My partner and I spent 7 days in Israel this in late August/early September, on vacation as the Americans would say or was it on Pilgrimage as a Medievalist might say? One thing is for sure, we weren't on a crusade. It is such a strange, alluring and complex part of the world that I want to write a blog or two on it, and this is the first; fragmented thoughts and scattered insights. Others will follow if I get the time…
We arrived at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport and, after my partner faced some reasonably stringent questioning (they didn't seem that bothered by me), we got a car to Jerusalem. Our first four nights were spent in The Holy City, and our first morning there was spent walking the Via Dolorosa.
The Via Dolorosa is a walk through the winding streets of Old Jerusalem, which is still a walled city, with seven gates; we entered in through Damascus Gate. The Via Dolorosa supposedly traces the journey of Jesus from his condemnation by Pilate to his internment in the tomb. Each of the famous Stations of the Cross are marked on the route, some with a simple round medallion on the wall, some with a chapel or sanctuary. It's a fascinating walk to take, both for the sites - some of the chapels are exquisite (for example the Church of the Flagellation with its beautiful stained glass and Crown of Thorns ceiling, or the Chapel of the Third Station, with its compelling paintings) - and also the characters: the local traders trying every which way to make a dollar from the tourists & pilgrims, the former stopping to take photographs and the latter mostly in groups, singing hymns at each Station. This heady mix of money-making and tourism with sanctity and religiosity is the most palpable and peculiar flavour of Jerusalem, and it would be wrong to wish for it to be any other way. It's kind of a theme park where people go not simply for fun but for ecstasy and grace. I can't say I felt, at the time, any great spiritual affect – but being there is to be swept up into this very real and very present place which is at the same time very unreal and very Eternal. It is a kind of place where time and eternity meet but the effect of that happening is not what you might expect. One thing is for sure, it could only be Jerusalem.
I have a lot of time for the Gospels as Imaginative Art and I've done a fair bit of reading around the historical Yeshua-bar-Yosef, the various theories as to what really happened if any of it did, the "reality" behind the Myth. I suppose my take on this is relatively unusual, because for the Myth to work in me (and at times it does), there doesn't need to have been a literal reality. The Jesus of the Gospels exists in the words on the page and in the Imagination of the reader. Whether a first century Jewish holy man was the reality behind that Myth isn't essential, any more than whether some Theban tyrant really stands somewhere behind Oedipus. Of course, someone came up with the Parables, which seem to me quite extraordinary literary achievements, and someone stands behind the ideas; if Saul/Paul of Tarsus or some other early follower had made it all up, they would surely have credited themselves with the parables and ideas and claimed they were themselves Messiah; so the background figure I suspect strongly was a real person. This ambiguity I have as to the historicity of the figure is an ambiguity which is essentially writerly. As a writer myself, I might base this or that character or situation on a real person or event; I wouldn't want anyone to get too interested in the reality, as the story as I have written it is The Thing. The kick I get from finding out about the life of Yeshua-bar-Yosef is in seeing what the writers of the Gospels – clearly men of literary genius – did with it to turn it into this incredible Myth. That Yeshua-bar-Yosef was something of a literary and philosophical genius himself is an added layer of intrigue…
But how to approach Jerusalem, where real places are presented as mythic ones? The Via Dolorosa ends inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which contains not only the supposed Sepulchre of the Resurrection but also the rock of Calvary and the place on which Jesus was laid to be perfumed and shrouded after death, the Stone of Unction. There are contested theories as to whether these places are the actual places, if the actual events took place (which is, to some more than others, a big if). I am made a little queasy by real land being made mythic in this way; the mapping of Imaginative space onto actual space kind of bothers me. Yet this sceptic wasn't always in place. Underneath an elaborate Greek Orthodox altar and glass case, one is presented by a rock which does indeed look like a skull. One doesn't see the rock until quite late as you approach the altar and, at that moment, I felt a palpable shock. One has to bend down in order to reach through and touch it and there in that moment I wondered "What will happen? Will some vision course through my mind, splitting it open? Will my heart burst with the kind of love St Teresa felt in her ecstasies? Will I be taken on a Trip of mind-altering, cosmic dimensions?" But it was just a cold rock I felt with my sense of touch, as it would be, and those not blessed with a spiritual moment or cursed with a schizophrenic one are left with their imagination to build on this place in that brief moment of touch and after, in contemplation and creativity.
The Holy Sepulchre is more difficult to get one's head around. It is easy to believe that someone was crucified on that rock two millennia ago; it is somewhat harder to swallow that on the nearby site of the now elaborately covered Holy Sepulchre that same man came back to life. It is easy to take this in a myth – Tiresias changed his sex and Leda was raped by a swan, of course I agree with those story elements and can just as soon agree that Jesus came back to life; it is easy to take as a metaphor – after all, you can't kill an idea. But as a historical moment? This is where one needs faith and unless you have this with you already at the Holy Sepulchre, I doubt you'll find it in the Aedicule of the Sepulchre itself. Pilgrims and tourists are harried and herded, about 12 or 13 at a time, into the Aedicule and given a very limited time in the actual space (you pass through one chamber into another). There's little chance here for the trails of mystery and awe to weave themselves around one's mind. Perhaps thinking about the place later? In that case, might you as well not have gone, just Imagined? The literal presence of the places simply leads one back to the Imagination, where such events really take place. William Blake posited that all events take place in the Imagination…
Behind the Sepulchre there is an ante-room with a battered old altar and you can pass through this to the Tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, which unlike the Sepulchre has no ornate or any other decoration and therefore has rather more atmosphere (not many people venture in here, as an added plus). In this barren, unlit cave, crouching down, one can get strange intimations; you could believe that out of sight, out of mind, a wondrously strange thing might happen here… The lack of decoration, the lack of light, the lack of others presents the Imagination with opportunities…
In retrospect, the walk along the Via Dolorosa and around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was an extraordinarily special thing to have done – whether or not one subscribes any truth to the legends about these places. These are rich sites from which have sprung stories and from which stories can and will continue to spring. The place of the skull though – that is a place in your head, and it is there ultimately that the Saviour will be crucified and might Rise Again; is it there all other mythic events, about Jesus and anything else, will ultimately take place…
The crucifixions and resurrections that go on in your own mind will bleed and come back to life in the reality we share, which is after all the site of the meeting of minds.
