The Tongues of Men or Angels

Three Days before the Crucifixion

A saw-scaled viper lies motionless, shrugged over a boulder, trying to warm its night-cooled frame in the first of the sun. It slowly lifts its head and flicks a hay-fork tongue to taste the breeze, as if sleepily becoming aware of a presence. As it does so Cephas hacks at it with his stubby iron sword. The serpent’s head is not cut cleanly: it is still attached by the leathery skin of one side, though its inner flesh is exposed and its cold blood spurts. The snake tries to strike, but its head flops away, past right angle from its body, like a snapped flower stalk. Cephas brings down his blade again and severs the neck fully this time. The viper’s tail thrashes erratically, then falls off the rock and lies still.

‘Can the snake help being a snake?’ James the Lesser asks.

‘No more than a Roman can help being a Roman, but he is still responsible for his actions,’ Cephas says.

‘And what were the snake’s actions so worthy of death?’

‘Being a snake.’

They withdrew to the safety of Bethany last night. Now, once again, they look down to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. The city walls zigzag across the horizon, in crisp lines like broken matzah bread — the unrisen loaf of affliction.

Below them — descending past Gethsemane to the Kidron valley — are excavated burial caves. Those of the aristocratic Sadducee families have carved entrance ways and inscriptions. Not for the poor such finery in mortality. This valley is the boundary line between the living and the dead. The scriptures say the resurrection will start here at the end of days. Yeshua says this is the end of days.

The valley is on fire. Even the Temple — high above the city ramparts — is part obscured by the smoke that rises from the steep side of the Kidron below it. The plume looks dirty-pink in the morning sun. It lifts to the same height as the holy white smoke that already flows from the pyre of the Temple platform, then both veer off in the strength of an elevated western wind.

Fumes would fill the tomb caves were it not for the round stones rolled across their fronts. Even so, some smoke must be seeping through the cracks and the fissures to mingle with the flesh-desiccated bones within.

The fire is probably a deliberate burning, started to encourage regrowth and to prevent bigger fires later. If the grass of the Kidron valley grows too long and dry it can burn in a conflagration fierce enough to make even those in the city fear. Grass fire could never pierce the great limestone walls, but sparks can fly on the wind and ignite from within. Jerusalem is a city under permanent threat of combustion.

‘Moses was spoken to by a burning bush and below there is a multitude. Perhaps it’s a sign,’ Jochanan says.

‘Yes, it’s a sign. It’s a sign that the goatherds are sick of the gorse scrub and the dumped rubbish,’ says Cephas.

Though not the palm-fronded entrance of yesterday, Yeshua and the disciples have still accumulated a large following by the time they climb the great stone stairway of the Temple. Many know who Yeshua is — some have travelled far to be part of this; others are simply Passover pilgrims, who join the mass of people heading in the small-step crush of the crowd to the Temple gates.

The giant stairs — broad as a field that could feed a Galilee family — are carved from the very rock of the Jerusalem Mount; they are an integral part of this sacred country and the Temple is the holiest place on earth, the one and only seat in all the world where the Israelites can make sacrifice. It is bigger even than the Acropolis or the Temple of Jupiter at Rome; the Jerusalem Temple is perhaps the largest site of worship known to man. Even Gentiles journey here, just to wonder at the magnificence.

Cephas and the rest of the Galileans come from a place where few buildings even have a second floor and a village can mean a hundred houses, or half that. Throughout the year they have followed Yeshua, they have stayed away from the metropolises and even large towns, sticking to rural backwaters when they entered habitations at all. And now they are facing a structure that soars as if it might scrape the heavens. Each hewn-rock block is as high as a man’s chest, held together with no bonding material save their own unimaginable weight. Every new row looms just a finger’s width back from the one below in an imperceptible pyramid, forty rows high. And that monstrous construct is just the platform for the Temple itself — white marble, plated with gold — to stand upon.

Cephas is a man built for battle, nicknamed not only Rocky but also ‘Baryona’ — Outlaw. He could be a gladiator if he did not belong to God. He might be one yet, if the Romans take him alive some day. Cephas has wrists as thick as many men’s ankles. A head as broad, as jowled and as menacing as the giant mastiffs the Romans use as dogs of war. But Cephas is not a fool. And Cephas knows what they are about to do. And Cephas feels his stomach coil like a boat rope as he mounts the steps.

The first courtyard of the Temple is open to all, even non-Jews. Though covering most of the thirty-six-acre precinct, large as a great lake, it is almost a bazaar. Awash with traders shouting, the yawp and squeal of livestock and the Babel babble of foreign tongues. Someone watching from the Roman-garrisoned Antonia Fortress looking down on the scene — and such there are — would not be sure if the great crowd that entered the Temple at one time is spreading throughout the court deliberately, or only through necessity of the narrow spaces between stalls. But spread they do, dispersing in every direction, seeping into the corners, strolling in groups of two or three to admire the frescos, or to take the shade of a colonnade, or to haggle half-heartedly with a stallholder.

The Twelve stay close to Yeshua, with his brother, James the Lesser, to one side and Cephas to the other, Jochanan behind, the Three Pillars who support and protect Yeshua always.

But for the opulence of the court and the magnificence of the Temple, draped with ornate tapestries of scarlet and purple, this could be any market square in the civilized world. Though peculiarly specialist: most of the table traders are money-changers and many of the stallholders selling animals for sacrifice. Doves for the poorest, oxen for the richest and, this being the time of festival, lambs for everyone with a family large enough to eat one. The trade is necessary: the sacrifices are laid down in the sacred law and travellers can hardly come — often from far-off lands — carrying a live sacrifice and keeping it pure. Likewise, the Temple tax must be paid — Moses himself commanded that every Jew over twenty years must donate a silver half shekel by the Passover of each year. The tax is a sacred duty and it is the one levy in this country that does not fill Roman coffers. The exchange of coins for a single Tyrian shekel, to ensure that all men pay the same, is a necessity; money-changing is no abomination. Yeshua is not against these things.

But if Judaea were free, she could mint her own coins and would not need to suffer using those with graven images and words like ‘Divine Augustus’ upon them. And in this occupied land, the Temple tax and this Temple trade silts the purses of collaborators and conspirators: the high priests, who bribe and fawn their way to their appointment; the Sadducees, with their lavish houses in the upper city, their servants and imported slaves; the Herodians and their aristocrat cronies, who profit from the status quo, with their Roman finery and Latin education and affected accents. It is they who decide who can trade in the courts of God’s Temple. And they who determine how much must be paid for the privilege. On God’s Mount, by the Holy of Holies wherein God Himself dwells.

Yeshua leads the Twelve to the slots in the wall where pilgrims post their donations. A widow precedes them there. Too old to marry again. Too young yet to die. There are many widows in Judaea these days. Her face is raisined from fieldwork. Her clothes would scarcely be worth a rag merchant’s trouble of taking to market. Her bare feet are pocked from the bite of fleas or mosquitoes. She places one tiny copper lepton at the slot, the smallest coin there is, and turns behind, to see who watches her in her shame. But her eyes meet those of Yeshua and he smiles at her. Yeshua’s smile is a half-smile, just one side of his face changes and this asymmetry somehow reinforces how symmetrical he is. How handsome. His eyes and skin dark, like a Bedouin’s. His black hair a lamb’s-wool tangle. Yeshua’s bearing is humble, but even this widow — who knows nothing of him, whose eyes are clouded with cataracts — can tell that he’s a prince.

Yeshua shouts, so all nearby can hear him, even through the chatter of commerce. A voice much practised in addressing crowds. An ability to carry born from crying in the wilderness. ‘This poor widow has contributed more to the Temple than all the wealthy men of Jerusalem combined. For all of them have given a little from their great abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’

The widow shrinks, to be suddenly the object of so much attention, then seems to feel a strength pouring from Yeshua’s presence and straightens again. Straighter than she has stood in years.

Like a dropped anchor, the whole Temple is suddenly tethered to this point; ripples of awareness flow outward from it.

Yeshua motions to Jochanan, who hands the widow some coins. Perhaps a hundredfold what she has just donated.

The Sadducee priest who monitors this section of the courtyard — at his back a squad of Temple Guards — comes to confront Yeshua. The Sadducees don’t like pretenders to the throne and they don’t like talk of rich and poor, divisive talk, and they especially don’t like those who speak openly against Rome. This priest must know the views of Yeshua, perhaps thinks to entrap him in arrestable offence. The priest moves forward, but he does not come quite face to face with Yeshua: he stops behind a money-changer — a corpulent man, seated at a small table — a human barrier between them.

‘So you approve of paying the Temple tax at least, Rabban,’ the priest says. ‘Now tell me, should we also pay taxes to Rome?’

Yeshua picks up a denarius from the money-changer’s table. The man looks affronted, begins to protest, but sees Yeshua’s grim brow and glances to Cephas’s bulk and sits the fuck back down. ‘Whose image is this on the coin?’ Yeshua asks.

‘It is Tiberius Caesar’s,’ says the priest.

‘But doesn’t God’s law forbid graven images?’

‘You know that it does.’

‘Ah, yes, I remember it now,’ Yeshua says: ‘You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water; you shall not bow down to them or serve them. And who do you say Caesar is?’ Yeshua asks. ‘Is he a man or a god?’

‘There is only one God.’

‘But this coin of Caesar’s says he is a god, the son of a god. And now you say he is just a man. So, do you think Caesar is a liar or a fool?’

The priest stammers a non-response. The crowd laughs. Not just the disciples, but all who stand and watch. The priest should leave it now. The priest probably even knows himself that he should leave it now, but pride is a powerful wind.

‘You still haven’t answered me, Rabban,’ he spits, and he motions the guards to draw closer to him. ‘Should we pay the taxes of Rome?’

‘If I pay tribute to a man who says he is a god, whose image is graven on the very means of payment, is graven on the standards of his armies, is graven on the statues of his towns, am I not bowing down and serving a graven image? Am I not breaking God’s commandment?’

The priest doesn’t answer. He looks conflicted because he has achieved his aim: he has Yeshua in publicly witnessed sedition, but it has not run how he would have liked.

‘You look confused, friend,’ Yeshua says. ‘Do I need to make myself plainer? Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s! Italy belongs to Caesar. Let it pay him tribute. Let him tax Egypt, if he must. Syria, too, for what we care. But this is God’s land. Covenanted to God’s people. It is forbidden to give God’s things to a heathen. The fruits of this land are tithed to God. Render unto God what is God’s!’

And Yeshua grasps the edge of the money-changer’s table before him and flips it full circle into the air. The Sadducee and the guards scatter to avoid its landing point. Coins spin and roll about the ground, graven heads of Caesar clattering upon paving.

‘This place should be a house of prayer, but you robbers run it as your private den,’ Yeshua roars now. And he pulls the bull-whip of cords from an oxen stockman’s hand and slashes it across the face of the Sadducee priest, who crouches and cowers.

One of the Temple Guards comes at Yeshua to grab the whip. But Cephas drops him to the floor. A punch from Cephas is as compelling as the hand of Fate. The guard is not a small man, but he is knocked down as if a child by a horse kick.

And havoc has been unleashed now. The followers of The Way, who had dispersed throughout the courtyard, all begin to smash tables, to shake free the doves from their split-wood cages and to drive the bigger beasts onwards into the chaos; they need little encouragement to try to flee, for dumb beasts are not so dumb that they cannot smell death. And the followers beat those who try to resist them and some of the richer merchants they beat even if they don’t resist. Because a new time is coming and the last shall at last come first.

The guard troop around the priest backs hastily away and the Sadducee himself scrambles up and flees with them. And the rest of the Temple Guards stationed there that day draw their swords, but only that they might safely escape: they make no attempt to intervene in the carnage. The numbers are unrealistically against them. They take flight through the western gate along the arched bridge that leads directly to the upper city, a route normally forbidden to anyone save the priests and the Herodians. But by the time the guards have forced their way to it, all the priests and Herodians have already fled.

The Romans who watch from the high towers of the Antonia Fortress do not intervene either. Not yet. Perhaps they think this is a Jewish problem, best left to Jews. Perhaps they rightly realize that such high blood will only be inflamed by Roman boots in the Temple. They cannot afford a full-scale eruption of Jerusalem at festival time. Or perhaps they just don’t care. Perhaps the only reason Yeshua is still alive at all is that the Romans have such disdain for the Jews and their doings.

But Yeshua and his followers drive out those who sold and those who controlled the Temple, and they overturn the tables of the money-changers and take the money for the poor. And since so many of them are themselves poor, some find that transaction to be swift. And they smash the stalls of those who sell pigeons. And lambs and goats and unblemished oxen roam about the broken wood and the golden frescos. And the gates are blocked by men of The Way and no Sadducee-sanctioned trade is allowed in the Temple for the remainder of the day. And when dusk falls, in one unstoppable mass the followers of Yeshua — many laden with new acquisitions — flood through the twin porticoes of the Huldah Gates, still whooping and hollering of victory and Yahweh, out into the scattered safety of the hill country and the desert behind the Mount of Olives.

And the smoke continues to rise from the Kidron valley, long after they have shaken its dust from their feet.