Tuesday, 25 May
My extended stay at Elmfield House on Friday afternoon was very
enjoyable indeed, mainly because I had a perfect excuse to fawn over Luke
without attracting suspicion but also because Leonard has progressed to
painting Luke’s portraits and I find the painting process to be tremendously entertaining.
I sat behind Leonard and the large wooden easel that dominated the centre of
the workroom, pretending to follow each brushstroke while all the time watching
the colours swirl around inside the jar of water that he uses to clean his
brush. At one point Luke developed a raspy cough that he blamed on the dusty old
cravat that he was wearing for the portrait but Leonard believed that it was
brought on by the strong paint fumes that were accumulating in the room and, although
Luke insisted that he was fine, Leonard opened all the windows and then retreated
into the kitchen to brew up a pot of cough remedy which, from what I can
gather, consisted mostly of mullein, horehound and honey. He offered a mug of
the steaming mixture to me and although it smelled sweet and appealing, I
politely declined.
We resumed our positions around the easel and then after ten minutes or
so of silence, Leonard enquired from out of nowhere: “so…any new thoughts on
the wand?”. At first I was unsure to whom Leonard was speaking as he had his
back to me, but since Luke was looking directly at Leonard and I knew that Luke
would not be so rude to ignore him, I inferred that the question must be addressed
to me. Besides I have learned to anticipate a theological-cum-magical lecture
whenever the room falls quiet and on most occasions, unless I am feeling particularly
tired, I am relieved when Leonard strikes up a discussion as it serves to fill
the awkward silences, although I wonder whether he does this a) to genuinely test
my opinions on his theories, b) to provide entertainment in order to prevent me
from becoming bored or c) to simply amuse himself while he is working.
My apathetic response to Leonard’s question was the verbal equivalent of
shrugging my shoulders like a sulky teenager. What else could I say? I had
exhausted every conceivable theory that had come to mind during our last conversation
on the matter and so I made an indifferent, hesitant noise that hung pitifully
in the workroom air along with the paint fumes. Clearly impatient to reveal his
own thoughts on the subject, Leonard jammed the end of his brush between his
teeth and stepped back from the easel, then he reached over to a shelf and retrieved
his bible. He handed the bible to me and instructed me to turn to chapter
fourteen of the Gospel of Matthew and read the first two verses of the chapter
aloud. Obligingly I located the passage and read:
‘At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the
fame of Jesus, and said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from
the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him.’
The afternoon was rapidly turning into another bible study session and I
was embarrassed that yet another theological debate was taking place in Luke’s
presence. Although Luke knows that I am a student of theology and these discussions
have an entirely academic basis, I do not want him to think that I am a
religious fanatic who talks about nothing but Jesus and the New Testament all
day long. And reading bible passages aloud during our sessions is doing very
little to discourage this impression.
Leonard asked me to explain,
from my understanding of these two verses, how Herod believes that Jesus is
able to perform miracles. I reread the passage to myself and answered tentatively
“because John the Baptist has risen from the dead?”. He nodded in agreement and
then asked me to explain how the deceased John the Baptist could be the source
of Jesus’ ability to perform miracles. After feigning deep concentration for a
short while, I shook my head and confessed that I had not considered the
meaning of Herod’s words in this passage before, but the implication appears to
be that Jesus somehow is John the
Baptist.
My reply sounded ridiculous but,
before I could contemplate it any further, Leonard presented me with yet another
puzzle. He said that in the Markan version of this story the claim that Jesus
is to be identified as John the Baptist is made by the general public rather
than Herod and, in another episode that occurs later in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus
asks the disciples ‘who do men say I am?’ to which they respond with the names
of John the Baptist, Elijah and ‘one of the prophets who has risen again’. In
Mark’s version of events it is the
general populace who identify Jesus as John the Baptist and by asking the
question (and promptly demanding secrecy afterwards) we infer that Jesus
himself was fully aware of these allegations. So, Leonard asked me, what could have
led Jesus’ contemporaries to believe that he was John the Baptist or another popular
deceased figure?
It seemed obvious to me that Herod
and the people were thinking in terms of reincarnation - that John the Baptist
had been reincarnated as Jesus – but Leonard dismissed this theory, pointing
out that a) John and Jesus existed contemporaneously and they are distinctly
separate characters in the Gospels, and b) Herod’s accusation is not that John
has been reincarnated but that he is
risen from the dead and he is actively empowering Jesus to perform
miracles, to which I exclaimed “you mean, Jesus had taken John’s dead body out
of his grave?!” causing Leonard and Luke to laugh at my shocked and repulsed expression.
Leonard said that he seriously doubted that John’s stinking, rotting corpse was
accompanying Jesus around Galilee and performing miracles on his behalf. On the
contrary, he argued that Herod’s words do not concern the bodily resurrection
of John but rather the resurrection of his spirit and therefore Herod’s claim is
that the spirit of John the Baptist is
empowering Jesus and granting him the ability to perform miracles. “Like spirit
possession?” I interrupted, to which Leonard pulled a face and replied that the
term ‘spirit-possession’ is a little misleading…
Leonard introduced the word ‘necromancy’
into our conversation at that point and he explained that the term typically refers
to the physical resurrection or re-animation of a corpse using magical
procedures, although it was also broadly applied to the magical manipulation of
the spirits of the dead, particularly the practice of consulting the spirits of
the dead regarding future events. He said that necromancy was widely practiced
in antiquity and it features in the literature produced by many cultures
throughout history, so it is no surprise that it even makes an appearance in the
Synoptic Gospels. When I questioned Leonard about this statement he said that
Jesus was an accomplished necromancer who performed both the physical
resurrection of the dead and the magical manipulation of the spirits of the
dead and when I considered the evidence presented by the Gospel authors then the
claim made perfect sense: Jesus talks with Moses and Elijah during his
transfiguration (which Leonard described as an invocation of the dead in order
to consult with them concerning future events), Jesus raises a child from the
dead on two occasions and in the account of the raising of Lazarus in the
Gospel of John we are presented with the resurrection of a corpse that had been
dead for four days.
I confessed that I had not considered
the raising of Lazarus to be an act of necromancy before, to which Leonard pointed
out that the artists who portrayed Jesus raising Lazarus with a wand in early
Christian art clearly interpreted the passage in this way. Leonard said that if
these popular artistic representations of Jesus performing the raising of Lazarus
using magical methods are any indication that Jesus was suspected of practising
necromancy in the centuries following his death then it is likely that he
encountered similar accusations during his lifetime, which could account for the
popular belief that Jesus could resurrect the souls of deceased individuals such
as John the Baptist. Herod’s words could therefore be further evidence that Jesus’
contemporaries understood that Jesus was capable of manipulating the spirits of
the dead through magical means and they believed that the source of his
miracle-working powers did not originate from the divine or the demonic, but from
the spirits of the dead.
More later, I must leave for a lecture now. I will write again
tomorrow…..
