The Great Library

 

Revelation5.1-10 and Luke 19.41-44.

Alexandria, on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, was conceived by Alexander the Great and built by his successors, the Ptolemaic dynasty. The city grew from empty sand into the most powerful city in the world, before it was later eclipsed by Rome, built not on military conquest but on the belief that knowledge equals power.

The Pharos, the harbour lighthouse, standing over 100m tall – a light that shines in the darkness – was one of the seven wonders of the world; but it was the Library and Museum that cemented Alexandria in history. The Library was to house every book in the world – monopolising knowledge. Agents were sent throughout the world to buy up books. Envoys were sent to every royal court to borrow books, make copies, and return them (in the case of valuable books, the originals were often kept, and copies returned). The Library housed works of poetry, philosophy, religion, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, engineering, architecture, agriculture – everything under the sun. They invented the role of librarian, the arranging of books by topic, and the alphabetical ordering of authors.

The adjacent Museum was a centre of research – forerunner to both museums and universities – where scholars advanced understanding in every field, building on and questioning everything that went before (the proved the earth was round and travelled around the sun). People from every nation, tribe and tongue made Alexandria their home, including a Jewish community – the Hebrew scriptures were translated into koine Greek, the new, simplified Alexandrian dialect of Greek, here – and a Buddhist community.

Books were written on papyrus scrolls, wrapped around an umbilicus, a wooden rod, and protected by cloth. Author information was recorded on clay seals attached to the scroll, for ease of identification. As several books could be copied onto one scroll, a scroll could have multiple seals attached to it.

In the first century BCE, the Roman Julius Caesar set fire to the ships in the Great Harbour of Alexandria, as a military tactic. The fire spread through the docks and surrounding buildings, including the Great Library. The knowledge of the world was lost, much of what we know coming from second hand accounts that cite texts we will never get to read.

(For more on Alexandria, read Alexandria: the City that Changed the World, by Islam Issa.)

Towards the end of the first century CE, a man called John, who had been apprenticed under rabbi Jesus and had gone on to hold a similar role, had a vision of heaven. In Revelation chapter 5 he records being in a room not dissimilar to the Great Library in Alexandria, except that this one has not been destroyed. A scroll is brought forward, with seven seals. It is the record of all that has been learnt in seven communities, the churches in seven cities across Asia Minor (part of modern-day Turkey) gathered onto one scroll. We have already met them, earlier in the vision, in recorded correspondences between the heavenly library and the agents or envoys in those cities. But no-one can open the seven seals, and so, in effect, the learning is lost.

And for this tragedy, John weeps.

But then, Jesus steps forward and is able to open the seals.

The lectionary pairs this reading today with a passage from the Gospel According to Luke, that records Jesus weeping because he knows that, just as the Romans had raised Alexandria with fire, so they would do to Jerusalem.

Jesus weeps. John weeps. Both weep, for the state of the world, in which cities rise and fall, and knowledge is built up only to be lost.

And yet, these books, authored by John and by Luke, and carefully copied many times over by professional scribes (who were paid for both the volume and the penmanship of their work) have survived. Translated into every common language, we can read them today. We can learn from what has been learnt before us.

And what we learn, in both these passages, is that it is acceptable – indeed, appropriate – to weep in the presence of God for the tragedy of the world.

John will continue to have visions of heaven. They culminate with a promise, that there will be a day when God wipes away every tear. The tears of John. The tears of Jesus. Your tears. My tears.

But, for now, we can weep before God. His Great Library is a safe space to do so. Our churches ought to be likewise.