The Tongues of Men or Angels

Twenty-one Years after the Crucifixion

In a world composed largely of city states, there are many great cities. Paul has by now tasted not a few of them: Philippi, the home of his new sponsor Lydia, from which he has only recently departed; Tarsus, his birthplace, itself is no mean city; then there is Jerusalem, site of the Temple, which in turn houses the Holy of Holies. Though Paul now doubts those twin pillars are as important as the self-elevated Jerusalem fellowship would have you believe; Pharisees and hypocrites, chief among them those other Pillars. But Jerusalem remains undoubtedly a hallowed place: where the Saviour was sacrificed. And then there is Rome, where Paul suspects he must eventually head to win this battle of wills with the phoneys who plague and beset him, trapped in the world of their outdated Torah laws. How Paul would love to be a citizen of Rome, the centre of the Empire, the centre of the world. But for all that, for all these great cities, there is something more marvellous about Athens: the cultural pinnacle.

Every man of worth should stay in Athens for a spell, soaking in the learning and knowledge that swells from its every street and shaded grove. Paul’s travel-calloused feet feel quite light as he trips the paving of Athens. At each corner there is a sculpture, and though the outdated gods depicted are imaginary, you can still admire the skill of the men who created the stone marvels. Statues are just empty shells and offer no temptation to the strong in spirit. Only the feeble need to fear graven images. How James would likely tremble in this place. And Cephas, Old Stony himself, scared of mere stones!

The Athenian buildings seem dusted with white light, as if God’s favour is poured out upon them. Even the tenements and the store fronts have an otherworldly glow. And over it all, the Acropolis, built up on giant casement blocks merged into cliff rocks, as if it all surges as one from beneath the earth.

Paul has every confidence that, after a span preaching in the marketplace, these noble philosophers will realize the wisdom of his words and insist that he preach to them all in the court of the Areopagus. Or in one or all of Athens’s great gymnasia, the schools of learning, where philosophers refresh and instruct the minds. Tarsus was a city of great schools, places wise men studied and taught, but Athens has schools far grander. Centres of learning to which the whole known world owes a debt.

Silas and Timothy, Paul has sent away to check on the community founded in Thessalonica, perhaps even now suffering interlopers from Jerusalem. Paul must stay here alone, fearful for the state of his children. But what is quite certain is that, upon his companions’ return, they will find Paul has firmly established a new church — a new base of operations, to replace that of Antioch — in this great city.

Paul is misdirected initially, when he asks passers-by to show him the way to the marketplace. It seems the agora he seeks is more properly the old marketplace; most of the vulgar daily trade is now carried out at a new spot to the east; it is the old agora where philosophers pursue intellectual pleasures and where Paul is sure he will finally encounter minds as great as his own.

But even the new marketplace is not entirely to be scorned: it, too, has its merits. A man plays a kithara, the more learned brother to the lyres you would find in marketplaces in other cities. Even in its street markets, it seems, Athens exceeds. The seriousness of the player’s face echoes the beautiful notes he produces. Paul has half a mind to chip a copper quadrans coin into the earthenware pot the player has set out for just such procurements. But ministry must come first. Nothing can be allowed to precede the mission, and who knows what future need Paul may have of that one small copper coin?

A sword-swallower eases a thin blade down through his mouth into a straightened and straining throat and Paul mentally logs the picture. It is perhaps an image he can use to win converts: ‘Just as a sword-swallower engulfs the blade, so will this world be swallowed when the Christ returns.’ No, not that. But something. He knows he cannot expect any acquaintance at all with Israelite texts among these pagans, so he needs to form some other point of connection.

At the edge of the market square, a boy child flips up a wicker ball with his feet, keeping it in the air lightsomely, motiveless. Oblivious to passers-by, no platter out for bread or coin. Dancing the more beautifully because he dances only for the dance.

Even the tongues of the errand runners and stallholders sing. They do not speak street Greek here, they speak with the elaborate high Greek style of Pericles and Aristotle. Paul is invigorated and enlivened by the chance to debate with the thinkers of this great city and to sway them to his beliefs. Oh, how will it be to have such great men at his side: the elite of the world? While James’s Jerusalem church holds sway only over its own parochial confines. Those in that introverted fiefdom claim to be the chosen people, but who could be better chosen than these fine Athenian citizens? Here people even smell more pleasant. You can tell they bathe with an urbane regularity. There can be no place more cultured than Athens, more learned, more devoted to erudition, purely for enlightenment’s own most sacred sense.

Eventually Paul finds the agora he seeks: the market place of ideas, where the Athenians, with their renowned thirst for knowledge, prefer nothing better than to hear of and discuss every new belief. Paul knows the conventions of Athenian debate from his own boyhood lessons: each man has a chance to present his own case and will be listened to attentively, without hassle or heckle. It is most certain that among the minds of these most noble, refined of men, Paul’s risen Jesus will find a haven.

It is easy for Paul to gather a small crowd about him before he begins. The sophisticated philosophers can doubtless perceive him to be one of their own. And on the way to the agora Paul came across something that gave him an idea with which to link to these people, who, though highly cultivated, are nonetheless unknowing of the scriptures.

‘Men of Athens,’ Paul begins. ‘You are too superstitious.’ There is a slight murmur at this accusation from the gathering, but Paul shocks them only to save them.

‘On the way here today, I found an altar inscribed TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. So anxious are you not to miss out on a god that you have made a place to worship one you don’t even know about. You are unaware of the very thing you worship. But let me tell you, the God you are blind to does not live in altars built by human hands. The divine being does not abide in images. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Because I bring you good news: this world is soon coming to an end.’ Paul pauses, to let the crowd take in the grandeur of his words.

‘The world is soon going to end,’ one man says. ‘And how is that good news?’

A titter ripples through the crowd. The man who spoke has a pate as unadorned as Paul’s own, as bald as Plato’s. Paul wishes that God would similarly dash a tortoise into it. But no such wrath is evidenced. The man has a neck like a tortoise for that matter: stretched out and crinkled along an over-elongated length.

‘Idolatry must cease, all other gods are nothing,’ Paul continues, ‘for the one true God has set a day when He will judge the world. Time runs short and shouldn’t be wasted in worshipping statues.’

Another man from the crowd interrupts, against everything Paul had been taught about Athenian convention: ‘But our philosophers have long said it is wrong to confuse a mere statue with the god represented by it. You’ll not find people in Athens who believe that an idol is a magical creature. In fact there are many who believe that all the deities are merely manifestations of a divine urge, which might well be not so different from your one-God. Plato wrote as much more than four centuries ago. This is no new idea. But we are not so rude, or so certain, as to push our feelings on others as fact. What makes you so convinced that you are right, that all the tutelary deities who’ve served us well enough are nothing?’

‘God has given evidence of this to everyone, by raising from the dead the man He has appointed to judge you all in the day soon to come.’

‘So, a bit like Osiris, then?’ someone says.

‘This isn’t philosophy,’ another Athenian mutters, already turning to wander off. ‘He’s just a propagandist for foreign gods.’

‘No, not like Osiris,’ Paul shouts. ‘Jesus was taken and tortured and killed to become a sacrifice for mankind’s sins and reborn to be a proof and a judge over us.’

‘Sounds precisely like Osiris, then! Who is this charlatan? He picks up scraps like a sparrow on the docks, but he mistakes plagiarism for learning. He has woven bits of other religions into a nest of his own and thinks himself a prophet.’

‘But this is no Oriental myth. This is true.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It came to me in a vision.’

The crowd erupts into laughter now.

Paul’s cheeks scald, like a bronze in the sun, with discomposure and anger.

‘Well, there’s no more certain evidence than a dream.’ It is a gangly beak-nosed man who says this; curse his mother’s encounter with a heron.

‘Not a dream, a vision. A waking encounter with the risen Jesus.’

‘There’s a beggar to be found by the Odeon steps who daily encounters Zeus and by night is visited by Hecate. How are his gods imagined yet yours are real, or he a madman but you a mystic?’

‘The true God does not come and go,’ Paul says. ‘God is all around. In times of trouble, famine, war, hardship, loneliness, God is always to be found.’

‘Which begins to look suspicious …’

People are openly laughing now. The old man with the tortoise neck who started it all is visibly weeping with mirth, wiping the tears with the back of his hand. But Paul is made of stronger stuff than they can know. Paul has been stoned and scourged; these wiseacres will not best him with words.

‘Jesus died and rose again, and we who are now alive will witness the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sonor of God’s trumpet. Jesus will descend from the skies, and the dead will rise.’

‘But if he doesn’t come, it won’t be the end of the world …’ another man heckles.

‘Through the death and resurrection of the Messiah Jesus, God has promised eternal life to all who are faithful to The Way.’

‘But that’s just what’s offered to those reborn into the sects of not only Osiris and Isis, but Dionysus, Atargattis, Mithras, Orphism, the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Great Mother cult as well. We’ve seen many so-called “Mystery Religions” arrive. What is no mystery is that their fantasies of a blessed, plentiful, heavenly hereafter resonate with people who suffer with servitude, hunger and despair in their present. But just to wish for something doesn’t make it true.’ The man who says this wears a tunic off the shoulder and carries a bag and a staff, like a Cynic philosopher.

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Paul yammers, at the edge of self-possession.

‘To call you a liar would suggest that I see some deliberate volition on your part. There are many types of liar in this world. But the best liars, the truly great liars, are those who can fool even themselves and they are not really liars at all. So, no, I’m not calling you a liar,’ and the man says this with a look almost of sympathy, which vexes Paul even more than the laughter.

‘Doubters! You’ll see the veracity. We’ll all know the truth of this soon enough: the Day of the Lord is coming. Like a thief in the night. You will not know the hour, but it will be soon. The new age will dawn within our lifetimes. It could be any moment. Sudden destruction will arrive as certain and inevitable as labour pains on a pregnant woman. And when it does, your mocking will sound as hollow as your pride, O great Athenians, wallowing in the grandeur of times that will never return to you. The glory of Jesus will live for ever.’

Paul snatches his things from the ground. He would force his way through the ignorant idiots, but they peel apart for him anyway.

In his affronted hurry he leaves the agora the wrong way and has to double back a circuitous route to avoid bumping into any of the people he has just stormed from. The imbeciles, clinging to history: they are not ready in this city to absorb any new thing.

The city stinks, Paul notices, making his way back to his lodgings through the new market. Filth cakes the buildings. Rats run in the gutters and barely larger worm-riddled dogs roam everywhere.

He spends a copper coin on a loaf of bread to supper on. The stall maid passes it with a flash of hairy dank armpit, but speaks as though she’s spouting Socrates. Plum in her mouth, she has. You would think nothing of importance has happened to these poor sods since the death of Demosthenes three hundred years back. Can’t they see the world has moved on?

The kid is still inanely flicking a stupid wicker ball about. The people watching him are probably pederasts. Athens is famed for them. And even worse: men fornicating with their own kind, with grown men.

The pompous kithara player is still there too. Making dumb expressions, like a cow drunk from eating fermented apples. As if there were something oh-so-important about the process of twanging strings on a box.

Paul is forced to spend nearly four weeks in Athens. An elderly and infirm city, sick from decrepitude. Mired in the memories of a great past. Unable to accept any new thing for fear it would signal Athenian irrelevance to the future. You should weep for that future, elderly Athens, Paul thinks, because you will have no part in it. He is anxious for news from Timothy and sick of this scum city, but cannot leave because Timothy would be unable to find him if he did.

Instead of preaching, Paul wanders through the Acropolis. The Parthenon is adorned with an elaborate frieze running all about it, depicting an Athenian festival, illustrating yet again the overbearing overconfidence of these vain fools: who but such deluded snobs would place themselves so high? Ordinary Athenians carved from unblemished marble, painted and gilded with no thought of the cost to purse or soul. Such pretentious glories will yet be snatched away, Paul is sure of that. These proud and self-important Athenians will rue the day they scorned the Apostle of the Gentiles: Paul, who will judge the angels, will surely judge Athens.

They can keep their giant Parthenon temple with blasphemous statues of skirted Athena, holding up the ceiling with her head. Goddess of wisdom supposedly: all they give a shekel for is knowledge in this half-damned hell-hole; Paul would sooner be a fool, if this is what wisdom looks like.