The Galileans: A Novel of Mary Magdalene

by Frank G. Slaughter

  “Why did you say just that?” Joseph asked.

  “It was something I knew,” Simon said simply, “like I know that I am sitting here with you and Mary tonight.”

  “I feel it too, Joseph,” Mary said. “The very first time I saw Him, I knew who He was in my heart.”

  “But if Jesus is really the Messiah,” Joseph protested, “why does He not announce it publicly?”

  “Until now the time had not come,” Simon explained. “But we are ready. If the Master had not left us, we would proclaim Hking and march on Sepphoris and Tiberias tomorrow. Jerusalem would be next, and then the Anointed of God would reign over all of Israel.”

  “Then you think Jesus really plans to establish an earthly kingdom?”

  “Why else would the Messiah come?” Simon looked at him in astonishment. “Is it not written that He will free the Jews from bondage and set them over all the people of the world?”

  “But the soldiers of Rome—”

  Simon stood up, his face suddenly flushed with anger. “Take care, Joseph,” he warned. “When you say the power of the Most High cannot prevail over any earthly power, even Rome, you blaspheme against God.” And without waiting for an answer, he stalked from the room.

  Joseph started to rise and follow Simon, but Mary put her hand on his arm. “You can’t argue with him,” she said. “He and Simon Zelotes and Judas Iscariot and the sons of Zebedee think of nothing but setting up an earthly kingdom.”

  “I know you don’t agree. Why?”

  “The Pharisees once questioned Jesus about when the kingdom of God would come. He told them, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed. Nor will they say: Lo! Here it is! Or, There! For, behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.’ The message of Jesus is not for our eyes or our ears, Joseph,” she said. “It is for our hearts.”

  He was tempted by her calm conviction and his love for her to agree. And yet the man he had heard speak from the rocks beside the shore that afternoon was utterly different from what he had been taught since childhood to expect of the liberator who would be known as the Christ.

  “Come walk with me by the shore, Joseph,” Mary said, getting to her feet. “Jesus may return later. If He does, I must be here to wash His feet and anoint His head with oil and see that a fresh robe is ready for Him in the morning, but we can have a little time together until He comes.”

  The moon had already risen above the precipitous hills to the east where lay the Greek cities of the Decapolis. A broad band of silver lay upon the water, broken occasionally by thousands of tiny wavelets when a fish leaped to shatter the mirror-smooth surface. Joseph took Mary’s hand and they walked along the shore close together both in body and mood.

  “Do you remember when we last talked by the water?” she asked.

  “It was at Alexandria by Lake Mareotis, in the garden of your villa.”

  “You tried to persuade me then not to kill Gaius Flaccus.” She lifted his hand and put it to her lips. “Dear, good Joseph,” she said softly. “If I had only listened . . .”

  “You could have been one of the richest women in the world.”

  “But then I might not have known Jesus.”

  “Is knowing Him worth giving up everything you might have had?”

  “If I were as rich now as I was in Alexandria,” she said simply, “I would still give all of it in exchange for the privilege of serving Jesus. Deep down inside me, in my very soul, I know this is what I was intended for.”

  “Teach me to know Jesus as you do, Mary,” he begged impulsively, but she shook her head.

  “I can only show you the way to see for yourself, Joseph. Today you are like those of whom Isaiah said, ‘You shall indeed hear, but never understand.’ Perhaps only a woman can really understand the inner heart of Jesus,” she continued. “The love He has for the world is like that of a mother for her child, a thing that all women feel inside them.” She turned her eyes to the hills back of Bethsaida. “Somewhere up there He is alone, Joseph, praying, to His Father that men’s eyes shall be opened so they can see Him for what He is. So many look to Him only to be healed, and the Pharisees seek a sign from heaven, while Simon the Zealot and Judas only see Him leading the Jews to triumph over Rome. None of them seem able to realize that through believing and following Jesus, their very hearts can be changed until they see the glory of the Most High here on earth itself.”

  “Then He has failed in His mission?”

  “No, Joseph. The Messiah cannot fail, but those He loves have failed Him. His family name Him a madman and would shut Him away. His disciples—even Simon Peter, whom He loves more than the others—can think of Him only as an earthly king. And Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas call Him a criminal but dare not arrest Him because they fear the consequences.”

  “What can He do then, except go away?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary admitted. “But I am sure He has come to some sort of decision and that our going away from Galilee at this time is a part of it. He told us not so long ago, ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’”

  “What sort of man prophesies His own death?” Joseph asked incredulously.

  “Who could prophesy it? Who else but the Son of God?”

  Jesus did not return to the camp that night, and early the next morning a messenger came from Him bidding the others follow along the road to Tyre. Joseph watched them break camp and start the march northward. Judas, the two Simons, and the sons of Zebedee were angry, but they could do nothing except obey the command of their leader. To proclaim a king when there was no king to crown would have been worse than folly.

  Joseph bade Mary good-bye and turned his camel toward Capernaum and the road to Jerusalem. He had not gone far when he noticed that he was being followed. Obviously Simon Zelotes and Judas of Kerioth were taking no chances that their plans would be betrayed to Herod Antipas or Pontius Pilate.

  All that morning the zealot rode behind Joseph. Only when he was well into the Plain of Esdraelon on the Central Highway and past Sepphoris, did the other man stop. Watching the distant figure, sitting on his mule on a little hill where he could see him on the road, Joseph thought with a sudden flash of insight that Simon and the rest of the band of revolutionaries called the Zealots were a far greater threat to Jesus of Nazareth and the seed He was trying to implant into the hearts of men than Herod or Pilate could ever be.

  XIV

  Winter was a busy time for a physician in Jerusalem, and particularly for the medicus viscerus of the temple. The stone floors of the great sanctuary were cold and damp, and the feet and legs of the priests, usually corpulent men addicted to feasting, often swelled and cracked open. This condition, known colloquially as “temple foot” or “priest’s foot,” was an exceedingly painful one. Joseph had been outstandingly successful in treating it with snug bandages and soothing balms, but the bandaging took time and had to be replaced often, so he spent long hours in the quarters of the priests. The winter climate in Jerusalem was damp and raw much of the time, too, and there was much sickness in the city, particularly among the pilgrims who came here from warmer climates and were ill dressed for the weather.

  Also in winter occurred the Feast of Dedication, and Jesus had come to celebrate the feast, along with the huge crowds that always arrived in Jerusalem for the feast days. Jesus was teaching in the temple and Joseph, often there to visit his patients, stood at the far edge of the crowd, listening. A group of Pharisees managed to get some temple guards together. They had pushed through the crowd, and one of them, more brazen than the rest, demanded loudly, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.”

  “I told you.” Jesus’ words lashed at them like whips. “And you do not believe. The works tha
t I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness to me. But you do not believe because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”

  He paused and looked out over the crowd. Joseph saw that the anger had faded from His eyes now, to be replaced by a look of sorrow. “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

  For a moment, the full implications of that statement did not penetrate the minds of the men who were questioning Him. When it did, the Pharisees suddenly began to shout, “He has blasphemed! Stone Him! Stone Him!” Some of them even pushed forward to seize Jesus, but He raised His hand, and the force of His calmness and certainty of purpose held them back.

  “I have shown you many good works from the Father,” He said. “For which of these do you stone me?”

  “We stone you for no good work but for blasphemy!” the spokesman for the Pharisees shouted. “Because you, being a man, make yourself God.” The common people understood little of the minute points of the law so beloved by the Pharisees, the breakage of which was called blasphemy. But in matters of religion they were accustomed to look to the Pharisees for leadership, and when the cry of blasphemy was raised, many of them took it up.

  Jesus looked scathingly at His tormentors. “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If He called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” He paused, then went on, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

  “Blasphemy!” The Pharisees took up the cry again. “He has blasphemed against the Most High. Let Him be stoned!”

  Simon Peter and the sons of Zebedee were close beside Jesus, but they seemed stunned by this sudden happening. Joseph elbowed his way through the crowd. “Jews of Jerusalem!” he shouted. “You know me, Joseph of Galilee. I have bound up your wounds and nursed you back to health when you were sick. Listen to me!”

  A momentary hush fell over the crowd, for many of them had been healed by his medicines and his skill, and they respected him and trusted him, as a man naturally trusts his physician. “You all know that I have kept the law from my youth,” Joseph told them. “These Pharisees would have you stone a good teacher because He has shown you what they are, whited sepulchers, hypocrites, liars. Then they can say, ‘We have not done it, but the crowd.’”

  “He lies!” the leader of the Pharisees shouted. “Stone the blasphemer!” they shouted again.

  “To the gates!” And the mob once more took up the cry.

  Clawing hands were already tearing at their clothing, and all seemed truly lost when Joseph heard the sound of marching feet. He looked up and saw a group of soldiers led by a centurion passing along the lower terrace on their way back to Antonia from the first guard period of the day. The officer he recognized as a man named Trojanus, whose wife Joseph had cured of a severe fever only a few months before.

  “Trojanus!” he shouted in desperation. “Trojanus! Would you see the physician of Pontius Pilate killed by the mob?”

  The Roman turned, and his eyes quickly took in the situation. The entire garrison knew that Joseph was a friend of Pilate and his wife and also served as physician to the Roman troops. At a sharp command from Trojanus the soldiers lowered their shields and, using the butts of their swords as bludgeons, plunged into the crowd. Like a battering ram, the column easily forced its way through the cursing, snarling mass of humanity and surrounded the small group that was the target for the buffeting of the mob. “What is the trouble here?” the centurion demanded.

  “The Pharisees seek to have us stoned,” Joseph explained breathlessly. “Can you guard us as far as the road leading to Jericho?”

  Trojanus looked doubtful, until Joseph added, “I will be personally responsible to Pontius Pilate for your actions!”

  “Make a good story of it then,” he said, grinning, and Joseph knew that he had won. “Tell how I saved your life when it was in great peril.”

  Guarded by the soldiers, the small party left the temple and crossed the city to the gate where the road from Jericho entered. Not many of the crowd followed. It was one thing to drag a defenseless Jew accused of blasphemy outside the gates and stone him to death, but quite another to attack Roman soldiers and bring down the wrath of Pontius Pilate upon all the Jews in Jerusalem. By the time they reached the gates, only a small crowd of the curious followed, and when the party set out toward Jericho they were unmolested.

  Jesus had not spoken during their dramatic rescue. Looking at the sadness and disappointment that showed in His face now, Joseph thought Mary must indeed be right. Jerusalem had failed Him, just as had Galilee, and Jesus must be glad to be away from it.

  Joseph bade the little group good-bye at the gates. The Master walked ahead on the road making His way back across the Jordan River, alone and lost in His thoughts, while the disciples followed along behind, quarreling among themselves at the ill fortune which had forced them to leave Jerusalem just when it seemed that they were near the height of their success. None dared blame their leader for precipitating the controversy that morning, but a few upbraided Joseph for taking them out of the city under the Roman guard, insisting that they might have been able to hide inside the walls and thus continue their plans for making Jesus king in Jerusalem.

  Joseph thought of Mary often but had little news from her. From information picked up by Nicodemus on his travels about the country, it appeared that Jesus was avoiding Galilee, perhaps fearing that a return to the site of His more successful ventures would cause the revolutionary spirit of His disciples and the people who followed Him to flare up anew.

  A devout Jew, Joseph had always viewed the temple as a symbol of everything sublime in the worship of the Most High, a holy place dedicated to a holy purpose. But now he began to see things which, in his concern with the higher principles of God’s worship, he had never noticed before.

  The booths of those who sold animals, spices, and other precious objects to be offered as sacrifices to the Most High were, he knew, a necessary and natural part of the temple worship. But now he saw the cheating that went on. A tender and pure lamb sold this morning to a pilgrim of Cyprus and delivered over to the priests to be killed and burnt upon the altar often appeared in the same seller’s stall that very afternoon, while a mangy animal costing less than a third as much as the pilgrim paid was killed in its stead.

  The lower court of the temple swarmed with peddlers selling all kinds of curios to the pilgrims who thronged here. And since only temple shekels could be given as offerings, the money-changers did a thriving business turning money from the hundreds of cities of the empire into approved coin, at a tremendous profit to the changer. Daily Joseph saw messengers from synagogues of Israel in far-distant cities of the empire pour into the temple, bringing the “tribute” required of all Jews, which they were happy to pay as their duty to God. But while the priests lived in magnificence and luxury, the poor who had scraped up their last denarius for the temple tribute went hungry and often without shelter. And meanwhile the priestly hierarchy grew richer and richer every year.

  In moments of self-examination—which his profession gave him all too infrequently—Joseph admitted to himself that there had been no change in the temple and its practices. These injustices had been going on for centuries. What had happened was a change within himself, a new vision that let him see through the outward gloss to the pettiness beneath, the outright thievery masking under the guise of worship, and the con
stant political plotting among the Sadducean groups who controlled the temple and therefore the religious life of Israel.

  Nor were the Pharisees really any better, he saw now, although he had always prided himself upon belonging to that select group. In their pettiness over details they had completely lost sight of the fact that the individual man was important in the sight of God.

  “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” the Psalmist had asked. And then had gone on to say, “Thou hast made him little less than God.” Now Joseph knew what it was that appealed to people so much in the teachings of Jesus. It was the fact that the Nazarene brought to them an assurance that the Most High loved each of them as individuals. There could be no greater assurance of this concern for the individual than the words of Jesus: “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

  What a comfort such an assurance of the love of God for every man was to people bowed under the burden of the law that the Pharisees worshiped so devoutly. It was easy to understand now why they would follow one who assured them of the forgiveness of their sins and the concern of the Father for each of them.

  More and more as the months wore on, Joseph was tempted to leave all this sham and pretense, the thievery, gluttony, and luxury in the guise of the worship of God that characterized Jerusalem and the temple. If he had thought Mary would join him, he would gladly have given up his successful career and returned to Magdala to live with her. And the more he thought of the quiet garden at Demetrius’s old house overlooking the lake and Mary’s happy voice singing there, the more he was convinced that only in Galilee would he find the peace he seemed to need more and more.

  Nicodemus returned from one of his trips late one afternoon in midwinter. Joseph had just come home from visiting the sick, and when he saw his friend’s retinue before the house he hurried over to greet the lawyer.