Fifth Gospel:The Odyssey of a Time Traveler in First-Century Palestine

by William Roskey

  “Now a somewhat similar situation existed with respect to my country, which originally consisted of thirteen separate and distinct provinces, each going its own separate way for many years. Like the Greeks, a man thought of himself first as a member of his province or region—say as a Pennsylvanian or a Georgian, or as a Northerner or a Southerner first, and only secondarily, if at all, as an American. But our revolt against our king, who was named George III, and his empire changed that, just as a revolt changed that for the Greeks. This is not to say that all conflicts between states or provinces or regions ceased, but it did bring us all together. And we have stayed together in spite of everything, but that is another story. As for democracy, we not only borrowed the idea from the Greeks, but the very word itself. Only we went still further. In the Greek city-states, slaves could not vote, freedmen could not vote, women could not vote, non-Greeks could not vote, Greeks originally from another city-state could not vote in the city-state in which they resided, even Greeks born in the city whose fathers had come from eight or ten miles away from the city beyond the headland could not vote. In addition, many of the city-states demanded that one must be a land owner in order to vote. So it was that even in Athens, the most democratic and freest of them all, out of a population of 315,000, only 43,000 were eligible to vote.”

  “In your country slaves are permitted to vote?”

  “In my country we have no slaves.”

  “No slaves?”

  “No, we did away with slavery almost a hundred years ago.” Only a hundred years ago, I thought ironically. Progress.

  Bartholomew was shaking his head in wonder. “And you allow women to vote?”

  “Yes, we gave women the vote nearly forty years ago.” Again. Progress. Why had it taken so long for such elementary reforms to have come about? Here I was, talking to a man two millennia removed in time from my own, and I was suddenly struck with the uncomfortable realization that I couldn’t boast of two millennia worth of social progress. We were on the right track to be sure, but mankind had not exactly been moving down that track with any dazzling speed.

  “A most remarkable land,” Bartholomew opined.

  “Most remarkable,” I agreed.

  “Have you then subjugated many people, as have the Romans?”

  “Only the original inhabitants of the land, my mother’s people. We have fought wars in other lands and on other shores but, after we win the wars, we always pack up and go home.”

  “Why?”

  “I … don’t know. I guess we just aren’t the subjugating type.”

  “How odd.”

  “I guess so. I never thought much about it before,” I shrugged.

  “Your people sound most peculiar.”

  “Oh, people are people, Bartholomew. As I’ve said, we’re no different than anyone else. We’re born and we die, and in between those two events we spend our time trying our best to make sure that we experience more happiness and contentment than pain and suffering. We make friends and enemies; we love and hate, buy and sell, get married and have children, learn and forget, spend and save, succeed and fail, and laugh and cry. Once every generation or so, we go off and fight a war. We’re no different than anyone else. Once I thought we were unique, but that was before I did some traveling.”

  “All my life I have wanted to travel,” said Bartholomew wistfully. “I was born in Capernaum, raised in Capernaum, and will surely die in Capernaum. Lightfoot, you can’t even begin to understand what it’s like—day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, to see travelers come and go and to always remain behind yourself. To hear them tell of the great and wondrous places they’ve been, the exotic sights they’ve seen, the …” he broke off suddenly. “Lightfoot, I’ve never even been to Jerusalem! Anna resents every moment that I am away from the inn. She doesn’t understand anything. She thinks that I’m always trying to shirk doing any work around the inn.

  “The moment I met you though, I knew the time had come. I immediately recognized you as a kindred spirit, as a fellow seeker after truth. And, as if that were not enough, you too were intrigued by this man called Jesus. Clearly, it was the appointed time to make my move. No more daydreaming. I decided on the spot that this time I would translate thought into action. I want it to be said of me, and, which is vastly more important, I want to be able to say to myself, that at least for once in my life, I was not Bartholomew, the dull, timid, and henpecked little innkeeper, but Bartholomew the Adventurer, Bartholomew the Bold, a man who left home and safety behind him to embark on a glorious Quest …” he stopped dead and looked embarrassed. “At least once in his life, a man must do something like this. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand the feeling?” Did I?

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me, Lightfoot, your king, your emperor, is he a Jew?”

  “No,” I replied, momentarily taken aback by the unusual question.

  “Then your countrymen are? Or at least the majority of them, they are Jews?”

  “No, only about three out of every hundred.”

  Bartholomew’s brow wrinkled in the flickering firelight. “Then why are your people interested in the Jewish Messiah? This is a matter of great importance to Jews, of course, because the Messiah will free us from the oppressive yoke of Rome. But why should a mysterious and far-off land of Gentiles consider this to be such a momentous issue?”

  I moved my gaze from the campfire to the vast blanket of stars overhead, and it was a long time before I finally spoke. “Most of my countrymen, as well as the people who inhabit the countries we have allied ourselves with, say they believe in the teachings of Jesus. It is entirely possible to do so without being a Jew. At any rate, most profess to believe in the teaching of Jesus. Now a few are lying, and a few really do believe, but most merely think they believe; in their hearts, they are not really sure. Therefore, they don’t make as serious or as concerted an effort to live up to the teachings of Jesus as they would if they knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he is who he says he is. Jesus, along with the things he has said and the things he stands for, pervades our entire Western civilization—our literature, our laws, our art, our music, our customs, our codes of ethics, everything.”

  “But how is it possible that one man, a man who is not yet widely known in his own country, have such a far-reaching effect on a land so far away?”

  “Believe me, there has been enough time for such a thing to happen,” I said, brushing aside his question. “At any rate, because of his vast influence over my land, if I can deliver absolute proof that he is or is not the Messiah, either way, then it will profoundly change our Western world.” Suddenly, I realized that I had just parroted Ike’s initial speech to me. Bartholomew’s eyes grew large as he looked upon me with a new respect bordering on awe.

  “A tremendous responsibility must surely weigh heavily on your shoulders.”

  I felt uncomfortable under his stare and not a little inadequate. He was right. This was serious business, more serious than anything else in the history of mankind. I felt a twinge of guilt when I remembered that only a few short moments ago, I’d been feeling very sorry for myself. I continued to stare at the countless stars and galaxies in the infinite vastness of space. For the first time, I really believed in what I was doing. This was no longer just an adventure or a challenge.

  I had to know.

  31

  The next morning our path put us on a main trade route leading almost due south toward Jerusalem. It was here that we fell in with a caravan, and, during the course of the day’s march, I pumped as many people as I possibly could, trying to get as much information as was available concerning Jesus. In the evening all the men sat around the campfire and tried to impress one another with stories about their business acumen, strength and endurance, success with the ladies, and learning. Nothing much ever changes, I guess. Except for the clothing and the language, it could just as easily have been a meeting in an Elks Lodge in Poughkeepsie.

  S
ince trees were so scarce, wood was seldom used to fuel fires in Palestine. Camel dung was used instead. Centuries later, the Plains Indians would use buffalo chips for the same reason. The aroma left something to be desired, but it sure burned pretty well, and there was plenty of it.

  During a lull in the conversation, I brought up the subject of Jesus, and immediately I caught some guarded looks being exchanged in the flickering firelight. A silence hung like a pall over the group.

  “Friend,” said one of the ugliest men I’d ever seen in my life, slowly drawing a wicked looking curved knife from his belt, “you show an uncommon interest in our opinions of the Nazarene.” There were nods of assent all around as the man brought out a sharpening stone and methodically began to hone the blade. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another meditatively fingering the handle of a Roman short sword.

  “You appear to be a most curious man,” the first went on, almost crooning as he worked the already impossibly sharp and gleaming blade back and forth across the surface of the stone. “A most peculiar stranger comes among us and begins to ask all manner of questions of us about a most controversial public figure. Some say that such a stranger could well be a spy for that fox, Herod Antipas.” He spat, punctuating the sentence. “Others are of the opinion that such a man could be a spy sent by the Sanhedrin or by the Procurator.”

  In what I hoped was a casual gesture, I brushed my right hand against my left side and felt the reassuring thirty-seven ounces of steel that was my Colt .45 Peacemaker. Reassuring? No. There were too many. Besides, there had already been too much bloodshed. I was tired of killing, and that wasn’t what I’d been sent here to do anyway. I let my hand fall away. There was nothing for it but to try to talk my way out of the situation. And, if that didn’t work, well, Aloysius Lightfoot O’Brien’s final resting place would be a shallow and unmarked grave in the desert. People have done worse.

  I began to mentally frame a reply to the accusations. The words and the tone would have to be just right. This crew was a hair’s-breadth away from turning into a lynch mob. Things were so volatile that I’d just as soon have been playing catch with a bottle of nitroglycerin. I decided to use some body language for a start. I slowly spread my hands, palms up, in the universal gesture of a harmless and innocent man who has been seriously misunderstood. Next, summoning up all the tact, diplomacy, and practical psychology at my command, I opened my mouth to speak, when Bartholomew thundered, “Ignorant dogs! How dare you accuse my colleague of being a spy for Herod or the Sanhedrin or Pilate? He is nothing of the sort!” Bartholomew puffed out his chest importantly. “He is a spy for a foreign country of great proportions lying far to the west across a great ocean!” The effect of his impassioned outrage was stupefying in the sense that no one there, including me, believed that anyone could be stupid enough to come out with a pronouncement that placed his neck as well as that of his traveling companion’s in the noose so neatly. We, all of us, were so dumbfounded that we sat there in a frozen tableau that might have made an excellent diorama for the halls of the Smithsonian. Mouths were agape, and the ugly man with the nasty knife had stopped sharpening it in mid-stroke. I can’t be sure, but I think my heart also stopped.

  It was then that a most remarkable thing happened. Into the mouth of my pal with the knife, flew a large moth. He leaped to his feet, spitting out sticky pieces of moth and dropping his knife and sharpening stone in the process. Then somebody laughed, then another, and yet another. Bartholomew and I even joined in. It doesn’t sound so funny as I write these words though. I guess you had to be there.

  When the laughter had at last subsided, I spoke. “To the extent that wandering and impoverished scholars who have many questions and few answers are considered spies in your country, then to that extent, I must confess. I am a spy. I mean no harm. My country is interested in many things. It sends out many people in many different directions to learn. To learn of foreign plants, animals, cultures, science, everything. We want to know what kind of creatures dwell in the sea, what the air is made up of, how old different artifacts are …”

  “Let us not cloak or dissemble our speech and its meanings before these men,” interjected an elder whose hair and beard were snow white. He spoke with gentle authority as he continued, “For dim though my eyes may be, it is clear that they mean no harm. I perceive that they only seek truth, and since such men are few, all men have an obligation to help them. Let us help then. Let us speak frankly and openly of what we have seen and heard of this Jesus and give them the benefit of our conclusions.”

  A portly trader in his late forties needed no further invitation. He began speaking in sonorous and self-important tones. “How can a man who profanes the Sabbath be any kind of holy man or prophet, let alone the Messiah? Did not the Creator Himself rest on the seventh day? The Scriptures are clear, ‘Keep Holy the Sabbath.’ Yet the Nazarene preaches on the Sabbath, heals, undertakes journeys—in short, treats it like any other day. No, this Jesus is not a godly man.”

  “But,” a youth of about seventeen interrupted, “how can healing the sick, on any day, be an evil? Isn’t healing doing God’s work?” The trader cast him a baleful glance.

  Another man broke in. “The crime that eclipses all else though, is his blasphemy! He calls himself the Son of God!”

  “Perhaps,” another said in the voice of one who is always ready to reason, “he means it in the sense that we are all children of God. Are we not the Chosen People? All of us are Sons of God. Yes, I think perhaps he is just using a figure of speech.”

  “No! I’ve heard him! I’ve heard him, and I can assure you that he means that he and he alone has some sort of special and unique relationship with the Almighty. That he claims special power and station. He even has the audacity to speak of his ‘Kingdom.’ He is a blasphemer pure and simple,” the man exclaimed heatedly. “and if the Sanhedrin doesn’t sentence him to death, then others will!” There was a chorus of hearty murmurs. So we were back once again into the lynch-mob mentality. These guys scared me. It was most inopportune for Bartholomew to chime in, so he did.

  “My friend and I think he may truly be the Messiah.” Dummy, I thought. “In fact,” he went on, as all eyes swung toward us again, “almost all of my colleague’s fellow countrymen are followers and believers in Jesus. That is why he was sent here on a special mission from his king—to consult with Jesus.” Double dummy, I thought, if we ever get out of this alive, I’m going to …

  The ugly man with the curved and shiny knife stroked his beard slowly and looked at the old man with an I-told-you-so expression on his face. “Indeed,” he said, and a whole lot of meaning was put into that one word.

  “It is as I’ve said,” I replied, “I have come here only to learn.”

  “And precisely where do you come from?”

  “It is a confederation of states far to the west. No one here,” I said truthfully, “has ever heard of it.”

  “Stop it!” the elder said. “Enough of this! These men are here to learn; let it be so. I told you that it is our bounden duty to assist them. Would anyone else speak of the Nazarene?” The words of the frail old man had a powerful and instant effect on the mob, not unlike the words of a man reprimanding a young child. The men became subdued, the mood softened.

  “This Jesus,” said the man with the reasonable voice, “his words sound well and good when one is seated on a grassy slope and the sky is blue, and a gentle breeze refreshes you, and there is food in your belly. But his way cannot be followed every day in the real world. The story of how he intervened in the stoning of the adulteress is well known and will serve as an excellent example. Are you familiar with it?”

  I had, of course, read it in the Bible but shook my head because I wanted to see if there were any other versions extant. Bartholomew also shook his head. The man nodded and began, “Well, it seems that a crowd had gathered to stone an adulteress who had been just caught in the very act. There could therefore be no doubt of her guilt. So, in OBEDIENCE T
O THE LAW, a group of right-minded citizens prepared to stone her. It was at this point that some addlepated fellow took it upon himself to ask this Jesus of Nazareth what he thought of the situation. Do you know what the reply was? Never in ten thousand years could you guess what he said.”

  “He said not to stone her,” piped up Bartholomew hopefully.

  “Wrong,” smiled the speaker. “He is much too clever, too cunning, to openly tell people to disobey the Law. He said, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’”

  “And then what happened?” whispered Bartholomew, his eyes open wide.

  “First one man, then another, then a few more, then all dropped the stones that were in their hands and walked away. The woman went unpunished.”

  “And then what happened?” Bartholomew asked eagerly.

  “Then nothing! That’s all! Nothing! Justice was not served!”

  Bartholomew’s blank expression seemed to enrage the man all the more. “You stupid fellow! Don’t you understand the implications? If only sinless people can punish the wicked, then the wicked will never be punished! Then all of our laws should be torn up, our prisons and courts done away with! A man commits a crime, a murder say. If only a sinless man can execute him, why arrest him in the first place? A man steals. If only a sinless man can imprison him, why have prisons? They can be of no avail if we are to take the Nazarene seriously.”

  “He is a clever one, all right,” another said. “A man recently asked him if it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome—a straightforward question, is it not? Well this Jesus wriggled out of that one by asking to be handed a coin. Then he asked whose picture appeared on it. ‘Caesar’s,’ was the reply. ‘Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,’ he answered. Now, I ask you, friend,” he said to me, “no, I challenge you to tell me what his meaning was. Are we then to give all our money to Caesar, or only those coins that bear his image? As you may or may not know, the Law says, ‘Thou shalt not carve images, or fashion the likeness of anything in heaven above, or on earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.’ Consequently, no devout Jew would be caught dead in the possession of coins that bear the graven image of men or animals. This is why all the coins struck in Jewish mints bear only the likenesses of various plants, fruit, or symbols. Even the arrogant Herod the Great did not dare put his likeness on coins; instead, he had only the words, ‘Herod King’ on one side, and a design of one kind or another on the reverse side, depending on the denomination. Sometimes a cornucopia, sometimes flowers, sometimes fruit, a shield, and so forth. Herod Agrippa put a parasol on his coins. Even the Romans respect our feelings in this matter. The coins that they strike in Judea bear only the name of Caesar, with a laurel crown and various other symbols. Good Jews do not go about carrying coins with Caesar’s graven image on them. Of that I can assure you.”