Heroes

Paul Johnson

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061849992
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

A galaxy of legendary figures from the annals of Western history

In this enlightening and entertaining work, Paul Johnson, the bestselling author of Intellectuals and Creators, approaches the subject of heroism with stirring examples of men and women from every age, walk of life, and corner of the planet who have inspired and transformed not only their own cultures but the entire world as well.

Heroes includes:

Samson, Judith, and Deborah • Henry V and Joan of Arc • Elizabeth I and Walter Raleigh • George Washington, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Nelson • Emily Dickinson • Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee • Mae West and Marilyn Monroe • Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II

1

GOD’S HEROES: DEBORAH, JUDITH, SAMSON AND DAVID

No people in history were more in need of heroes than the Hebrews. Cast in their role, by events, as “strangers and sojourners,” they came originally in the time of Abraham, deep in the second millennium BC, from what is now southern Iraq, and entered recorded history between 1450 and 1250 BC. They were a slave people, without country and possessions, with little art or technology and no skill or record in warfare. They were subjects of the Egyptians, the greatest power of the Bronze Age, and woefully oppressed. They were not numerous either. It is one of the miracles of the human story that this tiny people, instead of disappearing into oblivion through the yawning cracks of history, as did thousands of other tribal groups—and even scores of famous nations—should still be in self-conscious existence today, an important piece on the great world chessboard, recognizably the same entity as nearly four thousand years ago.

Yet history has no miracles: only causes and consequences. And the reasons the Hebrews survived are that they had a god, a sole god, whom they worshipped with unique intensity and exclusiveness; and they had their own language, first oral then written, in which they recorded his favor and protection. They were weak in the physics of survival, strong in the metaphysics. They were first henotheists, with their sole god, Yahweh, as the divine ruler of their tribal confederation (what the Greeks called an amphictyony); then, during their Egyptian sojourn, they elevated their religious system into monotheism, Yahweh becoming sole god of the universe and all its peoples. This belief, which made them unique in antiquity, emerged under the first of their heroes, Moses, who took them out of Egyptian slavery and into independent nationhood. He gave them, in writing, their first code of divine laws, and led them, through forty years of tribulations and testing, to the edge of the land, “flowing with milk and honey,” which Yahweh had promised them. Moses made full use too of their second great gift, their language. Hebrew was not only sinewy, expressive and resourceful, but peculiarly adapted to the recording of history. It was Moses, according to rabbinical tradition, who set down the first five books of the Hebrew national epic, the Pentateuch, the opening section of what became known as the Bible, to Christians the Old Testament. On this foundation the Bible accumulated over the generations, as the canonical record of Hebrew history, in time, “the most famous book in the history of the world,” “the book,” as its name implies. Moses and his doings continued to dominate it. He is mentioned 767 times in the Old Testament and 79 times even in the New Testament, the Christian title deeds. No other hero of antiquity, at any other period or from any other region, has this degree of heroic celebrity.

Moses having created, as it were, the matrix of heroism, Hebrew records arranged the continuing story of the people and heroic figures. The Book of Joshua, conservatively dated from between 1375

BC and 1045 BC, tells how the Promised Land was conquered and settled. According to the Talmud, the Jewish record of oral teaching compiled from 400 BC to AD 500, Joshua, the Hebrew general, as well as being the hero of the book, was also its author, except for a coda recording his burial. The next biblical book, Judges, is the key work in Hebrew heroism, however. It was written late in the first millennium BC, after Joshua, and supposedly, according to the Talmud, by the Prophet Samuel. By rights it should be called the Book of Heroes, for most of its celebrities were not judges but fighters, who enabled the Hebrews, or Israelites as they began to be called, to survive as a recognizable, independent people during extremely difficult times.

The last centuries of the second millennium BC, the chronological junction between the Bronze Age and the new Iron Age, witnessed one of the greatest convulsions of antiquity, involving the whole of the eastern Mediterranean and its shores and much of western Asia—huge conquests and tribal movements, invasions and dispossessions, massacres and genocides and great minglings and fusions of peoples. The destruction of Mycenaean Greece and Crete, the events reflected in Homer’s later (eighth century BC) recounting of the Trojan War, the near-disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt and the movement of the Hebrews themselves into Palestine are all part of this reshuffling of the cards of history, the biggest upheaval until Alexander the Great broke up the Persian Empire and replaced it with the Hellenistic world.

The literary and archeological evidence of these massive but obscure events is fragmentary, and the picture historians have been able to build up is confused, and likely to remain so. No wonder, then, that the Book of Judges, recording part of the turmoil in a small area of the scene of convulsion, from a Hebrew viewpoint, is a confused and confusing document also. It claims to record the deeds of a dozen “judges,” or tribal heroes, called Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah (and her general Barak), Gideon, Tola, Jain, Jephthah, Ibzan, Elon, Abdon and Samson. But, though they are presented in chronological order, it may be that some were contemporaries. Their importance varied greatly. Several were obscure leaders of a single tribe. Others were national figures. The enemy too varied. At the beginning of the book, the enemy seems to be the original inhabitants of the Promised Land, the Canaanites. But no scholar has been able to settle the origins of this term, and it may be that it signified no more than the collective expression for a mass of small kingdoms and amphictyonies, living in Syria and Palestine: the Jebusites and Amorites, Girgashites, Hivites, Arkites, Sinites, Arradites, Zemarites, Hamathites and others. The term may mean “lowly” or “low born,” and be abusive. One of the earliest references to Canaanites occurs in a clay tablet from the administrative records of the city of Mari (fifteenth century BC), which refers to “thieves and Canaanites.” The Hebrews regarded them with horror, for the Canaanite group of peoples had a superior artistic culture, and superficially attractive religious cults, and Hebrews were tempted to assimilate with them and intermarry. It was the Hebrew religious instinct to maintain a strict code of racial apartheid, which made dangerous contacts as difficult as possible. The best way to uphold this doctrine was to pursue continuous warfare, in pursuit of land, booty and slaves. The Judges personified this policy.

However, the various Canaanite petty kingdoms, even including the more technically advanced ones which eventually coalesced into the people we know as the Phoenicians (producers of the alphabet we still use today), were not the only or even the principal enemy of the Hebrews. In the Old Testament, “enemies” are mentioned 919 times. Of these, 423 mentions, or 46 percent, refer to the Philistines. These formed one of the great, magisterial lost peoples of antiquity, whose name alone survives in the term Palestine, still used for the Promised Land of the Hebrews. This word was Egyptian, “Pelest,” or as the Egyptians put it, having no written vowels, “Plst.” The Egyptians knew them as the “Sea Peoples,” invaders who arrived from the north in ships. They came close to destroying the Pharaonic kingdom of Egypt and they evoked well-grounded terror wherever they penetrated. They were tremendous warriors by sea and land, rather like the Normans in the history of early medieval Europe. They overwhelmed the Hittites in Anatolia and destroyed the ancient and heavily fortified seaport of Ugarit in Syria.

They transformed Canaan into Palestine and took and fortified five big towns, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Gath and Ekron. They were, as we would say, Europeans rather than Asiatics or Africans. They came from Greece and Crete. With the collapse of Aegean civilization in the thirteenth century BC they had become pirates and mercenaries, but they brought with them their iron culture and Aegean-type pottery. We know what they looked like, for the Egyptian low-relief sculptors, with fear and trembling, carved their images on the temple walls of Medinet Habu. They were tall and slender—giants to most Asians—clean-shaven and eagle-eyed. They wore paneled kilts with tassels and their chests were protected by multilayered ribbed linen corselets. Their headgear, distinctive and frightening, were upright circles of reeds or leather straps or horsehair, mounted on a close-fitting cap. Each warrior carried a pair of spears or a long sword, or both. They had three-man iron chariots, each with a driver and two spearmen, and behind their armies, their families followed in oxcarts. Their mastery of hard-metal working made them more than a match for Bronze Age peoples in battle. And in the arts too, for their skills were considerable. The term “Philistine” as a hater of art is a misnomer: the Hebrews had nothing by comparison.

This formidable people moved into the coastal strip, slaughtering the Canaanites and pushing into the interior, confining the Hebrews to the mountains and their foothills. The Hebrews, then, faced a variety of enemies whom they needed to defeat simply to survive, let alone to occupy all the rich land Yahweh had promised them. Their resources, as noted, were metaphysical rather than primarily physical—they had tremendous religious morale springing from their monotheism and their clear code of ethics. But in one respect they tapped a physical resource which most ancient peoples denied themselves: they made full use of the brains and courage of their women. How it came about that so many great peoples, until quite recently, failed to draw upon half their human capital we shall never know. But the Hebrews did not fail—just as well, since they had so little else—and the Bible is the record of their common sense. It is a curious fact that the first written record of a joke—of laughter—occurs in the Book of Genesis, and shows Sarah, Abraham’s wife, in an antimasculine posture, laughing at the solemn all-male consultation between her husband, God and his angels about her approaching pregnancy. God rebukes her for laughing, but she has the last laugh, as well as the first.

This extraordinary episode, so typical of the way in which the Bible, unlike any comparable record of antiquity, continually places women in the forefront of events, sets the tone for the future. Hebrew, or Israelite, society was patriarchal, as indeed were all societies then (and indeed now), but not exclusively so. Women were prized too for their wisdom, tenderness, passion, and at times heroic ruthlessness. This is brought out with great force in the story of Deborah, which is told in Judges chapters 4 and 5. It is told twice over, first in prose, then in verse, and the Hebrew is superb. As with all the stories in Judges the scene is set by Israelite sinfulness—that is, their relaxing of racial apartheid and their mingling with the pagans, including observing their religious and cultural rites, what the Bible calls “doing what was wrong in the eyes of the Lord.”

When this happens Yahweh selects an instrument for the castigation of his people, in this case “Jabez the Canaanite king, who ruled in Hazor.” The account says that Jabez had a general, Sisera, “who lived in Harosheth-of-the-Gentiles,” and that he oppressed the Israelites “for twenty years” (i.e., a long time, though not a very long time, which would have been “forty years”). Sisera was a mercenary, and probably a Philistine or a commander of Philistine mercenaries, who we surmise set himself up as a king in his own right. Sisera, we are told, had “nine hundred chariots of iron” and the Israelites had no mobile armor at all. But they had Deborah, and her wisdom and power of command.

This enchanting woman provides one of the most satisfying biblical portraits. She was the wife of Lappidoth, but he was a nonentity and we hear no more about him. She had many gifts and roles. First she was a prophetess. She was by no means the only woman prophet. We hear also of Miriam (Exodus 15:20), Huldah (2 Kings 22:14) and in New Testament times Anna (Luke 2:36). But Deborah was also a judge, indeed the only one of the judges who is actually described as exercising judicial functions. “It was her custom,” we are told, “to sit beneath the Palm Tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephrahim, and the Israelites went up to her for justice.” This arcadian scene recalls Moses as judge, and evidently when this book of the Bible was edited, over two hundred years later, the tree was still in existence, and revered, and known by her name. Her evident repute and prestige as a judge reveals that she was learned, knowing all the regulations later described, not only in the Pentateuch but in Deuteronomy and Numbers, and much case law too. People came to her because her rulings were respected and took effect. When Sisera’s terrifying force of iron chariots threatened the settled land, “the Israelites cried out for help” but they turned to Deborah for advice and decisions. Her ruling was prompt. She could decide, from her wisdom, the nature of the campaign to be fought against Sisera, and the general strategy. But, being a woman (and probably an old one), it was unbecoming for her to direct detailed, tactical operations on the battlefield. For that a professional soldier was needed. “So she sent for Barak, son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali,” and issued to him God’s commands, she acting as prophetic spokeswoman for the Deity: “Go and recruit ten thousand men from Naphtali and Zebulun, and bring them with you to Mount Tabor. I will entice Sisera…to the torrent of Koshon with all his chariots and his horde, and there I will deliver them into your hands.”

General Barak’s willingness to obey Deborah’s summons testifies to her authority, and he accepted her plan moreover. But the reply with which he qualified his submission is still more telling: “If you go with me [into battle], I will go. But if you will not go, neither will I.” That was blunt: her morale-boosting presence on the battlefield was essential to victory, in his view. And he, as battle commander, needed her physical reassurance, and advice on tactics too. So it had been with Moses. She assented with a grim feminist note: “Certainly I will go with you, but this action will bring you no glory, because the Lord will leave Sisera to fall into the hands of a woman.”

So Deborah went with Barak at the head of his ten thousand men. When Sisera heard of Barak’s movement, he took his entire force to the bottom of Mount Tabor. That was exactly what Deborah had hoped for. Torrential rains, pouring down the slopes, had turned the plain below Mount Tabor into a quagmire. She woke the sleeping Barak: “‘Up! This day the Lord gives Sisera into your hands! Already the Lord has gone out to battle before you.’ By this she meant the rain.” So Barak came charging down from Mount Tabor with ten thousand infantry at his back. Sisera’s huge force of chariots became useless in the rapidly forming marsh, sticking in the mud. Their spearmen had to dismount, and were picked off one by one. They tried to flee, but the Israelite foot soldiers pursued them, and killed all.

Sisera too abandoned his bogged-down chariot and “fled on foot.” It is always a poignant moment when the commander of a powerful and triumphant cavalry force miscalculates, sees his squadrons distintegrate and suddenly finds himself alone, without even a horse. Some hours elapsed, and many weary miles. The proud commander, now muddy, frightened and exhausted, came across a group of tents of a tribe he believed friendly to King Jabin. He approached a woman’s tent, for safety, and Jael came out to meet him and said: “Come in here, my lord, come in—do not be afraid.” He went in, and she covered him with a rug. It was, of course, against all etiquette for a man, especially a fugitive, to violate the sanctity of a woman’s tent. And Sisera, in his distress, went on to commit two further breaches of social laws. He asked for refreshment without waiting for an invitation. He said to Jael: “Give me some water to drink—I am thirsty.” So she opened a skin full of milk, gave him a drink, and covered him up again. Thus emboldened, he tried to take charge of the woman. He said to her: “Stand at the tent entrance, and if anybody comes and asks if someone is here, say No.” This was too much. Jael, whose husband was Heber the Kenite (another nonentity), affronted and angered, waited till Sisera was asleep, then “took a tent-peg, picked up a mallet, crept up to him and drove the peg into his skull as he slept. His brains oozed out into the ground, his limbs twitched, and he died.” In due course Barak arrived in pursuit, and Jael went out to him and said, “Come, I will show you the man you are looking for.” Barak went in, found the wretched corpse, and remembered Deborah’s prophecy.

This is a grim but fascinating and convincing story, and we are told it in the Bible not once but twice. Judges chapter 4 tells it in prose, as I have just summarized it. Chapter 5 tells it in verse, which Deborah composed and sang (with Barak providing a base or baritone descant). She thus emphasized a point which all sensible heroes or heroines learn: those who compose for posterity their own account of their deeds, and so get their version in first, are more likely to be remembered with all honor—a lesson made use of by many heroes, as we shall see, from Julius Caesar to Winston Churchill. Deborah sang the earliest version of her victory song on the evening after the battle. Just as she followed Moses’s example as a judge, so her song echoed the chant of exultation he composed after Pharaoh and his host were drowned in the Red Sea (Exodus, chapter 15). On this occasion we are told that Miriam, another prophetess, and Aaron’s sister, “took up her tambourine, and all the women followed her, dancing to the sound of tambourines,” and Miriam sang to them this chorus:

Sing to the Lord, he has risen in triumph,

The horse and the rider hurled in the sea.

But Deborah, after the battle of Mount Tabor, was more than a tambourine girl. She was a successful ruler in war. As she put it:

Champions were there none,

None left in Israel

Until I, Deborah, arose,

Arose, a Mother in Israel.

Deborah’s song is a more sophisticated piece of poetry than Moses’s victory hymn. Much had happened since the days of the exodus, and the Israelites had honed their poetic gifts perhaps by illicit contact with the Canaanites and other more advanced peoples. There is some splendid detail in Deborah’s song, and a pulsating rhythm in the battle scene, recalling the thunder of the chariots—and bitter taunts at the missing Israelite tribes who were not in the battle in their nation’s hour of need. There is also pathos. Deborah tells the tale of Jael and Sisera in more detail than in the prose version and the description of Sisera’s awe-inspiring death is dramatic, with the throb of sickening repetition. But Deborah adds a touching coda, describing the anxiety of Sisera’s mother, worried by his late return, “peering through the lattices,” watching the high road through the windows of his palace, and repeatedly asking her attendant princesses:

Why are his chariots so long in coming?

Why is the thunder of his wheels so delayed?

Deborah, an imaginative and clever woman, puts herself in the place of the tragic mother, and ends her victory paean on a humane note of sympathy for the stricken woman. The true hero always ends a battle by thinking of the slain, including the defeated enemy.

We have, then, this picture of Sisera’s mother straining her eyes through the lattice. That is so characteristic of the Bible, a great book of true history, written as vivid literature, full of character sketches of the mighty and the small, and warm touches of humanity. There is nothing quite like it in the other writings of antiquity, until we come to the Greek drama of the fifth century BC. Homer has not the same intimate power.

Deborah’s heroic epic is essentially about women—herself, Jael and Sisera’s mother—and it left a huge impression on Israelite womenfolk, many of whom could read the Scriptures, some even helping to write them (the Book of Ruth is certainly by a woman). Late in Israelite history, about 300 BC, there appeared a sparklingly written account of an event that had occurred a century before, about the decapitation of an enemy general, Holofernes, by a beautiful and clever Israelite heroine, Judith. Scholars often argue that the Book of Judith, which is in the Apocrypha rather than the ...