Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

Paul has every confidence that, after a span preaching in the marketplace, these noble philosophers will realize the wisdom of his words and insist that he preach to them all in the court of the Areopagus. Or in one or all of Athens’s great gymnasia, the schools of learning, where philosophers refresh and instruct the minds. Tarsus was a city of great schools, places wise men studied and taught, but Athens has schools far grander. Centres of learning to which the whole known world owes a debt.

Silas and Timothy, Paul has sent away to check on the community founded in Thessalonica, perhaps even now suffering interlopers from Jerusalem. Paul must stay here alone, fearful for the state of his children. But what is quite certain is that, upon his companions’ return, they will find Paul has firmly established a new church — a new base of operations, to replace that of Antioch — in this great city.

Paul is misdirected initially, when he asks passers-by to show him the way to the marketplace. It seems the agora he seeks is more properly the old marketplace; most of the vulgar daily trade is now carried out at a new spot to the east; it is the old agora where philosophers pursue intellectual pleasures and where Paul is sure he will finally encounter minds as great as his own.

But even the new marketplace is not entirely to be scorned: it, too, has its merits. A man plays a kithara, the more learned brother to the lyres you would find in marketplaces in other cities. Even in its street markets, it seems, Athens exceeds. The seriousness of the player’s face echoes the beautiful notes he produces. Paul has half a mind to chip a copper quadrans coin into the earthenware pot the player has set out for just such procurements. But ministry must come first. Nothing can be allowed to precede the mission, and who knows what future need Paul may have of that one small copper coin?

A sword-swallower eases a thin blade down through his mouth into a straightened and straining throat and Paul mentally logs the picture. It is perhaps an image he can use to win converts: ‘Just as a sword-swallower engulfs the blade, so will this world be swallowed when the Christ returns.’ No, not that. But something. He knows he cannot expect any acquaintance at all with Israelite texts among these pagans, so he needs to form some other point of connection.

At the edge of the market square, a boy child flips up a wicker ball with his feet, keeping it in the air lightsomely, motiveless. Oblivious to passers-by, no platter out for bread or coin. Dancing the more beautifully because he dances only for the dance.

Even the tongues of the errand runners and stallholders sing. They do not speak street Greek here, they speak with the elaborate high Greek style of Pericles and Aristotle. Paul is invigorated and enlivened by the chance to debate with the thinkers of this great city and to sway them to his beliefs. Oh, how will it be to have such great men at his side: the elite of the world? While James’s Jerusalem church holds sway only over its own parochial confines. Those in that introverted fiefdom claim to be the chosen people, but who could be better chosen than these fine Athenian citizens? Here people even smell more pleasant. You can tell they bathe with an urbane regularity. There can be no place more cultured than Athens, more learned, more devoted to erudition, purely for enlightenment’s own most sacred sense.

Eventually Paul finds the agora he seeks: the market place of ideas, where the Athenians, with their renowned thirst for knowledge, prefer nothing better than to hear of and discuss every new belief. Paul knows the conventions of Athenian debate from his own boyhood lessons: each man has a chance to present his own case and will be listened to attentively, without hassle or heckle. It is most certain that among the minds of these most noble, refined of men, Paul’s risen Jesus will find a haven.

It is easy for Paul to gather a small crowd about him before he begins. The sophisticated philosophers can doubtless perceive him to be one of their own. And on the way to the agora Paul came across something that gave him an idea with which to link to these people, who, though highly cultivated, are nonetheless unknowing of the scriptures.

‘Men of Athens,’ Paul begins. ‘You are too superstitious.’ There is a slight murmur at this accusation from the gathering, but Paul shocks them only to save them.

‘On the way here today, I found an altar inscribed TO THE UNKNOWN GOD . So anxious are you not to miss out on a god that you have made a place to worship one you don’t even know about. You are unaware of the very thing you worship. But let me tell you, the God you are blind to does not live in altars built by human hands. The divine being does not abide in images. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Because I bring you good news: this world is soon coming to an end.’ Paul pauses, to let the crowd take in the grandeur of his words.

‘The world is soon going to end,’ one man says. ‘And how is that good news?’

A titter ripples through the crowd. The man who spoke has a pate as unadorned as Paul’s own, as bald as Plato’s. Paul wishes that God would similarly dash a tortoise into it. But no such wrath is evidenced. The man has a neck like a tortoise for that matter: stretched out and crinkled along an over-elongated length.

‘Idolatry must cease, all other gods are nothing,’ Paul continues, ‘for the one true God has set a day when He will judge the world. Time runs short and shouldn’t be wasted in worshipping statues.’

Another man from the crowd interrupts, against everything Paul had been taught about Athenian convention: ‘But our philosophers have long said it is wrong to confuse a mere statue with the god represented by it. You’ll not find people in Athens who believe that an idol is a magical creature. In fact there are many who believe that all the deities are merely manifestations of a divine urge, which might well be not so different from your one-God. Plato wrote as much more than four centuries ago. This is no new idea. But we are not so rude, or so certain, as to push our feelings on others as fact. What makes you so convinced that you are right, that all the tutelary deities who’ve served us well enough are nothing?’

‘God has given evidence of this to everyone, by raising from the dead the man He has appointed to judge you all in the day soon to come.’

‘So, a bit like Osiris, then?’ someone says.

‘This isn’t philosophy,’ another Athenian mutters, already turning to wander off. ‘He’s just a propagandist for foreign gods.’

‘No, not like Osiris,’ Paul shouts. ‘Jesus was taken and tortured and killed to become a sacrifice for mankind’s sins and reborn to be a proof and a judge over us.’

‘Sounds precisely like Osiris, then! Who is this charlatan? He picks up scraps like a sparrow on the docks, but he mistakes plagiarism for learning. He has woven bits of other religions into a nest of his own and thinks himself a prophet.’

‘But this is no Oriental myth. This is true.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It came to me in a vision.’

The crowd erupts into laughter now.

Paul’s cheeks scald, like a bronze in the sun, with discomposure and anger.

‘Well, there’s no more certain evidence than a dream.’ It is a gangly beak-nosed man who says this; curse his mother’s encounter with a heron.

‘Not a dream, a vision. A waking encounter with the risen Jesus.’

‘There’s a beggar to be found by the Odeon steps who daily encounters Zeus and by night is visited by Hecate. How are his gods imagined yet yours are real, or he a madman but you a mystic?’