Ulysses Essay 44 (72:10)

Chapter 5 (Lotus-Eaters) No. 5

“Letters on his back I. N. R. I? No: I. H. S.”

Bloom, monitoring the slow progress of the Eucharist ritual with a cynical eye, observes that the officiating priest has ended his round and is now stowing the communion cup into a cupboard. The priest kneels for a moment, turning his back to the worshippers and allowing Bloom to catch a glimpse of “a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he had on” and “a bald patch behind.” Bloom tries to make out the initials inscribed on the back of the priest’s vestment: first they seem to him to be “I.N. R. I.” but he then realizes that they are actually “I. H. S.”. He remembers having asked Molly, who was brought up Catholic, what “I. H. S.” denotes and he thinks he was told by her that they stand for “I have sinned” or perhaps “I have suffered.” Bloom also reminds himself  of a popular local  interpretation of the I. N. R. I. acronym: “And the other one? Iron nails ran in.”

In both instances of course Bloom has his facts wrong, as is so typical of him whenever he tries to recall theological, historical or scientific data. Still it must be admitted that there is not a consensus regarding I.H.S. The most accepted  interpretation is that the letters stand for the Latin title of Jesus: “Iesus Hominum Salvator”  (“Jesus, the Savior of Men”) but some believe that they constitute an abbreviation of “In Hoc Signes [Vinces]” (“In This Sign [You Shall Conquer])”, the promise ostensibly given to Emperor Constantine in a vision in 312 C.E. when, newly converted to Christianity, he was preparing to go into battle, for the first time under the sign of the cross.

Regarding “I. N. R. I.” there is no controversy. These initials stand for the mocking Latin title “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum” (“Jesus, the Nazarene, King of the Jews”), which the New Testament records as having been inscribed on the cross, most explicitly in  the Gospel of St. John: “Pilate wrote a sign and affixed it to the cross, and this is what was written: ‘Jesus, the Nazarene, King of the Jews.’ Many Jews read this inscription because the site of Jesus’s crucifixion was close to the city, and the inscription was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.” (John 19:19-20). The three other gospels also refer to this aspect of the crucifixion, although they are somewhat at variance with the text described by John. Thus Matthew states: “And they placed above his head in writing the nature of his guilt: ‘This is Jesus, King of the Jews.’” (Matthew 27:37); Mark records similarly: “And above [him] the nature of his guilt was written: ‘King of the Jews’” (Mark 15:26)“; while Luke puts it thus: “And there was an inscription above him, written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew: ‘This is Jesus, King of the Jews’” (Luke 23:38).

At the time of the crucifixion no Jewish monarch ruled in Judea. Following the successful Maccabean revolt against the Greek Seleucids in 164 B.C.E. the Hasmonean dynasty was established, and ruled for a century. By 63 B.C.E., however,  infighting between King Hyrcanus II and his younger brother Aristobulus II over the right to the throne had become so intense, that Aristobulus asked Pompey, the Roman Emperor, to intervene and settle the succession. Pompey, recognizing the existence of a power vacuum, seized his chance and invaded Judea, captured Jerusalem, and even entered the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Judea became a Roman protectorate under the supervision of the Roman governor of Syria. The Romans appointed Antipater, a pro-Roman Edomite whose family had converted to Judaism, as the local client procurator of the province. In 40 B.C.E Antipater’s son, Herod “the Great”, inherited the procuratorship after his father’s death and apparently because of his unusual influence in Rome, possibly related to his family’s great wealth, the Roman Senate unexpectedly restored the Judean monarchy, naming Herod “King of Judea”. King Herod, notorious for his extreme cruelty (including the “Massacre of the Innocents:“ recorded in the New Testament) but also renowned for his magnificent building projects in and around Jerusalem, ruled until his death in 4 B.C.E. Herod’s will specified that his kingdom (consisting of three provinces – Judea, the Galilee, and Transjordania) be divided up among his three sons, Archelaus, Antipas and Philip, each respectively to become a tetrarch of one the three provinces. This arrangement was highly acceptable to Augustus, the Roman emperor at the time, who thereupon proclaimed the final abolition of the Judean monarchy.  Archelaus, who became provincial governor of Judea, was soon the subjects of numerous complaints against him by the local Jewish citizenry leading to the Romans exiling him to Gaul in 6 C.E., and replacing him with a line of Roman procurators, one of whom was the well-known New Testament figure of Pontius Pilate, who governed Judea from 26 C.E. to 36 C.E. and who probably had been informed by his military intelligence corps about the historical sensitivity of the issue of kingship among his Jewish subjects.

The fact is that earthly “kingship” has always had a bad name in Jewish history and thinking. It is not for nothing that in Jewish liturgical parlance God is frequently addressed as “the King of Kings” to emphasize the non-divine status of political monarchy. Already the Torah sets democratic limits on the powers of a future monarch: “When you come into the land which the Lord your God is to give you, and you inherit it and dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations around me.’ You must be sure to set a king over that the Lord your God chooses. The king that is set over you must be  from among your brethren; you may not make a foreigner who is not one of your brethren king. Moreover, he must not have many horses for himself, or make the people return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, for the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall not ever again return by this way.’ And he should not take many wives; and his heart should not turn away; and he should not have much silver and gold. And when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, he should write a copy of this law in a book, in the presence of the priest and the Levites. And it shall accompany him, and he should read from it every day of his life, so that he might learn to fear the Lord his God, to observe all the words of this law, and to keep all these statutes, so that he will not consider himself in his heart as higher that his brethren, and will not deviate neither right nor left from the commandment, in order that the days of his reign will be prolonged, both for him and his children, amongst the people of Israel.” (Deuteronomy 17:14-20).

Human nature being what is – or as the Torah puts it so succinctly, “every man tends instinctively to evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21) – these egalitarian Deuterenomic strictures were more honored in the breach than the observance throughout most of the periods of Jewish monarchial rule (both biblical and post-biblical), although admittedly the Israelites were slow to establish a monarchy. According to the Tanach for some two centuries after their entry under Joshua into Canaan, the squabbling  Israelite tribes allowed themselves to be governed by a series of locally appointed judges, some better, some worse, and not all benefiting from national acquiescence, thus creating an anarchic situation pithily described by the author of the Book of Judges: “There was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6 and 21:25). However, Samuel, the last of the line of judges and the most eminent of them, was recognized by all the tribes as an indisputable religious and moral leader and as a national statesman, especially after he led the Israelites into a decisive victory over the Philistines. Nonetheless, the people rose in protest when Samuel appointed his corrupt and wayward sons as his successors, demanding that Samuel oversee the establishment of an official monarchy: “And they said to him, ‘Behold you are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint us a king to judge us like all the nations.’” (I Samuel 8:5). Samuel, an experienced if somewhat world-weary politician, explains to the people in no uncertain terms what an omnipotent king is likely to do: “… he will take your sons to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots; he will make them officers in his army; they will have to plow his ground and reap his harvest…he will take your daughters to be his perfumers and cooks and bakers; he will expropriate your best fields, your vineyards and your olive orchards, and give them to his minions. He will tax you a tenth of your seedlings and your vineyards and give it to his courtiers and minions. He will take your workers and your maidservants and your best young men, and your beasts of burden, and make them work for him. He will take a tenth of your flocks of sheep, and you will become his servants. And then you will cry out against the king whom you have chosen, but God will not answer you on that day.” (I Samuel 8:11-18).

But the people are unconvinced, and Samuel is forced to anoint Saul a tall and bashful Benjamite as the first King of Israel. Saul, brave in battle, but weak and cyclothymic in personality, is challenged for the kingship by David, a young and ruddy Judean shepherd. David has a brilliant career: he kills the Philistine giant Goliath with a sling stone; he arouses Saul’s jealousy by becoming a national hero (the women sing: “Saul has killed his thousands but David his tens of thousands” [I Samuel 18:7 and 29:5]); he maneuvers himself into the royal court as a harpist to allay the monarch’s intermittent bouts of depression; he becomes the inseparable (and possibly homosexual) companion of Jonathan, the heir to the throne; and finally tops it all by marrying Saul’s daughter Michal. The aged Samuel – disappointed by Saul’s “kingly” merciful treatment of his opposite number, the defeated Amalekite king Agag – has previously (and unknown to Saul) anointed the young David as the next king of Israel, setting in motion a north-south civil confrontation, that will culminate in the splitting of the nation into two kingdoms (Israel to the north and Judea to the south) after the death of David’s son Solomon, the third king of Israel. Saul and Jonathan exit the scene when both die in battle against the victorious Philistines at Gilboa (Saul by his own sword), and are mourned by the upstart David in his incomparable lament: “The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how are the mighty fallen… Saul and Jonathan, the beloved and the pleasant in their lives, even in their death were not divided. They were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions…I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; you were very pleasant  to me; your love was wonderful to me, more than the love of women.” (II Samuel 1:19.23,26).

Thereafter David assumes the kingship, first ruling for seven years from the Judean town of Hebron, near his ancestral Bethlehem home, and then, feeling that his monarchy is unchallenged, takes his troops ten miles northwards to capture Jebus, the strategic mountain stronghold of the Jebusite tribe, which he renames Jerusalem and proclaims as his new capital. Here he reigns dictatorially for thirty-three more years; expands the Israelite kingdom in a series of bloody wars (in return for which he is supposedly informed by God that he is not fit to build the Temple because of the blood on his hands [I Chronicles 22:8]); takes a slew of wives; puts down revolts by two of his sons (Absalom and Adoniya), and in old age (and somewhat befuddled) is persuaded by his eighth wife, Bathsheba, to appoint her intellectual gifted and atypically unmilitaristic son, Solomon, as his successor.

Solomon, proverbially wise, initiates a pacific foreign policy, based on diplomacy and trade rather than war. He enters into treaties with King Hiram of the Lebanon, who provides him with cedar wood for building the Temple, and with the Ethiopian government, whose ruler, the Queen of Sheba, visits him and bestows on him untold gifts. King Solomon’s ships sail from the Red sea port of Eilat to trade with distant countries, even reaching India. He celebrates his kingdom’s prosperity by building the First Temple, but implements unpopular internal policies. Besides taking a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines (confirming the strictures of Deuteronomy and of Samuel), he institutes a harsh taxation policy, to the extent that when his son Rehoboam inherits the throne after his death, the new king is challenged by the rebel Jeroboam, who, having fled Solomon’s wrath, had been living in exile in Egypt. When Jeroboam pleads with Rehoboam to lighten the royal yoke imposed by Solomon, Rehoboam ignores the advice of his elderly counsellors and replies famously to Jeroboam: “My father scourged you with whips but I will scourge you with scorpions.” (I Kings 12:14).

This sets the scene for the inevitable north-south split in 931 B.C.E.: Rehoboam continues to rule over  the important southerly tribe of Judah and its capital, Jerusalem, and also over the minor Benjamite tribe, while Jeroboam becomes ruler of the northern kingdom of Israel, ruling over the remaining ten tribes from his capital in the northern Samarian town of Shechem (Nablus). After an initial period of open enmity, the two kingdoms, Judah and Israel, coexist relatively peaceably for nearly two centuries, often forging alliances against common enemies, until the Kingdom of Israel is conquered by the Assyrians in 732 B.C.E. and most of the population is deported (“The Ten Lost Tribes”). The Judean kingdom survives another 150 years until 586 B.C.E. when it too is conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, who destroys the First Temple and exiles the Judeans to “the rivers of Babylon” ending Jewish kingship for four centuries until the monarchy is restored during the late Second Temple period by the Hasmonean dynasty after the Maccabean revolt against the ruling Seleucid Greeks in 167 B.C.E. (the Jews having returned to the land of Israel in 518 B.C.E. to rebuild their temple following the dramatic freedom manifesto of the Persian emperor Cyrus who had conquered Babylon).

During the period of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel a succession of kings (and one queen, Athaliah) hold power in both monarchies. With few exceptions their regimes are dictatorial and violent, and they are constantly criticized by the great prophets of the Tanakh, epitomized by Elijah’s deathless three-word condemnation of Ahab, King of Israel, after, on his wife Jezebel’s advice, he had expropriated his neighbor Naboth’s coveted vineyard, executing Naboth in the process: “Ha’ratzachta ve’gam yarashta?”(“Have you murdered and also inherited?”) (I Kings 21:19) thunders the fearless Elijah.

Thus when Pontius Pilate engages in a dialog with Jesus about whether he is indeed the “King of the Jews” Jesus does not answer directly, implying that while God is the only king, he (Jesus) has a share in divine kingship (and in fact in Christian liturgy he is frequently referred to as “Christ the King”, “Christ” being the Greek for “anointed”). Moreover, when the kings of the East come to Jerusalem after seeing the star in the eastern horizon, they inquire “Where is the newborn King of the Jews?” (Mathew 2:2). And on one of Jesus’s preaching trips, an enthusiastic follower named Nathanael, declares in no uncertain terms, “Rabbi, you are the son of God; you are the King of Israel.” (John 1:49). So the placard “I.N.R.I.” affixed to the cross by Pontius Pilate and the crown of thorns mockingly placed on Jesus’s head by the Roman soldiers prior to the crucifixion, may indeed indicate that Jesus and his disciples were actually subversively contemplating the institution of a renewed, egalitarian and Deuteronomically-inspired Jewish monarchy, directly descended from King David, which would be ethically responsive to the needs of the common people and oppositional to the legalistic priestly-rabbinical leaders of the time, who forty years later would institute a militarily hopeless revolt against the Romans, leading to the destruction of the Second Temple and two millennia of exile and persecution.