"The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pullman Philip)

The Stranger Talks of Truth and History

Christ never knew when the stranger would come to him. The next time he appeared it was late at night, and the stranger’s voice spoke quietly through his window:

‘Christ, come and tell me what has been happening.’

Christ gathered his scrolls together and left the house on tiptoe. The stranger beckoned him away from the town and up on to the dark hillside where they could talk without being overheard.

The stranger listened without interrupting while Christ told him everything Jesus had done since the sermon on the mountain.

‘Well done,’ said the stranger. ‘This is excellent work. How did you hear about the events in Tyre and Sidon? You did not go there, I think.’

‘I asked one of his disciples to keep me informed,’ said Christ. ‘Without letting Jesus know, of course. I hope that was permitted?’

‘You have a real talent for this task.’

‘Thank you, sir. There is one thing that would help me do it better, though. If I knew the reason for your enquiries I could look more purposefully. Are you from the Sanhedrin?’

‘Is that what you think? And what do you understand of the function of the Sanhedrin?’

‘Why, it’s the body that determines great matters of law and doctrine. And of course it deals with taxes and administrative business, and – and so on. Naturally I don’t mean to imply that it’s a mere bureaucracy, although such things are, of course, necessary in human affairs… ’

‘What did you tell the disciple who is your informant?’

‘I told him that I was writing the history of the Kingdom of God, and that he would be helping in that great task.’

‘A very good answer. You could do worse than apply it to your own question. In helping me, you are helping to write that history. But there is more, and this is not for everyone to know: in writing about what has gone past, we help to shape what will come. There are dark days approaching, turbulent times; if the way to the Kingdom of God is to be opened, we who know must be prepared to make history the handmaid of posterity and not its governor. What should have been is a better servant of the Kingdom than what was. I am sure you understand me.’

‘I do,’ said Christ. ‘And, sir, if you read my scrolls-’

‘I shall read them with close attention, and with gratitude for your unselfish and courageous work.’

The stranger took the bundle of scrolls under his cloak, and stood up to leave.

‘Remember what I told you when we first met,’ he said. ‘There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting truth into history. You are the word of God.’

‘When will you come again?’ said Christ.

‘I shall come when I am needed. And when I come again, we shall talk about your brother.’

A moment later, the stranger had disappeared in the darkness of the hillside. Christ sat for a long time in the cold wind, pondering on what the stranger had said. The words ‘we who know’ were some of the most thrilling he had ever heard. And he began to wonder if he had been right to think that the stranger came from the Sanhedrin; the man hadn’t exactly denied it, but he seemed to have a range of knowledge and a point of view that was quite unlike those of any lawyer or rabbi Christ had ever heard.

In fact, now that he thought about it, Christ realised that the stranger was unlike anyone he had ever come across. What he said was so strikingly different from anything Christ had read in the Torah, or heard in the synagogue, that he began to wonder whether the stranger was a Jew at all. He spoke Aramaic perfectly, but it was much more likely, given all the circumstances, that he was a Gentile, perhaps a Greek philosopher from Athens or Alexandria.

And Christ went home to his bed, full of humble joy at his own prescience; for hadn’t he spoken to Jesus in the wilderness about the need to include the Gentiles in the great organisation that would embody the Kingdom of God?