Chapter 1 - The Temple

Foreword

This book was written 2000 years ago by Jesus of Nazareth. One fine day, a red cardboard folder landed on our editorial desk containing a manuscript written in Greek, with a word here and there in Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic. The whole thing consisted of well-preserved papyrus sheets. Accompanying the ancient life story in the folder were low-level documents from a citizen of the Russian Federation (including a certificate accompanying the medal "for the liberation of Palmyra," newspaper clippings, two photographs, and a death certificate issued by the population register of the Kuzhminki district of the city of Moscow. Judging from these documents, the finder of the manuscript had served in the Russian army, had been in Syria during the recent military campaign, and had discovered a copper case containing papyrus somewhere in Damascus, in a house wall torn by a grenade explosion. After his return, the man had worked for the Moscow rescue services. He perished putting out a fire, a fact confirmed by an obituary clipped from the newspaper The Savior. We thank the staff of the Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who translated the text into Russian. The manuscript has been given exceptional preservation. Laboratory research has shown that the time of its creation coincides with the date indicated by the author.

Chapter 1 - The Temple

I was born in a cemetery just outside Bethlehem. My father and mother came from Nazareth to participate in the census taken by Quirinius, who ruled Syria. They could not find a place in the recess, and I went into the world in a cave next to the tomb of Rachel, the youngest wife of the patriarch Jacob. My mother was a strong, healthy woman. The very next day, she was able to leave the cave to go to Bethlehem, where, in the town hall, we were added to the list of inhabitants of the Roman province. My name was inscribed on the white Nile papyrus - Jesus, son of Joseph.

It is said that in those days, between the planets Shabtai and Maadim in the constellation Serpent-bearer, a new wandering star appeared with an unusual fierceness that faded as I sucked in the breast milk more and more voraciously.

It was in the 42nd year of the August government.

My parents returned to Nazareth, and for 13 years, nothing remarkable happened to me. I helped herd goats and learned reading, writing, and philosophy from the old Helleen Nikandros.

I first saw Jerusalem on the Feast of Passover. I was with my parents then. My father, Joseph, was already very old, even though he was still working as a carpenter. My mother and I went on foot while he sat on a young donkey that often stopped to beam, with its head in the air, as if to tell the world of something important. Father would then get angry and kick him in his flanks with his heels while the pilgrims walked around us on either side. Joseph had the land: the night before, he had returned from Sepphoris, where he had made crosses with other craftsmen for the death sentence of rioters, and the Centurion in charge of the work had paid him less than promised.

I have little memory of Jerusalem, but I was struck by the Temple. From afar, it is like a snow mountain with a peak of gold because it is built of white stone, while the roof is covered with pure gold leaf. Pilgrims stop their horses on the hill, donkey or camel, wagon or cart, and the slaves with their palanquin around it. Against the naked mountain peaks in the distance, its immense size and, at the same time, weightlessness make it seem like it is floating above the city.

In the Temple grounds, work goes on uninterrupted, year after year: servants carry firewood to the furnaces, other servants carry dishes with oil, which other servants fry with gritter goods and aromatic spice mixtures. On a vast brass altar, meat roasts, incense wafts, and blue fumes hang. Seated under the marble pillars of the gallery, scribes and Pharisees argue with Sadducees to master the most precise interpretation of the law. Several pilgrims sit on a straw mat in a quiet corner, some carrying a slaughtered bull. At the same time, Levites converse in hushed tones with high-minded people and each other to make crucial decisions and perhaps decide the fate of the Kingdom of Israel. An eternal flame crackles in the wood fire on the altar, and the chanting of prayers mingles with the shouts of merchants, with trumpets blaring and the roar of animals being slaughtered. If that sanctified work suddenly ceases, what will happen to our people? What will become of me when the TempleTemple is no longer there? Will I die then?

So I thought as I studied the mosaics on the walls in the narthex. The holy of holies was hidden behind curtains of cherubs and flowers. It was as if behind them was the center of the firmament that all that was as inexplicable, hidden, hungered as it was mighty and beautiful was concentrated there. This was emphasized by the precious gems on the robes of the clergy, the golden censers and cups, the silver vessels as much as seven cubits high, so smoothly polished that the day's fires of the menorah were reflected in them, whose oil lamps were filled with olive oil from the holy court.

Father and Mother brought their offerings and rested with an acquaintance named Theodosius, a dealer in tableware and dyes for fabrics. They allowed me to stay in the Temple until evening, but I had to go to Thegoius' house afterward. The plan was to spend the night with him and return to Nazareth with a large group of fellow townspeople the next day.

I sat among other children in one of the rooms of the TempleTemple and waited for a clergyman, a law scholar, to come and talk to us. While waiting for him, we were treated to a pitcher of grape juice and a basket of figs.

I knew the sacred lore even then, thanks to my good memory, which enabled me to remember something I had once read or heard once and for all.

That day, for the first time in my life, I experienced intense anger. Like everyone else, my parents also had to pay sacred taxes in silver Tyrian staters because, in the opinion of the treasurers of the TempleTemple, these coins were not unclean because they did not have an image of pagan Gods or the heads of Roman emperors on them.

In niches stood tall jugs into which pilgrims threw coins under the watchful eye of Levites. When those jugs were complete, a guard carried them to the underground room under the TempleTemple. In the square in front of the entrance, in addition to the traders of sacrificial animals, some men exchanged unclean coins from the pilgrims for staters, keeping a small percentage for themselves. And the exchanger had cheated us, giving us back a dinar less than he should have done for our three-drachms pieces. I figured it out immediately because, in my mind, I had added everything up. Still, Mother refused to demand back what she was shot from the exchanger. Her eyes twinkled at me, and she said such was little godliness since today was a big holiday... As always, Father did not dare to contradict her, but I boiled internally and wanted to overturn the table of that damned changeling and demand justice....

Too bad, not everyone understands that it is not God who needs our piety but that it is men who teach us to hate the emperor and his head on the coins.

That year, I became the son of chastisement,

and by now understood that a law, even the most righteous, cannot accomplish itself because God is helpless without the people who are his instruments.

But whose son was I? Shortly before we left for Jerusalem, a neighbor told me Joseph was not my father.

At first, I didn't believe it.

It was painful to think that my mother had obtained me criminally. I didn't dare talk to her about it to find out the truth. Hot-tempered and bossy as she was, she considered me a misfit anyway, on whom there was a stitch loose, and constantly suspected me of things. She had grown up under the smoke of the Temple and was naturally proud of that. One time, she said I was too savvy to love me. An intelligent person sees the shortcomings of those around him, even those closest to him.

I wanted to talk to the cleric about that. Indeed, a clergyman should be wise enough to instill a quiet confidence... But of what? What can we be sure of at all?

Soon, the clergyman showed up. We sat on the floor, on pieces of felt, and he stood before us. We asked questions, and he answered. He repeated the commandments that I knew just as well. Cited this or that place from the Torah. And I asked him what God had to do with such a large Temple; after all, his love for us could not depend on the width and height of a structure, could it? The spiritual answers that people from all ends of the earth flocked to the TempleTemple to appear as one generation before God; therefore, the Temple was a large, spacious house for a great and wealthy generation. His answers disappointed me because it followed that the Temple was built by and for people. So what was God doing here?

Then, the spiritual began about the messiah, the last prophet who would come to deliver Israel forever. I burst out laughing, and the other children stared at me in amazement. "Then where did he come from?" I asked. 'From the box of law scrolls?'

'To argue about that, you must first study the Holy Scriptures properly,' the cleric replied.

'And why has the Messiah still not come? What is he waiting for? I asked without understanding.

'Boy, we are not yet worthy to experience Him because our faith is still weak.'

'So it's not about holy scripture, it's about faith?' I continued curiously. 'So what matters is faith, so all the rest is just words?'

'The prophet Moses received from the Lord God the Tablets of the Law,' the clergyman patiently explained, but I noticed he was getting cranky. 'Also, the prophet Isaiah was animated by the Lord God Himself. Is it no wonder that we can read what he told us? The Messiah is coming, and all nations will turn their swords into plowshares! Wars will end, and peace and prosperity will break forth... The wisdom of all the prophets is collected in the Scriptures. They are not just scrolls of text; they are a gift whose rejection is foolish and shameless. Do you understand, boy?

Then I asked another question, to which you could only give a direct answer, without being able to hide behind the prophets: 'There is a room near the TempleTemple for the lepers. Has anyone ever been healed there?'

The cleric pretended not to have heard the question, but over his face slipped an untruthful smile as if, for a moment, he fit the mask behind which the monstrous truth was hidden. He began to recount how the angel of death had gone by the houses in Egypt to kill the firstborn because Pharaoh did not want to release the Jews from slavery.

That evening, when the interview was over and the children had gone their separate ways, I joked to the clergyman that I had no parents and had nowhere to go. He consulted some people, and I was permitted to stay in Temple Square as long as the holiday continued.

I knew I had to learn constantly, and I decided that the Temple Temple was where I could do that. You could talk to many educated people and learn many new things there.

I was given flat, unleavened bread and goat's milk and led after a small shelter next to the oil storage room resembling a horse stable. There was a clean straw. I lay down on it. Beyond the edge of the thatched roof was the starry sky. I remembered that you had people who believed in celestial bodies, some worshiped black stones, and those who had fallen from the sky. That told me about the Hellenist Nikandros, who taught me much about Nazareth with his scrolls. And I decided then that a doctor who healed a leper deserved more love than stones or than the clergy of the TempleTemple, all of whom could not yet answer one question.

I was terrified because, looking up at the heavens above the TempleTemple, I remembered the words of Isaiah: "And all the host of the heavens shall fester, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a book, and all their host shall fall off, as a leaf falls from the vine, and as a fig falls from a fig tree.

I felt restlessness and bitterness. I understood I did not want to return to Nazareth with my parents. But why not? How was I to go on living? Why hadn't the clergyman said anything substantial? I looked for answers... I understood that my father was old and would die soon. And was he my father? Probably not. Who was he to me? A strange mortal... I began to cry. Mother was cold and dreaming of a new husband. She was weighed down by old Joseph. I loved him but understood that returning home would not make me stronger... I had to go to life away from my mortal parents.

In Nazareth lived the girl Rebecca I liked: a little pouty plum mouth and eyes filled with dark fire. She was as enchanting as she was stubborn, but what a unique sweetness there was in her stubbornness; you wanted to break it as secretly as stubbornly. Within her slender, tawny body lay the hot, brittle breath of life itself. She looked like a tulip from the mountains. Or an anemone. As life rotted away in my father ... and I wanted nothing to do with my mother.

But Rebecca wasn't worth lingering in the past either. I didn't want to go back home.

I could go to Athens to live. Thought I. Nikandros had taught me everything he knew, including the Hellenic language and Latin, the first principles of rhetoric and philosophy, and the art of determining one's path in life and making small predictions based on the stars. I had even read the Roman poets with him, spelling out every line: Virgil, Catullus, and they pleased me better than the book of wisdom of Ben-Sirach or the dreary exploits of Judith, the bloodthirsty virgin who had cut off the gullible Holofernes' head. I remember well how excited I was when reading the first lines of Empedocles of Akragas, which read, "Be glad, God is among you! From mortals, I have become immortal'.

When I held the scroll in my hand, it was as if God was behind my back, having been summoned from the abyss by this verse.

Born in a graveyard, I lay in a horse stable and thought: Who am I? Was I created just to replace a sleeping horse in this wonderful world? My eyelids stuck together. I rolled up on the straw like a wild animal. The nights at the end of the month of Nisan are still chilly. My parents say we are of royal blood, which I considered, but what should I be, king?

Because of the high walls, the sounds of Jerusalem did not penetrate there, but the roar of sacrificial animals in the corral could be heard on the temple grounds. They felt that the end was near.

I was fed and did little chores. Sometimes, I wanted to talk to one of the clergy, but they knocked me off like a horsefly. It was hurtful. Were they perhaps afraid to tell the truth, and was this unwillingness to tell me the truth an act of mercy toward me?

Three days later, my parents found me.

Since I would have come from the Temple to the house of Theodosius, they concluded that I must have gotten lost somewhere in Jerusalem. In search of a son, they dusted off narrow streets and squares, inquired of people, and looked in dark cellars, courtyards, and merchants' stores until they were savvy enough to return to the temple grounds. There, too, they had not immediately found me among the thousands of pilgrims.

Mother was furious and sailed against me. The milk beside her turned sour when she was like this, and the horses stumbled. Her big fish eyes had an expression of stubborn incomprehension mixed with the bitterest gloom about her fate. She thanked one of the Levites for the shelter they had given me. She had to give him three drachmas, which she recalled several times because we were not well off.

Then we walked into town, and at the level of the market square, she began to shriek in everyone's presence that I was disgracing the whole sex. A wealthy city woman came by, followed by a slave with two baskets. The slave looked at me and chuckled. Joseph was silent absently, leaning on his cane. I thought it hurt that even a cheap slave was worth thousands of dinars when Mother had just left me three coins.

At the North Gate, she had calmed down a bit, but she continued wailing, "What are you doing to us? We searched all of Jerusalem for you. We thought you had been kidnapped... Taken somewhere under pretenses... Do you think you are more savvy than us? Why don't you help your father and spend so much time with that cursed Nikandros? It's all his fault! That he may stick the murder under all those scrolls of his! Why do you listen to him more than your parents? While you're no more intelligent than a lizard sleeping under a farmer's cartwheel!

I couldn't make sense of it: Mother attributed so much significance to the fact that she had been raised in the TempleTemple for a few years, and I had only been there for three days. Now, she was so displeased with that. Yes, she wanted me to take over her father's business and one day become a reputable man, as she liked to express it. A reputable craftsman who could eat from his own hands, as the Law of Moses prescribed... 'if you don't give your son a profession,' she used to repeat, 'it is the same as renouncing him.' What was I to do then? Steal turn spades, axes, and rakes, assemble tables, benches, and crosses for bandits? No, no, if you didn't want to make a fool of yourself, you had to say that the most vulnerable people ate other people's work. Not for nothing that by the age of four, I could read and knew by heart all the names of all our patriarchs.

For two days, we waited on the outskirts of the city for a group of pilgrims to go with us to Nazareth; only in this way, as a crowd, could you defend yourself against robbers, and the roads were teeming with them: fugitive slaves, seasoned murderers, bloodthirsty legionnaires without superiors, people who pretended to be envoys of God, but who in the process burned with desire to steal your knapsack and your moneybag at any cost.

We were joined by a gladiator who had been ransomed into abandoning his handiwork when he had earned a large reward from a duel fight. Neither before nor since have I met a former gladiator, all ending their lives in the sunny circus arena or a drunken man's fight somewhere on the street as they drank their earned money through it. According to his account, he went to Cana via Nazareth to marry the sister of the gladiator he had killed in the fight. I did not believe in such love. After he had ransomed himself, he had become a little tickled with joy, and lying went worse for him than twisting away the net of the retiarius and striking at the throat of a floored opponent with a sword.

By the way, everyone was happy with him, whereas highwaymen were also with a large group, and a gladiator was a valuable man in the crowd of pilgrims.

When the Jerusalem was out and walking up the hill, I turned and looked at the TempleTemple. Its roof shone in the sun, like the shield of a great warrior in battle with the sky.

During our rest, we read excerpts from the sacred history of our people. We sang psalms in chorus, the words of which were beautiful, like the patterns on an expensive jewelcase, but I tasted aridity and idleness in them. I was not fond of those stories that turned into songs. Nor was I proud of our people because being proud of your people, clothes, or family tree is foolish. To be proud is not stupid. My mother was also angry because she noticed it in me; my extraordinary relationship with sacred lore did not escape her. She told me to love our people and hate the Romans. But they had done nothing wrong to me. And Emperor Octavian Augustus was a sensible man and certainly an entertaining conversationalist. But it was impossible to argue with Mother; she inflamed like dry brushwood and kept harping on the same thing. And she also said that I was a "triple-crossed dunce" and a "damned liar.

Even as a child, I had noticed that I could turn a lie into truth. It was just a matter of when exactly to lie. You had to sense the moment when one word could take the place of another. There was the case where one morning, out of the blue, I had suddenly told everyone that the ox of Savvaty, our neighbor in Nazareth, would die before the sun rose. I was sweating, but at the same time, I was filled with the conviction and delight of being able to see into the future, even if it was not so far away. The ox did indeed die, which surprised me most of all, while Savvaty concluded that I had either poisoned the ox or had observed signs of illness in him.

Along the way, I thought about the Messiah, whom the cleric in the Temple Temple had told, and about how it was honorable to be a true prophet—a prophet, not one of those talentless soothsayers who wandered everywhere, looking for people willing to believe in anything, if only to forget for a moment the reality around them.

Being a prophet was as enjoyable as it was easy. Even if it was only for a few people. You did not have to do heavy labor, not with stone or wood... And I decided that one day I would be filled with conviction and delight, and everyone would say that I was that Messiah. All you had to do was talk to people and give them hope. But I understand you need a lot of knowledge and a long learning time. By the way ... Didn't some people get that knowledge at birth?

But Nazareth was such a category that no one there had the slightest interest in prophets. Everyone was busy with their little tasks that always had something to do with agriculture. Spiritual apathy, numbness. No one gave a flat loaf of bread to a beggar, and they wouldn't pay any attention to that Messiah even if he came down from a cloud. Not for nothing did you have the saying, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

I had gained almost all of my life's wisdom in Nazareth, nestled among the green hills, with its narrow streets where a nomad from outside at night could easily plant a knife in the back of a late passer-by to take away his money. And the entire Roman garrison in a neighboring district would not stand in his way. No one would hear anything; if he heard anything, he would pretend his nose was bleeding. Then, the remains ended up in the well. Yes, once they had dredged up a dead person from the well near our house, and the water had been spoiled for a long time.

I went there to see Rebecca. She looked at the corpse in dismay while I gazed stealthily at her tawny, slender neck with a bit of curly hair. Our God knew what he was doing when he had sculpted Rebecca out of his miracle clay. Just then, I felt like a man for the first time.

Dead people in Nazareth were often just left lying in the street, and no one cared, especially if they had not been Jews in life. No calamity could compare with the shame of dying and rotting under a fence. For that matter, wild animals could save you from that, such as jackals, came upon the smell of decomposition and saved you from that. Yes, jackals were best for this job as ferrymen from our unsteady realm of death to the world where no death existed.