György Spiró - Captivity

This was already Samaria! These people were not striving to reach Jerusalem but their own ruined shrine in the north, at Mount Gerizim.

Was that where we were headed?

The temple of the Samaritans had once stood on Mount Gerizim, which they had built in defiance of the Temple in Jerusalem that had been demolished. There they had made sacrificial offerings of incinerated meat to appease a wrathful Lord, and before Herod the Great it had been destroyed by John Hyrcanus, then the king of the Jews, and since lain in ruins. However, the Samaritans kept making sacrificial offerings among the ruins even now, and they hated the Jews, with whom they shared a common God and language.

They had difficulty making further progress along the path, continually changing course because of pedestrians, forcing the mules to trample untrodden shrubland, listening to the joyful singsong. Like the Judaeans, the Samaritans chanted psalms; they were taking sacrificial animals and produce to the ruins of their own temple.

These people are not going to harm us, it occurred to Uri; they believe that we too are going to make sacrificial offerings at their temple, that we are not hostile Jews but their brothers.

A cunning dodge, that: a Jew from Judaea could hardly be safer in traveling in Samaria. Presumably we are also saving ourselves a substantial detour on the way to Tiberias.

But what about the way back? Shall we be coming back at the time of the Festival of Booths, like good Samaritans? But traveling is forbidden for them, too, at that time.

By the afternoon every path had become clogged with people, and the mules, unused to such activity, constantly tugged this way and that, balking and coming to a standstill.

These people struck Uri as being happier than those on the road from Caesarea to Jerusalem.

A prophet with a flowing beard went along in the center of one group, yelling hoarsely, with people joining in.

“The Ark of the Covenant!” they shouted.

Aaron held back until he was in step with Uri at the end of the line.

“Move it! We’re making progress too slowly. Don’t fall behind.”

“What are those people shouting?” Uri asked.

“You can hear them yourself,” Aaron said, pressing on to the front.

That evening they were unable to find a place for themselves, so they made camp among a throng of people.

A divine miracle has occurred, people kept on saying, joyously, both to themselves and to each other. The Lord has had mercy on us, God is with us, blessed be the Eternal One. They bowed to the north and prayed, saying a short Sh’ma, and they never wearied of proclaiming that those alive right now were joyous because the Ark of the Covenant had turned up. It was a miracle, a miracle! The Almighty had worked a miracle: the Ark of the Covenant had been found!

Uri shuddered.

He had already given some thought to the Ark of the Covenant on the journey. It was as if his thinking about it had caused people to start talking about it. They wielded shovels, sticks, and swords; serious men and shriveled elders and irrational children and wailing women. The Ark of the Covenant was in the depths of Mount Gerizim; the depths of the Holy Mountain were concealing it. It only had to be dug out.

So that was what we were going to do — dig it out!

They prayed and chanted throughout the night; it was impossible to sleep.

By daybreak Uri had formed a clear picture for himself.

The Lord had appeared in a dream to a certain Matthew, a prophet, and informed him that the lost Ark of the Covenant was hidden by Mount Gerizim, and also told him exactly where it was to be sought. Upon awakening Matthew doubted whether he had really spoken with the Lord in his dream, but when he turned his gaze on the mountain he saw a burning bush in its depths at exactly the spot the Lord said the Ark of the Covenant had been buried centuries ago. Matthew raced over and began digging, but he realized that he alone was not equal to the task, and he set to preaching to the populace what the Lord had told him, calling on them to dig alongside him. He had been preaching the words of the Lord for a week now. The Lord was well aware when to announce the secret because the people would be flocking there for the Day of Atonement anyway; indeed, many had set off earlier than usual. Everyone would dig, and the Ark of the Covenant would be found, and with the Ark of the Covenant, power! Because the Lord is seated on the Ark of the Covenant, and in this way he would raise the Semites of Samaria above all peoples, blessed be His name!

As to what kind of man this Matthew was, no one had anything to say; obviously they did not know him. But the important thing was not so much who this prophet was but that the Lord God had appeared to him in a dream.

Uri, however, was troubled.

He would have been extremely pleased were the Ark of the Covenant to come to light, but he found himself unable to believe it was about to happen. If it had not been located for centuries on end, and why would it now in particular? The peaceful landscape of Judaea and Samaria did not exactly give the impression that Judgment Day was nigh.

No way are we going to Tiberias, it occurred to him. Mount Gerizim had been the destination from the outset.

But why?

He began to calculate.

They had been traveling for four days now. If the vision really had come to Matthew a week ago, as people were saying, then it would have taken at least four days for news of it to reach Jerusalem. Messages could be sent by fire, but that was not usually used for long, complicated messages, as vowels were left out and meanings could easily be misunderstood. It was quite probably a courier who had carried the news. It must have been at least eight days ago, or even earlier, that the courier had arrived in Jerusalem with the news that people were going to search for the Ark of the Covenant at the festival with shovels and swords in the depths of the mountain. We’re being sent there to see whether the chest comes to light.

Uri muttered discontentedly to himself that the story was not credible.

There was no chance of the actual chest turning up, Uri thought. Had another chest been fabricated? Had the Samaritans forged one and buried it on the mountain so that it would be found and they could assert ownership and gain the upper hand over other Semites? Even supposing that was the case, why precisely was it us, newcomers to Judaea, who were going to be put in proximity to the chest? What might our task be — to bear witness to the fact that the chest was a fake or, on the contrary, that it was genuine? But then who amongst us would have the courage to bear witness on a matter like that? If that chest came to light the high priest would have to see it, but there is not a priest among us!

We have been sent to Samaria as spies, to spy on those looking for the Ark of the Covenant.

The Samaritans were so joyous that they paid no attention to them. They scarcely even greeted the two in white robes, though they recognized and appreciated that they did not worship toward the Temple in Jerusalem. Aaron had heard the familiar way that the two white-robed men addressed the Samaritans, but he had let it be.

How could it be that men in white robes lived in Judaea and didn’t pray toward Jerusalem? Was it not all a single religion? Or was it a single religion that had broken up into several faiths?

Roman Jews, like the priests of Jerusalem, did not believe in a Hereafter or the immortality of souls or the transmigration into a new body, yet Master Jehuda and other masters believed in these things. They still belonged to one religion, however, because they made sacrificial offerings to the Temple. But was anyone who did not make such sacrifices a Jew at all? Was where one paid taxes a criterion of Jewishness? The Jews of Parthia who had stayed in Babylon paid no dues, or like the Roman Jews sent only half a shekel in taxes, yet they were still Jews. What did they believe in?