by Paul L Maier
The small hairs at the back of Jon’s scalp bristled.
“Now, Jon, go pick it up. Isn’t that better than losing so valuable a pen?”
Jon’s head was whirling. He stood up to retrieve his pen and then paced the veranda, locked into deep thought. He could find nothing theological or even logical to contradict the possibility that Joshua was genuine, that Joshua was Jesus. Still, he was not fully persuaded—the claim was just too bizarre for that—but his respect for Joshua had increased dramatically.
It was now very late and time for him to leave. As they walked down from the veranda, Jon could not resist another biblical quote. He thanked Joshua for their time together, looked directly into his sapphire eyes, and asked, “So then, are you He who should come, or do we look for another?” John the Baptist had told his disciples to ask that very question of Jesus.
Jon knew, of course, what Joshua would say. With a smile and penetrating stare, he replied: “Tell Jonathan Weber: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, the deaf hear. Don’t be faithless, but believe.
”At their apartment that night, Jon reported everything to Shannon, having first turned on a tape recorder so that he would not forget a syllable of the most extraordinary conversation he had ever had in his life. Her eyes opened progressively wider in the telling, her hand covering her mouth when it came to the pen episode.
When he had finished, she shook her head and said, “Jon, unless you’ve taken leave of your wits, I think it’s high time for you to get over your skepticism. I really think—I truly do—that Joshua most probably is the returned Jesus!”
Sleep eluded Jon for a long time that night. Shannon’s comment ricocheted around in his mind. What if she were right? Then his “Nicodemus call” on Joshua Ben-Yosef was not merely a nocturnal chat, but a visit with ultimate, even cosmic significance. Still, if that were the case, how come everything seemed comparatively ordinary in his conversation with Ben-Yosef—well, certainly not ordinary, but perhaps not extraordinary enough? Where were the trumpets? The clouds of heaven?
Then again, like most Christians, he was likely expecting too much, and the celestial fireworks were hardly necessary if this were in fact an intermediate coming. No trumpets had sounded the first time around either.
Sleep finally approached after Jon made one safe decision; namely, to make no decision on Joshua—to postpone even the beginnings of any decision to a future as remote as possible. It was escapist, of course, and not very heroic. But it was soporific.
His last memory before falling asleep, however, was of a flying pen. Beyond all debate, this did seem to be a token of the supernatural. And he did not have to rely on possibly garbled reports. He had seen it with his own eyes.
TEN
The next morning, Jon’s first thought was of a flying pen. Had he really seen that weird phenomenon? Was it a crossover from another dimension, a sign of the supernatural? Absent other explanations, possibly. Did it prove that Joshua was Jesus? According to Shannon, quite probably. And he?
Jon got out of bed and walked over to the dresser. There it was, the traveling Mont Blanc, lying unobtrusively next to his keys and wallet. He picked up the pen a little gingerly, as if the thing were somehow radioactive. The gold crown on the cap now had a slight abrasion on it—as might result when a flying pen hits a wall.
An entirely new vector of thought suddenly seized him. There was the supernatural, and then again, there was the supernatural. It all hinged on the cause. And that cause? Was it divine . . . or, perhaps . . . demonic?
Jon hated to go down that route: Joshua as satanic. For one thing, it was such a hackneyed theme in American novels and movies, whether for the secular or the religious market. You want a best-seller? Then simply invoke the demonic supernatural. Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist or the Stephen King novels had their even more exaggerated counterparts in Christian fiction, especially for the evangelical market. Involve demons by the thousands or millions, as in the Left Behind series, or one by one, as in the Frank Peretti books, and your readership will instantly materialize. A multitude of readers, obviously, love to be terrified, a masochism of the masses that makes the satanic-scare books thrive. But this was reality, Jon mused, not fiction.
On the other hand, successful fiction often reflects fact, he knew well enough, and just because some authors involved the demonic in their novels was no reason to discount the possibility that the demonic did in fact cause the supernatural in Joshua Ben-Yosef’s case. The scare writers could be right after all, especially since Jesus Himself predicted that there would be satanic imitators of Himself, and there were gospel references to the devil appearing as an angel of light. Joshua Ben-Satan? Jon shuddered at the direction his thoughts were taking him.
Before the flying pen, Jon had never personally witnessed anything incontestably miraculous. Would he now have to craft new tools of logic in dealing with the supernatural?
Grappling with all the options, he finally managed to isolate one clear conclusion: he found it extremely improbable that the first potential breakthroughs from the supernatural dimension into his own life should have come from the negative rather than the positive source. He recalled how, in his childhood, he had comforted himself after seeing a horror movie at too tender an age: the cross would always stop Dracula in his tracks, he had told himself.
Later on, in more adult terms, he had reasoned that while the demonic should never be denied, any miraculous incursions from that quarter should hardly be expected. For if they did take place, Satan would have defeated his own campaign by proving that a supernatural dimension existed after all. And whether or not it did was the most basic issue in religion or philosophy.
Moreover, if Joshua’s healings were genuine and miraculous in fact—and the jury was still out on that—could something as positive and helpful as these be ascribed to the demonic? Jon knew that some would say yes: satanic imitators might try to deceive the faithful by such means. Yet there were no real instances in the Old or New Testament of this actually happening: satanic trickery was always exposed. And since the devil was not some second god on a par with the first, but very much “God’s devil,” as Martin Luther put it, anything supernatural with a positive result—like true miracles of healing— should have a divine origin. If Joshua’s miracles were genuine, then he could hardly be Satan’s minion.
What was he, then? A deluded Jesus imitator, like someone who believed himself to be Napoleon and went about acting the role? An outrageous liar, carrying out some demonic plan for his own evil purpose? Or, on the other hand, an ethically motivated leader, trying to do good in imitation of the Christ he admired? No, that wouldn’t work: an ethically motivated Jesus imitator would never have presented himself as the personally returned Jesus.
So Jon was back to the three clear alternatives so starkly presented by C. S. Lewis: Joshua, like Jesus, was either a crazed delu-sionary, a perverse liar . . . or precisely who he claimed to be: the returned Jesus of Nazareth.
Jon was hunkered down with a magnifying glass, examining a half dozen copies of the Sepphoris mosaic spread out across his desk in various sizes and contrasts, in both black-and-white and color. On the left side of his desk was a lexicon of ancient Hebrew, which he consulted from time to time. To the right lay a pad of yellow legal paper, festooned with writing, lines crossed out, arrows, and blotches. I’ve almost cracked this, he thought, but the Hebrew lettering uses several abbreviations I’m still not sure about. His apprehension building, he planned to meet with Mordecai Feldman early the next day.
In Feldman’s office at Hebrew University, Jon said, “This has been fun, Mort, a very pleasant change of pace—my first real chance to get away from this Joshua business!” Then he laid three items atop his desk. One was a sharp color photo of the mosaic, the second was his reconstruction of the text:
The third was a computer version of that text in conventional Hebrew lettering:
Feldman studied the three documents carefully. Then he nodded and sa
id, “I think you’ve got it, Jon. Have you translated it into English yet?”
“I’m close, but I’m still working out a couple of words. The last nut to crack, of course, is the calligraphy and its era, which will tell us whether or not the mosaic is contemporary with the synagogue, although it certainly looks as if it is.”
“The problem here is the mosaic vehicle, of course,” said Feldman. “If this were a normal inscription, the shape of the letters wouldn’t be forced by the geometry of the tiny stones, the . . . the . . .”
“The tessera,” Jon offered.
“The tessera, yes.” Feldman now pulled over a ladder and climbed to an upper shelf in the fortress of books that enclosed his office from floor to ceiling on three sides. Pulling out a large tome and blowing the dust off its top, he said, “So let’s see if Wassermann will help us.”
“Oh-ho, you have Wassermann? Splendid!”
Hebrew Mosaics in the Ancient Near East—300 B.C.E. to 500 C.E. by Isidore Z. Wassermann was nicely divided by chapters into eight centuries, as suggested in the title. The text was full of mosaics from synagogue floors, private homes of the wealthy, public buildings, and tombs. Jon held a photograph of the Sepphoris inscription next to all mosaics with lettering while Feldman slowly turned the pages. The task was not as arduous as Jon had feared, since not even 10 percent of the illustrations contained lettering of any kind.
After wading through eight hundred years of Jewish artistry with tiny tessera, they returned several times to specimens from the first century B.C. and first century A.D. as the closest parallels to the Sepphoris inscription. Feldman finally looked up and said, “All things considered, don’t you find a 100 B.C.E. to 100 C.E. horizon for our mosaic appropriate?”
“I do indeed, Mort. Note the similar shapes of those yods and alephs. Besides which, most of the other mosaics at Sepphoris also date from that time frame, when Antipas rebuilt the city. And, of course, the mosaic was found at the same elevation as that first-century synagogue floor.”
“I’d say that’s a double indication that our piece is about two thousand years old.”
“Well, our puzzle is partially solved, then,” said Jon, “except, of course, for the meaning of the text.”
“Exactly. There’s no subject! Do let me know what it says.”
Jon’s public symposia at Hebrew University were now so cluttered with questions about Joshua Ben-Yosef that he did something unprecedented. Opening his lecture one morning, he said: “I regret to make an announcement that I never thought would be necessary. In fact, it’s against all principles of the free inquiry on which academe thrives. But I have no choice: in order for us to complete this symposium, I will entertain no further questions or comments about Joshua Ben-Yosef, only those relating to the historical Jesus of Nazareth.”
A drone of discussion filled the hall, but enough hunching of shoulders and raised palms among students to demonstrate that they understood. Privately, however, Jon exempted himself from his own restriction. He had many—too many—questions about Joshua. He would continue asking them and continue seeking answers.
There were so many queries he should have raised with Joshua in their meeting in Bethany, he now realized. Why had he not gotten details on how the worldwide cyberincursion was accomplished? Or asked about Joshua’s future plans, or hundreds of other items? One evening supplied only so much available time, of course, but he must see Joshua again, if possible.
When he returned to their apartment on French Hill, Shannon declared, “I just learned that Joshua is coming to Jerusalem again tomorrow morning, and I want to go out and see him. And Jon, whether you like it or not, I’m going!”
“By all means!” he replied enthusiastically. “I’d go myself if I didn’t have to teach.”
Barely a mile from Jerusalem, Shannon intercepted Joshua and his entourage as they rode donkeys—yes, donkeys—up the valley road from Bethany. Cheering crowds were lining the roadsides. They were not on the main route to Jerusalem, but on the lower trail through the Kidron Valley that finally reached a site below the southeastern walls of the Old City known as Silwan. Here Joshua and his twelve followers dismounted.
Shannon ran up to Shimon, hoping he would remember her, and asked where they were heading. Before he could reply, Joshua himself walked over to her and exclaimed, with his blazing blue eyes and serene smile, “What a pleasant surprise, Mrs. Weber! Please join us as we wade through Hezekiah’s Tunnel!”
“Are you . . . are you really going to do that?” she stammered, not really caring how banal her query sounded.
“Why not? There’s less than a foot of water at this time of year, and you can carry your sneakers.”
“Well . . . I’d be delighted!” she enthused, while thinking, How did he ever know the word sneakers?
Shannon recalled that the tunnel was the only site in Jerusalem that looks exactly the same today as when good King Hezekiah constructed it 2,700 years ago. The king wanted to supply Jerusalem with water from the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley, the very place where Solomon had been anointed king to succeed his father, David. Here it was that Hezekiah constructed his remarkable 1,750-foot tunnel with workmen chiseling the watercourse out of solid rock at both ends to meet somewhere in the middle.
Shannon took off her shoes and waded into the cool waters just behind Joshua and the Twelve as they trudged through the tunnel to the Pool of Siloam on the other side—the reservoir into which the waters of the Gihon spilled. While sloshing through the still-flowing stream of water, she couldn’t resist the thought: Wait till I tell Jon about this! For once I got there first with the best!
Halfway through the tunnel, they came to the place where Hezekiah’s two teams of workmen, tunneling from both ends, met each other. With their primitive yet effective engineering, they were off only five feet laterally. Not bad for the 700s B.C., thought Shannon.
Joshua himself threaded his way back to make sure Shannon noticed how the pick marks of the two teams of workmen cut the rock at different angles that intersected just at the dividing point.
“I’m not sure I see where that is. Here?” she pointed.
Joshua took her finger and moved it fourteen inches to the left. “No, here,” he said.
“Oh . . . I see it now. Thanks for pointing that out!” she said, tears of excitement filling her eyes that Joshua had showed her such attention. He smiled briefly, his eyes meeting hers so pleasantly, and then he returned to the head of the procession.
Finally they reached the ancient Pool of Siloam. Again Joshua seemed to be a paragon of solicitude, making sure that his entourage recognized the spot where Hezekiah’s famous sign, the earliest Hebrew inscription of any length, had originally been placed.
“Unfortunately,” he explained, “the inscription stone has been pried out of its niche, as you can see. It’s now in the Archaeological Museum at Istanbul. Someday, it really must be returned here.”
He made sure his group was listening—as if that were any problem—and smiled again when he saw Shannon. Once more his azure eyes seemed to penetrate hers. Her pulse was wildly aflutter, and she could not forget the delightful tactile shock when he had touched her finger in the tunnel. It seemed wrong to her, of course: she remained totally committed to Jon. But this Israeli—quite apart from any superior credentials—was far more than what any American teenager would call a hunk. Not only was he a superb demonstration of the male species, but he seemed also to exude a unique magnetism that cast a spell on anyone in his presence. Begin with this, but then ask, what if he were all this and more than a man? Shannon still had trouble truly comprehending the latter, though it was always at the edge of her horizon.
The group paused for a moment around the muddy waters of the Pool of Siloam, the famous reservoir where Jesus had cured the blind man, and continued climbing up a stone staircase toward the walls of Jerusalem. Shannon hoped that the waters of Siloam in Jesus’ day were a little cleaner and bluer.
At the street circl
ing the south wall of the Old City of Jerusalem, Joshua’s cavalcade turned left and continued upward toward the Dung Gate. Along the roadside, and dangerously close to oncoming traffic, sat a beggar on a soiled green blanket he had spread out on the sidewalk. He was croaking out a plaintive song as he accompanied himself on an ancient lyre, a pathetic musical performance for which he awaited contributions from anyone within earshot. But the dish in front of him contained only two coins. He turned toward Joshua’s advancing group with a glassy stare, eyes milky and pupils rolling upward aimlessly.
“He’s been begging here for the last seven years,” an Arab street merchant told Shannon, over a cart laden with soft drinks, candy, and curios. “The poor guy is blind as a bat.” Clearly, tourists must have taught the vendor American jargon.
Joshua now stopped in front of the beggar, greeted him, and asked, “Do you know who I am?”
The man turned toward the voice and seemed puzzled. Finally he replied, “No, sir. I can’t see you.”
“Perhaps you shall,” said Joshua. “Do you believe that our Lord God is able to cure your blindness?”
For a moment the man was speechless. Then he wheezed, coughed, and finally mumbled, “Well . . . well . . . I guess so. God . . . He can do anything, can’t He?”
“Just so,” said Joshua. “Now go down to the Pool of Siloam and wash your eyes.”
“Wha . . . why should I do that?”
Joshua smiled patiently and replied, “It’s really quite simple, my friend: do you wish to receive your sight? Or remain blind?”
Shannon saw the beggar’s jaw drop, almost in tandem with her own. A little more dialogue was necessary to convince the beggar that this could be for real. Finally he rose shakily to his feet. Shimon and several others in the entourage supported his arms and guided him as the group now walked back down the stairs to the Pool of Siloam.
