The Heretic's Gospel - Book One: A Novel

By Gabriel Stone

The Heretic's Gospel - Book One tells the story of a young Jewish carpenter, from his birth in a humble cave in Bethlehem, through his childhood, his reluctant betrothal, his baptism by the famous John the Baptist, and to his own preeminence as the "Great Healer of Upper Galilee." Based on literally thousands of hours of archaeological and historical research, the past will come alive again as you look at Life in First Century Israel through the eyes of the man who comes to be known to the world as Jesus Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483650982

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THE HERETIC’S GOSPEL

BOOK ONE

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A Novel By

Gabriel Stone

Copyright © 2013 by Gabriel Stone.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4836-5097-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4836-5098-2

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: 06/08/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

THE FIRST SCROLL:

The Book of the Beginning

Chapter One       An Introduction Of Sorts

Chapter Two       Joseph And Mariyam

Chapter Three       In The Upper City

Chapter Four       In Bethlehem

Chapter Five       I Am Born

Chapter Six       A Carpenter’s Son

Chapter Seven       The King Of Israel

Chapter Eight       The Royal House Of Herod

Chapter Nine       In The Land Of Egypt

Chapter Ten       The Redemption

Chapter Eleven       The Death Of A King

Chapter Twelve       A Kingdom Divided

THE SECOND SCROLL:

The Book of the Baptist

Chapter One       The Priest’s Son

Chapter Two       The Torah Scholar

Chapter Three       The Bar Mitzvah

Chapter Four       The Grand Reception

Chapter Five       The Prodigal Son

Chapter Six       The Wild Man Of Judaea

Chapter Seven       The Prophet Of God

Chapter Eight       The Baptist

Chapter Nine       The Sacred Brotherhood

Chapter Ten       The Heir To The Throne

THE THIRD SCROLL:

The Book of the Yeshiva Boy

Chapter One       Parazah

Chapter Two       The Yeshiva Boy

Chapter Three       The Pharisees

Chapter Four       Hillel And Shammai

Chapter Five       The Sadducees

Chapter Six       The Essenes

Chapter Seven       Jerusalem At Pesach

Chapter Eight       At Pippo’s Inn And Tavern

Chapter Nine       The Holy Temple

Chapter Ten       In The Court Of Men

Chapter Eleven       The Son Of The Covenant

Chapter Twelve       I Learn A Trade

THE FOURTH SCROLL:

The Book of the Quest

Chapter One       The Betrothal

Chapter Two       The Wedding Plans

Chapter Three       The Kaddish

Chapter Four       I Leave Home

Chapter Five       My Adventures Begin

Chapter Six       I Am Baptized

Chapter Seven       At The Crossroads

Chapter Eight       The Oasis Of Beth Ab-Ara

Chapter Nine       Tales Of The Khalawiya

Chapter Ten       In The Wilderness

Chapter Eleven       Machaerus

Chapter Twelve       Around The Sea Of Salt

THE FIFTH SCROLL:

The Book of the Sacred Path

Chapter One       Of Angels And Demons

Chapter Two       The Sanctuary

Chapter Three       The Sacred Path

Chapter Four       The Greater Truth

Chapter Five       My Destiny Is Revealed

Chapter Six       I Return Home

Chapter Seven       The Scandal Of The Century

Chapter Eight       In The Footsteps Of The Baptist

Chapter Nine       An Inauspicious Beginning

Chapter Ten       On The Old Hill Road

Chapter Eleven       The Fishermen Of Capernaum

Chapter Twelve       At The Congregation Beth Nehemiah

THE SIXTH SCROLL:

The Book of the Great Physician

Chapter One       On The Road To Cana

Chapter Two       The Wedding Feast

Chapter Three       My First Sermon

Chapter Four       My First Arrest

Chapter Five       The Grand Inquisitor

Chapter Six       Passover In Samaria

Chapter Seven       The Great Physician

Chapter Eight       My Healing Ministry Begins

Chapter Nine       The Leper

Chapter Ten       The Paralytic

Chapter Eleven       Healing The Romans

Chapter Twelve       Summer By The Sea

THE SEVENTH SCROLL:

The Book of Sinners

Chapter One       Rumors And Innuendoes

Chapter Two       The Tax Collector

Chapter Three       At Matthias’ Estate

Chapter Four       Dining With Sinners

Chapter Five       The Fifth Disciple

Chapter Six       At The Blue Pelican

Chapter Seven       A Nest Of Vipers

Chapter Eight       The Festival Of Sukkoth

Chapter Nine       The Old Man At The Pool

Chapter Ten       I Am Arrested Again

Chapter Eleven       The Woman In The Mud-Pit

Chapter Twelve       Overworked

DEDICATION

To my children, David and James and to my grandchildren, Alex and Gary. Thank you for your love and may God forever bless you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following: the writers of the canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; and the writers of the non-canonical gospels: James, Judas, Mary, Thomas, Philip and Nicodemus, for their inspiration. I would like to thank God for not striking me dead during the writing of this book. I would like to thank my dear friends and family for their support and help with the production of this book. And finally, I would like to thank Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs, and the rest of the brilliant minds of the Internet for allowing me to do my research from the comfort of my computer. Thank you and God bless!

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

Gabriel Stone was born and raised in Southern California. After his stint in the Navy, he attended a major Southern Californian university and majored in Psychology. He has worked in the fields of medicine, counseling and the Law. He now lives in the Midwest with his wife Rosetta, his sons David and James, two dogs and a nervous cat. He is a card-carrying member of the Church of Spiritual Humanism and this is his first novel.

PREFACE

Somerset Daily: GLASTONBURY, England (April 14, 2007)—The Lake Village Museum in Somerset today received a large crate of artifacts found in a new excavation in the Glastonbury Lake Village. Authorities at the British Museum in London have been notified.

The largest artifact, a wax-sealed earthenware jar measuring seventy-six centimeters by fifty-one centimeters of the kind once used to store olive oil, was found to contain thirteen sheepskin parchment scrolls. A thorough examination of said scrolls shall commence shortly. The other artifacts found include crude wooden, bronze, iron and copper saws, mallets, drills, lathes, chisels, axes, awls and adzes, as well as pottery shards, bits of linen and dyed wool, a lock box made of inlaid cedar, ebony and olive-wood, an oil lamp, three medium-sized silk-lined cedar-wood chests, several small vials, a small silver cylinder and several cooking and writing utensils.

The Glastonbury Lake Village, which was near the old course of the River Brue, was discovered in 1892 by medical student Arthur Bulleid, and was first excavated in 1897, at which time much of its wooden timbers were re-buried in order to preserve them. Previously-found artifacts, which dated the hamlet as having been inhabited between 600 B.C. and 100 A.D., at which time, it fell to Roman occupation, had not, until now, revealed much regarding the lives and nature of its inhabitants. The new artifacts are in the possession of the Glastonbury Antiquarian Society. Both the Glastonbury Lake Village and the nearby Glastonbury Tor are officially off-limits to archeological excavations.

The Glastonbury Tor itself has long been considered a site of mystical healing and spirituality. The first Christian church in England is said to have been built at the top of the Tor in 65 A.D. near or on the site of an even more ancient Druidic temple. The Tor is also believed to have been the mythic Isle of Avalon and is associated with the tales of the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

The most-recently unearthed artifacts were discovered by a Mr. Nigel Bartley who is currently under arrest for trespassing, removing artifacts from a protected historical site, and other related charges. Mr. Bartley, an avowed spiritualist and armchair-historian from Wessex, reported to the police that, while in search of the Holy Grail, which many believe was buried on the Tor by Joseph of Arimathea, Mr. Bartley was led to the Glastonbury Lake Village by two floating balls of golden light, known locally as will-o-wisps, at which point he began his illegal excavation. Regrettably but not unexpectedly, the ever-elusive Holy Grail was not found at the site. 04-14-07 1015 EDT

Somerset Daily: GLASTONBURY, England (June 20, 2007)—Research continues on the thirteen parchment scrolls found in the Glastonbury Lake Village. Classical philologists and linguists from Oxford, the British Museum, Turkey, Israel, Syria and Iran have determined that these scrolls were written in an eastern dialect of Aramaic near the end of the First Century, A.D. The author or authors of these texts have yet to be identified. It is believed that these scrolls may be the most significant archeological find since the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels found near the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945 and the Dead Sea Scrolls found near Qumran in 1947. 06-20-07 1207 EDT

Somerset Daily: GLASTONBURY, England (August 3, 2007)—At the request of the Royal Family, Washington, D.C. and the Vatican, translation of the Glastonbury Scrolls has been permanently suspended and the scrolls themselves have been removed to an undisclosed location. 08-03-07 1624 EDT

These are those scrolls.

BOOK ONE

THE FIRST SCROLL:

The Book of the Beginning

CHAPTER ONE

An Introduction of Sorts

Until now, I did not wish to write down my words for fear that future scholars, disciples, and laymen might attribute too much importance to me instead of God, or be influenced too strongly by what I have to say, and so fail to hear God’s voice when He speaks to them in the quiet of their own hearts. But much has been made of my life and my words and my alleged death and too many people have misunderstood these things and used them to hurt and suppress other people of other faiths. Therefore, even though it is often said that if one can’t say something nice, then one should say nothing at all, nonetheless, I must speak the truth about my life, and so must include both the good and the bad, and leave nothing out.

Consequently, since I have reached the age in which I desire nothing more than to while away my time with a nice warm cup of beer, a little nosh, and enough ink and parchment with which to write an honest accounting, I wish to set the record straight so that you, my unknown reader, who have taken the time and care to unearth these scrolls from their resting place, might know me and who and what I was, and am, and what became of me.

Let those who are ready to hear the truth now hear it: It was not as it has been reported.

I was born on the Seventeenth Day of the Month of Nissan in the year 3760 as it is reckoned by our sages. This was also the thirty-seventh year of the reign of King Herod the Great, and the thirty-second year of the official reign of the first Emperor of Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, who was known to us as Augustus. My birthplace was the small town of Bethlehem in the District of Judaea, which is part of the larger Roman Province known to them as Syria-Palestina, but which we, the Children of Abraham, who have been chosen by God to bring His immutable Laws into the world, have always called the Promised Land, or simply Israel.

These were grim and unsettling times. We, the people of Israel, bristled under the yoke of Roman rule just as we had bristled under the yokes of the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Greeks for almost six hundred long and turbulent years before the Romans invaded our shores. For as long as anyone can remember, there has always been rebellion and talk of rebellion in the streets, in the taverns, in the marketplaces and in the synagogues throughout the land. And during those many generations of unrest, we have held tight in our hearts the hope of the coming of a Deliverer, the one true Moshiach, the Anointed One, that one truly remarkable and heroic man who has been chosen by God to bring us out of bondage to our oppressors as He chose Moses to lead our people out of Egypt and to the Promised Land.

Alas, the one true Moshiach has not yet come, and as it was with the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Greeks, our newest oppressors, the Romans, have time and time again proven that their military might is much greater than our own, and those few good folk who have tried to win for us our freedom, that same number has been made martyrs to our cause. All the same, our spirits have not been broken and their grim fates have only served to fuel our hatred that much more.

My father was Joseph ben Jacob, from the District of Judaea, who was a childless widower before he married my mother. As such, he was a good deal older than she was, by some twenty years or so, and was as wise, gentle, strict and loving, and in all ways the most excellent father as ever there has been. He was the firstborn son of Jacob, who was the son of Matthan, who was the son of Eliazar, and so on and so on until you get closer to the beginning of our line, and that was King David, who was of the House of Judah through his great-grandfather Boaz, who was married to Ruth, who was a Gentile princess from the mountains of Moab.

After David became the King of Israel through his military exploits, he had many wives and concubines and at least twenty children. Not the least of these was his second son Solomon, and it was he who became the next King of Israel after the death of his older brother Saul. King Solomon himself was blessed, or cursed, depending on one’s viewpoint, with seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines and innumerable children, and his children begat children, and those children begat children, and those children begat children through twenty-seven generations and beyond. And so you can see that through my father’s line, I am, along with countless others, so very distantly related to Princess Ruth, King David and King Solomon that there is very little royal blood in my veins at all.

In the year before I was born, Augustus, as the Emperor of Rome, decreed that all of the people in his vast empire should be tallied in a census. Since, at that time, there was no Roman governor, or Prefect, in Syria-Palestina, this census was to be organized and carried out by one Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, who was the Prefect of the northern Roman province of Syria-Phoenicia at the time. And this census was, at least theoretically, to take place once every fourteen years, which was as much time as was needed for a baby girl to be born, grow to young womanhood, marry, and beget a little taxpayer of her own.

Unfortunately, the Roman Empire, which stretches across most of the entire world, had well over a thousand times a thousand people in it. And then as now, most of these people lived far from Rome and resented the intrusion of a foreign power into their lives, which, as I’m sure that you will agree, made the counting of them a logistical nightmare. Therefore, the census was attempted only once, the year that I was born, and was not attempted again for another fifty years, until the reign of Emperor Claudius who had, himself or through his minions, worked out the kinks of such an massive undertaking. As for Emperor Augustus, if he wanted to know exactly how many subjects he had in his vast empire, then the best that he could do was guess.

Now, in order to theoretically facilitate this process, each and every freeborn or manumitted adult male was ordered by Imperial Decree to return to the city of his birth in order to be counted and also to list his wife and children on the census, that is, if he were married and had been blessed with little future taxpayers of his own. And for most of the people of Israel and beyond, this was not very much of a problem in spite of our objection to it, for most of us stayed for our entire lives within the confines of the hamlets, villages, towns and cities where we had been born, and did not venture forth except to take our goods to market or to go elsewhere on holiday.

On the other hand, as I said before, my father had been born in the District of Judaea, and specifically in the small town of Bethlehem, which was a four-hour journey south of the Great City of God that is Jerusalem. However, some ten years before I was born, he had moved north, out of Judaea, past the District of Samaria, and to the tiny village of Parazah in the District of Galilee. Why? Because he and his father had a falling-out over such a mundane thing as the proper running of my grandfather’s construction business.

The story is this: According to my father, his father, Jacob ben Matthan, did business with that royal tyrant, King Herod the Great, who handed out valuable building contracts to such men, as they flattered him most and gave him the best deal for his money. And this, my grandfather quite readily did, for even though he had started his career as a mere carpenter, as his father had been before him, he had expanded his business and had become a building contractor. Still, he conducted his business in such a way as to cause one to think that he was corrupt, which he most likely was. And since it is said that birds of a feather flock together, he and the King got along quite splendidly.

According to our father, who was a very honest man and who told us these things so that we might learn from them, our Grandfather Jacob used to buy defective building materials that he had obtained on the cheap. He also cut corners in other ways so that his buildings could not rightly be called safe or secure or constructed to last for an entire lifetime. Furthermore, he had in his employ, not only his own many sons and relatives, but also ex-convicts and former slaves who were paid based on their education and level of skill, which, for most, was very little, and often nothing at all, since Grandfather Jacob was able to convince them that their payment was in experience rather than in cold, hard cash. But, since landlords and grocers demand payment for their services, most of my grandfather’s employees, especially the more skilled and sober ones, did not stay for very long, but were able to find paying jobs elsewhere as soon as they were able. This left my grandfather with only those laborers who were lazy and drunken louts, and this, combined with the use of defective building materials, did not lend itself well to good workmanship. All the same, he was able to amass a small fortune, for King Herod got his buildings on the cheap and so funneled more and more building contracts in my grandfather’s direction.

My father, on the other hand, was of an entirely different mind. He felt that the King was a murderer and usurper, which he was, and that as such, he should at all costs be avoided, even when it came to doing business. What is more, my father felt, and quite rightly, too, that one should use only the finest building materials possible and hire only the best, and most experienced craftsmen who could be trusted to show up sober and on time to do the work that they had been hired to do, to do it right the first time, and to do so in a timely fashion. In this way, one could be assured that the workmanship was good and that whatever it was that the carpenters, roofer, brick-layers, and plumbers had been hired to do could stand the test of time and use. Such skilled men, he argued, were worthy of their pay, in cash, even if it should happen to cut into the business’ very sizeable profits and even if that craftsman should happen to be one’s firstborn son.

Well, as you can imagine, this difference of opinion caused much friction between my father and my grandfather, since my chintzy grandfather didn’t much relish hearing his firstborn son tell him how best to run his business, nor was he pleased with the notion of having to pay him in cold, hard cash, for of experience, he had plenty. And so, in retaliation for this difference of opinion, my grandfather declared Kaddish upon his firstborn son, who, armed with a fierce spirit of adventure, ample courage, and a copious amount of righteous indignation, packed up his first wife Judith, his carpentry tools, his favorite hawthorn walking-stick and their household goods in their tiny donkey-cart, and he, Judith and their donkey Hezzie left the little town of Bethlehem in the dust behind them.

Once the three of them had passed Jerusalem, they traveled north on the Old Hill Road, for it seemed to them as good a direction as any, inasmuch as they were none too picky about where they were going as long as they left Judaea and my despotic grandfather behind them. They then passed through the District of Samaria and the fertile Jezreel Valley, and finally they found, tucked away in the rolling green hills of Lower Galilee, the ancient and obscure little village of Parazah, an idyllic little un-walled place of happy children and unlocked doors. This place looked like Paradise to them, for it was completely unlike the dry and desolate District of Judaea, and had the additional benefit of being very far from my Grandfather Jacob’s sphere of influence. And this was where they decided to stay, and where they lived in bucolic bliss for some seven years, until Judith passed to her reward, may she rest in peace.

CHAPTER TWO

Joseph and Mariyam

After about two years of mourning, which is a very respectable amount of time, my father, who was now in his mid-thirties, came to the quiet realization that he was not meant to live his life alone, nor did he have the actual wish to do so. And so he wrote to his second-cousin, Eliazar Eli ben Matthan, who had been his best friend when they were at Yeshiva in Bethlehem, but who, when he was grown, had moved to the small but affluent city of Bethany, for he had inherited a small fig orchard there. Eli, himself, had been a widower and had more or less recently remarried, and so my father wrote to him to see if he or his new wife Mahalia might know anyone who had a daughter of marriageable age.

By the Grace of the Almighty God, Eli and Mahalia did know one such man, and that man was Joachim ben Itzak, a very rich but very pleasant Sadducean gentleman who lived in the small but affluent City of Ramathai, which the Romans have renamed Arimathea, and which is just northwest of Jerusalem on the Old Hill Road. Joachim was in the import-export business, and his ships transported tin and iron and the like to the lands surrounding the Great Sea and all of the way to the Misty Isles in the north. And, as it happened, he and his equally plump and pleasant wife Hannah had a young and temperamental teenaged daughter whom they were most anxious to marry off. And so, even though my father was a poor Pharisean carpenter, and Joachim ben Itzak and his wife were rich but hardly-observant Sadducees, my father bundled up the customary gifts, and journeyed down to Ramathai in the hope, however slim, that he might win young Mariyam’s hand in marriage.

God was truly with my father in his quest, for when he beheld the beauteous young daughter of Joachim ben Itzak the Merchant, he instantly fell in love with her as no man has ever fallen in love with a woman, either before or since. All the same, this might have been the end of it, for her young heart was not so easily won, inasmuch as she bristled at the very thought of being, as she saw it, sold into marriage. In fact, for two years, she had steadfastly refused the sweaty hands of dozens of young suitors who had come knock-knock-knocking at the door, and these men were considerably younger, wealthier, and more handsome than was my weather-worn, middle-aged, working-class father.

Fortunately, Mariyam’s father was of an entirely different mind, since he was, as I said, most anxious to get his headstrong daughter out of his house. What is more, even though Joachim was only about fifteen years older than my father, he discerned in him a wise and even-tempered spirit which might counterbalance his otherwise-indomitable daughter, and so the match was made, whether Mariyam agreed to it or not. But, as it turned out, this was not such a bad thing, for my father always took great care to treat my mother as though she were a queen, and so she truly had no grounds for her many petulant objections.

Now, back to the matter of the census. Because of the bad blood between my father and his own father, and by extension the rest of his family, my father felt that it would be altogether too much trouble for him to travel for about a week, all of the way from the peaceful little village of Parazah in Galilee where he lived with his new wife, back to his hateful ancestral home of Bethlehem in Judaea in order to register for something as silly as the Roman census, especially on foot or even with the aid of a donkey and cart, and then take another week to come back home again. In fact, a lesser man might have even lied to the census-taker, and claimed that he had been born in Parazah and been done with it. However, my father was not a lesser man, for he was, often to his regret, meticulously honest.

All the same, like most of the men of my father’s generation, he didn’t particularly want to register for the Roman census. He felt, as many did, that it was none of the Emperor’s business how many people were in his vast Empire, and the less that he knew about us, the better. On the other hand, failing to register for the census carried with it certain penalties, such as arrest and imprisonment, and taken to its extreme, the penalty of death for treason. But, to be perfectly honest, this last was very unlikely, since the Emperor, who was, all in all, a kindly and capable ruler and certainly the best of the lot who followed him, wanted the population of his subject nations to increase and not to decrease unless it was for reason of rebellion. After all, dead taxpayers pay no tax at all, and taxes are what keep a government going, feed the armies and allow for the building of the many roads to Rome. All the same, my father delayed registration for as long as he possibly could, which was until the local census-taker came rap-tap-tapping at the door.

Now, as it happened, the census was supposed to have been conducted no later than the Seventh Day of the Month of Tevet which is roughly the same as the Roman month of January. However, our winter holiday of Hanukkah is in the Month of Kislev, which is immediately before the Month of Tevet, and even though Hanukkah is not an especially expensive holiday, all the same, much olive oil must be bought for the frying of our customary treats, and at least twenty-one candles must be purchased for the lighting of the family menorah, and such things do not come cheap.

Moreover, the Day of the Shabbath Shekalim falls at the end of the Month of Shevat, which is immediately after Tevet, and it is on Shabbath Shekalim that my people must each give a half-shekel for the maintenance of our synagogues. And trust me, it is sometimes difficult, especially for poor folk, to dredge up a half-shekel for every family member who attends, and never more-so than when that half-shekel could be better used to feed their families or for kindling to keep out the winter chill.

Even worse, two weeks after Shabbath Shekalim is our joyous Festival of Lots, which is also called Purim. And then, after Purim, which is in the Month of Adar, is the very costly week-long holiday of Pesach, which is in the Month of Nissan. And this is a very important holiday, and much more important and expensive than Hanukkah, Shabbath Shekalim and Purim put together. This is because it is a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, for the Children of Abraham to descend upon Jerusalem like a great cloud of locusts in order to properly honor it there, if not for the entire week, then at least for the first day or two. And after Pesach is the somewhat less expensive holiday of Shavuoth, at which time, we are supposed to return to Jerusalem for yet another week of celebration, which my own family never did, because we simply could not afford it.

At any rate, because of the holidays of Hanukkah, Shabbath Shekalim, Purim, Pesach and Shavuoth, this time of year tends to be very costly, especially for those who struggle from day to day to make an honest living, which included my father, for never in his adult life was he a wealthy man. For this reason, it’s quite understandable that he didn’t wish to spend even more money, which he didn’t have, by taking an extra trip down to the District of Judaea in the Month of Tevet in order to register for anything as silly as the Roman census, especially since he was spiritually obligated to go there in Nissan.

And so it was that when the census-taker came knocking at the door on the Seventh Day of Tevet, my father explained to him that he, my father, had been born in the town of Bethlehem in Judaea and not in the village of Parazah in Galilee. He also explained that it would cost him a great deal in terms of time, money and trouble if he had to travel all of the way down the Old Hill Road to the District of Judaea twice in the same year, since going to Jerusalem to celebrate Pesach was, for him, a sacred obligation, and there was no way around it.

My father then asked the census-taker if he would possibly allow him to postpone registering for the Roman census for about four months, until Pesach, since Bethlehem was a mere half-day’s journey south of Jerusalem, since, in this way, he could take care of his civic duty and his spiritual obligation at the same time. And because my father had, by that time, lived in Parazah for ten years, and was known as a man who possessed great honor and integrity, the census-taker, who was, himself, a reasonable man for a pagan, agreed. And this whole conversation was witnessed by my very astounded mother, and I think that her respect for her new husband grew tenfold on that day.

Now, it happened that my mother was newly-pregnant when the conversation took place, and so she knew that my father would be in Bethlehem to register for the census when she would be in her fifth month, since the beginning of a woman’s pregnancy is reckoned from the quickening.

My mother also knew that it would take my father a week, if he did not travel on the Shabbath to go to Jerusalem, where he would be for at least a day, and then he would have to spend another day or two going to and from Bethlehem, and then it would take him another week to return to Parazah. In short, he would be gone from her for the better part of three weeks, that is, if he had not been slain by highwaymen along the way.

As a result of these concerns, when the time grew near for him to depart, my mother refused to let him to go alone, but insisted upon going on this long journey with him, even though she was not legally obliged to sign the census books herself. And who can know the reason for this? Perhaps she didn’t think that she would need the services of a midwife, since she was only four or five months along, but still did not wish to be alone. Or perhaps she wanted to go because she was a young and vibrant woman and Pesach in the Great City of God is a joyous celebration not to be missed. Or perhaps she knew that once she started having children, there would be no time for frivolity. At any rate, for whatever reason, which she didn’t care to divulge to me, she was most stubborn on the subject and there was nothing that my father could do to dissuade her. Besides, what man can resist the tears and entreaties of a beautiful young woman unless his heart is truly made of stone?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a fine education in accountancy for one to know that when two people go anywhere, the costs incurred by two are easily twice as much as the cost incurred by one. And this is especially true when the extra person requires such things as pickled eggs, fresh strawberries, goats’ cheese and very costly carob cakes, for it’s said that if an expectant mother isn’t allowed to indulge her cravings, then her child will be born with a very noticeable birthmark in the form of whatever it was that she craved but her tyrannical husband would not let her have. And so my father had to scrape together all of the money that he could, and then somehow double it, which was not the easiest thing for him to do, inasmuch as times were hard in Parazah, and nobody had much need for a carpenter, even one whom God had blessed with tremendous talent and a truly admirable work ethic.

And so it was that in the early morning of the Eleventh Day of Nissan, which was the First Day of the Shabbath, my father put ten silver half-shekels in his satchel, half of which he had borrowed from Manny the Pawnbroker, with my father’s newer tools put up as collateral. Then he packed up their provisions in several large parcels, put them and my mother in the back of their donkey-cart, grabbed his hawthorn walking-stick from his shop, and, in defiance of the local custom of unlocked doors, took care to lock tight the narrow door of their upstairs apartment and the wide double doors of his carpentry shop downstairs. Then the three of them, my mother, my father, and Hezzie the Donkey, left the peaceful little village of Parazah behind them on their long journey south.

CHAPTER THREE

In the Upper City

God was with them in their journey, for the weather, though dreary enough with cold Spring rains, was good enough for travel once they passed the hills and valleys that separate Lower Galilee from Samaria, and so they were able to make good time. They got as far as the village of Ginaea on the first night, and by the second night, they were in the newly-rebuilt City of Sebaste in Samaria. By the third night, they had gotten as far as the village of Gophna, but they were still in Samaria, for it is a very large and hilly district, indeed.

Now, it is the custom and the mitzvah of both the Jewish folk of the northern District of Galilee and those who live in the southern District of Judaea for us to obey the Sacred Law of Hospitality and open our homes to strangers, inasmuch as some folks have entertained angels unawares. And, whether one has entertained angels unawares or not, this fine tradition has saved many a traveler the costs normally incurred by obtaining food and lodging whilst one is on the road.

On the other hand, most of the Hill People of Samaria, which, as I said, is between the Districts of Galilee and Judaea, are, then as now, very rural folk of limited education and much less sophistication. They also tend to be, by and large, then as now, very leery of strangers, and so they are not particularly interested in offering to them the same high degree of hospitality as is usually offered to others by Galileans and Judaeans. And, more to the point, what hospitality that they do offer does not come cheap, since they tend to inflate the prices charged to those who pass through their district.

This lack of cordiality and resultant greed would have been acceptable to my parents if they had been willing to pitch a tent and camp on the side of the road at the various rest-stops along the way, for then they could have lodged for free. Alas, this was not to be, since it would have been very hard for my mother to get herself on and off of the cold hard ground, nor was she inclined to try. And so my parents were forced to spend all three nights at various inns, and this used up three half-shekels, since, as I said before, these inns tend to be very costly, especially for the easily-exploited pilgrims who travel on the Old Hill Road.

Finally, on their fourth day on the road, my parents found themselves in the District of Judaea, at which time they stopped in my mother’s hometown of Ramathai in order to spend the night in comfort at her childhood home. Unfortunately, the house was locked up tight, for my Grandmother Hannah and my Grandpa Joachim were still at their winter home on Lemnos, and my mother’s brother Joseph, about whom I shall tell you shortly, was not at home. And so my mother convinced my very weary, hungry, and grumbling middle-aged father to climb over the wall and open the gate while she tapped her dainty little foot outside. In this way, they were able to spend the night in my mother’s fancy former bedroom, and without having to spend any more of my father’s hard-earned cash.

The next day, which was the First Day of Pesach, my parents arrived in Jerusalem just in time for the opening ceremonies. And then, at mid-day, after the pomp of the processions and parades and such had passed, they went to the Upper City.

Now, it happens that the Upper City, which is on Mount Zion, was where all of the rich people stayed during the holidays, and this included my mother’s Aunt Elisheba, who was my Grandma Hannah’s older sister. For the better part of the year, she and her husband, Zechariah ben Abijah, lived in a grand villa in the exclusive gated community of Beth Mizzeh, or Emmaus as it is called by the Romans, which is about a half-day’s journey west of Jerusalem. During the holidays, however, Great-Aunt Elisheba and Great-Uncle Zechariah, who was a firstborn son of the House of Levi and a mid-level priest at the Holy Temple, preferred to stay in their townhouse in the Upper City so that he could be close to his work, since his sacred duties easily doubled at that time of year. And so my father left my mother in her aunt’s tender care whilst he grudgingly parted with yet another half-shekel in order to buy a lamb for the Pascal sacrifice.

According to my mother, who loved nothing more than to speak of family things whilst we were shelling peas, my Great-Aunt Elisheba spent a great deal of time showing off her very active baby son whom she had named Jochanan but whom she called by his Greek nickname Yanni as is the custom of the upper classes. He had been born in Bethlehem some six months before and he had, according to my mother, the biggest mouth, the largest bald head and the most forceful pair of lungs that she had ever seen or heard on an infant, and so my mother felt that her aunt had absolutely no grounds for her boasting.

As it happened, my mother’s infant cousin spent most of his time wrestling with his buxom Nabataean nursemaid Selah, for Great-Aunt Elisheba didn’t feel herself obliged to actually care for her only child, but had hired a nurse-maid to do it for her. On the other hand, this pawning-off was somewhat understandable because of my great-aunt’s great age for, even though she tried hard to pass herself off as a woman half her age, the cold hard fact was that Great-Aunt Elisheba was already fifty years-old when her first and only child was born. In that way, Cousin Yanni was considered a Miracle Baby by everyone in my Great-Aunt’s inner sanctum, for she was quite easily old enough to be not so much the mother of her young son, but his great-grandmother instead.

In spite of her great age, her pinched mouth and her wiry thinness which bordered on emaciation, Great-Aunt Elisheba still considered herself a good-looking woman and she firmly believed that everybody else thought so, too. This natural beauty she attributed to her daily massages with fine Egyptian and Persian perfumed unguents and oils, a plethora of excellent cosmetics, high-quality wigs made by the finest hair-stylists in Rome, the most fashionable attire, a personal trainer from Damascus, a diet that consisted of nothing but the finest imported fruits and vegetables, and biannual trips to take the waters down at the Spas of Cleopatra on the shores of the Sea of Salt. And all of these incredibly expensive things she heartily recommended to my mother, even though she must have known that my parents could not very well afford them. In return, my mother was getting more and more cross because she, in her turn, felt increasing poor, ugly and fat. And, as you might have guessed, my mother was not in the best of all possible moods in the first place, since she didn’t much relish being dumped with her aunt as though she were, herself, a mewling infant in need of babysitting.

What is more, according to my mother, my Great-Aunt Elisheba seemed to think that she was the only woman in the entire world who had ever birthed a baby. But how hard could it have been, my mother later snorted, since Great-Aunt Elisheba had been attended by no less than three doctors and two midwives, and had been given the finest child-birthing herbs and potions that money could buy? Besides, her aunt had been given in marriage to a priest from a wealthy and powerful family, which made her doubly blessed, for if they hadn’t gotten married, she would not have had access to a fine townhouse in the Upper City or a fine villa in Beth Mizzeh, or vineyards, orchards, biannual trips to the Sea of Salt or the two sets of household servants that such domestic arrangements require. Indeed, my mother fumed, many far less-privileged and far more worthy women have had to soldier on with less.

Even worse, according to my mother who got it straight from the rouged lips of her aged aunt, Cousin Yanni was not just a Miracle Baby, but he was truly the most extraordinary baby in the entire world. Each ear-piercing scream and gurgling coo that came out of his big fat mouth was the symphony of angels, each drip from his stubby little nose and every lick of spittle from his big fat lips was the nectar of the gods, and each and every infantile thing that he did only served to prove to his doting mother that he truly was a genius.

In fact, Great-Aunt Elisheba extolled the virtues of her infant son so much that you would have thought that he was born to be the truest Moshiach to ever walk the earth, even though, according to the prophets, the Moshiach is supposed to have been born of the twenty-eighth generation after King David, and her son was only of the twenty-seventh. Additionally, the Moshiach is supposed to be the son of a much younger woman and this, my aged great-aunt most definitely was not. Nonetheless, Great-Aunt Elisheba justified her belief by pointing out that if one considered that the life-spans of the patriarchs and the matriarchs usually ran deeply into several hundred years, then her span of a mere fifty years made her, in effect, a teenager. Consequently, in her mind, she was no older than her niece, which meant to her that her precious son was destined to be the Anointed One of God. As for that inconvenient little detail about the one true Moshiach being of the twenty-eighth generation? This she conveniently forgot.

Furthermore, as she explained it to my mother, even if, God forbid, Cousin Yanni were not destined to be the Savior of Israel from the moment of his birth, then at least he had a very promising future before him, because, in time, he would become a priest like his father. And once that happened, it was distinctly possible that he would be promoted to High Priest, which was a political appointment made by the King. And who knows what would happen after that? God willing, according to my mother’s aunt, he might even, in time, become the King Anointed by God, which would indeed make him the one true Moshiach and the Deliverer of the Promised Land!

Nor was this purely wishful thinking on her part. Even though her husband, my Great-Uncle Zechariah, was a mere mid-level priest, her son’s Av Sheni, which means Second Father in Hebrew, was none other than His Royal Highness, Prince Antipas, the tall and handsome fifth son of Herod the Great, King of Israel. And with credentials like that, how could the future of Great-Aunt Elisheba’s ugly, bald, big-mouthed, squirmy, puking little baby boy be anything less than perfect when he was grown? And all of this my Great-Aunt painstakingly explained over the course of several hours until my mother’s eyes and nerves were quite crossed from hearing it.

Fortunately, later that day, and to my mother’s everlasting relief, her big brother Joseph, whom we called Uncle Yossi, arrived at Great-Aunt Elisheba’s door in order to pay his respects. Now that their father, Joachim ben Itzak, had already retired to a nice quiet life spent on shore, Uncle Yossi tended to that part of his father’s import-export business that required extensive travel. He also ran, for a very modest fee, his own business of shipping the bones of those who had died in distant lands back to Israel so that they might be interred in their families’ bone boxes in the Great Necropolis outside the walls of Jerusalem. However, this combination of professions meant that he spent a great deal of time away from home.

Now, my Uncle Yossi, who was about ten years my mother’s senior, was a very refined, educated and brilliant young man who had graduated with honors from Plato’s Academy in Rome at a time when they had welcomed rich young Sadducees from the Provinces as a way of bolstering their coffers. And even though he had spent so much of his boyhood away at school and now traveled a great deal on business, he loved my mother very much, as she did him, for they were each other’s only siblings. For this reason, he always brought her dolls, books, combs, scarves, parasols and such from strange and exotic lands. And this time, too, was no exception, for he had brought her a nice little wooly toy sheep from the Misty Isles, and she passed it on to me.

In the evening after the services at the Holy Temple and the joyous singing and dancing in the streets, none of which my very irritated mother was allowed to see because of her delicate condition, my father and my Great-Uncle Zechariah returned to the townhouse in the Upper City in order to enjoy an exquisitely catered Seder with my mother and my Great-Aunt Elisheba. My Uncle Yossi, on the other hand, could barely tolerate his aunt and uncle, not even for his sister, and so had elected to take the Seder at the loft of his two former class-mates and friends, Jonathan Jon ben David, who was the Royal Pastry Chef, and his companion, Jonathan Nathan ben Israel, who was one of the Palace’s royal decorators. Because of their professions, Jon and Nathan were in the best position to know all of the most scandalous court gossip. Frankly, given a choice between dining with his gossipy friends and dining with my stuffy great-aunt and great-uncle, I think that my uncle made the right decision.

After the Seder at Great-Aunt Elisheba’s townhouse, and because of the wine and my mother’s delicate condition, my great-aunt and great-uncle insisted that my parents spend the night with them instead of at some dingy and dangerous roach-and-rat-infested low-rent inn down the hill in the slums of the Lower City, which was in fact the only lodging that my parents could now rightly afford. And why not, my great-aunt asked. After all, they had many warm and comfy guest rooms, and more than enough servants to attend their every need and whim.

Even so, as you can well imagine, this arrangement didn’t please my mother one little bit because, as she has often said, it is more blessed to be in a position to give to charity than it is to suffer the indignity of actually having to receive it like a common beggar. On the other hand, however sick she may have been of her aunt’s company, the very thought of spending another night in another filthy roach-and-rat-infested inn was more than she could bear, especially since her aunt had servants who could wait upon her every need and whim. And so my mother and my father were forced to spend one more night in the lap of luxury, just as they had spent the previous night in the comfort at my grandparents’ house in Ramathai. All the same, it was not quite as pleasant as they had hoped, for Cousin Yanni was up all night with colic in spite of Selah’s frantic efforts to appease him, my great-uncle’s rages and my great-aunt’s nervous fits of pique because of it.

CHAPTER FOUR

In Bethlehem

Early the following day, which was the Sixth Day of the Shabbath, and long before anyone else in Jerusalem was awake, my father lifted my mother back onto the bench of their tiny donkey-cart and they made their way quietly out of the Great City of God by way of the Zion Gate. They took the rough road south through the Hinnon Valley and headed down to the town of Bethlehem. The Hinnon Valley, by the way, is also called the Field of Blood, and it is a foul-smelling place indeed, for this is where the blood from the sacrifices at the Holy Temple is deposited along with the refuse of the city. Fortunately, my parents traveled along the western side of it, and so were upwind of the stench and swarms of biting flies.

As soon as they passed through the city gates into Bethlehem, and because he had already given his word, my father registered himself with the Roman census-taker in order to get the matter out of the way. After that, my mother, who had never been to the dusty little working-class town of Bethlehem before, insisted that they visit the Tomb of Rachel who had died there whilst giving birth and whose maternal spirit was said to intercede with God, especially when it came to having an easy childbirth. After this, my parents choked down a cheap supper of cheese, flat brown beer and stale flat bread, which used up yet another prutah, and then my father sought shelter for my mother who was by now completely exhausted from the trip.

Now, as I have already said, my father had been born and raised in Bethlehem and still had many kinsmen there. Because of this, you might think that he and his young, pretty, and very pregnant second wife would have been more than welcomed by one of them as a long-lost prodigal son might be welcomed into the bosom of his family after his many humbling trials and tribulations. You might even expect that this welcome would be even more warmly extended because it was both the Shabbath Eve and Pesach, and these are supposed to be times of warm and loving family gatherings, and, in my parents’ case, should have even more-so since she was pregnant with his first child.

Alas, in this assumption, you would be wrong, for my Grandfather Jacob had, ten years before, declared Kaddish upon his firstborn son and still hadn’t forgiven him for having left his influence and employ. What is more, my grandfather was a petty tyrant, and the biggest fish in the very small pond that was Bethlehem, and so it was not wise to antagonize him lest he took his revenge in various and sundry ways. Therefore, the door of each and every relative was shut tight and my parents were forced to seek another night’s shelter at yet another inn.

This, unfortunately, proved to be much harder for them to do in Bethlehem than it had been in the District of Samaria. Part of the reason was that everyone in town, from the shop-keepers to the innkeepers to the servants in the households, was afraid of Jacob ben Matthan, for his memory was long when it came to slights, both real and imagined. The other reason, though, was that, because of its close proximity to Jerusalem, Bethlehem was already crowded with an overflow of low-rent pilgrims who couldn’t afford a suite in one of the finer inns the Upper City, but who would have sooner died than rented a room in one of the seedy inns in the Lower City. Therefore, not one bed was to be had in the entire town, not even for the night.

And so it was that my parents were forced to take the only shelter that was left to