An excerpt from A Goat For Azazel: A Novel of Christian Origins, © 1956 by Vardis Fisher, Published by Alan Swallow, Denver. 

He said his name was Socrates but Damon thought that possibly he was jesting. A man in late middle age he wore only rags but they were clean, and carried a hawthorn staff in which he had worn depressions almost as deep as his fingers. Most of his teeth were gone and he spoke with a sibilant lisp but you were not aware of that if you looked at his eyes. They were a very deep blue and they danced a perfect commentary on his thoughts. Such marvelous lights of kindliness and goodwill, of subtlety and humor, Damon was seldom to see in a human face. His hair was gray, with some streaks much whiter than others; his brows were white; but his short thick beard was not. Damon suspected that he dyed it, reserving beyond the discipline of his rigorous standards this one vanity to soothe his last lonely years. 

Socrates came to the library now and then, where it was his habit to go from reader to reader and peer over their shoulder, to see what engaged their interest; and one day, finding Damon lost in a strange wild thing called the Book of Enoch, he whispered in his ear, “What a waste of time!” When he left the building Damon followed him and they sat on a bench by the river and talked. 

“You think I waste my time?” 

“Fantasies by foolish men written for children! Doesn’t it say that the final assault of world powers will be wrecked on the rock of Zion, and one with a head as white as wool will ascend the throne, and with him one whose countenance is like that of man. His name was  before the stars were formed. On the day of judgment the godless shall be  burned in a lake of fire, and a great bull will come forth with horns. Young man, I ask you, what nonsense is this?” 

Damon said he had been reading the book only because certain Christians were devoted to it. 

“Ah, those wretched and deluded people! What are they but a council of frogs croaking? For their sakes the world was created!” 

“But this book,” Damon said, looking at the man’s marvelous eyes, “was written by a Jew.” 

“The Jews! Another council of frogs. Upon them, the chosen of God, rests the salvation of the whole human race. Can human presumption go farther than that? Jews and Christians, both dangerous because self-idolatrous. Tell me, young man, why should a person consider himself so superior to the lion and the horse as to assume that God has human form? Or tell me why God chose to show himself to mankind as a Jew.” 

Damon was silent a few moments. He said: “Christians believe in love.” 

“What is love? Virtue alone is good.” 

“But can there be virtue without love?” 

“You are younger than I thought. Self-control, my brother, is the essence of virtue. Is it a virtue to hate those who will not accept your beliefs?” 

A few days later Damon told the gray philosopher that what he most wanted to know was where the Christians came from. Did anybody know? 

“An offshoot of the Jews,” said Socrates, waving toward the south with his stick. “Yonder the superstition was born and now it is spreading everywhere, to women, children, idlers, quacks, fakers, impostors, slaves. What is the great appeal of this doctrine? this,” he said, poking at Damon with his stick. “Be baptized, repent, inherit eternal life, all in the time it would take you to pick off a scab or blow out a sneeze.” 

But was repentance that simple, Damon asked, thinking the old man too glib and superficial. And was there not more to it? The common people had no religion; in Rome worship was the privilege of wealth, and even in Greece foreigners and slaves were excluded from religious feasts. Was not religion everywhere only for those who could afford it? — but Jesus had said, Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden. The Christians were saying to all people, Come — to the poor, the outcast, the sick, the homeless — all. Had any religion ever said that before? 

The eyes twinkled on Damon, amused, tolerant, kindly. “If it’s a religion for the stupid and illiterate of what good can it be? Only the few have the power to sense the promptings of the spirit. For all others it is ritual, a slipping into heaven by the back door.” 

Damon knew he was no match for such a facile adversary. He said: “But don’t people deserve more than their rags? If they must eat lentils and black bread and leeks and locusts and go half-naked and be enslaved and despised and worked to death and then cast out to die would you deny them this comfort of a faith?” 

“Oh no, no — but deny to an intelligent man like you the right to see in it more than is there.” 

“For the first time in human history —” 

“Yes, brother, yes, I know what you’d say. It sounds like a good thing to you, does it? But look, a religion that the simple can understand must make the way to heaven pretty easy. Isn’t that so?” 

“I guess it is,” said Damon, wondering if a snare was being laid. 

“Very well, now follow me. If a religion is accepted solely on faith and makes entrance to heaven simple and easy, in time the whole of mankind may be infected with such mediocrity of the spirit and drag all life down to that level. Had you ever thought of that?” 

Damon had not. He said he would think about it. 

Socrates went on: “Philosophy can’t elevate the imbecile but if enough imbeciles get in positions of power they can drag philosophy down to their level. The forces in mankind that would descend are stronger than those that would climb, and may always be. Very well, then, this new faith, which appeals to the ignorant, and only so far as I can see to them, may some day debase mankind. For look! The Jews don’t go to heaven the easy way. They get there with meditation and good deeds. But this rabble called Christian, how do they get to heaven? Why, bless you, simply with faith and an act of grace. Any idiot or scoundrel in the world has only to come crying repentance and to believe and the kingdom is flung open to him.” 

“But if he is sincere?” 

“It’s too easy. It’s a thousand times easier than the Jewish way.” 

“You don’t think this new faith can ever appeal to enlightened people?” 

“It can conquer them.” 

How many times in after years Damon was to recall those words: It can conquer them! 

On still another day Damon asked the old man a question: What was the chief thing in this new faith? 

“Denial of life in this world,” Socrates said. “and what would that lead to if it should ever become supreme? the end of mankind, would you say?” 

“I don’t know,” Damon said, feeling wretched. The old philosopher made him so unhappy that he would go away and sit alone by himself and weep, thinking of his mother in the fire, of his father’s broken spirit in the last days of his life. And then with renewed frenzy he would read again, determined to find somewhere in books a great truth that no philosopher could throw down. 

It was during this time that he met Elisha, a Jew who was to become a close friend. Elisha was a few years older and for Damon extremely learned and extremely skeptical. Hearing one day that Damon was reading what Elisha called the  fables of the Jews — at the moment the stories of creation and of Moses — Elisha was curious to know why. Damon said feebly that he was looking for similarities between the faith of the Jews and that of the Christians. Did Elisha think there had been a Jew named Jesus who was crucified? 

Oh, it was possible, Elisha said. He had once heard that such a man had wandered over Israel with five disciples, named Mattai, Naquai, Netser, Buni, and Todah. “But what,” he asked, “is Netser but a pun on Notsrim, meaning Christian?” 

Damon stared at him. It was impossible to tell when Elisha was serious and when he was spinning fables of his own. Elisha told him a story—and Damon was to find variants of it all over the world. A certain Jew named Yochanan espoused one Mariam, a virgin. Mariam, a very lovely girl, attracted the interest of a handsome scoundrel named Joseph Pandera, who seduced and betrayed her. He did this under cover of darkness, when the innocent Mariam, believing the wooer to be her husband, gladly surrendered. Great was her shame when she learned that the man was not her husband. Great was Yochanan’s anger when he found his wife pregnant by another man. He fled to Babylon. 

Mariam gave birth to a son and called him Yehoshua, corrupted to Yeshu, which in Greek was Jesus. It was a precocious child and now and then confounded the sages. In the holy temple — so the story ran — Jesus learned the ineffable and secret name of the Jewish Yehweh, and to preserve it wrote it on a piece of leather, which he then sewed under the skin of his thigh. He gathered a group of disciples, proclaimed himself the long-awaited king, and performed miracles and wonders by using the secret name. Alarmed, the wise men arranged for one of their number, Yehuda Iskarioto, to learn the name and also perform wonders. Jesus was at last brought before the rulers, condemned to death and taken to Tiberias and imprisoned; but his disciples, who believed him to be the king, rescued him and fled with him to Antioch. Some time later Jesus went into Egypt and a second time to Jerusalem, where he was discovered and hanged on a tree on Passover eve. Lest he defile the Sabbath he was taken down a few hours later and buried, but a gardener removed the body from the tomb and disposed of it. When the disciples returned and were unable to find the body they believed their king had risen from the dead, and they proclaimed this belief as the glad news. Among these disciples was a man named Shimeon Kepha—the Jewish word Kepha meant Peter or rock in Greek—who kept the faith alive among the followers. 

“But the sect in Pella don’t think he rose from the dead.” 

“I know it.” 

“Maybe some of them knew him.” 

“Maybe.” 

“If he came to Antioch maybe there are people here who remember him.” 

A little sharply Elisha said: “You seem to be taking the story pretty literally.” He filled their cups with wine, pressed the tips of his fingers together and said: “Who is this Jesus? Ben Stada, the false messiah in Egypt who promised to throw down the walls of the holy city? Jesus ben Pandera, hanged on a tree more than a hundred years ago? Are the Christians confusing him with Dionysus, or the Phoenix, or Jason, or Joshua? Jason equals Joshua equals Jesus. Joshua with twelve helpers passed through the Jordan. Jason with twelve went after the golden fleece. The sun wanders through the twelve signs of the zodiac. If there was a Jesus and he had disciples their number must be twelve, I suppose, by analogy to all the other wonder-workers.” 

Damon nodded. His reading had told him that. 

“Is it only the old sun-myth in a new form? What do you make of Judas?” 

“Who?” 

“You haven’t heard of Judas?” 

“No.” 

“Well, some of the Christians say he was the twelfth apostle who betrayed Jesus. In the religion of sun-worshipers the twelfth month is the betrayer of the sun, that sickens at the winter solstice. So what do we have?” 

Silent, Damon lifted his cup of wine. 

“By analogy to sun-gods when would Jesus be born?” 

“At the winter solstice. You think the whole thing a sun-myth?” 

“I don’t think much about it. Isn’t any religion chiefly myth and legend?” 

“Yours?” 

“That of my people, you mean. Joshua and Samson were sun-myths, I suppose. What Moses was I can’t figure out but it’s as sure as sunrise that he wasn’t Moses.”... 

Damon smiled. He asked if a king was coming to the Jews. 

“Opinions differ,” Elisha said, his smile enigmatic. “Will he be Daniel’s son of man, coming on a cloud? — or Isaiah’s maimed and despised scapegoat, doomed to dishonorable death? Will he be a powerful king like David? will he rule four hundred years and then die? Will triumphant Israel march at the head of a penitent mankind?” He looked at Damon, a dry wry humor playing over his features. “Isn’t his coming foretold in the psalms and in Ezekiel?” 

Not knowing what to say, Damon said, “Is it?” 

“That depends,” said Elisha, “on how unhappy you are when you read them.” 

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