How this infuriates the Gadarene! They bluster and they threaten with fist and with stick, so that Simon Peter, who has broken the chain with one last blow of stone on link, stands away from the madman, turning to face these men as Simeon, and now Jude, faces them. “As God is just,” he calls out, “this man’s demons would enter you! Run away from here, pigs of Gadarene, before I come to push you all into the sea.”
And they do run. They know true Sicarii when they see them, and they hike up the skirts of their robes and they are off before else is said or done. At which Simon Peter and Simeon laugh so hard the hills ring with the noise of them.
Yeshu gives up his own mantle to clothe the man called unclean, and though the poor thing begs to come with us, back to Galilee where he might be safe from his neighbors, or at least safer, we cannot take him. There is barely room in Joazar’s boat for us. “But I hear voices, master. They speak vile things to me. By day and by night, I hear them, so that I hear nothing else, so that I cut at myself to let them out.”
“Do you hear them now?”
Surprise crosses the face of he who held legions. “No. I do not hear them now.”
“Then they are gone from you, and will not come again. Go to your own house, Yair, son of Akiba. Remember what the Father does for you.”
By the evening, we are far from Gadarene, settled once again in Galilee.
Following such things, casting out demons and subduing storms, comes another evening during which Yeshu must endure his disciples sitting near, but not too near for their growing awe, and comes another evening where no matter how clearly he says a thing, he is not heard, not even by those who follow.
Seated at his right hand at table, I watch them. What do they whisper, each to each? Are they as those who call him messiah? Do they too think him king? With good, though foolish, intent, do any speak aloud to others of what, being near Yeshu, they would only whisper? And do these others speak to yet others?
I despair of how this goes, for in whose ear does it come finally to rest?
Near Gennesaret in Galilee, a great crowd has once again gathered to hear Yehoshua the Nazorean. And once again my beloved is ringed round by those who would protect him from the love the people bear him, and once again he begins with silence, and in silence we all wait, for at such a time there is nothing else in the world, nothing, save Yeshu. But on this day, though the sky is as smooth and as blue as an egg, there is a darkness at the center of things that I cannot name. On this day, even Simon Peter is uneasy, as if a storm were somewhere building and building. I am near to Yeshu. I know he is enraptured. We all of us wait, until there is nothing but perfect quiet and perfect stillness; then, and only then, he speaks, saying, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden shall be revealed to him.”
“Ahhhhh,” sighs the multitude, looking up at him with such a terrible uncomprehending need that that which is dark in this day becomes darker still. If Yeshu feels this darkness, he makes no sign, but goes on speaking in his quiet way, so that some begin to sway at his words and some begin to moan. Here one is moved to call out, and here another. And by and by, more and more murmur and mutter and raise their hands, and then the day is shattered by the voice of a woman crying out, “This is our Messiah!” and at this, a man stands forth, sweat beading his fervent face, and turning to the crowd, he calls out, “This is he who comes!” And then another man shouts, “This one is our very king! And another cries, “Seize him! This very day, we shall take him to Jerusalem!”
And more and more and more of the same, until the crowd presses forward like one great beast, and Jude and Simeon and the Sons of Thunder push them back and push them back, but still they come forward, and it is only by moments that Jude and I manage to catch hold of Yeshu’s arms and to pull him back into Joazar’s boat. Simon Peter and Seth and Thecla clamber aboard, pushing away those who would also clamber aboard, and then as one they take us away, away. Even so, there are those few who swim after us and those many who run along the shore calling out, “Yehoshua is the Messiah!” and will not leave us, not until we make our way far out onto the sea. And there we remain until it has gone full dark and there are none left to make Yeshu king.
But the day after this day, Jacob the Just goes back to the wilderness, and with him goes Andrew of Capharnaum and Timaeus the Bandit and all those who shave their heads until the Temple is cleansed. “As I love you,” says Jacob to Yeshu, “this is not my business. As I love God, I must do my own work.”
Yeshu kisses him and, without protest, lets him go.
As we settle to sleep this night, I see the despair in Yeshu’s face. I see the beginnings of broken eyes. Reaching out, I touch him, saying, “Perhaps you ask too much, beloved? The people are as children and you must treat them as children.”
“What then am I?”
“You are as a father to them.”
“In that case, I should beat them for their stupidity.”
“In that case, you would be Yahweh and not Yeshu.”
Yeshu laughs and laughs. I would seldom hear that laugh again.
Often now, Yeshu is weary. Though he makes no mention of it, it is in his eye and his skin, in the simplest movement of his hand. No matter that I select the best in the markets for his supper, he grows thinner, and I am made uneasy that he will know his pain again. This day, when Hanukkah is gone by for another year, as is the planting of barley and of wheat, he is become shaken in the bone by what has come of his teaching, and would seek solitude.
So it is that today we rest.
There are seven who sit on the banks of the sweet Sea of Galilee just south of Capharnaum. Behind us rise up the mountains of Galilee, coming so close to the sea there is only this narrow strip of land between water and mountain. On this day, Joazar’s boat waits quietly at anchor. Others who follow are scattered wherever and however, and if I did not know better, I should think the world a safe and quiet place, and I would think that any time now Salome and I could set sail for Egypt. Perhaps taking Seth, perhaps taking even Yeshu? It is not impossible. It is not an impossible dream, and sitting on the shore of the sweet water sea I dream it, as I still dream of Kush.
Under the nearby mulberry trees, and sheltered by tents from a mizzling rain, Salome sits with Helena as well as with the mother and aunt of Yeshu, though I know she is not truly with them. She is with John, which means she bends her diligent head over her scrolls and her inks and her reeds. Others of us have gone seeking diversion. They travel by boat farther south to Taricheae and some even on to Tiberius. Herod’s new city is a mess of timber yards and full loud with the cries of builders and the pounding of mattocks, yet it provides much that should divert them.
Simon Peter has gone home to Perpetua and to Mark, though if he remains the Simon Peter I have come to know, he will demand food of his mother-in-law and he will frighten his son and he will lie with his wife, and he will be gone in the morning. Tata also visits in the home of Simon Peter to see that all remains well with Sarah, but she will not stay the night. With Tata has gone Miryam, for Yeshu’s youngest sister has long since become attached to Tata. If Tata remains the Tata I dearly love, and she does, by now the innocent weaver Miryam knows much of honey and of laps and of lifted heads.
Where we sit on the bank, a catfish noses out from the water, then sinks away again. Four turtles are stacked on a sunken log like newly washed bowls in a scullery.
Seated next to Thecla, Addai’s old friend Dositheus holds forth on the interesting fact that the god of the Jews does not have sexual organs. Says he, “The priests of the Temple claim this one has created the world by will alone.” By now, Dositheus never uses the forbidden name, Yahweh, or even those names allowed, such as Adonai or ha-Shem, but only the name Plato gave his Maker of the Universe, Demiurge, or Craftsman, because, as says Dositheus, “This god has fabricated a copy of the higher world, which by its nature can only be base imitation.” But where Plato thought
the Craftsman worked to the best of his ability, and therefore his copy is as good as it can possibly be, Dositheus thinks the Craftsman is flawed by self-centeredness and arrogance and the desire to dominate human affairs, and therefore his copy is fatally flawed. He calls him the Jealous God, and sometimes, Sakla, which is Aramaic for fool. Salome has seen the point he makes by this and she has asked, “If Yahweh is the One and Only God, there being no other gods at all, and if Yahweh is good, what is there to be jealous of?”
Dositheus speaks on, “Now this is an interesting thing, calling forth by the will, which is the basis of magic as Joor once taught us, and I would debate it with these Yahwists if their god were truly the Supreme Being, and not the chief material Power, or Archon.”
Eleazar, leaning over far enough to fall as he sits near us, though not quite with us, pretends to skip a pebble over the water, and Dositheus follows its course with a gloomy eye. “More and more, I come to believe as it is taught in certain secret sects that there is a realm of the spirit which is Good and is called Pleroma, and over against it there is a realm of matter which is Evil and is called the World. I am entirely convinced that it is not the Supreme Being who calls this World forth, but the Demiurge who is the Master of Matter. And into this evil matter we have fallen, and cannot find our way out again, being tormented by the nephilim who mimic the Divine, but who are lesser deities of the chief Archon, and evil in themselves. Enoch’s book calls these the fallen angels, and this sits well with me.”
Yeshu is staring out at the sea, but he is listening, especially now as Seth is moved to reply to Dositheus of Gitta. “You would have two realms, then? One Dark and one Light, each antithetic to the other, indeed, opposed to the other?”
“I would.”
“And therefore you would say that duality is at the root of all things, as is conflict and discord?”
“Yes. I believe this is where my thought takes me.”
“As it takes others. But tell me, in this world of Evil in which we take vital part, consciously knowing no other world, have you come to believe that men and women themselves are evil?”
Dositheus holds up his hands, his woeful face wreathed in worry at the very thought. “No. No. I cannot bring myself to think that, though there are surely evil men, or at least men who do evil. But Evil is, as you know, one of my favorite topics, and I have yet to think to the end of it.”
“As it is mine, Dositheus. And who has come to the end of it? But it seems to me that rather than use Plato, you might as well call your ignorant Craftsman the evil spirit Ahriman who opposes the god Ahura Mazda, for all this is so much Persian thinking! If we are helpless before Evil, which is outside a man and not inside a man, you take from us our splendor. By this we are no more than creeping things, scurrying from under a sandal; no more than spent leaves, blown this way and that.”
Dositheus sighs to hear this, saying, “By this, I have given man his innocence. I have given him the Good as his home.”
“It seems to me,” replies Seth, “as it did to Parmenides of Elea, that the very thoughts of man and of woman are the world, and if there is evil in it, it is our evil, and if there is goodness, it is our goodness. I maintain there is no battle between Good and Evil that is outside the self. There is only a mastery of the eidolon, or smaller self, that leads to Knowing. I believe gnosis is the door to the Kingdom of God, which is the immeasurable Age, or Aeon, of Truth. And it is neither good nor evil, but all things, and felt as love.”
I see Yeshu lift an eye at this. I see him regard my teacher Seth, and I allow myself the slightest step beyond his skull. As I admire Seth, Yeshu admires Seth, and how this pleases me! But Dositheus, who has heard all this before, leaps before Seth can draw breath for more of the same. “Just so. Just so. Any day now, sir, I shall finish my book, which I think to call, On the Origin of the World. I pray you will read it.”
“Dositheus! I should read anything you have written, for yours is a worthy and admirable mind. But, on this, wrong.”
And so it goes. And so it goes. This is not a new conversation. Seth and Dositheus once talked like this endlessly. But lately, Seth’s heart is not so engaged in such things, nor is his mind. Lately, he has taken to listening to Yeshu, and talking to him, and though Yeshu does not know the half of what Dositheus knows, and not a fifth of what Seth knows, he knows what neither of them know: Yeshu knows Glory. Yeshu has opened the door to the Kingdom. By this alone, Yeshu might be the Perfected Man. And by this, Seth, who follows no one, and would follow no one, follows him.
Since John died, the simple sadness of Dositheus is become dread. This saddens me.
Seth touches Yeshu’s shoulder. “Yeshu, what say you? Do you agree with Dositheus the world is a creation of the male Demiurge, who is the chief Archon of Evil, and who does not know his mother, Sophia? Or would you say it was the reflection of Source, which has no gender, and is neither Good nor Evil but endlessly creative?”
Here it is. Dositheus believes the world a thing of a flawed god’s evil making, into which we are fallen. Seth believes the world entirely what man would make of it, and a place of magical intent. If Yeshu does not agree with Dositheus, will he have lost him? Beside me, Addai stirs. He knows where this goes. He too fears the loss of his old friend from his days in Sepphoris and his travels with Jael, a friend older by far than any other. Waiting for Yeshu’s answer, I think, but what if Yeshu does not agree with Seth?
Yeshu does not move. I know he values Dositheus and listens attentively to his ideas of Dark forces and forces of Light, and helpless fallen humanity caught as the playthings of malevolent darkness. For all his cleverness with the Pharisee and with the Poor, Yeshu is no politician, he must answer truthfully.
This is his answer, one that those who clamor for health or for safety never hear. “I would say that all things must be weighed against the heart. I would say that if I look into my own heart, I see that the Mother and the Father’s world is a reflection of man who is a reflection of the Parents and is therefore beautiful even to its most inward parts. To see with the eyes of Glory is to be enchanted. Each thing, animate or inanimate, glows with the force of its own unique perfection, unfolding with the genius inherent in all that is. I would say that it is only man’s not knowing his source that is evil, for by his fearful ignorance he does evil.”
Dositheus, who has been holding his breath, lets it out slowly. He is relieved; there is room here for maneuvering. But I see also this: Dositheus thinks himself into a place of true sorrow and despair. Step by step, and thought by mournful thought, he takes himself into a tortuous ravine of the mind where all is hopeless and all are helpless and all are beset by ravenous evil. And I think he would not think any of these things if, even for only one brief instant, he could know Yeshu’s Kingdom of God. For then Glory would fill him with love for this world, and for all that it contained.
Two men have found us. Both are clearly Pharisee, though the Pharisee are not many in Galilee, nor are they strong. Almost swifter than thought, Jude is risen from his place on the shore of the sea, his curved blade in his hand, though it is a knife unseen if one is not looking. No mystery why, for though one man bears the marks of a once terrible disease of the skin, the other has certainly come for mischief. But Yeshu rises to make welcome these Pharisee, saying, “What would you have of me?”
I hear the sighs of Simeon and of Jude, even of Addai. I sigh as well. Yeshu is forever doing such things, which means we forever find ourselves in many a strange and dangerous place.
So it is that an hour later we are in the house of Simon the Leper, a man in the salt fish trade in the town of Taricheae. And so it is that Yeshu and Jude, Addai and Seth and I sit in the Jewish fashion on Simon’s stone terrace as servants hold umbrellas over our heads so that we might not feel the slight rain.
There is, as usual, danger here. And Yeshu, as usual, knows this, but he plays with his fate as he plays with such as Jacob the Just. But no moment has passed that Jude takes his hand from
his robe. Nor does Addai, and by this I am suffused with pity, for I know that he could not well wield the knife he carries. As for Seth, his eyes miss nothing, and if there is not a knife hidden somewhere about his person, I should be most surprised.
Simon the Leper of Taricheae, and his friend, the ill-willed Phabi of Nain, have fed us and have talked with Yeshu and, over the course of this long afternoon, have not yet found a single thing to condemn him for. We all of us know this is why Yeshu has been invited into the house of these Pharisee, just as he is often invited into the houses of certain Poor. Though no sect means him more harm than another sect, all would protect themselves. They would find him out, and who could blame them? With the death of John, Herod Antipas has become most irritable on the subject of the Anointed One, the Mashiah. Poor Herod must surely have thought that by his killing of this particular “king,” the subject of kings would fade as dye fades, but it has not. It grows darker by the day. If I were the son of the great Herod, or his wife, Herodias, I would be secretly shaking my fist at Yahweh.
But now we sit quietly and sip the wine we have been given, which is as vinegar to the wine Father would serve. And as we do, Phabi of Nain turns to Yeshu and asks if Yehoshua the Nazorean is as John was, why does he eat meat? And Simon the Leper asks if Yeshu is as John was, why does he drink strong drink? And Yeshu tells them he is not as John was; he is as he is, but, as usual, they listen only to half of what they hear, and hear only half of that.