Jesus of Nazareth: Boy and Man
A Novel of the Lost Years
by G. Miki Hayden
Copyright 2011 G. Miki Hayden
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved
Adonai, the Anointer
Chapter 1. Jesus in the Courtyard
Every year his parents took him to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, so Jesus was very familiar with the Temple. Or, rather, he was accustomed to sitting in the outer great court, where the common people collected for their worship—and for more profane purposes. The inner courts and the Holy of Holies, where God Himself was said to dwell, were forbidden to the public. All had, however, heard the reports of what the Temple interior was like. An enormous ornate altar received burnt offerings, while a bathing pool of staggering dimension served the priests’ purification, and inside the Holy of Holies polished gold abounded.
Though some might view such indulgences with an eye to their material utility or lack of it, the 12-year-old Jesus understood that the intention of the architecture and the gilding was symbolic in nature. And though he accepted such an ideal on the level at which it was intended, he also knew that not a handful in all of Jerusalem, no, in all of Palestine, could see through the veil of these trappings to the inner reality.
Perhaps King Solomon, at whose mandate the original Temple had been built, knew what such plans were about.
Jesus had some insight into all this because he had pondered upon similar matters for a large portion of his decade-plus (so far) of life. Because Jesus knew God and was well aware that the ornamentation of the Temple walls had no relevance to the all-encompassing spirit that had created man. This focus on the decorative arts had puzzled him at first, until he had come to see that beyond heart and mind, man had only the material with which to express his overflowing love and gratitude for God.
The lavish inner life of the Temple must point out to the priests the greatness of Him who it was they served. Or so Solomon might have originally hoped. Jesus, who had witnessed the behavior of the priests and had read their souls, wasn’t so sure. Seemingly some had decided that the priceless decorations celebrated them and their own stature in this land. But Jesus knew he must bless them and let God alone judge.
Crouching down to listen to today’s debates on this and that, Jesus smiled at such a thought; no matter how astute his observation might be, the idea of any priest taking on such airs was too silly to entertain.
“Ah, the boy smiles,” said one of the men Jesus knew to be a regular. Jesus had sat here and listened many times before. The boy smiled again. “What do you know, youngster, that makes you smile?”
“I want to ask you about the Kingdom of Heaven,” said Jesus on impulse, responding to the debate the philosophers here engaged in today. “How is it you say that the Kingdom of God separates the good man from the evil, and that God casts out the wicked into a pit?”
Jesus knew a great deal about their thinking from the several years of wondering how he differed from the others. He wasn’t like them in the way he saw the world, a realization that had come to him slowly over time after numerous shocks at perceiving this divergence. And lately he had felt as if he wanted to explain his views. Felt driven to explain who God was in relation to man and what that implied about man’s responsibilities to God and the world.
The truth, a simple truth, was very clear to the boy, and he wanted to lay his understanding before the Israelites for their betterment. Life wasn’t easy, either in Jerusalem or in Nazareth where his family lived, and he saw how the people struggled.
The rabbi Jesus had addressed, in turn, smiled as if the boy must be joking with him. “Isn’t it obvious that the Lord, Jehovah, will accept the good into His Kingdom and cast out the wicked? For so the books of our Torah and the Prophets have always said.”
“Then I must ask who created all men,” responded Jesus in the type of rhetorical exchange that those here customarily employed.
“YHWH and only YHWH is the Creator,” answered the man, speaking not the name of God: For to say the incommunicable Name would be not merely irreverent, but truly impossible, according to the wise. Yes, impossible, for who could name Him beyond all naming? Only the plants and animals of the material world were given to men to call by their name. God himself could be referred to, but could not be named.
Jesus was pleased with the rabbi’s answer, and he replied, “So does not YHWH tell us in Isaiah, `For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great compassion will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid My face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have compassion on thee, saith YHWH thy Redeemer.’”
“And this is said in Numbers,” retorted the learned elder now more hotly. “`But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord.”
The boy Jesus glowed with a mysterious essence that had permeated his core from birth, and he again quoted the prophet Isaiah, “`I have seen his ways, and will heal him; I will lead him also, and requite with comforts him and his mourners. Peace, peace, to him that is far off and to him that is near, saith YHWH that createth the fruit of the lips; and I will heal him.’”
Surely those who listened to the boy in the Temple courtyard, he believed, must now better understand God, their Father, who was Absolute Love. For he felt that intensity of love flush through him until he nearly swooned with the ecstasy of such a deep emotion. Clearly, the Lord God loved and cared for all His children, just as the parents of Jesus—Maryam and Joseph—cared for the boy himself.
But Jesus saw that while he nearly passed away from a delight in the Lord, the others had retained their ordinary state of mind and were only too glad to continue on, subsisting on words alone and not the fulsome nourishment of the spirit.
Chapter 2. At Work in Sepphoris
Jesus and his father, Joseph, and brother James had gotten up before the sun and walked during the relative cool of the morning to their work in Sepphoris, the capital of Herod Antipas—the son of Herod the First, and the king who now ruled the Galilee. As the men walked, they could see their destination, an elegant city on top of a tall hill. Sepphoris, not at all far from where Jesus and his family made their home in Nazareth, happened to be the birthplace of Maryam, the mother of Jesus, who had lived here as a girl.
More than a decade before, upon the death of Herod the First, Jewish rebels had risen up, had invaded Herod’s palace in Sepphoris and stolen arms to use in challenging the Romans and their rule. They were soon overcome by the Syrian governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and three legions of his Roman soldiers. The city had been burned; at least two thousand Jews had been crucified; and many Jewish residents had been sold as slaves.
Jesus, just a baby and then a toddler, had been in Egypt with his parents during this period, and only upon their return did they learn that the grandparents of Jesus, his mother’s parents, had been killed during the fighting.
Now Jesus, Joseph, and James were employed here, helping to build a Roman-style villa for a wealthy Jewish olive merchant doing business with the Romans. The town, on a steep ridge overlooking the valley floor, offered magnificent views. Sculpting the stone portico of the house they worked on, the man and two boys when they paused to wipe away their sweat could see straight down to the silver-green olive groves and nearby flocks of sheep.
“They say that Herod Antipas is going to seize the fields around Sepphoris from the farmers, then rent those same farmers back their fields,” said James. He fitted one stone onto another, after which he shaded his eyes and looked further up the hill toward the Roman fortress. “Herod the Great—“ he began, but was abruptly cut off by his brother.
“We don’t call Herod `great,’” objected Jesus. “He killed his own wife and several of his sons. And so many others.” To think that a man who claimed to be a pious Jew, though only a half-Jew, had committed these murders. The Law was clear. Why would any man go against the Law? Then a thought struck him. Herod had been frightened. He had been afraid of other men because he hadn’t trusted in the Lord. He thought only the destruction of life could guarantee his safety. A sad lot.
“And we don’t gossip,” added Joseph. He began to recite the story of how God had created the world, a story the boys knew very well and could read from the scrolls of the Torah in Hebrew. “`In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good...’”
Jesus went to where the foreman stood chatting with the owner of the house and fetched a stack of weighty, chiseled stone.
“Don’t drop those, boy,” called out the home owner in Greek. “Those stones are expensive.”
Jesus, nearly grunting with the effort of his task, tried to smile. He’d learned early on both not to break anything where he worked and to try to maintain a pleasant demeanor with their bosses.
He returned to Joseph and James, repeating the Greek words to himself. He enjoyed learning, and many Jews these days spoke Greek as well as Aramaic. Naturally, he knew some Latin, too, and certainly the Hebrew of the Mikra—the entirety of the Jewish scriptures: the Torah, Prophets, and the Ketuvim—the remaining 11 books. Jesus had listened to these all his life, and had learned to read from the scrolls as well.
Early enough in the day to hurry home for the Sabbath, the three family members set their workplace aright and cleaned off their tools to carry with them. Around them, the other workers on the site, good Jews most of them, did the same.
They lined up in front of the foreman to be paid. Jesus and James received their own, lesser wages into their hands, and then Joseph and his sons took the stone path down to the lower market where they parted from one another in order to shop. Jesus bought grapes for his mother and olive paste, while James chose figs and pomegranates. Joseph discerned the freshness of the fish caught in the Sea of Galilee and the equally close-by Mediterranean.
The shoppers then met at their usual spot and walked home among the other craftsmen and laborers, all in a festive mood.
As they hastened back to Nazareth and other neighboring villages, whether Joseph liked it or not, a hubbub of idle chatter arose. The Jewish workers vented various degrees of long-held spleen, spite toward the house of Herod—not considered the rightful Jewish rulers—and against the Roman conquerors who took a heavy toll in taxes. They spoke of the Zealots who would overthrow the Roman rule.
These were common themes heard day and night throughout the Galilee, and elsewhere, Jesus supposed. All men, indeed, wanted to be free, but where did freedom spring from, really? From the Kingdom of God. Jesus certainly knew this to be true.
Shabbat stirred a feeling of spiritual excitement in the young man. Always aware of God’s presence all times of the day and night, he nonetheless felt a special happiness on their day of rest. This was the time of week he could spend many hours with his attention fixed solely on his Father in spirit. The world of the material would fade into the background and he might luxuriate in the exultant awareness of the “I Am.”
“Thank you, Father,” he whispered, and Joseph cast a sideways glance at him.
At home, Maryam and the girls greeted the three workers warmly and took their purchases to fix the dinner with an eye on the sun, which moved steadily lower in the sky. The males washed at the cistern outside.
“If we ever have a time without work, we could make our own mikvah,” suggested James, referring to the type of ritual bath that those wealthy Jews in Sepphoris installed for their personal use.
Joseph smiled, as did Jesus. Money in and of itself was unimportant, but money doled out in the furtherance of worship was a proper expenditure. And one must eat and care for the body, of course—though God always seemed to provide such for the willing hand and humble heart.
That was a mystery also, wasn’t it? A heart that gave way to God’s movement in the world could receive just the same as the one who’d turned muscle to the plow. The old widow who remembered YHWH wouldn’t be forgotten, but he who had the strength to labor must give that to YHWH with the identical sense of devotion.
All work performed was done for God, to earn God’s favor. God rewarded the worker, or not, according to His Compassionate Will.
Such thoughts remained not just in the mind of the young man, but ran through his veins and bubbled through his organs. God was, as He had announced Himself to Moses, the Ehyeh asher ehyeh—the “I am that I am,” the “I shall be that I shall be.”
Jesus washed outside a bit then went in the house to put on clean clothing, so he’d be ready while his mother lit the candles to say the prayers. What a refreshment. The words of the prayer already coursed through his thoughts and a pure love of the Father gushed along with them.
Chapter 3. Shabbat
The family spent the morning in synagogue. Maryam and the girls settled on a bench in the back with the women, and the men sat in the men’s section. Joseph took a turn at reading from the book of Exodus in the carefully unwrapped Torah—though of course he might have recited all five books of the Pentateuch without stopping, from memory alone. Joseph claimed descent from King David himself, as did Maryam’s side of the family. But Jesus wondered. Were they not all descendants of the same God and, as Jews, all from David and Solomon?
After the morning service, during the break for a cold meal of foodstuffs that had been set out on the table the day before—before sundown—Jesus backed away from his family. They were familiar enough with his habits, but Maryam said, “Won’t you just eat before you go wandering?”
Jesus showed his mother the kerchief he carried, wrapped around a piece of bread. The smile he gave her was a mischievous one.
“Be careful,” she told him in a tone of voice that acknowledged she would never be able to make him obey. He dashed off.
He had so little time on his own to discover and study everything around him, the wonders of this land they lived in, the people, the animals, all things that grew, the caverns, the rocks... and of course he needed time to be on his own and to pray and ponder without interruption.
He headed out into the wilderness. If he could do nothing but travel around, that would be a dream come true. But how he loved Adonai, the Lord, and would do whatever the Lord wanted him to.
Once far enough outside their sleepy village, Jesus followed a snake about his business, until he spotted a herd of ibex abroad. “Lucky ibex, that I’m not a hunter,” he told the grazing animals who looked up at him suspiciously, ready to run. “Neither will I take your horns, nor spin you into cloaks.”
Thus assured perhaps, they went back to their browsing. Jesus walked on.
A while later, deep in conversation with his Lord, he came back to the material world at the bleating of some sheep and he looked around for the shepherd.
There the child was with his long staff to drive off all predators, not an easy job for a boy younger than Jesus was. Leopards lived out in this region—Jesus had seen them—along with hyenas—animals that would as soon attack a slender shepherd as his sheep. Jesus asked his Father for the boy’s protection. Of course the Lord would protect the boy without a petition for Him to do so, but the asking could never go awry for either Jesus or the boy.
Jesus made a friendly gesture toward the youngster, then ferried on. He supposed the other young man would like to talk since he must rarely have any company other than his sheep. Yet Jesus himself seldom had the time to be on his own in a family of nine—five brothers and two sisters, and their parents. Not to mention six long days a week he must spend working. But work was good.
The knowledge of which Adam and Eve had eaten might have been that they needed to contribute through their labor to God’s world. Children must grow up. They couldn’t have stayed in their Father’s paradise forever.
Or could they have? Surely a deeper knowledge was to be eaten of, rather than the ordinary message that one must labor in order to receive.
Finding a niche at the foot of the sand-colored cliffs, Jesus sat and tried to let himself forget his daily concerns. That was the approach that allowed him to delve more deeply into the questions he asked.
Jesus felt that the answers were there, right there, and that his Father would give them to him. Life in Palestine was as God had made it and the only way for Jesus to find his way was to look to God. In fact, finding his way wasn’t the issue, but finding the way of his Father was. Jesus might enjoy himself, earn a living, have a family, and die. But he felt driven by YHWH to something else.
Chapter 4. In Prayer
Jesus stayed where he was and began to pray. For all the scripture he had learned directly from the books of the Torah, prayer was something he’d had to ask God to teach him directly. And he prayed knowing that God always answered his prayers, but not always at once or in the way Jesus might expect.
My Father. I love you. I’m bursting with love. Let me serve you as you would have me serve. What shall I do? Let me do your work here in Palestine. Let me lead your people into your heart, if that’s your will for me. Show me somehow what I must do. Tell me. Direct me. You burn here in my heart. I will serve you in any way you ask. Just ask.
Jesus meant, ask clearly. He knew he must do something with his life to serve. But what?
He felt that his heart must be joined with the heart of his Father, although he knew the heart of God was too big and too grand to be inside his own body and his chest. Still, he felt a single heart beating and he believed that heart was not solely his alone.
He remained in that state for a while, a state in which his awareness had cleared of any clouds of the everyday. He saw through any confusion that told him he was man made of clay. He was man, made of spirit. His Father was spirit and his own lineage was of spirit only.
The day was beautiful. His being was in perfect order. But Jesus still didn’t know what mission God had set him here for. All in good time. All in good time. Even now at 13, he apparently was still not ready to do as God might want. Prepare me, Father
And Jesus felt that God did prepare him as he sat there. That revelations were poured into him as time stood still and though his mind seemed empty of all content. Had someone tapped him on the shoulder and brought him back to the ordinary world at that moment, he could not have said where he had just been. Places exist that are not the usual places of human habitation, places for which man has no words.
After a while, he finally emerged from that state, though the feeling of quiet and peace that pervaded him remained. He sat and watched the landscape, the owl that perched upon a branch of a low-lying bramble, two sons of Ishmael on camels riding slowly across the sward of land in front of Jesus.
Then Jesus realized that the sun had sunk and threatened to descend from the horizon. His mother would be anxious, and, indeed, would afflict the others with her worry.
Although Jesus hastened home at a pace that gave him the enjoyment of some hearty exercise, he was still late and had to take his last steps in what, but for a helpful quarter moon and a handful of stars, would have been the dark. The boys, James and two of the younger ones—Joseph, and Simon—were still in the outer courtyard of their small home, wrestling about, running, and shouting. The sight of his brothers made Jesus smile, but even so, he slipped by them and into the house without a greeting. He wasn’t in the mood for such boisterous play.
Inside, the Holy Day concluded, two lamps had been lit, an extravagance in terms of burning oil. But the family had three workers now and soon two others. Judah, the baby, wouldn’t bring in a living for many years. But who knew—conceivably the boy would be a priest or an architect rather than one who carried out the architect’s instructions.
His mother was the first to look up and see her wandering boy, Jesus. Never one to sit and rest, now that the Sabbath was done, she had begun to clear the table, wipe up, and put away the items kept for that one day a week.
Mother’s and son’s eyes met, and with hers, Maryam chided Jesus for his late return. But he had no intention of being cowed by her unwarranted upset and merely sent across a look of love.
His sister Sarah, the younger, more outgoing girl, who had been sitting at the table picking at a piece of bread, jumped up and ran toward her brother and grabbed both his hands in hers. “Jesus, Jesus, you’re so late. I missed you too much. You ought to have stayed in synagogue with us and been in time for our supper. But I’ll serve you. Yes, sit and I’ll serve you.” She dragged him toward the table though he hadn’t washed.
“Oh, I forgot to eat the bread I had,” he said. He hadn’t, indeed, remembered to be hungry. He sat on the bench by the table, pulled the bread out of his pocket and holding it only by the scarf in which it was wrapped, began to eat.
“Have you washed?” asked his mother.
He merely smiled. While she was correct in admonishing him, he was a man who would soon have to go his own way at God’s behest and mustn’t be subject to his mother’s rule. Moreover, the little prescriptives laid down on life were not so important, surely not so essential as the larger issues.
His sister brought him a dish with walnuts, then returned with a plate of yogurt.
At that, Rachel, the older girl, came forward from the kitchen with a bowl of water and a towel slung over her shoulder. She sat beside Jesus on his bench, took his kerchief with the bread from him and set it on the table, then she held his left hand and began to wash it. She cleansed each finger of that hand and then the other.
Jesus knew his sisters truly loved him. Maybe because he had first and always loved these precious girls. And of course since their very natures were simply founded in Adonai’s own love.
Jesus nodded. “What a smart girl you are,” he said. “What smart girls you both are.” He smiled at each of his sisters in satisfaction. Rachel was seven and Sarah was six. They were young, too young to have to know the world—and how he would protect them from it, as if he himself were their father. At 12, they would be ready, nonetheless, for marriage, and the expectation was that they would serve their husbands as now they must serve their parents at home.
Jesus felt a pang in his heart. He must wish for them both to marry good men, good Jews, but in truth, he wanted the family to stay forever as it was now, the girls innocent, waiting only on their loving brother.
If Adonai would have them marry, then Jesus must embrace their fate as wholeheartedly as he knew these sweet girls would.
On impulse, however, with newly cleaned hands, he fed Rachel a shelled walnut half. Then he fed Sarah. The girls each took the food into her mouth solemnly and both chewed as he watched. Something about the moment spoke of a religious ritual and he felt assured for them, that God Himself would husband and care for them.
Chapter 5. Passover in Jerusalem
During Jesus’s 15th year, Maryam decided to stay home with the girls and with Judah, the toddler, instead of going to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. Joseph and Jesus and the other three boys joined a party of two dozen or so for the long walk south. As usual, some walked well and some not, but the better walkers such as Joseph and the boys, restrained themselves for the sake of the others. The point in being together was both for companionship and for protection.
Also for protection, the travelers skirted around Samaria and the other towns where the Samaritans lived. “They would as soon rob you as look at you,” declared a neighbor woman to Jesus. For so the Jews of Nazareth believed, and so Jesus had heard all his life. But could Jesus himself accept such a thing? He had never known a people to be uniformly any way but good, arising from the very nature of man, God’s own sons and daughters. And he knew many Greeks and Romans, Ishmaelites and Jews, as well as people who claimed their identity was founded on the towns they were from or the Jewish sect they adhered to.
Someday Jesus would travel through Samaria and not around it and prove the inhabitants’ goodness for himself., but he already understood that the citizens in these towns were very much like the people of the Galilee in all respects.
For now, he simply smiled at the woman, poor soul, fatigued as she was at the end of the day. He offered her his arm on a couple of the hills, but let her own son assume the task finally, and afterward ran up to join his brothers. He saw the younger ones so seldom, really, as the weeks were filled with work. These several days to Jerusalem were a fine time to get to know them better.
Nearly at the city of Jerusalem, the travelers found an encampment site to spend their nights up in the hills. With so many people pouring into the city, this was the only way all could be accommodated.
Looking down toward the holy town, Jesus believed he could just make out the vast structure of the Temple and the foreboding Roman fortress right next to its gates.
He felt a great love of the magnificent Temple, but not really the Temple structure he mostly imagined that he saw. His love was directed at the idea of the Temple, a Temple that celebrated the God of the psalmist: “Know ye that the Lord, He is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”
Mindful of the verse, Jesus intended to enter into the Temple below with thanksgiving and praise. For with such an intention, he understood that God would return a blessing to him in kind. Those who worshipped God in sincerity would be invited into His courts. And that was all that Jesus wished for. That was the craving that had overtaken him for as long as the young man could recall.
“For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”
After they had settled themselves and set up a spot to cook, as well as separate places for the men and the women to have their needed privacy, some of the pilgrims went down into the city, to the sprawling Temple complex where they might pray.
The streets were awash with Jews who, like Joseph and his boys, knew it as their religious obligation to come to Jerusalem to the Temple Mount, the platform upon which the Temple sat, and where they might be nearer the Holy of Holies. Many traveled here three times a year, though workers such as Joseph and his sons came much less often.
Alongside those present for a stringent religious purpose were merchants vending foodstuffs and changing Roman denarii for shekels without a graven image that might be used inside the Temple itself.
Joseph gave Jesus a sideways glance when he stopped only for enough shekels to pay the pay the Temple tax for the family. The boy had convinced his father not to buy an animal for sacrifice. Jesus felt the roots of the practice were purely pagan, that while the priests might like it, the God of Israel didn’t desire any such thing.
During the reign of Herod the First, moneychangers had been allowed into the Temple as well as on the streets, thus inviting, Jesus felt, the rather mindless, even cynical, practice of bringing the graven image of the Caesars onto Temple grounds.
Now the men purified themselves in the mikvah baths. The soft chanting of prayers all around him thrilled Jesus as if the words were the water of life themselves. The prayers were many and various, but all said the same thing to his inner ears: love of God. He felt as if all that purity of love were meant for him as well, since they were aimed at the Father he loved without a single boundary. The words vibrated deep within him, within that core substance from which the entire world had been formed. Jesus might have swooned except that he was used to feeling the beauty of Adonai quite profoundly. Outwardly, he feigned an ordinary state of mind and dressed himself in a fresh tunic before entering into the Temple with the others.
Chapter 6. A Rare Friendship
Coming out of the ritual prayers and the reading of the story about the miraculous life of Moses, Jesus was deep in contemplation of how YHWH had convinced Moses to take on the task he had been born to.
And YHWH said furthermore unto him, put now thine hand into thy bosom. And Moses put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow.
And He said, put thine hand into thy bosom again. And Moses put his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and, behold, it was turned again as his other flesh.
Did that mean, Jesus asked himself, that God was the very creator of such disease? Or that God was both the creator of disease and its healer? So often Jesus wondered about man’s misfortunes and his suffering, why Adonai, the Good, who was nothing but Love, dealt so harshly with some.
Yet Moses hadn’t actually been afflicted, merely shown a vision of the kind that some might call a chimera.
Or did the scripture speak in a secret way, a way not easily interpreted? Possibly Moses did have leprosy but God had quickly healed him.
This conversation Moses had engaged in with God—was it speech of the type that Jesus himself exchanged with his Father? That was, a talk within, without the movement of an eyelash or the sound of a sparrow’s wing? And had it taken place over time, only to be written as if it had occurred all at once?
Jesus must probe all these details of revelation to one such as Moses because Jesus himself was like a babe found in the bulrushes, a man come from the most commonplace and yet unusual circumstance, perhaps chosen to lead God’s people out of their enslavement to great ignorance.
Thus occupied in thought, Jesus continued with his father and brothers until they went underground and eventually came out by the Temple gate.
“Hello there, cousin,” cried a voice, and Jesus finally looked to the outside world. With happiness, he saw his cousin John, a few months older than he and also steeped in a deep interest in the mysteries of the Lord. Jesus was eager to visit with John again, to get to know him, and to hear his current views.
The men embraced, each brother and Joseph then greeting John—whom they knew from years past—in a like manner.
John lived in the upper city of Jerusalem. Because John’s father, Zacharias, was a priest at the Temple, the family lived there in Roman-style luxury.
“Were you in the Temple?” Joseph asked. “Did you hear the scriptures? Join the sacrifices?”
“I hate the hypocrisy of this place,” said John. “I just came down because I knew sooner or later I’d find you here. Come up to our villa for some refreshment and conversation.”
Jesus knew that Joseph would rather go and get settled for the evening. “I will,” he told his cousin, “and let my family find their resting place in the hills.”
John didn’t much mask his pleasure at the chance to be alone with his close cousin in age and temperament.
They all walked up the hill a way and then the two parties separated, Jesus going into the wealthy area with his cousin.
“We Jews live as Romans,” said John in disgust as they traveled through the streets of this section of town.
Jesus, of course, had seen the manner in which the rich Jews lived in Sepphoris—like the occupiers of their land. But John sounded angry and disgusted. He lived this way and had come to feel it somehow as a personal insult. But so much was to be done in the spiritual realm, Jesus could argue, that any contemplation of the political situation would only be a waste of precious time.
They came to John’s house and entered in through the vestibule, where a male servant greeted them, a young Jew who spoke Aramaic but was dressed in a Roman-style mantle. The two cousins removed their dirty shoes and put on clean house slippers, then went into the lounge where they sat on wide, cushion-covered benches next to an open-roofed atrium. On the other side of the lounge was an outdoor garden with fountains and sculptures of fish and birds.
John asked for food and drink, and the serving man scuttled away.
Jesus had been inside the house the year before. He enjoyed both its beauty and the irony it represented and looked around curiously now to see what had been added or taken away.
The expression on John’s face acknowledged the absurdity of Jews living this way, and John pointed at the floral mosaic on the floor. “No Roman gods and goddesses at least,” he said. “No heathen images, though your eyes might expect them. That’s what we Jews have come to, even in the houses of the priests.’
Jesus nodded, but he was more concerned now with his cousin’s apparent bitterness than the corruption of the religious order.
A serving woman brought in bowls of water for the cousins to wash their hands and the man followed with a tray that held olives, figs, bread, cheese, and a pitcher of some sort of juice that Jesus suspected would be pomegranate. He was right.
“I despise all this,” said John.
“Look to the source of everything we see,” countered Jesus. He took up a fig and ate. “This is YHWH’s great abundance we are given. It doesn’t come from the Romans, or the priests or the land owners, or even those who labor to cultivate these things.”
“I see it up close,” John told his cousin. “The moral decay within Judaism. Don’t you agree with me? I thought you did last year when we spoke.”
Jesus nodded. “Yes, but that’s why we have to move away from orthodoxy, not restore it.” He worried that John might be involved with a group such as the Zealots, who wanted to challenge the Romans militarily, and that could bring danger on his head. The Zealots sent forth death squads into the towns and broke into the military stores. Members of the group, always on the lookout for young converts, had approached Jesus and his brothers more than once and had been firmly but courteously rebuffed
John didn’t reach for any food. Perchance the young man was always sated. John went on speaking. “For Herod, the rebuilding of the Temple was to show himself off. Under the high priest, Annas, the function of the place is purely political. And his son Caiaphas will be the next high priest. The Sadducees in the Temple have forgotten YHWH.”
Jesus sighed. “I know all that,” he said. “Forget the Temple. The only importance of the Temple is as a place where the people gather and may receive the word of God, not necessarily from the priests.” He sank into thought because at that moment he realized someday he might be called upon to preach, even in that very courtyard. And he saw at that moment that the concept wasn’t a foreign one to him. He could think of many understandings of their Lord he must explain to the common folk.
John’s intense eyes captured those of his cousin. “I want you to come with me at the end of Passover,” he begged. “I want to take you to meet some people, people who worship our God in all purity.”
Jesus looked back at John in amazement. Had John become a Pharisee, following the oral as well as the written traditions, all given to Moses? Those priests serving in the Temple, such as John’s father, were Sadducees who had abandoned the Law from anything but scripture.
Chapter 7. Burnt Offerings
Back up in the hills with his family and neighbors, Jesus refrained from eating at their Passover Seder. He had eaten. Moreover, he knew how some of his neighbors felt about those who didn’t pay for a sacrificial goat or bullock: They disapproved. It was a portion of those offerings at the Temple that the celebrants consumed at this meal. Another share would be served tonight at Seders in the homes of the priests.
Jesus himself didn’t think the priests taking the food was so wrong. Each man had to earn his bread according to his labors in the world. But he thought back, too, to the psalmist, Asaph, who had written: I am God, even thy God. ... I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor the goats out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most High: And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.
“`Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy vows unto the Most High,’” murmured Jesus, and though the others might not have heard nor understood the reference, Joseph looked at Jesus and smiled.
“`To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith YHWH: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats,’” Joseph quoted Isaiah.
And Jesus, pleased to see that Joseph understood him, maybe had understood all along, answered, also from Isaiah, “`Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.’”
Saying that, he felt as fed as if he’d eaten fully with the others and not just small mouthfuls at his cousin’s.
The next morning on their way to the Temple, Jesus told his father he had to stay on after Passover week and spend time with John.
“Your mother will be disappointed and worried if you don’t come home with the rest of us,” responded Joseph. He appeared pained.
“I understand that,” Jesus said. “But can I, as a man, be by her side every hour of every day in reassurance? She, too, even she, will have to turn to YHWH to answer her prayers, to show her that all is well in His Kingdom, that He looks after each one of His children with extraordinary care. He can be no worse a father than she a mother, and He has the limitless power to execute His will. Tell her that.”
His words stopped Joseph from formulating a reasonable answer, for, as Jesus believed, nothing else could be said. Any sentence that began with “but” now would only describe Maryam’s own failings and neither Joseph nor Jesus wanted to do that.
The remainder of the way to prayer, Jesus and Joseph remained silent, while the other brothers chatted about the sights they’d seen so far in Jerusalem, the people from this city and other places, the comfort of their sleep, their estimation of the food. So people spoke to one another day after day, boringly dwelling on the mundane; but the mundane, Jesus knew, was what primarily caught their attention. He only hoped that, in moments at least, the boys saw more.
That led him to think of the Pharisees and of his cousin, John. Not that Jesus thought the Pharisees so much worse than the Sadducees. Because the Pharisees stressed the Law, they were often men of virtue; but because they nagged at other Jews to follow as they themselves claimed to do (but often didn’t), he couldn’t respect them. In telling others what to do, they seemed to Jesus to be bullies and busybodies. In their emphasis on meeting the external requirements of the Law rather than the essence of the Law, the reason for the Law—the rule of God, the love of God—he found in them nothing of essential, otherworldly importance. They provided no foundation for a new day of Jewish worship, a revival of greatness of their people’s spiritual awareness.
So for Jesus to imagine John as a Pharisee—well, he really couldn’t visualize such a thing. The Pharisees were men of average intelligence and dull religiosity. They were followers of the times, sycophants of the elite, and interested in their places in the world. They had, for that reason, a strong political side. His cousin would soon be disillusioned with the group, Jesus expected.
Not that a Pharisee couldn’t be a man of real spiritual content. When asked about the Law, a great rabbi from Babylonia had said, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary.” Such speech from a Pharisee proved not all were woven into the same cloth. Perhaps John’s friends were like this woodcutter and laborer named Hillel.
The crowds at the Temple today were even greater than on the day before, if that was possible. In the tunnels, Jesus took the hand of Simon, to keep him safe and close. He remembered what he’d told John previously about the Temple—that the building itself held no importance. These impressive bricks were hateful to Jesus, in fact. The idea that supposedly the Holy of Holies lived within these walls and only here showed what the Jews had come to in their spiritual learning.
Israel, oh Israel, how I grieve for your sad state, he thought. You whom Moses led back to this place so that you might worship your Lord, and you don’t even recognize him, for all your belief in your own piety. Jesus was moved beyond tears, but by compassion also. He yearned to rescue his people from their spiritual degeneration. If you decree it, Lord.
Chapter 8. Two Cousins Journey
Jesus and John spent two days walking east from Jerusalem at a somewhat leisurely pace. On the first part of their expedition, they were accompanied by myriad pilgrims returning home, but the closer they got to the Salt Sea, the fewer their companions.
Yet John didn’t lead Jesus to the Salt Sea itself—so called the Dead Sea because the high concentrations of salt made life within its waters impossible—he led him inland to a dry plateau, a place he called Qumran.
“This was a fortress once during the Hasmonean reign,” John explained. Both men knew that the Hasmoneans had been the final legitimate Jewish kings and that Herod the First in his palace at Jericho had drowned the last male heir of the Maccabees, who had established the Hasmonean lineage.
“And now?” asked Jesus. He’d refrained from questioning his cousin during their pleasant exercise across the hills.
John smiled happily. “Those whom I’ve told you about.”
But John had actually told him nothing.
“The Essenes.”
Jesus nodded. The Essenes. He knew many who called themselves that, righteous men who refrained from eating meat and who purified themselves in the mikvah bath daily. They believed the soul lived on after death and believed, too, in the resurrection of the body.
So this was John’s secret—a harmless one. But a certain doubt continued in the mind of Jesus. He looked at John and felt uneasy.
Alert sentries greeted the visitors, John by his name, and brought the two young men down further from the cliffs. What a contrast from the Temple and the Temple city of Jerusalem. A grove of fig trees grew on the south side of a moderately sized but shabby two-story building in need of a good stoneworker, or several of them.
Men in garments that once apparently had been white but were now grey rags came toward the building from all directions.
“You’re in time for lunch, and welcome to share with the Yahad, the community,” said the sentry, named Hananiah, who had accompanied them down. He turned for a moment and scrutinized the two. “First the mikvah. Up the right staircase and down the left. You’ll see. Take a clean robe before you enter the dining hall. Just follow along. I have to go back up onto the ridge.”
So saying, the man waved them on, while he went back the way they’d come. It was only then that Jesus noticed he wore a silver dagger at his side. For protection, Jesus told himself, but he sensed so strongly the protection of Adonai, that he felt perplexed by that necessity.
They followed those who cleansed themselves in the mikvah, and did likewise, then carried down their soiled robes to put on borrowed white ones. Jesus started to whisper something as they entered the communal dining hall, but John grabbed his arm, and with a warning pressure stopped him. The space, filled with dozens of men in white robes, was completely silent except for some soft shuffling of feet as members served flat loaves of bread to each table. Clay bottles of wine and water made the rounds, but no one yet took a bite to eat or poured out a drink.
An aisle monitor motioned to John and Jesus indicating where the two might sit. Jesus sat, and in the quiet fell into prayer, so much so that he was startled by a strong voice from ahead speaking to all the men gathered here. “And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God for the good He has bestowed upon you."
The silence continued, not a bad thing for Jesus, so used to the meal-punctuating outcries of little children. Although... he found something quite holy and profound in the voices of the innocent. A man should not make too much of his own stature or too little of the place of the small ones.
They ate barley bread, sheep’s milk, wine mixed with water, and a few dates. At the end, a benediction was made, blessing them all, and Jesus liked that, and he smiled.
All then left the communal dining hall and changed back into their threadbare clothes, including John and Jesus who were dressed rather better, certainly John the best of them all, though he seemed to Jesus careless of his garment. This disregard for what was given in life had both a good side, Jesus thought, and an evil, since what came was given by God, though it was not the whole, at all, of what God gave each of them continually.
Chapter 9. An Invitation Extended
An “instructor” here named Eleazar took the two young men around, despite the fact that John had seen the place before. Up to the second floor they went where scribes were at work copying out manuscripts in both Hebrew and Aramaic. Jesus paused to read a little: “He shall perform the will of Elohim in all his acts and with all his strength as He has commanded. He shall fully rejoice in all that befalls him, and shall desire nothing except God's will....” Jesus was unfamiliar with this exact scripture, but he liked it, and wondered at its origins. Perhaps they wrote out some of the oral traditions.
The visitors and their guide descended the stairs and went out into the fields where the shepherds watched their flocks and the farm laborers tended to the barley, wheat, and corn. This was a hard environment for such work, due to their proximity to the Salt Sea and the otherwise dryness of the region. But the fortress had been set up with an arrangement of cisterns that the sect here now used and, explained Eleazar, they captured any rain water that God should send them.
Eleazar questioned Jesus about the type of work he did and seemed pleased at the answers. “We ardently desire craftsmen here,” he said. “Look at how badly in need of repair our buildings are.”
Jesus thought about the climate and such. “You ought to reseal the bricks with mortar made from crushed rock and burnt lime,” he answered in all professional seriousness. He could have given very exact directions if he thought Eleazar would follow his words.
“Likely you could stay on with your cousin and do the work for us,” the Essene suggested. He sounded as if he knew that John would stay.
Jesus looked at John questioningly and received an answer in his expression. John intended to remain with these Essenes Jesus knew so little about. ”I can’t stay,” Jesus told the instructor. “My parents are waiting for me at home.”
They went back into the main building and Eleazar took them into the dining hall where he called for a drink of water for them all from the workers clearing away the last remnants of lunch.
“Let me tell you, Jesus, a little bit about us,” Eleazar said. Jesus felt glad for any explanation and he smiled agreeably.
“We live communally, as you see. No man here has private property. No man here marries. If you joined us, you would have a two-year period as a novitiate.” Eleazar paused, his eyes intent on Jesus, who felt somewhat taken aback. Hadn’t he just said that he must return home?
The water arrived, and Eleazar took a sip. “We are righteous men, the sons of Zadok who were the priests of old. We constitute God’s chosen, and stand out as the true remnants of Israel in all her glory. Now, at the end times, we await two messiahs, the messiah who will led us in our worldly government, and the messiah who will rule us spiritually. We live in expectation of the final days, the final battle between good and evil, the final triumph that will usher in the Kingdom of God.”
They claimed then to be Zadokites then, about whom Ezekiel said, “...the priests that are sanctified of the sons of Zadok; which have kept my charge, which went not astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray.” Jesus wondered at the Essenes assertion of this heritage.
Again, Eleazar paused and watched for a reaction from the young Nazarene. Jesus nodded as expected of him. “We believe in the eternal soul of the righteous. We believe in their resurrection into other bodies, other lives. Later on, you will come to know what we know and to learn many esoteric secrets.”
Jesus felt his head spin to the point he became actually dizzy. Not that he didn’t understand the words. But with so many sects in Palestine, so many views, he couldn’t follow the subtleties of each, nor did he believe he needed to. And the only thing he didn’t quite comprehend was why John had come so willingly into their clutches. Yet, really, he understood John’s motivation very well—his hatred for the impurity of the Temple. His desire to be identified with a true Jewish movement.
“Do you love our God?” asked Eleazar.
A shock of just that emotion hit Jesus hard. His body and his heart lit up with the burning fire of devotion. He might have dropped to his knees were he not so strong. “I do,” he swore.
“Do you seek Him?” the Essene continued.
Jesus smiled slightly and shook his head in the negative. “Why seek the very air we breathe?”
John and Eleazar stared at Jesus.
“God is the I Am,” Jesus said, to explain. “God is the spirit of life within us.” Didn’t they, too, feel as he did? No, he knew most others didn’t, and he must find a better way to make his statement clear. “The entire Kingdom of God is within us.”
“Your arrogant statement shows how very much you need training with our masters,” said the Essene grimly.
Jesus closed his mouth and said no more.
Chapter 10. The Anointment
In the morning before daybreak, Jesus rose with the rest of the community. “I’m sorry cousin,” he told John. “I disappoint you.” He bit his tongue, wanting to say that the messiah was already perfectly present and that the Kingdom of God was always open for business, as the Torah unambiguously told them. He gave John his blessing.
Jesus hoped that John would finally find his way while here, but that he would also know when the right time came for him to leave.
He tried to return the fine wool traveling robe John had lent Jesus for the cold desert nights, but John insisted his cousin keep the garment, for John would own nothing at this place. Jesus tied the piece around his own short robe like a sash.
Then John walked Jesus to the pathway leading to the cliffs. “You’ll see,” John said. “You’ll come to know that what this community offers is the real thing. They have a Righteous Teacher here who knows our God.”
Climbing back up the rocky slopes, Jesus mused that he must become more skilled in how he spoke to people of what he knew about the Kingdom. And he must take care especially when to speak and when not to speak. His words to Eleazar had been wasted. He should have known they would be, since the Essene had a lifelong investment in his path, not to be thrown away at the least little word of a youngster. Could Jesus have found another way to talk to the Essene? He must become better practiced at such interactions if God intended for him to reawaken the people’s love of Him. Was that God’s intention, God’s role for Jesus? Such was his expectation, at any rate. But whatever he was told by YHWH, he would follow.
Here he was, at last, alone, for his first long journey by himself across the land. What a luxury. John had told his own mother, Elisheba, the cousin of Maryam, that he would be gone for a while. Thus Jesus needn’t even return to Jerusalem to bring word to the family. Elisheba, who’d had John very late in life would certainly grieve at his desertion, but family ties, no matter how close, must take second place to the dictates of Adonai.