Sublime

The first was a young man called Saul of Tarsus, later known as Paul.4 According to his own account, he was a Jew by birth who had been sent by the community to suppress the activities of the new sect of Christians, Jews who believed that the Messiah had come. On his way to perform his mission he experienced a conversion and became convinced that

If, then, the Temple remained for ever, and his movement fizzled out (as Gamaliel thought it might159), he would be shown to have been a charlatan, a false prophet, maybe even a blasphemer. But if the Temple was to be destroyed and the sacrifices stopped; if the pagan hordes were to tear it down stone by stone; and if his followers did escape from

Esther—A Jewish beauty in a Persian king’s harem seems an unlikely biblical heroine. The book about her is the last narrative in Act 2.

If, after all, he looked like leading a whole town astray, then Deuteronomy 13:12–18 would come into play; it has been suggested that this was why several towns refused to countenance his teaching, since to do so would court disaster for them as well as for him.

Book of Esther, in which the title character, who bears the Hebrew name Hadassah, becomes the queen of the Persian Empire and keeps her Jewish identity a secret—helped along by her new name, borrowed from the Persian goddess Ishtar.

Barbara Tuchman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author and historian, once observed that of all the peoples of the world from three thousand years ago, it is only the Jews who live in the same place, speak the same language, and practice the same religion.

Jesus was replacing adherence or allegiance to Temple and Torah with allegiance to himself. Restoration and purity were to be had, not through the usual channels, but through Jesus.