The Eternal Jew’s Tale, #209, Messiahs, 4

In this episode, Rome, desperate, sends an agent into Betar.
{Note: for the reader’s convenience, I have labeled the speaker/thinkers for the first part of this story. I leave off with those labels when they become largely superfluous.}

The Eternal Jew’s Tale
Messiah Tractates, a Montage
Bar Koseva Fragments, 3

… Is this a dream I dreamed last night? Awake or dream, I cannot tell…

Hadrian speaking in Eliezer’s dream:
‘… Eliezer, Eliezer, listen to me! Do you realize who I am?’

Eliezer responds:
‘Yes, I know you, Hadrian, tyrant, pagan, soulless dog.’

‘Grumbler, call me what you will, but you will serve me anyway.’

‘Your words are garbled; I can’t hear…’

‘Eliezer, listen sharp. I will send a messenger… Eliessenger… essenger… my infomers… perishuddenly… we will uproo, curshen rout… Eliezer, azer, azer..’

‘Belial, demon king… save me Lor, save, now…’

Bar Koseva, his brain overheated:
“… Eliezer, look how your prayer has contracted me and all our might and all our land and all our God…
“… and yet, within an acorn, an oak will burst its shell and thrust its trunk heavenward, and spread it branches like an eagle’s wings, like an angel’s wings, and shoot its root far and wide to earth’s core and distant edge…
“… expand your spirit from this holy plot…
“… our time is come to break out…”

Eliezer’s thoughts:
… the time is past, and breaking in…
… souls ruined, ancestral fragments crying out in prayers unknown, words unknown, thoughts unknown…
… an asp entwines Bar Koseva; are they wrestling, or do they dance? is it an asp or lupus himself?…
… end-time howls, these, my sore that ooze the pus of all my sins, all my doubts that God is hear…
… a skull is lying on the ground, weeds growing out of its jaws…
… and so the world and God contracts into messiah, all else shard in dread despair to be restored…

… Eliezer, wake yourself…
… no! I must not succumb to doubt…
… the Lor is my strength, I will adore…
… my crag, my fort, my savior, my rock…

… Rome, Belial terrifies me…
… snares of death…
… dread distress…

… mountains shudder…
… the Lor is hear…
… robes of darkness…
… a thunderhead…
… Your fiery coals, scatter and rout…

See, Eliezer is wasting away, wrapping his bandages at Betar’s gate.

Roman agent:
“Eliezer, I am sent by caesar to you for a private word…”

… evil men would devour our souls, but see, they stumble; see, they will fall…

Who is that stranger whispering words to Eliezer as he wraps his sores?

“Eliezer, caesar would save your life if you would forsake Betar.”

… we will write scrolls recounting these deeds, the great deliverance that You decreed…

Report that stranger to Bar Koseva. This looks like treason; fly, make haste!

“Eliezer, save yourself while caesar still has pity for you.”

… a thousand have fallen on our left side, ten thousand more on our right…
… but we will see as if with one eye the punishments You will inflict…

“Where’s the traitor? Show him to me! Eliezer, that Samaritan who spoke with you, who is he?”

“Sire, no one spoke with me. All day I was bringing down the Lor to bastion you against the wolf.”

“I have at least two witnesses that swear you spoke with a stranger here, a Samaritan with evil intent.”

“Yet, no one spoke with me today.”

“Here, my king, is the Samaritan sent to find our weaknesses and sew dissension in our ranks.”

Roman agent:
“If I reveal caesar’s plans, caesar will surely have my head, and you rebels might yet prevail. But you offend God and man, so I defy you, come what may.”

“Flay him slowly til he talks.”

In wild agonies that dog spilled his secrets, everything. The most important thing he said:

“Eliezer has lost faith and plans to forsake Betar soon and turn his prayers against our Prince.”

Morning comes. As the sun rises, see, a pack of snarling dogs lapping blood and gnawing on flesh at Eliezer’s headless corpse. And before the next Rosh Khodesh* has come, fortress Betar has been overrun. Three hundred baskets of tefillin found scattered around Betar’s streets, and Judea’s name erased from the map, renamed Palestina by Rome, and the few Jews who still remained were exiled from their Eternal Home.
* new month at the new moon

Eliezer, Bar Koseva… messiahs? We’ll have none of that. O desperate people, oh lost and roiled folk, to think messiahs will save the world…
… tefillin scattered in the streets…

End of Bar Koseva Fragments

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In the next episode, a history of Abu Isa.