Джеймс Миченер - The Source

“It’s torn by strife between the Christians,” the Meccan said.

“The Christians against whom?” Abd Umar inquired.

“Themselves,” the Meccan replied, shaking his head in confusion, and he had led his camels toward the hills which protected the Jordan.

Now Abd Umar himself was involved in Palestine and he was finding it as perplexing as the long-ago Meccan had indicated: when the Arabs ventured into Tabariyyah following their conquest of Damascus they had met with little armed resistance, but the leaders of three different Christian churches had come bearing complaints one against the other so that brawling had broken out with loss of life. Spies had come to the caravanserai at Tabariyyah with reports that similar conditions prevailed in both Safat and Makor, while Akka was bitterly divided over which church had the right to collect money from pilgrims arriving from Rome and the west to visit the Sea of Galilee. At Damascus, of course, the contentions between the Christian churches had been disgraceful, and as a result of these confusions, plus the desire to keep Christian pilgrims visiting their holy places—for they brought much wealth—Abd Umar had begun to make a study of the Christians and their habits, gathering what information he could from spies and the leaders of churches in captured Damascus and Tabariyyah.

In this work he was encouraged by something Muhammad had once told him: “There are only three permissible religions—Judaism, Christianity and ours—and these are acceptable because each relies upon a Book which God has personally handed down.” He pointed out that the Jews had their Old Book delivered to them through Moses, while the Christians had their New called forth by Jesus Christ, but the Arabs had the Koran, and since the latter summarized the best of the preceding two, the former were no longer essential. On one memorable day Muhammad had told his companions, “You are to follow the traditions of the Jews and Christians span by span and cubit by cubit … so closely that you will go after them even if they creep into the hole of a lizard.” Later, when there had been much discussion of this teaching, the Prophet had predicted in Abd Umar’s hearing, “You will always find that our most affectionate friends will be those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ for they like us are people of the Book.” At Tabariyyah, after Abd Umar had halted the brawling among the various sectors of the Christian church, he had asked the priests to instruct him in their faith and he was relieved to find that what Muhammad had said was true: these Christians accepted three of the Prophet’s favorite predecessors, John Baptist, Mary the Virgin and Jesus Christ. In fact, he discovered that the Christians revered Mary almost as much as the Arabs did, and this was reassuring.

At the same time, however, he discovered that the Christian church was so badly split between Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian factions—regarding points of theology which he could not untangle—that any hope of reconciliation was impossible. He suspected that because of its hateful fights Christianity would soon wither like a rootless plant exposed to sunlight in a desert wadi, and it was his job to make the last days of the religion as pleasant as possible. At Makor he was determined to accord the Christians every courtesy, hoping that they would of themselves see their error and join Islam.

Was he arrogant in these assumptions? Not especially, for in those springtime years of Arabian faith, when leaders like Abd Umar had known Muhammad personally, Islam seemed a marvel of cohesion and order; when compared to the confusions that tormented the Christian church and the inadequacy that had overtaken the Jews, it had both commitment and direction, so that Abd Umar could be excused if he believed that the future lay with his kind. For the days had not yet come when Islam was to be shattered into worse schisms than even the Christians knew, but the great separation into hostile camps was even then building. Before Abd Umar was dead the saintly Ali, cousin of the Prophet and husband of his daughter Fatima, would be slain; his sons would be hounded into near-divinities around whom would rally many of the greatest minds of Islam and much of its propulsive power, forming a breach that would never be healed.

If Abd Umar had looked closely at his own religion he could have seen these strains developing, but like most religious persons of his day he was more concerned about the divisions that rent other religions than about the strife that would soon shatter his own, so as he pressed his troops toward the forest that separated him from Makor, he cautioned himself: Under no circumstances must we become involved in the quarrels of the Christians, for they will soon fall apart and join us.

Within the vanished walls of Makor the Christians waited. They were a sorely divided lot torn into four fragments which reflected the various schisms that racked Christianity in this period. Not even the loss of Damascus to the Arabs and the consequent halt of trade had inspired the sects to unite against their common enemy. The fall of Tiberias had ended the rich pilgrim traffic to Capernaum. And now it looked as if the approach of Islam would terminate Makor’s profitable trade in relics: each year several dozen thigh bones pertaining to St. Mary Magdalene were peddled to believers who carried them home to adorn small European churches, and the loss of this income could prostrate the town. But still the Christians quarreled.

Of course, the basic argument—was Jesus man-and-God-at-the-same-time as Egyptians argued, or was He man-then-God as those of Constantinople believed?—had long been settled precisely as Father Eusebius had foreseen: each side was wrong and all good Christians now acknowledged that Christ owned two complete natures, one forever human, the other forever divine, though the Egyptians still refused to abandon their contention and on it had constructed a separatist church. But with the problem of Christ’s physical nature thus solved to most people’s satisfaction debate was moved onto a higher level, for the problem which now tormented the church was this: Was the spiritual nature of Jesus human or divine?

In the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene, built nearly three centuries before and well known in Europe for the mosaics which pilgrims visited on their way to and from the holy places, a bishop reigned, appointed by the emperor in Constantinople and obedient to the desires of that imperial ruler. He was an ineffectual man who had at first tried to bring some kind of peace to Makor, but in making this attempt he had insisted upon the orthodox opinion that Christ had two separate natures, human and completely divine; but this doctrine was not acceptable to the simple-minded people of Makor, who knew in their hearts that Christ could have had only one nature, human and divine at the same time. So the two-nature bishop in his basilica preached the ideas of Constantinople to an ever-dwindling congregation, while in the ramshackle church east of the main gate the one-nature citizens worshiped according to the popular rites of Egypt. They were sometimes threatened by the bishop, who imported imperial troops from Constantinople, and when these soldiers appeared, the one-nature people filed meekly into the basilica to promise both the bishop and the mercenaries that they would henceforth accept the orthodox contention that Christ had two natures, but as soon as the soldiers disappeared they would go roaring back to their own church, shouting:“The body of Jesus is one,

Holy forever.

The Mother of Jesus is God-like,

Holy forever.”

When this provocative song erupted outraged Byzantines would try to murder the Egyptians, so that Makor was often splashed with blood; but the schism could not be healed, nor would it ever be. Like the great split that was about to engulf the followers of Muhammad, this one between Egypt and the west would endure forever.