Apologies for the delay since my last post - I will continue from where
I left off last time....
I remember glancing at Luke to observe his reaction but he was seemingly
oblivious to our bizarre conversation and he took advantage of the break, walking
across the room to lean against the window ledge and appearing to be completely
uninterested in our discussion. My confused expression and stunned silence
caused Leonard to prompt me once again. Examining the papers much closer this
time, I noticed that in each of the pictures Jesus was touching the head of
Lazarus with a long, thin instrument. I smiled and Leonard’s face immediately
lit up in response. He rested the drawing board on his lap and announced “you
once insisted that a magician should have a magic wand….well then, Helen, here
is your magic wand!”. I laughed at the absurdity of his words at first, but
then I reminded myself that Leonard has a habit of causing me to swallow my
disbelief…
Leonard explained that many
artistic depictions of Jesus in the third and fourth century AD portray him
using a wand-like instrument when raising the dead and these magician-like
representations feature heavily in the wall frescoes in the catacombs of Rome
and they appear in a number of other locations (as Leonard had demonstrated by
the various artworks in the folder). In fact these mysterious ‘wands’ are so
commonplace during this period that there have even been attempts to
‘christianise’ them in some instances by putting a small cross on the top of
them. He said
that biblical scholars and art historians alike are unsure how to account for
the presence of these strange ‘wands’, but they appear to serve a functional purpose that is directly related
to the performance of a miracle as they do not appear randomly in scenes of
Jesus’ life but only when a miracle is being performed and in each case they
make direct contact with the object that is to be transformed, i.e. with the
head of Lazarus in this particular case. Leonard paused while I studied the
pictures again and I could tell from his amused grin that he was enjoying my
staggered confusion. I reflected on the pictures for a second and then the
rational theologian in me began to fire out questions…
My first thought was that the
unidentified instrument represented a walking staff, particularly since there
is mention in the Gospels that the disciples carried walking staffs. Leonard said
that the type of walking staff that I had in mind (i.e. the kind used by
beggars and the old) was a rigid staff known in Greek as a ‘skeptron’, but the
Greek word that is used in the Gospel passages that I had in mind is not
‘skeptron’ but ‘rhabdos’. He said that the word ‘rhabdos’ refers to a much
smaller, flexible twig that would provide no support as a walking staff and,
most significantly, the term ‘rhabdos’ is invariably translated in antiquity as
‘wand’ so, technically speaking, the disciples carried wands rather than walking
staffs!
I confessed to Leonard that the word ‘wand’ calls to mind a short black
stick with two white ends that is waved around by flamboyant entertainers on
television shows, but Leonard explained that wands took a variety of forms in antiquity
and they were considered to be an effective tool for conducting the souls of
the dead (he gave the example of the Greek god Hermes who appears in The
Odyssey with a golden wand which he uses to guide the dead into the
Underworld). Since wands were commonly believed to be employed by gods and
powerful magicians to conduct the spirits of the dead, Leonard said that they
were frequently used in magical resurrection rituals and they appear in many
early depictions of magical resurrection in which the magician is often
portrayed as touching the head of the
corpse with a small wand in order to return the soul of the deceased to
its physical body.
I looked back at the pictures
and tried to make sense of the parallels that Leonard was drawing between these
stories of magical resurrection and the artistic representations of Jesus’
resurrection of Lazarus that were resting in my lap. In each one of the
pictures Jesus was touching the head
of Lazarus with a long wand-like instrument in the same way that the
magicians who performed magical resurrection were commonly depicted. So my next
question to Leonard was simple; are these artists deliberately portraying Jesus
as a magician who raised the dead using magical techniques?
Leonard was evasive with his
answer - even though it seemed to be an entirely plausible explanation to me -
and he reeled off a list of possibilities for me to consider: maybe there is a
lost literary text or a forgotten historical event upon which these artists based
their portraits of Jesus employing a wand in his ministry? Or maybe there was a
Christian cult in the late third and fourth centuries that revered Jesus as a
great magician and chose to present him in this way? In the end Leonard’s
conclusion was uncharacteristically vague: “your guess, dear Helen, is as good
as mine, or anyone else’s for that matter.”
As he said this, he retrieved the drawing board from beside his chair
and Luke promptly returned to his fixed position in the middle of the floor. I
was fascinated by the unspoken understanding between them but at the same time
I was disheartened to see that Luke demanded far less direction from Leonard than
I required. Leonard stood out of his chair and walked over to Luke to adjust
the white cloth around his waist and nothing further was said about the
pictures. I offered the folder back to him when he returned to his seat, but he
declined and told me that I could keep them as he had copies, so I sat with
them on my lap for a while, just looking at the pictures and occasionally across
at Luke. Again at the pictures and then at Luke. Both were equally as mysterious
and captivating that afternoon. I am delighted that Luke is precisely
the man that I had hoped he would be and, if he contributes little else to our
sessions than his mere presence, I am pleased that my future visits to Elmfield
House will be equally as visually stimulating as they are intellectually stimulating…
