of his listeners showed even the slightest sign of surprise, and the Count barked a laugh. “And so you should, after a lifetime of being taught to revere him. What you are hearing now, from us, sounds like blasphemy. Having difficulty with that merely proves that you are alive and thinking properly.”

“Aye, well …”

“Well nothing, lad. Accept it. What you are learning now, within our Order, is the truth, written down in the beginning and unchanged in more than a thousand years. Everything you’ve learned about such things until now, on the other hand, is the manufactured truth, as perceived by the men who built the world’s Christian community.”

“But Saint Paul is the greatest saint in the Church’s calendar.”

“Aye, he is. But that makes no recognition of any possibility that the Church might be in error. And devout and dutiful Christians dare not wonder whether Paul might be the greatest saint of the Church only because he appointed himself to that position.” He paused, watching Stephen, then asked, “Do you know who the Maccabees were?”

“Er … They were Jews … No, I don’t know.” “

And what about the Seleucids. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Well, it will, once you have learned a bit more. The Maccabees were the hereditary high priests of the Jewish temple before the advent of the Seleucids and the Romans.” The Count turned to his cousin William. “Why don’t you tell him about the Seleucids. But keep it simple.”

Sir William spoke to Stephen, inclining his head in the direction of the Count. “He never stops testing, this one. Very well, but before I begin, know this, Nephew. This difficulty you are having is not new. We have all known it, suffered the same fears, felt the same uncertainties, experienced the same reactions. Every one of us within the Order of Rebirth has had to grapple with this doubt, the very question you are debating now, so you are not alone. Bear that in mind through everything we tell you here. Do you understand me?”

Stephen nodded.

“Excellent. Now listen closely. We have evidence—and you will soon see it for yourself—supporting all of what you are about to hear, and it was all written down more than a millennium ago. The Seleucids were a very powerful dynasty, a line of kings directly descended from one of Alexander of Macedon’s generals, and they ruled Syria for hundreds of years.”

“Alexander of Macedon. You mean Alexander the Great?”

“Aye. What do you know of him?”

“He was Greek. Conquered the world three hundred or so years before the Christ was born.”

“Aye, he was Greek. So were his generals, who divided up his empire when he died. Macedonians, all of them—Hellenic. One of them was Ptolemy, who took over Egypt and founded the dynasty that bred Cleopatra, and another was Seleucus, who founded the dynasty that ruled Asia Minor and Sicily for hundreds of years, intermarrying and diluting their Hellenic blood with the Arabs to produce a bastard race. Nothing wrong with that, as the Romans proved.

“But then these Seleucids whelped a fellow called Herod—called himself ‘the Great’—who made himself king of the Jews after marrying Miriamne, the last princess of the Maccabees. He then wiped out the remainder of the Maccabean royal family and proceeded to spawn an entire brood of his own, the most famous of whom, from our viewpoint, was Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. The Herod clan itself, and everyone associated with it, became known as Herodians, and the Jews—especially the fanatically nationalist Jews, the Zealots—detested them all, for being gentiles, of mixed, unclean, and non-Jewish blood. Herod’s biggest sin in the eyes of the Jews, however, was that he replaced all the Maccabean priests of the temple with priests of his own—the Pharisees. The Jews—the real, devout Jews—saw that as the worst kind of sacrilege: unclean gentiles and false priests defiling the temple.”

He paused as though seeking something inside him, then went on. “You will find it easier to understand much of this, Nephew, if you understand this one thing: false priests defiling the temple may not seem like much of a sacrilege to us today, but that is because we are accustomed to seeing Christian churches defiled by ungodly priests, and to thinking of churches—all of them, from basilicas to cathedrals to small chapels—as the house of God. By that we mean they are places of prayer and worship, places in which we can gather to pay homage to God.

“But the Jews believed no such thing. They had only one temple. It stood in Jerusalem, and it literally was the house of God. Jahweh, their God with the unutterable name, lived right inside it, in the Holy of Holies, which was why there was so much ritual involved in approaching the place. People who entered there were entering, in fact, into the presence of God Himself. He was there, in the Holy of Holies. He did not live in Heaven, or in Paradise. He lived among His chosen people, in the temple they had built to house Him. And so when Herod appointed his own priests, Seleucid priests, to tend the temple, and then invited the Romans to oversee their safety, he outraged everyone who took the slightest pride in being Jewish.

“So there you have the political lines that were drawn in Judea at the time of the Christ’s birth. In power, you had the gentile Herodians, under Herod Antipas, backed by the armies of Rome, and against them, beneath them but all around them, the Jews—the Hebrews and Israelites—seething in half a hundred sects and factions, most of them awaiting the Messiah, the Jewish King who would free them, and all of them screaming for independence, self-rule, and freedom from the Roman overlords. Their viewpoints and some of their activities may have varied wildly, but for all intents and purposes they were united as a single movement to throw off the foreign chains that bound them.” He squinted at young Stephen. “Did you follow everything I said there?”

“Aye, I did, I think.”

“Good. Now comes the next level of understanding.” William glanced at the Count, raising his eyebrows. “Do you want to continue from here?”

Count Hugh smiled and shook his head. “No, you are doing remarkably well.”

“Right.” William pursed his lips for a moment, considering his next words, then launched himself. “It’s difficult to make this brief, but I said all the Jewish sects were united in a movement, and so they were, although there’s no single name for it. But we know it was revolutionary, because it ended up in a revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Jewish nation.

“Be that as it may, this … movement was characterized by its opponents, the Pharisees and their Herodian allies, as a Messianic and therefore a warmongering movement, aimed at overthrowing the Jewish authorities and establishing a revolutionary nationalist government. The Herodians, in consequence of that, represented themselves to the Romans as the forces of peace and order, dedicated to maintaining the status quo and the stability of the Jewish state. And since the status quo was pro-Roman, the die was cast accordingly.

“But it was more convoluted that that—far more complex.” Sir William was frowning, concentrating hard upon what he was attempting to say. “There was more involved in the movement than simple patriotism in the Roman sense. To the Romans, patriotism was, plainly and simply, a love of their homeland, Rome itself. But to the Jews, far more was involved. Their patriotism involved the love of God, and of God’s chosen people as an entity, and of their homeland—God’s homeland. And that’s what gave rise to all the trouble that followed.” His voice faded away, and Stephen, impatient, prompted him.

“What happened?”

“Nothing that’s easily explained, as I said before, but I’ll try. There was a common element among most of the Jewish sects around that time, and it was all about poor-versus-rich politics, those who had nothing against those who had everything. The governing class in Judea was Herodian. They owned everything, simply because they had usurped it with the backing of the Romans, who were happy to have a vassal king in power who was sympathetic to Rome and willing to keep the contentious Jews and the remaining adherents of the Maccabees in their place.”

“Wait. What exactly do you mean when you say Herodian?”

Sir William cocked an eyebrow at that, then grunted and said, “Think about it, lad. Herod’s family held all the power, and they used it to create new priests, tax collectors, and a hundred other forms of support for themselves, and all of those people owed their livelihood to the Herods. Their loyalties, therefore, were Herodian, as vassals to liege lords.”

Stephen nodded, understanding the feudal equivalent, and Sir William continued. “The Jews, on the other hand, whose country Judea was, had nothing. Less than nothing, in fact, for most of them were heavily indebted to the Herodian moneylenders. The system under which they lived forced them to borrow heavily in order to survive, for that was how their entire society had been structured, ever since the Herod clan had come to power. Increasing taxes, including tithes to the temple, kept the people mired in poverty, and they were forced to borrow to be able to pay their tithes, plus their next round of taxes. It was a vicious, killing circle.

“And so this tradition—this cult—of poverty grounded in unyielding righteousness had come into being, and the Zealots were among its prime supporters. Another sect, Ebionites or Essenes, called themselves the Poor Ones, or sometimes the Poor, Righteous Ones. Or even more simply the Poor.”

William cocked his head towards the Count, who was listening closely, his face expressionless. “Am I missing anything?”

The Count shook his head, as though surprised at being addressed. “Nothing important. I am fascinated by how much you can remember without prompting.”

William turned his eyes back to his nephew. “The Poor. Do you recall Jesus’ words about the camel climbing through the eye of the needle?”

“Aye, of course. It’s an impossibility, equal to the chances of a rich man gaining entry to the kingdom of Heaven.”

“Exactly. Rich men, to the Jews of Jesus’ time, were either Herodians or Romans, which meant that they were definitely not Jewish, and the Jews of Judea were the most self-righteous race in the world—God’s chosen people.

“It means nothing to us today, but it must have been intolerable to them to have their country, and the temple that embodied their religion, ruled and owned by a mongrel race, half Arab, half Greek, and both halves unacceptable in the eyes of Jehovah. And then, simply because they were so stiff necked and unbending, it must have been even worse to be forced to live with the Pharisees, Herod’s false priests. Think then, how their frustration must have been inflamed by having to endure the scorn of the temple moneylenders and the indignity of having to deal with them in the first place, and to know there was nothing they could do about it because the power was all in the hands of the rich, with the hated Romans—who had attempted to set up an idol of their blasphemous emperor inside the Holy of Holies in the temple itself—providing the force that kept the usurpers safe from harm.”

Sir William was silent for a moment, giving Stephen time to think about what he had said, before he continued. “The Jews lived in a world of black and white, Stephen, with nothing between the two extremes, no middle ground. Anyone who was not Jewish was gentile, and could not inherit the Kingdom of God.

“But even for a Jew, the way to God’s good graces was a rocky and uncomfortable one, and among the Messianic sects was a group from among the Ebionites, or the Essenes, although some called them Nazarites or Nazarenes, who had set themselves up as a small community in Jerusalem, a community more strictly law-bound and conservative in some ways than were the Zealots—a community of righteousness, founded upon the expectation of the coming of the Messiah and the triumph of the Jews and their God over the whole world. One of that group’s leaders was a man called Yeshua Ben David—we call him Jesus—and according to the records in our Order’s possession, he never laid claim at any time to being the Messiah and never had any thought of being the Christ, the redeemer of the world. He was just a man, extraordinary in some ways. But he was involved in revolutionary politics, so that he fell afoul of the Pharisees, the upstart High Priests, and they denounced him to the Romans, who crucified him.”

William St. Clair rose to his feet and crossed to the ewer of wine on a table by the wall, where he filled his own cup before offering some to the others. The Count accepted, but Stephen waved away the offer. William drank deeply, refilled his cup, and finally set the wine jug down, leaning his buttocks against the edge of the table.

“Thirsty work, talking. Doesn’t matter whether you talk well or badly, clearly or confusingly. Have you understood what I’ve been telling you?”

“So far, yes. But I can’t see what any of it has to do with Saint Paul.”

Sir William looked quickly at Count Hugh, and then back at Stephen. “Paul was a Seleucid.”

Stephen sat blinking. “You mean, half Greek and half Arab? No, he was a gentile, a Roman citizen, from Tarsus.”

“The Seleucids were gentiles, and many of them were Roman citizens, too. And perhaps he was from Tarsus. That’s certainly what he wanted everyone to believe later in his life. But the truth is, no one today really knows who Paul was or where he came from. No one knows anything about his early life, until the moment when God supposedly knocked him off his horse, after which he admitted openly that he had been a persecutor of Christians. But there were no Christians at that time, Stephen. There were only Jews. Christianity had not yet been defined or named.

“Our records, however, which name him clearly as the man you call Saint Paul, indicate that he was a Herodian—and a family member, at that, blood cousin to Herod—by the name of Saulus, and that he was the man sent as ambassador from the Herodian ‘peacekeepers’ to invite the Roman army that was camped outside Jerusalem to enter the city. The same Saulus sent a report of the event, at the time, to Nero’s headquarters in Corinth, in Greece, a favorite haunt of Paul’s in later years. Anyway, we were talking about the Crucifixion.” He turned to Count Hugh. “You tell him about the Crucifixion, Hugh. You were the one who told me about it, and I’ve never forgotten what you said.”

The Count at first demurred, saying he preferred to listen and enjoy rather than to think laboriously, but William would have none of it, and eventually Hugh shrugged his shoulders in resignation and sighed deeply.

“Much is made of the Cross today, Stephen, and of the fact that the Jews crucified the Christ. You know that, of course.”

“Of course, my lord. Everyone knows that.”

“Ah, everyone does. Every man knows that.” Sir William’s tone was somber and he shook his head gravely. “You must always be careful of those words, young Stephen, because they tend to mean the opposite of what they appear to say. Things that everyone knows are seldom what they appear to be, and they are seldom true.

“So, let us begin with the absolute truth, that which we can prove to be true: the Jews did not crucify the Christ. We can go even further than that: the Jews did not hate the Christ, because the Jews had never heard of the Christ. No one had heard of the Christ because the name did not exist until Saul, or Paul if you wish, first used it, years after Jesus was dead, speaking of him as Jesus, the Christ. ‘Christos’ was an obscure Greek word, meaning a redeemer of things, before Saul personalized it to Jesus, to indicate his supposed divinity. So the argument condemning the Jews as the slayers of Christ is a total fabrication. It is a vicious lie, created for political purposes.

“Nor can it be argued that the Jews hated Jesus the man, even setting aside the ‘Christ’ part, because hatred requires great effort and dedication, and they had no reason to hate Jesus collectively. He was one of them, a member of their movement and a citizen of Judea. There was hatred enough to go around in those days, God knows, but it was all used up between the Seleucid family of Herod and his supporters and the people of Judea, the Jews. It flowed in equal measure from both sides, one to the other. But the Jews, most certainly, would not have hated Jesus, simply because he was one of them, the people who were God’s chosen. He was a Jew.

“And they certainly did not crucify him, either, because that was simply beyond their power. Crucifixion was a Roman punishment. Nor did the Jews—as a mob—ever scream for Jesus’ blood and call down God’s wrath upon themselves and upon their children for his death. That is the worst kind of madness to claim, and to believe. Think about it calmly for a moment. Can you imagine any crowd of people, or even any mob, calling down the wrath of God upon their own heads and their children’s heads, and doing it not only voluntarily but in unison, unrehearsed? It defies belief, and yet people believe it. You do, don’t you?”

“Believe it?” Stephen floundered, open mouthed, before his uncle took pity on him.

“Of course you do, because you have no choice. Because throughout your life, ever since you were old enough to understand, the most important people in your life have been telling you that’s the truth, that you have to believe it, because if you don’t, you’ll be excommunicated, you will be damned to burn in everlasting fires. The Church tells you that. The priests tell you that. A monk will tell you that if you stop one on the road and ask him. And there is nothing, anywhere, to suggest otherwise, or to teach you otherwise, or to explain anything in alternative terms. Nothing. So what else can you do but believe what you are told?” He stopped suddenly, dramatically, holding up one hand towards the younger man.

“But let us think about crucifixion, you and I, for just a while longer before we move on to other things—about the Crucifixion, about the way the Romans and the Jews sought to humiliate the Son of God by hanging him on a cross for all the world to mock, as though crucifixion were a special invention designed to shame and humiliate Jesus. You know all about that, don’t you?”

“I …” Stephen hesitated, then raised a shoulder defensively. “All about that? I would have said yes moments ago, but now …”

“Quite right you are, too. Right to doubt. Right to question, because there was nothing special involved in any part of the Crucifixion, except perhaps for the man to whom it happened. It was a commonplace event. Crucifixion was the most common form of death for criminals in Roman times, whether the criminals were thieves, miscreants, murderers, rebels, political dissidents, or deserters from the Roman armies. If you were deemed worthy of death by the Romans, you died. If you were wealthy or well connected, you might die quickly, beheaded or garroted, but if your death was required by the state, as a public spectacle, a lesson and a deterrent to others, you were crucified and died slowly, in great pain. Jesus was condemned as a political criminal—a rebel. And that was how he died. And apart from the people who knew him and were close to him, no one really cared.”

There was silence among the three men for some time after that, for neither of the two older men wished to add anything at that point, and Stephen plainly did not even know how to begin formulating a response. After a while, he rose to his feet and crossed to the table, where he helped himself to a cup of wine and stood sipping at it, staring at the wall in front of him while the other two waited, watching him. Finally, he gulped one great mouthful and swung around to face both of them, his voice truculent and challenging.

“You still have said nothing about how all this has anything to do with Saint Paul.”

Sir William raised his injured arm high and cupped his shoulder with his other hand as he flexed the joint, grimacing in discomfort. “You phrased your comment wrongly, Stephen. It was Paul who had to do with all this,” he said through gritted teeth. He lowered his arm and released pent-up air explosively between his lips. “Paul changed everything, Stephen, from what it was then into what it is today—from Jewish to gentile. It was all Paul’s doing. He stripped what was there in Jerusalem—the movement that Jesus and his followers called the Way—of all its Jewishness, and thereby of all its true meaning, and turned it into something inoffensive and innocuous, an idea bland enough to be accepted by the Romans. He stripped away all the rigid, unyielding, and unpopular Jewish morality and rewrapped the story in the style of his ancient Greek ancestors, with their love of fantastic, dramatic, fictitious, and completely implausible tales. And in so doing, he changed Jesus from a simple Jewish man of high ideals and stern patriotism into the Son of God, born of a virgin.”

The Count rose to his feet and stretched mightily. “You have heard enough here this afternoon to set your head a-spinning,” he said to Stephen. “So much information, and all so sudden and so unexpected. I know that, and so does William here. But remember what we said earlier, about time. You have your entire lifetime in which to explore and re-examine what we have told you, and you have full access to all the records in our archives, together with equal access to our most learned brethren, who will be happy and honored to share their knowledge and their studies with you.

“All that we require of you is that you keep an open mind and be aware that there are always other points of view on any topic that the human mind can countenance. In this particular instance of the man known as Saint Paul, you will learn that there are voices from the past, from his own time, that state quite clearly that he was not who he appeared to be, and that he was not altogether wholesome in many aspects of his character, including his truthfulness. There are others, equally strong and cogent, who maintain that his vaunted Romanness led to his being a toady and a confidant and spy of the emperor Nero. Still others indicate—and I make no accusations here, I am merely saying they indicate—that he may have been directly involved in the murder of James, the brother of Jesus. After the death of Jesus, James took his place as leader of the movement that we in the Order call the Jerusalem Assembly. James had no time for Paul and made no secret of his disapproval of the man, while Paul clearly saw James—and said so in his own writings—as a threat, a deterrent and a hindrance to the spreading of God’s word to the gentiles. He denounced and denigrated James accordingly as being worthy of arrest and punishment. There is no doubt that he was right about the hindrance, for James was a Jew, one of the people chosen by God to be His own, and there was no place in James’s world for gentiles.

“There is far more to all of this, of course, than most men know, but we in the Order, who can trace our direct descent from the Essenes, the Poor Men of the Jerusalem Assembly itself, and who acknowledge the Way that they perceived and by which they lived, have a duty to maintain a clear line of sight from here to where this all began. Bear that in mind at all times from this moment on, and be true to the vows you made in being Raised.” He stopped and eyed Stephen sympathetically. “You look baffled. And so you should. But now you need to go away and think about everything we have said here today. And if you have more questions, come back and ask them, of either one of us. Go now in peace.”