by Nick Tosches
In Nazareth, we heard again the word mashiach. My priests and teachers of the Holy Temple who had told Jesus that the key to the kingdom was on his shoulder, who had become the priests and teachers of the Holy Temple who, as others told it, had anointed him and proclaimed the key to the kingdom to be upon his shoulder, were now the high priest and elders of the Holy Temple, and the key was now golden, and all was as had been long-ago prophesied, long-ago promised, and long expected.
He was Jesus of Nazareth, and Nazareth was proud of him. This pride was evident in the fabrication of fond remembrances of his youth that were heard here and there. The few who had true memories of him, the few who remembered him as he really was, seemed not to be heard.
We walked through the streets, which were not many.
“This is a very small place, with a very small synagogue, and little else,” said Jesus. “For me, there are only ghosts here. Ghosts and scavenging dogs and bad memories.”
He drew heavy breath. “I wish to leave this place,” he said.
“You did.”
“Again. Now.”
“There is your pronouncement to be made.”
“I will perform no healing. I do not like these people. I will do no healing among them.”
I laughed quietly. “It’s not as if you’re actually helping anyone,” I said.
He shot me a look as if it were a stone aimed from a sling. His look was true. He had helped the blind child in Nain, and he had helped her father and mother. He had brought the self-afflicted back to more salutary lives. He had helped those two whores in Gabaon. He had even helped that groveling scoundrel in that nameless settlement to become a higher class of scoundrel.
Then there was no more sling, no more shot. Not for me, anyway. He grew calmer as he looked about. It was not a pleasant calm. It was as if he had simply wearied of anger and disgust.
“My father was a carpenter here. I worked with him. Most of our work came from the city of Sepphoris. I measured. I cut. I planed. I joined. I was better at wood-crafting than he.”
“Why did you quit? It is a good trade.”
“My father was a vile man. He had his way by force with my sister when she was a child. My mother did nothing. My brothers could do nothing. They were too young, closer in age to my sister than to me, and they did not comprehend. I struck him in the head with the hammer-end of an iron adze. The blow almost killed him. My regret then is my regret now: that I did not strike a second blow, or a third. But I let him live, and, like you, I was banished.”
I let time pass before I spoke. “You could have taken your skills to Sepphoris. You could have taken them anywhere. To the capital, Caesarea, itself.”
“When I see planks and nails, I see him.”
The synagogue was nothing but a dwelling in ill repair. It was the Sabbath, and when others entered into this dwelling, we entered with them. When it was time to read, the attendant hesitated. He well knew which few of the congregants could understand and say aloud what was written, and on any other Sabbath he would have passed the scroll to one of them. But custom demanded that, should there be a visitor among them who could read, the scroll should be given to him. The attendant’s hesitation derived from his not knowing whether or not Jesus could read. He reached out with the scroll slightly and tentatively in the direction of Jesus, and Jesus put forth his hand.
As I had been told by Jesus, the scroll would be one or the other of the first two parts of the Book. He had prepared a brief passage from each. The scroll turned out to be the part known as Prophets.
Jesus opened the rods of the scroll so that the parchment unfurled to a random place. He looked down and pretended to read the words on the small section of parchment before him, though the words before him were much different from the words he pretended to read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to recover sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed, to make known the year of the Lord’s favor.”
He closed the scroll and returned it to the minister, who was as surprised as the others. The few eyes in the room that had not been on Jesus were on him now.
When the congregants left the synagogue, he stood before it, and addressed those who gathered.
“When I am asked who I am, my answer is always that I am Jesus of Nazareth. For it was here, in Nazareth, that I was a child; and it was here, in Nazareth, that I reached my manhood. It was here, among the good people of this good town, that I earned my daily bread through daily work, with callused hands and the sweat of my brow. I was not alone in doing so, for this is an honorable place, of honorable people, with a long and honorable history.
“Our ancestors gave to this place the name of Nazareth because it is indeed the neser-shoot of a flower, a most glorious flower that drinks purest spring-water that flows to the south of here, where she overlooks the plain of Esdraelon, which is like unto a field of Eden that the Lord spared for us, and our flower, to gaze upon.
“I have returned to Nazareth on this day because this town and its people are dear to me. It is here, at this moment, as I stand before you that I now give voice to words I have not before uttered.
“For I say that I have been told by those from Jerusalem to whom I bowed that I am the fulfillment of the very words of the prophet Isaiah to which the scroll did open to me.
“And I have been told by those from Jerusalem to whom I bowed that the key to the house of David has been laid on my shoulder: the key of which the Lord did tell the prophet Isaiah.
“And the prophet Isaiah spoke of a shoot, and said that fruit would in time be borne by the branch of its growth, and that the Spirit of the Lord will rest in him who was that borne fruit—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord.
“The shoot is Nazareth, from which I have come and to which on this day I have returned to tell you, my fellow Nazarenes, of the Spirit that is upon me, and of the key, and of the shoot—our shoot, the sprout of us all, Nazareth—from which I came.
“With you alone did I want to share these words. For it is here, now, that I commit myself to the ministry that has been appointed me.”
He told them of the new temple he had been ordained to build. He told them that the sprout of Nazareth would be the corner-stone of that temple. The sounds of the gathering swelled. A Sabbath-song and joy were among them. They turned to the minister. Yes, he told them, the Book forbade the handling of money for any transaction on the Sabbath; but this was no transaction. It was tzedakah, charity, and furthermore a very special and unique occasion for it. If the Lord had wanted them not to contribute to the corner-stone, he would not have brought Jesus to us today. Jesus knew the Book. If he did not know that this Sabbath giving was sanctified, he could easily have waited the day.
In truth, Jesus was as unaware of this interdiction as was I, and we were silently very grateful for the minister’s intercession.
The offerings were many. This was not a prosperous place, but those who did not give what their means allowed, gave beyond their means. The minister himself gave from his own purse and from the funds accrued to the synagogue for good works. Only a few used the strict letter of the proscription as an excuse not to give.
There were those who felt their donations entitled them to a blessing. My quick-witted Jesus blessed them all at once, bowing his head to them and raising his palms with arms bent at right angles.
He knelt, kissed—or seemed to kiss—the threshold-stone of the synagogue, where many had trodden. This was his inspired doing, and the gathered beheld it in solemn delight.
There were offers of food and lodging, and the synagogue was open to us. “Come sunset,” observed the minister with a smile, “the niggardly ones will have no pretext for their closed fists.”
But Jesus was set on escaping Nazareth, an
d did not look back even as voices called warmly to him.
The little village with the little synagogue was behind us. A young boy began to run after us, but his mother called him back to her.
“Sepphoris is only a few hours away. From there, it is even less time to Simonias.” He looked at the sky for a while. “We will meet the priest there, maybe the others as well.”
We counted the money. It was a substantial amount. The pouch in which I kept our money was becoming heavy with the weight of copper, silver, and gold. We soon must store it safely in Caesarea. Safely? With whom in Caesarea would it be safe?
He was silent for some time. He seemed not to want to say what he did when at last he spoke.
“I saw my brother James, and my mother there. They stood not far from those who gathered near me, but they did not come forward. They were not in the synagogue. I saw them later, when I delivered my nonsense. Your nonsense.”
“It worked well enough.”
“The shoot of the beautiful flower that is Nazareth.”
He said these words in a way that brought grudging laughter to me. He began to laugh as well, ungrudgingly.
Then he quieted again; then he spoke again.
“I did not see my sister or my other brothers. I did not see my father. Maybe he is dead. That would be good. They could have told me, my brother and my mother. But they did not approach. I wonder what they felt on seeing me again. I wonder what became of my sister. Their faces were inscrutable to me.”
He inhaled deeply, and slowly exhaled. The slow expulsion of his breath seemed to lighten him.
“They were not among those who gave,” he said, almost off-handedly.
“Maybe they gave through another, not wishing to impose themselves on your moment,” I said, knowing there was no truth in these words.
He laughed darkly and unopenly, as if unto himself alone, as if at all the world.
Man is a haunted thing.
14
THE CALENDAR OF THE JEWS IS ALIGNED MUCH MORE STRICTLY with the moon than is our Roman calendar. In the Hebrew calendar, every one of their twelve months begins with the appearance of the first slender crescent of the new moon’s emergence from darkness, with the sunset that is the beginning of each of their days.
Whereas our year begins on the first day of Januarius, the month of Janus, theirs begins with the appearance of the new moon of the month they call Nissan, whose name derives either from the word for a budding or from the word for signs and miracles. They are not in agreement as to from which of these ancient words the name Nissan derived. This first month of their year, Nissan, is the month of their great feast of Pesach, another word over whose origin and meaning they argue. Their Nissan comes in the midst of our third and fourth months, Martius and Aprilis.
The dark moon that overtook us after the Sabbath ended on the evening we spent in Sepphoris would show the first, falcated trace of its rebirth on the evening after next. Then, as it rose from the sunset, the new month of Tishrei would begin. This is a name whose meaning is little argued, as the possibilities are too numerous, so tangled and countless are its contending roots. Some say these roots extend to Babylon, to Assyria, to places unremembered.
Tishrei was a month of many holy days, which the Jews called by names such as the Feast of Trumpets, which began on the very sunset of our arrival in Sepphoris, and the Day of Expiation, which came with the ninth sunset following the Feast of Trumpets, and the Feast of Tabernacles, and others whose names I do not remember.
This month of Tishrei, the seventh of their months, comes in the midst of our ninth and tenth months, September and October.
It was indeed this Feast of Trumpets that Jesus wanted me to witness in Sepphoris, the great cosmopolitan city that was the capital of Galilee and, for a time, the capital of all Judea.
The stern and severe God of the Book had ordained the Feast of Trumpets to be, as Jesus said it was there written, “a day of joyful blasting.”
He told me that of late some rabbis, who felt this to be quite unlike their angry God, were trying to convince their fellow Jews that this feast was the anniversary of God’s creation of the first man and woman—Adamus and Eva, as we would call them—who disobeyed him by seeking wisdom, a transgression for which all men and women, descended from them, must continue to suffer. This was, said these rabbis, the birthday of those first sinners, the commencement of a new year of suffering. Little attention was paid to them, as it was generally held that God had spoken what he had meant to speak regarding the Feast of the Trumpets.
He told me, too, that in places less cosmopolitan than this, the atmosphere would have been far more subdued. For the gloom-loving Jews, this day was looked upon in its holiness as another day of abstinent requital, another Sabbath-day, different from others only by the call of the trumpets. But in a city such as this, the presence of many gentiles changed the tone of the feast, and many of the less gloomy Jews happily partook of that changed tone, that mood of celebration, freedom, and abandon.
And what a joyful and glorious blasting it was! I had never seen this side of the Jews.
Lamps and blazing torch-staves filled the moonless night with light. There was merriment, and there was dancing such as to pulverize underfoot the bread of affliction. And the sound of the horns! The very stars above seemed to frolic in their glitterings.
The trumpets sounded not at all like the various instruments of brass we know. The dominant of them is an actual ram’s horn of large size, which is blown with such force as to cause a deep chthonic rumbling drone to build within its big curling curves and issue sonorously from its natural hollow. The others, which accompany it, are long, straight, elegant clarions of silver. Here, in Sepphoris, when the traditional priestly music ended, other musicians appeared with other horns, and the music made by them became more freely, more rousingly sublime.
Oh, what a noise, and oh, what a night!
Romans and Africans sang together. Arabs shook timbrels and sistra and banged on goatskin-headed drums and pans. Many were the colors of the sounds that wove through the joyful Hebrew blasting. Even our donkey took to happily braying.
For sweet uncounted hours, there was no world but this. No Rome. No Tiberius. No new temple. No nothing. Only the here and now of life, and life alone.
“This is my Judea,” said Jesus. “These are my people.” I smiled to behold him.
By this time, I no longer looked upon my loiterer as merely a means to an end. He was no longer but an instrument for me to play, no longer the ram’s horn of my own artful blowing. The wall separating us, the Jew and the Roman, was crumbling. Except for physical differences, and differences of language and circumstance, we were two men of like mind and temperament. The distinguishing marks of tongue, snout, and cock were trifles now. What had begun as conspiracy, each wary of the other, had slowly become camaraderie. We conspired now in the truest sense of the word: we breathed together.
The boughs, leafy branches, hanging vines, and flowers of lush scented gardens swayed in the warm breezes of the night.
There came over me an endearment for these people who were his people.
There came over me a guilt for what we were doing to them.
“The food of Lebanon is here,” said Jesus. “The wondrous food of Persia is here. Wines from Syria, wines from Rome. Women from every nation of the world.
“No one in these crowds knows us. Let us break our vow just once, on this night. Let us have wine and women. Let us drink and fuck under the stars.”
The man approached us slowly.
“I am Simon, son of John, of Bethsaida,” he said. “I fish the Sea of Galilee. As yesterday was the Sabbath, of course I did not cast my net.”
Hearing these words, I felt the guilt lift from me.
At hearing the formal manner in which the man introduced himself, I remembered how Jesus had once thrown back at me the words with which I had introduced myself to him, addressing me on the night of our meeting as Gaius et cetera et
cetera, son of this one, grandson of that one. I smiled to remember that evening, which seemed now to have been so very long ago.
“I was on the eastern shore, far south of my home, south even of Tiberias, when I took my fish to market at Gath-hepher on the eve of the Sabbath. There is no synagogue there. So it was that I came to be at the synagogue in nearby Nazareth when you read from the prophet. And I was much stricken by your words in the street. I have come here seeking you.”
Jesus was no more in the mood for this bore of a boor than was I. This was a night for abandon and joyful blasting, not for business.
“What sort of fish do you catch?” asked Jesus.
I could hear the sarcasm and ambiguity in his tone, as if he were belittling the intruder.
“Mostly tilapia.”
“That is what all who fish the Sea of Galilee seem to catch. Tilapia. Nothing but tilapia. Always tilapia. Day after day, year after year, generation after generation: tilapia.”
“This is so.”
“And why have you come seeking me?”
“I wish to follow you.”
The undercurrent of annoyance and aloofness that I sensed in Jesus was mistaken by the fisherman to be an air of casual ease, so he ventured a sprig of jocosity:
“I am sick of tilapia.”
“He seems a good man,” I interjected, in the way of calling back Jesus to the matter of our business, as much as we both wished this night to be a respite from it.
Jesus looked the fisherman up and down. He was a sturdy man of about the same age as Jesus himself, perhaps a few years older. In his beard were streaks of gray, which lent the lie of sage experience to his demeanor.
“So you wish to be a fisher of men?”
“Your words yesterday moved me much, and I feel much in your presence. I believe that you very well may be the mashiach.”
Assuming the full character of his dramatis persona, but still not wholly without a hint of lingering resentment, Jesus responded to him with words that were both cryptic and curt: