The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

That afternoon, I was rubbing Nubia down as she stood in the water near fishing scows, when a covey of children cavorted about begging for rides on my horse. I acceded to their request, leading the black mare to a level field behind the family dwellings of some fishermen, heaving the boys upon her back as their sisters stood by giggling.

  It was then that I overhead portions of a loud discussion between the fisherman Simon and his wife through a rear window of their home.

  “...leave us again to roam the countryside with that man, whilst your boats and nets lie idle on the shore?” the woman argued.

  “He is a holy man,” a deep voice replied. “God wills it.”

  “The Torah wills a husband to remain with and provide for his wife and children.”

  “Come join us then.”

  “You would drag me and our seven little ones out of our home to live in the fields and scavenge food? Listen to that Jesus repeat the same message over and over?” she countered. “Not again, Simon.”

  “My hired men will provide for you until my return.”

  The woman began to sob. “And will they chastise your sons, lie in your place on our pallet?”

  “I am compelled to follow this man, Jessica. That is all I know.”

  The next day as we set out for Almagor, Jesus invited the man Simon to walk with us, whose deep voice I had heard in argument with his wife, Jesus addressing him as Peter, his ‘rock,’ by which the simple fisherman was flattered. His brother Andrew also joined us, both appearing dejected for a time at leaving their families, unused to walking long distances in leather sandals that caused new blisters on their calloused feet shuffling along wagon ruts of dusty country roads, as the sun reached its maximum height. The small procession seemed to brighten their disposition as they listened with rapt attention to my brother’s discourse on his simple themes woven with different parables, oblivious to rivulets of perspiration streaming down foreheads and under coarse robes, as their strides carried them farther from home in mind and reality.

  Later that night as Jesus and I lay side by side under our shelter, the embers of our cooking fire glowing at our feet, I brought the familial conflict of his most ardent followers to his attention.

  “We must make choices, Shimon. I do not force anyone to do anything.”

  “Yet, you urge them to follow you toward a better life. These are not educated men able to evaluate alternatives or philosophical concepts. They learn the laws of the Torah by rote and abide them.”

  “Exactly some of the mindless dictates I try to persuade them against.”

  I could not refrain from a soft chuckle in the darkness. “And you accuse me of blasphemy.”

  “Let us not be in contention, Shimon.”

  “I am trying to understand a path to God that separates a man from his family.”

  I do not know if he had fallen asleep or chose not to respond.

  Looking back on that season of my twenty-sixth year, I see an unsettled man of many moods, only months from enslavement and engagement in the most brutal occupation of the day, still estranged in the newly wrought sandals of a freedman.

  Under the next several moons, I came and went from the company of Jesus, increasingly disturbed at his frequent meetings with Judah, frustrated at the over-concern of that Zealot regarding my brother’s safety from threats relayed in gossip yet never encountered, uneasy that reports of intensified bloodletting by the Sicarii would stimulate the danger to Jesus we feared. In deference to my brother and for greater anonymity on the streets of Sepphoris, I began wearing my gladius89 belted under my robe, so wrapped around me that I had instant access to the hilt with only my pugio visible in my leather belt.

  My refreshing solace from concern for Jesus came in the arms of Yentl, who provided yet another source of frustration in her refusal to move into my ample home in the elegant western district where I abjured servants and roamed the mostly unfurnished rooms late into lonely nights.

  What manner of man am I to conclude that personal freedom itself is no release from bondage, or that self-imposed bondage is also an enslavement of the soul? At that time, I believe I had been so inured to the regimentation of life as a gladiator that I actually yearned for some dire engagement of my being, the daily proof that I could still survive against great odds, prevail in totally adverse circumstances. Did I miss the clash of steel, the roar of the crowds, the test of mettle? Not the killing. Never the killing. How could I have been so churned, so completely out of place in normal society, at constant loss to find an avenue to an inner serenity, discover some pleasurable avocation that would bring contentment to my tormented mind? Then, as I joined the tiny band that followed Jesus about the Galilee, my older brother became another source of my discontent.

  Judah did not wish to be visible among the people gathered to hear Jesus preach, for fear that their association would become known to Herod or Pilate So the Galilean urged me to appear within the larger crowds assembled to observe and monitor my brother’s preaching. Although I admit to finding his repetitive teachings boring, paying them little mind, I became curious about the relationship between Jesus and one of his more recent disciples, a dark-skinned, educated merchant from Iscariot named Judas, whose left eye skewed towards his right, their constant movement making it difficult to look into his face, which made me ill at ease.

  After a score of his regular followers partook of their evening meal, Jesus and Judas would engage in discussing some of the more esoteric points of the Torah, particularly my brother’s belief that some of the ‘lesser’ laws could be minimized or eliminated without offending Yahweh or reducing our commitment to our religion. Judas was a contentious man by nature, yet both men seemed to thrive on these conversations from which I usually abstained, sipping steadily from a wineskin that aided my ability to sleep. I surmised that the questions and challenges posed by Judas helped Jesus clarify his own thinking, compared to the facile absorption of his teaching by practically all of his simple disciples and audiences.

  Soon after we met, however, Judas began posing challenges to my brother’s tenets from the midst of a crowd gathered to hear him. Jesus suffered these interruptions kindly because his agile wit and scripture knowledge usually bested not only Judas, but also similar challenges from antagonistic Pharisees.

  I sat near the back of a crowd comprised of almost one hundred people, marveling at the practiced delivery of those familiar postulations in his sonorous voice carried down the wide grassy slope on a favorable breeze to the rapt multitude clothed in heavy robes and blankets against the early morning chill.

  Jesus had been preaching his theme of forgiveness with the assurance that our One True God would absolve occasional transgressions of all good men who followed His laws and showed kindness and compassion to others on earth. As an example of this lesson, Jesus told a story about a poor grape farmer traveling home from a selling trip, coming upon an ass with a broken leg at the foot of a wadi. Lying beside the dead beast was a badly injured Syrian, whom the farmer lifts on his horse, takes to his home, engages a surgeon and pays for his services. Upon his recovery, the Syrian steals a pouch of dinari from the farmer and tries to escape, but is caught by a servant. Instead of turning the thief over to the police, the farmer offers the Syrian employment in his vineyard as punishment for the transgression and resume a respectable life thereafter.

  Judas stood to address Jesus in his clean robe in contrast to the rest of the shabbily attired crowd. “What if the Syrian steals wine from the farmer’s warehouse with the intent to sell the flasks for his own profit? Should the merchant forgive him again, have the man arrested or flogged by his own slaves as the law provides?”

  “Forgiveness will open the gates of The Kingdom,” Jesus replied, “while vengeance remains without, gnawing its entrails for all eternity.”

  Judas would not desist. “What if the merchant takes the Syrian into his home to correct his criminal ways and the thief seduces the merchant’s wife?”

  Jesus frowned at Jud
as in apparent wonder at the purpose of his taunting. “The greater the trespass, the greater the act of absolution, the more assured the reward of eternal life.”

  “What if the Syrian sets fire to the merchant’s home with his wife and children in it?”

  Jesus was obviously angered, flinging his retort at Judas as a personal warning. “Vengeance is mine, the Lord has said, and those who usurp me will feel my wrath!”

  Judas seemed not to care or notice his Rabbi’s fury as the perplexed multitude listened raptly, attempting to absorb the contentious exchange. “If Yahweh would have the righteous submit to the indignities of evil men without retribution, would not evil run rampant among us and His will be thwarted?”

  My brother had brought himself under control,. “Righteous men need only have faith in God and do his bidding. Do you not trust God to punish evil men?”

  “I see little evidence of it here, Rabbi.”

  “Then you do not acknowledge The Kingdom, nor will your ilk it with ease.”

  With that, Jesus turned from his audience, and immediately enveloped by his closest, retreated beyond the crest of the hill. The assembled hundred sat stunned in silence before giving up to a querulous murmur, then dispersed hesitantly toward the road back to town. That was one of the few instances when I observed Jesus provoked to such outrage or threaten anyone with expulsion from his inexplicable ‘Kingdom.’

  Judah the Galilean had lingered where he sat on his mount beyond the edge of the gathering, and as I passed on Nubia, smiled at me, uttering: “That went well, I think.” The import of his comment was lost upon me at that moment, for I was preoccupied deciding if this was a propitious time to greet my brother, dug the heels of my sandals into Nubia’s flanks and cantered back to Sepphoris.

  Yentl was not at her home that evening when I walked the half-mile to her house in the poor Jewish section of the City. As I knocked on the door of her neighbor, I heard the giggling voices of children behind it, one of which sounded a good deal like Hezibia. My questions regarding Yentl’s whereabouts elicited answers from the woman, I believed, pretending ignorance regarding Yentl’s absence or when she would return. On my way back to my own quarters, I stopped at a tavern for a time, contemplating my awkward existence. I had lost all contact and commonality with boyhood friends whilst I was enslaved by Rome. Those acquaintances that I encountered on the streets of Nazarat were now residing in an unfamiliar world with families and gainful employment, whose aversion to my gossiped history I could sense, particularly my disreputable occupation in the Circus, envy of my freedman status, obvious wealth, the sword worn under my cloak and illicit liaison with the widow Yentl. My immediate brethren, mother, brothers and sisters seemed uncomfortable in my presence, also. I did not make friends easily or know how to restart my life, as many ex-slaves had done to their great advantage. Yentl seemed indifferent to me, and other than low women or an occasional prostitute, I had no idea how to find a suitable female companion. It seems that a man can have all the sex he wants in this life, but true affection is difficult to obtain.

  Another issue that disturbed my mind was Jesus. Judah the Galilean seemed inordinately concerned with my brother’s safety, and I was beginning to suspect some sort of conspiracy between the two. Thinking back to the comment made by Judah following the public argument between my brother and Judas Iscariot, that exchange seemed to have taken place with the prior knowledge and participation of Jesus, to what end I could not discern. Before my brain ceased to function that night, I vowed to attend my brother’s preaching sessions more frequently, paying greater attention to the meaning behind his words.

  It was a fortnight later that I rose with the sun as usual, broke my fast to quiet my growling stomach and aching head with dates, barley, wheat and honey, not unlike the gruel of the Circus. I left instructions with my hired man to care for Nubia in my absence, stuck my pugio in my belt surrounding my girth, an old, unwashed robe, my red hair concealed under a wide-brimmed hat of woven straw worn by farmers and set out to find my peripatetic brother.

  It required a full day of inquiries, walking from town to village, before I found him preaching to fifty or more men in a grazing meadow, where his audience had to sit among stones and flats of cattle dung strewn about the tufted hay. Pretending no knowledge of this itinerant Rabbi, I queried several men at the rear of the gathering regarding the speaker’s background. I was astounded to hear these eager peasants proclaim my brother as a holy emissary of Yahweh, who performed miracles, healing sick and crippled men and women alike. Noting my twisted leg in its brace, some even suggested that I go forth to implore the rabbi to set it straight.

  As the sun rose toward its zenith, some of his disciples passed among us collecting money to take into the village to purchase bread, fish and wine to feed the crowd. When they came to me at the rear of the audience it was clear they had not appropriated anywhere near enough coins from those poor peasants to feed them. Whereas I donated ten sisteres on condition of their confidence, and sent them off to buy food to feed us all.

  In that attempt to support my brother, I had given them too much money, because after blessing the first few baskets and the crowd had eaten its fill, there were several baskets of food remaining; which the satiated peasants carried back to their village proclaiming another miracle performed by their avowed prophet, who they averred had increased a paucity of poor crusts and fish entrails to a bounty the entire gathering could not consume. This unfounded adulation was propagated when his disciples traveled ahead to the next town he would visit, announcing the coming of a holy prophet who promised an end to a world of hardship, hunger and poverty for Jews as a consequence of the coming relief from dominance by Rome.

  Since his crowds were composed primarily of lowly peasants, laborers, craftsmen and merchants trying to earn their livelihood for their families from an equally impoverished community of Jews and a penurious gentile populace under the restrictions of their religion and heavy taxation from Rome, they were uniquely susceptible to Jesus’ message of change in restrictive Torah law and the promise of relief from oppression by the imminent appearance of the Messiah and ultimate Kingdom of God—whatever that was. The few women present in the gatherings, concealed behind headscarves and veils, stood apart from the predominately male audience, several local rabbis and Pharisees, I also observed from aside, intent, no doubt, on documenting the heresy of this rebellious, alleged healer.

  Jesus liked to preach standing above his audience from some elevation as he did that day on a hill outside the town of Ramah. His basic message of consideration for others as the road to salvation was absorbed unquestioned by the majority of those gathered, to whom this philosophy was reminiscent of the Torah, yet foretold greater immediacy in his ‘End of the World’ and ‘Kingdom of God’ prophecies, which bordered on the arrival of some “Deus ex machin90.” On that occasion, however, his closing admonition to the apparently mesmerized crowd seemed to encompass his entire philosophy in a simple and succinct manner that captured the heart and mind and spirit of every person present.

  “...therefore, every one of you is the son or daughter of the Father, brothers and sisters each to the other, equal in the eyes of your holy Father who reigns in heaven. So, neither shall you harm or slight or demean your siblings in any way; nor shall any wealthy or powerful person castigate a common man or beat his slave; nor shall a common man defraud his master.

  “Resist evil and oppression wherever you find it. For the Father did not anoint His Chosen People to see them suffer at the hands of godless despots.

  “Show compassion to your brethren and to your own being. For the Father created the person you are, with attributes to nurture and faults to correct. Therefore, be at peace within you; do not harbor anxiety or guilt for God-given inadequacies. He will not hold you responsible for what He created.

  “Everyone of you that treats his brethren with kindness and respect in this life will be treated likewise by the Father at the End of this World, and en
joy our resurrection to eternal life after mortal death. This is the goal you must attain on earth: to earn the right to sit with the Father in peace and unity and happiness forever. Commit no evil act; strive to be righteous; do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

  Jesus raised his arms to a cloudless blue sky, eyes closed, white robe brilliant in the shining sun reflecting on his clean shaved cheeks, his garment billowing in the gentle breeze rustling his shoulder-length hair. I felt rooted to the ground, oblivious of all but him, staring at a man I had known, supped with and slept beside from my birth, stunned at his radiant transformation, the immense, almost tactile power of truth and conviction exuding from atop that sloping knoll. Suddenly aware of motion around me, I realized the multitude had risen to their feet, standing with eyelids shut tight, arms raised wide to the heavens in apparent communion with one another, Jesus, and their common Father.

  An overwhelming sense of humility and confusion surged through mind and body in a chill shiver. Had I underestimated this man? Was he in fact a messenger from God? Was God speaking to all Judea through the lips of my brother? Or was he simply a good man schooled in the Torah by rote, glib and charismatic with the same ancient message revised and temporized with today’s problems, simplified with parables to sound exceptional?

  The crowd dispersed in thoughtful silence. Priests and Rabbis conversed in low tones with Pharisees, as I followed the progress of Jesus and his disciples speaking together in a huddled group as they walked across the field toward the west.

  I was perplexed by his holy admonitions, guidelines and pronouncements made that day, compared to the revolutionary messages like his “Render to Caesar...” comment and public argument with Judas that Judah implied had been rehearsed. Although it did not occur to me at the time, I subsequently realized that Jesus had cast the grape farmer in the subtle persona of all Jews, and the succored thief was surrogate for the Roman Empire. Jesus resisted harsh retribution by the farmer for the unconscionable transgressions of the thief posed by Judas; yet the questions he asked were clear and provocative: “How much oppression can God expect us to endure before exacting retribution, or allowing us to do so?”