The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

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EIGHT MONTHS HAD PASSED SINCE THAT HAPPY DAY WHEN Joseph arrived in Nazareth with his family safe and sound despite many dangers, the donkey less so, for it was limping slightly on its right hoof, when the news came that King Herod had died in Jericho, in one of his palaces where he took refuge to escape the rigors of the Jerusalem winter, which spares neither the weak nor the infirm. There were also rumors that the kingdom, now robbed of its mighty monarch, would be divided among three of his sons who had survived the feuding and destruction, namely, Herod Philip, who would govern the territories lying east of Galilee, Herod Antipas, who would inherit Galilee and Peraea, and Archelaus, who would rule Judaea, Samaria, and Idumaea. One day a passing muleteer with a flair for narrating tales both real and fictitious will give the people of Nazareth a graphic description of Herod's funeral, which he will swear he witnessed. The body, placed in a magnificent sarcophagus made of the purest gold and inlaid with precious stones, was transported on a gilded carriage draped with purple cloth and drawn by two white oxen. The body was also covered with a purple cloth, all that could be seen was a human shape with a crown resting where the head was. Behind followed musicians playing flutes and the professional mourners, who could not avoid the overpowering stink, and as I stood there at the roadside even I felt queasy, then came the king's guards on horseback, then foot soldiers armed with lances, swords, and daggers as if marching to war, an endless procession wending its awesome way like a serpent with no head or tail in sight. In horror I watched those soldiers marching behind a corpse but also to their own death, to that death which sooner or later knocks on every door. Time to leave, promptly comes the order to kings and vassals alike, making no distinction between the rotting body at the head of the procession and those in the rear choking on the dust of an entire army, they are still alive but heading for a place where they will remain forever. Clearly this muleteer would be more at home as an Aristotelian scholar strolling beneath the Corinthian capitals of some academy rather than prodding donkeys along the roads of Israel, sleeping in smelly caravansaries, and narrating tales to rustics such as these of Nazareth.

Among the crowd in the square in front of the synagogue was Joseph, who happened to be passing and had stopped to listen. He did not pay much attention to the descriptive details of the funeral procession, and lost interest when the poet began to strike an elegiac note, for grim experience had made the carpenter wise about that particular chord on the harp. One had only to look at him, his composure when he concealed his youth by becoming solemn and thoughtful, the bitterness that marked him with lines deeper than scars. But what is really disturbing about Joseph's face are the eyes, which are dull and expressionless except for a tiny flicker caused by insomnia. It is true that Joseph gets little sleep. Sleep is the enemy he confronts each night, as if fighting for his very life, and it is a battle he invariably loses, for even when he seems to be winning and falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, he no sooner closes his eyes than he sees a detachment of soldiers appearing on the road, with Joseph himself riding in their midst, sometimes brandishing a sword above his head, and it is just at that moment, when terror overwhelms him, that the leader of the expedition asks, Where do you think you're going, carpenter. And the poor man, who would rather not say, resists with all his might, but the malignant spirits in the dream are too strong for him, and they prise open his mouth with hands of steel, reducing him to tears and despair as he confesses, I'm on my way to Bethlehem to kill my son. We won't ask Joseph if he remembers how many oxen pulled the carriage bearing Herod's corpse or whether they were white or dappled. As he heads for home, all he can think of are the closing phrases of the muleteer's tale, when the man described the multitude accompanying the procession, slaves, soldiers, royal guards, professional mourners, musicians, governors, princes, future kings, and all the rest of us, whoever we might be, doing nothing else in life but searching for the place where we will stay forever. If only it were so, mused Joseph, with the bitterness of one who has given up all hope. If only it were so, he repeated to himself, thinking of all those who never left their place of birth yet death went there to find them, which only proves that fate is the only real certainty. It is so easy, dear God, we need only wait for everything in life to be fulfilled to say, It was fate. Herod was fated to die in Jericho and be borne on a carriage to the fortress of Herodium, but death exempted the infants of Bethlehem from having to travel anywhere. And Joseph's journey, which in the beginning seemed part of some divine plan to save those holy innocents, turned out to be futile. The carpenter listened and said nothing, he ran off to rescue his own child, leaving the others to their fate. So now we know why Joseph cannot sleep, and when he does, it is only to awaken to a reality that will not allow him to forget his dream, even when awake he dreams the same dream night after night, and when asleep, though trying desperately to avoid it, he knows he will encounter that dream again, for it hovers on the threshold between sleep and waking and he must pass it when he enters and when he leaves. This confusion is best defined as remorse. Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.

Mary is pregnant again. No angel disguised as a beggar came knocking at the door this time to announce the child's arrival, no sudden gust of wind swept the heights of Nazareth, no luminous earth was discovered in the ground. Mary told Joseph in the simplest words, I'm with child. She did not say to him, for example, Look into my eyes and see how our second child is shining there, nor did he reply this time, Don't think I hadn't noticed, I was waiting for you to tell me. He just listened, remained silent, and eventually said, Is that so, and carried on planing a piece of wood with apparent indifference, but, then, we know that his thoughts are elsewhere. Mary also knows, since that night of torment when her husband blurted out the secret he had kept to himself, and she was not altogether surprised, she had been expecting something like this after the angel told her in the cave, You will have a thousand cries all around you. A good wife would have said to her husband, Don't fret, what's done is done, and besides, your first duty was to rescue your own child. But Mary has changed and is no longer what one would normally refer to as a good wife, perhaps because she heard the angel utter those grave words that excluded no one, I am not an angel who grants pardons. Had she been allowed to discuss these deep matters with Joseph, who was so well versed in Holy Scripture, he might have pondered the nature of this angel who appeared from nowhere to announce that he did not grant pardons, a statement which seems superfluous, since everyone knows that the power to pardon belongs to God alone. For an angel to say that he does not grant pardons is either meaningless or much too meaningful. An angel of judgment, perhaps, might exclaim, You expect me to forgive you, what a silly idea, I did not come to forgive, I came only to punish. But angels, by definition, leaving aside those cherubim with flaming swords who were posted by the Lord to guard the path to the tree of life lest our first parents or we, their descendants, try to return to steal the fruits, angels, as we were saying, are not vigilantes entrusted with the corrupt albeit socially necessary enforcement of repression. Angels exist to make our lives easier, they protect us when we are about to fall down a well, help us cross the bridge over the precipice, pull us to safety just as we are about to be crushed by a runaway chariot or a car without brakes. An angel worthy of the name could have spared Joseph all this torment simply by appearing in a dream to the fathers of the children of Bethlehem to warn them, Gather your wife and child and flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you to return, for Herod means to slaughter your child. In this way the children could have all been saved, Jesus hidden in the cave with his parents and the others on their way to Egypt, where they would remain until the same angel returned to tell the fathers, Arise, gather your wife and child and return to Israel, for he who tried to kill your children is dead. Thus the children would return to the places where they came from and where eventually they would meet their deaths at the appointed hour, because angels, however powerful, have their limitations, just like God. After much thought, Joseph might have reached the conclusion that the angel who appeared in the cave was an infernal creature, an agent of Satan disguised this time as a shepherd, and further proof of the weakness and gullibility of women, who can be led astray by a fallen angel. If Mary could speak, if she were less secretive and revealed the details of that strange annunciation, things would be different, Joseph would use other arguments to support his theory, most important, the fact that this so-called angel did not proclaim, I am an angel of the Lord, or, I come in the name of the Lord. He simply said, I am an angel, before adding cautiously, Keep this to yourself, as if afraid for anyone else to know. Some may argue that such details contribute nothing new to our understanding of what is an all-too-familiar story, but as far as this narrator is concerned, it is crucial to know, when interpreting past and future events, whether the angel came from heaven or from hell. Between angels of light and angels of darkness there are differences not just of form but also of essence, substance, and content, and while it is true that whoever created the former also created the latter, He subsequently attempted to correct His mistake.

Mary, like Joseph, but for different reasons, often looks distracted, her expression becomes blank, her hands drop in the middle of some task, her gestures are suddenly interrupted, she stares into the distance, not so surprising for a woman in her condition, were it not for the various thoughts that occupy her mind and that can be summed up in the following question, Why did the angel announce the birth of Jesus yet say nothing of this second child. Mary looks at her firstborn crawling on all fours as children do at that age, she studies him and tries to perceive a special trait, some mark or sign, a star on his forehead, a sixth finger on his hand, but she sees a child like any other, who slobbers, gets dirty, and cries, the only difference being that he is her son. His hair is black like that of his parents, his irises are already losing that whitish tinge inaccurately called milky and assuming their natural, inherited color, a dark brown which gradually turns a somber green if one can so describe a color, but these features are hardly unique, important only when the child belongs to us, or, as in this case, to Mary. Within weeks he will be making his first attempts to stand up and walk, he will fall on his hands countless times, stay there staring, lifting his head with some difficulty as he hears his mother say, Come here, come here, my child. And he will begin to feel the urge to speak, sounds will form in his throat, at first he will not know what to do with them, he will get them mixed up with sounds he already knows and makes, such as gurgling and crying, until he begins to realize that they must be articulated in a different and more deliberate way, and he will move his lips as his father and mother do, until he succeeds in pronouncing his first word, perhaps da or dada or daddy, or perhaps even mummy, in any case after that little Jesus will not have to poke the forefinger of his right hand into the palm of his left hand if his mother and her neighbors ask him for the hundredth time, Where does the hen lay her egg. This is just another of those indignities to which a human being is subjected, trained like a lapdog to respond to certain sounds, a tone of voice, a whistle, or the crack of a whip. Now Jesus is able to answer that the hen can lay her egg wherever she wishes so long as she does not lay it in the palm of his hand. Mary looks at her little son, sighs, downhearted that the angel is not likely to return. You will not see me again for a while, he told her, but if he were to appear now, she would not be as intimidated as before, she would ply the angel with questions until he gave her an answer. Already a mother and expecting her second child, Mary is no innocent lamb, she has learned, to her cost, what suffering, danger, and worry mean, with all that experience on her side she can easily tip the scales to her advantage. It would not be enough for the angel to reply, May the Lord never allow you to see your child as you see me now, with nowhere to lay my head. First, the angel would have to identify this Lord in whose name he claimed to speak, secondly, convince her that he told the truth when he said he had no place to lay his head, which seemed unlikely for an angel unless he meant it only in his role as beggar, thirdly, what future did those dark, threatening words augur for her son, and finally, what was the mystery surrounding that luminous earth buried near the door, where a strange plant had grown after their return from Bethlehem, nothing but stalk and leaves, which they had given up pruning after trying to pull it up by the roots, only to have it reappear with even greater vigor. Two of the elders of the synagogue, Zacchaeus and Dothan, came to inspect the phenomenon, and although they knew little about botany, they were in agreement that the seed must have been in the mysterious soil and then sprouted at the right moment, for as Zacchaeus observed, Such is the law of the Lord of life. Once she became accustomed to this stubborn plant, Mary decided it added a festive touch at the entrance to the house, while Joseph, still suspicious, moved his carpenter's bench to another part of the yard rather than have to look at the thing. He cut it back with an ax and saw, poured boiling water over it, even scattered burning coals around the stalk, but superstition prevented him from taking a spade and digging up the bowl of luminous earth that had been the cause of so much trouble. This was how matters stood when their second child, whom they named James, was born.

Over the next few years there were not many changes in the family, apart from the arrival of more children, including two daughters, while the parents lost the last vestiges of youth. In the case of Mary that was not surprising, for we know how childbearing, and she had borne many children, gradually saps whatever freshness and beauty a woman possesses, causing her face and body to age and wither, suffice it to say that after James came Lisa, after Lisa came Joseph, after Joseph came Judas, after Judas came Simon, then Lydia, then Justus, then Samuel, and if any more followed, they perished without trace. Children are the pride and joy of their parents, as the saying goes, and Mary did her utmost to appear contented, but after carrying for months on end all those fruits that greedily consumed her strength, she often felt impatient, resentful, but in those days it would never have occurred to her to blame Joseph, let alone Almighty God who governs the life and death of His creatures and assures us that the very hairs of our heads are counted. Joseph had little understanding of the begetting of children, apart from the practical rudiments, which reduce all enigmas to one simple fact, namely, that if a man and woman come together, he will likely impregnate her, and after nine months, or on rare occasions after seven, a child is born. Released into the female womb, the male seed, minute and invisible, transmits the new being chosen by God to continue populating the world He has created. Sometimes, however, this fails to happen, and the fact that the transmission of seed into womb is not always sufficient to create a child is further evidence of the impenetrability of God's design. Allowing the seed to spill onto the ground, as did the unfortunate Onan, whom the Lord punished with death for refusing in this way to give his brother's widow children, rules out any possibility of the woman's becoming pregnant. On the other hand, time and time again, as someone once said, the pitcher goes to the fountain until there is no more water and it comes back empty. For it was clearly God who put Isaac into the little seed that Abraham was still able to produce, and God who poured it into Sarah's womb, because she was past conceiving children. Looking at things from a theogenetic angle, as it were, we may conclude without offending logic, which must preside over everything in this and every other world, that it was God Himself who spurred Joseph to keep having intercourse with Mary, so that they might have lots of children, helping Him assuage the remorse that plagued Him ever since He permitted, or willed, without considering the consequences, the massacre of those innocent children of Bethlehem. But the strangest thing of all, and which goes to show that the ways of the Lord are not only inscrutable but also disconcerting, is that Joseph truly believed he was acting of his own accord and obeying God's will, as he made strenuous efforts to beget more and more children, to compensate for all those killed by Herod's soldiers, so that the numbers would tally in the next census. God's remorse and Joseph's were one and the same, and, if people in those days were already familiar with the expression God never sleeps, we now know that the reason He never sleeps is that He made a mistake which no man would be forgiven. With every child begotten by Joseph, God raised His head a little higher, but He will never raise it fully, because twenty-seven infants were massacred in Bethlehem, and Joseph did not live long enough to impregnate one woman with that many children, and Mary, worn out in body and soul, could never have withstood that many pregnancies. The carpenter's house and yard, though full of children, might as well have been empty.

On reaching the age of five, Joseph's son started going to school. Each morning his mother took him to the synagogue and left him in the charge of the steward who taught beginners, and it was there in the synagogue-and-classroom that Jesus and the other little boys of Nazareth under the age of ten observed the wise man's precept, The child must be instructed in the Torah just as the ox is bred in the corral. The lesson ended at the sixth hour, which we now refer to as midday. Mary would be waiting for her child, and the poor woman was not allowed to ask him what he was learning, even this simple right was. denied her, for as the wise man's maxim categorically states, Better that the law go up in flames than it be entrusted to women. Besides, if by any chance little Jesus had already been taught the true status of women in this world, including mothers, he might have given her the wrong answer, the kind of answer that reduces one to insignificance. Take Herod, for example, with all his wealth and power, yet if we were to see him now, we would not even be able to say, He is dead and rotting, because he is nothing but mold, dust, bones, and filthy rags. When Jesus arrived home, his father asked him, What did you learn today, and Jesus, having been blessed with an excellent memory, repeated word for word and without a moment's hesitation the lessons of the day. First the children were taught the letters of the alphabet, then the most important words, and finally whole sentences and passages from the Torah, which Joseph accompanied, beating out the rhythm with his right hand and slowly nodding his head. Standing aside, Mary looked on and learned things she was forbidden to ask, a clever stratagem on the part of women and practiced to perfection throughout the ages. Listening, they soon learn everything, even the difference between falsehood and truth, which is the height of wisdom. But what Mary did not understand, or understand completely, was the mysterious bond between her husband and Jesus, although even a stranger would have noticed the look of wistful tenderness on Joseph's face when he spoke to his firstborn, as if he was thinking to himself, This beloved son of mine is my sorrow. All Mary knew was that Joseph's nightmares, like a scourge on his soul, refused to go away, and were now so frequent that they became as much a habit as sleeping on the right side or waking up with thirst in the middle of the night. Mary, as a good and dutiful wife, still worried about her husband, but for her the most important thing of all was to see her son alive and well, a sign that Joseph's crime had not been too serious, otherwise the Lord would have punished him without mercy, as was His wont. Take Job, broken and leprous, yet he had always been an honest, upright, and God-fearing man. Job's misfortune was that he became involuntarily the cause of a dispute between Satan and God Himself, each clinging tenaciously to his own idea and prerogative. And yet they are surprised when a man despairs and cries out, Perish the day I was born and the night in which I was conceived, let that day turn to darkness and be erased from the calendar and that night become sterile and void of all happiness. It is true that God compensated Job by repaying him twice as much as He had taken, but what of all those other men, in whose name no book was ever written, men deprived of everything and given nothing in return, to whom everything was promised and nothing fulfilled.

But in this carpenter's house life was peaceful, and however frugal their existence, there was always bread on the table and enough food to keep body and soul together. As for possessions, the only thing Joseph had in common with Job was the number of sons. Job had seven sons and three daughters, while Joseph had seven sons and two daughters, giving the carpenter the merit of having put one woman less into the world. However, before God doubled his possessions, Job already owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yokes of oxen, and five hundred donkeys, not to mention slaves, of which he had many, whereas Joseph has only his donkey and nothing else. And there's no denying that it is one thing to feed two mouths, then a third, even if only indirectly during the first year, and quite another to find yourself saddled with a houseful of children who need more and more food when they start growing. Since Joseph's earnings were not enough to allow him to hire an apprentice, it was only natural that he make his children work. Besides, this was his fatherly duty, for as the Talmud says, Just as a man must feed his children, he must also teach them to work, otherwise he turns his sons into good-for-nothings. And recalling the precept of the rabbis that the artisan must never think himself inferior to the greatest scholar, we can imagine how proudly Joseph began instructing his older sons one after another as they came of age, first Jesus, then James, then Joseph, then Judas, in the secret skills of the carpenter's trade, ever mindful of the ancient proverb, A child's service is little, yet he is no little fool that despises it. When Joseph returned to work after the midday meal, his sons lent him a hand, a good example of domestic economy and a way to establish a whole dynasty of carpenters for future generations, if God in His wisdom had not decreed otherwise.