The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel

by Wangerin Jr. , Walter

  For the stars of heaven joined the war;

  they dropped from their courses fighting,

  and Kishon exploded her banks in torrents,

  sweeping the kings away:

  March on, my soul with might!

  So sang Mary, while Jesus, gazing at farmland, watched an ancient war. No, Mary did not laugh that day.

  But she taught Jesus other songs. And she taught him the lilies, the flowers, the grasses and all growing things, seed and soils, and how to pray. She taught him prayer by praying herself, and he watched with a swift understanding. She taught him thrift—not grimly, nor bitterly, but with ingenuity and a glad self-sufficiency. She taught him to sew. And to cook.

  Joseph, stolid and laborious, taught Jesus to read and to write, both in Aramaic and in Hebrew.

  Joseph took Jesus to the synagogue.

  Joseph never laughed.

  When Jesus asked about that, he told his boy he was too old to laugh.

  He had lost the knack a while ago. But Mary’s laughter, he said, was like his own.

  “It is enough,” he said.

  In those days Joseph’s huge bush of a beard was shot through with white. His eyebrows had started to grow. There was almost no face left to look at. A nose.

  In the spring of the year when Jesus turned twelve, his parents decided to take him with them to Jerusalem, to celebrate there the feast of the Passover.

  It was a four-days’ trek in company with many families from Nazareth. Almost everyone walked, though a few rode donkeys. The distance from Galilee to Judea was not easy, since the hills between Samaria and Jerusalem were cut across by sudden, precipitous gorges; and there were innumerable caves along the way where thieves lurked.

  In Jerusalem the people of Nazareth dispersed, each family to find its own lodgings.

  It was at this point—just upon arrival, approaching a two-story house in the valley between the high hill of Zion and the temple Mount—that Mary and Joseph always looked for Zechariah. Since all the priests of all the divisions were on duty for the Passover, Zechariah would come early and prepare for his relatives and cheerfully greet them as they arrived.

  But today no Zechariah came out of the house, neither the priest nor the nailsmith. Instead, Elizabeth appeared in the doorway and waved. She tried to smile. But as Mary drew closer, the smile broke. The tiny old woman lowered her head and lifted her arms, and Mary knew. Mary knew. She walked into her great-aunt’s embrace. Each woman fell on the neck of the other, and they wept together for the sake of Zechariah.

  “He died in his sleep,” Elizabeth said. “John and I have come to Passover alone this year. Oh, Mary, I am so glad to see you.”

  On the day of the sacrifice of the lambs, Joseph took Jesus outside the city to the east, to the Mount of Olives, where there were two great cedar trees. Under one tree a man was selling nothing but young doves. Under the other tree there were four shops offering everything necessary for sacrifices: lambs, sheep, oil, and meal.

  Joseph purchased a sheep, one year old without spot or blemish.

  As they led the sheep down into the Kidron Valley and back to the city, he said, “Every year at Passover, Rabbi Baba ben Buta brings three thousand head of livestock to the temple, right into the Court of the Gentiles. There he sells the sacrifice to pilgrims. I would rather buy ours here.”

  Joseph showed Jesus how to wash in preparation for the sacrifice.

  Together they entered the white, multitudinous, noisy courtyards of the temple. Smoke rose to the beautiful sky. Levites were singing on the steps of the temple. Periodically, trumpets blew from the pinnacle at the southwest corner of the royal porch. Hundreds of people were streaming in one gate with walking sheep, while hundreds more streamed out another, carrying bloody cuts of meat and the hide of the carcass, neat and whole.

  Within the inner Court of the Priests and the Israelites, Joseph knelt down and held his sheep with an arm around its chest, awaiting his turn. Jesus stood by, watching.

  Soon a priest approached, and a Levite beside him. The priest inspected the animal closely, mouth and ears, stomach, and the roots of its wool; then he handed Joseph a small clay bowl and stepped back. Joseph, still kneeling, placed a hand on the head of the sheep. Suddenly the Levite seized its whole snout in his left hand, shut off the wind, and with a single sweep of a silent blade, cut the animal’s throat, causing a sigh and a bloody yawning there. Two fountains of blood began to spurt.

  The Levite lowered the front portion of the beast, aiming the blood into Joseph’s bowl which, when it was full, the priest took, together with the loose, woolly body. The blood he threw against the altar. The sheep he skinned and butchered with amazing speed. He washed the pieces of meat, lifted them up to the Lord, then returned them to Joseph, and Joseph gave some to Jesus, who had seen it all with a steadfast and unblinking eye.

  This is the food that Joseph and Mary and Jesus consumed that night with a ritual care—and not them only, but Elizabeth and John as well. Zechariah’s family reclined with Joseph’s family that night, singing hymns and remembering.

  For this was the Passover, the ancient story all over again, the Exodus by signs and wonders and the salvation of Israel, whom the Lord bore out on eagles’ wings and brought unto himself. And this was the same Lord who had loved an ancient nailsmith, allowing him to see a new thing before he died. Zechariah had stood on the mountain with Moses and seen the promised land.

  On the following day Elizabeth and John went home.

  Mary and Joseph lingered through the last day of the feast. Early in the morning they gathered with their friends from Nazareth, and the whole group set out northward.

  They traveled till evening, when people began to put up tents, preparing for the night. Mary set some stew over a fire, then went to tell Jesus that it was time to eat.

  But Jesus was nowhere to be found.

  She began to run from tent to tent. People shrugged and shook their heads. Relatives were sympathetic, but they couldn’t help her. No one had seen Jesus anywhere the whole day through.

  “He’s a boy,” she said over and over. “He’s only twelve years old!”

  And now it was dark on earth. The distant hills were pure black silhouettes. The only light was the fires of families who had sat down to eat.

  Mary rushed back to Joseph, crying, “Let’s go! We’ve got to go back! Either he’s lost on the wayside, or else Jesus is in Jerusalem alone!”

  So they walked all night long, alone, ascending the difficult roads to Jerusalem as quietly as they could, for fear of robbers and thieves.

  In the city itself and in the light of day they began a long search, questioning strangers, knocking on the doors of many houses. Mary couldn’t eat. She had begun to suffer such torments of guilt that she grew dirty and unkempt. Her dark hair knotted and grew ratty. Her face was pale, her dark eyes staring.

  “My fault, my fault,” she kept muttering. “He isn’t even thirteen. I should have been watching. It’s my duty to watch out for him.”

  They had been to the temple. It was the first place they had looked, both the outer and the inner courts. Nothing—though more than once Mary thought she saw the wide forehead of her son among the people. Nothing. Now, therefore, she returned to the temple no longer to look, but to pray. It had been three days.

  Mary went away from the crowds. She thought she would seclude herself behind a column in the porch of Solomon. As she entered the place she heard soft voices to the left, so she turned to the right. But suddenly one high, piping voice began to speak, and she recognized it. Jesus! It was her son’s voice!

  Mary flew around the pillars and found some ten men sitting in a circle, old men, young men—and a boy! Rabbis, they were. Teachers and students and—

  “Yeshi!” she shrieked. All talking came to a halt. “Yeshi, what are you doing here?”

  Everyone turned and looked at her. Jesus turned, too, but with level eyes and a maddening calm.

  A rabbi said, “The
lad is studying the Law. He has a marvelous understanding—”

  Mary hardly heard him. She ran to Jesus and took his face between her hands. “What have you done to us?” she hissed. She was going to cry. She could feel it coming. She did not want to cry. Therefore, she shouted at the top of her lungs: “Your father and I have been searching the city for days! I would never have treated my parents like this! Yeshi, I’ve been dying with worry!”

  “Mama,” the boy said, “why did you have to search?”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “But didn’t you know where I would be? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

  Mary stopped shouting. She released her son’s face, seeing pink marks where her hands had squeezed him. No, she did not understand this thing which he said. Neither did she understand him.

  This she knew now as never before, that she did not understand her son. And this too: that she had to cry. No matter the place or the company, she lowered her head and covered her face and began to cry.

  Then it was Jesus who rose up and took her by the arm and led her to a more private part of the porch and there consoled her by patting her on the shoulder. He patted her and held her hand and sat with her as long as she needed.

  THIRTY-TWO

  John the Son

  of Zechariah

  I

  IN THOSE DAYS there lived on the wilderness shores of the Dead Sea a community called the Essenes, people who were waiting for the absolute reign of God: Thy kingdom come, they begged in many ways. They separated their daily lives from the entanglements of world economies and the taint of governments, declaring themselves to be the New Covenant. The Essenes felt that their community was a visible sign of that kingdom where the temple of the Lord would be built not of stones but of people completely obedient to him.

  They avoided luxury and every impurity. They studied the laws of Moses and strove to keep them in every particular. They were especially observant in matters of cleanliness since it was their purpose to be a present witness of the future and eternal kingdom. This present age was coming to an end! And since its faithful populations must learn how to prepare, the Essenes wrote their teachings on scrolls.

  Regarding the signs of the end of the age, they wrote that there would arise two messiahs, the priestly and the lay. When the duly anointed high priest and duly anointed king appeared—messiahs anointed of Aaron and of Israel—then all the scattered hosts of Israel would be gathered together, and the earth would be filled with the knowledge of God like the waters which cover the sea.

  In language most formal, they wrote that the lay messiah, the king, would be a Scion of David who shall in the Last Days reign in Zion, an offering of the booth of David now fallen down. By “fallen booth” they meant the Law. They felt that the laws of Moses had been long neglected, justice and ritual purities, both. He, they wrote, as the anointed king, will arise to bring salvation to Israel.

  Of the anointed priest they wrote that he would be the Expounder of the Law.

  These were the signs of an end and a beginning—the end of an unrighteous age, the beginning of the direct reign of God, as once he ruled Israel when they wandered in the wilderness.

  Therefore, when a man named John began to cry in the Judean wilderness, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” the whole community of Essenes began to tremble with excitement. For John was the son of the priest Zechariah, and his mother had been of the house of Aaron!

  Surely, he was that priest!

  His preaching was a fierce and fearless exposition of the Law. Surely the end which the prophets had foreseen was finally at hand! Hadn’t Isaiah prophesied: The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!” Yes, and this John was no respecter of persons. He told the truth. He lived dependent on no one’s welcome nor anyone’s wealth. And he was as concerned for the laws of cleanliness as the Essenes themselves. He offered Jews a ritual washing. He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

  Coming from the wilderness near the Dead Sea and from houses on Zion, the Essenes trooped to the places where John the son of Zechariah preached.

  Many other people went out to hear him. Multitudes came from Jerusalem and all the regions of Judea to the shores of the Jordan to be baptized by John, confessing their sins.

  II

  JOHN THE SON OF ZECHARIAH had hands as huge as his father’s, shovels at the ends of his wrists. Like his father’s, they were hard and dark, though he was not a nailsmith. In fact, he had no craft for earning money. He survived on the poor fare of the wilderness; he ate insects, locusts, and the wild honey he found in rocks and trees; he drank water, and sometimes as gifts from those he baptized he drank the milk of goats. He gathered wood and slept on the hard ground. It was simple survival that had made his hands hard. He lived as his ancestors had lived two thousand years before him, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: a wilderness existence.

  And he dressed like the nomad, wearing a rough mantle of camel’s hair. He dressed (so noted the Essenes) like the prophet Elijah, wearing a leather girdle around his waist.

  None of these details was lost on the citizens of Judea.

  Many yearned to see signs of the kingdom and the restoration of their holy covenant. They hated subservience. They hated Rome. The Roman presence was a perpetual abomination. If a Gentile spat on the ground, a Jew had to cross the street to avoid the discharge or risk his own impurity. Gentiles exhaled filth. They ate their food defiled; they stripped naked for public games; they used coin that offended the laws of God; they profaned the land, taxed poor Jews beyond their means, and murdered them upon a whim. Pontius Pilate, the new Roman Procurator of Judea, was brutal in his governance and cold in execution. Nor were the sons of Herod any better. No kings, they! They ruled at Rome’s behest. Not a genuine Jew between them, since neither one so much as pretended a righteous worship. They built palaces of luxury by the labor of citizens more faithful than they. Ah, there was such a yearning in the land, a deep, weeping desire for the return of the kingdom of the Lord God of Israel. Therefore, while some people separated themselves and struggled to obey the laws of Moses, others formed fierce military units and planned by might and rebellion to restore the freedoms of Israel. In the name of the jealous Lord God they made a public denunciation of iniquitous foreign influence, idolatries, Jewish apostasies. These were by nature and by political definition Zealots.

  So great was the yearning that when the rumors flew through Jerusalem—“He wears leather like Elijah! He bows to none but God! He refuses to eat with sinners, and he preaches the Law without compromise!”—multitudes went out to hear this John the son of Zechariah and to be baptized under his huge hands.

  Nor did they turn away from his harder words of judgment. The times required iron expositions.

  “I have seen wildfire race through dry fields,” John cried. He was standing on a flat stone, head and shoulders above the people. His hair fell in wild tangles down his back. His voice was a battering—and the people felt consoled.

  “I have seen,” John cried, “small beasts rush from the flames, squeaking and bleating in terror. And then, as the bright burning consumed even the edges of the fields, I saw the silent ones stream out, the hidden ones, slick snakes whom we do not see until they’ve bitten us shin and heel.”

  John threw out his arms to indicate the entire crowd before him. “You brood of snakes!” he bellowed. “Who warned you to flee the fiery wrath to come? What are you doing here? Do you think a little splash will wash you clean? Or do you trust your heritage to protect you when this age ends and the judgment of God precipitates the eternal covenant? You children of Abraham! You children of that older covenant, there comes now a covenant so new that each must enter one by one. Every heart must prove the truth of its own purity, its own new purity.”

  John paused. He snapped his body straight and stood fixed for a moment, a narrow column above the people. H
e had the capacity to be with them and absent, both at the same time—indifferent. It was a troubling habit, since it broke focus. The circle had no center.

  More quietly, now, John said, “People, people, prove your purity. Reveal your heart by the work of your hand. Let seeming and being be the same in you. Bear fruits befitting repentance. I tell you, even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree that does not bear good fruit shall be cut down and cast back to the dry fields where the fires shall consume them.”

  John stepped down from his stony platform and began to walk through the crowds downhill toward the Jordan.

  He was a man of a large frame and lean muscle, a gaunt jaw, deep-set eyes. Perhaps his hands seemed the larger because his forearms were shrunken around their two bones. He walked with the long loose stride of a bedouin.

  Five men fell in step behind him, clearly familiars of his, disciples.

  The rest of the people hesitated. There was no protocol here. Should they follow? Should they wait for a smile and a nod? But John was not given to smiling. How should civility treat one who makes even the wilderness his private portion?

  One of the Zealots ran down the path after him, crying, “Sir! Sir! What are we to do, then?”

  John stopped, turned, and looked at him. The Zealot shrugged and tried to smile. He was a soldier rudely weaponed, a member of those insurgent groups that hid in Judean caves and fed on the produce of farmers. “What,” he said, “is the right thing for us to do?”

  “Stop robbing the common folk,” John said. “Rob no one, not by violence, not by false accusation.” Suddenly he lifted his voice. “To every soldier here,” he called, “those in the temple guard, those under Herod Antipas, be content with your wages!

  “And let every person here be generous: if you have two coats, give one to the man who has none. If you have food enough, share it!”

  John turned back and continued descending to the river. Apparently, this exchange had broken any hesitation. The multitude flowed down behind him.