Джеймс Миченер - The Source

In addition to the Byzantine and Egyptian sects Makor owned two additional Christian churches, one supported by Rome for the use of its pilgrims coming from Europe and another for the strange Nestorians of the east, and between these two groups there was also frequent brawling, so that in this little village one could observe a microcosm of the theological anarchy that characterized the church in Asia: the Byzantines from Constantinople, the Romans, the Egyptian separatists and the Nestorians.

It was into this cauldron that one of the noblest emperors of Byzantium had recently tossed an attractive new theology. Heraclius was soldier, scholar and saint, and in the first of these capacities had recently defeated the Persian Chosroes to win back the True Cross, which had originally been discovered three centuries before by Queen Helena, and this accomplishment had made him the world’s premier Christian. So in his second character he studied the dissensions that threatened his church and was now ready as a saintly man to suggest an ingenious compromise acceptable to Byzantine, Roman, Egyptian and Nestorian alike, if only they approached his proposal with good faith. In those fateful years when the Arabs were stealing Damascus and half his empire Heraclius was busy developing his grand compromise, which reached Ma-kor in this provisional form:Eager to end the strife that mars our church, we have decided that there shall be no more argument as to whether the nature of Jesus Christ was one or two. The matter is unimportant and we hereby decree that regardless of how a man believes, he is welcome in our church. Forgetting the nature of Christ’s body, we hereby announce that He had but one will, which faultlessly represented the will of God. This is now the belief of all true Christians, for we have spoken.

The emperor’s edict was read at dawn one summer’s morning, and by nightfall three men were dead in the ecclesiastical rioting. In succeeding days the bishop wailed in his basilica, “There are two natures in Christ and one will. That is the law.” But the stubborn Egyptians countered, “There is one nature and two wills,” so that the emperor’s gesture, intended to bring conciliation, had brought only a new schism to agitate the community.

And so as Muslim troops approached from the east on that mighty conquest which would terminate the power of Byzantium in the Galilee, the citizens of that contentious area continued their bitter arguments over the nature of Christ, not realizing that they were engaged in an extension of the same argument that had agitated Makor in the days when the young Jew Menahem ben Yohanan joined the new church as Mark, and the debate was no more trivial now than it had been then: it was an effort to build a base from which Christianity could conquer the world. If one considered Jesus to be all man, His divinity was rendered meaningless, while the miracle of Mary as the Mother of God vanished; on the other hand, if one argued that He was all God, the significance of human redemption was diminished and the crucifixion could be interpreted merely as a device adopted by God to prove a point: no human suffering or agony need be involved. However, if a concept of Jesus could be evolved whereby His substance, His nature and His will could all be accepted as both divine and human, then Christianity would have acquired a subtle unifying principle upon which enormous structures of faith and philosophies of life could be built. It was in this historic battle over the meaning of Christ that the Christians of Makor were engaged, but the adroit proposal of Emperor Heraclius helped little, for within a few weeks of its reception pickets came from Tabariyyah with news that the Arabs were planning to capture Makor, and Ptolemais as well.

Now, as Abd Umar, the servant of Muhammad, led his squadron away from open fields and into the forests of the Galilee, he might be somewhat confused by the conflicting claims of Christians; but he was totally bewildered by the Jews, for he would never be able to understand why they had failed to accept Muhammad, and he approached this problem with love, for in any essential meaning of the word he could have considered himself a Jew.

As a half-Negro slave he had for a time been the property of one Umar, hence his name Slave-of-Umar, but that man had disappeared and he had passed into the hands of a robust, red-headed Jew named Ben Hadad, whose ancestors had wandered down from Palestine during those turbulent years when General Vespasian of Rome was crushing the rebellious Jews. Ben Hadad’s people had arrived in a caravan from the Galilee and had found a pleasing welcome in Arabia among the sand dunes and the white-walled cities. The Jews had lived alone, obedient to the Torah, and had gradually established themselves as traders, especially in Ben Hadad’s city of Yathrib, to be known in history as Medina.

Ben Hadad was a large, jovial merchant whose caravans had prospered and who had acquired, during a trip to Damascus, a portion of the Talmud brought there from Babylonia, and his possession of these sayings of the Jewish fathers had made him a kind of spiritual leader of his people; but he fell into no traditional category of rabbi, sage or teacher. He was an easygoing man who loved the hurly-burly of trade and who sent his adopted son, Abd Umar, into the desert with a caravan by himself at the age of eleven.

“Take care of the camels and God will take care of you,” Ben Hadad had said to the dark boy. “If a man asks for fifteen pieces, give him sixteen … if you expect to do business with him again.” Where the other Jews of Medina refused to engage in any work on Shabbat, Ben Hadad argued, “If my camels are half a league from home at Friday sunset, God Himself wants to see them properly bedded down.” He also taught Abd Umar, “If you abide for three days in the desert tending a sick camel, God will somehow repay you.” He was a man of forty-eight who had four wives and numerous children, but of them all he loved Abd Umar best, for the slave was quick and had the same love of good living as Ben Hadad. “When a young man goes to Damascus and fails to see the girls from Persia, he might just as well have stayed at home with the women packing dates.”

Better than most Arabs, Abd Umar appreciated how much of the Koran had come to Muhammad through the teachings of Jewish sages, and he approved when the Prophet, hoping to bind the old and the new into one force, made generous efforts to win the Jews to his side. Muhammad had nominated Jerusalem, the city from which he had ascended to heaven, as the locality toward which his followers must turn when they prayed; he had reassured his Jewish neighbors repeatedly that he like them was descended from Abraham—through Ishmael in his case; and he had incorporated into his religion all matters which the Jews held most precious: the concept of one God, the visions of Moses, the rectitude of Joseph, the glory of Saul and David and Solomon, and the practical wisdom of Job. To any intelligent mind the religion of Muhammad must be the logical next step in the growth of Judaism, and the Prophet waited for the Jews to join him. It was symbolic, perhaps, that when he fled from Mecca to Medina, it was the hospitable Jew Ben Hadad who first welcomed him coming through the Medina gate, and one of the first gestures Muhammad made in his new home was to invite Ben Hadad’s people to join him.

Why had the Jews refused? Why? Abd Umar often wondered, for he could recall the derisive manner in which his father, Ben Hadad, had laughed when Muhammad suggested that he lay aside the Old Book and accept the Koran. When pressed, Ben Hadad said, “I agree with you that there is only one God, but prophecy has ceased.” Argument had followed, and Muhammad was as persuasive a logician as any who had ever crossed Arabia, but the Jew had repulsed him with his rocklike faith: “The Torah is all we need.”