Daughter of Jerusalem

by Joan Wolf

  “The way Ms. Wolf handles this often misunderstood and controversial woman is nothing short of a literary triumph. Bravo!”

  —Margaret Brownley, New York Times best-selling author, Dawn Comes Early and Waiting for Morning

  “In Daughter of Jerusalem, Joan Wolf has given us a treasure: a new, vibrant perspective on the life of mysterious Mary Magdalene. As the story unfolds it is impossible not to feel afresh the excitement we knew at our early explorations into our faith.”

  —Stella Cameron, New York Times best-selling author, Court of Angels series

  “Wolf weaves an original and intriguing tale of treachery and lost love with the discovery of forgiveness, hope, and redemption. An inspiring story not to be missed.”

  —Cathy Gohilke, award-winning author, Band of Sisters

  “At last, a Mary Magdalene we can believe in and root for. Joan Wolf eschews the stereotypes to portray Christ’s beloved female disciple not as a prostitute or ‘fallen’ woman but as a complex, autonomous, intelligent person of beauty and passion as well as piety. Enthralling.”

  —Sherry Jones, best-selling author, The Jewel of Medina and Four Sisters, All Queens

  “Compelling, thought-provoking fiction. Joan Wolf is a brilliant story-teller, recreating the world that Jesus walked.”

  —Patricia Rice, New York Times best-selling author, The Trouble with Magic

  “The fictional story of Mary Magdalene drew me in from the first page. Rich with details and wonderful characters, this inspirational tale tugged at my heart and kept me up way past my bedtime. Truly one of the best books I’ve read in a long while.”

  —Beth Wiseman, best-selling author, Daughters of Promise series

  “Daughter of Jerusalem is a powerful story . . . . Joan Wolf creates [Mary Magdalene’s] world with vivid grace.”

  —Mary Jo Putney, best-selling author, The Lost Lords series

  “I loved reading the Gospel stories from the perspective of a woman. . . . A must-read for those who enjoy historical fiction!”

  —Melanie Dobson, award-winning author, The Silent Order and Where the Trail Ends

  “A moving portrait of one of the most curiously overlooked women in history. Wolf deftly shows us . . . that our greatest worth is to be found in the soul.”

  —Iris Anthony, author, The Ruins of Lace

  “Meet Mary of Magdala, a woman of great courage and love, a woman for all seasons.”

  —Catherine Coulter, author, Backfire

  Copyright © 2013 by Joan Wolf

  Published by Worthy Publishing, a division of Worthy Media, Inc., 134 Franklin Road, Suite 200, Brentwood, Tennessee 37027.

  HELPING PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THE HEART OF GOD

  eBook available at worthypublishing.com

  Audio distributed through Brilliance Audio; visit brillianceaudio.com

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012954114

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  For foreign and subsidiary rights, contact Riggins International Rights Services, Inc.; rigginsrights.com

  Published in association with Natasha Kern Literary Agency

  ISBN: 978-1-936034-67-3 (trade paper)

  Cover Design: Faceout Studio, Jeff Miller

  Cover Images: © Shutterstock

  Printed in the United States of America

  13 14 15 16 17 LBM 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For my mother and father in memoriam.

  NOTE ON LANGUAGE

  At the time of Christ the spoken language among Jews was Aramaic. Hebrew was known only by the highly educated, who studied it so they could read the scriptures. A simplified form of Greek was the universal language of the widespread Roman Empire, and most Jews probably spoke this marketplace Greek as well. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written in Greek. Only the Romans spoke Latin. The characters in this book are supposedly speaking Aramaic. What you are reading is a modern English “translation” of that language.

  CONTENTS

  Note on Language

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Two

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Three

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Part 1

  Daniel

  Chapter One

  It was deep August when my father and I made the journey from my old home in Bethany to what was to be my new home in Magdala. We traveled with a party of friends from Jerusalem going to visit family in Galilee, and we joined up with other groups in Jericho because it wasn’t safe to travel the route along the Jordan if you weren’t with a large caravan.

  Papa was taking me to live with my mother’s sister, my aunt Leah, because I did not get on with my stepmother. He had married Judith shortly after my mother died, when I was three. She was never nice to me. As I grew older, I learned to stand up for myself. We disliked each other intensely and made no attempt to hide our feelings.

  A neighbor once told me that Judith was jealous of me. Instinctively, I knew that to be true. On the surface, Judith had the authority in the house, but I always felt that I had more power because I was better than she was. I wasn’t petty minded, and people liked me. My little half brother, Lazarus, and half sister, Martha, loved me more than they loved their own mother. But Judith had brought several highly profitable olive groves to Papa when they married, so he always took her side.

  When I was ten, and the confrontations between us were growing worse, my father decided to send me to live with Aunt Leah. He told me it was for Aunt Leah’s sake; her husband had died, and she had no children of her own. I would be a comfort to her, he said. My mother would have wanted me to go.

  I knew the real reason behind my banishment was that he was tired of having to listen to Judith’s complaints. He saw an opportunity for peace in his house, and he was going to take it.

  It’s not that I didn’t love my Aunt Leah. She lived with her husband and his brothers in a house on the Sea of Galilee, and she always stayed with us in Bethany when she came to Jerusalem for the holy days. She was my mother’s only sister, and there had always been a special bond between us. If my aunt had lived in Bethany or anywhere close by, I would have been thrilled to make my home with her. But I could not feel happy about being sent to Galilee.

  Judeans believed Galilee was a barbarian place. All my life I had heard that G
alileans weren’t strict Jews, the way we were in Judea. They were lax in their practices, unclean in their table manners, and poorly educated. None of the great Temple scholars came from Galilee. Nobody of any importance had ever come from Galilee. I couldn’t understand how my father, who had often said these things himself, would want me to live in such an uncivilized province.

  When I told him this, my father got the hard expression on his face that meant he wasn’t going to change his mind. So Judith packed my belongings, and my father and I left Bethany, the only home I had ever known, to make the long, hot walk north to Magdala in Galilee. Lazarus and Martha cried and clung to me when I left, making me feel even worse, and I was thoroughly miserable as we joined the group of people who were to be our companions on the road.

  The trip north wasn’t as horrible as I feared. The farther we walked, the lovelier the landscape became. In August, Bethany was hot and brown and dry; Galilee, in contrast, seemed cool and lush. Dark evergreen forest covered the hillsides, and the sheep looked fat and healthy in their lush pastures. The wheat had been harvested, but everywhere figs hung ripe on trees, and we could see men at work harvesting dates.

  After two days of walking we arrived at the southernmost tip of the Sea of Galilee. The sun was setting as we came into the village, and the lake waters reflected back the streaky gold colors of the sky. The hills on the western side of the sea rose like shadow guardians out of the sunset. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

  One of the men in our party saw my face and chuckled. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “I never saw so much water!”

  The man laughed. “One day perhaps you will visit the Great Sea, where you can sail for days and never see land. Then you will understand just how tiny this so-called Sea of Galilee is.”

  One of the men traveling with us was from Capernaum, another city on the lake, and he was quick to defend his native province. “You have nothing nearly as beautiful in Judea. The Dead Sea is ugly, and nothing can live in it. Our lake teems with fish. You can’t get fish like ours anywhere in Judea.”

  The Judean exploded into a defense of his province, but I stopped listening to the squabble. Instead I stood quietly, looking at the beauty that lay stretched out before me, praying in my heart that God would let me find happiness in this new place.

  It was too late to go on to Magdala, so my father and I spent the night at one of the inns that served travelers and merchants along the well-traveled route. We set forth early the next morning, taking the road that ran along the west side of the lake. The first town we came to was Tiberias, a new city that was still being built by Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee.

  I was hungry, but we didn’t stop. My father told me Tiberias was a Roman city and that no good Jew would sully the soles of his sandals by stopping near it.

  “It’s almost as bad as Sepphoris,” my father said with disgust, as he marched me along, determined to put the polluted city behind us as quickly as possible.

  “What’s Sepphoris?” I asked, skipping along beside him.

  My father spat, something he rarely did. Then he told me that Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, was a den of sin. It had been built by Herod the Great using Greek architects and was the seat of the Roman occupation in Galilee. Herod Antipas, my father said, his voice dripping with scorn, was as in love with the Greeks and Romans as his father had been.

  It was early afternoon when we arrived in Magdala. As the first houses started to appear, I noticed that most of them were built of a light-colored stone, not the mud bricks we used in Bethany. It was very pretty.

  “There is the house,” my father said, and I stared in amazement. Built of stone, it was situated directly on the lakeshore. And it was huge! It had two stories, supported by a series of stone arches. Gardens stretched out on either side, and the roof was tile, not the packed clay I was used to.

  The people who live here must be very rich, I thought. My father was considered a well-to-do man in Bethany, but our house was tiny compared to this.

  I felt my chest growing tight with anxiety as my father opened the gate that gave onto a path to the front door. Close up, the house looked even more enormous, sprawling over a huge plot of land, with outbuildings and an orchard of date palms and fig trees.

  “Papa,” I whispered, as I trailed behind him, “are you certain this is the right place? This house is so big!”

  He didn’t appear overwhelmed. “Benjamin has obviously done well with his business.”

  He kept going, and I followed reluctantly, forcing one foot to move after the other. I was frightened and had a dreadful feeling I might cry. I never cried, and I was proud of that distinction. No matter what Judith said, no matter how many times my father locked me up in my room, I never cried. I would not start now.

  But the outlines of the huge house had become suspiciously blurry. I ground my teeth together to gain control.

  The gate banged behind us, and someone called out my father’s name. We stopped and waited while a well-dressed boy came down the path toward us. He addressed my father politely: “You must be Jacob bar Solomon. Welcome to our house, sir. I am Daniel, Benjamin’s youngest son.”

  My father smiled and reached out to embrace the boy. “I thank you, Daniel bar Benjamin,” he replied, turning the full strength of his charm on the boy. My father was a very handsome man, with thick black hair only beginning to turn gray, dark brown eyes, and imperious black eyebrows. People often joked that there was no way he could deny my paternity, I looked so much like him. I was never quite sure I liked the comparison. Certainly I had his hair and eyebrows, but my nose did not jut out like his, and my cheekbones were high and thin, not broad and solid.

  Lately I had taken to stealing peeks at myself in Judith’s polished bronze hand mirror, and I had been pleased with what I saw. Judith caught me once and called me ugly names, and I lost my temper and told her she looked like a cow. That was when my father made the decision to send me to live with Aunt Leah.

  My father introduced me to Daniel, and we stood, silent in the sunlight, looking at each other. He was the handsomest boy I had ever seen, with clean, dark brown hair and reddish brown eyes. We knew immediately that we would like each other.

  “Welcome to our house, Mary,” he said and smiled. Daniel had a wonderful smile; it lit up his thin, boyish face and made me feel that I truly was welcome here.

  “Come into the house with me,” he said, glancing back at my father and then again at me. “I’ll find Leah and my mother to greet you.”

  My aunt was waiting just inside the front door. and I ran into her outstretched arms. They closed around me tightly. “Mary,” she said, her lips pressed against the top of my head, “I’m so glad you have come to me.”

  I was glad too. Daniel’s smile and Leah’s welcome had washed away the tears that had threatened on the path, and my old confidence came rushing back. My father said, “You have contributed greatly to the peace of my household, Leah, by having Mary live with you. I thank you with all my heart.”

  “We are happy to have her,” another voice said, and I lifted my face from my aunt’s shoulder to greet Daniel’s mother, Esther, the matriarch of the family.

  Her eyes were the same color as Daniel’s, and she looked at me for a long moment before she said, “I hope you are used to working, Mary. In this family, everyone has responsibilities.”

  I bowed my head respectfully and assured her I would happily do whatever she might ask. I felt Aunt Leah take my hand and squeeze it, and I squeezed hers back.

  Suddenly I was glad to be here in Magdala, in this house set on the beautiful Sea of Galilee, where Daniel lived.

  Chapter Two

  It didn’t take long for me to learn that fitting into a large, new family wasn’t going to be so easy. The head of the household and the family business was Benjamin, Daniel’s father; next in authority after Benjamin was his younger brother, Joses. Counting from Benjamin down to the youngest baby, the ho
usehold numbered thirty-two people in all. For a girl from a small family of five, it was overwhelming.

  Aunt Leah had been married to Benjamin’s other brother, Isaac. When Isaac died, Leah, having no other place to go, remained with her relatives by marriage. That’s why she had been so happy when my father asked her to let me come live with her. I was someone of her own blood.

  She was so sweet and gentle that I often thought my mother must have been like her. I had no memories of my mother, but that didn’t stop me from missing her. If she had lived, she would have taken care of me and loved me. If she had lived, I would never have had to deal with Judith.

  Esther, Lord Benjamin’s wife (we were all supposed to call him Lord to show our respect for his position), put me to work right away. Even though some girls came from the village to help, there was still a lot to be done each day. Just getting enough water for the daily household needs was a huge task, as were milking the goats and making cheese and curds from the gathered milk. The daily bread had to be baked and the food for supper gathered and cooked. Squeezed in between these chores were the ongoing tasks of spinning cloth, making the cloth into garments, and caring for the large vegetable garden.

  I tried hard to do everything the way Esther wanted, but I had learned little about housekeeping or cooking from Judith. Nothing I did had pleased her, and she banished me from her kitchen.

  Aunt Leah gently tried to show me what to do, but I was miserably homesick for Lazarus and Martha. I would often slip away into the courtyard to play with the young children. It was much more satisfying than trying to carry out tasks that everyone scorned me for doing poorly.

  Eventually Esther settled on the jobs most suited to me. I would rise early and prepare the day’s bread, do the weeding in the vegetable garden, and help look after the children. I didn’t mind doing any of these things and tried to go about my work as quietly and competently as I could.