The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ Page 8

  Although Joseph fully realized that Jesus was not His son, He had always treated Him as His own flesh and blood, taking as much pride in the signs of His becoming a scholar as in His undoubted skill in working with tools on wood and stone. Between the two, the youth and the now elderly man, there was a warm relationship of mutual respect and love that grew as Jesus increased in stature and wisdom with the passing of the years. And when finally seized by a grave illness, Joseph went to join his God secure in the knowledge that in the capacity of eldest son, Jesus would care for the family as lovingly and as capably as he himself had always done.

  Chapter 7

  In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea.

  Matthew 3:1

  During the period when the Hasmonean king-priests were destroying themselves, with considerable assistance from Antipater and his son Herod, the Pharisees, successors of the early “pious ones,” the Chassidim, had turned away from material considerations and moved closer in their own way to God. The Pharisees saw much of Israel’s troubles as a punishment for the sins of its leaders and those who followed them; the only approach to God and eternal life, they felt, was through close attendance to the laws of God. Logically then, a man became increasingly righteous to the extent that he knew and obeyed the Law.

  Laws, even those of God, required interpretation, however, and so there grew up a large group of pious men within the Pharisees called scribes whose concern for the details of the Law of Moses and for seeing that it was obeyed, steadily narrowed their concept of the eternal wisdom and understanding which characterized the God of Abraham and of Moses. Despondent over the human frailties of the Hasmoneans which had kept them from bringing about in Israel anything resembling the kingdom of God on earth for which pious Jews longed, the Pharisees and scribes turned more and more to the hope of a Messiah.

  The Sadducees, on the other hand, numbering many of the noblest families in Israel and often highly placed in the priestly hierarchy, had regarded the collapse of the Hasmoneans and the final subjection of the nation under Rome as a purely political outcome of the world events taking place around them. Liberal in their approach to God and utterly realistic, they often played lackey to Rome for the obvious material benefits such a policy brought. In addition, they denied the resurrection of the body upon which the Pharisees based their hope of taking part in the glorious kingdom of God on earth that they confidently expected one day to take place.

  Between these two points of view were the great mass of the people, the am ha-arets, who obeyed the Law when they could and who were the butt of contempt from the Pharisees when they did not. They admired and envied the splendor and the high places of the priests and other Sadducees. They listened with awe to the learned debates between various groups of Pharisees and scribes as these indulged in endless hairsplitting on technical points of the Law. Meanwhile they went their way, living each according to his own concept of his purpose and duty in life.

  In Judea after the banishment of Archelaus, the rule of the procurators was not a heavy burden and most of the actual political control of the country was vested in the Sanhedrin. Composed of seventy members—sometimes more, sometimes less—it was largely a gathering of nobles and therefore controlled by the Sadducees, although containing a substantial representation from among the Pharisees and some artisans. Limited only by the necessity to gain the approval of the Roman governor for the sentence of death, the Sanhedrin was supreme in the administration of justice, whether religious or temporal. Actually there was no difference, for the Law of Moses was the law of the land and no other was needed or desired.

  Being Roman and alien, the procurators made mistakes. The fifth in the series, Pontius Pilate, almost precipitated a rebellion when he brought the imperial standards of Rome into Jerusalem where no graven image could enter. He had withdrawn that order only when thousands of Jews plodded over the mountain roads to Caesarea and bared their necks to the sword in protest. Pilate’s action somewhat later in using temple money to build a great aqueduct into Jerusalem created another stir, but the abundance of good water was tangible evidence of its benefit to the people in general, and the priests were known to be rich, so their protests were largely disregarded.

  Thus there grew up in Judea the sort of complacency that comes with peace and prosperity. The Pharisees concerned themselves with the Law of Moses and the promise of the Messiah in the Psalms and other prophetic writings. The Sadducees administered the temple functions and grew rich. The common people groaned under the burden of taxes and hated the publicans, or tax gatherers, to whom the task of collecting the various tributes was farmed out. Nobody in a position of authority looked with any degree of longing toward the old bloody, if sometimes glorious, days of the Hasmonean dynasty, and no one wished to bring down the wrath of Rome by allowing anything to occur that might appear to be a rebellion. Thus Sadducees and Pharisees alike sought to prevent any disturbance among the vast crowds which thronged the Holy City for the daily sacrifices and the religious festivals.

  In Galilee things were somewhat different. Dwelling in villages and smaller cities, the Galileans were a strong and turbulent people having for the most part only a few generations of identification as Jews behind them. While Judea had been freed from the rule of the hated Herods, Galilee had not, and soon a group of men came into being who hated both Rome and Herod, and were already beginning to call themselves Zealots.

  The Zealots believed the expected kingdom of God in Israel could be established only by the sword. During Jesus’ boyhood, they went to war behind one Judas, the Gaulonite, confident that God would give their tiny forces victory as He had given it to Judas Maccabaeus centuries before. Long experienced in such affairs, however, Rome had moved rapidly. The revolt was put down and hundreds of Galileans were crucified. Since then the activities of the Zealots had been sporadic, but the threat of an outbreak was always present and both Herod in Galilee and Pontius Pilate in Judea watched carefully for any sign of recurring strength among this faction.

  One large group of pious men in Israel chose to retire from the world and live strictly within the original statements of the Law given to Moses, making no concession to any interpretations or adaptations to present situations. These were the Essenes, a band of ascetics whose interpretation and concepts of the Torah grew narrower while they preached that if the rest of Israel did not follow their ways, it was doomed to destruction.

  Although small groups of Essenes were to be found throughout Israel, the greatest center for them was in the desert wilderness along the northwest shore of the Sea of Judgment where they had first dwelt m caves. Far enough removed from the priestly centers of Jerusalem and Jericho to afford them the feeling of withdrawal they so fervently desired, the thriving community was at the same time near enough for the voices of Essenes to be heard often in the Holy City and their teachings to be listened to by the crowds that thronged there.

  Deeply committed to the essence of the Torah, these intensely dedicated men regarded themselves as having inherited the promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets of a great kingdom one day to be re-established on earth. To the pious Essene, man was in the midst of a constant struggle between good and evil, represented as Light and Darkness. Since the final days of the struggle, with the triumph of Light and the coming of the true kingdom of God on earth, was almost momentarily expected, their activities were accompanied by a deep sense of urgency and intensity of feeling.

  In organization, an Essene community was very strict. A probationary period of two years was required of anyone wishing to become a member. During this time the applicant devoted himself to study, meditation, and the strictest of ascetic living. At the end of the period, if he were accepted, he turned all his property into the common fund and became a member of a group of ten, led by a priest. A council of twelve, with three priests among them, governed each Essene community, of which that
on the shores of the Sea of Judgment was by far the largest unit. One among the group, descendant in authority from a martyred “Teacher of Righteousness” who had founded the order nearly two hundred years before, served as the leader.

  The Essenes observed a ritual communal meal representing the great banquet of the righteous when at last God’s task for men on earth was finished and His kingdom came in all its final glory. They were cleanly in their habit and used baptism with water as a sign that those baptized repented of their sins and sought ever afterwards to live according to the Law.

  Like the Pharisees, the Essenes looked to the day when a new leader, perhaps a new “Teacher of Righteousness” like the martyred founder of their own order, would appear to usher in the kingdom of God on earth. Moses, they taught, had predicted this very thing when he said: “The Lord said to me, ‘I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brothers, and will put My words in His mouth, and He will speak to them all that I command Him.’”

  For men to receive, understand, and obey the Torah, the Essenes believed they must receive a certain enlightenment. This state of enlightenment members of the various communities sought for themselves through meditation, study, withdrawal from the world, and self-denial. In this way they hoped to move upon higher planes of understanding and experience, secure in the knowledge that there was hope for even ordinary human beings to enjoy a communion with the Divine.

  II

  To the community of the Essenes near the Sea of Judgment came the youth named John, son of the priest Zacharias and Elisabeth who was the kinswoman of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Shortly after his thirteenth year, when he became a “Son of the Commandment” and took on the status of a young man, John had withdrawn into the desert and the community of the Essenes. There, while living the simple life of the community and denying himself the pleasures of ordinary men in order to make himself pure, he had studied the Law and the promises of God’s kingdom to be brought about on earth.

  Zacharias had told John about the strange circumstances surrounding both his birth and that of Jesus. In his quavering voice the old priest had described how he had been struck dumb when the angel of the Lord had revealed to him that Elisabeth, though well past the age of childbearing, would give him a son who would “be called the prophet of the Highest.”

  John had pondered upon these words while he went about the quiet life of the Essene community and sought the enlightenment which would prepare him for the coming kingdom of God. The intense, dedicated youth, convinced as he grew older that he had been singled out for a great purpose, became a fiery man whose spirit could not long be contained by the rigid rules and the intense preoccupation with the Torah characterizing the life of the Essenes. As time passed, John became more and more convinced that his mission was not, as the brethren of the Essene community held, to achieve his own salvation, but to bring to all men a warning of the impending coming of God’s kingdom on earth and the necessity to repent of their sins in preparation for it.

  Soon word began to spread that a prophet was teaching in the wilderness country at the northern end of the Sea of Judgment. A region of steep hills and black basalt boulders and caves, and of robbers who preyed on travelers, the region around what was called the “Fords of the Jordan” east of Jericho was admirably suited for the appearance of a prophet. Gaunt and fiery-eyed, John was like one of the volcanoes which had rumbled beneath this very area long ago; his turbulent spirit resembled the fires of God which had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah when the whole vast rift in which the Sea of Judgment lay had rumbled and exploded as if in agony.

  One of the most frequently traveled roads between Jerusalem and Galilee ran through this region. Near where it crossed the river, at a place called Bethabara, John began to preach from a natural pulpit among the rocks overlooking a grove of sycamores that sheltered his listeners from the burning sun of midday pouring down upon John’s own unprotected head. Although still practicing the asceticism of the nearby Essene community where he had lived, John had put aside the white garments an Essene usually wore and, like Elijah of old, wrapped his body in a roughly-woven robe of camel hair with a leather girdle about his waist. Lodging in the villages when he did not sleep beneath the open sky, he ate the food of the poor, often locusts and wild honey.

  Locusts were much liked by the villagers. Sometimes the insects, which swarmed everywhere, were simply roasted in an oven and eaten with salt. But often they were prepared more elaborately by first drying them in the sun, then grinding them into a slightly bitter powder which was mixed with honey and a little flour to make a highly prized cake.

  As word of John’s fiery preaching in the wilderness began to spread, more and more people stopped on the way to and from Jerusalem to hear him. There had not been a real prophet in Israel for hundreds of years, and word spread quickly concerning the angel who had appeared to his father at the very altar of the temple, announcing John as a prophet of God in the tradition of Elijah.

  And John did not fail to live up to that tradition. From his rocky pulpit, he preached to ever larger crowds of people, thundering at them the necessity to repent and be forgiven of their sins through the symbolic Essene rite of baptism before it was too late. Nicknamed “the Baptist,” John’s desperate urgency communicated itself to those who heard him and soon many began to say that he was indeed the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low. The crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth. The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.’”

  Even the area where John preached seemed to fit in with the prophecy, for it was easy to see in the tumbled basalt boulders and the sulfurous fumes seeping through crevices in the rocks that God had indeed once filled valleys and brought mountains and hills low in this very region when He had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, at the southern end of the Dead Sea, because of their excessive sinfulness. This same sinfulness, John preached, would lead God to destroy the people once again unless they listened and repented.

  Unable to comply fully with the complexities of the Law, the common people were always conscious of their sin. Even if they had not been, the Pharisees would not have left them unreminded of it, so John’s thunderings concerning the imminent end of the present era and the coming of God’s kingdom under an Anointed Messiah struck fear and trembling into nearly every heart. By thousands they came and camped along the banks of the Jordan and the several brooks that ran into it here. Campfires dotted the valley and extended into the hillsides, many of the campers sleeping in the caves that pocked the rocky slopes.

  The Essene community nearby gave help to those who became ill or were too poor to buy their own food, but its resources were soon considerably overtaxed. Merchants from nearby Jericho and farther up the Jordan Valley brought food and supplies on mule trains to be sold at the usual high profit under such circumstances. The caravansary nearby, open to travelers as a shelter, was always filled to overflowing.

  Every day after he preached, John led a procession of the repentant down into the shallows at the fords of the Jordan to be baptized in the Essene manner, but it was in the pulpit that he really became the prophet the people were already acclaiming him to be.

  “Brood of vipers!” he flayed the religious leaders who came to listen. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” He went on to warn that no mere lip service would suffice to save them. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’” he shouted, referring to the tendency of Israelites to believe that as sons of Abraham they were favored of God and their sins would therefore be more easily forgiven. “For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones,” he warned. “And even now the axe is laid to the root of
the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

  With the odor of brimstone, which the ignorant people firmly believed came from the very fires of hell, still rising from crevices in the volcanic terrain nearby, this pertinent reminder had an immediate effect upon his listeners. Falling on the ground before him, repentant sinners cried, in an agony of fear and conviction of their own unworthiness, “What shall we do then?”

  “He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none,” John answered. “And he who has food, let him do likewise.” It was the simplest of God’s commandments and, because of human greed, the one most frequently ignored.

  “Teacher, what shall we do?” a tax gatherer asked.

  “Collect no more than what is appointed for you,” John advised sternly, referring to the publicans’ habit of demanding from people greater taxes than they were legally required to pay—and pocketing the overage.

  “What of me?” a soldier inquired. To him John said, “Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages.’’

  John’s teachings contained nothing that was really new; every Jew was required by the Law to practice these very things which John was advising. But when coupled with his dramatic appearance as a prophet who spoke the word of God directly to them, and his dire warnings that God’s kingdom was soon to come and that those not worthy would be destroyed like the tree cast into the fire, they had a powerful effect upon his listeners.