Allegedly

What follows is a transcript of the emergency meeting of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, Tammuz 15, in the Year of the Consulship of Ocella and Sulla, otherwise counted as 786 Ab Urbe Condita¹ from a recording made on an Uher 5000 reel to reel tape recorder.² Those present were the rulers, elders, scribes in the presence of Annas, the High Priest as well as Jonathan, his son, and Alexander Unknown - all members of high priestly families and respectable men.

Elder 1: (Speaking to the detainees – by name Peter and John, and including the formerly crippled man) By what power and what name have you done this?

Peter: Rulers of th…

Elder 2: I’m sorry to interrupt…

Elder 1: Yes? Yes?

Elder 2: But what is the question under discussion here this morning?

Elder 1: What?

Elder 2: Is it the question of the healing of the crippled man…

Scribe 1: Alleged healing…

Elder 2: Yes. Alleged healing. Or is it the question of their heretical doctrine, namely the resurrection of the dead?

Scribe 2: Alleged resurrection.

Elder 2: Yes. Alleged Resurrection.

Elder 1: What?

Peter: Rulers of th…

Elder 1: The detainee will keep silent until he has been addressed. Now, what is the question?

Elder 2: Exactly.

Elder 1: What?

Elder 2: What is the question to be addressed here this morning? Is it the healing… alleged healing, or is the question of the questionable doctrine of the alleged resurrection?

Elder 1: What does it matter? We’re not here for questions; we’re here for answers. Now (to the detainees again) Why haven’t you answered my question?

Peter: Rulers of th…

Scribe 2: Could we have the question repeated for the record?

Scribe 1: I believe it was, “By what power and what name have you done this?”

Elder 1: Yes. Yes. That was it. By what power and by what name? And we are still waiting for an answer.

Peter: Rulers of th…

Scribe 2: Could you speak up? So we can hear your words and record your answer.

Elder 2: Yes. Do speak up.

Peter: Rulers of the people and elders! If you are questioning us about an act of kindness…

Scribe 1: Alleged act of kindness.

Peter: If you are questioning us about an act of kindness to a crippled old man, if you’re asking us how he was healed, then you all should know, that it was in the name and authority of Jesus of Nazareth – whom you crucified …

Scribe 2: Allegedly

Peter: …. and whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands on his own two feet before you today. Of all the given names in this world given to men, there is none other by which we can be saved.

The detainees were excused for the moment, sent back to the holding cells still bearing their fetters.

Elder 1: Your excellencies, what are we to do with these men? They are uneducated to be sure, but they are aweless and unafraid.

Ruler 1: Perhaps it is because they are uneducated that they are so audacious; they have not learned the proper respect for our position, or for theirs.

Elder 1: That may be so. We know them to be associates of the criminal Jesus, who was, like them, untrained and uncredentialed.

Elder 2: However that may be, the man has been healed.

Scribe 2: Allegedly.

Elder 2: Oh, lay off. We all know he was. We’ve all seen him in the court of beggars. We’ve seen him lying there for years. And now we’ve seen him standing in front of our eyes. And what is more, it’s obvious to everyone in the city that he’s been healed. These men are exciting the casual inhabitants of the city – the dockworkers, porters, hawkers, costermongers and the like. If we don’t silence them now, then all the bookbinders, clock-winders, and tailors in the city will be talking about this miracle.

Scribe 2: Alleged miracle.

Elder 2: Shut it, you old fool! You just saw him yourself.

Annas: Gentlemen, please. We are losing ourselves here.

Jonathan: Yes, father. You are quite right. Quite right.

Annas: What we want is stop this report from spreading any further.

Elder 2: And again, I am sorry, my lord, but which report is that?

Annas: What?

Elder 2: Are we trying to stop the report of the healing or the report of Jesus’ resurrection.

Scribe 2: Alleged resurrection.

Annas: Oh, for heaven’s sake. Call the detainees back in and warn them in the sternest terms possible not to speak of this or in this name to anyone ever again.

Jonathan: Yes, father. You are quite right. Again, quite right.

The detainees were called in before the members of the Sanhedrin once more and their shackles were removed from their wrists and ankles.

Elder 1: Gentlemen, you are hereby and forthwith ordered to stop all promulgation and proclamation in, of, about, or concerning the name of one Jesus of Nazareth, who was recently hung upon the executioner’s tree in this very city. You will, pursuant to the orders given by this governing body as incorporated under the authority of the emperor in Rome, Tiberius Caesar Augustus, cease and desist from all reckless speech and discourse, both here in the city of Jerusalem, and in the land of Israel and all her territories.

Elder 2: Now, what say you?

Peter: You are the judges, and you will judge what is right and proper. But we have seen what we have seen, and we know what we know. Is it right and proper for us to listen and to obey you, or to obey the voice of our Lord God?

John: We cannot and will not stop proclaiming what we know to be true.

Elder 1: I warn you again, I warn you most sternly: say no more to anyone about this or you will not fail to face the consequences. The next scream you hear may be your own.

John: And what, good sire, would those consequences be? What punishment is proper for the healing of cripples and restoring them to health?

Elder 1: …

Scribe 1: (Whispering) My lord, we have no chastisement we can give for this. I’m not even sure, my lord, if this can be described as a criminal action.

Elder: (to the detainees) Depart. And go with this warning.

The detainees, including the formerly crippled man, were escorted from the building.

Scribe 1: My lord, I forgot to ask earlier, but it’s important for the records: how old was the man who has been miraculously cured?

Scribe 2: Allegedly cured…

1July 2, 33CE 

2By a strange twist of asynchronicity it was the exact same Uher 5000 reel to reel tape recorder used by President Richard Milhous Nixon as part of his White House taping system. It slipped through time and space and wound up in the possession of the High Priest. It's presence in first century Jerusalem remains unexplained.

If and Even If – Some Random Arguments

    Here I am, just cleaning out the mental junk drawer. 

    If, as the King James Only crowd will argue, the words of God are pure and uncorrupted, pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times and God has kept them, preserved them from this generation forever (Psalm 12: 6-7), then why was the King James translation necessary? Shouldn’t the Tyndale translation, which preceded the KJV, have been sufficient? Or if the Tyndale was corrupted, shouldn’t the Latin Vulgate translation have been preserved uncorrupted? Or again, why did the Jews in Alexandria in the 3^rd and 2^nd centuries BCE feel the need translate the scriptures into Greek? Shouldn’t the Hebrew originals have been preserved uncorrupted?

    And never mind the fact that the KJV translators themselves rejected the idea that their work was perfect. They explicitly denied it in 1611 in their preface to the completed work.

    Even if we were to accept the historicity of Noah’s ark and the worldwide flood (and that’s a big if…), God’s promise to never again flood the earth (Genesis 9:11) cannot be used as an argument against global warming. God may have promised not to flood the world, but that is not the same as a guarantee of protection from our own climate-changing acts of self-destruction. God’s covenant of mercy does not absolve us of our ecological stewardship.

The Hidden Ranks - A Darling and Mio story

    Darling, traveled under her nom de guerre, wearing the occasional disguise – wigs and glasses. Lifted shoes and invented limps. She was both investigating and investigated. Though not yet defenestrated, the threat was always there. Persistent pursuit. It was adrenaline action without rush. Always professional. Always the cause.

    She carried memos where digital traffic was routinely intercepted. Whispered secrets where phone calls could be overheard. Passed notes in the back of class, backstage, and dead drops out front. They’d given her an implanted electrolarynx to disguise her voice and quiet thumbnail cameras. They’d given her passwords and encryption authentications. But she could not do it alone.

    Milo too, serving in an army without a gun, within the hidden ranks. Constantly pushing back with ink and film and precision knives against despotic force. Unlawful, maybe. But they would not be brought under the power. They would not be enslaved by chaos or corruption. They would not be held in bondage by fascist atrocities or soldiers in the church.

    There were cops on the street and in the air to maintain the deregulated status quo – twenty-four seven drone surveillance. Masked blacked out forces operating with impunity. Between the streetlights, between the taboo, the dangerous, the risky and the public square. Everywhere. There were dead friends too. Murdered and long dead men and women with names unspoken unlisted, dirtied with painful memories. Teenage boys stabbed in jail. Women beaten to death by sidewalk police. Broken down, despised and ostracized by political forces forever beyond their reach.

    But not without a fight. They’d sworn true faith and allegiance to justice, and to love if not to law.

    She saw reflections in the mirror, in the pupils of strangers’ eyes. Reflections in late-night television. The weight and cruelty of the everwatching eye. Flickering screens and shifting positions. Emotion laid low, beneath layers of self-control. Passion suspect beneath purpose.

    House and home. Children. What could not be protected had to be put aside. He had plans. She had opportunities. None of it mattered. Their marriage now, their only safeguard. They’d sacrificed everything but one another.

The Darling and Milo stories: 
1 - Everything’s Back to Normal
2 - One Life and One More
3 - Milo Remembers
4 - Milo Wonders 

Milo Wonders

     This is the fourth installment of what is becoming a series. I like these character, Milo and Darling. I'm curious what will happen to them. 

Milo Wonders

    Milo sat at his drafting table, work lamp off, magnifying loupe put away in its case. Evening was coming and Darling wasn’t home. He wasn’t worried, not just yet. A loving marriage that had earned his trust. Repenting. Forgiving. Never enemies. Trust. Their marriage in this thirty years war had survived.

    Survived her travel, twenty-five thousand, forty-thousand miles, he’d lost count. Survived illness, and bitterness ongoing. Seasick, airsick Fear. Survived apartment fires. Survived dangerous mobs and riots in the streets.

    And through it all she was keeping the record, writing the report through the regular rhythms of bitter conflict and escalating violence – in the city and the nation beyond. The assaults, black and blue, and unlucky blows.

    He checked his watch and went to the kitchen. He’d start the potatoes and wait.

    “My thoughts have been and will be formed and pass away. I know the dust and dwelling place. I know the frailty of this flesh. Every tombstone. And there are times and there are places – still dwelling, being, living now. Thoughts going. Thoughts drift. I wonder. My struggles before, blood, trouble, and trials of love, and strength, and sorrow when the world comes to an end. My thoughts to the very last will be written.”

    Now the sky was dark and blackout conditions in force. Curtains drawn and lamps down low. Dinner dishes for one cleaned and put away. Her portion waiting in the fridge. He checked his watch.

    “I am a man, well pleased. I am a man of conscience, unashamed. But I’m having a hard time finding my thoughts. My mind. Do you think it strange? Do I love and serve? Am I distracted?”

    He imagined not murderers and thieves, but busybodies and gossips. There was the danger. Evildoers. Purloined letters. The private correspondence of critics. Damaging interoffice memos circulated, copied, and passed on by Darling to her handlers. Undermining the State Press – writing the free press, underground. He imagined fiery hell burning away. The fiery judgment of a living hell. The godly and the free suffer persecution. But fire and water purify.

    He checked his watch. “Fire can save us, yeah? Purify? I hope.”

    Hours later, one in the morning, she came through the door. Returning home, she fell into his arms, burning with fever. Ill. One hundred degrees. One hundred one. He rushed her to bed.

    “Can we live a thousand years like this, Darling?”

1 - Everything’s Back to Normal
2 - One Life and One More
3 - Milo Remembers

No Revelation, No Knowledge

    This is a companion piece to The MAGA Glossolalia, built from the same scaffold — 1 Corinthians 14, the same Paul passage about tongues and intelligibility and the failure of speech to communicate — but they're doing completely opposite things with it.

    The MAGA Glossolalia was extroverted and performative. The speaker was loud, certain, facing a crowd, wielding language as domination. His tongue was a weapon. The unintelligibility was a feature — meaning hidden from the intellectuals, the barbarians getting barbarous tongues. The speaker had all the best words and didn't care that they communicate nothing because communication was never the point. Power was.

    This piece is the not that.

    The same diagnosis, one delivered as exposure, one as confession. The same theology. Different rooms.

No Revelation, No Knowledge 

    “I love you.”

    These are words easily spoken. These are words easy to understand. These are words spoken white-knuckle into the air.

    “I do. I will.”

    We speak by revelation –the things we do not know. A model of the Christian faith and maturity through marriage, sex, and children.

    We speak by knowledge – in romantic statements, most curious and long out of love. Obstinate and distant.

    We speak by prophecy – more frightful than hell, captured by solitude, the net of eternal damnation.

    We speak by words of instruction – Brutally honest. Lights off, frigid and fearful. Increasingly distant. The seemingly impossible and the least likely to succeed.

    Speak in a tongue, any tongue, any language and speak to God but never to me. Disconnected from reality. And not to other people because nobody understands anything anymore. Preaching the entire Bible but the meaning is hidden. Frustrated and afraid. Defeated. I needed help but didn’t know how to ask.

    I love you, please.

    Maybe she knows she’s giving a half-truth and doesn’t care. Maybe she’s too lazy to look deeper, to investigate. What she’s heard confirms what she already believes, so she won’t bother to look. Maybe she’s as lost as me. Either way, stop dressing up like a grieving widow and speak to me, please.

    Flute or lyre or trumpet – it’s all the same note without a melody. I do not understand the meaning of the sounds you are making. All of our conversations are like this - no sound doctrine, no meaningful discussion. A drone or a dirge unsung forever.

    No revelation.

    No knowledge.

    No prophecy.

    No doctrine.

    My heart derives no comfort from ten thousand words in this unknown tongue.