Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

‘The true God does not come and go,’ Paul says. ‘God is all around. In times of trouble, famine, war, hardship, loneliness, God is always to be found.’

‘Which begins to look suspicious …’

People are openly laughing now. The old man with the tortoise neck who started it all is visibly weeping with mirth, wiping the tears with the back of his hand. But Paul is made of stronger stuff than they can know. Paul has been stoned and scourged; these wiseacres will not best him with words.

‘Jesus died and rose again, and we who are now alive will witness the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sonor of God’s trumpet. Jesus will descend from the skies, and the dead will rise.’

‘But if he doesn’t come, it won’t be the end of the world …’ another man heckles.

‘Through the death and resurrection of the Messiah Jesus, God has promised eternal life to all who are faithful to The Way.’

‘But that’s just what’s offered to those reborn into the sects of not only Osiris and Isis, but Dionysus, Atargattis, Mithras, Orphism, the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Great Mother cult as well. We’ve seen many so-called “Mystery Religions” arrive. What is no mystery is that their fantasies of a blessed, plentiful, heavenly hereafter resonate with people who suffer with servitude, hunger and despair in their present. But just to wish for something doesn’t make it true.’ The man who says this wears a tunic off the shoulder and carries a bag and a staff, like a Cynic philosopher.

‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Paul yammers, at the edge of self-possession.

‘To call you a liar would suggest that I see some deliberate volition on your part. There are many types of liar in this world. But the best liars, the truly great liars, are those who can fool even themselves and they are not really liars at all. So, no, I’m not calling you a liar,’ and the man says this with a look almost of sympathy, which vexes Paul even more than the laughter.

‘Doubters! You’ll see the veracity. We’ll all know the truth of this soon enough: the Day of the Lord is coming. Like a thief in the night. You will not know the hour, but it will be soon. The new age will dawn within our lifetimes. It could be any moment. Sudden destruction will arrive as certain and inevitable as labour pains on a pregnant woman. And when it does, your mocking will sound as hollow as your pride, O great Athenians, wallowing in the grandeur of times that will never return to you. The glory of Jesus will live for ever.’

Paul snatches his things from the ground. He would force his way through the ignorant idiots, but they peel apart for him anyway.

In his affronted hurry he leaves the agora the wrong way and has to double back a circuitous route to avoid bumping into any of the people he has just stormed from. The imbeciles, clinging to history: they are not ready in this city to absorb any new thing.

The city stinks, Paul notices, making his way back to his lodgings through the new market. Filth cakes the buildings. Rats run in the gutters and barely larger worm-riddled dogs roam everywhere.

He spends a copper coin on a loaf of bread to supper on. The stall maid passes it with a flash of hairy dank armpit, but speaks as though she’s spouting Socrates. Plum in her mouth, she has. You would think nothing of importance has happened to these poor sods since the death of Demosthenes three hundred years back. Can’t they see the world has moved on?

The kid is still inanely flicking a stupid wicker ball about. The people watching him are probably pederasts. Athens is famed for them. And even worse: men fornicating with their own kind, with grown men.

The pompous kithara player is still there too. Making dumb expressions, like a cow drunk from eating fermented apples. As if there were something oh-so-important about the process of twanging strings on a box.

Paul is forced to spend nearly four weeks in Athens. An elderly and infirm city, sick from decrepitude. Mired in the memories of a great past. Unable to accept any new thing for fear it would signal Athenian irrelevance to the future. You should weep for that future, elderly Athens, Paul thinks, because you will have no part in it. He is anxious for news from Timothy and sick of this scum city, but cannot leave because Timothy would be unable to find him if he did.

Instead of preaching, Paul wanders through the Acropolis. The Parthenon is adorned with an elaborate frieze running all about it, depicting an Athenian festival, illustrating yet again the overbearing overconfidence of these vain fools: who but such deluded snobs would place themselves so high? Ordinary Athenians carved from unblemished marble, painted and gilded with no thought of the cost to purse or soul. Such pretentious glories will yet be snatched away, Paul is sure of that. These proud and self-important Athenians will rue the day they scorned the Apostle of the Gentiles: Paul, who will judge the angels, will surely judge Athens.

They can keep their giant Parthenon temple with blasphemous statues of skirted Athena, holding up the ceiling with her head. Goddess of wisdom supposedly: all they give a shekel for is knowledge in this half-damned hell-hole; Paul would sooner be a fool, if this is what wisdom looks like.

‘I won’t lie to you, Useful, there was a setback at Athens.’ Paul adjusts himself on the stuffed rugs that are currently functioning as a couch.

Manius, the Praetorian to whom Paul’s wrist is chained, trying to doze, looks irritated by the movement. But then Manius has seemed to find annoyance in everything these past weeks. It appears that his good graces were only ever based on his stomach and they have vanished with the last of the pomegranates and dove preserves. Though Paul’s disciples have managed to salve adequate alms to secure the group a large tent of their own in the refugee camp, the conditions are far below those that have become customary during their years in Rome. The days of shellfish, snails and dormice are gone; occasional eggs are now a delicacy. But Paul, who in his time has suffered greatly worse, is undaunted by the deterioration. Paul has been stoned, flogged and beaten with rods; a little discomfort is as nothing to him.

Paul continues: ‘Athens was the first city I had visited where men didn’t flock to my words. Because they were obsessed with “wisdom” in that place and my message about Jesus appears as nonsense to those who think themselves wise. But it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will reject .

‘So where’s the wise person? Where’s the scholar? Where’s the philosopher of this age? I’ll tell you. God has turned their wisdom into foolishness. In His true wisdom, God saw that their supposed wisdom impeded them from knowing Him. And so God chose to save those who believe the “nonsense” of my preaching. Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.

‘Sages think they can use logic, experiment, observation and reason to explain away the spiritual. But God doesn’t follow those rules. God has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise. Jews ask for signs, and Athenians look for wisdom, but I preach of a crucified Saviour, an impediment to Jews and nonsense to Athenians, but God’s nonsense is wiser than human wisdom. God chose what is foolish to make the wise feel ashamed.

‘So my message is wisdom, but not the wisdom of this world, which is passing away. Instead, I speak about God’s wisdom: a hidden secret, which God destined before the world began. And I don’t speak about these things with human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit. I explain spiritual things to spiritual people. A person who isn’t spiritual can’t accept the things of God’s Spirit, for they are nonsense to him. But to us, nonsense is wisdom. Do you see?’