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8/7/2019 ORIGINAL FRAGMENT

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A FRAGMENT

Below them the fields stretched like dark velvet. Here and there

the small fires of shepherds glowed, and the grand moon behind them

silvered the sheep so that they looked like clouds floating above a

dark sea. And the stars, the bright stars so icy cold. Silence except

for crickets, and the night air damp and heavy settling on all.

Antiphon had brought a blanket, which he tugged around this

shoulders. You re not cold?

Judas shook his head. Keeps me awake. He turned to the Greek.

What are doing with us, Antiphon? Why have you joined with us?

Antiphon shrugged. I like adventure. I told you that.

You might have had just as much adventure with your own people,

attacking us. And I think you d be much more likely to be on the

winning side if you had.

So. But I like the lost cause. And a desperate fight is much

more amusing than an overwhelming rout. He smiled at Judas. I m sure

you agree with me, my friend, or you wouldn t be sitting here beside

me.

Judas snorted and shook his head. He rubbed his hands together

against the evening chill: perhaps he should have brought a blanket.

But why us, Antiphon? Why us?

One of his hands emerged from the blanket. Antiphon had found a

long twig, and now pushed around the bare ground between his feet,


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tracing little patterns. Oh, I ve had a fascination with the Jews for

many years. You might say that they re a hobby of mine. I kept running

into Jews for some reason. And I liked them. I liked their food, and

their singing. I liked the look of their women: modest, yet ripe and

beckoning. I liked the way the men drank wine without getting drunk. I

liked their jokes. Wherever I went I d find myself wandering through

the streets, until I came to some Jewish enclave, and I d go to an inn

and feel like I was home. But I could never be Jew: I m too attached

to my foreskin.

Judas laughed, and then covered his mouth, embarrassed. Not to

worry, friend, Antiphon said. I don t really think the Greeks mean

to kill us all tonight. He waved his stick toward the vast valley

below. Here we are protected for awhile: the hills behind us too

treacherous to climb, the valley too open to view. We re safe here.

Until the flocks run out of grass, Judas agreed. We are led by

their needs, like our fathers were led by the pillar of fire from the

Ark.

Ah yes, the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Testimony.

Whatever became of that box, Judas? I ve always found it a fascinating

oddity.

I ve heard some say that the prophet Jeremiah carried the ark

across the Jordan and hid it in a cave at Mount Nebo. Doubtless the

Lord will reveal its location in his own good time.


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In a dream no doubt, given to some child of obscure parentage.

Your god enjoys that sort of thing. He s very strange, your god. I

think that s why I find the Jews so charming. Your god is remarkably

strange.

Judas shifted uncomfortably. Antiphon had been a great help, and

might even one day be his friend, but he didn t like it much when

Greeks started mocking the Lord of Hosts.

Antiphon noticed. I mean you no harm with my musings, Judas

Maccabees. But since I have fought beside you, and bled beside you,

perhaps you ll indulge me? For I have some questions about your god,

and you might know their answers.

I m no scholar. Let s find a priest.

Now there s the thing, Judas. Among my people, the priests make

it their task to learn every little thing about the gods they serve.

Not so among the Jews. Your priests speak only of rules, of clean and

unclean. How to kill, how to burn. Of their god they speak very

little, except of his wrath if some detail gets fudged. Who then knows

your god?

One of our poets maybe, or a prophet? I m not sure what answer

you seek?

Antiphon chuckled. Our gods all have stories. Every schoolboy

knows them. They live together on a great mountain and argue all the

time. They pop down among us in human form, and start wars, or create


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elaborate tasks for us, or perilous journeys, and trick us

mercilessly, or give us treasures or kingdoms. Of course the gods most

relish ravishing any attractive young virgin they might spy from their

great heights. Pretty virgins drive make them crazy.

Your god, by contrast has no such stories. No virgins. No

treasures. No tricks. He never puts on a human form to walk among you.

How does he appear to you? In a dream. Or in a flaming bush. Or a face

or voice in a cloud or smoke.

And in these insubstantial forms, he gives your people the most

elaborate directives. Do this and this. Make this vessel so many

cubits and so many wide. Make it out of acacia wood and locust beans.

You know the sort of thing.

And it s not enough for you god simply to say his demands. No.

He writes them down, with his own finger of fire, and into stone! I

seriously doubt that any of our gods could even sign their names, let

alone engrave commandments.

It is a testimony to his greatness, Judas said. He wasn t sure

where Antiphon was leading.

Yes, the greatness of your god. The greatness of the Lord of

Hosts. That s another aspect so different than our gods. Your god

moves the wind, and brings fire and plagues, and fills rivers with

blood, and parts the sea. So sweeping and so grand.


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As Moses told Pharaoh, the Lord of Hosts is Great God, Judas

agreed. Moses revealed to the Egyptians the power of the Lord, until

Pharaoh at last relented and set them free?

But why, tell me friend, must he do all these great acts? All to

get one king to say one word. So powerful a god, yet he couldn t coax

a simple word from the lips of single man? And instead must wipe out

hundreds of children, and fill the streets with death? Why visit the

punishment for one man s obdurance on an entire nation? Yet that is

your god in a nutshell.

Wind and clouds and seas he commands with ease. Getting someone

to change his mind seems however a task quite beyond him. In fact, I

am so surprised that he has managed to find a whole tribe of priests

who do nothing more than minister to his needs.

What needs? Our lord needs nothing! He is the lord of all!

Yes that s as may be, but still, he likes the smell of burning,

doesn t he? Incense. The flesh of lambs and goats and cattle and

birds. He s set up elaborate demands so he can have the smoke of their

carcasses every morning and all day. He seems quite incapable of

getting this himself. Our god Zeus might do the same by throwing a

thunderbolt at his intended victim. But your god needs humans to

attend his needs. I can t imagine what he s doing now the Temple is in

disarray.


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In point of fact, where is your god now? Do you have any idea?

He used to live in a little box, but you say yourself that box is now

hidden. Then he took up residence in the House built for him by

Solomon. Broken and destroyed, and then rebuilt. I suppose he came

back when it was done. But now, surely, he finds it too obnoxious to

remain, filled with as it is with sex and swine. So where is he? Where

has he gone?

Judas stood and looked at Antiphon s face in the moonlight. He

studied it so intently that Antiphon, who felt as though his soul was

being weighed by the Jew, grew restive and turned away from his gaze.

If any other Greek had said these words, Antiphon, I might have

thought them no more than the goading of a sophist. But your eyes tell

me that you ask in sincerity despite your words. And you and I have

shed blood together: our blood has mingled in the soil of this land

which makes us brothers. So I will answer you as a brother.

The Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, the Creator of the

Universe cannot be contained, whether in an Ark or even a temple. He

lives on high, his throne resting on the wings of cherubim, or so we

say in our songs. But the truth of the matter is a harder thing: For

the Lord, by reckoning, is no more to be found in the sky than to be

found in the temple. Those who seek him there will surely sorrow.

Where would one find the Creator except in his Creation. He

sweeps the skies and seas because he made them. They do not obey his


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will, the express it. He is in spark that lights the flame that lights

the fire, he is the wet within the water. He is in the clay that makes

the bowl, and the will that holds the clay together, and the shape of

the clay that gives the bowl its purpose, and the emptiness that gives

the bowl its meaning. He is the space between your fingers as much as

in your hand; he is in the black between the stars. He is the sun, and

the tree, and the leaves of the tree, and the shade it casts upon the

ground, and the ground itself. He is in each grain of sand and the

space between the grains. He spans the space between us both. He is

the hearing in our ears, the wisdom in our words. He is the light and

the dark, the fullness and the void.

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