The Gospel According to the Son

7

Let it be understood that I was not unprepared to speak to the priests of the Great Temple. Like other children, I had started school before the age of five, and in our small synagogue we studied every day until nightfall. By the age of eight, I could even read the language of the old Israelites, and I knew the Commandments, which came down from Moses, and the laws derived from the Commandments. Since each law gave birth to ten laws, and each of these to another ten, there were now ten hundred laws concerning prayer and diet and the rules of sacrifice on the altar. And we also studied Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and the book of Deuteronomy.

We read the prophecies of Elijah, and of Elisha and Ezekiel and Isaiah, and much of what was not in our few scrolls was remembered by our elders and teachers, who passed it on to us.

Yet on our return to Nazareth following our visit to the Great Temple in my twelfth year, I decided that if I had been given wisdom enough to speak to the wise men, that must have come from the spirits of those infants who were killed because of my birth.

An even greater weight was upon me. That was Joseph's story concerning my true father. I could hardly see myself as the Son. After school, on days when we would scuffle with each other, I would lose such fights as often as I won. How, then, could I be the Son of the Lord? And this doubt left me in fear of His wrath. For I remembered that the Lord had said to Moses, "Behold, these people will forsake Me and break My covenant and then shall My anger be kindled against them. They shall be burnt with hunger and devoured with burning heat . . ." And indeed the Lord's wrath may have been upon me as a result of having such thoughts. The great fever burned in my flesh soon after. In my twelfth year, I was all but devoured by that fever.

When I recovered, I had lost all memory of what Joseph had told me and was again like others, and even a young man, for now I was thirteen. I began my labors as an apprentice in Joseph's shop and spent seven years as a simple apprentice and seven again as a full apprentice before I became a young master.

The first seven years were spent in learning how to make mud-bricks for walls and put up framing for roofs and doors and windows. And I also acquired the skill to build beds and tables, stools and cabinets, boxes of all sizes, and plows and yokes for oxen. In my second apprenticeship I worked, however, in Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, an hour on foot from Nazareth. There I learned more of my craft by working in fine houses, and Joseph taught us much, for he knew many arts.

Here too lived Herod Antipas, the son of Herod, and this Herod Antipas had become king of Galilee, Idumea, and Judea. When I would watch him pass in procession, I did not know why my blood raced like a steed and I was ready to bolt. My heart was speaking to me even if my mind was not; I had no sense of why I should feel such fear at the sight of King Herod Antipas taking his royal passage through the avenues of Sepphoris. All I knew was that I seemed to have no greater wish afterward than to propitiate all bad feelings (and good ones) by working with care. My life was devoted to the practice of carpentry.