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A LARGE CROWD HAD ALREADY GATHERED ON THE CONcourse facing the steep stairway that led up to the entrance. Ranged along the walls on either side were the tents of the peddlers and traders selling animals for sacrifice, and here and there were money changers at their stalls, groups of people engaged in conversation, gesticulating merchants, Roman soldiers on foot and on horseback, keeping a watchful eye, slave-borne litters, camels and donkeys laden with baggage, and frenzied shouting everywhere, interrupted by the feeble bleats of lambs and goats, some carried in people's arms or on their backs like tired children, others dragged by a rope around their neck, but all destined to perish by sword or fire. Jesus passed the bathhouse used for purification, climbed the steps, and without stopping crossed the Court of the Gentiles. He entered the Court of the Women through the door between the Chamber of the Holy Oils and the Chamber of the Nazirites, and there he found what he was looking for, the assembly of elders and scribes who traditionally gathered to discuss holy law, answer questions, and dispense advice. They stood in groups, and the boy joined the smallest of these just as a man was raising his hand to ask a question. The scribe invited him to speak, and the man asked, Can you tell me if we should accept, word for word, the commandments given by the Lord to Moses on Mount Sinai, when He promised peace on earth and told us no one would disturb our sleep, when He promised that He would banish dangerous animals from our midst, that the sword would not pass through our land, and that if our enemies pursued us, they would fall under our sword, for as the Lord Himself said, Five of you will pursue a hundred men, a hundred of you ten thousand, and your enemies will fall under your sword. The scribe eyed the man suspiciously and, thinking he might be a rebel in disguise sent by Judas the Galilean to stir up trouble with wicked insinuations about the Temple's passive resistance to Roman rule, he replied brusquely, Those words were spoken by the Lord when our forefathers were in the desert, having fled the Egyptians. The man raised his hand a second time and asked another question, Are we to understand, then, that the Lord's words on Mount Sinai were meaningful only so long as our forefathers did not enter the promised land. If that is how you interpret them, you are not a good Israelite, the words of the Lord must prevail in every age, past, present, and future, for they were in His mind before He uttered them and remained there after He spoke. But it was you yourself who said what you forbid me to think. And what do you think. That the Lord allows that our swords should not be raised against this military force which oppresses us, that a hundred of our men lack the courage to face five of theirs, that ten thousand Jews cower before a hundred Romans. Let me remind you that you are in the Temple of the Lord and not on some battlefield. The Lord is the God of legions. True, but do not forget that God imposed His condition. What condition. The Lord said, So long as you observe my laws and keep my commandments. But what are these laws and commandments we have ignored, that we should accept Roman rule as just and necessary punishment for our sins. The Lord must know. Yes, the Lord must know, and how often man sins without knowing, but would you care to explain why the Lord should make use of the Roman army to punish us instead of confronting His chosen people and punishing us Himself. The Lord knows His intentions and chooses His means. So you're trying to tell me that the Lord wants the Romans to govern Israel. Yes. Well, if that is so, then the rebels fighting the Romans are opposing the Lord and His holy will. You jump to the wrong conclusion. And you, scribe, contradict yourself. God's will may be not-to-will, and that not-to-will may be His will. So the will of man is genuine yet of no importance in the eyes of God. That's right. So man is free. Yes, free so that he might be punished. A murmur went up among the bystanders, some stared at the person who had asked the questions, based on the texts yet politically inopportune, and they looked at him accusingly, as if he were the one who should answer for the sins of all Israel, while the skeptical were reassured by the victory of the scribe, who acknowledged their praise and applause with a complacent smile. The scribe looked around him confidently and asked if there were other questions, like a gladiator who, having dispatched a weak opponent, seeks a more worthy opponent in order to gain greater glory. Another hand went up, and a different question was raised, The Lord spoke to Moses and told him, The stranger in your midst shall be treated as one of your own and you will love him as you love yourselves, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. But before the man could finish speaking, the scribe, still flushed from his victory, interrupted in a sarcastic voice, I hope you are not about to ask me why we do not treat the Romans as our compatriots since they, too, are foreigners. No, what I want to ask is whether the Romans would treat us as their compatriots if both sides spent less time arguing about the differences between their laws and gods. So you too have come here to anger the Lord with blasphemous interpretations of His holy word, said the scribe. On the contrary, all I ask is whether you truly believe that we are obeying the holy word of the Lord when strangers are strangers not so much to the land in which we live as to the religion we profess. To which strangers do you refer. To some in our own day and age, to many in the past, and probably many more in the years to come. I've no time to waste on enigmas and parables, make yourself clear. When we arrived from Egypt, there were other nations living in the land we now call Israel, whom we had to fight, and in those days we were the strangers, and the Lord commanded us to exterminate the people who opposed His will. The land was promised to us but had to be conquered, we did not buy it, nor was it offered to us. And now we find ourselves living under foreign rule, we have lost the land we made our own. Israel fives forever in the spirit of the Lord, so that wherever His people may be, whether united or dispersed, there the land of Israel will be. In other words, wherever we Jews find ourselves, others will always be the stranger. Certainly, in the eyes of the Lord. But the stranger who lives among us, according to the word of the Lord, must be our compatriot and we must love him as we love ourselves, for we were once strangers in Egypt. That is what the Lord said. In that case, the stranger we are expected to love must also be those who, living among us, are not so powerful that they can rule us, as at present with the Romans. Yes, I agree. Then tell me, do you believe that if one day we become powerful, the Lord will permit us to oppress the stranger He commanded us to love. All Israel can do is obey the will of the Lord, and since the children of Israel are His chosen people, the Lord wills only what is good for them. Even if it means not loving those we should. Yes, if so willed. Willed by whom, the Lord or Israel. By both, for they are one and the same. Thou shalt not violate the stranger's rights, says the Lord. When that stranger has rights and we acknowledge them, replied the scribe. Once again, those present murmured their approval, and the scribe's eyes gleamed like those of a champion wrestler, discus thrower, gladiator, or charioteer.
Jesus raised his hand. No one present found it strange that a boy his age should come forward to question a scribe or doctor of the Temple, the young have been plagued by doubts ever since the time of Cain and Abel, they tend to ask questions to which adults respond with a condescending smile and a pat on the shoulder, When you grow up, young man, you'll stop worrying about such matters, while the more understanding will say, When I was your age, I thought the same. Some moved away, and others were preparing to do so, which vexed the scribe, who did not want to see his attentive audience leave, but Jesus' question caused many to turn back and listen, What I want to discuss is guilt. You mean your own guilt. No, guilt in general, but also the guilt a man may feel without having sinned himself. Explain yourself more clearly. The Lord said that parents will not die for their children or children for their parents and that each man will be judged for his own crime. This was a precept for those ancient times when an entire family, however innocent, paid for the crime of any one of its members. But if the word of the Lord is forever, there is no end to guilt, and as you yourself just said, saying man is free so that he might be punished, then one is right to believe that the father's guilt, even after his punishment, does not c
ease but is passed on to his children, just as all of us who are alive today have inherited the guilt of Adam and Eve, our first parents. I am amazed that a boy of your age and humble circumstances should know so much about the scriptures and be able to debate these matters with such ease. I only know what I was taught. Where are you from. From Nazareth of Galilee. I thought as much from your manner of speaking. Please answer my question. We may assume that the gravest sin of Adam and Eve, when they disobeyed the Lord, was not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but, rather, its consequence, because their sin prevented the Lord from carrying out the plan He had in mind when He created first man and then woman. Whereupon the second man who asked a question challenged the scribe with another gem of sophistry, which the carpenter's son would never have had the courage to voice in public, Do you mean to say that every human act, such as that of the disobedience in Eden, can interfere with God's will, which is like an island in the ocean assailed on all sides by the turbulent waves of human will. Not exactly, the scribe replied cautiously, the will of the Lord is not content only to prevail over all things, His will makes everything what it is. But you yourself said that it is because of Adam's disobedience that we do not know the plan God conceived for him. That is what our reason tells us, but the will of God, the creator and ruler of the universe, embraces all possible wills, His own as well as that of every man born into this world. If this is so, intervened Jesus with sudden insight, then each man is a part of God. Probably, but even if all men were united as one, that combined part would be but a grain of sand in the infinite desert that is God. Sitting on the ground surrounded by men who watch him with mixed feelings of awe and fear, as if they are in the presence of a magician who has unwittingly conjured up powers greater than his own, the scribe looks less complacent. With drooping shoulders and doleful expression, his hands resting on his knees, his entire body seems to ask that he be left alone with his anguish. People in the group started rising to their feet, some made their way to the Court of the Israelites, some to join other groups still engaged in discussion. Jesus said, You didn't answer my question. The scribe stared at him like someone coming out of a trance, then after a long, tense silence replied, Guilt is a wolf that eats her cub after devouring its father. The wolf of which you speak has already devoured my father. Then it will soon be your turn. And what about you, were you ever devoured. Not only devoured but also spewed up.
Jesus rose to his feet and left. Heading for the gate through which he had entered, he paused and looked back. The column of smoke coming from the sacrificial fires climbed into the heavens, where it dispersed and vanished, as if sucked in by God's mighty lungs. It was mid-morning, more and more people were arriving, while inside the Temple sat a man broken by a sense of emptiness, waiting to regain his composure so that he could reply calmly to one who came wanting to know if the pillar of salt that Lot's wife turned into was rock salt or sea salt, or if Noah got drunk on white wine or red wine. Outside the Temple, Jesus asked the way to Bethlehem, his second destination. He lost his way twice amid the confusion of streets and people before he found the gate through which he had passed while inside his mother's womb thirteen years earlier, almost ready to enter the world. But this was not in Jesus' mind, because the obvious, as we all know, clips the wings of the restless bird of imagination, if any reader of this gospel were to look at a photograph of his pregnant mother when she was carrying him, for example, could he possibly imagine himself inside that womb. Jesus descends in the direction of Bethlehem, now he can reflect on the scribe's answers not just to his own question but also to the questions raised by others. What worries him is the feeling that all those questions were really one question, and that the reply given to each answered all, especially the last reply, which summed up the rest, the insatiable hunger of the wolf of guilt that is forever gnawing, devouring, and spewing up. Thanks to the fickleness of memory we often do not know, or know but try to forget, what caused our guilt, or, speaking metaphorically like the scribe, the lair of the wolf that pursues us. But Jesus knows, and that is where he is going. He has no idea what he'll do when he gets there, but this is better than announcing, I am here, and waiting for someone to ask, What do you want, punishment, pardon, or oblivion.
Like his father and mother before him, he stopped at Rachel's tomb to pray. Then, feeling his heart beat faster and faster, he resumed his journey. The first houses of Bethlehem were within sight, this is the main road into the village, taken by his homicidal father and the soldiers in his dream night after night. In daylight it doesn't seem a place of horror, even the tranquil white clouds drifting across the sky are benevolent gestures from God, and the very earth slumbers beneath the sun, as if bidding us, Let's leave things as they are, there's nothing to be gained by digging up the past, and before a woman with a child in her arms appears at a window asking, Who are you looking for, turn back, erase your footprints, and pray that the endless motion of the hourglass of time will quickly obliterate with its dust all memory of those events. Too late. There is a moment when a fly about to brush past the web still has time to escape, but once it touches the web and finds its wing caught, then the slightest movement suffices to trap and paralyze it completely, forever, however indifferent the spider to its new victim. For Jesus, that moment has passed. In the middle of a square with a spreading fig tree stands a tiny square building, and one does not have to look twice to see it is a tomb. Jesus approached, walked around it slowly, paused to read the faded inscription on one side, and this was enough, he had found what he was looking for. A woman crossed the square, leading a five-year-old child by the hand. She stopped, looked inquisitively at the stranger, and asked him, Where do you come from, and to justify her question added, You're not from these parts. No, I'm from Nazareth in Galilee. Have you relatives here. No, I was visiting Jerusalem, and it seemed a good opportunity to take a look at Bethlehem. Are you passing through. Yes, I'll return to Jerusalem later this afternoon, when it gets cooler. Lifting the child onto her left arm, the woman told him, May the Lord go with you, then turned to leave, but Jesus detained her, asking, Whose tomb is this. The woman pressed the child to her bosom, as if to protect it from some threat, and replied, Twenty-five little boys, who died years ago, are buried here. How many. Twenty-five. I mean how many years ago. Oh, about fourteen. So many. I think that's right, they would be your age if they were alive today. Yes, but what about the little boys. One of them was my brother. You have a brother buried here. Yes. And this child in your arms, is he your son. He's my firstborn. Why did they kill only the little boys. No one knows, I was only seven at the time. But you must have heard your parents and the other grown-ups talking about it. There was no need, I myself saw some of the children being killed. Your brother as well. Yes, my brother. And who killed them. The king's soldiers came searching for little boys up to the age of three, and they killed all of them. Yet you don't know why. No one knows to this day. And after Herod died, did anyone go to the Temple to ask the priests to investigate. I really don't know. If the soldiers had been Romans, one might understand it, but to have our own king ordering his people slaughtered, mere babes, seems very strange, unless there was some reason. The will of kings is beyond our understanding, may the Lord go with you and protect you. It's a long time since I was three. At the hour of death men go back to being children, replied the woman before departing.
Once alone, Jesus knelt beside the boulder covering the entrance to the tomb, took the last piece of stale bread from his pack, rubbed it into crumbs between his palms, and sprinkled the crumbs all along the entrance, as if making an offering to the invisible mouths of the innocents buried there. As he finished, another woman appeared from around the corner, but this woman was very old and bent and walked with the aid of a stick. No longer able to see clearly, she had caught only a fuzzy glimpse of what the boy did. She stopped, watched him carefully, saw him get to his feet and bow his head as if praying for the repose of the souls of those unfortunate infants, and
although it is customary, we will refrain from adding the word eternal to souls, for our imagination failed us on the one and only occasion we tried to picture eternal rest. Jesus ended his prayer and looked around him, blank walls, closed doors, nothing except the old woman standing there, dressed in a slave's tunic and leaning on her stick, the living image of that third part of the sphinx's famous enigma about the animal that walks on four feet in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening, It is man, replied astute Oedipus, who forgot that some do not even get as far as midday, and that in Bethlehem alone twenty-five infants were cut down. The old woman drew closer, hobbling at a snail's pace, and now she stands before Jesus, twists her neck to get a better view of him, and asks, Are you looking for someone. The boy did not answer immediately, in fact he was not looking for anyone, those he sought are all dead, buried here, and are not even what you could call someone, mere infants still in diapers and with pacifiers in their mouths, whimpering, their noses running, yet death struck and turned them into an enormous presence that cannot be contained in any ossuary or reliquary, these are bodies that come out of their graves each night, if there is any justice, to show their wounds, the holes that, opened at sword point, allowed life to escape, No, replied Jesus, I am not. The old woman did not go, she seemed to be waiting for him to continue, so Jesus confided, I was born in this village, in a cave, and was curious to see the place. She stepped back unsteadily and strained her eyes to get a better look, her voice trembling as she asked him, What is your name, where do you come from, who are your parents. No one needs to answer a slave, but the elderly, however low their station, deserve our respect, we must never forget that they have little time left for asking questions, it would be cruel in the extreme to ignore them, after all we might possess the very answer they have been waiting for. My name is Jesus and I come from Nazareth of Galilee, the boy told her, and he seems to have been saying nothing else since he left home. The old woman stepped forward again, And your parents, what are their names. My father's name was Joseph, my mother is Mary. How old are you. I'm almost fourteen. The woman looked around her, as if seeking a place to sit, but a square in Bethlehem of Judaea is not the same as a garden in Sao Paulo de Alcântara, with its park benches and pleasant view of the castle, here we have to sit on the dusty ground, at best on a doorstep or, if there's a tomb, on the stone by the entrance put there for the respite of the living who come to mourn their loved ones, and perhaps also for those ghosts who leave their rest to shed any remaining tears, as does Rachel, in the tomb nearby, where it is written, Here lies Rachel who weeps for her children and seeks no consolation, for one does not need to be as shrewd as Oedipus to see that this place befits the circumstances, and Rachel's weeping the cause of her grief. The old woman lowered herself onto the stone with effort, and the boy went to help her, but too late, for halfhearted gestures are never made in time. I know you, the old woman told him. You must be mistaken, said Jesus, I've never been here before and I never saw you in Nazareth. The first hands to touch you were not your mother's but mine. How is that, old woman. My name is Salome, and I was the midwife who delivered you. Acting on impulse, which only goes to prove the sincerity of gestures made spontaneously, Jesus fell to his knees at the old woman's feet, wanting both to know everything and to show his gratitude for bringing him out of a limbo without memory into a world that would mean nothing without memory. My mother never mentioned you, said Jesus. There was no need, your parents appeared on my master's doorstep, and I was asked to help, since I had some experience as a midwife. Was that when the innocents were massacred. That's right, you were fortunate they didn't find you. Because we lived in a cave. It was either that or because you'd already left, I never found out, for when I went to see what had happened to you, the cave was empty. Do you remember my father. Yes, I remember him well, at that time he was in his prime, a fine figure of a man, and honest. He's dead. Poor man, he didn't live long, but if you're his heir, what are you doing here, for I assume your mother is still alive. I came to see the place where I was born, also to learn more about the children who were slaughtered here. God alone knows why they had to die, the angel of death, disguised as Herod's soldiers, descended into Bethlehem and slew them. So you believe it was God's will. I'm only an old slave, but all my life I've heard people say that everything that happens in this world can happen only by the will of God. So it is written. God may decide to take me any day now, that I can understand, but these were innocent little children. Your death will be decided by God in His own good time, but it was a man who ordered that the children be killed. The hand of God, then, can do precious little if it cannot come between the sword and little children. You mustn't offend the Lord, good woman. An ignorant old woman like me isn't likely to cause any offense. Today in the Temple I heard it said that every human action, however insignificant, interferes with the will of God, and that man is free only in order to be punished. My punishment doesn't come from being free, it comes from being a slave, the old woman told him. Jesus fell silent. He hardly heard Salome's words, because it suddenly dawned on him that man is a mere toy in the hands of God and forever subject to His will, whether he imagines himself to be obeying or disobeying Him.
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ Page 17
