Marriages of the Magdalene

By Helen Martineau

This novel breaks through centuries of dogma and legend to uncover the lost beginnings of Christianity, re-imagining the untold stories of Mary Magdalene and John the Beloved. Long-time friend Naphtali wants to set the record straight about their inspirational lives. He shares their story.

First century Palestine seethes under Roman rule and suffocating religious conventions. The young man who will be called John tries to live by strict patriarchal rules. His rebellious new wife Mary secretly follows heretical goddess traditions. They pull in opposing directions. Then Jesus the prophet challenges them to walk mystical paths of inner development. From their brave decision to discover who they are, two remarkable destinies will unfold, as they come to know the deepest wellspring of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Mar 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514445341

Helen Martineau

Helen Martineau met the indomitable actress Sheila Florance as an impressionable seventeen-year-old. Her subsequent marriage to Sheila’s son Peter Oyston began a long friendship that would lead to her writing the biography Sheila Florance - On the Inside. Helen’s qualifications include art and dance training and a Bachelor of Arts from England’s Open University. She enjoyed a varied and fruitful career as a performer, choreographer, and English and humanities teacher. Becoming an author was a culmination, the re-emergence of youthful talents and a new creative adventure. She continues to write both fiction and non-fiction on themes close to her heart.

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Copyright © 2016 by Helen Martineau.

Cover design by David Gould

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016901708

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-4536-5

                Softcover         978-1-5144-4535-8

                eBook             978-1-5144-4534-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 03/03/2016

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

The Land of Canaan in the first century CE

Plan of the Second Jerusalem Temple

The Roman Imperium around the Mediterranean

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE LETTERS

The First Letter—Naphtali bar Tolmai from Ephesus in Asia Minor to Johannines Near and Far

Naphtali bar Tolmai to the Johannines—The Second Letter, Concerning the Promise and Potential of Youth

Naphtali bar Tolmai’s Third Letter—Concerning Signs and Purification

Naphtali bar Tolmai’s Fourth Letter—Concerning the Revelation of the Self Whose Name is I AM

Naphtali bar Tolmai —The Fifth Letter, Which Speaks of Illumination and the Beginnings of the Way

Naphtali bar Tolmai to the Johannines—The Last Letter, While Our Community Grows Like a Vine

GLOSSARY

AFTERWORD

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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CAST OF CHARACTERS

For the people inhabiting this story, I have drawn on the indigenous names in multilingual first-century Canaan/Palestine. Here a person often had an Aramaic/Hebrew and a Greek name. The repertoire of names was much smaller than today, so a defining nickname or title might be added. The more well-known names in the English Bible (given in brackets) have been derived from the Greek, or the later Latin translation.

MAIN PROTAGONISTS

Jeshua (Jesus)—the Nazarene; extraordinary teacher and prophet

Miryam (Mary)—his disciple and later leading apostle; given the title ‘Miryam the Tower’ (Hebrew migdal, Aramaic magdal), in Greek Maria hé Magdalené (Mary the Magdalene)

Eleazar (Lazarus)—her husband; a member of Jerusalem’s ruling Sanhedrin, Greek nickname Nicodemus (‘ruler over the people’); Jeshua’s disciple; as a teacher in Greek-speaking Ephesus becomes known as Johannes (John)

Naphtali—the narrator writing from Ephesus; formerly from Galilee, friend of the central characters since his childhood; Miryam’s cousin, Eleazar’s amanuensis

THE FAMILY FROM SAMARIA AND GALILEE

Grandma Rahab—matriarch of the Galilee-Samaria clan

Tolmai of Cana—Naphtali and Nathanael’s crippled father

Nathanael—Naphtali’s admired half-brother, his senior by sixteen years; Eleazar’s friend

Susanna—Naphtali’s mother; Miryam’s aunt

Rachel and Eliphas—Miryam’s parents

Susanna and Joezer—Miryam’s closest sister and brother-in-law living in Samaria

Tabitha—Miryam’s gentle and sensitive friend; Nathanael’s wife

‘Little’ Tolmai and Shuli—Nathanael and Tabitha’s two elder children (two younger siblings, Miryam and Johanan, are minor characters)

Rahab—Miryam and Eleazar’s daughter

Nathanael (Nathie, later Hanael)—Miryam and Eleazar’s son

THE FAMILY FROM BETHANY IN JUDAEA

Simeon—Eleazar’s father, a widower; rigorous Pharisee and member of the Great Sanhedrin

Martha—Eleazar’s kind-hearted older sister

Malachi—a loyal old servant

Dalia—his older daughter

Adah—his younger daughter, who becomes Miryam’s travelling companion

THE RULING CLASS BASED IN JERUSALEM

Joseph Caiaphas—the high priest; a Sadducee and leader of the Sanhedrin

Annas—former high priest

Joseph of Arimathea—a chief priest; rich landowner; old friend of Simeon

Zoheth bar Phiabi—Eleazar’s unintelligent contemporary, nephew of Caiaphas

JESHUA’S FAMILY

Miryam (Mary)—a widow; Jeshua’s mother; known as Mother Miryam, mentor to young Miryam

Johanan the Baptist (John)—a prophet; Jeshua’s cousin; Eleazar’s friend and mentor

Salome—Jeshua’s youngest half-sister; a keen disciple

Jacob the Righteous (James)—Jeshua’s half-brother, an ascetic

Judah Thomas—Jeshua’s youngest half-brother and disciple

Miryam Clopas—sister-in-law to Mother Miryam, wife of Clopas

Johanan Markos—their son

SOME OTHER DISCIPLES OF JESHUA

Simeon called Petros ‘rock’ (Peter)—a fisherman and leading disciple

Andreas—his brother, a friendly giant of a man

Johanan and Jacob bar Zebediah—fishermen, nicknamed Boanerges (‘sons of thunder’)

Judas of Kerioth—a former Zealot

Philippos and Eunike—husband and wife; friends and former employees of Miryam’s mother Rachel

Tichicus and Matthias—a lame man and a man blind from birth; became disciples after being healed by Jeshua

Paulos the apostle (Paul)—Hebrew Saul, a missionary to the gentiles

THE HERODIAN AND THE ROMAN

Herod Antipas—tetrarch (ruler) of Galilee and Peraea

Pontius Pilatus—Roman procurator (governor); in Jerusalem for the Feast of Pesach (Passover), he oversees Jeshua’s trial

IN ALEXANDRIA

Philo Judaeus—eminent Jewish philosopher

Polydorus the Bard—introduces Eleazar to the Orphic mysteries

Diogenes the Egyptian—Eleazar’s guide in the famous Alexandrian library

ON ELEAZAR’S ESTATES

Bethany beyond the Jordan

Shimri—the manager

Reuben—his son

The estate near Aenon

Gilah—a healing woman

Binah—becomes Naphtali’s wife

Gavri—a widower, becomes Martha’s husband

IN GALLIA NARBONENSIS LAND OF THE SOUTHERN GAULS

Andronicus Sicula—a merchant from Massilia (Marseilles)

Joseph—son of Joseph of Arimathea

Belenos—a bard, he marries Miryam’s daughter Rahab

Miryam Belisama—their daughter

THE HEAVENLY COHORT

Elohim—gods (although plural, it is often understood as god singular)

YHWH—the Tetragrammaton (Hebrew consonants for the divine name ‘I am that I am’, ‘I have being’, or ‘I cause to be’), in the Torah it was heard by Moses. Hebrews substituted Adonai (from Adon ‘lord’) to avoid profaning the name by voicing it.

Havvah (Eve)—Mother of All Living, the archetypal great goddess; cf. the world soul, Greek anima mundi, the living world’s animating intelligence

Hokhmah (Wisdom)—divine wisdom (in Greek, Sophia)

Logos (Word)—Greek, divine creative action / order / reason

Christos (Christ)—Greek parallel to Messiah (Anointed), the title given to Jeshua by the first Christians, for whom Christos became the mystical name for the cosmic spirit of Logos-Sophia united with the indwelling human spirit—in John’s Gospel referred to as I AM

The First Letter—Naphtali bar Tolmai from Ephesus in Asia Minor to Johannines Near and Far

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~ ONE ~

What the Sea Whispered

Life is a sea. Its rhythms ebb and flood, with each quiescent moment an indrawn sea-breath, before the pouring out, the inundating chaos—again and again, always.

The picture slipped into my mind this very morning to disrupt my walk along the beach edge. I couldn’t enjoy the sound of shells as they crunched under my feet or the gulls that sang ships to and from the harbour. I heard only the waves tell of things past, things to come and the moment itself.

Friends, today is the calends of April as the Romans say, first day in the month of Etruscan Aprilis, Roman Venus, Greek Aphrodite and their festivals of wine and grain. It begins the season of love. I have placed a lighted candle in my private shrine to honour the memory of our dear ones who certainly loved much—the teacher Johannes and my cousin Miryam, called the Magdalene. She was never an enigma to me as she is for some. She first touched my heart when I was a small boy.

They are dead now, yet they are with us in spirit and I believe their misgiving entered through those waves. It hung on the sea mist, pursued me home and lingered round the stone walls while I brushed the Ephesian sand off my feet. That persistent whisper is behind my urge to write to you.

Peace prevails in this succession year of Emperor Trajan, but brave Johannines, you know we will face more threats. Such is the human rhythm of our world. Like you, I can cast my gaze forward and see the usual conflicts and dangers, but that isn’t why I must write. This is: What stories will they tell about our Magdalene and Johannes? I, who was as close as a son to both, suspect many foolish legends will arise about them that will diminish the magnitude of their lives and with it the truth of our way of love in freedom. Already fabrication begins. Look around. The rhythm of men is to wash away vision, drown the soaring mind, swamp the revolutionary heart.

Is this inevitable? No, friends, we can rescue the truth and keep it alive so it will be told somewhere, somehow in future ages. Here is how. First we must dare to make our secret gospel public. You have received the oral tradition in every place Johannines meet. Our teacher Johannes’ writings have always been held here in Ephesus. Now copies will be made and sent to you in your dispersed communities. From the worlds beyond, Johannes has charged me with this task because for fifty years I was his loyal scribe. Do you know his youthful name? It was Eleazar bar Simeon, and as Eleazar I first knew him and came to understand his mind so well.

So, we have purchased some good parchment and two other trusted companions will work with me. I acknowledge the risk of misunderstanding when the mystery teaching is disseminated in this manner. You, dear Johannines, learn to seek for deep layers beneath the surface. But who knows where the gospel will one day travel? The message of the Way is one to uplift thirsty souls, yet without understanding the reality could be as dust. This is why another voice speaks to me. It is the Magdalene herself, my best loved cousin Miryam.

Hers is a big but wonderful challenge. She wants me to write the story of them both, all of it, so that even those of you here in Ephesus who once listened to them will know them as I did and be encouraged. Eleazar-Johannes’ revelation stands upon a luminous philosophy he only achieved after much inner conflict. That will certainly be part of the story. And I can reveal this—how Miryam’s insight was nurtured first within ancient rites only women knew and how her vision was purified and enlarged. I will write of the pitfalls they both encountered, the wrong turnings they made, the transformation they experienced before they were ready for the planting of the Christos seed in their souls. I will write of their striving as they explored and held true to its essence.

Their paths were different. You could say they represent the feminine way of the heart and the masculine one of the mind towards wholeness. Yet my story, their story, must also be about the harmony of those polarities within you and me and everyone. Too long these impulses have been at war with each other. See how man tries to suppress woman, how woman manoeuvres to undermine man. This opposition is surely a reflection of what is happening in the human psyche.

I will tell you a mystery about Miryam and Eleazar, how they are always together in the gospel he wrote, whether he calls them by name, in veiled references to either one of them and most of all when he writes of the one he called the beloved disciple. That is why I can speak now of how they discovered the mystical marriage that alone makes true love possible.

Sixty-eight years ago our two friends, young then, encountered the man Jeshua, who ushered in a new aeon. They witnessed his deeds and would come to understand more than most. The wisdom they achieved can guide us as we struggle now to maintain that age of freedom against the oncoming tide of repression.

They discovered the Way and walked it ahead of us to become the spiritual mother and father for all Johannines. They are as beacons in the night. They shine light on the stages and the inward trials we must face when we choose the life that will bring genuine liberty. Both of them were destined for this, even from birth, and I am grateful that my life intertwined with theirs. It will assist me to speak rightly.

Wisdom says to us that once begun, a task is half over. How then shall I begin? I am an old man, and my sea, as it were, is retreating in preparation for its next coming in. That rhythm I cannot alter. But in the manner of the aged, sometimes I dream back. I enter the feelings of the boy I used to be and recall earlier days, the innocent days before any of us could foresee what the gods had in mind.

A picture comes to me now. It is the summer of our friends’ first meeting in Cana of Galilee in the land of Canaan, when the young women danced among the olive groves and the quickening of a young Pharisee’s heart disturbed the equilibrium of his thoughts.

~

The turning of the seasons had arrived with the dew and squill blossoms fluttered white against the brown hillsides. They reminded us that Olive Day was near.

On the afternoon of the fifteenth of Av, every marriageable female of our town collected a simple white himation to wear, a borrowed gown to ensure that no one, however poor, would feel embarrassed. They made ready and then set off together past bulging gardens of leek, garlic, lentils and chickpeas where the herby scents of marjoram, cumin, fenugreek, mint and dill hung in the warm air. They walked beside terraces of almond and citron trees, too preoccupied now to look down to the expanse of royal grain fields where many of our people worked. No doubt images of the grey-green olive trees, their fruits fattening with oil, beckoned those girls. Soon they would dance there. And the young men would watch, hoping to choose a bride.

Not long after, others followed the same path, the unmarried males, the matrons and old men to keep an eye on matters, and we boys. I was nine years old and only mildly interested in the things the older boys whispered when we rested after gathering in fruit from the orchards. Still, the dancing had always been fun and I stepped out eagerly like the rest toward the olive groves.

White-clad girls had gathered from all around the district. I could only glimpse them through the leaves although their laughing and chattering gave their whereabouts away. Young men shuffled and fidgeted, and mothers whispered behind their hands until at last the girls settled themselves and began to sing—their song originated in King Solomon’s own love story, the song of expectation.

Do you hear the voice of my beloved?

    O, I hear, I hear.

Do you see the grace of my beloved?

    O, I see, I see.

Behold, he comes leaping upon mountains, and bounding over hills.

He is like a gazelle; he is like a young stag.

    Behold, I see my beloved . . .

Their voices gathered strength and some girls began to clap the off-beats. Then they all moved forward. They wove around the trees and leaves shook as they swept by. Most of the dancers had let their hair loose and wore garlands of roses and daisies threaded through myrtle leaves for love. Their long skirts swirled and flapped around their ankles as they approached, and they lifted sandalled feet in time together.

My cousin led the dancers like her namesake the prophetess Miryam, sister of Moses and Aaron, who danced and sang for joy when our Lord destroyed the pursuing Egyptians. I thought my Miryam was the most beautiful of all the girls. Some folk said she was too tall and not demure enough as a woman, but then who else could dance with such surety, bending like a sapling in the wind? Whose dark hair did the sun burnish when she turned? And who had such eyes, the colour of our Lake Gennesareth at night when the moon shimmers across its surface? Only Miryam, our Miryam. And I was not the only one to respond to a magical kind of light she cast in her dancing.

She gave me a smile as she passed. I noticed, though, that a stranger standing a little apart from the local youths drew most of her attention. He stared at her as she danced—for him alone, it seemed. This made me rather cross because she had said, ‘I will dance for my special little cousin.’ That was me of course.

I stomped over to my mother who was with my aunt. ‘Who’s that?’ I demanded.

‘Naphtali, don’t point. That is a young man from Judaea.’

‘Well, what is he doing here then?’

Mother smiled, although not at me. ‘It is Olive Day, isn’t it?’ she said.

Then Aunt Rachel added in a meaningful sort of tone, ‘Indeed, Susanna, the day of love.’

I may as well not have been there. My mother went ‘Ooh’ and continued, ‘I agree, Rachel, he is presentable even though he’s a Pharisee.’

‘But what if he’s from the tribe of Benjamin?’ my aunt asked and she even sniggered.

I gave a lordly toss of my head and headed back to my friends. I knew what my mother meant about Olive Day. We Galileans mostly followed the religion of the Hebrews, the people of the Law, and this festival commemorates an event described in our holy scripture when the Lord showed compassion for the tribe called Benjamin. Its men had committed such a dreadful sin the rest of the people in the land attacked the tribe, killing most of them. Only six hundred males escaped. This remnant made peace, but it had been decreed that anyone who gave a girl in marriage to a Benjaminite would be cursed. That created a dilemma because, so it is written, Benjamin was an important tribe under the Lord and could not be allowed to vanish. This is why, during a yearly feast when the young women of Shiloh dressed in white and danced out in the groves, the men of Benjamin were permitted to hide and each one of them seize a woman for his wife. Our sages placed that story in the month of Av because of the long-stemmed white squill that sway like maidens all over our land at this time. I don’t believe any dancing takes place in the groves these days. Then it was a favourite celebration, still concerned with bride seeking except that a man no longer carried her off by force.

I looked more closely at the stranger from Judaea. He was presentable, I guess, from a woman’s point of view, and probably wealthy. The wide stripes on his chiton hem and neck were dyed with expensive Tyrian purple and the knee-length himation he wore over it was made of fine bleached linen with much gold thread. He had a small groomed beard and a proud head on which he wore an ornate mound-shaped cap like the Babylonians. The pattern on his girdle matched his headgear exactly. Miryam obviously approved. She still danced as if he was the only man around and looked directly at him with those wonderful eyes. He stood straight and stiff as he returned her gaze. I thought he looked arrogant. I couldn’t know that he was holding himself taut because her closeness disconcerted him. It was due to her beauty certainly, and something else he was finding almost uncanny—in a woman.

~ TWO ~

Women’s Secrets

Some would consider it brazen for my cousin to stare at a man that way. Not so, yet even in those days she was an unusually independent young woman.

A quick run through the family background will be helpful here. Miryam’s mother Rachel and my mother Susanna were the daughters of a widow called Rahab, her husband long dead. The family originally came from Sebaste in Samaria. Rachel, the older sister, married a man of Samaria called Eliphas and remained there to produce four daughters. Miryam was the youngest.

My mother married a Galilean, Tolmai from Cana, and he brought her home with him. He was a highly-thought-of man although quite a bit older than her. This was his second marriage and there was a son Nathanael by his late wife. Nathanael was already sixteen years old and strong from work in the orchards when I was born. My mother had lost two babies before me so Grandma Rahab came north from Samaria to help with potions and herbs. Fortunately I was healthy and only worried my family with the normal raucous infant cries. Still, from then on Grandma lived with us. So that made up my side of the family until I was six years old and my half-brother wed a local girl called Tabitha. By the time of this Olive Day, although but a lad, I was uncle to their children, Little Tolmai and baby Shuli. Here is our immediate family tree at that time:

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When his older three daughters were wed and off his hands, my uncle Eliphas decided he would like to move from Samaria to Galilee where he saw new business opportunities. Aunt Rachel agreed and I’m sure had influenced him so she could be with her mother and sister. They came to live in our house bringing the youngest girl, fourteen-year-old Miryam, with them. Eliphas bought a fish-preserving business in Taricheae on the lake. It produced pungent and exotic fish sauces called garum and salsamentum as condiments for all the banquet tables of Rome. Products like these had brought prosperity to the old fishing town. Taricheae means ‘town of salt fish’. It was half a day’s walk away from Cana and Eliphas spent his days in both places. He made a great success of the business. Then after just two years he caught a violent fever and died.

Although he had been a good man who never in his life complained about only having daughters, for his bereaved wife it meant there was no son to carry on the work. Instead Aunt Rachel, who remained a widow by choice, moved to a house in Taricheae and took over his business. Miryam was soon working with her. This was uncommon, but not exceptional. Quite a few women had charge of businesses in those days and traded in the cities of Tiberias and Sepphoris and even out beyond Galilee. With the help of a manager, mother and daughter continued this way for a year, which might account for why Miryam was still unmarried at eighteen. They returned to Cana not long before this Olive Day.

The morning after the dancing, I joined the other local boys between the ages of six and twelve in the biggest room of our house dedicated as beth-sefer, house of reading. We did this every day apart from Shabbat, the day of rest. There under my father Tolmai, who was our respected local teacher, we studied the sacred scrolls of the Torah, the holy law in the five books of Moses. I must admit we boys enjoyed the Torah’s stories of creation, the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt and Moses on the mountaintop more than its long lists of laws and proscriptions. We also dipped into the Judges, Kings, Prophets and Writings.

There was a difference today. The stranger joined us. My father introduced him as Eleazar bar Simeon, a learned young Pharisee from Bethany in Judaea (I will tell you how he came to be known as Johannes, but not yet). Father offered him the opportunity to speak to us.

Eleazar bar Simeon bowed. ‘I have heard of your reputation as an ethical teacher offering more than words and outward forms,’ he said. ‘I would consider it a privilege to sit and hear you.’

He was right in my opinion. Father was the finest of men. Bitterness was a stranger to his heart, despite having seen in his youth two thousand men of our land, including his two innocent brothers, hauled up and crucified along the highway north out of Jerusalem on the orders of Publius Quinctilius Varus. That was the way our Roman overlord squashed the rebellion that erupted after the death of King Herod. Yet I was not to learn hatred from my father against Romans nor, as was often the case in Galilee, prejudice against Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Idumaeans or Judaeans. As for the Samaritans, loathed by righteous Hebrews, again my father didn’t judge.

Father thanked our visitor for his compliment, and so despite his fine clothes, Eleazar sat on the floor behind us while my father taught in his normal kindly manner.

If Eleazar knew that we did not participate in all the Torah’s requirements, he had taken no account of it. I liked that. Our family duly kept the Law of the Hebrews, but as part of worship, people of the Torah were supposed to attend the Temple in Jerusalem for the three major feasts—Pesach, Sukkot and Shavuot—with offerings from the land according to the season. My father had been crippled for half my life, and because he was unable to come with us, members of our family rarely made the arduous journey south. I had never been there.

I felt so proud of Father that day. Everyone in our town looked up to him. The women in our household naturally received the same respect and it was not only because of my father. They had their own charisma for the most unusual reason. They followed the old ways, the forgotten ones—traditions a rigorous Hebrew would assume to be long gone.

On certain warm nights, my family’s women and some others in the district would go off and meet beneath aged oak or laurel trees where they undertook mysterious rituals. None of the women in our town would talk openly about their activities at the old holy places, but they were happy when anyone associated it with their healing lore. My grandmother, who had learned her arts in Samaria and brought the knowledge with her, had taught local women how to prepare laurel, olive leaves and the humble thorn for vitality, how to use storax to ease fevers, galbanum for wind, aloe to soothe cuts, mandrake to arouse the senses, and the creeping birthwort growing beside the vines to bring on pregnancy. She passed on countless remedies for humans and animals. All through our region, people valued Grandma Rahab for her wisdom.

I was sure their disappearances involved more than healing because although this was a female activity, those lessons took place anywhere the desired plants grew. As far as I could tell, our women’s behaviour had slipped outside the Law. It puzzled me why my father, Nathanael and the other men didn’t forbid it, although it was their right to as heads of their households.

Miryam joined the women on their mysterious expeditions about two years before the Olive Day dancing I’ve written about. I was seven at the time and because I saw myself as her favourite, Miryam’s participation made me feel abandoned. I didn’t take into account that only boys received education from a rabbi when I watched the women walk off, all whispers and linked arms, to take part in a secret world denied to me.

It wasn’t long before I waylaid my cousin and complained, ‘You’re not fair having secrets.’ She only laughed and tried to tickle my ribs. I ducked away. ‘Tell me what you do when you disappear!’

‘If I did I’d have to sacrifice you after.’

‘You would not.’ Sidling up close I took her hand. ‘Please, just a little bit that’s not too secret?’

Miryam stopped playing. ‘I would like to, Naphtali. But I can’t, not yet. I promise I will say more . . .’

‘When?’ I pushed.

‘Oh, Naphtali, after you grow up a bit. You could start by thinking about the stories I’ve told you.’ She shook her head and made disappointed eyes at me. Then she left me alone with my mortification. Her comment stung because since I was small she had been my most generous storyteller. Her stories were more outlandish than the familiar ones of the tradition, which is one reason why I loved them.

But to return to the aftermath of Olive Day, I found out that Eleazar bar Simeon had come to Galilee to see my brother Nathanael. The two had formed a strong friendship when they studied together in the famous Egyptian city of Alexandria. Eleazar was from one of Jerusalem’s ruling families, and Nathanael told us he was widely respected among the leaders there because of his intellectual gifts. It was by chance that he arrived in time to see the dancing. Or was it? I believe we are subject to divine destiny, although it is up to us how we use what that destiny brings.

Eleazar bar Simeon stayed for a week with us. After he left, I continued with my boyhood pursuits. Most of what had taken place during his visit slipped from my busy young mind.

~ THREE ~

To the Most Holy City, Jerusalem

Later that same year I went up to Jerusalem for the first time to attend Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles. I would soon be turning ten, and around this age, a boy became entitled to take part in some Temple rites. Only when he became an Israelite at thirteen could he enter them fully.

In the month of Tishri, our party, five families in all, set off from Cana with a sense of work well done. The vegetables had been gathered and stored, the corn brought in from the threshing floors, and the wrinkled sun-dried figs, apricots and raisins collected from the rooftops. With all the pilgrims heading south, there would be little threat of brigands, and wild animals had long since retreated to the mountains. Nevertheless, my mother, who was staying home to be with Father and to look after Little Tolmai, whose toddler legs wouldn’t cope with the journey, put Nathanael in charge of me.

‘Stay close to your brother; promise me, Naphtali,’ she pleaded. I agreed happily. It would be no hardship because he was my hero. My big brother always encouraged me to keep my eyes open. I remember the time he took me with him to Sepphoris to sell our excess produce. This large market city, rebuilt after the ravages of Varus, was a popular haunt of those ragged wandering Greeks, the Cynic philosophers. They believed all law was unnatural and Nathanael didn’t hurry me off when they started a heated argument with the rabbis instructing people about tithing and ritual cleanliness. He saw this as an opportunity for me to learn. It felt perfect now to explore new roads and cities with my big brother leading the way.

On the path across the wooded hills of oak and pine, we children shattered the forest hush with our shouts and laughter, and when we stopped to drink at the running streams, we ended up splashing one another. The grown-ups let us be. They knew we would tire soon enough.

At Tiberias we met many more pilgrims. In order to entice travellers from the other side of Lake Gennesareth into his tetrarchy of Galilee, our tetrarch, Herod Antipas, had built this unbelievably luxurious city near some famous hot mineral waters. I guess it was to satisfy his indulgences too, for he had been brought up in Rome. I believe his palace still stands up on the hillside. It is so enormous they say you can even pick out the decoration on its columns from the other side of the lake. Large Roman-style villas descended all the way from the palace to the wharves. There our party had to push past stalls cluttering the path and offering temptations to the crowds of shoppers. Our grown-ups only purchased some cheese and dates for the journey, while I watched fishermen pulling their boats in, by mid-morning heavy with their catch. Other boats unloaded passengers in a relentless stream. Most people were speaking Greek or Aramaic. I also heard languages that sounded like gabbling to me.

‘Ooh, look at all the people,’ I said. ‘Let’s follow them.’

‘Huh, it wouldn’t be worth it,’ Miryam scoffed. ‘This city is filled with tourists like them.’ She crinkled her nose. ‘And Romans and Herodian bureaucrats, and what about the poor Galileans who have been bribed to live where no one else will, above desecrated graves haunted by ghosts.’

It was well known that Antipas had built much of Tiberius over an Israelite necropolis, but I did wonder how my brother would react to Miryam’s outburst. In his quiet way Nathanael often tried to teach her to be more circumspect. This time he said, diplomatically because of the strangers around, ‘Come friends. We need to move on.’

So we didn’t explore Tiberias. Still, there would soon be plenty more to excite a boy whose heroic imagination had been fuelled by our land’s old stories. We headed south, Lake Gennesareth with its cooling breeze on one side of our road, steep forested cliffs on the other rising up to the Horns of Hattin. From those peaks you could see the whole world, so I had been told. We circled the hot springs and more rowdy tourists. Then we followed the road along the foothills above dense riverside scrub. Across the Jordan we could see gardens watered by its tributary, the Yarmuk.

Soon the Jezreel Valley and the wide Plain of Esdraelon unrolled like a scroll to the right of us, its big villas marking it like widely spaced letters. Fields of flax and wheat simmered in the wind like broth on the boil. The earth left fallow this year was red-brown against the yellow grain. The Roman overlords called our soil terra rossa, and I believe they owned most of it around here, except those parts belonging to Herod Antipas.

On the outskirts of Scythopolis, largest of the Greek cities of the Decapolis, everyone split up for the night. Nathanael, Tabitha, baby Shuli, Aunt Rachel, Miryam and I stayed the night with business friends of my aunt. From there, Jerusalem could be reached by three main routes—the high road through Samaria where Samaritan resentments might be stirred, the caravan road on the other side of the Jordan River (which involved fording it twice) and the low road on the river’s western side. Although the latter was the least popular route because the going was so hot, it was the way my brother decided on the next morning. ‘I have a special reason for taking this road,’ he said. ‘I hope to encounter a man who many say is a genuine prophet.’ That set many adults to talking and wondering.

The majority of pilgrims headed off as one large body towards Samaria but we joined up with a smaller group. Jordan means ‘descender’ and low our way was to become. From the everlasting springs beneath far-off Mount Hermon, our beloved river rushes downward through marshes and gorges, eventually opening into Lake Gennesareth. After this, it falls like a wounded bird, twisting and bending all the way to the salty Dead Sea. Jordan is not a mighty river compared with waterways I have since seen, but it has always been special to Hebrews.

Tabitha was carrying baby Shuli in a sling. She squinted up at the sun and shielded Shuli’s face with the ends of her himation. ‘I fear this way is going to be too hot for baby,’ she said as she touched Nathanael’s arm.

It was nothing for him to work all day in the sun but he took a moment to lift the covering and smile down at his daughter, who grabbed his finger. ‘Don’t you worry, little one,’ he said in the voice adults put on for babies. Then to everyone, ‘We have plenty of time so we could all rest in the shade during the hottest part of the day.’ And so it was agreed.

We walked close to the river at times and we could see it swirling round rocks and through the reeds, bending them almost to breaking. When poplars, pink oleanders and thick banks of willow hid it from view, we could still hear its watery breathing. At noon everyone stopped to eat and rest under these trees. The women and girls clustered around Tabitha and the baby, as females do. We boys played quietly for a while. It was so pleasant even I succumbed in the end to the general dozing. That night was the opposite. We spent it in a village consisting of an inn and a few rough houses where I wriggled and tossed on the packed inn roof with insects around my head and donkeys braying in the courtyard. I thought I would never drop off to sleep, but I must have, because it seemed only moments before I saw the sun creep up over the horizon.

The third day’s journey began with the narrow valley known as the Prodigality of Israel. Here the river struggled through rampant jungle and we boys pretended to be ancient Israelites stalking a hidden enemy. No one strayed from the road or left the group, however, because vipers and robbers haunt these hills. Very soon we reached the place where the Jabbok flows into the Jordan. The undergrowth thinned, the land widened again and rows of date palms gave us some shade as we walked on. At last we turned away from the river, thirsting now for the oasis of Jericho. We children no longer played our games. Baby Shuli had become fractious. Nathanael was carrying her but he lagged behind. He had his eyes on a crowd milling around some activity further downriver.

‘Johanan, finally,’ he said, and went to hand Shuli to Tabitha. Shuli let out some deafening owl shrieks. Tabitha looked owl-eyed at her husband. He sighed and cradled the baby again.

Tabitha said, ‘I’m so sorry.’

Miryam linked arms with her. ‘Don’t be sorry. Shuli’s more important than some old crowd-pleaser.’

She and Tabitha were close friends so Nathanael didn’t comment. He raised his eyebrows a fraction and we left the throng to their milling.

I have three vivid memories of the low-lying city of Jericho: the ruins of its once massive walls, old King Herod’s monstrous fortresses and the sticky date honey we bought from a stall owned by a Judahite. I knew he must be of the tribe of Judah because the ones I’d seen in Galilee were severe folk and this man was way too sombre to be selling such delicious sweetness. I whispered this to Nathanael. He shook his head at me, although the corners of his mouth were smiling. Tabitha’s smile was bigger and Miryam laughed a bit too exuberantly so her head cover slipped off. A few men turned to look at her. I couldn’t tell whether they were disapproving of her boldness or admiring her lovely face.

At one stage I whispered to her, ‘You look happy. Is that because of what will happen in Jerusalem?’ I was thinking of the feast and was surprised when Miryam blushed. ‘I didn’t know you… no… not really,’ she said and then she kissed me.

‘Well, I must be right,’ I said, mainly to cover up my embarrassment.

That night we bedded down in a womb of darkness under the Lord’s starry cloak, along with pilgrims who had come south like us and others who had crossed the river at the ford. This time I couldn’t sleep because I was over excited, so I listened to some adults talking about a radical prophet who had been baptizing in the Jordan, probably the man who interested Nathanael. Eventually I dozed off, lulled by the scents pouring out from the moist gardens.

Our final morning took us up to Jerusalem. Now the road became really crowded. Everyone kicked up so much dust we had to cover our faces and sip from the water bag to clear our throats. Our ascent followed the dun-coloured ridges between shadowed gorges that are dry most of the year. After the rains, they run with dangerous torrents, and over the ages, these have cut deep jagged scars into the earth. I imagined old gods throwing down angry bolts of lightning to shatter the wilderness into such tortured shapes. It is a grim and inhospitable part of our land, but the mood lifted when stones and dry scrub gave way to rows of olive and fig trees. Everyone knew we were approaching our destination. One group began to sing and we all joined in the words of the Psalm: ‘Jerusalem, built as a city which is bound firmly together, to which the tribes go up, the tribes of Yah as was decreed for Israel.’

How can one describe the holy city? You may have heard or read about it. It can only increase in majesty and beauty in our imaginations now that it has fallen. And the Temple—every heart stirred before such a wonder. I pointed and cried, ‘There it is,’ with the rest as we reached the top of the Mount of Olives and saw it standing on the rocky plateau of Mount Moriah, gleaming like a snowy peak with all its courts and columned porticos. King Herod had developed the earlier complex until it was the grandest sight in the land. I gaped again at the Antonia fortress abutting the Temple and at the citadel with its three high towers across on the Upper City.

With the crowds, we went down into the Kidron Valley and through the Gihon gate in the city wall. And what a wall. It was so thick the builders had been able to set the guardroom right into the gate’s archway. We elbowed and pushed our way along the narrow alleys of the old city. Then we stopped at the busy market next to the Temple wall where the adults wanted to buy some provisions. The noise, amplified by massive overhead vaults, was incredible as everyone yelled to be heard. Those vaults supported the overpass steps across the Tyropoeon valley to link the Upper City with the Temple’s outer courts and porticos. I passed the time trying to pick out all the smells and name the nationalities of those hustling, bustling people. While we were there, Roman auxiliaries in their helmets and breastplates marched through, their sandals going clip, clip in unison on the stones. I thought they looked splendid. In our peaceful village my life had not been disrupted by the Romans, so I had never experienced their harsh rule. I noticed that people pulled back and many turned their faces away. Someone even whispered a curse, but smothered with a cupped hand. The mood had dampened although I was pleased to see that Miryam at least looked as stimulated as I felt.

~ FOUR ~

The Feast of Water and Light

Our family stayed as guests in a house owned by my Uncle Joses in the Upper City. He had room for a crowd of visitors. I liked this area on the city’s higher western hill, which had once been the sun sanctuary from where Melchizedek the ancient priest-king brought out bread and wine for Abraham. I had a sense of that ancient sacredness despite the Upper City’s domination by more recent structures of worldly power like the palace and Roman administration buildings. The extensive palace gardens and rows of tall cedar and cypress trees beyond the walls meant the streets were quieter too.

There was little for a child to do during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which took place the day after we arrived. Then after the whole day of fasting, prayers and solemn readings, there was more fun when we children helped to set up a booth made from plant material on my uncle’s roof. From the fourteenth of Tishri, for seven days, that’s where we would all eat and sleep. When I looked up through the loose tangle of boughs at the winking stars, I found it easy to imagine myself as a tribal boy sheltering in the wilderness just like the ancient Hebrews. On our first night up there, Uncle Joses quoted from the sacred texts in his deep musical voice so that we would remember the goodness of the Lord, who provided for us in the desert and is always with us, and who has promised that he will reign forever. For, as it is written in Zechariah, ‘Behold, a day of the Lord is coming,’ and ‘On that day there shall be neither cold nor frost. And there shall