***
[...] Returning to Antioch, mad as hell, in a mildewed toga, Saint Paul found an excuse to crush the competition. It was quite sad, really. Pamela, 14, the youngest of the four girls and a sweet kid, had just written a new song about the Second Coming, called "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," a tune that the Virgins first performed down in Joppa. In it, Pammie happened to mention that "Christians will have joy a-plenty / And Heaven, too, / Scooby-doobie-do / When Christ returns, / Sinners to burn / In century one-and-twenty."
It was that last line, about Jesus being slow to return, that got the girls into trouble with Paul the apostle; who, when he heard it, dismissed the ditty as "female blasphemy," and "cockamamie heresy," and "a God-[con]d[e]mned lie!”
"The time is short," said Paul. "The end of the world is nigh upon us, when Jesus will descend from Heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel [
i.e.,
Gabriel], and with the trumpet of God," and yada yada (
1 Cor. 7:29, 10:11,
1 Thes. 4:16).
Paul and Philip got into a fierce altercation. Philip sided with his daughters, saying that these girls had a good track record, and that they had every right to sing "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" whenever they pleased, until such time as they were proved wrong.
Paul snapped back, "Very funny, Philip! Just who do you think will be willing to wait around for
two thousand years?"
"Jesus," for one, said Pamela, sweetly. (She had been eavesdropping from the kitchen.)
"You stay out of this, young lady!" snapped Paul.
Then came a big surprise: Saint Peter, for once, agreed with Saint Paul! Well, that was a first!
Philip promptly backed down. He commanded The Four Virgins a Cappella to pull the new song from their repertoire, which they did.
But that was not the end of it. Two weeks later, the girls received a vituperative ten-page epistle from Saint Paul, addressed to their father, with a stinging rebuke, forbidding them, or any woman calling herself a Christian, to perform at any time whatsoever, in any place wheresoever, for any persons whomsoever, for any reason whysoever, in the name of Christ Jesus: "Women must not speak or prophesy of spiritual things," he wrote, "lest, by their insubordination and spiritual error, they should undermine patriarchal authority and thereby threaten the collapse of the entire Christian religion" (
Epistle to Philip of Antioch, 4:13-16).
At the end of the epistle was a double signatory: "In Him, / Rabboni Paul," and "XO [Simon Peter, his mark]."
Dutifully, The Four Virgins disbanded and were never heard from again; or at least, not in public. They remained in Antioch, in Philip's home, and were quickly forgotten, receiving barely a cameo mention in the New Testament (
Acts 21:9). But the four women continued to prophesy among themselves, in a kind of staccato shorthand: in the privacy of their own home, Prudence would sing out, for example, "67!" and the other three girls would think for a moment; and then cheer, and sing, "Yes, yes!" – because that was the year in which the Jews finally rebelled in force against their Roman oppressors.
After a sip of fruit juice, Priscilla might then shake her head and sing something like, "Yes, but 70!" – and the four sisters would weep in unison, for that was the year in which Titus destroyed Jerusalem, crucified thousands, and crushed the rebellion – a victory that subsequently funded construction of the new Coliseum, in Rome; as a result of which, Jews and Christians suffered alike. 70 CE was going to be a bad year, no doubt about it.
The girls would often weep piteously over this or that human catastrophe coming down the pike. But then Prunella might say, "Okay, how about this one?" and she would sing out, for example, "October 9, 1890!" – and they would smile sweetly, and nod, for that is the date on which Aimee Semple McPherson would be born.
Or Pamela would shout, "
2000!" – and all four girls would rejoice heartily, because that was the year originally scheduled for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (21 Dec. 2000), and for the commencement of God's "Millennium of Rest" (2001-3000 CE), closing out those prior six millennia of frequently rigorous divine activity (4000 BCE - 2000 CE).
As it happens, the Rapture and Second Coming have been delayed, for reasons I'll tell you about later. What happened instead, in 2000 CE, is that George W. Bush was elected to the White House, which is something that even The Four Virgins could hardly have foreseen. Even the Lord God may have been caught flat-footed on that one. I mean, who would have thought?
But I digress.
There was an incident. Once, when Saint Paul was speaking as a guest lecturer at the Antioch Church, Prunella blurted out, "66!" – and the four girls fell into such giggles that they had to led from the sanctuary. What set them off is that this number, 66, reminded them of a pair of eyeglasses, which were not yet invented – and that was just too bad for Paul, because he had lousy eyesight! (
Gal. 6:11). And the other reason why the four girls giggled so hard is that "66" is the year in which Saint Paul, with his oversized ego, would enter Nero's Circus, drop his earthly weapons, and issue peremptory commands to a hungry lioness; the end result of which – in the eyes of these prophetically gifted women – was not altogether a thing to be lamented.
The Antioch Virgins did have at least one prophetical blind spot, however, which was this: the holy Ghost never allowed them to foresee their own future (which was a blessing: each of Philip Bar-Sceva's four daughters was thereby able to keep alive her personal dream of romantic love, and of Christian motherhood and submissive housewifery); but what a tragedy, too! For in 65 CE, a new book came out,
The Revelation of Saint John, which prophesied the end of the world under Emperor Nero, and predicted the Final Judgment. It was in this same apocalyptic bestseller that Saint John – Jesus Christ's own favourite apostle – first disclosed the chilling information that "66" is a code number for what John in
The Revelation calls “the Anti-Christ in the Whore of Babylon.”
(By "Whore of Babylon," Saint John was not referring to any particular individual, such as Mary Magdalene, or Courtney Love, or Camilla Parker-Bowles. The “Whore of Babylon" was John's phrase for the city of Rome, which in those days was the capital of Christian persecution.)
After reading
The Revelation, the apostle Paul recalled that the Four Virgins thought the number, "66," was pretty hilarious. And that is how he determined that Priscilla, Prudence, Prunella, and Pamela were actually Jewish witches – because they called out, in Church, the number of the Great Whore, "66!" -- and had giggled.
Writing from prison to the Church at Antioch, Paul commanded that the four "so-called virgin" daughters of the "so-called apostle" Philip must be arrested, tried, and burned to death, according to the Law of Moses.
The deacons of the Church complied. The fire was held in the churchyard, out back, and the whole Christian community came out to watch the young women fry. (Philip, who had died in 64 CE, was no longer on hand to protect his girls from Saint Paul’s righteous indignation.)
As the flames crackled around them, Priscilla, Prudence, Prunella, and Pamela, looked up toward Heaven and raised their voices in courageous four-part harmony, in a brief hymn addressed to the Virgin Mary: "Mother, forgive them," they sang, "for these men know not what they do...."
Philip's daughters, in 65 CE, thereby became the first four women of some 42,000 who were convicted and put to death during the Christian era for the crime of witchcraft; not to mention the uncounted women who were burned without the benefit of an actual trial.
But that was a long time ago. It has been almost two thousand years since the Christians of Antioch silenced the four daughters of Philip the Apostle, and almost 300 years since the Church burned a woman to death for witchcraft. Things have changed. Indeed, there has even been some talk, lately, in ecclesiasticl circles, that it may soon be safe for the Church to start letting women back into the Christian pulpit.
But what I don't get is this: why would any intelligent self-respecting woman ever want to go there?
– L.
(
Tomorrow: the spread of Christianity, and no antidote!)
