Ben Isaac had begun the story without hurry and confusion, except the two interruptions when Gavache received phone calls.
According to the Gospel of Jesus, which Ben Isaac uttered from memory with a tremor in his voice, Yeshua was born a year before the death of Herod the Great, during the Jewish month of Tishri in the year 3755 on the first day of Sukkot in Bethanya, a small village a mile and a half to the east of Jerusalem, at the foot of the Mount of Olives.
‘Do you think I have any idea what you’re talking about?’ Gavache interrupted.
A discouraged Ben Isaac frowned. ‘September 14, 5 B.C. A Saturday. The first day of the Feast of Tabernacles.’
What the fuck. Gavache didn’t need precise dates. He forced himself to keep his mouth shut and not show his skepticism.
Jesus was prepared from an early age to assume an important role. He was a descendant of Abraham, David, and Solomon, who had ordered the building of the Temple. He was expected to restore the glorious time before the exile, the glory of Israel. But the Jerusalem that Jesus knew was not the Jerusalem of the Old Testament. That city had fallen under the yoke of Babylonia, which razed the city and destroyed the Jewish Temple. The Ark of the Covenant had been lost forever in the sixth century B.C. The Jerusalem of Jesus’s time was reconstructed from scratch by the Jewish rulers of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century B.C., and the Temple was reconstructed by Herod the Great a year before Jesus’s birth.
Herod wanted Him dead, not because he was a lunatic, but because Jesus was a noble Jew who had been proscribed with all His family. Herod had to eliminate any possible challenge to his throne.
‘For the Jews the word Messiah didn’t mean the chosen one or the one sent by God. Messiah simply referred to the heir from the house of David. Joseph was also an heir, and Jacob before him,’ Ben Isaac continued.
‘But why Jesus? Did He know he was an heir to the throne?’ Gavache didn’t understand.
It wasn’t difficult to find the answer in the Bible. The accounts place the family of Jesus in Bethlehem, later in Egypt, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Cafarnaum, Jericho, Betabara, Enom, Betsaida, throughout the Jordon valley and along the Sea of Galilee, among many other places. Jesus’s family, a royal family, was in permanent flight. In one place His father was a carpenter, in another a stonemason, an artisan — always manual crafts, which those sent by Herod never paid attention to. Joseph never stayed in one place too long. Of course, this information was not explicitly mentioned in Holy Scripture, since the authors of the gospels wanted to emphasize the importance of the virgin birth, of conception without sin. From the beginning the intention was to emphasize Jesus as the Son of Man, the Messiah, a man greater than all other men who could perform miracles as if He were the Son of God Himself. Everything else was history.
‘In the middle of the night, without warning, Father awakened us. It was time to leave again,’ Ben Isaac quoted.
‘Is that in the Bible?’ Gavache asked.
Ben Isaac shook his head no. It wasn’t necessary to cite the source of the quotation. For Gavache it was a completely different picture of Jesus from what he knew.
The life of Jesus bounced back and forth until his adult years. He became a renowned and respected rabbi because of His humility and wisdom until… John the Baptist. Gavache frowned and redoubled his attention at this point in the account.
John the Baptist was Jewish, the son of the priest Zacarias and Elizabeth. He was born on the outskirts of Jerusalem in Ein Kerem, six months before Jesus, and began his Nazarite education at the age of fourteen in Ein Gedi.
‘Nazarite education?’ Gavache asked.
‘Yes, the consecration of someone to God. It involved some physical sacrifices, never cutting one’s hair, never drinking wine, never touching a corpse, never eating meat. One had to maintain a purified state against all temptations,’ Ben Isaac explained, with the patience of Job. ‘Jesus was also a Nazarite.’
‘Jesus the Nazarite, as opposed to Jesus from Nazareth, the Nazarene,’ Gavache deduced, absorbed in the story. ‘A Messiah consecrated to God?’
‘See how it all connects,’ Ben Isaac tossed out.
Jesus was fascinated by John the Baptist for his abnegation, but even more for his personality. He saw a wandering preacher who advocated baptism instead of fanatical extremism. Like all the Jews of his time, John had a preoccupation with purification by water. Even today archaeologists are constantly discovering the basins for ritual baths, the Jewish miqwa’ot. Practically every Jewish house had one, and any traveling Jew that entered one had to be purified. They had to dip themselves in a pool, which was filled with spring water, but, before going in, they had to wash their hands and feet, especially the lower limbs, which were the source of impurity. After dipping, their feet and head were rubbed with purifying oil. The woman who anointed Jesus in the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany two days before the Crucifixion, according to the canonical gospels, was just performing a Jewish ritual with ancient roots.
‘Okay, they took a lot of baths. What does that have to do with anything?’ Gavache asked.
‘The baths were Jewish rituals. John the Baptist performed the same ritual in the Jordan River, but for gentiles,’ Ben Isaac explained.
‘And baptized Jesus,’ Gavache added.
‘But this didn’t have the enormous outcry that the apostles and His followers claimed it did. The majority didn’t understand what had happened. Not even John understood.’
Jesus was a flexible, open, intelligent man, a rabbi, a master, a healer of souls, a preacher who greatly admired John’s methods. John the Baptist was an enormous influence. In reality John marked a break with the past. After him, Jesus intensified his rituals and preaching, presenting variations that were not pleasing to conservative believers. Jesus created a new branch of Judaism, a kind of sect. When John was beheaded by Herod Antipas, Jesus was his natural successor.
‘John never performed a miracle,’ Ben Isaac said, and then sighed deeply, as if in sorrow. ‘Neither did Jesus. The Jesus who gave sight to the blind and cured cripples exists only in the Bible.’
‘How boring. And where does Bethlehem and Nazareth fit into all this?’ Gavache asked, disillusioned.
‘The authors of the New Testament had to emphasize that Jesus was the Savior, the Anointed One, the Son of God, Emanuel, and that there was no doubt about this. The prophets of the Old Testament had pointed the way and described the steps to follow. He would be born in Bethlehem, flee to Egypt, return, and be called the Nazarene. But, as you noted, they confused “Nazarene” with “Nazarite.”?’ Ben Isaac smiled slightly. ‘The only time that He stepped foot in Nazareth, as an adult, he was poorly received. People wanted to kill him. Do you think that would have been possible if he had belonged to one of the good families of the region?’
‘What a confusing story.’ Gavache was speaking in general, not referring specifically to Ben Isaac’s account, which made sense. ‘Why did Pontius Pilate wash his hands of all this and order the Jews to decide?’
‘That’s more nonsense,’ Ben Isaac replied. ‘Do you know who the dominant force in the so-called civilized world was from 27 B.C. through the next four hundred years?’
‘I assume you’re referring to the Romans.’
‘You assume correctly. Do you know what happened during this time?’
Gavache shrugged. He was an expert on life, not history.
‘Roman expansion, which lasted for several centuries, and in the case of the Eastern Roman Empire, more than a millennium.’ Ben Isaac counted off on his fingers. ‘The birth and death of Jesus and of Paul of Tarsus, the author of the Epistles. During this time the canonical and apocryphal gospels were written, and a new religion was born, Christianity.’