Festive paper chains adorned the grimy ceilings and walls of Sir Toby’s, stained a murky brown by centuries of burning tallow, oil lamps and smoky fires fuelled by central European brown coal. The overall impression was, perhaps, welcoming, and in its own way, festive.
Prague itself was a Christmas fairy-tale of decorative lights, Christmas markets, and medieval buildings which gave hints of transcendence in their winter illuminations. From The Castle’s point of view, Christmas was to be celebrated; the people were to be festive and cheerful. The Castle’s representatives mingled with the crowds to make sure this was the case. There was, after all, a faltering central European economy to be maintained, and a cheerful crowd is a free-spending crowd.
The Cabal had been at the inn for a few days, its various members turning up with no sense of a schedule or timetable having been agreed, and each joined in the shapeless conversations which morphed in a bewildering variety of forms, splitting off into different groups and subgroups, with the usual disagreements and old antagonisms being expressed.
The elderly sage - whose contributions to discussions conveyed a heightened impression of sagacity by occasional pauses, long, deep draughts on his clay pipe, and exhalations of smoke rings which rose with a wobbling precariousness high into the murky rafters - cleared his throat.
“And if we are to find in what is commonly known as ‘the Christmas story’ an underpinning of the narrative expression which many of our friends so ardently contend for,” he said, casting a glance in particular at the rather youthful-looking representative whose smart leather jacket seemed to harmonise with central European progressiveness, “then are we also to assume that in the Matthean version, we find little more than Old Testament allusions cobbled together with contemporary legend material, taking the form of a fanciful expository midrash, which asserts in a highly propagandistic fashion the messianic credentials of the one who was to come?”
The weight of this question seemed to add to the intense gloom which was descending on the proceedings. The end of a paper chain came adrift from its moorings, and dangled as if in mockery of the question which had just been raised, left, as it were, suspended in the ensuing silence.
“In principle, I would say, yes, why not?” said the dapper young man, breaking the silence’s spell. “The point of the story was never to provide a theological proof for the divine credentials of the second person of the trinity through a virgin birth, but to develop arguments, in a historically contextualised way, for his messianic status – within the broader parameters of the narrative of Israel, of course.” He took a deep draught of the noxious brew which swirled around the massive clay Krug which was firmly clasped in his right hand.
As the group pondered these reflections, the motley collection of mongrel dogs which was circling the Cabal seemed to gain greater confidence, and took to sniffing around the shoes of the theologians in the hope of finding some morsels which had inadvertently dropped to the ground during the deliberations.
“Well I don’t know,” grumbled an Australian voice. The figure had been sitting in the semi-darkness just outside the circle, but his angular features and sharply cut red beard could just about be seen. “Are we talking about narrative invention here, without any pretence to be history? It seems to me that all we have is imaginative myth – nothing at all that would stand up to any decent modern historical scrutiny.”
“Imagination,” sighed the elderly sage, emitting a succession of smoke rings as if to underscore his point. He subsided into some form of internal reverie. “Perhaps,” he said, “God is as we are,” gesturing vaguely around the room and the assembled individuals.
“But perhaps,” said a small, balding, bespectacled figure, dressed in the garb of a Trappist, who until now had made little contribution to this particular discussion, “theological, narrative, mythical and genuinely historical interests can co-exist, be combined without the one invalidating the other. Perhaps the references to the birth of Moses in contemporary legend in the Matthean account were intended to highlight, not invalidate, a greater historical fulfilment through the birth of the Messiah. Perhaps the fanciful midrashic play of text and exposition was intended to be framed in a literal, actual occurrence - a historical event? Perhaps Matthew even went so far as to develop Isaiah’s prophecy of the young maiden into an account of a miraculous event which really happened – the virgin birth of a child? Particularly bearing in mind that although virgin births have been known, the issue has always been of the female gender, never male. Perhaps, in this account which has all the elements of folk lore and imaginative intertwining of theology and myth, we find a more literal fulfilment? Perhaps narrative and history can live comfortably together in an imaginatively and theologically embellished account. Perhaps,” he continued, his voice subsiding to barely a whisper, “history and imaginative narrative converge at this point, where history became His – story.”
As if an invisible power had timed it, at that moment a gust of wind suddenly blew open the door of the inn, sending a flurry of snowflakes across the room, scattering the dusty piles of learned papers which the Cabal had prepared. Paper chains danced wildly, lights flickered crazily, the fire blazed with fresh energy and at that very moment, the bells of a hundred churches sounded out from city steeples across Prague, summoning the faithful to midnight mass. Christmas had dawned.
the old man does ramble on so
“I no longer remember precisely when I arrived in this place,” the old man began, “but if the cobbled clatter of my stick had momentarily distracted you from more ethereal concerns you would have given little heed to the greybeard canted slightly forward like a man carrying a heavy burden uphill – and so I felt myself to be, but that is of no concern… The fact of the matter is this: I could have been a brigand or a prince, a troubadour or a contriver of schemes, and you would have paid me no more mind than if I had been one of these dogs.”
Reaching out a crabbed hand the old man snatched one of the dogs by the scruff. The scrofulous cur, used to ill-treatment, cowered, its whimper inaudible to all but his canine fellows, all of which skulked silently to the other side of the room. With one hand the old man pulled the dog’s muzzle up and forward while with his free hand he swabbed a piece of bread through the empty bowl of the abbé, who shrugged and muttered a common but colorful French obscenity. The old man dropped the sop to the floor and released his canine captive. The dog quickly gulped down the morsel before slinking between the tables and out the open door. In a trice three other dogs moved to the old man’s side.
“What if I were to tell you,” he continued, “that that stooped old man hobbling along the road was a figure of legend, a traveler from a land unknown even to those who have traded in the silk bazaars of Samarkand or passed among the floating spice islands of Shikoku or gazed upon the unveiled faces of the blue women whose footsteps leave no trace in the endless desert – a man as ancient as the world he walks, one for whom the times to come are even more tediously familiar than the times that have already been, one for whom there had been neither direction nor destination until that unreckoned day he passed unnoticed through the city gates and happened upon this particular inn?”
“I would say,” said the Trappist without looking up from the ball of string he had been unraveling, “that I would never have known.”
“Precisely,” remarked the old emissary.
“And your point is what, precisely?”
The old man considered whether this question, posed archly by the smartly-dressed young Westerner, constituted an invitation or a challenge. Neither, he decided. “Which summons shall we heed tonight?” he asked no one in particular. No one spoke. “The bells. Which church?”
“But it was my understanding…”
“Yes of course, but my dossier instructs me to respect the local customs.”
“A man of legend holds no portfolio,” challenged the Antipodean.
“This is the usual objection,” the old man acknowledged as he hoisted his coat over his shoulders. “When the days of festival are completed we shall take up the paradoxical notion of the true myth. In my view there are five possibilites…” Without restraint the bitter wind scattered the voices of the cloaked and cowled theologians, figures from an unremembered dream who drifted toward their appointed but unknown destination.
Re: Christmas at Sir Toby's
Christmas day had dawned with a fresh covering of snow across Prague, under a cloudless blue sky. The streets were quiet. The Cabal had busied itself about various separate affairs of its members during the morning; some had mysterious engagements in places of religious unorthodoxy in out of the way suburbs of the city. Some had taken advantage of the weather to admire the city in its Christmas finery. Others had remained at Sir Toby’s in their rooms, reading obscure, voluminous religious tomes, and making careful annotations in the margins, for future reference.
After midday, a group had gathered in the communal area of the hostel, before a seasonally well-banked fire, which was cosily spitting pine sap and cinders at any who came too close.
The Trappist raised his eyes from an ancient leather-bound volume that lay open on the table before him. Peering over his spectacles, he coughed slightly, to obtain the attention of any in the group who cared to listen.
“Zechariah, Mary and the Shepherds were greeted with a heavenly angelic salutation. Each responded with fear, the natural response to the supernatural. Each was reassured with the same words - “Do not be afraid!”, the most frequently repeated command in the biblical texts,” he added, with the faintest trace of a smile around his otherwise impenetrable physiognomy. “It would seem to me that approaching the texts with a similar kind of respect, a holy fear, would provide an appropriate attitude for interpretation, and would perhaps receive a similar reassurance.”
He continued. “Gabriel’s promise to Mary concerning her child echoes the promise of God to David through the prophet Nathan - of an offspring to come who would enjoy a place of unique favour before YHWH, a throne, house and kingdom, which would last for ever.” He peered over his spectacles again: “I need hardly mention that ‘from age to age’ has an added eternal reinforcement here; that ‘seed’ as the messianic nomenclature reminds us of the Abrahamic ‘seed’; that even ‘raise up’ contains shadowy suggestions of resurrection.” At this, there was some coughing and shuffling amongst the hearers.
The Trappist continued. “A narrative theology might seem to require no more than an assertion here of the messianic credentials of the one who was to come. Are we entitled to view the Lucan description in this purely limited way?”
“Whilst the Matthean account only mentions the debatable ‘virgin’ within the citing of Isaiah’s prophecy, it is nevertheless clear from the context that Mary was indeed a virgin. Luke makes the theme of Mary’s virginity more explicit, in verses 27 and 34 of his account. From the point of the view of the texts, this particular discussion need go no further.”
“In Luke’s account,” he went on, “the episode increases with intensity as it moves towards its, er, climax. Not content to leave us with the bare outline of a fulfilment of prophecy given to David some 1000 years previously, Luke wishes to press further, into more controversial territory. The sexual union implied in verse 35 is no less than a union of the divine with the human, doubly emphasized, using, no doubt, the techniques of poetic parallelism. A human impregnation seems to be excluded. Had Luke wished us to be in no doubt about a human agency, he would, no doubt, have made himself clear at this point.”
“Your point being?” interrupted a grumbling voice from the circle.
“At this point in the narrative, a new emphasis is given to the phrase ‘Son of God’, a title now given to the one to be born. Prior to the description of the impregnation, it might have been possible to regard appellations such as ‘Son of the Most High’ as purely human terms. Now it seems that ‘Son of God’ takes on a new meaning. We all know that ‘Son of God’ was YHWH’s term for his unique relationship with Israel, as his beloved ‘son’. ‘Son’, or ‘sons of God’ was also the psalmist’s term for the angelic heavenly host. Here, it seems to be taking on a further meaning - a true son of Israel, who combined in himself, according to the birth account carefully studied, human and divine elements.”
“Mary was reassured that miraculous gynaecological phenomena were not to be confined to her alone - her relative Elizabeth was also to have a child in her old age. But here, the agency was human, albeit with divine asistance. The reassurance must have sounded somewhat limited, when Mary ‘pondered these things in her heart’. She was, in the final and real sense, on her own.”
The Trappist continued. “Here, as in many places of the writings of the New Testament, do we not find a fuller meaning of the term ‘Son of God’, than has been hitherto implied? Dare we suggest, that even at this early stage of Jesus’s career, as carefully crafted in Luke’s narrative, the divine credentials of the one who was to come are being presented by the narrator? In short, are we not witnessing the rise of a new horizon of understanding, in the light of which the old horizon, carried over from the Hebrew Scriptures, must now be understood and interpreted?”
He peered again over his spectacles at the group. The elderly man seemed absorbed in internal thought. The antipodean seemed more than usually menacing beneath his shock of red hair and spikey beard. Various sage heads nodded, though perhaps more through sleep brought on by the warmth of the fire and the mulled wine than agreement. The suave delegate in the leather jacket, however, rose to respond.
the seven scrolls
“More soup?” the suave Westerner asked the Cabal. The clattering of spoons and bowls on the rough-hewn tables having eloquently expressed the theologians’ will in the matter, the Westerner nodded subtly toward the kitchen. He sat down, folded his hands before him, closed his eyes, and said no more. As the uproar subsided, an unaccustomed silence commingled with the clouds of smoke and the sharp smell of stale beer that suffused the hall. The Trappist, grumbling into his cup, maintained his vow for a change. Glancing from table to table, the old traveler emitted a resonant belch and straightened himself in his chair. Dismayed yet reconciled to inevitability, the gathered theologians understood at once that they were about to be subjected to yet another one of the old fool’s rambling and pointless anecdotes.
* * *
“Once I met a young man on the road. ‘Take it,’ the young man insisted as he thrust the scroll toward me. ‘It is the story of how the world began.’
“Not without reluctance did I accept what was being offered. ‘How did you come to know this story?’
“A zealous seeker after truth, the young man had asked the prophet to tell him of the beginning of all things. I see the future, the prophet had told him, but not the past. The young man asked the scribe. You may read what has been written, the scribe said as he gestured toward the pyramids of scrolls that covered the tables, but there is none who knows. The young man asked the priest, who warned him sternly of the evils that had befallen others who had asked this question. But the question had already taken possession of the young man’s soul.
“He undertook a rigorous asceticism, eating nothing but the buds of a certain shrub that grew uncertainly near the mouths of the caves, training himself in the disciplines of silence, offering neither encouragement nor resistance to the question that grew and grew until at last it had absorbed him inside itself. Having studied the signs in the sky he knew with precision the day his enlightenment would arrive. No one saw him leave the village. Three days later the weaver would find him lying by the well. It was two days before he recovered his senses, six before he could speak. On the fourteenth day he asked that a quill and scroll be brought him.
“Lightly did I hold the scroll before me. ‘It is the one,’ the young man affirmed, and without another word he walked up the lane toward the mountains.
“Many years later and half a world away I met another man. With downcast eyes he muttered something in an accent I had heard only once before in all my wanderings. He had to repeat himself twice before I could understand him: ‘This is the story of the how the world began.’
“He too had begun his quest by asking others; he too found no satisfaction. Instead of seeking mystical enlightenment, the man undertook years of exploration into the nature of things. He collected rocks and sand, leaves and fruits, skins and eggs. He studied the movement of the streams and the clouds and the stars. He counted things, carefully listing his tallies in many volumes. The merest glance at his collections left no doubt that his travels had taken him where even I had never been. Though he had written extensively, he had shown his writings to no one. Now, in this one thin scroll, he presented to me the essence of his accumulated understanding.”
* * *
The old man tapped his pipe on the heel of his boot, dislodging a plug of half-burned leaves that flared like a shooting star as he kicked them vaguely toward the fireplace. “The third reasoned her way to the beginning of the world. The fourth asked the wisest among his people what they believed; the fifth asked the most simple. The sixth was a teller of tales who, having perfected her craft, turned her hand and her imagination toward the beginning of all beginnings.” Reaching beneath the table the old man pulled forth his rucksack, scarred like its bearer by the years and the miles but still serviceable. He swept his arm across the table, the sodden crumbs barely reaching the littered floor before the dogs could snap them up. One by one the old man extracted six scrolls from the heavy sack and placed them side by side on the tabletop. Though yellowed and creased, the scrolls seemed intact. It was evident to those seated nearest the fire that the seal on each scroll remained unbroken. “The seventh,” he said firmly but without elaboration as again he reached into the rucksack, “is my own.”
“You mean to say…” exclaimed the Trappist. The old man shrugged.
“Why haven’t you read them?” demanded the Antipodean.
“Not curious,” the Westerner speculated from behind closed eyelids.
“Incurably. Insatiably.” But now it was the others who spoke and not the old man. “Which should we read first?” “Which is most likely true?” Only the dogs paid heed to the two burly scullions who bore the steaming cauldron in from the kitchen, so distracted were the theologians by the seven scrolls…
the soup is served
Soon, however, the rich aroma of the soup proved persuasive and the theologians fell to eating in earnest. The baker slid loaves of hot bread onto the tables; pitchers of spiced wine were passed from hand to hand. Everyone began speaking at once, tellling tales of distant homes and the many roads that had brought them to Sir Toby’s. Amid the din the old man leaned across and shouted into the Trappist’s ear. “The story of your savior’s birth intrigues me. There is some question, then, as to whether he was born a god or became one?”
The Trappist nodded. “Some say he was born of man and woman, and that God adopted him as his son.”
“What privileges does your God extend to his sons?”
The Trappist said something; the old man cupped a hand around his ear and leaned closer. “Our God is lord and king,” the Trappist bellowed. “To his son he grants authority over his kingdom.”
The old man chewed a crust thoughtfully. “As adopted son your savior may have been granted this power, but he would have remained but a man, is this not so?” The Trappist shook his head. “And you who follow this savior — are you not also adopted as sons?” Nodding from the Trappist. “So you are alike, then, your savior and those whom he saves.” Again the Trappist shook his head.
With a rheumatic forefinger the old man tapped the Trappist on the chest. “But you, my friend, insist that this savior was fathered by your God. Tell me, is it not true that in your ancient stories the sons of the gods bred with the daughters of men? That these women gave birth to a mighty race? That the sons of men were overwhelmed with jealous rage at the sons of the gods? That this competition between gods and men led to great strife and corruption? That Yahweh, who would become your god, destroyed the half-breed race in a flood? That he began again with a pure human stock, preserved through the flood on a boat? That even after the flood the mighty half-breeds could still be found in the land? Tell me then: why at last would Yahweh have consented to breed with human woman? Had the god-man mongrel race at last overwhelmed the purebred humans, so that of all the gods only Yahweh had no human lineage?”
The old man lowered his head over the steaming bowl, dipped in his spoon and tipped it into his mouth, the thin broth dribbling down his beard and onto the floor.
Re: Christmas at Sir Toby's
“The account in Genesis 6:1-2 to which you refer is open to different interpretations,” said the Trappist. “My own preference is for the interpretation of M.G. Kline, who proposes that the term ‘sons of god’ takes up a general usage in the OT world as a prefix to the title of king, and that in the Genesis passage it is simply referring to rulers of that remote antediluvian era.”
The Trappist paused, turned to the serving wench and bellowed “More soup!”
He then turned to the elderly sage. “Anyway what about these seven veils, er - I mean seven scrolls that you were going to tell us about?” he asked.
the eighth seal
“Ah yes.” The old man leaned back from the table and rubbed his stomach, evidently preparing to declaim at length. Slowly, smugly, he turned to address his interlocutor, only to find himself facing a profile of the Trappist’s tonsured head. Sweeping his gaze across the hall the old man observed the urbane Westerner and the gruff Antipodean engaged in an exchange that had attracted the attention of the other theologians seated near them. To the old man’s ears the surrounding din had organized itself into a dual-register choral polyphony, the weak reed of his own voice overwhelmed by the dominant chord that resounded through the hall. When he lowered his head he seemed diminished, as though he had already been reduced to a vague and faded memory.
“The age of legends is behind us now,” he began, “but if a new legend could be configured from these seven scrolls, what would be its tenor?” He spoke softly, as one who no longer expects to be heard. “Perhaps the Castle would at last issue its summons and I would be granted an audience, or be taken into custody. In the confusion the scrolls would be left on the table. Or…I could gather the scrolls, return them to my pack, and depart undetected without having revealed their contents. Or I could consign them to the flames, so.” The old man tossed a crust of bread into the hearth, where it immediately blackened and crumbled. He picked up one of the scrolls and twirled it between his gnarled but surprisingly nimble fingers. “What if I opened them one by one and they all told the same story of the beginning of all things? Or if the stories differed from one another in every respect? Or if every scroll was blank?”
Reaching beneath the table the old man again pulled forth his rucksack. He took out a sheet of parchment, a quill, a pot of ink. With quavering hand he wrote as around him the clamor of voices surged and receded like the surf of an ancient sea. When he had finished he blotted the page with his sleeve and rolled it into a tight cylinder. Reaching across the table with his free hand he grasped the candlestick, dripped hot wax onto the scroll and impressed it with his signet. With some care he replaced the other seven scrolls in his pack and affixed the frayed straps. He struggled to his feet.
“Look here, where are you headed at this hour?” It was the Trappist.
“I have other affairs to settle,” the old man muttered; “a function, perhaps a reprieve. No, no, don’t stand.” The two theologians shook hands firmly. The old man put on his coat, slung his pack over a stooped shoulder, grasped his staff, and limped toward the door.
“But wait,” the Trappist called after him, “you’ve left one of the scrolls.” The old man smiled, lifted his staff in benediction, with some effort pulled open the heavy door, and was gone.
Re: the eighth seal
The Trappist peered into the gloaming, but the elderly man was already no more than a vague blur in the encircling gloom, lurching down the hill to the tram stop. He turned back to the warmth of the hostel, and was left pondering the paradoxical notion of the true myth, the five possibilities, the seven scrolls, and an eighth scroll which now lay before him on the rough beer-stained table. Even as he looked at the scroll which the old man had left behind, he wondered who would be found worthy of breaking open the seal, and revealing its contents. Fretfully, he picked up his ball of string, which, like worry-beads, he absent-mindedly continued to unravel.
Sons of God
He stared at his son’s hands. They were large boned, hairy and handsome but the skill of shaping the crystal was not in them. He had chanced upon a recent mastadon kill while on a morning ramble. There were very few wounds on the hairy wrinkled skin. In one was the haft of a broken spear. With curiosity the hunter worked the shaft free. It was deeply embedded. Then he saw the head. No wonder the spear had dug so deep! The crystal at the tip was sharp. Fine flakes had been chipped off its faces to produce a weapon of murderous intent.
There had been rumours. These man like creatures were slender, hairless, but more warlike. They attacked anything that crossed their paths even if it was not edible. They roamed far and fast. They had come to this land when the winters became warmer. They were becoming more common. What would be the fate of his people when they had to meet the hairless ones? Would they trade? or would they kill?
He believed in God, yet now the ancient prophecy troubled him. God had told them that there would flee from His garden in the East, a creature that would bind the earth in terrible bondage. The prophecy warned them to flee to the mountains for the evil would be rapacious and their frugal and gentle ways would be construed as weakness. Perhaps the time had come?
First he must find and talk to one of these…had they come from Eden?
Live to serve : Serve to live