The Sage of Time and Chance

Housley

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498201797
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Sage of Time and Chance is a work of fiction based on Ecclesiastes, the most skeptical book in the Bible. Ecclesiastes was written by a Hebrew sage called Koheleth who had the courage to wonder whether human beings were different from animals, and why the mind was limited in its ability to comprehend life. In The Sage of Time and Chance, Koheleth summons translators from all the corners of the Earth to review his provocative manuscript before he dies. The story is set in Jerusalem in the third century BCE, a peaceful period rich in cultural exchange and scholarship. Among the translators who come to the council are a monk from India, a Scythian warrior, and a shaman. Bitter rivalries and misunderstandings make reaching consensus difficult and dangerous. So also does the presence of actual translators of Ecclesiastes from the future, including Jerome (Latin) and Saadia ben Yosef (Arabic). The most unusual translator is a silent child who understands more than all the others what it means to be human--the essential question that drives Koheleth. Led by the child, Koheleth navigates around the pitfalls of cynicism and finds his way back to joy.

1

All Streams Flow to the Sea

“Mist mist all is mist.” Koheleth murmurs the words so softly no one else in the great hall hears. While he listens for the congruence of sound and meaning, he senses inwardly that his silver life thread is stretched taut, and his golden bowl has developed fine cracks that are spreading steadily from the base to the rim. He wonders if he has enough time to do what must be done before the thread snaps and the bowl shatters. For a moment only, Koheleth pulls on his gray beard and gazes up at the high ceiling with its sturdy cedar beams imported from the distant mountains of Lebanon. Then he gives his head a slight shake and forces his mind back to the problem at hand, which is how to phrase the opening line of his untitled scroll.

“Emptiness, emptiness all is emptiness.” If he uses that word instead of mist, will the reader be able to differentiate between the subtle gradations of meanings: either a permanent void or a space with the potent capability of being filled? Is the hollow stem of a reed flute empty? What of a water pitcher broken at the well? Is the earth empty of sound just because Koheleth’s ears have lost the capacity to hear distinctly? Is it bleached of color because he cannot see clearly? Such foolish rhetorical questions! Yes, it has been a long time since Koheleth last heard the soft cooing of the doves at sunrise; nonetheless, he does not doubt they continue to coo for his children and grandchildren. He has difficulty reading (throughout his life a source of contentment, even astonishment), his eyes becoming so tired that the letters blur after only a few paragraphs. But that problem is pleasantly ameliorated by having someone read aloud to him. So also, only if his friends and family come near can he discern their distinctive features—the slight crook in his son’s nose from the time he fell out of the fig tree, the jagged scar on his daughter’s right cheek where she was scratched by a pet panther, up until then considered quite tame. He does not need to see those marks to be certain they remain.

“Vanity of vanities, vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does a man gain from all his labor, toiling under the sun? Generations go and generations come, but the earth stays forever. The sun also rises and the sun sets and hurries to its place where it arose.” Koheleth pauses in his whispered recitation. The word vanity troubles him. Maybe the word futility would be better. At least he is pleased with the lines about the perpetual transit of the sun. Over the years, he has conversed with many scholars in this hall, some coming from where the sun rises and sets, far beyond the boundaries of all the known kingdoms—Koheleth’s reputation having been transported along the dusty trade routes by talkative Hebrew merchants who passed on tales of his intellectual exploits and proverbs as if they were valuable commodities. He suspects that the merchants embellished the tales, mixing them with news on the price of sword blades, mustard seed, and silver bangles; spicing them with warnings of bandits in the northern passes, and rumors of suspected poisonings at the Alexandrian court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.

Some scholars had sought him on the basis of his proverbs alone, many of which he readily admitted he had not written but only collected, such as, “the fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh.” Or the often quoted,“better a handful with quiet than two handfuls with toil and a chasing after wind.” That proverb had even been inscribed on clay tablets for sale in the marketplace. Other sages had heard of his legal decisions wherein justice and mercy balanced on the thin edge of a knife blade—the rights of the poor widow being equal to the rights of a king. Although some of his visitors were gifted with the ability to listen and discern, many were entranced by their own ideas glittering like fool’s gold in a streambed. Then there were the malicious few who were like slow-acting poison, tasteless and colorless, attempting to destroy Koheleth’s work while appearing to support it.

Which brings him to “nothing, nothing, all is nothing.” He rejects that word immediately as too easy to misunderstand, verging on cynicism. Nothing—neither his deep dissatisfaction with the words he has available, nor the antagonism those words have sometimes stirred up—reduces life to nothing. Koheleth is not bitter about his declining health or regretful of the numerous failures in his long life, although he has to admit to himself that certain painful memories, springing unbidden into his mind, have the strength to make him gasp afresh at his capacity for foolishness.

He strokes the handle of his walking stick, his old reliable friend. There is beauty in it, polished smooth by the long slow pressure of his hand. When he was eleven or twelve, Koheleth had longed for wings; not the utilitarian feathers of the little brown sparrow nesting peacefully in the eaves outside his window, but the majestic plumage of the eagle, able to ride storm winds. With such powerful wings, Koheleth had dreamed of rising above the confining walls of Jerusalem, becoming a speck in the blue heavens, soaring over exotic lands only rumored to exist; following the course of a muddy river meandering through a dense jungle; or exploring endless plains covered by snow. Had someone offered him this walking stick then, he would have scorned it, throwing it away as worthless. Now he is profoundly grateful for it, leaning against the arm of his chair. Accompanying him everywhere since the days of his accident, it is made of acacia wood of which the Ark of the Covenant is also made. Neither has broken under the weight of his unrelenting demands, nor upbraided him for his long periods of apathetic neglect when he took them for granted.

Even Koheleth’s mind has changed as the physical senses that provide it information have weakened and become unreliable. Those loyal subalterns—sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell—have served him faithfully his entire life. Yet now they doze at their posts, startled awake and confused by a sudden loud noise in the streets or a penetrating beam of light. As for the vehicle that has carried him through the world, it has become a rickety cart with a loose wheel and a bent axle, squeaking its way slowly down the road. Knee joints crack, ankles swell, skin sags, urine comes out in a thin sporadic stream. From the flea hopping on the tip of the dog’s ear to the servant plowing the field, death comes to all, sometimes swiftly and too soon, sometimes slowly and too late, whereas the mourners feel more relief than sorrow. It is coming for Koheleth. He is trying to prepare, though he doubts the purity of his motives. Isn’t this gathering yet one more attempt to gain at least a dust mote of immortality, an effort to make his ideas have permanence far beyond the borders of his time, even if his name is lost? Mist, mist all is mist—the words he will speak this evening, yet which his own actions belie. Meaning, meaning, all is meaning—that phrase is nearer the truth, less a striving after wind than a yearning for spirit, the yearning alone expansive enough to hold infinities.

Koheleth surveys the chamber with its low tables arranged in the shape of two large crescent moons facing each other, one rising, the other setting. On them are bowls of dates, almonds, and the last of the season’s figs picked from Koheleth’s own tree—a tree that has the strange ability to bear succulent fruit whether in or out of season, resting and reblooming on an unpredictable cycle not related to sun and rain, heat and cold. There are silver goblets for wine, wooden flagons for beer, even delicate china cups for tea. The cups had been brought from Samarkand, the great trading city at the eastern edge of what had once been the Persian empire before Alexander had defeated King Darius, slaughtered his army, and imposed Macedonian rule and Hellenistic ideas throughout most of the known world. As a young man, Koheleth had found the cups not in Samarkand (he never made it that far in his travels) but in a bustling market in Babylon near the Jewish academy where he was studying. Besides the cups, the merchant also had silk for sale, which Koheleth had never seen before. It was luminescent blue and brilliant red, both soft and strong. Koheleth could not resist purchasing the silk for his mother and sister and the cups for himself. When he returned to Jerusalem a year later via camel caravan, he wrapped the silk around the cups to protect them. All—silk, cups, self—arrived home safely. As for the tea, that could be obtained easily from the trading vessels that sailed on the monsoon winds across the Indian Ocean, anchoring in ports on the Red Sea.

Already several women and men recline on the cushions and rugs, talking quietly to each other, casting curious glances his way. Occasionally there is laughter, not too loud, more like a little ripple of water across the surface of a tranquil lake. He likes this sound, for it is the sound of friends who have come to a place they know well and in which they feel at home. Even the clicking of Saroruha’s bronze prayer wheel rising up from the courtyard gives Koheleth a feeling of contentment. It reminds him of the tinkle of the little golden bells sewn to the hem of the high priest’s robe that make known his presence.

It is early evening and a slight breeze lifts up the smell of dust—a gritty redolence marking the end of the dry season just before the coming of the rains. In the folds of their robes, the plaits of their hair, the soles of their sandals, the scholars themselves carry with them scents as diverse as their homelands: garlic, lemon, myrrh, camel dung, wood smoke. There is even a hint of saffron in the yellow robe of bald-headed Alithemata who eats a plum as he waits for the assembly to begin.

On the far side of the room stands Michal, her robe as white as her braided hair, giving Koheleth the impression of a marble column gleaming in the twilight. Fifty years before, Koheleth had glimpsed her for the first time from his chariot as she trimmed her grapevines with a curved blade—unveiled and dark-skinned. When he had stopped to inquire about the ownership of the vineyard and whether he might enter, she had answered him bluntly with the words from the Song of Solomon,“My vineyard is private. You have a thousand vineyards.” His Michal! Koheleth smiles at the thought because the one word that can never be linked with her name is the possessive his. No one, least of all himself, has ever owned Michal who has always held a portion of herself secret and sacrosanct, as small as a mustard seed, as large as the firmament. She was the wife of his youth, the first love of his life, always his friend, his advisor, and more than any other title—his physician—the one who still has the power to lift from his heart the grief that sometimes threatens to crush it, not by removing it outright but by placing her own heart beside his. She was the one he had in mind when he wrote in his scroll: “Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their toil, for if they fall, one will lift the other up. Woe to the one alone. When he falls there is no one to help.” Just knowing she is in the room increases Koheleth’s resolve to go on with his plans for the evening and the days ahead. “A cord of three is not quickly broken.” That phrase, gleaned from his reading of the ancient Sumerian poem about Gilgamesh, the ruler of the long-ago kingdom of Erech, could be comprehended several ways, Koheleth’s favorite being two friends upheld by God, making a braid of three strands.

Yet none of Michal’s roles, not even her capacity for blunt truthfulness, accounts for her presence this evening. Only her ability to read Sanskrit gives her the right to be here, because this is a gathering of translators summoned by Koheleth to provide guidance on his scroll. He is concerned that he may have used some words that are untranslatable into other languages. Having written many proverbs, he has a tendency to compress language, coiling as much meaning as possible into a tight spring. Before it is too late, he must ask for guidance. And he must be willing to make changes—if he has enough time.

Besides Michal, there is Targitaos from the Scythian plains where they drink the milk of mares; Dreela from the one-eyed race that lives near the gold-guarding griffins; Hemlinsu, a woman trained as a man who dresses in voluminous pants, speaking a language with two forms, one used by females, the other by males; Radeek, a throat-singer from the cold steppes a lunar-year distant.

In their midst stands a small boy, a recently purchased slave whose language is a peculiar mix of clicks and chirps, sometimes sounding like a chorus of insects on a hot night; at other times like the call of a lonesome bird. Koheleth hadn’t intended to purchase him. His household staff was already too large and none of them were slaves, being paid fairly for their labor, although it had not always been so. He had meant to purchase an ancient scroll brought to Jerusalem by a trading caravan from somewhere near Sheba. However, as he and the trader were haggling over the price of the scroll, the trader had thrown the boy into the bargain. Koheleth had accepted, much to his surprise. And so while his servant had carried the scroll, Koheleth, oddly elated, had walked home leading the boy by the hand.

The boy has light brown skin, not as dark as the skin of the people far south of Elephantine downstream from the first cataract of the Nile; but neither does he look Ethiopian. His face and hands are fine-boned, his nose narrow, almost delicate. As Koheleth gazes at him, the passage in the eighteenth chapter of Isaiah comes to mind about the kingdom of Cush inhabited by “a people tall and smooth-skinned, dreaded near and far, a people of strange speech whose land is divided by rivers.” Was he from there? Until the boy learns to speak Hebrew, there is no way to know. Ruefully, Koheleth realizes he has not been able to attend the boy’s Hebrew lessons the past week, leaving the task of teaching to Michal who already treats him as if he were a member of the family. Truth is, so does Koheleth. Something about the child has brought back to him memories of his dead son who also sang softly to himself when he was playing alone. Perhaps the child has stirred the same memories in Michal, although she has not mentioned them to Koheleth. But then, when have they had the time to talk about the child, or anything else? Remorse sweeps over him as he shifts his gaze from the child to Michal who is looking back at him. She smiles and it is like the soothing balm of Gilead to his soul, flooding him with the awareness that she shares responsibility for the boy, which is the reason that she has made an effort to have him with them this evening when by all logic he should be in bed.

Counting the child, forty scholars now sit before Koheleth, chosen for their linguistic abilities combined with their awareness of the limitations of all language: not meaning so much as approximations of meaning, not the perfect word but the adequate word, the one that will suffice. And again the phrase a striving after wind curls up like a wisp of smoke through Koheleth’s thoughts and he says to himself the words he has written: “The wind goes to the south and veers to the north, round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams flow to the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place where the streams flow, there they return again.”

Lycos arrives next, shuffling through the stone archway at the far end of the room, barely lifting his feet from the floor, led by his twelve-year-old granddaughter Sarah who accompanies him nearly everywhere. He turns his head toward the waning light of the high window and bows slightly, assuming correctly that Koheleth is seated at the head of the table. His vision is poor and his posture bent, yet he retains the weighty presence of a Hellenic scholar, a man who has seen with his own eyes the ways of the world and has maintained a keen interest in all that surrounds him, as ready to debate a passage of Torah as to quote Homer.

Koheleth is touched by Lycos’s efforts to be in attendance. He knows personally how much Lycos’s knees must have throbbed as he slowly climbed the stairs, the shortness of his breath necessitating him to pause every few steps, the rapid erratic pulse that has not yet begun to slow. Attendance is not mandatory for anyone. Giving orders has rarely been Koheleth’s way. Lycos did not have to come, but he is one of the most dutiful people Koheleth has ever known. He would have come even if he had to be carried on a pallet. So also, many years before, he had not been required to stay in Jerusalem to teach Greek to Koheleth during the year following Koheleth’s accident at the limestone quarry beneath the Hill of Ophel where he had gone to inspect the blocks to be used in the new residence of the high priest. Day after day in utter frustration at his inability to walk, hating to look at the angry scar running the full length of his thigh from his hip down to his swollen and throbbing knee, Koheleth had stared out of his window on the holy city, honey-colored beneath the strong sun, toward the temple on the mount wherein was the deep darkness of God—the boundless that chooses to be bound, the timeless that accepts the constraints of time—enveloped by the outstretched wings of the golden cherubim.

Meanwhile within the Greek texts that he studied with Lycos, another world of darkness and light opened up, so that without leaving his room, Koheleth roamed throughout the cosmos unfettered. Reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, he had entered the gates of Troy hidden inside a wooden horse; he had escaped from the bloodthirsty cyclops by disguising himself in sheepskin. Reading Herodotus, he had infiltrated the tribe of Amazons, each woman an expert with the bow; he had surveyed the country beyond the Istar River possessed by bees. For that mental liberation, he owed Lycos half a kingdom. Koheleth has already taken steps to guarantee that Lycos’s granddaughter will have the opportunity to become a scholar in her own right. But the thought of a guarantee gives Koheleth rueful pause, the only things guaranteed being sequential ra...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• 1. All Streams Flow to the Sea
• 2. Striving After Wind
• 3. A Time for Every Season
• 4. Toil Under the Sun
• 5. The Tears of Oppression
• 6. Vanity of Vanities
• 7. Eat Your Bread with Gladness
• 8. Generations Go, Generations Come
• 9. The Silver Cord is Broken
• Scriptural References and Notes