Judas

by Frederick Ramsay

  I shook my head.

  “For example, that scene at the temple just now with…that woman…Jesus seems to have no sense of propriety when it comes to people like that. And more importantly, one might be led to believe he sees himself as a judge equal to the Lord. He said he forgave her sins. Only the Lord can forgive sins.”

  “He didn’t say, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ He said, ‘Leave that sinful life behind,’ and he would not condemn her. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Perhaps not, but to the ordinary listener, one not skilled in the niceties of disputation, it amounts to the same thing. And in the past he has forgiven sins. There was a woman in the house of Simon, whose sins he forgave. There have been other instances…”

  I said nothing and waited for his next words.

  “We are sincere in our desire to find the Messiah. Of all the men wandering about this land in the last generation, and the testimony of the Baptizer…your Jesus seems likeliest. Our problem is what people say about him and what he says about himself do not always appear congruent. We must know all there is to know about him, and it must be from someone like you, someone who walks with him daily and he trusts completely. Do you see our point?”

  Certainly, it could not hurt Jesus if they heard the truth. The stories circulating about Jesus were often hugely exaggerated. One claimed Jesus changed the colors in a vat of dye so the dyer would not be found to have made a mistake and be punished by his master. Where that story began, I do not know; probably from a dyer seeking attention. People are not satisfied with just the truth. They need to make it bigger and, sometimes, to put themselves in its middle. If this natural inclination to exaggerate, to overlook reality, were not stemmed, we would soon face a serious credibility problem.

  “What is it you wish from me?” I asked, my suspicions still intact.

  “Only the truth,” he said, and spread his arms wide. “We want you to write the things that happen, the things he says. Write only what you are comfortable in sharing with us. And do not worry whether we understand. We will study what you write and decide for ourselves. If we can support Jesus, we will send for you. If not, we will dispose of your letters and remain silent. In any case, what can be the harm in that?”

  What indeed? If the truth were known and reported, what harm could come of that? But if those other wild stories continued to circulate, there could be trouble. A record of the important points kept by someone who had witnessed them could only strengthen our case. The men were right: I was the one person trusted by Jesus and levelheaded enough not to get carried away with flights of fancy, like Andrew, or misunderstand the essence of the thing, like Peter, or dress it up in John’s theological abstractions. I could do it. Still, I hesitated. What would Jesus say?

  “This is a delicate position,” he added, sensing, I suppose, my concerns. “Perhaps it would be best if only we knew of these writings. Your associates may think you are over-reaching. Why not just deal with us? When the time comes and we announce our support for Jesus, we will acknowledge your contribution. I think that would work best.”

  As I listened, it dawned on me that I must have been placed in this position precisely for this task. When we met, did not Jesus tell me that I had been chosen? And now I knew why. I set aside my intuitive dislike for this sweaty official and his perfumed handkerchief. We needed something more—something from the established leadership, from the center of power. He asked only for the truth.

  “Very well,” I said. “I will do as you ask, if I can. I write passable Greek and some Aramaic…”

  “Greek will be fine. It is for our eyes only.”

  “Where would you like me to start?”

  “Ah, that is most important. Begin as far back as you can. There are things reported about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth that raise serious doubts, questions, you understand, about his ability to be considered a whole Jew, much less the Messiah of Israel. It is the problem with his father, Joseph, you understand?”

  Did I? People could be very hard on those with uncertain or mixed parentage, mamzers like me. Even though the scriptures are filled with one example after another of instances where great men arose from a mixed lineage, the descendants of Ruth and Boaz, for example, they worry too much about marriage with the historical inhabitants of the land and others who moved in with us. Pity the poor Samaritans.

  “What else?” I write slowly. It would read well enough but I did not want to spend time on things that did not interest them or would not help in their decision.

  “We would like to know what he says about the special relationship he has with the Lord. Every prophet has such a relationship. It is important we know his. The events of this morning need to be put in context. Tell us things he has done, healings, miracles, that sort of thing. And, oh yes, this is very important, any time he may have spent in the company of the Zealots, the Essenes, or any other dissident group. We must know if he could unite these people to our cause.”

  “I will write what I know to be true. I cannot capture all of the events, because I will not have time. But those things you ask, and those things I believe to be important, I will write.”

  “That will be enough. We will contact you in a week or ten days, if that is agreeable.”

  “I will try to be ready.”

  I doubted the other disciples would grasp the significance of what I had been asked to do. They were content in their belief that Jesus would magically unveil the new kingdom, or his army, or perform some mighty miracle and it would be done. They did not understand the world as I did. Common sense told me if any progress were to be made, it would have to involve many people including the entrenched ruling class.

  “Love your enemy,” he preached. Well, now I understood.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Jesus wished to return to the Sea of Galilee, but this time he decided to press farther north, toward Caesarea Philippi and visit the towns in Bashan and the Decapolis. Why he picked that particular day to travel by boat across the sea escaped me. It would have been easier to walk along the shoreline than bob around in a damp, smelly fishing boat. He said he wanted to let our fishermen exercise their skills and they were hard at it, hauling in lines, setting and resetting sails. As long as we had a northerly breeze, we were fine. These men, Peter, James, and the rest, were in their element and having a grand time. I tried very hard not to notice the boat’s rocking. Jesus, on the other hand, fell asleep in the stern. He had been teaching steadily for days and needed rest.

  The first several hours were pleasant enough. Then, quite suddenly, the sky darkened. I saw worried looks exchanged between Peter and Andrew. They consulted with the others and looked shoreward. The wind had taken us far from land.

  The wind increased and the sea became more violent. The boat pitched. Spray blew over the sides. We were soaked. Thunder crashed and lightning flickered menacingly on the roiling water. The men shortened sail and tied down baggage. Water accumulated in the boat’s bottom. Peter took an oar and attempted to bring the bow into the wind. John and Thaddeus scrambled over the thwarts to Jesus. It did not look good. I figured if these fishermen, knowing storms as they did, were frightened, I should be, too. Jesus opened one eye and then the other as they screamed at him.

  “Master, Master, wake up. We are all going to die.”

  He stared at us, cowering in the bilge, stood, faced the storm, and slowly raised his hands. The wind lessened. We were still tossing about but somehow we did not seem to be in as much peril. Then the storm left as quickly as it came.

  “Where is your faith? What are you afraid of?” he said, shaking his head, and he resumed his place in the stern of the boat and closed his eyes. The sun came out and we sailed on. I looked at the others. They all assumed an expression as if to say they knew all along we were not in any danger. But the telltale red in their eyes told me something else.

  ***

  We sailed to the area of the Decapolis where there were no Jews, the land of the Gerasen
es, near Khersa. The coast rose steeply from the shore, forming a low bluff that hung out over the sea. We beached the boat and climbed toward the top.

  When we reached the crest, we were met—perhaps overwhelmed would be a better way to put it—by the strangest sight I ever saw. A man crouched beside a pile of rocks near what appeared to be tombs. Behind him and reaching all the way up the bluff, a huge herd of swine rooted in what must have been the town’s dump. The man hunkered down on his heels and stretched his arms in front, hands planted on the ground like one of the pigs. When he saw us, he howled. He bared his teeth and growled, like Mary had at Magdala. I glanced her way to watch her reaction. Her eyes were wide.

  “Master…” she began.

  “I see.”

  He walked toward the man, who was completely naked, his body covered with so much filth we had not noticed it before. We drew back. The howling stopped, replaced by low mutterings and words so blasphemous and vile that even I, who’d spent more years than I care to enumerate in the streets and brothels of the empire, blushed. I looked at Jesus, but he seemed as calm as if he were listening to King David play his harp.

  The pigs stopped rooting, turned their heads, and watched us like an over-fed audience at a theater. We began to retreat, unsure which would be worse, pigs or this unclean and dangerous man. When he saw Jesus walking calmly toward him, the man screamed obscenities at us. Mary covered her ears. Then, the man wheeled and focused on Jesus. He growled, “What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the God of Israel?”

  Jesus raised his hand and said, “Come out of him.” The man jerked about but continued to rave.

  “You are torturing me,” he screamed.

  Jesus said, “Tell me your name.”

  “Legion,” he barked. “Legion.”

  “Well, Legion, leave him…this moment. Infest those pigs if you must, but come out.”

  With that, the man leapt to his feet and ran at the pigs. They, in turn, panicked, raced to the top of the bluff, and before anyone could stop them—not that we would have, they were pigs after all—they tumbled off. Some were dashed on the rocks below; others fell into the sea.

  At that moment, the man came to his senses. He stood in the field looking around as if he was not sure where he was or how he came to be there. Nathaniel, who had a better sense of propriety than the rest of us, took him down to the sea, washed him off as best he could, and put a cloak around him. When we took our leave, he asked to come with us, but Jesus said he should stay with his people and tell them what a mighty work the God of Israel had done.

  I mention all these cleansings, these exorcisms, because they became symbolic of my journey. The first I witnessed involved a single spirit. Later with Mary, there were more. And now this man whose demons were legion. If he could manage this demonic legion, surely he need not fear the power of Rome and its legions. That was the thought that formed in my mind. I would change that view later, of course.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Herod Philip built Caesarea Philippi in the north, almost to Dan. We made our way there moving from town to town. Sometimes there were large crowds, and sometimes only a few gathered. Caesarea Philippi is quite beautiful but, like his half-brother Antipas, Philip built a pagan capital. It had no synagogue and we gave it a wide berth. We used a nearby field to meet with the folk who lived and worked there and where we pitched camp. Andrew built a small fire, and we ate our evening meal. It had been a long and busy journey. We were tired and ready to relax, to speak of other things. In the quiet that followed, Jesus swallowed the last of his meal and refilled his cup from the wineskin, being careful to add some water to it. It had not traveled well.

  In the quiet that followed, I asked the question that had bothered me since that painful day on the docks in Caesarea Maritima. I guessed it would cause some trouble but I needed to know. “Master, is circumcision really necessary?”

  The others looked at me, mouths agape.

  “It was given to us through our father Abraham,” John said. “How can you ask such a foolish question?”

  “No, no, it is a good question. I would like to hear the answer to that myself,” Thomas said and winked.

  Jesus frowned. “If it were necessary, in the sense you mean, children would be born circumcised. What is important is the circumcision of the spirit.”

  There was a shocked silence. I looked at John out of the corner of my eye. His face was a thundercloud. Peter’s mouth dropped open. Everyone except the Magdalan looked uncomfortable. She hid a smile. I thought, born circumcised? We were, in a way. In this world we don’t choose who we are; we just are. And you are a Hebrew whether you like it or not. Amelabib said that to me in Corinth, a lifetime ago. Circumcision of the spirit.

  Then, he asked of no one in particular, “When you hear people speak of me, who do they say I am?”

  Well, people said many things about him and not all of them were complimentary. “Some think you are a prophet like the Baptizer…or Elijah or one of the ones we read about in synagogue.”

  “Some say you are the Messiah promised by Isaiah.”

  “Well, then, who do you think I am?” he asked.

  We were silent. The question hung in the air like an over-ripe pomegranate. I knew when it fell there could be a mess to clean up. I realized at that moment he had asked the single question that I, and I suspect the others, had avoided for over a year. He was the “Coming One.” We did not have to know in what way or how. We needed only to accept it and believe whatever we wanted.

  Suddenly, Peter blurted out in a voice as loud as if he’d been stung, “You are the Christ. You are the Son of the living God…you are…”

  Words failed him and he crumpled to his knees. Then, like lightning, the realization of what Peter said, struck us all. Each of us, as the truth sank in, followed Peter and dropped to our knees. It was like a hammer had pounded us into the ground.

  ***

  It took me a while to identify the soft sobbing and then locate it. Mary sat apart from the rest, crying quietly into her sleeve. We had recovered from our argument about Rehab and were again on friendly terms. This strange, tarnished woman intrigued me. I sat next to her and waited. After a while, her sobbing subsided.

  “Judas?”

  “Yes? Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, nothing. Is that why you are here?”

  “I heard you weeping.”

  “You were right about Rehab. We were wrong to judge her so harshly.”

  What could I say? It seemed unlikely that regret over poor Rehab would cause such a volume of tears.

  “She felt unworthy to be in the presence of the rabbi. She thought her sins too great.” Mary spoke as much to herself as to me. “Were her sins any greater than mine? I did with men what she does. That I was not in my right mind is no excuse. The truth…” She paused, deliberating whether I could be trusted with her story.

  “I am not in a position to judge either you or Rehab,” I said. She stared at me for a long time. Finally she lowered her eyes and told me her story.

  ***

  “I never thought of myself as different. As a young child, I had episodes when I became a different person, but my parents put that down to an overactive imagination. I would be playing with the other children and then I would assume the role of an entirely different person. They thought I invented this new person and delighted in the novelty of it. But I really did become that person. I stopped being Miriam and became Salome. Well, when you are young, you don’t know, do you? I mean, without some experience, you don’t know what is normal. I did wonder, sometimes, why the other girls couldn’t do it, too.”

  Madness, I heard madness. Not like Dinah, whose madness took her within herself, but the madness you see sometimes in the streets by people whose personae shift from lamb-like to leonine in the wink of an eye. A street entertainer I once knew had such a man on a leash, and he would goad him into becoming as many as a dozen different people. The force with which the man played
each part made it amazing, frightening, actually, and the leash necessary. No actor in the theater could have done what that man did. And now this woman told me she suffered the same way.

  “It amused my friends, but later, as I grew older, one or two of the women inside me turned me to doing things that no decent woman should do. The demons—”

  “But it is over now. That life is behind you. Your past has been forgiven.”

  “Forgiven perhaps, but not forgotten. Where will I go, Judas? Who would have me?”

  “I would,” I said. She gave no sign she heard. I took her hand and, this time loud enough to be heard, said “I would.”

  “You? But you would be consorting with a woman who could never be accepted by any community.”

  “There are some things you should know about me,” I said. And for the first time since I left my mother, I spoke of my past.

  ***

  “Now, I am going to ask you to do as I have done.” Jesus paused and seemed to weigh his next words.

  “You have listened to me for all these months. You know my words. You know what I am likely to do or say in almost any circumstance. It is time for you to go and do the same.”

  We all looked at each other, unsure what he asked. Did he mean we should wander about performing miracles, preaching, and exhorting? What did he mean by do the same?

  “I want you to go out in pairs. You will be given power. Your tongues will be loosened and your minds made clear. Seek those who need to hear the Word. If they are deaf, restore their hearing. If they are blind, restore their sight. Tell them of the good news God brings to the poor, the oppressed, and the hungry.”