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19. FACE TO FACE

In the ancient world, the God of the Hebrews was distinguished from a plethora of gods by His singular yet ineffable being. Unlike other gods, He did not share power, nor could He be represented by any image. Even His true name could not be uttered. One of the ironies of the gospels' version of the trial of Jesus is that Jesus is accused of blasphemy for claiming to be the Messiah or the Son of God, when in fact such claims were not blasphemous under Jewish law. But a simple oath made with the sacred name of God, Yahweh, was punishable by death (Mishnah Sanhedrin 7.4-5).

The intermediaries who could make some sort of connection with the ineffable Creator were the most important figures in Jewish culture. The Old Testament prophets were presumed to hear the words of Gods and see the visions He offered; therein lay their prestige. The symbol of the High Priest's supreme authority was the ceremony on the Day of Atonement, when he was permitted to enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Jerusalem Temple, the empty room inhabited by the invisible presence of God, and directly offer sacrifice on behalf of the entire nation. But while the High Priest addressed God, we are never told that he presumed to hear Him. And certainly the High Priest could never claim to actually have seen the Lord of the Universe.

Yet at the time of Jesus, there seems to have been a popular legend that one Jew had seen God: Moses, to whom God had personally delivered the law. That legend can be found in a pseudepigraphal Jewish hymn of the period, written in Greek and called "Orphica" because it was attributed to Orpheus, the first man to enter Hades and return. The hymn is addressed to Orpheus' son Musaeus, and contains esoteric knowledge regarding the Hebrew God (here we see the practice, common at Jesus' time, of recasting Greek myth in terms of Jewish theology). Orpheus, who in the hymn is clearly cast as a scribal mystic, says, "My son, I will point out to you, whenever I notice his footsteps/ And the strong hand of the mighty God./ But I do not see him, because around [him] a cloud is set up,/ A thin one for me, but tenfold for all other people.... And no one has seen the ruler of mortal men,/ Except a certain unique man.... Yes he after this is established in the great heaven/ On a golden throne... He is entirely heavenly, and brings everything to completion on earth.../ Being.../ The one who received... the twin tablets of the law."

Here is a Moses who alone has seen "the ruler of mortal men," a vision denied even Orpheus, himself a legendary magical adept with ten times the mystical acuity of any other man. And Moses' vision, not his status as the law-giver, is the source of his authority and uniqueness. Moses sits on a heavenly throne, just like the risen Christ; he is the heavenly being who brings all things to completion on earth, just as the risen Christ could declare, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth" (Mt 28.18). The Orphic Moses is, in short, the paradigm of the risen Christ.

We can only speculate by what means Jesus might have convinced his followers that he, like Moses, had seen the face of God. Doubtless Jesus' return from certain death added to the credibility of whatever vision he shared with his inner circle. But perhaps it was ultimately a case of Jesus finally persuading himself of his cosmic purpose, and with that new fervor convincing his own disciples. We can imagine a man of no distinction until his mid-thirties, just a few years from what his culture considered old age, still overshadowed by his spiritual mentor, John the Baptist, perhaps believing as he was led to his death that he had utterly failed in his mission to proclaim the imminence of God's empire. Whatever his clinical status on the cross, it is likely that Jesus believed he had died and had been restored to life. In that experience -- as is the case with so many modern near-death encounters -- Jesus may have achieved an understanding of God and His purpose far more profound than anything he had imagined in all of his previous ascents into heaven.

Jesus could not have survived long after his descent from the cross; the gospels describe a very brief period, forty days at the most (Acts 1.3). If he did not succumb within days to the lingering physical effects of the crucifixion, blood poisoning or infection of his wounds would almost certainly have caused his death within weeks. During that time, the wealthy supporters who had purchased Jesus' body, fearful of the Roman authorities, might have furtively moved Jesus among their country villas and estates; at the same time, Jesus probably summoned to his side the disciples who had deserted him in Hinnom. And in those few days or weeks, a dying fugitive, proclaiming his ecstatic vision of God, converted his feckless disciples into the architects of an enduring faith.

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