seen as a god, been put on a pedestal.’
‘That’s what people would have understood,’ Costas said. ‘No one worships a man.’
‘Exactly,’ Jack said. ‘It was a world where emperors were deified after their death, where the imperial cult was a huge unifying factor in the Roman Empire. And like all good missionaries, Paul was a shrewd operator who knew what he had to do to get the word across, the compromises and incorporation of age-old ways of thinking and seeing the world he would have thought necessary to get the light to shine through.’
‘So you’re saying this is the place where it all took hold, the Bay of Naples?’
‘The Acts of the Apostles suggest that there were followers of Jesus already here when Paul arrived in the late fifties AD, only twenty-odd years after the crucifixion. But Paul may have been responsible for making them truly Christian, for turning their thoughts from the message of Jesus, the imminent kingdom of heaven, to Christ himself, the Messiah. This is the place where Paul may have created the first western Church, the first organized worship, maybe somewhere hidden out there among the craters and the sulphur of the Phlegraean Fields. Taught them what they should believe, how they should live. Given them the Gospel.’
‘I wonder how much of it was the original one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, Paul didn’t know Jesus in life, had never met him. And Jesus never wrote anything down, right? It makes you wonder.’
‘Paul claimed to have had a vision, to have seen the risen Christ.’
‘I grew up with all this stuff, remember? Greek Orthodox. I loved the beauty of it, the rituals. But I’m just a nuts-and-bolts man, Jack. If we can follow a trail of hard facts, then I’m good with it. This early Christianity stuff is like looking through one of those kids’ kaleidoscope tubes, endlessly shifting lenses and prisms. I want facts, hard data, stuff written by those who were there at the time, texts that have never been tampered with. As far as I can tell, the only hard facts we have are those names scratched on that amphora we found yesterday at the bottom of the Mediterranean.’
‘I hear you.’ Jack grinned, and flipped off the autopilot. ‘Speculation out, facts in.’
‘I wonder what the old Sibyl would have thought of it all.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Christianity. Followers of a new religion, gathering here under her very nose.’
‘Okay. Final bit of speculation,’ Jack said. ‘Hard facts first. By the late Roman period, Cumae had become a focus for Christian worship. The temples were converted to churches, the cave of the Sibyl was reused for burials. The place is riddled with Christian tombs, almost like a catacomb.’
‘And the speculation? I’ll allow you.’
‘There’s a long-standing Christian tradition that the Sibyl foretold the coming of Christ. In Virgil’s Eclogues , poems written about a hundred years before Vesuvius erupted, we’re told of being at the end of the last age predicted by Cumae’s Sibyl, and of a boy’s birth preceding a golden age. Later Christians read this as a Messianic prophecy. And then there’s the Dies Irae , the Day of Wrath, a medieval hymn used in the Catholic requiem mass until 1970. I’ve just been looking at it again, while you were asleep. The first lines are “ Dies irae! Dies illa Solvet saeclum in favilla teste David cum Sibylla ! Day of wrath and terror looming! Heaven and earth to ash consuming, David’s word and Sibyl’s truth foredooming!” It’s usually thought to be medieval, thirteenth century, but there may be an ancient source behind it, one that’s now lost to us.’
‘The Sibyl would certainly have had her ear to the ground, in that cave,’ Costas said.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, that verse all sounds pretty apocalyptic,’ Costas said. ‘I mean, heaven and earth to ash consuming. That sounds like a volcanic eruption to me.’
‘Pure speculation.’ Jack smiled at
‘That’s what people would have understood,’ Costas said. ‘No one worships a man.’
‘Exactly,’ Jack said. ‘It was a world where emperors were deified after their death, where the imperial cult was a huge unifying factor in the Roman Empire. And like all good missionaries, Paul was a shrewd operator who knew what he had to do to get the word across, the compromises and incorporation of age-old ways of thinking and seeing the world he would have thought necessary to get the light to shine through.’
‘So you’re saying this is the place where it all took hold, the Bay of Naples?’
‘The Acts of the Apostles suggest that there were followers of Jesus already here when Paul arrived in the late fifties AD, only twenty-odd years after the crucifixion. But Paul may have been responsible for making them truly Christian, for turning their thoughts from the message of Jesus, the imminent kingdom of heaven, to Christ himself, the Messiah. This is the place where Paul may have created the first western Church, the first organized worship, maybe somewhere hidden out there among the craters and the sulphur of the Phlegraean Fields. Taught them what they should believe, how they should live. Given them the Gospel.’
‘I wonder how much of it was the original one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, Paul didn’t know Jesus in life, had never met him. And Jesus never wrote anything down, right? It makes you wonder.’
‘Paul claimed to have had a vision, to have seen the risen Christ.’
‘I grew up with all this stuff, remember? Greek Orthodox. I loved the beauty of it, the rituals. But I’m just a nuts-and-bolts man, Jack. If we can follow a trail of hard facts, then I’m good with it. This early Christianity stuff is like looking through one of those kids’ kaleidoscope tubes, endlessly shifting lenses and prisms. I want facts, hard data, stuff written by those who were there at the time, texts that have never been tampered with. As far as I can tell, the only hard facts we have are those names scratched on that amphora we found yesterday at the bottom of the Mediterranean.’
‘I hear you.’ Jack grinned, and flipped off the autopilot. ‘Speculation out, facts in.’
‘I wonder what the old Sibyl would have thought of it all.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Christianity. Followers of a new religion, gathering here under her very nose.’
‘Okay. Final bit of speculation,’ Jack said. ‘Hard facts first. By the late Roman period, Cumae had become a focus for Christian worship. The temples were converted to churches, the cave of the Sibyl was reused for burials. The place is riddled with Christian tombs, almost like a catacomb.’
‘And the speculation? I’ll allow you.’
‘There’s a long-standing Christian tradition that the Sibyl foretold the coming of Christ. In Virgil’s Eclogues , poems written about a hundred years before Vesuvius erupted, we’re told of being at the end of the last age predicted by Cumae’s Sibyl, and of a boy’s birth preceding a golden age. Later Christians read this as a Messianic prophecy. And then there’s the Dies Irae , the Day of Wrath, a medieval hymn used in the Catholic requiem mass until 1970. I’ve just been looking at it again, while you were asleep. The first lines are “ Dies irae! Dies illa Solvet saeclum in favilla teste David cum Sibylla ! Day of wrath and terror looming! Heaven and earth to ash consuming, David’s word and Sibyl’s truth foredooming!” It’s usually thought to be medieval, thirteenth century, but there may be an ancient source behind it, one that’s now lost to us.’
‘The Sibyl would certainly have had her ear to the ground, in that cave,’ Costas said.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, that verse all sounds pretty apocalyptic,’ Costas said. ‘I mean, heaven and earth to ash consuming. That sounds like a volcanic eruption to me.’
‘Pure speculation.’ Jack smiled at
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