King Jesus

  Antipas once more urged John to reveal the whereabouts of the King. “I will write a letter to my brother Philip, if you will.” But John would only nod and say : “You will know in good time, you will know in good time.”

  Antipas threatened to put him to the torture, but John laughed in his face.

  Jesus meanwhile was making a slow progress northward through a district of Judaea that had suffered severely during the troubled reign of Archelaus and not since recovered its former modest prosperity. The villages were ruinous and miserably poor, and though he might have been well received had he travelled alone, thirteen mouths discouraged hospitality. The harvest was not yet ripe and stocks of corn were almost exhausted. Besides, all but Jesus and Judas were Galileans : the people of Galilee were despised in Judaea for their uncouth accents, their keenness in bargaining, their ill-temper and their obstinacy. At each village that they entered the elders of the synagogue excused themselves from feeding them, on the ground that the laws of hospitality compelled them to feed the wayfarer, but not a troop of wayfarers, and directed Jesus with a polite blessing to the next village. One elder quoted the Preacher, the Son of Sira : “Give a portion to seven men, or even to eight ; for you know not what evil may befall you”, and said sincerely : “Were you only seven men, or eight, I should gladly obey this injunction.” At Kirjath-Jearim, Jesus ordered his disciples to disperse in pairs and meet him again in three days’ time at Lebona, on the Samaritan border.

  Once or twice he preached by the way, but the people who listened were vacant-eyed and inattentive. He said to James and John, whom he had chosen to accompany him : “The vision that came to the prophet Ezekiel. Tell me : when in the Great Day of the Lord the letter Tav is marked in blood on the brows of the faithful to reserve them from the slaughter, how many will cry out : ‘I am a Judaean from the hills which stand between Jerusalem and the plain’ ?”

  James and John shook their heads gravely. Nevertheless, on that same day a poor man gave them a lapful of locust-beans for the love of God, and on the next day they had mouldy cheese and a little bread from a poor widow, and they did not lack for well-water.

  At Lebona they found the other disciples already assembled, and all of them together helped a rich farmer to cut and carry his harvest, and were well rewarded. Thence they passed through Samaria, where the peasants grudged them even water, and hurried forward to reach Galilee before the oncoming Sabbath prevented further travel. They came to En-Gannim late in the afternoon before the Sabbath, but the hospitality of the place had been exhausted by Passover pilgrims ; that night they nearly fainted for hunger.

  The next morning they entered the cornfields of a large estate. Philip and James the Less who walked ahead of the rest began plucking the ripe corn as they passed through and rubbing it between their hands to husk it. The estate-steward, on his way to the synagogue with two of his neighbours, caught them in the act. Husking corn was regarded by the Sages as a sort of threshing and a desecration of the Sabbath, and the steward therefore warned Jesus that he intended to make an example of the two offenders. “To what township do these wretches belong ?”

  “These two hungry men are of Capernaum.”

  “Very well,” said the steward ; “the charge will be referred to the elders of Capernaum. I myself will accompany you and your disciples there as witness. With Samaritans or Greeks or beggars I should not trouble myself, for I can ill afford to lose two days’ work at this season, but when two men clothed in garments of deception, and in company with eleven others, similarly clothed, thresh my master’s corn on a Sabbath day, conscience will not permit me to condone the crime. If justice is done they will be well beaten and their staffs broken across the beadle’s knee.”

  “We will come with you,” said the neighbours. “We also witnessed the offence.”

  That evening the estate-steward fed Jesus and his disciples well, saying : “Until you are found guilty you are innocent. I would not have my master’s house defamed by you as inhospitable. Eat, men, eat, until the tears flow !” But he was still stern in his resolution to bring them to justice.

  At Capernaum the synagogue elders thanked the steward for showing public spirit in bringing the case before them, and agreed that it seemed a most serious one. But Jesus demanded that the charge of breaking the Sabbath should not be preferred against Philip and James until he had himself been charged with inciting them to break it.

  His demand was granted, and presently Jesus stood as defendant in a court for the first time in his life. Yet it was soon clear who was, in fact, the judge and who were the accused.

  Jesus admitted that the two disciples had done what was charged against them, but pleaded necessity and quoted a precedent : “Have you not read what King David did at Nob when he was starving? He demanded from Ahimelech the priest—Abiathar’s father—the hallowed shew-bread laid up at the altar, and shared five loaves with his comrades.”

  “These men were not starving.”

  “Must a man die to prove that he is starving ?”

  “Nor are you King David.”

  “Nor did my disciples eat hallowed bread ; they only exercised their ancient pluck-right. If our accusers from En-Gannim had invited us into their houses, as was their duty, and set food before us, these men would not have done what they did. It is the duty of every householder to feed the hungry traveller ; if the Sabbath was broken, it was our accusers who broke it.”

  “Food was not wanting ; for it was afterwards set before us in shame,” Peter interposed. “But I know En-Gannim of old. On week-days they set an armed guard at the gate leading through the fields to deny pilgrims returning from the Passover the exercise of their pluck-right.”

  One of the judges said : “That is neither here nor there, Son of Jonah. That you might not eat corn on the day before the Sabbath, or on the day after, does not entitle you to break the Sabbath. You should have brought provisions with you !”

  Jesus answered for Peter : “So Ahimelech might well have told King David. But was man created for the Sabbath, or the Sabbath for man? Was it instituted as a day of refreshment and joy, or as a day of fasting and grief? And can a hungry man be joyful and refresh himself ?”

  The corn-factor whom Jesus had cured on his first visit to the synagogue sat among the judges. He said severely : “King David himself counselled us to put our trust in the Lord, testifying that he had never in all his life seen a righteous man forsaken or his children begging for bread. Those who keep the Law do not go hungry on the Sabbath.”

  “Do you say this in self-praise? Being one of the rich yourself, you shun the society of poor men because they do not keep the Law—though it is you yourselves who prevent them. Must a cattleman or labourer forfeit the blessing of God because, worked nearly to death, he is unable to pay all the ritual debts which you impose on him as necessary to salvation? Can he don and doff his praying robe thirty times a day to make long set prayers in unison with yours, and wash his hands a hundred times? You find delight in the Law, in voluntarily undertaking burdens never envisaged by Moses, and the Law is indeed for delight ; but what is delight for you is misery for the poor. You say : ‘This man is unclean ; let him not enter into our clean congregation.”

  “We are warned by the Sages to guard the Law from infringement by setting a fence about it.”

  “The Sages have said : ‘Set a fence about the Law and guard it well, but do not take up your station within the enclosure ; he who does so cannot watch behind his back. Rather, take up your station outside and you will see all.’ Yet you take up your station within the enclosure ; you turn the fence into a high wall and the enclosure into a private demesne, from which the poor are barred.”

  “Would you have us consort with eaters of unclean food ?”

  “It is not only what goes into a man that defiles him, but also what goes out of him. Even clean food is turned into uncleanness when the body voids the noisome residue. Though you feed on the sweet food of the Law—as it is written : ‘It
was in my mouth as honey for sweetness’—you void it again in evil thoughts, pride and foolishness.” With that Jesus pointed his finger at the corn-factor and spoke a parable of a demoniac who, when rid of the evil spirit that has driven him out into dangerous and filthy places, decides to return home ; finds his house swept and cleansed and then, lonely for company, invokes seven other evil spirits to share it with him.

  The aged President of the Synagogue asked : “Do you, a young man, set yourself up in authority against us Doctors who have grown white-headed in the study of the Law ?”

  “Let the prophet Jeremiah answer for a young man who must be silent when the old speak folly : ‘How say you : “We are wise and the Law of the Lord is with us”? For the false pen of the commentator leads you to falsehood.’ ”

  This ended the case, and the judges, after a brief conference, publicly reprimanded Jesus and his disciples for their action at En-Gannim but imposed no other punishment. Privately, they sent a message to Jesus’s elder brothers Jose, Judah and Simeon to the effect that, unless they could persuade him to return to his carpenter’s bench at Nazareth, the Herodian police would be requested to place him under restraint as a lunatic.

  Two days later the three brothers arrived in consternation at Capernaum, bringing Jesus’s mother with them. They learned that Jesus was preaching at a tax-gatherer’s house to a large crowd of his poorer and more disreputable followers. Jose, the eldest, sent a boy in with the message : “Your mother and brothers desire to see you outside at once.”

  Despite the Commandment, “Honour thy father and mother”, Jesus did not break off his discourse and go out to greet Mary, as other pious Jews in his position would have done : it was clear to him that the peremptory message came from his brothers rather than from her.

  He replied : “A prophet has no father, mother nor brothers, except his fellow-prophets. Moreover, Moses blessed the tribe of Levi in these words : ‘They preserved the commandment of the Merciful One and kept their covenant with him, when each one of them denied his mother and father, and had no regard for his brothers and children.’ Then let each one of you deny his father, his mother, his brothers and his children, if they would restrain him from serving God in love.”

  Jose reported this answer to the elders of the synagogue, and sighed : “Alas, what more can we do? Our brother has been impudent and shameless from his youth up. We wash our hands of him. Let him be handed over to the authorities, for it is written : ‘Whoever curses his father or mother, let him die the death.’ What our brother has said to his mother falls little short of cursing.”

  But Mary turned on Jose and asked : “Who cursed his mother? Not my loving son. Dare you say this, you who grudged him his rightful inheritance? Dare you say this of your brother Jesus who reconciled you to Judah and Simeon? Remember the matter of the broken harness and be silent for shame.” She turned to the elders : “As for honouring his mother, what could a son do more than he has done? He made over to me his house and all his goods before he went to the Essenes of Callirrhoë. Nor did he disobey my order ; for it was Jose’s order, not mine. As the Lord lives, I have no complaint against him.”

  The elders shook their heads at her pityingly, and said : “Alas, the mothers of Israel, the mothers of Israel! Always ready to forswear themselves to save the lives of worthless sons.” And whatever Mary might say to the contrary, it was generally agreed that Jesus had put her to public dishonour. When he left the tax-gatherer’s house he was waylaid in the street and upbraided by a synagogue elder.

  Jesus answered : “Peace, man! If I have offended my mother, bring her in witness against me and I will ask her forgiveness. But I know a man, and you know a man, who cried Corban and devoted an olive orchard to the Lord’s uses. Was this done in love of the Lord? Or was it to spite his father who wished to buy the orchard from him at a price which he reckoned too low ?”

  The elder turned pale and trembled for shame.

  Jesus was then informed in a letter signed by the presidents of the three Capernaum synagogues that by his love of uncleanness he had separated himself from the congregation, and that if he continued to preach in the town he would be reported to the Herodian police as a trouble-maker.

  He retired to Chorazin, and there preached more urgently than ever the approach of the Kingdom of God. His conception of this Kingdom was a practical return to the Golden Age, or near it ; and meanwhile he warned his disciples again and again not to think anxiously about food, clothing and money, which their God always provided for those that loved him. Let them rid themselves of all worldly encumbrances that might unfit them for the citizenship of the Kingdom ; as a jeweller might sell the whole contents of his shop for the chance of buying a single exquisite pearl.

  “Obey the Doctors of the Law,” he said, “but do not think that they can draw you to the Kingdom merely by their scrupulous recensions of the Law.”

  “Who then can draw us to the Kingdom?” Judas asked.

  “The birds, the fish, the snakes, the wild things. They never plot and scheme. One day of life to them is as a thousand. They glorify the Lord, as they are enjoined in Daniel’s Song of the Three Children, where the worship of the holy and humble-hearted is compared with theirs. Therefore Daniel called his three companions ‘Children’ : for the Kingdom of Heaven is for the childish-hearted and simple, the eaters of pulse, not for the worldly rich.”

  He enlarged on this by declaring that at Jerusalem the God of Israel was wrongfully worshipped as a proud and capricious despot ; his Temple courts were of marble and gold, his servants were haughty, jealous and greedy, and as Hillel had said : “More servants, more thefts.” The God of Israel was, in truth, the merciful father of countless sons and daughters, and his Kingdom could not come until the common people acknowledged him as their father and refused any longer to support the false pomp which money and the sword had created. This, Jesus explained, was not to counsel the abandonment of handicrafts or husbandry. Husbandry could not yet be relieved of the curse pronounced on Adam : “You shall eat bread in the sweat of your brow”, but it could be relieved of the curse of money-making. Let each village be self-supporting and let the villagers have in common all such things as ploughs, beasts, store-houses ; but let every man sit under his own fig-tree and drink from his own well, give of his superfluity to those who asked for it and take no money in return. And the rich man? If he would not work with the rest, he must starve among the gold-bags of his useless treasury.

  Thomas asked : “Can all this be accomplished easily ?”

  “I do not prophesy immediate peace ; I prophesy war. The sword will be drawn in defence of the present way of the world. But how can the sword prevail if the common people remember their God? By massacre the lords of this earth will defeat their own end : they will set their own house on fire—would it were already alight! For as the prophet Malachi writes : ‘The day of the Lord comes as a burning oven and shall consume all the wicked.’ The Pangs of the Messiah which are the prelude to the thousand years of peace must begin with these very wars and massacres.”

  Having thus prepared and educated his disciples in the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, he sent them out in pairs : one of each pair to preach, the other to heal. They were to carry his message of repentance and hope to those who needed it most—the beggars, the needy, the sick, the sinners—but were to visit only Israelite towns and villages, and attempt nothing in places where they were given no welcome. The mission was to be undertaken without money, food, wallet or spare garments, and every day at dawn they were to kneel down and pray for the speedy coming of the Kingdom, for the forgiveness of their sins, and for bread sufficient for the oncoming day.

  James the Less complained : “Alas, that we are not better instructed in the Law.”

  “Whoever has the will to obey the Law shall know it.”

  He gave them authority to heal the sick in these words : Trust in the Lord : he will save.” So saying, they were to anoint with oil the affected limbs or other
parts of the body : using olive oil, which as anointed prophets they had themselves blessed. He advised them to combine the simplicity of doves with the cunning of serpents, but charged them strictly : “If anyone asks you by whose authority you do what you do, make no evasions. Do not cast down your eyes, shuffle with your feet, and mumble at last : ‘Jesus of Nazareth sent us out’, but answer boldly : ‘We do these things by authority of the Lord God of Israel—blessed be his name—whose prophets we are.’ For a good shepherd has pride in his King.”

  Jesus then visited Samaria alone, and is known to have attended a meeting of Samaritan priests on Mount Gerizim—he had convened the meeting on his passage through the province, just before the Passover, by a word of power spoken at the well of Sychar to their Dove-priestess—but no record survives of the transactions. Before he returned to Chorazin, where he had agreed to meet his disciples again, the grievous news reached him that John the Baptist was dead. Antipas had beheaded him at the request of Herodias and their daughter Salome.

  Jesus mourned thirty days for John, and when his disciples met him at Chorazin he was emaciated and hollow-eyed. They themselves were in good heart and reported that the healing had been successful, the preaching had taken root. They brought crowds of converts with them, all eager to see the master of such disciples. With them, too, came the disciples of John, asking : “Are you the Great One whom our master prophesied, or should we look for another? We have heard marvellous accounts of your feats of healing : how the lame walk, the blind see, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear.”

  “Who sent you to me ?”

  “Simon of Gitta, John’s deputy.”

  Jesus knew the man, the son of an apostate Zadokite who had been one of the Lady Livia’s chief agents in Syria. Simon was zealous, eloquent and courageous, but interested in power rather than in virtue. He had adopted circumcision in order to marry into a High-Priestly family ; but when his father was suddenly disgraced and lost all his money, he was in no position to implement the marriage contract, and the girl was married to someone else. Simon fell into a revengeful despair, and after various adventures in the service of an Arabian caravan-master became a disciple of John, from whom he hoped to learn the secret of prophetic power. Now that John was gone, he hoped to attach himself to Jesus, for whom John had obscurely expressed his veneration, and learn from him what John could not teach.