More Than a Skeleton

by Paul L Maier

  “I know that, Jon. I’ve spent more time in the Holy Land than you have! But do you think this actually was the place?”

  Jon shrugged. “It’s probably as close as we’ll come to any identification, solid or otherwise. Don’t look for any bronze plaque that says ‘Jesus Spoke Here.’” Then he added, “It’s funny, though, that Ben-Yosef should have chosen this spot.”

  Shannon looked up. “See that domed affair on top of the hill? Isn’t that the chapel Mussolini built?”

  “Ah, yes. Il Duce did better here than in Italy. But where the heck is Ben-Yosef holding forth?”

  Shannon pointed to a hillside just west of the Italian chapel.

  “Omigosh!” he exclaimed. “That slope must be covered with people! Let’s get back to the car.”

  They drove up a series of switchbacks to reach the summit, where they were waved into a vast, impromptu parking area with hundreds of cars. “Please try to remember where we parked,” remarked Jon, while locking their Peugeot. They walked southward along the hill’s crest, past the inevitable concession stands, and reached the outer perimeter of a vast crowd blanketing the hillside below them. Loudspeakers had been set up, over which Joshua Ben-Yosef, in a clear, authoritative baritone, was holding forth in Hebrew.

  “At least Jesus didn’t need loudspeakers when He preached here,” Jon commented.

  “Quiet, Jon, and tell me what he’s saying.”

  He squinted at the remote figure on the dais far below, as if trying to read his lips—a manifest impossibility at that distance. After a few moments he commented, “Well, that’s a surprise! He’s using a very classical kind of Hebrew—no local accents or twangs. No contractions. No slang!”

  Jon listened on attentively while Shannon stared at the speaker, wishing she had brought binoculars and feeling a little jealous at Jon’s command of Hebrew.

  “Amazing!” said Jon. “I just don’t hear any modern, synthesized Israeli words, no concessions to popular idioms. Heck, his Hebrew is almost . . . biblical in flavor.”

  “So please spare me the oratorical details. What’s he saying?”

  “It’s a remarkable commentary on living the good life in today’s world, both in relation to God and in concern for people. He seems to—”

  Suddenly Jon was cut off by deafening cheers and prolonged applause. Ben-Yosef had finished his address and was waving his appreciation to the vast throng before walking off the dais. Shannon, however, was frowning in frustration.

  “Not to worry, dear,” said Jon. “You can hear for yourself at four o’clock, and in English, no less. Though I wonder if he can really do English without smothering us in a thick Israeli accent.”

  They walked off to the concession stands, where Jon ordered a frosty bottle of Goldstar, the local brew. Shannon, however, drank only Perrier. “I don’t want my wits dulled in the slightest,” she explained. “I’ve been looking forward to hearing this man again!”

  “Ah, but a beer on a warm day only sharpens the mind of a German-American like me,” Jon assured her. “In moderation, of course.”

  When he and Shannon returned to the natural theater, to their surprise they found an even larger crowd seated on the grassy slopes. They had expected a complete change of audience, as between features in a movie theater, but many Israelis were apparently staying on for the English version.

  “What dunces we are!” said Shannon, peeved. “We should have gotten closer to the front between Joshua’s presentations. But here we are in the rear again, thanks to His Thirstiness!”

  “No, I want you here in the back,” said Jon with a smirk. “You’re much too interested in this fellow!”

  She chuckled, “You’re a real nut case, Jon! Do you know that?” Further chatter was cut off by a trumpet flourish calling the crowd to order. As the brass notes faded, Jon had a faint recollection of having heard similar music before.

  When he was introduced, Ben-Yosef regaled his audience with several delightful pleasantries—always the way to get a crowd’s attention wherever the place, whoever the speaker, whatever the language. But Jon and Shannon were not smiling at all; in fact, they were thunderstruck. They were expecting Ben-Yosef to speak English with the heavy guttural accents and swallowed r’s so familiar from radio and television interviews of Israeli statesmen or generals. This man spoke perfect English without any foreign accent whatever, and in a version that seemed to be a cultural cross between American and British English.

  “Beyond belief!” whispered Jon. “I’d swear this guy could be broadcasting right out of NBC studios in New York!”

  “Extraordinary!” Shannon agreed. “How can anyone speak both Hebrew and English without an accent in one or the other?”

  Ben-Yosef clearly could. His message was directed across the board to all classes of hearers. He talked first to the disadvantaged, the handicapped, the hungry, the troubled, the suffering. Not many such were in the audience, apparently, but he was singling out individuals who seemed distressed, and they looked especially touched and helped by his words.

  Next he addressed the common people—the farmers, fishermen, and blue-collar workers—not so much with words of comfort, but with challenges to stop self-defeating habits and add deeper meaning to their lives. “I ask you,” he said, “isn’t your life worth more than screaming at athletic events? Isn’t it better to add to your family resources than to waste your wages on lottery tickets and leave your wife and children hungry? Isn’t it better to drink in moderation than to become drunk every weekend? Isn’t it better to improve your minds by reading Scripture and other great books than to spend endless hours in front of your television, being hypnotized by fantasies?”

  “I’m beginning to like this guy,” Jon whispered.

  Ben-Yosef continued, this time targeting various echelons of hearers: “How blessed are you laborers who truly are worthy of your hire, who give an honest day’s work for your wages. How blessed are you employers who honor the dignity of labor rather than exploiting it. How blessed are you merchants and tradesmen who keep your thumbs off the scales. How blessed are you office workers who will not steal even one paper clip from your employers.”

  “See what I mean, Jon?” whispered Shannon.

  Ben-Yosef continued in his flawless English: “Blessed are you brokers who sell your clients stocks that reflect the true price-earnings ratios of honest corporations, as well as bonds that don’t have a large, hidden markup. Blessed are you doctors who continue in your medical research and are more interested in curing your patients’ illnesses than in collecting fat fees—from them or from their insurance companies or from the government. Blessed are you noble peacemakers who want to break the cycle of violence in this Holy Land: Israelis who have sympathy for displaced Palestinians, Palestinians who have sympathy for innocent Israelis maimed and killed by terrorists. Both of you are driven by a desire for peace with justice, and your reward will be great, both on earth and in heaven. “But watch out, you lawyers who overcharge your clients and turn them into victims! Watch out, you financiers who help build monopolies to stifle competition and then raise prices to exorbitant levels. Watch out, you crooked executives who will lie about the lofty profits of your corporations to balloon the price of your stocks, only to sell it to innocent buyers who then have their pension plans ruined when your fraud is exposed. In view of the terrible suffering you have caused to so many, life imprisonment is too good for you. Watch out, you auditors who can’t seem to discover fraud when it stares you in the face, and also you corporation boards of directors who receive large salaries while blindly endorsing all the lies of management. You will have your rewards!

  “Watch out, you corrupt clergy—you false priests and pastors who have disgraced your high calling by preaching morality on Sundays and then sexually abusing those entrusted to your care during the week. Watch out, you bishops and archbishops who knowingly have perverted justice by shuffling such predators around so that they can infect other parishes. You will certainly ha
ve your reward!

  “Watch out, you narrow-minded religious leaders who so legalistically remove the joy from life with your man-made rules and so many endless restrictions that you stifle divine grace and misrepresent our Lord and our land.

  “On the other hand, watch out, you hazy, radical revisionist ‘theologians,’ so-called, who poke fun at God’s Word or even deny His existence entirely. Watch out, you biblical ‘minimalists’ who wrench sacred history to suit your own, misguided imaginations, who blast holes in the biblical record, only to fill them in with your arbitrary maunderings. God is preparing your reward!”

  The multitudes on the hillside were sitting in rapt attention, broken only by much head nodding, smiles of agreement, and mutual poking in rib cages to convey the message: “Right on target!”

  “What do you think, Jon?” asked Shannon. “Is this man a spellbinder or what?”

  Jon shook his head slowly in amazement. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “I actually agree with most of what he’s saying!”

  And now Ben-Yosef was concluding: “Resist religious extremism of every variety, dear friends! Extremism is a satanic curse that turns believers into blasphemers, devotees into devils, and the sane into insane. Jewish extremism led to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the ancient world. Christian extremism led to witch-hunts and pogroms in the Middle Ages. Muslim extremism leads to terrorism, war, destruction, and death in the modern world.

  “Never measure success by what you have totaled up in the bank, in your portfolio, or in the size of your property. The genuinely wealthy are not those who have the most, but those who need the least. The truest measure of success is what you have done to help others. That will bring a satisfaction, a supreme and exuberant joy far greater than wealth, fame, or power can ever provide!

  “And finally, my colleagues in this extraordinary experience called life, celebrate every magnificent moment of your days! Think of what God has given you: you are the only beings in the entire universe who are created in His image. Only you can think and reason, communicate and speak, create and love! Therefore live your lives in gratitude to God and in love for one another. Thank you, my dear friends, for spending this time with me!”

  The hillside rose collectively in applause and cheering. Everyone seemed to jabber exuberantly as the meeting dispersed, including Jon and Shannon. While walking back to the parking area, she said, “So, I’ll ask it again, Jon: what do you think?”

  “Ordinarily I’d say that he’s the most effective inspirational speaker I’ve ever heard. But . . .” He paused.

  “But what?”

  “Isn’t it clear, Shannon? This all happened on the Mount of the Beatitudes, where Jesus most probably delivered His Sermon on the Mount. And Ben-Yosef’s address is actually a modern parallel to that sermon: the ‘blesseds,’ the comforts, the warnings, the ethical advice. But, more than that, there’s this mysterious personality, a man who can speak Hebrew as if he were born in Jerusalem, yet hold forth in English as if he came from Chicago.”

  “So?” she wondered.

  “This man is a . . . a Jesus wanna-be, Shannon, a Jesus wannabe! But why? And who is he really?”

  They drove back to the Plaza in Tiberias, trying to make sense of the day’s events. After dinner in the hotel’s vast dining room, they decided to pass on dessert and take an evening stroll instead. No town in Israel came to life more exuberantly when the sun set than the seaside resort of Tiberias. Multicolored lights twinkled in strands over the main street as Jon and Shannon took in the sights. Music of every sort was blaring out of discos, while honkytonk piano bars invited them inside—especially since it appeared that they had shekels to spend. Shops lining the streets offered them everything from objets d’art to tattoos.

  Stopping at a newsstand, they noticed again the big play being given Joshua Ben-Yosef in the Israeli press—something that evidently had been going on for some weeks. To stay in touch with the home front, Jon bought a copy of the latest overseas edition of U.S. News & World Report and thumbed through it as they continued walking through Tiberias’s version of the Great White Way. When he reached the religion section, he stopped abruptly.

  “I don’t believe this, Shannon: look, here’s a big article on Ben-Yosef. Now he’s hit the U.S. press too!”

  Moving under a street lamp, he studied the photograph accompanying the story. “Hmmm, so that’s what he looks like, up close and personal.”

  Shannon grabbed the magazine from Jon and tried to read the article. But bands of young people were parading through town, serenading the night and jostling bystanders—some in outlandish garb that suggested they were either skinheads or an Israeli version of Hell’s Angels.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Shannon. “I’ve had enough of the local nightlife.”

  “How about a little nightcap along the Sea of Galilee?”

  “Great.”

  Sauntering down to the waterfront, they found an open-air restaurant overlooking the lake. Because of the eardrum-shattering cacophony trying to pass for music inside the eatery, they chose a table at the far end of the restaurant’s pier, which was illuminated by tiki torches. After a waiter took their order, Shannon read the article in U.S. News, passed it back to Jon, and said, “Well, Ben-Yosef’s no longer just local news. Several American church leaders drop quotes in this article, including Martin Marty. He seems to agree with you: he calls Ben-Yosef ‘an interesting contemporary parallel of sorts to Jesus.’”

  Jon nodded, finished reading the article, then tucked the magazine away. He looked at Shannon—so excruciatingly lovely in the candlelight— and reached over to clasp her hand. Even though they had been married for many months, there was still an electric tingle, a tactile shock when he felt her hand. I can’t believe this radiant creature is really mine, he told himself, while carefully caressing each of her fingers.

  She responded by opening again a treasure trove of memories they had shared along that miraculous body of water. Then she stopped, blushed, and said, “I want to go straight back to our hotel, Jon.”

  “So do I, darling. But we did order drinks out here. And here they come.”

  Behind the approaching waiter Jon noticed a small group of men walking out onto the pier. After clinking his glass of Carmel red wine with Shannon’s, he saw that the men had reached the end of the pier and were looking out over the Sea of Galilee. Suddenly he whispered, “Shannon! That tall one there: that’s Joshua Ben-Yosef!”

  “Where? . . . Oh!”

  Ben-Yosef turned around and looked at them. He had a tanned face, square-cut features, and a generous mouth that was opening into a smile. His intensely blue eyes seemed to pierce theirs, a nice complement to his well-groomed thatch of dark hair, the hair-line proving that the man could not have been over thirty. He cupped his slightly bearded chin, walked over to them, and said amiably, “Excuse me, but I do believe I have the honor of speaking with Jonathan and Shannon Weber! Blessings, this evening, to you both!”

  Jon and Shannon sat transfixed, dumbfounded that Ben-Yosef should have known their identity. Her jaw sagged open, with nothing by way of response. Jon, however, said, “We . . . we heard your discourse this afternoon above Tabgha, Mr. Ben-Yosef. Brilliantly done!” “Well, then, there’s a coincidence: you also know my name.”

  “I do think it’s more remarkable that you should have known ours. Might I ask how that is possible?”

  He laughed and said, “Not know the name of the man who has written the best life of Jesus to date? Several weeks ago, Professor Weber, I was pleased to attend one of your symposia at Hebrew University. Yes, I’ll admit that I sat in the back of the auditorium and wore sunglasses to avoid recognition. Recently, this has become a problem. And everyone knows that you married the winsome daughter of the famous archaeologist Austin Balfour Jennings.” Turning to Shannon, he bowed slightly and said, “You are far lovelier than even your charming photographs, Mrs. Weber.”

  Shannon blushed and thanked
him, almost timidly.

  “Your precepts this afternoon on the Mount of the Beatitudes were very eloquently expressed,” said Jon. “I think they’re almost what Jesus of Nazareth would say, were He to address us today.”

  “You give me too much credit,” Ben-Yosef responded. Then, turning toward several in the group accompanying him, he called out, “Shimon! Yakov! Yohanan! Come over here: I want you to meet Professor and Mrs. Jonathan Weber!” Three men, about the same age as Ben-Yosef, walked over and extended cordial greetings. All were dressed, like Ben-Yosef, in clothing that might be styled Israeli casual: open-necked sport shirts, khaki slacks, and leather sandals. “Anything you’d like to know about first-century Judaism, my colleagues, here is your man!” said Ben-Yosef, again in accent-free and even idiomatic English. “You’ll recall how I advised you to read his book.”

  “Professor Mordecai Feldman told me that he’s invited you to speak at Hebrew University,” said Jon. “I do hope you’ll favor us.” “All in due time,” he replied. “I trust you’ll be staying in Israel for the whole academic year?”

  “I will indeed.”

  “Then I do hope our paths will cross again soon. Blessings to you both.” He turned and walked off the pier with his associates.

  Jon studied the group carefully as they headed back toward the restaurant with the blaring music. Shannon, on the other hand, overflowed with excitement and said, “This was some nightcap! Hear an internationally-known figure this afternoon, and then have him stop by our table this evening—and know who we are!”

  Jon said nothing, but sat there tapping his fingers on the table with slightly wrinkled brow.

  “What’s wrong, Jon?” she wondered.

  “Can you guess how many men were following Ben-Yosef onto the pier here, Shannon?”

  “Haven’t the faintest.”

  “I counted them as they left. There were twelve, Shannon. Twelve! Does that ring a bell?”