The Rising Sun

Simon ben David was afraid: it could not be good news when you were summoned before a Roman official. Two Roman soldiers had shown up at his shop and told him to put down everything he was doing and come with them—and he had come. The knowledge that he had done nothing wrong (there was not an honester merchant in Jerusalem) was hardly reassuring. The Romans had a reputation for finding pretexts to prosecute whomever they pleased, and his wealth made him a target for the greed of every petty official. Even now, he thought, as he was escorted through the streets, and pedestrians turned to look at him in sympathetic curiosity, soldiers might be ransacking his shop and home for the gold and silver, for the gems and other valuables, which constituted the wealth he had accumulated after a lifetime of toil and prudent economy. “Well,” he thought, “even if they take everything I own, as long as they don’t harm me and my family.” He also considered that he had started life with nothing, he knew what it was to be poor, and he could be poor again, if he had to be. Besides, he was sixty years old. How much longer could he live, either rich or poor? 

He was led to one of the official buildings which the Romans had constructed just within the city walls. It was three stories tall, made of granite blocks, with a grand façade of four marble columns upholding an architrave inlaid with carved figures—whether they were persons or gods, Simon ben David couldn’t tell. He was escorted up the short flight of steps to the entrance at which two soldiers stood guard, and neither of whom so much as turned their heads as he entered as though nothing were more normal for them than to see someone such as himself escorted into the building. Within the great antechamber the floors and walls were made of polished marble; tapestries hung on the wall, emblazoned with the symbols of Rome, the eagle and the fasces; and arched openings to the left or right led to other parts of the building. To one side stood a marble statue of Caesar, eight imposing feet tall, its right arm raised as though in benediction while the left, casually lowered, upheld a crimson military robe. The merchant marveled at all these things. The beauty of the architecture, the expensiveness of the materials, made him think, “Rome is great…”

He was led by the soldiers to a staircase straight ahead and which took him to a second floor; then they led him down a tapestried hall with an arched ceiling. They stopped at a set of double doors made of cedar wood with heavy polished brass fittings. One soldier went into the room alone, closing the door behind him; no doubt to inform the official within—an envoy sent from Rome—that the person he had summoned had arrived. The merchant glanced at the soldier remaining at his side and spoke to him for the first time since he had left his shop:

“How shall I address him?”

Without looking at him, with a face set as though in brutal stone, the soldier replied, “ ‘Your Excellency.’ ”

In a few more seconds the door was opened by the soldier who had stepped inside, and the soldier beside the merchant nodded for him to step forth. The room into which he entered was as bright and airy as it was spacious. Here there was more polished marble, more columns, more Roman insignia. At the opposite side a series of collapsible wooden panels had been pushed aside to reveal a balcony giving out to the hot white-bright day. The Roman envoy was standing there, looking out on a courtyard below him with his back turned toward the door

The wall on the right was in the process of being decorated with a painting, and what a painting it was! It was a view of massive buildings, temples perhaps, with fluted columns and ornate architraves set upon a hilltop and surrounded by trees and shaded walkways. So finely had they and their setting been painted, so accurate was the rendition of shading and perspective, that it was as though one were looking out onto an actual landscape in the near distance. Never before had the merchant seen such a large and beautiful painting. Never before had he seen the handiwork of an artist whose natural talent had, through years of training and disciplined work, been honed and enhanced so as to produce magnificent work. That someone could create such a thing from solid colors seemed to the merchant a revelation, a thing beyond human capacity, a kind of magic. He looked to the artist, wondering who he was. He was standing on a short ladder with pots of pigments on the floor around it. From behind—for he was facing the wall, working on it—he did not seem out of the ordinary. He was of medium height, thin, his hair longish and a little disheveled. No doubt he too was a Roman, brought to Jerusalem to adorn the buildings and homes of his powerful and wealthy countrymen. He momentarily turned around and looked at the merchant, who noted in his face an interesting dichotomy: large, soft, dark eyes, which seemed sad and sympathetic to all things, yet a strong, etched jawline and thin compressed lips expressive of resolve. The artist turned back to his painting, continuing to work on that part of it in which the rising sun, a great ball of orange-yellow, had risen into a sky deep blue and striated with wisps of white, gold-edged clouds.

The envoy himself was a man of perhaps thirty-five years of age. He was in the full flush of vigorous manhood. He was tall, well-built, and physically strong. His face was handsome with regular features, but there was something hard and unyielding about it. Clearly he was a man who was used to having his way, to giving orders and having them unquestioningly complied with. He looked upon the merchant for several seconds with vague impatience or displeasure, then spoke:

“You are Simon ben David?”

With a little internal start at the envoy pronouncing his name, the merchant replied, “Yes, Your Excellency.”

The envoy’s contemptuous eyes remained on the Simon ben David, who was intimidated and lowered his eyes submissively, only raising them when the envoy again spoke:

“I am in Jerusalem on orders of the Emperor to find out why this province is so troublesome. Caesar expects me to find out the reason directly and not through the self-interested and possibly distorted medium of local officials. I have been here two weeks and cannot say that I have learned more than I already knew. But one can always trust the locals of a place to know more than foreign officials stationed there. Someone like you, for instance. I am told you are well-known in this city—that you have a lot of connections here.”

The old merchant hardly knew how to answer. To his mind he was “well-known” only in the sense that he had many customers, many friends, many more friendly acquaintances, but to say that he had “connections”—in the high political sense in which the envoy seemed to mean it—would not have been accurate. His connections were of a purely personal and commercial nature. Whatever knowledge he had about the goings-on in the city came to him through the same usually inaccurate gossip informing a thousand others. Yet he knew better than to make some blanket statement of ignorance, fearing it would sound suspiciously defensive, so he replied:

“I have many friends in business, Your Excellency. And a large family, whom of course I speak to all the time.”

“Do you know of anyone who has spoken against Rome?”

What a question! For who hadn’t? No one who had lived more than a day in the city would hear the grumblings against the conquerors, especially among the religious who thought their presence, and especially their idols, an insult and outrage. To deny such a thing, Simon ben David knew, would be in effect to admit to the envoy that he was a liar, and perhaps incur angry consequences; and yet to admit it would be still more dangerous. He thought quickly how to respond in a way which would neither deny nor admit.

“Your Excellency, I cannot say that I have; at least, not that I can recall. But as you can see, I’m not a young man: my memory is not so good.”

“Hm!” the envoy muttered. He took a step toward the merchant and looked into his face critically, defiantly, with a vicious, accusatory expression before saying angrily, “Two of our soldiers were killed the other day by Jewish bandits. Did you know that?”

Simon ben David shook his head and said honestly, “No I did not know that, Your Excellency”—with all the respect toward someone with the power of life and death over him, and all the credibility of truth.

“Killed. Murdered.”

The old merchant lowered his head almost as though he were ashamed to hear it. Perhaps a part of him was, though the larger part of him was not.

The envoy backed away a few steps. He stood there almost uncertain of what he wanted to say next. He looked over to the wall painting, to the artist elevated above everyone in the room and still diligently working on the rising sun. Perhaps he had been talking with him before the merchant had entered the room. He turned his attention back to Simon ben David, and asked:

“Have you heard about a man named Jesus from Galilee?”

The merchant nodded, and said, “Yes, as many others have.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just once. Several weeks ago.”

“Where?”

“On a street here in the city.”

“What street?”

Simon ben David told him.

“I thought you said your memory was bad.”

“I just happen to remember that, Your Excellency.”

“Hm”—doubtful. “And?”

The merchant shrugged. “And that was all. I just saw him. There were several people around him. He was talking to them.”

“You didn’t hear what he said?”

“I have my own business to attend to, Your Excellency. I don’t have time to stand about listening to what strangers might be saying.”

“But you have heard about what he says—haven’t you?”

Simon ben David knew he had to be careful here. He had indeed heard, second- and third-hand, what the stranger from Galilee was saying and why he had gained a following. Nor was he, as an older practical man of business, especially impressed by the message insofar as he knew what it was: a disregard for the things of this world and a concentration on the Kingdom of Heaven. For to Simon ben David’s way of thinking it was all well and good to have a care for the Kingdom of Heaven; but until one got there one had to live this world, and a lack of attention to its challenges and requirements was bound to make it unnecessarily unpleasant—surely the very opposite of what a beneficent God wanted for his children. More importantly he knew that the Romans would consider such a message dangerous because it relegated their laws, their hegemony, and their emperor to a secondary or even contemptible footing, and so implied justification for insurrection against them. Again he had to think quickly, to calculate an answer which was as benignly non-political as he could muster. He said:

“He speaks a great deal of the next world, I believe. And of the need to repent of our sins.”

“And what else?”

“Honestly, Your Excellency, I don’t even know, or maybe I don’t remember. Perhaps someone told me but …”—he raised his hands a little in a gesture meant to show that the subject had not interested him enough to remember anything he might have heard about it.

The envoy looked over the merchant carefully again to try to see if he was being deceptive. It was hard to tell with people who were old: they had had a lifetime to learn how to lie credibly. On the other hand his gut feeling was that this one really didn’t know more than he had admitted.

“I’ll tell you what he says: he says there is a greater kingdom than Rome to which people must have allegiance. He says this world is nothing—which means that Rome is nothing. And he says, or it is said of him, that he is the son of God, which means that he is greater than Caesar. Did you know that?”

Again, Simon ben David had to think fast, for he had indeed heard such things. “Well,” he said, with an air of kindly reasonableness, “we believe we are all the children of God, Your Excellency— ”

“No! No—no”—shaking his head, imperatively. “That is not what I mean, and you know that is not what I mean. He claims to be the son of your God. Do you believe that?”

“Not in that literal way, Your Excellency.”

“Why not? Other Jews do.”

“Your Excellency, how can I be accountable for what other Jews believe? We have a saying here: ‘Put three Jews together and you will get four different opinions.’ ”

“But I am asking you yours. Why don’t you believe he is the son of God?”

“Because I have no proof.”

“But others say that they have seen the proof. They say they have seen him perform miracles—things no mortal could do. Do you think they are lying?”

“How can I say? I don’t personally know anyone who has claimed such things. As for myself, I could only believe such things if I saw them with my own eyes, and I have not.”

“Yet your God is invisible. You believe in Him, don’t you?” The Roman narrowed his eyes on the merchant and snuffled in satisfaction as though he were a master logician who had caught his opponent in the trap of an inescapable syllogism. “Well?” he goaded, waiting for his answer.

“You have a point, Your Excellency.”

“Of course I have a point. But once again, that is not what I asked you. You said that you would only believe in what you see for yourself, but your God is invisible, so the logical conclusion is that you don’t believe in Him either—is that right or isn’t it?”

“The truth is, Your Excellency, that ... I am not as pious as I should be.”

“Ha!” the envoy uttered, contemptuously. But then as he continued to gaze on the old man his attitude changed from contempt to some admiration as he considered, “Oh, yes, he’s a shrewd one.” He looked over the merchant from head to foot, sniffed disdainfully, and turned around to the balcony and took a few steps toward it.

Simon ben David felt his legs trembling. This is not good, not good at all, he was thinking, conscious of the envoy’s dissatisfaction with his answers. He was also aware of the soldier only a few feet away behind him, standing there as silently, as patiently, as death itself, perhaps with his hand on his sword and impatiently waiting for the order to strike. In fear, in despair of his life, he turned his eyes to the wonderful painting on the wall. How beautiful it was! For a moment his anxiety over an imminent death blow subsided under the inspiring influence of that sublime art. The artist of course had heard the interchange between the envoy and merchant, and surely felt the tension in the room. Perhaps he worked so quietly and continuously in order to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. All along he had been adding touches of orange, yellow, and white to the image of the rising sun, which seemed to burn more brightly than ever.

Meanwhile the envoy had stepped to the beginning of the balcony and was looking over the public square below. A statue of Caesar had been erected there. He was thinking what a waste of money and labor it had been to erect it or any other statue in this “city”—a word which he put to himself in disparaging quotation marks. He longed to be back in Rome with its fine homes, its paved streets, its cosmopolitanism and endless amusements; with people who were polite, learned, clean; with women who were beautiful, delicate, perfumed, and knew all the arts of seduction and pleasure. But this place? One of the most miserable spots on earth; hot, dusty, desert-forlorn; the people poor, uncivilized; the food limited in variety, and often tasting strange. What did Rome want with such a region, anyway? Still looking out on the square he began speaking as much to himself as to the merchant:

“Do you know what I find so amusing about your people? It’s that you have the gall to think so highly of yourselves. I have been to many places—lived among many nations—but not till I knew yours did I find one so infatuated with itself, so proud of accomplishments not even worthy of disdain. It just goes to show how backward and unsophisticated you really are that you can’t recognize your own insignificance. Because what have you done? Except for this ugly part of the earth, what lands have you conquered in battle, what seas have you crossed, what unknown parts of the world have you explored and brought back treasures from? Where are your great cities? Where is your great music? Where are your paintings, your sculptures–your great art? You have done nothing except scribble out fairy tales about an invisible God, and even that was by third- and fourth-rate writers whom a Roman schoolboy could put to shame for style. And yet you have the gall to strut about like peacocks as though you’ve really done something!... What you really are is a horde of superstitious fanatics who have either been conquered and enslaved by your betters, or have plundered those weaker and more miserable than yourselves. Of all peoples yours should be the most grateful to Rome for having taken you under her wing and showing you a better way. But instead of gratitude, what do you give us? Resentment. Resistance. Violence. Assassinations. Pfuh!”—he stomped his foot, turned around to the merchant, and spoke in the anger which he had worked himself into. “You miserable little ungrateful nothings! We bring you greatness and culture, and instead of thanking us for it you resist us at every turn. What is vulgarity, if not that?—seeing the finer, better way, but preferring to wallow in the mud of ignorance and superstition? The only problem is that you don’t stop there. Now you add audacity to barbarism and come up with a Jew who claims to be a god—who at one bound places himself above Caesar and every other monarch on earth. If that isn’t the summit of audacity, of—of insult—of madness—of insurrection—I don’t know what is. Maybe in your stupidity you think it’s a viable plot to undermine Rome. You are sadly mistaken. The world is a lot smarter and more sophisticated than you think, and there is never going to come a time when people will bow down to a Jew as a god. That I can promise you!”

—All the while the merchant had been listening, aware of the verbal attack, and frightened by the possible physical harm it portended. He watched the envoy look to the nearby soldier, who took a few steps forward with his hand on the hilt of his sword. The merchant’s heart sank to think that was “it,” the moment when he would be struck down. He tried to console himself: “Well, I’m sixty years old … how much longer could I live anyway …?”

But no harm was coming to him. The envoy had no respect for him, to be sure, but neither did he have any personal animus toward him. “Get him out of here,” he told the guards, in the same way in which he might have told a servant to throw out the garbage.

The old merchant was so relieved that he almost wanted to thank his Roman overlord. He bowed slightly toward him, then followed the soldier out of the room. As he did so he looked again at the magnificent painting, knowing he was unlikely ever to see such a beautiful thing again and making a conscious effort therefore to impress it on his memory. The painter had put the last touches on his depiction of the rising sun: it formed a bright circular backdrop around his head, indeed around the whole upper part of his body, like a halo of light.