Fishers of Men

by Gerald N. Lund

  “A hardheaded, stubborn, jealous fool. Do you think that is possible?”

  “Of course,” she said. She pulled his arms around her, closed her eyes and went up on her tiptoes again.

  Chapter Notes

  It is commonly thought that in the Jewish culture at the time of Jesus, all marriages were arranged by the parents, especially the father, and the woman had no say in who her husband would be. Some modern writers, both popular and scholarly, would have us believe that women were traded and sold like livestock with no choice in the matter. While this was likely the case in some instances, evidence suggests that the woman had significant rights and that romance between the sexes was not uncommon. Though Abraham sent his servant to find a bride for Isaac, and the arrangements were made with Rebekah’s father, Rebekah was asked for her consent (see Genesis 24, especially vv. 8, 58). Ruth, who was a widow, deliberately sought out Boaz and took action that told him clearly she wanted to be his wife (see Ruth 3–4).

  Two selections from modern scholars should serve to dispel the idea that women had no rights whatsoever in the marriage decision:

  “The father as head of the household usually instituted the plans for marriage on behalf of his son. This included the selection of the bride. On her part, she was more or less a passive participant in the transaction. . . . The place of the father in arranging marriage is consistent with the concept of the family in the Bible. It does not rule out some activity on this stage on the part of the potential bridegroom and bride. There is some indication of romance. We are told, e.g., that Michal loved David (1 Sam. 18:20). At harvest festivals and at the village well the sexes met and mingled freely. . . . Certainly Rebekah [in the Genesis 24 account] is not chattel to be bought in the market. The conception of the status of a wife found in Prov. 31 further supports the view that marriage by purchase is an untenable interpretation” (Buttrick, 3:283–84; emphasis added).

  “The arranging of a marriage was normally in the hands of the parents . . . ; there are, in fact, few nations or periods where the children have a free choice. But (a) infant or child marriages were unknown; (b) the consent of the parties was, sometimes at least, sought (Gn 24:8); (c) the rule [of the parents] was not absolute; it might be broken wilfully, or under stress of circumstances; (d) natural feeling will always make itself felt in spite of the restrictions of custom; the sexes met freely, and romantic attachments were not unknown (Gn 29:10; 34:3; Jg 14:1; 1 Sam 18:20); in these cases initiative was taken by the parties” (Hastings, 584–85; emphasis added. Not all references cited by the author of this passage were included here).

  Bibliography

  Alexander, David, and Pat Alexander, eds. Eerdmans’ Handbook to the Bible. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1973.

  Bahat, Dan. Carta’s Historical Atlas of Jerusalem: A Brief Illustrated Survey. Jerusalem: Carta, the Israel Map and Publishing Co., 1973.

  Berrett, LaMar C. Discovering the World of the Bible. Provo, Utah: Young House, 1973.

  Bloch, Abraham C. The Biblical and Historical Background of Jewish Customs and Ceremonies. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1980.

  Buttrick, George Arthur, ed. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962.

  Carcopina, Jerome. Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1940.

  Casson, Lionel. Travel in the Ancient World. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994.

  Clarke, Adam. Clarke’s Commentary. 3 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 1977.

  Collins Gem Latin Dictionary. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.

  Cornell, Tim, and John Matthews. Atlas of the Roman World. New York: Facts on File, 1982.

  Dummelow, J. R. The One Volume Bible Commentary. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1908.

  Edersheim, Alfred. Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ. 1876. Reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979.

  ———. The Temple: Its Ministry and Services as They Were at the Time of Christ. 1874. Reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1958.

  Fallows, Samuel, ed. The Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopædia and Scriptural Dictionary. 3 vols. Chicago: The Howard-Severance Co., 1911.

  Farrar, Frederic. The Life of Christ. Portland, Ore.: Fountain Publications, 1964.

  Grimal, Pierre. The Civilization of Rome. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963.

  A Guide to the Monumental Centre of Ancient Rome, with Reconstructions of the Monuments. Rome: Vision S.R.L., 1962.

  Guthrie, D., J. A. Motyer, A. M. Stibbs, and D. J. Wiseman, eds. The New Bible Commentary: Revised. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970.

  Hastings, James, ed. Dictionary of the Bible. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909.

  Jacobs, Louis. The Book of Jewish Practice. West Orange, N.J.: Behrman House Publishers, 1987.

  Johnston, Harold Whetstone. The Private Life of the Romans. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1903.

  Josephus, Flavius. Antiquities of the Jews. In Josephus: Complete Works. William Whiston, trans. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel Publications, 1960.

  Keil, C. F. and F. Delitzsch. Commentary on the Old Testament in Ten Volumes. 1878–89. Reprint, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975.

  Mackie, George M. Bible Manners and Customs. 1898. Reprint, New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., n.d.

  Regelson, Abraham. The Passover Haggadah. New York: Shulsinger Brothers, 1965.

  Schürer, Emil. The Jewish People in the Time of Jesus. Nahum Glatzer, ed. New York: Shocken Books, 1961.

  Shelton, Jo-Ann. As the Romans Did: A Sourcebook in Roman Social History. 2d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

  Vincent, Marvin R. Word Studies in the New Testament. 4 vols. New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1887–1900.

  Vine, W. E. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell Co. 1981.

  Who’s Who in the Bible: An Illustrated Biographical Dictionary. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 1994.

  Wight, Fred H. Manners and Customs of Bible Lands. Chicago: Moody Press, 1953.

  World Book Encyclopedia. 22 vols. Chicago: World Book, 2000. S.v. “Christmas.”

  Wouk, Herman. This Is My God: The Jewish Way of Life. Rev. ed. New York: Pocket Books, 1974.

  Wright, George Ernest, and Floyd Vivian Filson, eds. The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956.

  About the Author

  Gerald N. Lund received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University. While in southern California, he also did extensive graduate work in New Testament studies at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles and studied Hebrew at the University of Judaism in Hollywood. His love for the Middle East and its people has taken him to the Holy Land more than a dozen times as a tour director and lecturer.

  He was a religious educator for more than thirty-five years in the Church Educational System for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he taught students both on the high school and college levels. During his career, he also wrote and developed curriculum materials, including numerous media presentations on the Old and New Testaments.

  He is the author of more than nineteen books. In addition to the nine volumes in the bestselling The Work and the Glory series, he has written five other novels: One in Thine Hand, The Alliance, Leverage Point, The Freedom Factor, and Fire of the Covenant. He has also written several books on gospel studies, including The Coming of the Lord, a study of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. His books have won several honors, including twice winning the Independent Booksellers “Book of the Year” award.

  He and his wife, Lynn, have seven children and live in Alpine, Utah.

  Behold the Man:

  Kingdom and the Crown, Volume 3

 
Lund, Gerald N. Behold the man / Gerald N. Lund. p. cm.— (The kingdom and the crown ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-57008-853-5 (alk. paper) ISBN-10 1-59038-669-8 (paperbound) ISBN-13 978-1-59038-669-9 (paperbound) 1. Jesus Christ—Fiction. 2. Bible. N.T.—History of Biblical events—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3562.U485 B44 2002 813'.54—dc21 2002012028

  Printed in the United States of America Banta, Menasha, WI

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Maps

  Synopsis of Volume One

  Fishers of Men opened as Marcus Quadratus Didius, a tribune in the Roman legions, comes to the family of David ben Joseph, a wealthy merchant from Capernaum. The Holy Land has been under the total and often brutal rule of the Roman Empire for almost a century. The corrupt system of Roman tax collection encourages corruption, and David ben Joseph has gone to Damascus to try to raise money to pay an exorbitant assessment. His wife, Deborah, is already deeply embittered against the Romans. When she was fifteen years old, her family was caught up in a rebellion against Rome. Several, including her father, were killed, and her mother died in the months following as they were forced to hide through the winter in the mountains. This hatred for everything Roman has been passed on to her son, Simeon, twenty-one, who leads a band of “Zealots.” When Marcus Didius learns that the family does not have the money for their taxes, he refuses to accept their pleas for additional time and tries to arrest them. Simeon resists and is nearly killed. David, his father, returns barely in time to rescue his wife and daughter from being sold into slavery. It is against this backdrop of violence and injustice that the story unfolds.

  As a young man some thirty years before, David ben Joseph was in the shepherd fields of Bethlehem. He saw the angels and heard the glorious announcement that the Messiah had been born. So when word comes to the Galilee that a man named John the Baptist claims to be the forerunner for the Messiah and has designated a carpenter from Nazareth as that Messiah, David is anxious to learn more. Then Jesus comes to Capernaum and calls David’s partners in the fishing business as followers—Simon Peter and his brother, Andrew. David decides to investigate further. He is convinced almost immediately that Jesus is the Christ, or the promised Messiah, and soon is able to convince the rest of his family—all except for Simeon. Simeon finds the teachings of Jesus highly offensive. Loving your enemies and turning the other cheek seems antithetical to all the true Deliverer would stand for. Simeon’s refusal to follow Jesus alienates Simeon from his family.

  However, in time, Simeon cannot help being drawn to Jesus by the simple impact of his teachings and the increasing evidence of his remarkable power. After watching Jesus instantly and completely restore a man’s twisted and withered hand and then feed five thousand people with five small loaves of bread and two fish, Simeon can no longer say that Jesus is an ordinary man. This realization does not bring Simeon peace, however. Now he is torn between his old loyalties to the Zealots and his desire to become a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

  Mordechai ben Uzziel is one of the richest and most powerful men in Jerusalem. An aristocratic Sadducee and member of the Great Council there, he is anxious to make accommodation with Rome in order to maintain peace and protect the base of power he and the other Jewish leaders hold. His eighteen-year-old daughter, Miriam, is pampered, coddled, and accustomed to a life of comfort and luxury. But she is also filled with a strange sense of unrest. She sees that her father’s religion consists mostly of outward trappings, and she searches for deeper meaning in life. On a trip to the Galilee, she and her father are rescued from the hands of a vicious bandit, Moshe Ya’abin, by Simeon and his band of Zealots. Though Miriam feels a great sense of obligation to Simeon for this, her father does not. Because the Zealots threaten war with Rome, Mordechai sets up an intricate plot with Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, to draw the Zealots into a trap.

  As the story unfolds, Miriam also comes in contact with Jesus of Nazareth. She is on the Temple Mount when he drives out the moneychangers. Later she watches him deal compassionately with a woman taken in adultery. Though she knows little about him, she determines to learn more. To her surprise, her father is furious when he hears of her desire and forbids any further contact.

  Then Miriam accidentally learns of her father’s plan to draw the Zealots into the trap. A seemingly isolated wagon train of arms will be sent to decoy the Zealots into the Joknean Pass; then waiting Roman legionnaires will swoop down and kill them. Knowing that Simeon and the others who saved her life will most likely die, Miriam decides she cannot simply stand by. She goes to the Galilee and tells Simeon everything.

  This puts Simeon in a terrible dilemma. Just prior to Miriam’s coming, Simeon had told his band of men that he would not lead them in the raid against the Romans. Because of his commitment to follow Jesus, he has decided he must turn from his life of violence. But when he learns of Mordechai’s treachery and the danger to his men, there is no choice. He and his father ride to the Joknean Pass. Ironically, in order to stop a massacre, Simeon has to save the Romans, led by Tribune Marcus Didius, the very man who epitomizes all that Simeon once hated. Driven by a desire to do what is right, Simeon intervenes and saves the Roman column, but in doing so, one of his men is killed, and another, Yehuda, his closest friend and second-in-command, is captured.

  The book closes as, in an agony of conscience, Simeon realizes that his commitment to be a disciple of Jesus has come only at a terrible price to those who trusted in him.

  Synopsis of Volume Two

  After the tragedies at the Joknean Pass, Simeon is wracked with guilt over Yehuda’s capture and Daniel’s death. Though time is of the essence, he is immobilized by indecision, struggling to merge his old role as a Zealot leader with his new role as a peaceful disciple of Jesus. How can he “love his enemies” when those same enemies have imprisoned his friends? Knowing that by rushing into action with a sword he would betray his newly made baptismal covenants, Simeon concocts several more subtle plans to free Yehuda from prison. His first plan involves disguising a group of Zealots as Roman guards and delivering forged papers from the governor for Yehuda’s release. When complications arise, Simeon abandons that plan and prepares to bribe Pilate with gold to buy Yehuda’s freedom.

  Pilate is not so easily swayed, however, and underlying his acceptance of the deal is his own plan to capture Simeon and force him to reveal the name of the person who betrayed the Romans at the Joknean Pass. Late one evening, Marcus arrives with Yehuda and the other prisoners at the rendezvous point. The deed is done, the trap is sprung, and Marcus returns to present Pilate with the gold and a new prisoner—Simeon.

  Miriam is in similar straits—though in a prison of a different kind. Her relationship with her father, Mordechai, has been strained since the events at Joknean Pass. She is worried about the repercussions if her father were ever to find out that she was responsible for informing Simeon of the trap at the pass. Treading carefully around his increasingly volatile moods, she dares not protest too much when he announces they will be moving to Rome for an indeterminate length of time until the bandit Ya’abin can be captured or subdued. Miriam rejoices when Mordechai agrees to let her stay with Ezra until the move, for she knows that she will then be free to travel to the Galilee and listen to the teachings of Jesus. Her joy is increased tenfold as she, Livia, and Simeon enter the waters of baptism.

  Miriam, Simeon, and the others have been able to spend more time with Jesus and to hear some of his most profound teachings—the parables of the soils, the good Samaritan, and the lost sheep. As Jesus performs some of his most memorable miracles, including stilling the stormy sea with a word, walking on the water, and healing the demonic boy, his influence and reputation spreads throughout the region.

  Miriam is visiting Simeon’s family when they receive word of his capture; and Miriam knows she must take steps to save him—if she can—as it is her identity that he is protecting. She arrives in Caesarea ahead of her father and pleads with Pilate to
set Simeon free. When Pilate refuses, she suggests an alternative plan: release Simeon and Yehuda with orders to capture and subdue Ya’abin within a certain amount of time. If they succeed, they go free; if they fail, they are at the mercy of the Romans. Pilate agrees to the plan, and Simeon and Yehuda are released to hunt down Ya’abin in the Judean wilderness.

  Mordechai and Miriam move to Rome. Marcus joins them while he is on leave. The blossoming relationship between Miriam and Marcus deepens; he asks Mordechai for Miriam’s hand in marriage. And Marcus hires a man to track down Livia’s brother, Drusus, who had been sold into slavery when he was a child. Drusus is found and the siblings are reunited.

  Tensions continue to rise between Mordechai and Miriam as he plots the destruction of Jesus, and she hides the fact that she has been baptized. When events force her to reveal to her father not only her baptism but also her role in the Joknean Pass incident, Mordechai disowns her. He leaves Miriam and Livia in Rome under house arrest and returns to Jerusalem with Marcus.

  Meanwhile, Simeon and Yehuda have embarked on a series of psychological sneak attacks designed to demoralize Ya’abin’s forces. After months of baiting the Desert Fox, they deliver the final blow by luring Ya’abin into a blind canyon, where the Romans swoop down on their prey. Marcus toys with the idea of allowing Simeon to be killed in the trap as well, but his centurion, Sextus, essentially defies him and rescues Simeon. Flushed with victory, Marcus boasts to Simeon that he is engaged to Miriam.

  Simeon, unable to believe Marcus’s boast, journeys with Ezra to Rome, where he discovers the truth for himself: Miriam does not want to marry Marcus, and she and Livia have been plotting for some time to return to Jerusalem. Simeon and Ezra help them escape from Rome, and during the journey home, Simeon and Miriam proclaim their love for each other.

  List of Major Characters