1.
Pharaoh Ramses was leading his army towards Kadesh. What a great army it was; with twenty thousand men and 3000 chariots, it was the largest army yet to have set out for battle.
Each chariot has a horse dragging behind it a wheeled platform on which stood the driver and two archers, plus a large stock of arrows; a thousand of these mobile shooting platforms can quickly go into formation, shooting an enormous row of arrows at the enemy. As the column of chariots moved forward on a plain, the horse hooves and chariot wheels raised a huge cloud of dust that could be seen from far away, long before they came within arrow range. Outnumbered, the enemy could only shiver with fear, and do the cowardly act of retreating behind city walls, bringing contempt upon themselves from gods and men, leaving the Pharaoh to declare victory over an enemy too timid to come out and fight.
But this time was different; the Hittites in Kadesh had an army nearly as large, with nearly as many chariots. Further, moving an army of this size across dessert and hills was no mean task; 3000 horses and chariots needed 3000 grooms to attend to them, and many other men, horses and carts were needed to carry provisions. Even then, it would take just a few days for the horses to eat up all the hay and men the food. Further, simply to ensure the whole army would get to Kadesh quickly, the Pharaoh had to divide it into four parts, three travelling over three separate mountain passes, and one going by sea, to arrive before Kadesh at the same time for battle.
As Ramses's corps descended down its coastal mountain pass, scouts sent ahead returned to report sighting the enemy camp down below; they were not cowardly, and had come out of Kadesh to meet him! However, a second group of scouts soon brought additional information: the camp had women, children, camels and goats; it was just a nomad tribe that happened to be camping near the battle site. When asked what banner signs the tribe displayed, the scouts drew a six cornered star: two triangles one pointing upwards and one downwards, one superimposed on the other.
The Pharaoh frowned; this reminded him of something; ah yes, the compass on right angle that the workmen building the pyramids left behind from hundreds of years ago, still on the rocks beside their now unused campsite. Then a third group of scouts returned, together with the chief of that tribe and a young maid, who spoke Egyptian. The chief, who gave his name as Joseph, son of Jacob and grandson of Isaac, and his tribe's name as Habiru, "from across the river", prostrated himself before the Pharaoh and, with the young maid translating, requested permission to take his tribe across the mountain pass onto Egyptian land, so that they could graze his animals there, since the grass on this side was about to be exhausted. This was a fairly common event, and requests were generally treated with leniency, though usually not on the eve of a great battle.
"You swear to obey our laws, treat our gods with respect and send your sons to live in our palace to guarantee your tribesmen's good conduct?"
"I do, Great Pharaoh"
"What gods do you swear to?"
"One that has no name and no place, but is everywhere and the greatest"
"Greater than the Pharaoh?"
"Our God's greatness manifests itself in many ways; whatever that is wonderful and grand in this world is by His doing, and we prostrate ourselves before it"
Ramses decided to accept this as adequate recognition of his own divinity - the Pharaoh might be a god on earth, but even he did not deny there might be greater gods in heaven he did not know about
"I accede to your request, if you join our side in tomorrow's battle though not as fighters; I want you to drive your wagons and animals along the riverbank and raise dust behind some of my chariots where the Hittites can see it"
When the battle ended in the afternoon of the next day, the Egyptians declared a great victory, since the brigades marching down the inland mountain passes and arriving by sea successfully repelled the Hittites' chariots that came out of Kadesh to ambush the army they thought they saw on the riverbank, but had to withdraw in haste when they were threatened with besiegement by new arrivals on three sides.
So the Habirus received permission to use the grassland on the Egyptian side, but they did not remain in Egypt for long. When their prince Moses, who grew up in the palace, refused to pay respect to some of the ceremonial procedures, it became impossible for the tribe to live there. They returned to the east.

2.
with his kinsmen, Joseph led his camels and goats towards the Nile, passing by the great temples at Karnak. What monumental constructions these were!
Most of Egypt is dessert, but through its middle flows the great Nile river, its water creating a long oasis from south to north. Every spring as the snow melted in the Ethiopian mountains, enormous amounts of water rushed down the blue Nile, causing the Nile in Egypt to flood over the land on both sides, and fertilizing the soil on the banks with rich silt. As the flood subsided, farmers planted the season's crops as if gods had given them the signal to start. Indeed, the Nile is the god that Egyptians worshiped as the bringer of life, the goddess Isis, whose brother/husband Osiris was the god of corn, who "died" each season but was brought back to life by Isis.
in many lands, snakes were worshiped because it hibernated in winter and emerged in spring, as if to signal the time to start planting; snakes also resembled the male organ, and when they coiled together to mate, they seemed to be signalling fertility to humans; yet they were mysterious objects, their limbless slithering movement puzzling to humans, and powerful since one single bite could kill a man in a matter of minutes; Egyptian kings wore headdresses in the shape of the cobra, to signal their power; but with the Nile's regular flooding each year, there was no need to wait for snakes to signal the spring; Nile was the one deserving worship
but the kings also worshiped the eagle; the sun god Ra, (and Ramses or Ra-mi-se meant Ra-on-earth) which was supposed to be incarnated on earth as kings of Egypt, had the head of a hawk; now and then, one would see an eagle snatching a snake in its claws and flying high into the sky, the snake futilely wriggling to be free of the grasp, sometimes to be dropped onto rocks below from hundreds of feet above and dashed to death, after which the eagle may pick it apart at leisure; Joseph also remembered seeing a bird that could not even fly, but was able to kick to death a black cobra whose bite could be so deadly to humans.
Yet humans could shoot down eagles with arrows, or tame hawks to be hunting helpers; it was a circle in which each was feared by one, and feared the other in turn; an endless circle.
The Habirus believed that the snake was evil; it was condemned to crawl on its belly all its life because it tempted humans to commit sin. But then, some snakes still managed to stand up, though only for a short time, when they were about to strike with their deadly fangs...
As the men and the herd, now on the opposite bank of the Nile, passed in the distance the equally monumental temples at Thebes and entered the green valleys to its south, he recalled hearing about caves that were opened high on the cliffs to provide tombs, instead of new pyramids, for the Kings and Queens, secret sites hidden away from thieves and grave robbers; after a royal personage's demise, the coffin and funeral goods would be carried upstream along the Nile in great barges, then carted from the river bank to the cliff tops above the caves, and finally lowered into them, before the entrances were sealed forever, leaving no signs where they might have been.
But now and then the workmen that dug the tunnels and burial chambers, then decorated the walls with words and pictures that glorified the buried personalities, would carve signs of their own somewhere nearby. Joseph found himself passing a few just then: the compass to draw circles superimposed on the right angle that drew squares, forming a six-cornered star - similar to yet different from his own clan's six-cornered star, made up of two closed triangles. He vaguely remembered a grand uncle telling him, when he was still a small child, that the clan emblem used to have two open triangles like the sign in front of him, but God ordered the sides closed. God also ordered Joseph's great grandfather Abram to change his name to Abraham, and to chant during prayers IAHOUEH instead of IAOUE; why? we did not know because we were only human
Joseph saw another sign carved on a rock: four snakes with their tails entangled; then one snake coiling in such a way that it swallowed its own tail - the endless cycle of life...

3
Joseph thought of the great pyramids, near the city of Memphis, where two of his sons lived with some of his kinsmen, hostages under the direct watch of the palace, for the good behaviour of his tribe.
With the fertile soil providing abundance to the people and freeing many workmen from the field, Egypt could undertake truly monumental construction projects. To build a pyramid, enormous amounts of limestone were dug from distant mountains, hewn into the right dimensions, and dragged to the site, where they were meticulously piled on top of one another to form the four sides meeting at the tip pointing up to heaven, showing the way for the soul of the Pharaoh to return to heaven; with their compass and ruler, the engineers in charge worked out what pieces of stone were needed and how they had to be piled up; they even knew how to build a south facing tunnel into the pyramid such that, on just one day each year, when the sun rose highest over the horizon, the ray of light from the sun would reach down to the mirror at the end of the tunnel, letting light to be reflected back from inside the pyramid to the sun - earth answering back to heaven!
The Pharaoh was divine, a god that descended to earth to rule over its people for a period of time; Egyptian gods were content to leave affairs on earth to be run by one of their own, demanding little from the people, unlike gods in some other places that had to be shown respect in grand, often bloodthirsty ways; in his clan's migrations, he had encountered cities that sacrificed every family's first child to the gods, or used 30 human hearts for a single day's worship, or drowned 10 of the most beautiful maidens as brides for the river god. Egyptian gods demanded none of those horrors, but to ensure the good passage of the Pharaoh back to heaven, he had to be buried in the right way, with enormous edifices and plentiful accompanying material.
Joseph's clan seldom stayed long in one place, and could worship its own God in its own way without contamination; but now and then some of its people joined the others, maybe voluntarily, maybe forced like his hostage kinsmen near Memphis; instead of herding, they had taken up farming like the people around them; how long would they be allowed to continue worshiping in their current way? wondered Joseph
but God would decide; He would know what was to be

Laozi 老子

1.
It was morning, and Laozi was entering his reception hall in the Zhou Archival Office for his day's work; as he approached his official mat (chairs were not used in China before the Tang Dynasty; till then people knelt on cushions placed on mats, a practice still followed in Japan), his pupils and attendants standing on the two sides bowed low, and his chief clerk placed the manuscript he was to annotate on the low table in front of his cushion. As he seated himself, the clerk whispered

"Your former pupil Kong Qiu will be coming to pay his respects shortly"

"Oh yes my best student, the son of the celebrated general"
"Except that..."
"I know; his father was nearly 70 when he was born and people say his mother conceived him taking part in the Ni Hills Fertility Festival the year before"
"Quite an orgy I hear"
"It is uncommon for Zhou clansmen to pray for children at such shrines, but the Songs are not of the clan and are free to follow different customs"
They stopped talking, as Confucius was announced and entered with two attendants. He bowed low before Laozi, while his attendants prostrated themselves on the floor; Confucius made a motion to do the same but was stopped by Laozi's gesture in reply, indicating that Confucius was considered to be an equal rather than a subordinate
"Pray be seated"
"Oh Sir perhaps I ought..."
"Not at all; once I was your teacher; now you are a learned man in your own right and might even have things to teach me; no thing is constant"
"But 'nothing' is constant"
"Ah I see you have read my new book"
"I have indeed; a copy was presented to my Duke by the Royal Emissary; a truly profound piece of work"
"Well it summarizes my life's thoughts and observations, to leave behind as I retire soon from this office; I am glad you came in time to see me still here; I was hoping you could have come earlier"
"I very much wished to, but my bereavement..."
"My sympathies, and may the senior lady's rest be eternally peaceful; but I believe she passed away some years ago?"
"More than three, but we Shang desendents maintain the tradition of a three-year mourning period"
"Ah yes the great Shangs; and your clan the Kongs keep up the traditions, just as the Songs still maintain the Shang shrine and honour their heavenly ancestors; we the Li clan, domiciled in Chen State and descended from the Great Shun, try to live up to our particular past also"

2
Yes the Shangs, the cattle drovers who learned to breed horses and forge bronze weapons, rode down from the north on their chariots and was all conquering; they built their great palaces and tombs in Anyang, and filled them with bronze utensils and jade artifacts; a truly impressive tribe, but they lost their mandate of heaven one day, when the son of the King's brother in law, whom the King first promoted and then executed, led a small army to the east in vengeance and defeated the 10-times larger Shang army almost effortlessly. No thing is constant, indeed.
History is always written by the victors. Zhou historians came up with numerous accounts of the tyranicaly rule of the final Shang King, known as Shou; he was said to drink excessively (a charged also leveled against all Shang nobility), failing to perform sacrifices to his ancestors in the correct way, listening to his concubines in making decisions relating to the state, killing his vassals over trivial issues, executing his loyal ministers who tried to provide restraining advice, using cruel forms of torture and execution, opening the belly of a pregnant woman to find out the sex of the fetus, and chopping off the feet of a man wading through the river in winter without showing fear of cold to see what's so special about him.
No doubt some of charges had factual basis, but one particular charge was certainly true: he was said to amuse himself by watching naked men and women chasing each other in the woods where ponds of wine and stacks of meat were available to encourage wild abandon: this approximately described the fertility festivals of the old Shenlong tribesmen, who had lived in Northern China for thousands of years before the Zhous came along, and who had already been successively ruled by the Yellow Emperor dynasty, assuming you count Yao and Shun as his family, the Xia dynastry started by Yu, and the Shang dynasty, always maintaining their old way of life, which the Zhous found hard to understand. The practical Romans and the abtract thinking Hebrews had the same uncomprehending view of the more artistic and romantic Greeks. However, the same fertility festivals continued to be held in various of Zhou vassal states where the Shenlong descendents were predominant, and occasionally even the Zhou clan people joined in. Folk poems collected by the Zhou archival office, which Confucius later edited, had many pieces of a romantic, almost erotic, nature, which later Confucian scholars, living in a more repressed age, found highly embarrassing.
After the battle, the victorious Zhous were themselves surprised and almost unsure what to do, but the Zhou King's brother, the Duke of Zhou, had brains for statecraft as well as war. He gathered the defeated Shang subjects at a site between the Luo and Yi rivers, made them build the new city Luoyang, storing in the town the nine great bronze cauldrons for the nine territories, and distributed farming land to the Shang subjects, after putting a strong garrison in the town and putting the King's relatives as lords in surrounding states of Qi, Lu, Wei and Zheng, while setting up the Shang King's brother in Song to maintain the Shang ancestral shrine. Everyone had "face" and could live in peace thereafter.
The Duke of Zhou also devised the Zhou Conventions, specifying the right conduct for lords, knights and officials, even the King himself: he regularly received lords in audience and banquet, and went on inspection tours, to confirm their lord-vassal relationship; lords and subjects in each state together worshiped their ancestral gods, to show their family affinity; and the King/Lords all took part in the Plow Ceremony to pay respect to agriculture, the Shooting Ceremony to honour the soldier, the Drink Ceremony to bow to the Elders, the School Ceremony to honour learning and scholarship... The states sent children of lords and knights to the Zhou capital to learn from the books in the Archival Office about rituals and stately conduct, so that they went back to become state officials and perform their duty in accordance with the Zhou Conventions; unlike the Shangs, who left the various tribes to govern themselves as long as they presented the right tributes to the royal court (in bronze, jade, silk, slave workers, pretty women...), the Zhous actually had a national government
But that too fell apart; the Kings and Lords failed in their duties, most seriously in failing to always maintain the proper system of succession, because young concubines kept trying to supersede the official heirs with their own sons; it was such a sibling conflict, with the King You driving away his heir, who then received help from his maternal grandfather, and barbarians, to fight his father, that caused the Zhous to lose their wide western territories. Today the Zhou King could only command Luoyang itself.

3.
"now that your bereavement is over, will you be taking up a Lu State appointment?"
"Yang Huo suggested this to me, and I am still considering."
"That's the Steward of the Ji household?"
"That's correct; Lord Ji has entrusted the entire clan affairs to him, and as Lord Ji is the Duke's Chancellor, Yang Huo has also taken charge of state affairs on behalf of Lord Ji"
"That's quite a large role for a household steward; I believe he is well disposed towards your good self?"
"It appears to be so; he honoured my household by paying respect to my mother at her wake - it was during this visit that I heard from him about the great banquet Lord Ji gave for all the knights of his clan, though I could not be a guest myself; immediately after the end of my bereavement, his messenger presented me with a roasted hog"
"Now that is a major gift, the shrine offering category; I trust you were obliged by convention to pay him a visit to express thanks for the gift?"
"Indeed, but I visited his manor when he was absent, and merely left my calling card without an audience"
"Ah...a neutral gesture..."
"But it so happens I encountered his entourage on the way home so we did have a conversation; he reminded me of the crime of wasted talent not put at the disposal of the state, and the pressing of time"
"very earnest search for talent; I am sure he has high esteem for you; but you are still considering? perhaps you prefer to take up appointment in somewhat different circumstances?"
Confucius felt somewhat nervous at the question; he glanced at his two attendants and wondered whether any of this conversation would get reported to Yang Huo one day; Yang Huo's arrogant usurpation of the powers of his betters might soon lead to his downfall, but in the mean time one could hardly say so; now my student Yan Hui is a mere boy, scholastic and innocent, while my deputy Zi Lu might be a bit impulsive, but is surely loyal. As for Laozi's people...
"of course, as the recipient of a 1000 bushel state allowance, I am obliged to be of service, but my training classes may be considered sufficient service already"
"and I have seen the material you edited for the students' benefit; they were very well done; you have extracted the most important parts of the history, poetry and divination books and put them on just 3000 bamboo slices, so that a student can learn them all; I wish our own archive had enough students to justify that kind of effort; more students also mean more people to help out with the editing and compilation"
"In any case, any official appointment I undertake will be in accordance with Zhou Conventions"
"I am so glad to hear this; you know this might be considered old fashioned and bookish these days"
"but necessary"
"books capture the sages' words, but not their spirits, not their deeds; we read the books, but we need to feel their spirits and trace their deeds"
"to follow the Tao; but what is the Tao?"

4.
Laozi gave Confucius a toothless smile; then stuck out his tongue.
"I see that the hard has decayed, but the soft has remained"
"Very good; you see that jade dragon?"
"which swallows its own tail? the end is also the beginning? the Tao goes on and on?"
"but a step more; where does the world come from?"
"in the beginning there was the void"
"and from nothing arose everything"
"now I see what you meant by 'nothing' is constant, because nothing is everything"
"and therein lies the Tao; too much will turn into too little; clever is dumb; the strongest is the one who needs nothing"
"so it would be futile for me to aspire to office?"
"not at all; we are thing, not nothing, and we live in a world of thing; but when we have thing and do thing, our spirit should be with nothing"
"..."
"governing a state is like cooking a tender fish; turn it too many times, and it turns into a pile of mess"
"..."
"the more clever the people, the less governable is the state; only the ignorant are blissful; the wise, like yourself, are full of burden; cast off your egoistic desires and your spirits may soar free"

Pilate's clean hands 匹拉提两手干净

1.
Pontius Pilate, the Roman Pro-Consul for Judea, was in his study looking over several Greek manuscripts. Frowning, he stared at some pictures on the papyrus rolls spread out on the table before him, then read the text to see whether it explained the items he saw in the diagrams, with difficulty, since his Greek was only moderately good. Occasionally sipping from a flask of wine next to him and wiping off the sweat on his hands with a towel- after 15 years in Judea he was still not used to the summer heat - to avoid staining to sheets, he gave the picture of a person hard at work. Actually, these were not official documents at all, but books of mythology lent to him by his Greek secretary Cosius; however, mythology was about gods, and many Greek gods were found to be the same as Roman ones, so were to be treated with respect. Therefore, it was no idle pursuit either.
In fact, all gods were to be treated with respect, however primitive and ignorant the people who worshiped them might seem to be. In Judea especially there was this Yahweh/Yehover that supposedly had no name (but what about Yahweh/Yehover? was that a name or not?), no shape, no place, yet was everywhere and all powerful. It all made sense to the Jews, but was beyond a Roman mind to comprehend. But even the Roman governor, commander of its all conquering legion, dared not question the meaningfulness of such a concept; even the Greek sophists, who liked to debate about all kinds of nebulous subjects, steered clear of the topic in front of the Jews. Did not King Antiochus Epiphanius stir up serious trouble for himself when he tried, like a good Greek that worshiped the perfection of the human body (because it was in the shape of the gods), to stop Jews from disfiguring their bodies by circumcision, and to make them worship statues of himself? The Jews actually managed to expel Antiochus's army from Judea, but it was the Romans that ultimately benefited; they had a system that accommodated all the different religions, despite all the currents of discontent that lay just beneath the surface: moderation and pragmatism - you believe in your own rightness, but try not to question that of others, within certain limits; Roman peace has its price - farmers and traders are left alone to do their business their own way, but paid taxes so that the upkeep of the legions can be taken care of - but it kept all kinds of excesses in check; if not for the Romans, King Herod might still be carrying out his baby sacrifices, and his daughter Salome might still be offering up human heads to her gods in her dance rituals.
Yes the Jews kept talking about a Messiah that would come and deliver them, from the Roman rulers presumably though they did not say it in so many words. Now and then a new "messiah" would come along and make a mob get all excited, and the Roman governor had to deal with the situation; he had to judge whether the fellow presented a serious threat to peace, and one to Roman peace in particular. Most of the time, the fellows were just harmless idiots and could be left alone; when action had to be taken, he always tried to let the Jewish leaders handle the matter themselves, first because they were the people who understood the situation more closely; second because it was best not to take sides in other people's religious issues. But there were times these soft options could not be applied and the Roman fist had to take off its kid glove.
Judea was a small province, reasonably prosperous, in fact the Jews called it the land of milk and honey, but small; for other governors with larger territories, even a brief tenure might win three fortunes, one to pay your debts which you incurred to buy your way into the appointment, one to bribe the judges in case you got charged with misconduct, and one to be used to enjoy your days of retirement in a manner befitting your status; in Judea, maybe just two and half fortunes, provided you tread carefully and do nothing to upset the applecart. You need to know how to turn big problems into small, small problem into none...

2
He still remembered that charismatic young man Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter and Mary, who, despite her age, looked like a fresh maiden. He came from Galilee with a mob of followers, and disrupted operations in the Temple. Now Roman laws did not say whether money changers should be allowed to do business in the Temple - it might be considered a useful service to pilgrims, especially those from foreign lands, to provide the right coins for making donations to the Temple; Jesus also made some speeches, but none that violated Roman peace. When asked "should we pay tax", Jesus carefully answered "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar; give to God what belongs to God", a perfectly acceptable statement to the Caesar's representative in Judea. Rome had nothing against this man.
But the Jews thought otherwise; they demanded that he be put to death; in earlier times, they might have lynched him right in front of the temple (stoning is a bit difficult in Jerusalem - you might have to tear down a few houses to get enough rocks to kill a man), but in a Roman province, only the Roman magistrates could pronounce a sentence of death. Instead of taking this on, Pilate thought of sending the prisoner to another Roman official, who only ordered a whipping. So that matter came back to his plate and he had to deal with it. Poor fellow. Did he mean himself or Jesus? Pilate was not sure.
However, the matter did not end there; somehow the corpse of Jesus disappeared and the followers were convinced there was a Resurrection, that the Son of God had returned to heaven to join His Father; they even say He was born of a virgin, that Mary had been made pregnant by a golden shower of light in the same way Greek maidens were impregnated by Zeus. His group grew, and spread to other cities where Jews lived, even Rome itself, and even non-Jews began to profess to follow him.
Pilate recalled a story being told about Jesus's birth, that Joseph and Mary were travelling back to Galilee from the coast and Mary gave birth on the way in a barn; now why were they travelling so near to the time when the baby was due? Presumably to get away from an area where Phoenicians were still practising the sacrifice of the first child of each family. Amazing that so many years after Rome destroyed Carthage, this kind of practice was still being carried out. This story about Herod killing all the new born babies in his kingdom hoping to destroy the new King of Jews Jesus: obviously the story teller got things wrong; Herod was from a tribe that practise baby sacrifice - if he had been searching for Jesus to kill, he used a pretty lousy method and was not persistent enough to fulfil his objective.
Fortunately, the Romans and Greeks long ago gave up such savage practices. Romulus may have sacrificed his brother to appease the earth gods for his disturbing them by building the city, but now the vestal virgins are not killed as gifts to gods, they are merely priestesses in our temple, and they do not even have to work as temple prostitutes to promote fertility like they did in Babylon. Gods are satisfied with us just dropping a handful of incense before them now and then.
Now that story about Moses, that God killed all the first born sons of Egyptians to punish them for not allowing Jews to leave; surely just killing the son of the Pharaoh would be enough persuasion? obviously the story teller got things mixed up again: the Jews must have been living in a place where another tribe was living that practised the same first child sacrifice as the Phoenicians. And about those three Kings that paid homage to Jesus at his birth, reaching that barn guided by the bright star... Ah the ignorance of the people; they much prefer those stories, rather than learning the ideas, just like the Romans wanting bread and circus, forgetting what Roman citizenship was all about...
In any case there was no Roman law against the brotherhood of men, turning the other cheek, or even in giving your money to the poor; merely that these were not Roman ways. You could not rule a province that way. You might wear a pair of kid gloves, but inside...

3
The was a sound of solute by the guards outside the door; it opened and Cosius the secretary entered.
"Ah Cosius; I was just about to come and ask you about these books"
"I hope you found these interesting"
"Enormously so; and very puzzling; say, what is the meaning of these? What are the Fates doing with these craftsmen's tools?" Pilate pointed to a compass-and-square combination at the feet of the three Fates in one diagram.
"I was puzzled myself; I would have thought a weaving frame would be more appropriate"
"Quite so; after the Fates spun the yarn, dyed it and rolled it onto the spindle, the next thing ought to be to weave different coloured threads together into a cloth on a loom, and the pattern of colours would be the state of the polis with all these humans"
"I once asked my master, and he also was not sure, but said some thought the compass represented heaven because it drew round and triangle drew square and represented earth; so the Fates were spinning the lives of all humans between earth and heaven."
"Now I see earth may be square, but why is heaven round?"
"I guess I look up and see blue sky all around me; so it's kind of round"
"Something else about the Fates and their spindles; you know the other story about the spindle, that the princess touches the spindle and dies"
"Yes the curse of the uninvited fairy"
"That seems to be the same as the story of the golden apple"
"Indeed it could well be"
"But asking three fairies to prophesize the newborn's fate; seems like the three Fates? I think that's why the story has the spindle causing the princess's death"
"Yes I see what you mean; it never occurred to me before; they were so familiar to me that one never thought about these; I guess the gods do many things at different times"
"And this picture of the staff of Hermes; it reminds me of something I saw in Gaul, an ancient rock carving; actually I had my secretary at the time drew it to keep; I was told the same carving appears in many places"
"Yes I see, four entangled snakes instead of the two on the staff of Hermes"
"then I remembered this emblem of the Scythians you spoke of, with the four spokes bent at the end, just like the four snakes"
"so the Scythians were in Gaul too; they cremate their dead like the Greeks, because we both came from Scythia"
"Oh yes the Dorians who brought vowels to the alphabet; the Phoenicians only had consonants before"
"And the Jews; they wrote Yahweh as YHWH"
"Some say the four letters are all vowels, I A U A"
"Actually, I think it was meant to be all 5 vowels, I A O U E, and since they had no vowels they could not spell God's name, or God was namelesss; then I A O U E changed to Y A h O W E h, J a h o v e h"
"why did they add the 'h'?"
"I think because when you chant I A long you have to take a breath, and another breath at the end"
"Hmm...interesting; but enough of this; you have documents for me to see?"
"Indeed I do; these are for today's session; only one major case among all these; Paul of Tarsus; he came before you once."
"Really? I dont recall the name at all."
"Because he was then known as Saul; he bought a suit against those Galileans."
"You mean when those followers of Jesus disrupted the temple at Tarsus?"
"Yes, but then he changed his name and joined the Galileans; so this time a group of Hellenists accused him of insulting their gods and wanted him dead"
"Why was he bothering non-Jews? I thought Jesus only wanted to be messiah to the chosen?"
"Paul's idea was different; he says all men are born sinners and only Jesus can deliver them"
"How can a new born to have sinned?"
"We are all supposed to be descended from Adam and Eve, and we all share their sin"
"What was that?"
"They were tempted by the serpent to eat the fruit of knowledge."
"I thought that was just a metaphor about the bliss of ignorance, like Hesiod's going from the age of gold to silver, bronze, iron"
"I agree, but they take it more literally; when the evil serpent told Adam to lie with Eve for the first time, they sinned and we were the result"
"Ah but the founder of Athens was half serpent, right? and we worship Venus; I guess that's a sin for Paul and others like him"
"That what got him into trouble, and the plaintiffs ask for a death sentence"
"Now that seems excessive; surely we need not go that far?"
"But that group includes Agripinus..."
Pontius Pilate's face turned pale... "You mean..."
"Yes the nephew..."
"Let me see...what do you advise me to do?"
"Maybe we should first discuss the matter with Agripinus?"
"No; I cannot be seen to be currying favour; I need to do the deciding"
"You could delay the case"
"If necessary, but it is better to get the matter over with if possible"
"You could pass it to another jurisdiction like the case of Jesus"
"Again, maybe, but that might just buy some time"
"Paul has demanded to be tried in Rome by his rights as a Roman citizen"
"Really? Not sure his claim would stand up in a Rome court, but on the other hand it might solve our problem"
"Let's play it by the ear and see how the arguments of the lawyers go"
"Fine... Let's quickly go over the others"
"In the dispute over the Marcius land, I think the plaintiff has the stronger case"
"Let me see; yes your summary explains this very well, but I will need to look at the details too before I concur"
"And the plaintiff has offered 10 centurions to be donated to your town temple to have his merits recognized by the deities"
"I will ensure the gods of all our home towns will share in this recognition"
"I thank you for your generosity and devotion"

西藏的回忆 Tibet Memories

1.
King Sonjanganbo was returning from his morning hunt; ahead, the Podala Palace gleamed in the sunlight - situated high on a cliff, the golden walls of the palace could be seen from miles away on the flat plateau of Lasa.
He looked at the day's haul being carried on the horse behind him: not bad - two mountain goats, a deer, and the rarest of rare, a wild boar; pigs do not take to the cold climate and rough scrubs of Tibetan highlands; in fact, they want tender shoots and roots, almost like humans. Goats and yaks are not as choosy; they eat anything, leaving the better plant material for human consumption.
His wives did not approve of his enthusiasm for hunting: both the Princess of Nepal and the Princess from China were devout Buddhists who neither drank wine nor ate meat, and spent whole days reciting the sutras; it made time spent with them rather slow; in fact he spent little time with either, though by right he should be sharing their beds as often as possible so that his sons would be the grandsons of the Tang Emperor or Nepal King, which would be good for diplomacy. However, it was so much more enjoyable to spend time with Tibetan chiefs in drinking sessions, or those lovely maidens who had not been brought up so strictly.
No, a king's got to do what a king's got to do; however much the princesses might disapprove of the taking of lives, a king's job was to lead men into war, or at least, to hunt, riding on fast horses and shooting arrows. Those peasants who came from the east, up those deep river gauges, or the nomads that came from the west driving their yaks and goats, what do they know about being a king? They can worship the fire, stone, the monkey god, or snakes and dragons, refusing to change; the king has to go with whichever god whose blessing is needed to win, in war or in diplomacy. Tibet has known many gods, and right now, Buddha seems the most powerful, since both the Emperor of Tang and the princes of India worship Him; what choice does the King of Tibet have but to go along as well - but without abandoning any old gods that we used to worship; it would be unwise to offend the old even if one has to take up the new.
And this afternoon he would have to confer with all those chanting Great Vehicle monks who thought they could save everyone else, the scholastic Lesser Vehicle monks who thought each could only save oneself , the swearing shamans who could do those firebreathing tricks, and the dragon worshipers who said their ancestor was that monkey king - about how to decorate the Great Light Temple, built for the Nepal princess, and the Lesser Light Temple, built for the Chinese princess. The fuss they would make about every little detail, and they could never agree on anything so that every little thing had to come before the King in the end.
Yes a great king that knew everything; out in the country, peasants and herders who had not seen the two temples being built were already telling stories that he, using his magic power, constructed the two temples in one night - of course, if the king can command workmen to build what he orders, then the building arose from the king's power; but one night.
And stories about him being the wisest king, that when two women fought over a baby, the king judged the woman who gave up the struggle, for fear of injuring the child, as the mother; that when he was in Chang-an to seek the hand of Princess Wen-cheng, and was given the test of passing a silk thread through a nine-corner pearl, he did it with the help of an ant; that in anticipation of getting drunk at a banquet in the Tang palace, he took a ball of string and unreeled it as he went over, so that he could trace his way back at the end. All those stories he already heard as a small child in the nursery and were about great kings or sages of the past, but now had been put on him.
Of course Sonjanganbo did achieve many things; orphaned at a young age, he managed to fight off usurpers, evil ministers, scheming relatives and foreign interferers, rebuilt the Tibetan army and reimposed sovereignty on all those baronial territories. Even the great Tang Emperor had to treat him with respect. But statecraft was such a bore.

2.
Tibetans say they were descended from the union of a tribe of monkeys and a tribe of witches; the monkey, they said, popped out of a stone, while the witch made fire. With fire, we turn bloody, tough flesh into tender, fragrant food, keep savage beasts at bay, burn away vegetation to clear land for planting while making a fertilizing ash, and most important, turn offerings to the gods into smoke, to rise to heaven for them to enjoy; after death, some of the people insist their bodies needed to burnt so that their souls can rise. But stones were also important; those that stand erect pointing at heaven - surely one could speak to heaven through them? corpses could be covered by a mound of rocks, and those who did bad deeds were punished by being stoned.
Tibet used to have kings that came down from heaven to rule over people, and returned to heaven to make way for their sons who were also gods from heaven. The first king was found by the six shamans from the six tribes, who decided they needed a common king and went out in search. They found him descending the high mountain path, carried him back to the village on their shoulders and proclaimed him. The kings always returned to heaven when their sons were old enough to ride horses, so one need not put up with any one for that long. The Han people to the east of Tibet, and others, even more distant countries further east, did the same thing: heaven would send down a dragon to take their chiefs back up, when their sons were about ready to take over and old kings were no longer needed.
But in Tibet this arrangement soon stopped, when the last king of that dynasty, who upset many people by importing different shamans from the west, and then upset even more people by asking them to leave, had a duel with a courtier and was killed in front of all the watching noblemen and soldiers; he obviously did not go to heaven in the usual way arranged by the shamans; in fact, people say the fight of the two men accidentally cut the ladder that linked heaven to earth, stopping all future kings from returning to heaven; instead, they left behind corpses that needed to be buried in soil, like the Han people did with theirs. This is what they would do with Sonjanganbo, while his soul returned to heaven to be with his ancestor gods, and tribal shamans would chant and burn offerings for all the gods.
Now a new god, maybe the most powerful so far, needed to be included.

3.
"It pleases Sonjanganbo, King, Lord of Lasa, Siasion and Kamba, to decree that the Great Light Temple and Lesser Light Temple shall be decorated thus:
On the front shall be drawn the Diamond-Steel Rod, as wished by the Chanting Monks;
On the back shall be drawn the Praying Wall, as wished by the Scholastic Monks;
On the left shall be drawn the swastika, as wished by the shamans and followers;
On the right shall be drawn the mesh pattern, as wished by the tibetan natives.
So signed and sealed on this Day of the New Year"

the White Horse 白马

1.
Dhama was meditating under the bote tree, one of the many trees that Buddha meditated under though not the one under which he attained Nirvana; that tree was long ago enclosed inside the wall of the great temple that was built on that sacred site; the temple now attracted many pilgrims, all very much wishing to share in the enlighted way as Buddha directed.
Except of course that Buddha said he directed no one, that each must seek one's own enlightenment. However, that did not stop people from believing that merely by living ascetically, or chanting sutras, or touching the various relics left behind by Buddha despite his not wishing these to be elevated to the divine level, that they could share in the holiness he attained.
Since Buddha left this world many different sects of Buddha's followers had emerged. Some believed that Buddha meant his followers to strive for Nirvana for themselves only, that enlightenment was a small vehicle for personal use only - by releasing us from our desires we release ourselves from suffering; others believed that they can make efforts to save everyone, that Buddha left behind a system to spread enlightenment, a message that enlightened by providing understanding and knoweldge, the great vehicle.
What did Dhama believe in? He was not sure; he was striving to find out what was true; he was seeking enlightenment for himself, merely because he did not know how to give it to others; he did not have a message.
A shadow fell on him; he looked up to see a foreigner, obviously from an oriental country, standing in front of him, wearing the safron robe of a monk; Dhama himself wore a dark robe, not because he belonged to a dark robe sect since he was affiliated with no one; simply that he had no other clothes.
While the stranger was struggling to form the words, Dhama anticipated him "You are looking for the Temple of the Sacred Bote?" as this is where most monks and pilgrims coming here wish to go to.
"I..I was there already...I now want to find other holy men to talk to"
"I am not a holy man; I am only someone looking for the way"
"I am too; in my own country we know only one way; I come here to find all the different ways and true words of the Buddha, like Master Xuanzhuang did many years ago"

2
Dhama led his camel through the streets of Chang-an, dodging people, carts, horseriders, other camels..., now and then stopping by the side of the road to let the entourage of some important official through with a clear path, now and then stopping to ask someone the way to the White Horse Monastery. Most did not know; others vaguely pointed him in one direction or another. Eventually a boy said "not far; I take you there", and led him to the place. It was a tumbled down building that must have been grand once, but had obviously been unoccupied for years.
So this is Chang-an; and this is the White Horse Monastery, where the great monk Xuanzhuang kept the hundreds of volumes of Buddhist sutra that he bought back from India, riding the legendary white horse that, some say, was the son of a dragon king, doing penance for his sins; with a team of helpers, Xuanzhuang translated the volumes into Chinese, to spread the authentic words of Buddha; the very same words that had spread far and wide since Buddha uttered them. On Dhama's way along the famed Silk Road, he met Tibetans, blue-eyed people and others, all professing to be followers of Buddha, even someone from a land very far to the east, separated from China by wide oceans.
Dhama sat down beneath a shady tree, and lit a fire in his little stove to boil himself a bowl of gruel; for more than two years he had treaded from village to village, begging for alms to keep himself fed, till he met a generous wealthy man who gave him a camel and enough provision to last his whole journey; but now it had ended, in nowhere; when he set out, he did not know what he was seeking, but if he sought nothing, nothing was exactly what he found.
"White horse is not horse", he had read in a book about notable sayings from China "If one asks for a horse and receives a white horse, one is satisfied, but if one asks for a white horse but receives a horse of another colour, one is not, because horse is not white horse, and white horse is not horse". Ah those rhetoricians, Chinese or Indian; one need to be careful and alert when talking to them; they can twist the meaning of words and sentences to suit any argument they wish to make. My journey has ended in nothing, but they would say, nothing is thing, because before there was the world there was nothing, and the world came from the nothing...
He came to China seeking the White Horse Monastery, and found it, and found nothing; he had nothing else in mind to seek, but the quest had not ended; he had seen the White Horse Monastery and now must move on; seeking nothing, he wondered what he would now find...
As he left the southern bank of the Wei River and went towards to Hua hills, he set the camel free to roam on its own, continuing on foot up the mountain paths. Feeling thirsty, he stopped by a spring to take a drink, but a young girl passing by stopped him "Master, this water is poisonous; do not drink it", and directed him to another spring on the opposite hillside "this water is safe" She was young, and very pretty
"but I see birds bathing in the pond beneath that spring; they do not die"
"it is a slow poison, but people who drink daily from it would sicken and die"
Death was no horrible thing, since you merely got reborn, as someone else, or something else; it was how you lived that mattered, whether you lived in the right way; it was merely up to you to find the way; looking up the cliff above the (drinkable) spring, he saw a small cave with a path cut in the rock leading to it and asked the girl "what is that cave used for?"; he heard that it was once used, hundreds of years ago, occupied by two hermits, brothers who were refugees from Shang tyranny who, however, objected to Zhou "rebels" usurping the Shang mandate of heaven, and refused to eat produce from any Zhou territory, thus starving themselves to death, since all territory under heaven owed allegence to the Zhou King.
Dhama decided it was a good idea for him to live there, for a little while at least.

3.
Coming out of his cave at the end of the day's meditation session, he found the girl coming up the stone path, carrying a small sack of rice. The village people had again sent her to bring alms to him.
She had been there often, sometimes with others from the village; but while the other villagers stayed below and merely bowed to him and then watched, she was the one that came into the cave to set down his supplies: rice, vegetables, firewood, occasionally some clothing; sedentary and well fed for a change, he had even put on a little weight.
Occasionally she would simply come without bringing anything, and sat in the cave quietly, watching him meditate. He wondered whether she too wished to become a meditating ascetic, unusual that might be for a woman, but he did not ask; whatever she wished to do with her life, whether to marry a village boy and start a family, the husband plowing and she weaving, or to live alone all her life, was for her to choose on her own. He was however happy to see her. As an ascetic, he had no use for a woman, but was pleased to see her interest in his search and, apparently, sharing in the spirit of it.
Now and then they fell into a conversation, and he told her about his past search, about him seeing the bote tree under which Buddha attained enlightenment, now in this great temple that many pilgrims visited each day to touch the tree and see the other things Buddha left behind, such that the monks were busy running an enterprise and had no time for contemplation, which they thought unnecessary since what they were doing were already good for spreading the message of Buddha and helping others to achieve enlightenment for themselves. He also told her about the monk from China he met, who told him about Xuanzhuang and White Horse Monastery, and how he came to make the same journey of the White Horse that carried the hundreds of sutra books to China, simply to share the experience as part of his search.
One day a couple of young men came to the cave; they prostrated themselves on the ground before him and called him master, to which he objected: Buddha did not believe in prostration and idol worship; they told him they had moved into the area from a neighbouring village after hearing about the hermit monk from the west meditating in this cave; they had built themselves a hut in a grassy alcove around the corner and invited him to live in their hut as their teacher and master, because they wished to learn from him the right way to live and to achieve Nirvana; Dhama declined, and told them that it is for each to seek his own way and he had nothing to teach them; but he commended them on their desire and wished them well.
The boys were not at all discouraged: the master's humble reply only revealed his depth and profundity. They stuck around but did not bother him in any way. When the village people heard that the master monk from the west now had two disciples living next to him, they began to bring alms for them too; further, the boys, with help from villagers, cleared some land on a nearby slope and made a terrace field out of it, planting some vegetables and seed grains brought by a villager, and fertilizing the crop with their own manure; soon other boys, some from very far away, began to arrive - they too heard about the strange western monk and wanted to learn from him; receiving the same rebuff but also not discouraged, they built more huts and cultivated more land; before long, a small community had been sprung up in the hills, with the villagers contributing towards its upkeep in just small ways; some of the boys even started to perform for their patron villagers chanting sessions and rituals, which were quite strange to Dhama but were presumably familiar to Chinese disciples of Buddha.
Dhama did not involve himself in any of these activities, but now and then looked at them from a distance, often with the girl following him as he went around. Sometimes she would bring him news that yet another group of boys had arrived, and take him to where the newcomers had settled down. The community had by then spread over a wide area, and the hill slopes around the cave had become almost like another village. The earliest boys had taken on the role of planners, directing newcomers to suitable sites for huts and farm plots, organizing the distribution of seeds and tools, the storage of the vegetables and grains harvested, and cooking/eating in a mess hut which was also used for group chantings and sutra studies. Through it all Dhama, vaguely looked up to by the community from a distance, continued to lead his own separate ways.

4.
Another day, he was walking along the stone path and was pleased to find the girl coming to see him; as she came closer, she stumbled a little and he stretched out his hand to steady her. He found her continuing to sway forward, her soft body closely touching his bosom, her curves he could feel through her thin summer dress. Instead of springing back, she continued to lean against him, and he felt stirrings inside him he had never felt before.
Gently he pushed her away from him, wondering if she might be suddenly feeling weak or fainting, but she looked perfectly fine, in fact radiant. She smiled at him in a way he had never seen before, and he felt the inside stirring even stronger than just now. It frightened him. She turned around to leave, but as he watched her go down the path, she turned back several times, flashing the same smile at him, till she turned the corner and he could no longer see her. Yet, he stood there on the path for a long time, till it started to get dark.
He turned into the cave and got ready for bed, but heard a sound at the entrance. It was the girl returning. As she saw him, she removed her dress and revealed to him her silky smooth skin and jade like curves. He started to tremble and pant. Kneeling before him, she removed his trousers and placed his throbbing manhood into her mouth. In a matter of seconds, the cumulated desire of so many years, which he did not even know was there, had been drained out of him. Just as quickly, she put her dress back on and left.
As he layed in his bed, still trembling, he remembered stories about the fox fairy that turned into beautiful maidens to seduce young men and collect their life spirits; hermits and ascetic monks would also be visited by the fairies, for the life spirits of the holy men were much more powerful than that of an ordinary young man. So this is what happened to him? A life time's seeking and asceticism destroyed in one moment? Flesh has won over spirit?
After a sleepless night, he went out of his cave to walk around, hoping to clear his head; the thriving village was all round him, boys going about their daily business, all disciples of the holy master from a foreign land; yet he had nothing to say to them, no part to play in their life; they at least believed in what they were doing; did he? He caught sight of the girl, and she ignored him, but was closely following the boy who started it all, whom now everyone was addressing as the "abbot", as he very much deserved to be called. She flashed to the "abbot" the same smile shown to Dhama the day before.
Stopping next to the poisonous spring, Dhama watched birds chirping away bathing in its water, and realized that his quest had come to an end; stooping down, he scooped up the water again and again, gulping it down...
Many days later, villagers bringing alms found him dead in his cave; he was sitting upright in his usual meditation posture, but his soul had departed while he was meditating. To the villagers, it was obvious Dhama found nirvana.
No one dared to touch the holy body, and it did not decay; the poison in the spring water had over many days of drinking seeped throughout his body, preserving it from the rotten elements, the perfect sacred relic for the future Hua Hills White Horse Monastery, one of the greatest monasteries of China.

Treasures of the Templars 神殿骑士的宝藏

1.
James de Molay, who had just been handed the Templar Grand Master's sword with its six-pointed handle by his predecessor Theobauld Gaudin, and proclaimed as their leader by the knights gathered in the Temple chapel, was following Theobauld into the Grand Master's study. Everyone understood that the new leader was to be told The Secret.
Every member of the order (and many people outside) knew that the Order of the Knights of the Temple kept a great secret, but only the Grand Masters knew what it was. Rumours and speculations would surface now and then, neither confirmed nor denied. Some said the Templars found the True Cross, the Holy Grail or the Treasure of Solomon in the Jerusalem temple when the Crusaders first conquered the city; some said they were nursing a great heresy, that Pope was not appointed by Christ to be the head of Christendom because Jesus entrusted it to Mary Magdalene, whom he secretly married; some said the Templars engaged in devil worship in their secret rites, or nursed other heretical ideas. However, with special dispensation from the Pope himself, the order was not open to scrutiny by priests and bishops in the areas where they operate, and the knights confessed to their own chiefs and obtain absolution from their sins without having to speak to chaplins or vicars appointed by other church authorities. Outsiders simply had no means to look into the Templar Order and satisfy themselves of their good behaviour and good heart.
In fact, merely by joining the order, a knight was absolved of all past sins including the most serious sin of all, heresy; hence, there were members who harbored quite different ideas from those endorsed by the church, and it was easy for them to wonder about each other's beliefs, and about what might be going on in other locations of the Order, or when another group of knights gathered for a secret meeting of some kind.
Once upon a time, such circulated slanders were but a whisper, completely outshined by the Order's great reputation as fighters and as an effective organization. Not only were the knights better trained in individual fighting skills, they deployed new military tactics, coordinating their knights on horses and men on ground so that the lancemen and arrow shooters provided each other with protection as they advanced together. Further, being multi-national by nature and recruiting men and receiving donations from all the European countries, they established a pan-European network that could transfer messages and money in security. Pilgrims would deposit gold and silver in a Templar stronghold in one city as they set out for the Holy Land, and receive the equivalent amount (minus charges) in Jerusalem using the documents issued by the Templars when the money was deposited, in addition to receiving military protection on route. Templar castles were securely defended, such that even royalties began to use them as depositories for their own funds, turning the strongholds into bank vaults; in turn, they also borrowed money from Templars, who were by the end of the crusades more a banking and fund transfer organization in Europe than a military one.
In the mean time, the military situation in the Holy Land had gone from bad o worse. Having lost Jerusalem to Saladin in 1187 and making futile efforts to recover it, the crusaders lost Acre, their last stronghold, in 1291, and the Templars had to retreat to Cyprus.
The year 1293 was therefore not an auspicious time to succeed to the leadership of the Knights Templars, especially for a man already past the mid 50s in age, neither well educated nor well connected.

2.
Across the table, Theobauld said" I will now tell you the Order's great secret and pass to you our sacred object. You will safeguard this, keeping it with you wherever you are; take it with you whenever you travel to another place, till the time comes when you hand it to the next Grand Master and reveal its secret to him."
" If I go to battle, I may not return and there will be no one to tell the next Grand Master"
"Yes this is the tricky part; you need to write down the secret beforehand, in a pouch to be opened only after his election"
Theobauld took out a key, passed to James de Molay, and pointed at the old wooden box that he always had with him, in his study or carried around when he moved somewhere - people thought it had important documents, since it was not heavy enough to contain money or jewelry: "open it; in it lies the Order's great secret"; opening the box, all he saw was a small roll of papyrus and a clay tablet; a treasure map? directions to a secret shrine for Jesus? a set of catechisms? "Actually, I do not know the meaning of what is on the roll; nor did the earlier Grand Masters; they only said we must wait for a message from God to tell us what it means" replied Theobauld.
Scribed on the papyrus were some writings in an unknown language; at the top there was the picture of a compass imposed on a right angle, forming a six-pointed star, and at the bottom that of a coiled serpent swallowing its own tail. The clay tablet had just the two figures and a small number of signs scattered round them.
"This box was found in the inner sanctum, with the big scrolls of Hebrew books, when Hugo of Payns fought his way into the Temple; at first nobody thought it was important, but then one of the old men there was trying to sneak out with it and was stopped by Hugo, who realized that it must be more precious than the other objects; the old man gave his life trying to hold on to it; before he died, he said the box was made with wood from the same tree that was used for the Ark in the first Jerusalem temple, built by David and Solomon, and on the scroll was the most sacred message from God, whose meaning will only be revealed when He decides it should be."
"Hugo did not ask anyone about this?"
"It would not be much use asking a knight or a priest from Rome, but he did ask some of the old men in the Temple; all they could say was that not everything in the Book was true. Later he found some of those Hebrew hermits scattered here and there; they told him various bits of wild things: the world is much older than what the Book says; Adam and Eve did not commit sin; they just worshiped the snake because they wanted to have children..."
"which means men need not cleanse their sin by following Jesus? That fellow was denying Jesus as the True Prophet - but of course he is a Jew"
"Quite so, and they said the compass is heaven because it draws round, the square draws earth so earth is square; all that stuff has something to do with this scroll and this tablet, but I guess I will not live to find out"
"About the age of the world, I did often wonder whether there was enough time, after people dispersed from the Tower of Babel, to go to Egypt and learn to build all these pyramids"
"Actually, in Jerico the people say their town walls are 8000 years old. But they may have got it wrong"
"Well those ancient Jewish writers could have got it wrong too; even the four Gospels are different from each other"
"Oh my; I think we should be careful what we say; I am a bit deaf these days; I did not hear what you just said"

3.
How strong are my beliefs? James de Molay asked himself.

Templars were special people; they were both monks and knights; as monks, they were sworn to celebacy, poverty and a deeply religious life; as knights, they were trained to defend the sites sacred to Christianity in Jerusalem and protect pilgrims who came to seek a share of the holiness of these places.
Coming to Palestine had been an enlightening experience to all of them. Compared to the cold windswept land of western Europe, balmy Palestine was a land of milk and honey. They were accustomed to a diet of bread, wine and some meat, but here the abundant produce, with their strong fragrance and syropy sweetness, was a real change. In Europe, taking a bath was a rare event and wearing the same dirty, lice ridden shirt for hundreds of days was a sign of manly endurance, in the east mediterrenean area the lifestyle previously considered effeminine and extragant was standard. The new environment changed one's outlook, including the religious outlook. The saracen infidels, however one disagreed with them over religious doctrines, seemed genuinely dedicated in their beliefs, and often acted with greater honour than some of the Templars' own Christian friends.
The military reverses, often due to the crusaders' own incompetence, had a double effect on the Templars: the crusaders wondered why God did not seem to be showering them with blessings and helping with winning the war; they often resorted to uttering curses and blashmous remarks in their frustration, while the nobles and churchmen back in Europe looked for blame, that the crusaders had not shown sufficient religious dedication and had too often tried to enter into deals and compromises with the saracens. Much of the suspicion fell on the military orders, in particular the highly secretive, often independent minded, yet privileged and supposedly very wealthy Templars.
But James de Molay had no doubt about his own standing as a good Christian, maybe he was an even better Christian than the pious churchmen and the scholarly monks, because he had seen the sacred places and fought for them; he had known the places where Christianity started, and known something about its religious sources that went back much, much further. God was not just the God of Jesus, but also the God of Abraham and earlier.

4.
Another crusade; that's what the Pope said; that's what Templars would like to do. James de Molay looked at the new fleet of six ships, which the Order just purchased from Venice, with satisfaction. His assistant Count Beaujeu, standing next to him, also glowed with pride. Nice ships, but expensive; the Templar income was not as great as it used to be, and many debtors had been slow in repaying their loans from the Order, including King of France, Philip the Fair. It was nearly all the cash they had on hand that was used to pay Venice.
Ah all those stories people told about the fabulous wealth of the Templars. Sure there were generous donations when the crusades were hot in everyone's heart, and properties that new members gave to the Order when they took their oath of poverty. Templars also got a share of the land and castles when helping to reconquer spain and portugal from saracens. But the financial commitments of the Order were great too. Today Templars had to finance its fighting corps in the Levant, its organization, and its charity work, from its income out of European properties. And all those stories about these horrible sins they commit in secret.
"I hear there have been a new set of complaints about us at the French court." said Count of Beaujeus.
"We are directly under the Pope; only he can initiate proceedings against us"
"There have been scandal mongering in Avignon too"
"But he needs us for his next crusade"
"Sure, but still.."
Remembering Theobauld's advice of leaving behind word about the Secret before any expedition, James de Molay went to his quarters, wrote down the information, and placed the sheet in a sealed pouch which he gave to Beaujeus: "In case I do not return from the crusade; let it be opened by the next Grand Master."

Four part series sinazen.com/chinamyths sinazen.com/prehistory sinazen.com/middlehistory sinazen.com/singaporemythwriter

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Please also go to individual blogs I set up:

Confucius 孔子: konfuzi.com

Chinese dragon: sinadragon.com

Chinese-Hebrew mythology: sinabible.com

天圆地方: asiatao.com

Alexander Great alexandergrt.com