Джеймс Миченер - The Source

In 326 Queen Helena disembarked at Ptolemais to begin the overland trip to the Sea of Galilee, hoping to identify there the scenes where Jesus had preached, and once more her visions supplied the answers. “This must be the place where our Lord fed the multitude with two fishes and five loaves,” she announced, and a basilica was built. “I feel sure that on this spot Jesus must have delivered his Sermon on the Mount,” she said, and a second church was ordained. From oblivion she rescued those places that would become cherished throughout Christendom, and on her way back from her discoveries she stopped over at Makor, a town without walls perched on a mound, and there as she slept beside the mean little Byzantine church she had a final vision: she saw that Mary Magdalene, following the Resurrection of her Lord, had found refuge in Makor, and Helena rose next morning in great excitement to announce, “Here we shall build a fine church so that pilgrims on their way to Tiberias and Capernaum may break their journey.” Guided by her vision, she led the townspeople to the exact spot where Mary Magdalene had lived, and in accordance with the curious fate that governs such matters she chose the holiest place for ten miles in any direction, that sacred point where the cave men had erected their monolith to El, where the Canaanites had worshiped Baal and the early Hebrews had prayed to El-Shaddai. Here the priests of King David had offered sacrifice to Yahweh, while Jews rescued from Babylon had prayed to YHWH. Zeus, Antiochus Epiphanes and Augustus-Jupiter had all been worshiped on this slight rise of earth, and now the great basilica of the new religion would follow in its appointed course. Queen Helena knelt on the holy spot and, when she rose, indicated where she wished the triapsidal structure to rest, unconsciously placing her altar directly above the ancient monolith.

It was some years before the rulers in Constantinople got around to building the basilica of St. Mary Magdalene in Makor. By then the saintly old queen was dead, and she never knew whether her church of pilgrimage had been completed or not. Nor did Constantine, who died in 337, only nine years after his mother. But in the family the tradition was kept alive, and even though the descendants of Constantine warred among themselves, brother slaying brother in Roman fashion, it was always intended that their grandmother’s wish for a pilgrims’ church at Makor should be honored, so early in the year 351 the Spanish priest Eusebius convinced the rulers that the time was ripe. Consequently two ships set out from Constantinople laden with architects, slaves, stone masons and Eusebius himself. They landed at Ptolemais, and like thousands of pilgrims before them and hundreds of thousands later, started the overland march toward the Sea of Galilee, but unlike the others, when they reached the halting point at Makor they stopped permanently, which placed them within the dominion of Rabbi Asher ha-Garsi.

In these centuries when God, through the agency of preceptors like Augustine of Hippo, Origen of Caesarea, Chrysostom of Antioch and Athanasius of Alexandria, was forging a Christian church so that it might fulfill the longing of a hungry world, He was at the same time perfecting His first religion, Judaism, so that it might stand as the permanent norm against which to judge all others. Whenever in the future some new religion strayed too far from the basic precepts of Judaism, God could be assured that it was in error; so in the Galilee, His ancient cauldron of faith, He spent as much time upon the old Jews as He did upon the new Christians.

To build Judaism into its normative form, God had at His disposal the four great planks which His people had hacked from their desert experience and their battles with the Canaanites: the Jews finally accepted Him as the one God, supplanting all others; they worshiped His Torah; they were uplifted by the lyric outbursts of religious poets like King David and his chief musician Gershom; and periodically they reconstructed their society according to the flaming cries of true prophets like Jeremiah and the woman Gomer. But to preserve His Jews during the trials that loomed ahead, God required two additional planks, one common to many religions and one totally unique, and He was now about to create those necessary supports.

On that sunny morning in the year 326 when Queen Helena knelt on the earth of Makor, preparing it for the spectacular growth of Christianity, the leadership of the Jews rested in a remarkable little man named Rabbi Asher ha-Garsi, known through the region as God’s Man. From the age of three he had dedicated himself to the service of YHWH and at nine had memorized the Torah; by fifteen he knew by heart the wisdom literature of his people. At sixteen, obedient to the wishes of his parents, he married a country girl whom they had selected, and although in conformance to Jewish tradition governing holy men he restricted himself to sexual intercourse on Friday nights, he quickly fathered a string of five daughters, for whose support he worked diligently. As his name ha-Garsi indicated, he made his living by the purchase of wheat which he boiled, dried and broke into small pieces, producing the cereal so much appreciated by the city residents of Ptolemais. Groats-making was hard work and involved financial risk, for the cost of raw grain could rise or fall suddenly while the price of finished groats might be moving in the opposite direction. Better than most men, Rabbi Asher the Groats Maker understood the pressures of life, and the disappointments too, for he had always wanted a son to project his name and help him in his business, but none came and his two oldest daughters had married men who would not have been helpful in any occupation other than resting; his succeeding daughters were showing no signs of doing much better.

So the little rabbi sweated in the groats mill, worried about his hungry family, and tried to appease the Byzantine tax collectors; but his principal occupation was serving Makor as its unpaid rabbi, for in these years the Jews of the district were not rich, and it was in his conduct of this office that Rabbi Asher had gained the name God’s Man, for when members of his congregation came asking him to adjudicate their problems he first smiled at them with his sad blue eyes, which seemed to say, “You don’t have to explain about trouble to me,” then tucked his hands under his black beard, and finally said, “Before we discuss this matter, let’s agree between ourselves as to what God’s will is. If we know what He wants, we will know what we want.” In his own life he accepted without question the law as laid down in Leviticus and Numbers—Deuteronomy he held in some suspicion as being both modern and revolutionary—and he wished that his community were willing to imitate him. “It would be better if all followed the Torah,” he told his people, “but men and women are weak, so some of us Jews must set the pattern for the rest.” His gentleness had won many to a closer observance of the law, and it was recognized in Makor that in any argument which disrupted the town, if Rabbi Asher the Groats Maker could be brought into the discussion the interests of God would be represented, for even among the Christians he was known as God’s Man.

Now, as Queen Helena prepared to leave Makor, Rabbi Asher at the groats mill wiped his hands and looked with compassion at a huge, dark-skinned man with beetling eyebrows and hulking shoulders who had come to consult him on a difficult matter. At first the little rabbi was irritated by the interruption, but he smothered these feelings and said to the big man, “We’d better talk at my house, Yohanan.”

He led the way to a mean building where his younger girls were playing noisily. As he appeared they withdrew, leaving him a small room crowded with parchment scrolls rolled in the ancient manner and others whose leaves had been cut and bound in the new style. Shooing the children’s rooster from his alcove he took his position behind a small table while the hulking visitor, his prognathous jaw jutting out belligerently, waited.