Proudly independent fishermen nonetheless? No. The idyllic vision of them spreading their nets at sunset and genially roasting their catch over an open fire is just that: an idyll. In fact the fishing industry was highly regulated, and the fishermen as exploited as the peasant villagers laboring under their tax burden. Fishing rights were controlled by government representatives who sold to the highest bidder—and the highest briber. These were essentially conglomerates; they hired the fishermen as day laborers, leasing the boats at extortionate fees to the men who worked for them.
Read between the lines in the gospel of Matthew, and it's clear that no independent fisherman would have neglected his boats and gone off to follow a preacher, no matter how charismatic. But an indentured fisherman? One whose boat was his only at the grace of the head of the conglomerate and whose livelihood could be taken from him at any moment? He had nothing to lose.
And then, finally, Herod the Great died. Despite innumerable assassination attempts, he had survived well into his sixties; then as now, tyrants seemed to thrive on their abuse of power. At least he had died an excruciatingly painful death, by all accounts from stomach cancer.
Now the decades of waiting were over. As fast as word spread, street riots broke out throughout Palestine. This surely was the moment for the popular leader to arise, the anointed king, the messiah who would rid the land of foreign occupation and lead his people back to dignity and independence.
There were many candidates. In Perea, east of the Jordan, a certain Simon was proclaimed king by his supporters, then led them in a series of lightning raids against Herodian holdings across the river. They ransacked and set fire to several of Herod's palaces, including the infamously luxurious one in Jericho—a particularly satisfying target for Simon, since he had formerly been a slave there. In Judea, a shepherd referred to historically only by the Greek name Athronges was acclaimed a popular king, and together with his brothers, led guerrilla operations against Herodian troops. But neither these nor others had anything like the following of Hezekiah's grandson Judas in the Galilee.
His guerrilla band augmented by villagers, Judas stormed Sepphoris, the Herodian garrison town just over the ridge from Nazareth. With surprise and sheer numbers on their side, they quickly gained control of the garrison. Once inside, their first priority was to break down the door to the archives and destroy all tax and debt records.
Word spread quickly; more villagers came, reveling in the sudden sense of freedom. Their debts forcibly "forgiven," they looted the regional governor's palace, seized weapons, hauled sacks of grain—their own grain, taken by force as taxes—back home.
It couldn't last, of course. Reprisal, in the classical Roman style, was quick, brutal, and heavy-handed. The Roman general Varus swept down with his legions from his headquarters to the north in Syria. As usual with the Romans, only the commanders were actually from Rome; the soldiers themselves were mercenaries, mainly from Syria and farther east. No honor in arms here; no fine distinctions between combatant and non-combatant. As with all warfare of the time, it was total. Olive groves and fruit orchards were torn up. Wheat fields burned. Women and girls raped and killed. Houses destroyed, sometimes even whole villages, for sheltering fugitives. In Perea, Simon was hunted down and beheaded. Thousands of followers of Athronges, the shepherd-messiah, were massacred, and Athronges himself disappeared. Magdala saw bloody hand-to-hand fighting, and long lines of Magdalenes were led away in chains to be sold as slaves. But the fiercest fighting—and the fiercest reprisal—came in Sepphoris.
The garrison was razed, the leaders of the occupying rebels crucified, and their followers captured and sold as slaves. Nobody knows how many Nazarenes were among them, but certainly any survivors would have headed for Nazareth, just over the ridge to the south. Some of the braver villagers would have gone up to the top of the ridge to watch as the smoke from the burning town drifted across to them. Others, braver still, would have gone down the far side of the ridge to help guide any surviving rebels to safety, first in Nazareth, and then in other, more remote villages.
They'd have been close enough to watch as the soldiers prepared to crucify the resistance leaders—the Roman punishment of choice for slaves, rebels, and traitors. There was nothing they could do but look on helplessly as the crossbeams were raised into place on the Sepphoris hillside, then keep silent, distant vigil as the soldiers jeered at the tortured men nailed to the crosses, day after agonizing day. And when the men died at last, and the soldiers tossed their bodies into a nearby ravine, the villagers had to leave them there, to be polished to the bone by jackals and vultures.
Maryam kept vigil with them. How could she not? There is no question that she was involved in the resistance of her time. The only question is how she could possibly be anything but involved. Like any West Bank villager or Gaza refugee camp dweller today, she was caught up in the political turmoil around her because it reached deep into every village, every clan, every family.
Her own kinsmen were almost certainly among those crucified at Sepphoris, and that scene of crucifixion would sear itself into her brain, brand itself into her consciousness. These men were dying for her, for her neighbors, for all of them. To risk the cross was a sign of courage; to die on it, a hero's death. To abandon the struggle for fear of such a death would be to betray not just everything these men had fought for, but also everything she herself believed in and had worked for.
In any struggle of popular resistance, girls are as valuable as seasoned fighters. Even before Herod's death and Varus' savage reprisal, who better than a shepherd girl in her loose linen shift to smuggle food to the Arbel caves? Who knew the goat tracks better than she did the ones used by men, and knew them as well by starlight as by sunlight? The goats and sheep had taught her every cave, every tree capable of offering shade, every overhang where you could hide from the scorching midday sun, or from soldiers. Maryam was the perfect guide for a wounded fighter seeking safety.
It would never have occurred to her to do anything less. This was not just the idealism of youth, for the principle of resistance was set deep in her mind. It was part of her culture and her history as a Galilean. Repression merely strengthened her determination instead of sapping it. Just as steadfastness became the motto of Arab Palestinians during the Intifada—the uprising against Israeli rule that began in 1987—so too it could have served as the motto of Jewish Palestinians of Maryam's time.
Many of the methods used by the Romans sound jarringly familiar in today's Middle East: mass imprisonment, execution, deportation, collective punishment in the form of homes and villages razed, olive trees and fruit orchards uprooted. Anyone reading a newspaper over the past few years can't help but sense the echoes bouncing across time between the Roman occupation of Palestine and the Israeli one of the West Bank and Gaza.
As in the rebellions against Herod and the Romans, the Intifada was the result of a social and political upheaval within Palestinian society. It combined nationalist warfare with class warfare. The traditional aristocratic families who had protected their assets under both Jordanian and Israeli rule were now threatened, much as the Judean aristocratic elite was threatened by popular uprisings two thousand years ago. Like the high priesthood, the old-guard Fatah leaders were seen as culturally and morally corrupt—"whiskey drinkers" was one of the milder epithets for them—and the rise of the fundamentalist Hamas movement offered a seductive alternative, fueling the revolt with religious revival. As political journalists Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari noted, political activism "now combined patriotism with moral purity, and social action with the promise of divine grace."
The greater the repression of the Intifada, the more widespread its support. Most significantly, perhaps, it involved everybody: women and men, old and young. Grandmothers brought baskets full of stones to children aiming slingshots at tanks. Women organized tax strikes and social services. A new tactic developed reminiscent of the Sicarii, the dagger men, who operated in the middle of the first centur
y:assassination of suspected collaborators. By the year 2001, even long-standing concepts of honor had been turned around, with teenage girls gaining instant martyrdom by becoming suicide bombers.
What applies today, applied also two thousand years ago. Repression may have been effective in the short term, but it was counter-effective in the longer term. The Roman intention was to force the Palestinians into accepting their fate; instead, the Palestinians understood that they could alter and affect it—a revolutionary concept for peasants at any time in any place, and a firebrand one when mixed with religion.
No matter how many crucifixions there were—and there were thousands—no matter how many homes and olive trees were destroyed or people taken into slavery, Varus and his troops couldn't touch the sense that something new was about to come into being. Today we'd call such a sense millennial, though then there was no millennium. It was the year 3761 in the Jerusalem temple, and the year 753 Ab Urbe Condita, since the founding of the city of Rome. But no Galilee villager cared how the years were numbered. All that mattered was that the old tyrant was dead. Steadfastness and patience would now be rewarded. Simon and Athronges had been false messiahs, but if there was ever a time for the true anointed king to appear and lead his people to freedom and independence, it was surely now.
This was Palestine just over two thousand years ago—the world in which Maryam lived, and in which, at age thirteen, she became pregnant and gave birth.
It was the year we now know as 4 B.C.
Part Two
Her Womb
IV
Maryam learned early about childbirth. Since she was young, her grandmother has taken her along whenever there's a delivery. The old woman is in her fifties, but as alert and sharp as any shepherd girl; like all village wise women, she seems to defy age. Her name? The same as the midwife of apocryphal legend: Salome. It's a name that can mean either woman of peace, or woman of wholeness. Perhaps the two are the same thing.
At first, Salome just had Maryam carry her box of herbs and oils, but gradually, without the child even realizing that she was learning, she taught her how to help: pull here, apply pressure there, mix these herbs for an infusion, those for a poultice. And Salome knows now that she's chosen her successor well. The girl is quick to learn, with strong hands that can be firm or gentle according to need. Gifted hands, Salome calls them.
When word comes—a boy arriving breathless at the door, often in the middle of the night—the two women, old and young, make their way through the alleys to find the kinswomen of the household huddled around the moaning mother. The men sit in silence on the roof, keeping their distance; this is women's work. Salome checks that everything is in place: a stone on the floor for her to sit between the mother's open legs, a fire to heat water and oils, soil scattered in front of the midwife's stone to soak up the blood.
Maryam hangs the holding rope from a beam, so that the mother can cling to it as she pushes in labor. Salome directs the kinswomen: one to stand behind the mother so that she can slip her arms around her, below the armpits, and lift her; two others to kneel on either side so that they can take the weight of her thighs. The three form a natural chair of womanly support, with Salome in front, the fourth point of the compass.
Meanwhile Maryam mixes the herbs that will make labor go faster. Her grandmother favors giant fennel, and Maryam measures the crushed leaves carefully, for the correct dosage is vital. Then she mixes them in oil and a little wine, lifts the pregnant woman's head, and encourages her to drink. Salome watches; she likes the way her granddaughter handles the matter. Many women in labor pains will writhe and twist away, spit out the potions and frustrate a midwife's work. But Maryam's voice and touch seem to soothe them. They swallow the liquid she offers, breathe deep when she tells them, push when she says to.
More often than not, all goes well. The baby appears as it should, head first. Salome reaches up with both hands and with a deft twist brings the child out into the light of day, a bundle of wrinkled newborn flesh cradled in her dark, age-wrinkled hands. Then she calls on the afterbirth to follow without delay.
"Come sister," she chants, claiming it as family lest its spirit come back to haunt the child. "Come into the world."
"Come sister," echo the kinswomen, knowing that the placenta must emerge, or the mother will die.
If the afterbirth delays, some midwives use pepper to make the mother sneeze. Others burn hyssop or thyme and make the mother inhale the fumes to bring on extra contractions. But Salome prefers a simpler, more effective method: she presses her head hard into the mother's stomach, ignoring her cries of pain, and pushes the afterbirth down and out.
Now the kinswomen stand and ululate to greet the new baby into the world and frighten away any evil spirits that might be hovering nearby, ready to enter the vulnerable newborn. The high, sharp trilling wafts out over the village, carrying the good news as Maryam oils and salts the baby—every newborn anointed in its new world—to protect it from evil spirits and illness. Then she puts it into a basket along with the afterbirth so that the child can draw on its power for its first day of life.
Salome chants the spells that are expected of her. "El, great god who keeps every living thing alive," she cries. "Give afflictions and enemies no power over this woman and over the child that has emerged from her. I hereby call on the mighty one." And now, shortening the forbidden full name of Yahweh to Yah, she closes her eyes, lifts her head, and offers the abbreviated name again and again into the night, high and piercing: "Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah, Yah . . ."
She knows the infant's life was in her hands and her herbs, and that her spells, like the oil and the salt, are more ritual than practical. But she also recognizes the power of belief. A mother must have faith in her infant's ability to survive, and the very act of chanting a spell is reassuring, even to Salome herself. It is an act of closure, as it were, signifying that her work has been well done and she can return home to sleep in good faith.
She comes back the next day to cut the navel cord. If the newborn is a boy, she circumcises it. A swift skillful nick of the knife, a single cry, and it's done. Then she and Maryam wrap the afterbirth in oil and straw, tie it up in a cloth embroidered by the mother for just this purpose, and bury it along with the blood-soaked soil from in front of the birthing stone. This way, the earth will wait patiently to reclaim the new life, for as everyone knows, we are born of the earth and to the earth we shall return. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
The baby won't be named for forty days yet. If it survives, there'll be a feast; the village will celebrate, and the mother will be ritually bathed by her kinswomen. But not until those forty days have passed. You never want to provoke the wrath of the gods by taking life for granted.
Yet sometimes even Salome's best efforts fail. For all her skill and knowledge and experience, the gods will have their way. The mother may keep bleeding no matter how strong the herbs she's been given, growing weaker and weaker until she loses the strength to live. Or the infant is born dead: purple from lack of air, with the cord wrapped around its neck, or so malformed that you can't help but be grateful that there is no breath in its lungs.
Sometimes, and these are the worst, both mother and child die, and then the gathered women keen—a long, deep moaning like an animal in mortal pain—as Salome seamlessly switches from life to death, accepting the one as calmly and as naturally as the other. Maryam washes the bodies as her grandmother mixes myrrh and other aromatic herbs with oil, and then the two women, the old and the young, perform the last act of honor to the dead woman and her child. They rub and anoint the corpses and wrap them in their shrouds.
When I lived in Jerusalem, I used to go walking with friends in the surrounding hills in search of herbs, especially in the springtime. My favorite was wild sage, called maryamiya in Aramaic: literally, Maryam's herb. Not the wide-leaved garden sage, but a spindlier mountain species with long grayish-green leaves. We'd take it home and pack it into a glass, then fill the glass with honey a
nd hot water, sip, and feel extraordinarily clear-headed and . . . well, sage.
Whether Maryam's name came from the herb or the herb's name from Maryam, the link remains firm. The sage I collected and drank is certainly the same one she collected and drank. But I was merely dabbling; Maryam was far more professional.
Few people today have any serious difficulty accepting the image of her as a shepherd girl, out in the hills with the sheep and the goats. After all, that fits our picture of peasant life two thousand years ago. Or, indeed, of peasant life today. But there's a certain condescension in this, very similar to the one we adopt when we imagine that people who could neither read nor write were by definition ignorant.
Maryam has to have been far more than just another peasant girl out with the flocks. She would raise a child who would become a revered healer in his time, let alone a divine being after his death. How then did he come by such knowledge?
There have been innumerable theories as to where Jesus learned the art of healing, sending him everywhere from Egypt to China to become a kind of sorcerer's apprentice. Such theories feed off and into the ongoing western fascination with the occult, and the essentially racist idea of the inscrutably mysterious Orient. But not only are none of them helpful; they actually obscure the issue. A quick pass with Ockham's razor—the famous principle devised by medieval scholar William of Ockham which states, in essence, that ornate explanations are both unnecessary and illogical—and we can see a more convincing answer far closer to home.
Let us let go of Orientalist exotica, then, and see Maryam as a healer. An assumption, true, but by no means an unreasonable one, for there is strong circumstantial evidence. Every village of the time included a line of women who passed on the knowledge of herbal and manual medicine to their daughters and granddaughters. They were called "wise women," or perhaps more appropriately in Maryam's case, "sage women." Of course we don't know if Maryam's grandmother was called Salome; there is no record, neither historical nor legendary, of her grandparents. But women such as she were the midwives and pharmacists, the bone-setters and bandagers, the family practitioners and emergency-room physicians of the time.
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