Джеймс Миченер - The Source

Jehubabel wanted to believe that what Tarphon had told him earlier would come to pass—that when Antiochus knew how the Jews felt about the new laws they would be rescinded; so he clung to that hope: “If Antiochus retreats a little I feel sure trouble can be avoided.”

The slave washed Tarphon with a damp cloth, then brought clothes into which the gymnasiarch slipped, leaving most of his body still exposed. Moving to a chair beside the table he asked, “If trouble should become inevitable, what will cause it?”

“The swine we can forgive,” Jehubabel said reassuringly. “And we acknowledge Antiochus as ruler … even as god over his own people. But there is one thing …”

“That you’re afraid of?”

“Jews will continue to circumcise their sons.”

“No! No!” Tarphon protested. “On this matter I agree with Antiochus. The human body is too precious to be altered whimsically by any religion that comes along. Why do you suppose we outlawed the branding of slaves? And mutilation? And tattooing?” He brandished the marble hand with the strigil as if it were a pointer and demanded, “Tell me this. If your Jewish god, who is as perfect as you claim, made man, why should you try to improve on his handiwork?”

For once Jehubabel did not retreat to an aphorism. He said, “When the creator finished his perfect work he took Abraham aside and said, ‘I have made a perfect man. Now I need a perfect people. To prove to the world that you are my chosen people, you shall circumcise your sons.’ In doing so, we act not contrary to divine will, but in furtherance of it.”

Tarphon was surprised at the Jew’s clear statement, but he shrugged his shoulders. “The law is plain, Jehubabel. No more circumcision.” Then he added, “Please.”

The stocky dyer considered this appeal, the latest in a long series, and once more he conceded: “I don’t think any Jews would circumcise their sons without first discussing the problem with me.” Tarphon smiled. He knew that within the Jewish community it was only Jehubabel who performed the circumcisions, so if the law of Antiochus were to be broken it would be Jehubabel who would be responsible, but he did not embarrass his friend by admitting that he understood this fact. The long-robed Jew concluded, “So if the Jews ask me for advice I shall tell them that for a little longer …”

Tarphon was relieved. This was all he needed, a little time, for he felt sure that with time he could alleviate the troubles. Taking the second sheet of his report from under the marble hand he tore it up and threw it in a basket. “I was about to send Antiochus words which he did not need to hear,” he said with a nervous laugh. Then as he led Jehubabel to the door of his room the two men saw looming above them the gigantic statue of Epiphanes, and Tarphon said, “I’m glad you understand, Jehubabel. Against his great force you weak Jews could not prevail. It is with reason we’ll soften his laws.”

Jehubabel preferred not to look at the indecent statue. Instead, he took refuge in a Jewish proverb whose application not even he understood: “The breath of the king withers the barley, but at the end of winter comes rain.”

Tarphon thought: He’s truly a sententious bore, but without him we’d have trouble. Then, to help Jehubabel comprehend the situation, the gymnasiarch said with a certain enthusiasm, “Don’t be misled by that statue. Would you be surprised if I said I thought it preposterous too? But I also know Antiochus the man. As he rules in Antioch. He moves among the common people of that enormous city in a way no tyrant would dare. At night he suddenly enters a drinking place and sings with the sailors. He acts in plays, or wanders unknown in the alleys to see how the poor live. He has one consuming desire. To be loved. And when at the games his people cheer him he becomes in fact a god and dispenses justice to all. Believe me, Jehubabel, when he hears that his laws have made you Jews unhappy …”

“As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more,” Jehubabel said, “but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.” Tarphon shook his head, as if the middle part of the sentence had fallen out of the conversation, but in friendship he grasped the Jew’s shoulder and said, “When Antiochus reads my letter, the law will be changed,” And he accompanied his friend to the exit.

But as they left the gymnasiarch’s room, from the other end of the building appeared a group of seven handsome young men—the athletes with whom Tarphon had been wrestling. They were lean, clear-eyed young fellows dressed in a uniform which the older men of Makor had provided them to wear on their trips to compete with other communities: broad-brimmed hats with low crowns, handsome fluttering capes of light blue fastened at the neck with silver clasps, and white flexible boots whose laces crisscrossed up to the knee. In these gay uniforms the seven athletes looked like seven statues of Hermes, poised for whatever commission Zeus might hand them, and as they clattered noisily past the looming statue of Epiphanes, Jehubabel saw that the tallest of the group was his own dark-haired son Benjamin; but he took no pride in this fact.

When the boys were gone Tarphon walked with his friend to the exit, saying, “Jehubabel, your son Menelaus will be the finest athlete Makor has ever produced.”

“‘A wise son maketh a glad father:’” Jehubabel quoted from Solomon, “‘but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.’ Wrestling is foolishness. Discus throwing …” He pointed over his shoulder to the statue of Epiphanes. “Foolishness.”

“No!” Tarphon protested. “Days when such sayings were true are past. A boy today must have some wisdom, yes. But he must also know games, the social pleasantries. Nothing in excess. Great change is in the air, old friend, and you must change with it.”

But Jehubabel, haunted still by the face of the dead martyr, said, “Wisdom is still the only thing, if with wisdom you also get understanding.”

“I got my understanding from wrestling,” Tarphon replied, but this the Jew could not believe and he walked alone up the broad avenue leading to the temple of Zeus, where against his will he was drawn to look at the gigantic head of the man who posed as god, illuminated from below by an oil lamp which burned perpetually. “‘Vanity of vanities,’” he quoted from an ancient saying. Then he saw the spot where the old man had been flayed; it was still damp. For a few moments he prayed there and then turned east to walk down the main thoroughfare, whose numerous shops contained importations from all parts of the world: flashing ornaments made from the tin of Cornwall, silver beads from Spain and bright copper pots from Cyprus; there was gold from Nubia, marble from Paros and ebony from India. Some shops offered foods that a century before were unheard of in this town: sesame candies from Egypt, sharp cheeses from Athens, figs in honey from Crete, cinnamon from Africa and sweet pannag from Byzantium.

“‘All is vanity,’” Jehubabel quoted as he approached the synagogue under the east wall. The gaudy shops had never appealed to him; they were run only by foreigners, for the proud Jews of rural Israel were still incompetent in trading and the handling of money, inclining toward the more fundamental occupations like farming and dyeing, except that during the Babylonian captivity a few had acquired technical skills like goldsmithing, which their descendants still practiced. It was not these seductive shops which called forth Jehubabel’s reflection on vanity; it was his son Menelaus. The boy’s real name was Benjamin, but like many Jewish lads in Seleucia he had early acquired a Greek name by which he was generally known. Tall where his father was stocky, robust where his mother was slim, he had quickly won the attention of the Greeks, who had inducted him into their schools and their games, in both of which he excelled. Now, alienated from his Jewish parents, he spent most of his days in the gymnasium and many of his nights at the palace, where he was being initiated into Greek culture of the higher order. Like Gymnasiarch Tarphon, with whom he often wrestled, he was beginning to find his father’s homilies tedious, and like Melissa, Tarphon’s clever wife, he found the old-fashioned ways of the Jews difficult to take seriously. In the natural course of events, by the time Menelaus was thirty he would no longer be a Jew, for the empire of Antiochus Epiphanes needed young men of aptitude and it was probable that he would be invited to serve in areas where Jews were unknown. Inducements were being offered, not only to young Jews but to Persians and Parthians as well, to forgo their old inheritances and to become full-fledged Greeks, and as young Menelaus exercised with Tarphon and learned at first-hand the principles of Greek political life, or as he studied with Melissa and uncovered the richness of Greek intellectual life, he found himself increasingly tempted to surrender Jewish ways and to join the large number who had left the synagogue and had become in fact Hellenes.