The Tongues of Men or Angels

Twenty Years after the Crucifixion

Yeshua might well have approved of this community in Antioch, Cephas thinks. It is a strange thing, all right, to have Gentiles and Jews sitting down together like brothers. But strange is not the same as wrong. The prophets of old said that, when the Kingdom of God comes, every people will look to Israel for rule and guidance. Just as Zechariah put it: In those days, ten men of every language and nation will hold tightly to each Jew by the hem of his garments saying, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard how God is with you.’ In the time shortly to arrive, the Israelites will be the priests of all the world. So perhaps these people here at Antioch are just the first fruits of that.

This is Cephas’s debut trip to a foreign land, if you don’t count Samaria, and you can’t count Samaria. Scar-throated Jochanan didn’t think it was a good idea for Cephas to come. But Cephas is heartened now he’s arrived to witness this curious symbiotic synagogue and to see it so thriving.

Because it’s all very well for Jochanan to say that things should be this way, things ought to be thus and such. Things are as they are. It’s been a year since the meeting with Paul at Jerusalem, and Cephas thought it was past time that one of the Pillars visited the following at Antioch, to see what it was all about.

The church meets in a riverside warehouse, which a wealthy merchant has given them on permanent loan. It was damaged in an earthquake and parts of its stone walls still bear the marks of that, cracks jagged and random as the tracks of startled hens.

Paul, Barnabas and some of the other brothers live there, in canopied quarters they have fashioned, a kind of tent-village within the building, like internal Bedouin. But any of The Way are welcome to pass by at any time, and daily they do. And all of them gather for the commensal meal and prayers, held on the first day of every week so that the Jewish brothers can continue to observe the Sabbath, but all can join in together on the following evening.

And it’s on his first such evening that Cephas witnesses the collection being taken for the poor ones of Jerusalem, just as James had laid down to Paul. A Phrygian cap is passed around and each person places their donation deep within it, so that no one can note how much or how little a fellow can afford to give. But by the time it is returned to Paul, the cap is bulging and heavy, lumpen like a face stung by bees.

Perhaps they give especially generously because Cephas is here. It is hard for Cephas not to get a little swept away by his own celebrity. He is the first person these Antiochenes have met who knew Yeshua and they beam and gaze at him. Cephas is, of course, recognized and respected by many in Jerusalem too. But here believers even try to touch the blue-threaded tassels of his robe, as if they expect a little magic thereby to come upon them. Before the meal, some jostled and jockeyed one another for position, like boys at the beginning of a running race, to try to secure a place closer to Cephas’s.

Paul tells Cephas that Antioch’s dense-packed population is said to be more than four hundred thousand strong, with eighteen different ethnic districts confined within its walls. Not two years ago there were riots against the Jews and a great many died. Outside this warehouse of The Way is a city of mistrust and misunderstanding, gangs and rivalries, enmity and poverty. But in here all men are brothers and all men are fed.

And so Cephas breaks bread with them. Drivers, drovers, porters, bathhouse cleaners, tin-workers, merchants, shop attendants, carvers, coopers, labourers, blade-grinders, masons, sweepers, wea vers, artisans, tanners, spinners, stallholders, tailors, sailors, silversmiths, and even some slaves. Pierced and painted and branded, with hair and hat and apparel of every folk and fashion of the Empire. It is a marvel to behold. And Jochanan probably wouldn’t approve of it, but Cephas can’t help feeling that Yeshua might have.

For while it’s true that Yeshua never went to the Gentiles, didn’t he also say, in that parable about the feast: Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find. Yeshua only ever ate with Jews, it’s true, but within that he dined with sinners and whores, he welcomed any who would accept his message of rededication and repentance to bring about the new age. And, when you think about it, seemingly Yeshua never expected to die — he said back then that the new age would come within his lifetime; but since he did and it didn’t, everything subsequent has to be re-evaluated.

Paul calls the communal meal the Lord’s Supper, Cephas notices, which is a little odd. And he reverses the normal Israelite order, first blessing the bread and then the wine. And even the blessing is unusual: ‘We, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf,’ Paul says.

And he calls the wine the Cup of the Covenant. But aside from that, things are not so very different from community meals as the Nazarenes practise them in Jerusalem. And the table is spread with better food and Cephas has a belly for food. And the company is good. Though Paul, who sits next to Cephas, is also the most distant.

Paul has a livid blotch on his forehead. When Cephas first arrived, he thought it must be some minor injury. But over several weeks he notices that it has formed where Paul clutches his hand to his head when he seeks God’s guidance or prophesies. He pushes his fingers there — as if to govern utterances threatening to overwhelmingly burst forth — so hard that the place is becoming permanently bruised. It is a visible mark of Paul’s prodigious faith. But it must ache, Cephas thinks. It looks sore.

Cephas is unlettered — illiterate — and he admires Paul’s learning while watching him teach the community and new converts over those first weeks at Antioch. But Paul can also seem slightly shifty somehow. Cephas can’t quite batten down the sensation, much less define it, but it’s as if Paul is trying to be all things to all men. Around the Jews he acts like a Jew and accentuates and exaggerates his Jewishness. Around the Greeks you would never know he was a Jew at all: he acts like one of them, like a former pagan — even his accent changes. Perhaps that’s just the sign of a gifted orator, though, not disingenuous. There is no doubting that Paul has a compelling charisma. Whether he exhorts the followers to work, to pray, or to praise God in strange and startling tongues, he sweeps everyone along with his passion, like a mighty wave. Cephas half suspects that he is only really noticing little eddies of his own jealousy at Paul’s great gifts.

If Cephas hadn’t been chosen by Yeshua, he would still be a Galilee fisherman. His back would likely be strained and shredded as an old net by now. His face would be as dark and lined as the bruised skies before a storm. But he couldn’t in all honesty say he’d be less contented. There was something to be said for the simplicity of his life before The Way. When Yeshua was still around, Cephas had felt so alive and filled with hope. But he hadn’t needed to make any speeches or decisions back then; he had needed only to believe and protect. Now people look to Cephas to lead them. And Cephas doesn’t know if he was formed to lead; he doesn’t always know if his choices are the right ones.

James suffers from no such indecision. James is known as James the Just. And a few weeks into Cephas’s stay at Antioch, certain men of James’s come up from Jerusalem. At the head of them John-Mark. They wear black travelling cloaks and they bring black news.

‘I’ve spent the last year and more passing through all the communities of Paul’s I could find,’ John-Mark tells Cephas in private. ‘I back-tracked along the route he took in founding his groups. And things are not as he told you they were.’

Burdened with the news, Cephas begins to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles of Antioch. He no longer eats with them. The other Jews follow his lead. The hall divides into two. Split and separated, like the shell of a forbidden oyster.

Paul is energized and angered. He doesn’t even take Cephas aside. He confronts him publicly.

‘You are rending our community, Cephas. You’re a hypocrite: you were eating with the Gentile brothers contentedly and suddenly you break with them just because certain men have come from James.’ His face is puce with rage, the whole of it turned the same shade as the self-made bruise on his forehead.

‘But I didn’t know what I now do,’ Cephas says. ‘You haven’t been telling us the truth. With lies you might get ahead, Paul, but you can never go back. Yes, I sat with the Gentiles, but I presumed we were not eating forbidden foods. But now I hear you have been telling your followers to eat anything that is sold in the meat market without raising any question about it on the grounds of conscience. So how can I trust in what you serve us? How can I know it is not pork? How can I know that the meat was not strangled, or sacrificed to idols, or boiled with the blood still in it?’

‘You have lived like a Gentile in the weeks that you have been here, Cephas, not like a Jew. How is it that you suddenly remember to follow Jewish customs only when John-Mark comes? You told me yourself how with Yeshua you picked and ate corn on the Sabbath. Why was it all right to break the Torah then but not now?’

‘Yes, we did one time. We were starving and we were on the run. The Sabbath does not apply to men on the march. But in any event, like the Pharisees say, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. And there was precedent: King David’s men ate the consecrated bread, so why shouldn’t King Yeshua’s men have picked corn? It wasn’t that we wanted to break the Torah, we had to and it was allowable. It is not the same thing as in a period of plenty to eat meat sacrificed to idols, as I might have in your Lord’s Supper. Can you tell me with any surety that I haven’t?’

But John-Mark interrupts before Paul can reply. John-Mark’s dark eyes are as cold as those of Paul are on fire. ‘Why do you even call it the Lord’s Supper?’ John-Mark says. ‘Those are the words they use in the rituals of mystery religions. They have no meaning in Judaism.’

‘Who was speaking to you?’ Paul says. ‘You who deserted us at Perga and I hear have since been spying on our fellowships, following our path, like a jackal hoping to poach the prey of a lion. How can you of all people confront me, John-Mark, you who witnessed the miracle of my blinding the false preacher Elymas?’

‘I saw a man taken from the room, struck sick. But I couldn’t say that I saw you do it and I couldn’t say it was a miracle. There seem to be a lot of false preachers around of late, there seems to be a lot of blindness … James the Just told you that your converts must follow at the least the simple restrictions given to Noah, especially not to eat blood. You have not only broken this, but you are telling them the very wine they drink is transformed into blood. Turned into Yeshua’s blood! What insanity is this? If it were true, it would be cannibalism, it would be akin to human sacrifice, but since it is not true, it is blasphemy and lies. Deceits have no place in this movement. Leave rites of wine turning to blood and food turning to flesh to the magical papyruses and the devotees of Dionysius and Mithras. These things are abhorrent to Israelites and would have been to Yeshua.’

‘But that is the whole point. You do not know Him. Your Jesus was a fleshly man. Mine is the resurrected Jesus. He has spoken to me directly. You cannot presume to know Him better. You know only the things that He was, not what He is.’

‘What he is,’ John-Mark says. ‘What he is! You have been telling your followers that your Jesus is a pre-existent being, a god-spirit-thing formed from before the creation of the world. The Son of God, not as all Israel’s kings were known, but as quite literally the birth child of Jehovah. After the fashion that pagans believe Alexander the Great to be the son of Zeus and Caesar Augustus the son of Apollo. Do you deny it?’

‘Give up this madness, Paul,’ Cephas says. He is pleading, but from a person of his size even petition can seem like a thinly veiled threat. ‘Yeshua was something more than other men, of course he was. He was a prophet and a king, the anointed one. But he was not a god. I knew him. I saw him spit. I saw him shit. I saw his feet scabbed from brush and stone; hard though they were, they were mortal feet. I saw his skin blistered with mosquito bites from sunsets spent hip deep in river baptisms. I saw him eat, I saw him piss. He was no god. There is only one God.’

‘Yet you can believe this very mortal Jesus is still alive and returning to earth to bring the new age?’ Paul says.

‘Yes, he is now with God and will be back,’ John-Mark snaps. ‘Like Methuselah, King Hiram, Bithiah, Serach, the sons of Korah, Eved-Melekh, Elijah, Enoch and Eliezer. They did not die, but they were not gods.’

‘But you know your scriptures better than any of us, Paul,’ Cephas says, trying to be conciliatory. ‘Reread the Prophets and the Torah. Don’t trust only in these voices that you think you hear.’ Cephas opens his arms. There is still time; he would hug Paul and end this fray. But Paul shrinks from him.

‘Come to me, Paul,’ Cephas says. ‘Embrace me once more as a friend and we will forgive and forget your errors. These have been confusing, uncertain years for us all, but we must follow James the Just and the path that Yeshua laid in his lifetime. Return to your brothers and to the Torah.’

‘The Torah of Moses was never intended to be permanent. It came only through the tongues of angels, through imperfect mediation, and now it has been superseded by the new gospel given to me directly by God.’

John-Mark folds his arms in such a way as to push out the muscles, perhaps unintentionally but with inherent menace. ‘You say our laws came only through the tongues of angels. Only! Well, I say your words are only the words of a man. You’re a liar, Saul of Tarsus, and you should leave.’

Paul looks about the hall; the Antiochenes stare at the floor, at their dust-dragged toes, at the cracks in the walls and the holes in the surfaces of things. They are not with him.

‘Leave I will,’ Paul says. ‘I’ll be glad to, happy to have you gone from my sight. And the Lord long since decreed that mine is to be a missionary existence. Come, Barnabas, old friend, let’s get our things. The pilgrim road is calling us once more.’

Barnabas the Cypriot has tears not just in his eyes but down his cheeks and dripping into his beard. He looks like a cloth torn in two. But he shuffles to stand with Cephas and John-Mark.

‘I love you, Paul,’ Barnabas croaks, struggling to speak at all. ‘You know that I do. But Cephas was Yeshua’s right hand, his hearth guard, his chamberlain. James was his most beloved disciple and his brother. How can I go against them and still say that I follow The Way?’

‘Even you, Barnabas, even you?’ Paul looks through him. ‘So be it. I will follow my own way then. We’ll all know soon enough who was right. Already the axe of God’s judgment is poised, eager to sever the roots of the trees. And every tree that does not produce good fruit will be hacked down and thrown into the fire.’