The Roman by Mika Waltari Read Free Book Online

believe in a Messiah. The city of Antioch is neither willing nor even competent to decide whether the Messiah has come or not. So the Jews and the Christians must settle the matter in peace among themselves, without persecuting each other.� �So it has been and so it would still be,� said Paul passionately, �if the circumcised Christians weren�t so cowardly, like Cephas for instance, who first ate together with the uncircumcised but then withdrew from them because he was more afraid of the holy men in Jerusalem than of God. I told him straight out what I thought about his cowardice, but the damage was done and now the circumcised eat more and more frequently by themselves and the uncircumcised do the same. So the latter can no longer be called Jews, even legally. No, amongst us there are neither Jews nor Greeks, neither freedmen nor slaves, but we are all of us Christians.� My father remarked that it would be unwise to put forward
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    tins argument to the court, since by it the Christians would lose an irreplaceable advantage and protection. It would be more rational for them to admit that they were Jews and benefit from all the political advantages of Judaism, even if they did show little respect for circumcision and the Jewish laws. But he did not succeed in convincing these two Jews. They had their own unshakable belief that a Jew was a Jew and all others heathens, but a heathen could become Christian and in the same way a Jew could also become a Christian and then there was no difference between them, but they were one with Christ. Nevertheless, a Jew as a Christian continued to be a Jew, but a baptized heathen could become a Jew only by circumcision, and this was neither necessary nor even desirable any longer, for the whole world must know that a Christian did not need to be a Jew. My father said bitterly that this was a philosophy that was beyond his comprehension. In his day, he himself had been humbly wishing to become a subject of the kingdom of Jesus of Nazareth, but then he was not received because he was not a Jew. The leaders of the Nazareth sect had even forbidden him to talk about their king. As far as he could see, he would be wisest to continue to wait for the affairs of the kingdom to be clarified so that they would also be comprehensible to simpler minds. Clearly it was providence that was now sending him to Rome, for such unpleasantness was to be expected in Antioch from both Jews and Christians that even the best mediators could no longer offer a solution. But he promised to suggest to the city council that the Christians should not be tried for having violated the Jewish faith, since they by receiving the baptism, devised by the Jews, and by admitting a Jewish Messiah as their king, in any case de facto ii not also literally de jute, in some way or other were Jews. If lie council admitted this standpoint, then the matter could at least be postponed and the Jews� action set aside for a time. With this Barnabas and Paul were satisfied, and indeed they could hardly be otherwise. My father assured them that his sympathies in any case lay more with the Christians than with the Jews. The freedmen on their part implored my father to ask to be allowed to resign from the city council without delay, for he had enough to do with his own affairs. But my father quite rightly
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    replied that just at this moment it was impossible for him to do so, for a public application for resignation would make everyone believe that he in fact regarded me as guilty of sacrilege. The freedmen began seriously to fear that my father�s obvious sympathies with the Christians would make the people suspect that he had perhaps encouraged me, his son, with the view in mind of violating the girls� innocent rites. For both Christians and Jews felt an equally implacable aversion to idols, holy sacrifices and hereditary rites. �The Christians who have been baptized and then have drunk blood with their fellow believers,�