Crossing the thin line



Friday, 9 April

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…