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18. THE MYSTERY OF THE KINGDOM

It would be difficult to find any serious student of the New Testament, from fundamentalist to extreme skeptic, who doubts that Jesus was regarded by his contemporaries as a healer of the sick. The accounts of his healings recalled in John also appear in the Signs Gospel, and most of the healings mentioned in Matthew and Luke are borrowed from Mark, so we can comfortably place the healings very early in Christian tradition.

According to the New Testament, Jesus had a variety of techniques for healing. Sometimes it was a simple command: In Mark 2.11 and John 5.8, Jesus heals a paralytic by telling him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk." Equally common was the touch and command: "And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying to him, If you choose, you can make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and said to him, I will; be clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed" (Mk 1.40-42).

Jesus could also heal from a distance; in John 4.46-54, while in Cana, Jesus tells an official of Herod Antipas' to return to his home in Capernaum, about twenty miles away, and find his dying son cured. Yet sometimes special applications were required, as in healing the blind man in John 9.1-7: "He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, And said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam...." A similar procedure becomes more complex in the healing of a deaf-mute in Mark 7.33-35: "And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and said to him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly."

Closely associated with such healings was the exorcism of demons. At Capernaum, "they brought unto [Jesus] all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils. And all the city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many that were sick of various diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him" (Mk 1.32-34). The devils, demons, or "unclean spirits" (the three terms are virtually synonymous) mentioned so often in the New Testament -- and so often vanquished by Jesus and his followers -- produced symptoms that resemble epilepsy or various forms of mental illness, particularity schizophrenia. And these demons were indeed regarded as sentient entities who recognized Jesus -- "Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, "You are the Son of God!" (Mk 3.11) -- and even bargained with him, as in the case of the unclean spirits who begged Jesus to send them into a herd of swine after he exorcised them from a deranged man (Mk 5.1-14).

What we see in these accounts of Jesus' healings and exorcisms is a first-century magician at work. While some of the educated elite in the first-century Mediterranean world disparaged magic but did not entirely discount its efficacy -- Pliny the Elder being an example of that attitude -- the magician was widely admired by the poor and often employed by the credulous rich. In Acts 13:6-12, the Roman proconsul on Cyprus had an in-house Jewish "magus" (a "magus" was a high-end magician trained in the quasi-official Persian techniques) and "false prophet" named Elymas. When Paul tried to convert the Proconsul, evidently Elymas engaged him in a struggle for his employer's soul and was promptly blinded by Paul's superior power, which came from the "Holy Spirit."

The Jews had a particularity strong tradition of respect for magicians. Devout ascetic sects like the Essenes and Theraputae, as we have seen, devoted considerable study to magical cures. Moses, the original law-giver, was also considered the first Jewish magician. To Jews of Jesus' time, king Solomon, son of David and builder of the first Jerusalem Temple, was widely regarded as practitioner of magic, a theme that was popular in first-century pseudepigraphic texts like the Testament of Solomon, which list a series of demons and the diseases they cause, along with the names of the angels capable of thwarting those demons and restoring good health.

Flavius Josephus was one of those who believed that Solomon's wisdom also included the skill of exorcism: "God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and healthful to men" (Ant 8.45). Josephus goes on to say, probably referring to a pseudepigraphic text, that Solomon left for posterity formulas for performing exorcisms, several of which Josephus himself witnessed. He describes an exorcism performed by a Jew named Eleazar, in the presence of the Roman emperor Vespasian and his troops, in Antiquities 8.46-49: "He put a ring made of a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to nostrils of the demoniac; after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured [the demon] to return to him no more, still making mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations he composed." After performing such an exorcism, Eleazar commanded the vanquished demon to turn over a basin of water set nearby, as proof of its departure, "and when this was done, the skill and wisdom of Solomon was shown very manifestly... that all men may know... how he was beloved of God."

This glowing review of a magical exorcism by a highly educated Pharisaic Jew like Josephus explains why the scribes could not attack Jesus for performing exorcisms, but instead were forced to impugn the source of his power: "And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He has Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casts out devils" (Mk 3.22). Here Jesus replies, with considerable logic, "How can Satan cast out Satan... if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but has an end" (Mk 3.23-26). Luke 11.19 adds another dig at the scribal criticism, which has no meaning unless the scribes themselves were performing exorcisms: "And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out?" In other words, I'm exorcising the same demons you scribes are busy casting out; why do you say you do it by the power of God, and then say I do it by the power of Satan?

Evidently Jesus' whole complex of skills -- magical control of demons, interpretation of the law, and prophetic abilities -- was quite similar to those claimed by the scribes. These were, after all, the same skills possessed by the archetypal prophets Elijah and Elisha, critics of and advisors to the ninth century B.C. kings of Israel. God was the ultimate source of these abilities, but the prophets were able to pass them on to their own disciples. We have a strikingly detailed description of this procedure in 2 Kings 2.9-15. Elijah had been instructed by an angel to find Elisha, a plowboy, and anoint him as his successor. Knowing that God was about to take him into heaven, "Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for you, before I am taken away from you. And Elisha said, I pray you, let a double portion of your spirit be upon me. And he said, You have asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you; but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof..."

This is the first known vision of the Merkabah, the fiery chariot-throne of God which Ezekiel witnessed in his visions (Ezek 1.4-28, 10.1-22) and which became so important to later Jewish mysticism. In sharing this vision with his mentor, Elisha was filled with Elijah's magical power; he took Elijah's mantle, which had fallen from the sky, struck the waters of the Jordan River, which parted for him. Elisha then crossed over to Jericho, and "When the company of prophets who were at Jericho saw him... they declared, 'The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.'"

This spirit or ruach -- the animating breath of God -- is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek pneuma, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost which descended on Jesus when he was baptized by John the Baptist ("he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him..." Mk 1.10). In the jargon of the early Christian communities, this pneuma or Holy Spirit endowed its recipient with "power," for which the Greek terms exousia and dunamis are used synonymously, both denotative of the supernatural ability to perform miracles. Thus, Acts 10.38: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him." Or Acts 1:8, where the resurrected Jesus tells his followers, "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

In Luke 1.17, a direct lineage is established between Elijah and the power possessed by John the Baptist, which subsequently passed to Jesus: "And [John] shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." Jesus, in turn, passed the power to his disciples: "And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease" (Mt 10.1). So effective was the apostles use of this power after Jesus' death that the great Samaritan magician, Simon Magus, reputedly offered to buy it: "And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, Your money perish with you, because you have thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money" (Acts 8.18-20).

Passing the power probably wasn't quite as simple as laying on the hands. In the case of Elijah and Elisha it was a "hard thing," an arduous vision quest that took them into the desert east of Jericho, with no guarantee that even the anointed Elisha would "get" the vision and inherit Elijah's powers. Ezekiel, who had Merkabah visions similar to Elisha's, seems to have engaged in a severely ascetic regime prior to his visions, lying only on his left side, tied by cords so that he couldn't move, for three hundred and ninety days, subsisting on water and coarse bread baked over a cow dung fire (Ezek 4.4-15); he also shaved and burned his hair in preparation for the rite (Ezek 5.1-4).

Jesus evidently suffered a serious spiritual crisis when he received the Holy Spirit from John; he was driven into the wilderness for forty days, where he was tempted by Satan and administered by angels (Mk 1.12-13). Once in possession of the power, he found it a demanding resource. In Mark 1.35, after a long day of mass exorcisms, Jesus needed to regenerate his spirit: "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed." Evidently the power was drained from him with each healing. While Jesus was passing through the crowd on the way to see Jairus' daughter, a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years touched his garment and was instantly healed. "And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that the power had gone out of him, turned about in the crush, and said, Who touched my clothes?" (Mk 5.30).

While we have a number of illustrations of how Jesus publicly applied his power to the mentally and physically ill, the canonical gospels provide no picture as to how Jesus privately passed that power to his disciples. However, there is an interesting passage in Secret Mark, the unexpurgated version of Mark discovered in a Judean monastery by Morton Smith in 1958. It occurs immediately after Jesus had summoned the formerly deceased "rich youth" from his tomb: "But the youth, looking upon him, loved him and began to beseech him that he might be with him. And going out of the tomb they came into the house of the youth, for he was rich. And Jesus told him what to do and in the evening the youth comes to him wearing a linen cloth over [his] naked [body]. And he remained with him that night, for Jesus taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God."

Here we should recall Mark 4.10-11: "And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all [these] things are done in parables." So what we have in Secret Mark is a reference to the ritual by which the mystery of the kingdom of God, which outsiders -- Jesus' public audience -- can know only through parables, was taught to Jesus closest disciples.

Morton Smith, in his 1973 study of Secret Mark, The Secret Gospel, offers his own theory on the nature of this ritual. Baptism as practiced by Jesus was a nighttime ritual, Smith says, involving naked immersion in water, followed by prolonged chanting of repetitive, hypnotic prayers and hymns; Smith cites several ancient "handbooks," both Jewish and pagan, for such procedures. The Great Magical Papyrus in Paris, an immense corpus of magical formulas written early in the fourth century A.D. but containing material that originated centuries earlier, describes a rite for "getting an oracle": The adept, accompanied by an experienced magician, must spread a linen sheet on the flat rooftop of a house and at midday lie down naked on it, then recite a lengthy magical incantation; a diving bird, striking the adept, will announce the arrival of the spirit -- quite similar to the dove-like descent of the Holy Spirit immediately after Jesus' baptism. Among Jewish sects, Philo describes the nocturnal singing and chanting rituals -- evidently resulting in group ecstasy -- of the Theraputae, whose ascetic, communal practices so closely resembled those of the early Christians; both men and women participated, "being intoxicated all night till the morning with this beautiful intoxication" (ConLife 89). And, in The Gospel According to Thomas (Th 37), we may have Jesus' own reference to a nude baptismal rite: "Jesus said, 'When you strip naked without being ashamed, and take your garments and put them under your feet like children and tread upon them, then [you] will see the child of the living. And you will not be afraid.'"

Jesus' initiates, Smith suggests, "achieved hallucinatory union with Jesus," and were then taken on an "ascent into heaven." The Merkabah that transported Elijah, Elisha, and Ezekiel into heaven may have been a symbol of an hallucinatory state -- the "ride" the initiate had to catch in order to ascend; it may also have been some sort of shamanistic archetype or "gateway" image to which the initiate was guided en route to more spectacular visions. Most likely the fantastic visions of heaven -- the crystalline palaces of God and legions of ferocious avenging angels -- found in pseudepigrapha like 1 Enoch were the sort of sights the initiate might be expected to observe on his celestial tour.

Smith theorizes that the ritual ascent also involved manual manipulation -- the laying on of hands we so often hear about in the New Testament may have been a form of ritual massage. Some form of hyperventilation and asphyxia may also have been employed. Recent clinical research has shown that the classic "near death" experience -- the "tunnel of light" and the ecstatic experience that follows -- is actually the brain's response to oxygen deprivation. It is possible that after a preparatory period of chanting, sleep deprivation, drug ingestion, and hyperventilation, the initiate underwent controlled asphyxia, from which he was revived when the master breathed the spirit of life -- the pneuma or ruach -- back into him. We may have a hint of this procedure in John 20.22: "[Jesus] breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Ghost...."

As disagreeable as it is for modern Christians to consider, there is also the possibility that sexual activities accompanied the ritual of initiation -- perhaps erotic asphyxia, the enhancement of orgasm by oxygen deprivation. Evidently the homoerotic element in Secret Mark was the principal reason the author censored it from canonical Mark; it was also the reason why early Christian authorities such as Clement of Alexandria, the second-century writer whose letter condemned Secret Mark while inadvertently preserving it for posterity, considered Secret Mark so potentially damaging. Clement certainly had reason to be sensitive on that score, given the accusations of sexual libertinism that pursued the early Christian church throughout its first centuries. These charges were not, as is often suggested, mere calumny hurled by outsiders who misinterpreted the "love thy neighbor" ethos of early Christianity. In 1 Corinthians 5:1-2, Paul writes to the errant flock: "It is reported commonly [that there is] fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. 2 And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among you." What is particularly galling to Paul is that the Corinthians are proud --"puffed up" -- about the fornicator. In Ephesians 5.1-20, falsely attributed to Paul, the author invokes Pauline authority to attack "fornicators" within the community at Ephesus, saying "It is a shame even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret."

It is possible that the libertine practices so vehemently rejected by Paul and the later gospels were carried on among gnostic Christian sects like the Carpocratians, followers of an early second-century Alexandrian philosopher named Carpocrates; Clement of Alexandria, the vigilant custodian of Christian morality, attacked the Carpocratians for espousing free love. Smith concludes, as a result of his study of this and a great deal of additional material, that "libertine Christianity was widespread and ancient," and that Jesus himself presided over a libertine "inner circle." Smith theorizes that the effort by the later evangelists to clean up this tradition explains the absence of any authentic writings by Jesus and his disciples; the true Christian tradition may have scandalized its later followers.

While this theory offends convictions deeply held by western culture, there is a peculiar passage among the earliest known Christian sayings, The Gospel According to Thomas, that seems to support Smith's contention. While engaged in a teacher-to-pupil dialogue with his disciples, Jesus took aside Thomas and told him "three sayings." When Thomas returned to the rest of the disciples, he was asked what Jesus had told him privately. Whereupon Thomas answered, "If I say to you one of the sayings that he said to me, you will take stones and stone me, and fire will come out of the stones and burn you up" (Th 27.4-10). This is obviously a bit hyperbolic, but it suggests a bitter dispute among even Jesus' inner circle regarding teachings some of them evidently regarded as offensive or outrageous.

Regardless of the means by which the ascent into heaven was achieved, Jesus' initiation ritual explains how the kingdom of heaven could be both present and in the future. A frequent theme of the pseudepigrapha is that all the elements of time and fate are eternally present in heaven -- the angel armies of the apocalypse, the scales of the judgment day, the pit and paradise, the tablets upon which are recorded the lists of the saved and the damned. "When the Most High made the world," we read in the Fourth Book of Ezra, a first-century A.D. Jewish apocalypse, "he first prepared the judgment and all the things that pertain to the judgment" (4Ezr 7.70-71). In that sense the kingdom was eternally present and accessible to those with sufficient power; that was the great secret only those who had been to heaven were privileged to understand. The multitudes who could see only the pale reflection of the kingdom in Jesus' parables, however, would have to wait for the last day and the earthly fulfillment of divine prophecy in order to experience that final, ecstatic vision.

But presumably Jesus' followers had already toured heaven and seen the vast machinery of the apocalypse before Jesus was crucified -- this was the ritual by which they received the power over demons. If that is so, then Jesus, after surviving the cross, must have offered his followers an even more ecstatic and persuasive experience of the kingdom of heaven.

We can only dimly imagine the spiritual crisis that Jesus may have endured on the cross. Perhaps a vague impression is provided by the earliest passion chronicle, the Cross Gospel, as found embedded in the Gospel of Peter: "And the Lord [Jesus] called out and cried, 'My power, O power, you have forsaken me!'" (Pet 5.19). Suffering prolonged, excruciating suffocation, perhaps entering into a comatose state, it is possible Jesus took the ultimate ride on the Merkabah express, to an inner sanctum only one adept had ever before been privileged to enter.

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