Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians. Elizabeth Miller
Law, not in the suppression of heresy," he said bluntly. "Furthermore, my work here is not yet complete. Wilt thou excuse me, my brother?"
"Let me not keep thee from thy duty," Saul answered courteously.
"Joel! Come with me," Eleazar commanded, and together the two disappeared into the interior of the college.
Then the young man who had held his place came out of the shadows into the broad beam of the sun, which fell now over Saul.
"Peace to thee, Saul," he said; "peace and greeting." The voice, in contrast to the tones of the men who had lately discussed, was very calm and level, restrained by cultivation, yet one which is never characteristic of an undecided nature.
"Thou, Marsyas!" Saul exclaimed in sudden recognition. He extended his hands to meet the other's in a greeting that was more affectionate than conventional. The young man with sudden impulsiveness raised the hands and pressed them to his breast.
"Saul! Saul!" he repeated with a quiver of emotion in his voice.
"And none hath supplanted me in thy loves, Marsyas?" Saul smiled. "Art thou come hither for instruction? Am I to have thee by me now in Jerusalem?"
The glow of warmth in the rabbi's manner did not contribute its confidence to the young man. He seemed not less troubled than moved. With searching eyes, he looked down from his superior height into Saul's face. As the two stood together, physical extremes could not have been more perfect.
The rabbi was not well-formed, and his frame had a note of feebleness in its make-up in spite of its youth and flesh. The face was pale, the eyes so deep-set as to appear sunken, the hair, thin, curling and lightly silvered, the beard, short, full and touched with the same early frost. Though no recent alien blood ran in his veins, his features were only moderately characteristic of the sons of Jacob. He was not erect, and the stoop in his shoulders was more extreme than the mere relaxation from rigidity, yet less pronounced than actual curvature. The veins on the backs of his hands stood up from the refined whiteness of the flesh, and when his head turned, the great artery in his throat could be seen irregularly beating. It was the physique of a man not only weak but sapped by a subtle infirmity.
He wore the head-dress and the voluminous white robes of a rabbi, girded with the blue and white cord of his calling. But his class as a Pharisee was marked by the heavy undulating fringes at the hem of his garment, and by the little case of calf-skin framing a parchment lettered in Hebrew which was bound across his forehead. Herein, by fringe, phylactery and the traditional colors, he published his submission to the minutiæ of the Law.
In so much the rabbi could have had twenty counterparts over Judea, but his aggressive nature stamped him with an individuality which has had no equal in all time. Over his countenance was a fine assumption of humility curiously inconsistent with a consciousness of excellence which made an atmosphere about him that could be felt. Yet, holding first place over these conflicting attributes was the stamp of tremendous mental power, and a heart-whole sweetness that was irresistible. The union of these four characteristics was to produce a man that would hold fast to theory, though all fact arise and shouted it down; who would maintain form, though the spirit had in horror long since fled the shape. Thus, inflexibly fixed in his convictions, he was unlimited in his capacity for maintaining them. In short, he was a leader of men, a zealot, a formalist and an inquisitor—one of great mentality dogmatized, of great spirit prejudiced, of immense capabilities perverted.
Such was Saul of Tarsus.
But the other was a Jew of blood so pure, of type so pronounced, that the man of mixed races before him appeared wholly foreign. His line had descended from the persistent love of Jacob for Rachel, through the tents of them that slew the Midianitish women in the wilderness, through the households of Esdras and the camps of Judas Maccabæus.
He was above average height, and built ruggedly, as were Judah the lion, and Jacob who wrestled with the angel. One of in-door habit, he was fair on the forehead, under the soft young beard and the shining black curls at his temples. But his cheeks were crimson, his eyes intensely black and sparkling, his teeth, glittering ranges of shaded ivory. And the bold strength of his profile and the brilliance of his color seemed finished by the deep cleft distinctly discernible.
On his face was written an attribute common among men of a time of Messianic hopes and crises. Asceticism with its blank purity of brow set him apart from the sordid souls in his walk. Yet about him there seemed to be an atmosphere surcharged with physical radiations, with human electricity that fairly sparkled in its strength.
Even Saul, his long-time friend, on this occasion of sudden meeting, remarked this equal power of body and spirit. The Pharisee glanced at the young man's garments—simple robes without fringes, without gaud, and white as the snows of Hermon.
"Strange," the Pharisee said after his peculiar manner of talking with himself, "strange that thou shouldst elect to be an Essene." A little proud surprise appeared on Marsyas' face.
"I can not be anything else," the young man answered.
"Thou hast not ventured. But, nevertheless, thou wilt be noted in the college. The Essenes are very few these days in Jerusalem; En-Gadi receives them all. And thou art a doctor of Laws—a master Essene. How long wilt thou study here?"
"Five years, Rabbi."
Yet the young man was at least twenty-five years of age. What course of instruction was it which carried a man into middle life before it was finished? What but the tremendous complexities of the Mosaic and the Oral Law. But these things had been taught the young man in the forecourt of the little synagogue in Nazareth where he was born. So, because his learning extended beyond the reach of the provincial Essenic philosopher who had taught him in his youth, the young man had quitted the little hill town in Galilee to come to the feet of the master Essene in the great college of Jerusalem.
To be an Essene was to live a celibate under the regime of community laws, under a common roof, at a common board; to be bodily and spiritually spotless, to believe in the resurrection of the soul, the brotherhood of man, and the frailty and the incontinence of women; to accept no hospitality from one not an Essene and to own no possessions apart from the common ownership of the order. But to be an Essenic doctor was to be the most ascetic scholar and the most scholarly ascetic in the world, at that time.
But Marsyas had no thought on Saul's contemplation of him.
"I heard the talk of the Levite," he said. "Because it concerns me much, I could not shut mine ears against it. I, too, have heard the creed of the Nazarenes."
"How, Marsyas? Harkened unto the heretics?"
"I have heard their creed," he persisted in his calm way. "It differs little from the teachings of mine own order, the Essenes, except that they believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth and the receptiveness of the Gentile."
"And thou callest that a little difference?"
"Not so great that one going astray after the Nazarenes could not be satisfied with the Essenes, if he were obliged to give up his apostasy. I seek a remedy."
"Moses supplied the remedy," Saul averred with meaning.
"The Essenes are not inflicters of punishment," was the even reply.
The Pharisee made a conciliatory gesture. "It is then only a discussion of the practices of my class and of thine."
But Marsyas was not satisfied.
"Thou knowest Stephen?" he asked after a pause.
"Stephen of Galilee? Only by report."
"Perchance, then, thou knowest Galilee," the Essene resumed after a short pause. "Galilee that sitteth between Phoenicia the menace and Samaria the pollution, and is not soiled; that standeth between the Middle Sea, the power, and the Jordan, the subject, and is not humbled. She is Israel's brawn, not easily governed of the mind which is enthroned Jerusalem.
"We are rustics in Galilee, tillers of the soil, mountaineers and fishers, simple rugged folk who live in the present, expecting miracles,