The Flight to Lucifer by Harold Bloom

When he awoke, Perscors found himself lying by the bank of a wide river in a green valley. Years before, he had been in Iraq and had walked along the lower Euphrates. As he began to walk by this river, he wondered if he were back at the Euphrates, so reminiscent was the landscape. Then he stopped and looked about him. Olam, Valentinus, and the spacecraft were gone, and he was alone on a planet far away from earth, on the other side of the cosmos. He felt neither terror nor wonder.

Looking to his right, away from the river, he saw that he was not alone. A tall, gaunt man, but not so tall as himself, walked toward him across a meadow. The man, dressed in what seemed an aristocratic version of a shepherd's smock, carried a large shepherd's crook, which to Perscors seemed as much a weapon as a badge of office. Perscors silently waited to be welcomed.