Reporting Jesus
Excerpt from the opening chapter
A young Jerusalem reporter is assigned to investigate a dangerous preacher.
***
Oy, Israel, my Israel, you have known better times.
I am a son of Israel, one of his myriads, and it fell to me, after I learned to read the Scriptures, at age 12, that I should not become a learned one but that I might apply my natural tendencies to listen to the gossip of women at the well and of men at the gates (or pissing on the wall) and to report it to others who were not there of what the talkers talked.
Thus my abilities lead me to travel through the land as a visitor wherever I go, without a home except for the village where I was born and where, Yahwah willing, I shall go to die.
Funny. I reused that classic cliche to invoke God's Will, an instrument about which those in my profession have some doubt.
For we - I especially - have a special insight into the minds and hearts of those who profess to serve Yawheh, and seldom do I perceive any divine purpose there.
As a consequence of my pursuits these 4 or so years, I am a cynic. Not a Gentile, or Greek, but a home-grown cynic. I say this, though seldom openly: that if there is a God (and who am I to say there is not?) except for tradition and the sayings of our fathers, what has God, praise His name, done for us recently?
What true gifts or deeds can we point to like those who came out of Egypt and say, God is with us? For we have been overrun and insulted again and again and those who say we can boot the invaders out of our land have not seen, as I have, the power of Rome spread out across the world.
The human spirit - to say nothing of the Israelite, who is if anything extra-human in his spirit - rebels against such total power and can work seeming miracles. Witness the old woman, 100 years old if she was a day, who without help, drove away the soldiers who were slaying first-born males and protected her great-grandson.
The soldiers were just doing their job, of course; I interviewed their section leader shortly after I heard about the incident. He laughed. "One Jew more or less," he told me, "is not going to topple Herod." He and his squad could of course, have leveled the village. Truth was, they didn't care. Who could care about protecting King Herod's crown when he is a make-believe ruler anyway, a puppet of Mighty Caesar?
But Herod's fear sprang out of the Jewish faith, that the Messiah would come when events were so bad that they couldn't get any worse. The Messiah to free Jerusalem, to drive the invaders from the land, to make them serve instead of oversee the Jews. Like King David, who slew the giant Goliath, a philistine who desired to make us slaves.
This faith is so strong that it makes mothers believe they are going to give birth to the Messiah. As a 20-year-old reporter on The Jerusalem Times, I get constant reports, at least one a week, about some mother here or there, claiming that God is sending the Messiah through her womb. They all quote Moses: "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken." and the old farts stand up in the marketplace and quote Isaiah: "Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child." and ""Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children." and "Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God." and "Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her;" and so on without end or happening.
So do they mesmerize the virgins and make them hot to be the blessed virgin who brings forth the Sacred Child, the new Prophet who will gather the scattered faiths of his countrymen, make them stop worshiping the idols of rocks and trees, and generally behaving like fools, and lash these conquerors out of the holy land.
If the Romans can by propaganda make their women give birth to strong soldiers and men like Caesar, then surely our form of propaganda can bring us a Messiah? So I reasoned.
I used to cover a lot of weddings and births and circumcisions and at each, the old men and women and the young children too would be moaning and prophesying. And I'd report every moan and prophecy: "This week, in the village of Wherever, at the marriage of John son of So-and-So, and Mary, daughter of So-and-So, the bride revealed that she will soon give birth to a male child promised her by Y-W-H..."
It's a weird world, living in an occupied land. The Roman soldiers count the days till they can leave; they don't like staying here any more than we like having them here, but as they explain to me, it's their god-given duty to civilize us. They count us as one with the heathen! And of course our priests call the gentiles heathen and say they have no knowledge of the One God.
So I found it hard to take seriously Herod's fear. He never was a Solomon, and though he liked to party, he respected wisdom.
WISE MEN ARRIVE FROM EAST HEROD EXTENDS WELCOME to Jerusalem: Five "wise" men and a sizable entourage entered the East gate Wednesday morning and caused quite a stir in the Old Quarter. Hearing of their arrival, King Herod invited them to the Elias Court.
They stood before him and he asked, “Why have you come?” and they replied, “We seek to honor he that is born King of the Jews.“
"I beg your pardon?" Herod said, adjusting his crown.
"We saw his star in the East, and have come here to worship him. We assume he would be born here in Jerusalem, at the seat of David and near the Temple. Is he your son?"
Herod called in his wives and asked if anybody had a baby recently but none had. Although rumor has it that there were some tiny arks being made of bulrushes flowing in the Jordan. Anyway, none of them could qualify as a virgin...
It bothered Herod that he couldn't answer the wise men, and when Herod got troubled, all Jerusalem did, for, inept though he was, he could make heads roll. He called on the priests and the scribes and asked, "Where do the prophets say the Messiah shall be born?"
The priests and we scribes searched the scriptures and found just one verse that seemed relevant: "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel."
So they told Herod, "The Christ shall be born in Bethlehem."
"Ah," said Herod, "then you aren't a bunch of dunderheads."
"But," they said, "He shall be called a Nazarene."
Herod frowned. "What does that mean?"
The priests shrugged. "Perhaps there will be a city named Bethlehem in Nazareth?"
Herod dismissed the priests and called in the wise men, who had been wandering around the city patting babies on the head.
Herod said, "Behold, I have good news for you. You remember our good King David?"
The wise men nodded. A respected name from our past, who could forget David?
Herod said, "Well, the Messiah is a descendent of David."
The wise men nodded. Made sense to them.
Herod said, "However, our scriptures don't tell us exactly when the Messiah will be born, and some of my guys say it hasn't happened yet."
"Oh, but it has. We first saw the star over a year ago. We waited for news, but none came, so we decided to come here and see him for ourselves. This could make a big difference, you know, in our international relations."
Herod said, "Go now, and come again tomorrow, and I'll tell you where the baby is."
They went and then Herod called in his priests again, and my informants told me that he was boiling. "They saw a star. Why didn't you guys tell me about a special star?"
The priests said, "Well, the astrologers yapped about a bright star, but we couldn't find any scriptural reason for it."
Herod fumed: "These foreigners know more about us than we do about ourselves. No wonder the gentiles tell us how to get up in the morning and go to bed at night!"
I reported all this at the time; it didn't seem like major news, just more stuff going on in the court. Everyone knew the big decisions didn't get made in Herod's court, so my reports were usually not front page items.HEROD BIDS WISE MEN SEEK & FIND "MESSIAH"
Jerusalem: The five "wise" men from the East were given a sacred mission by King Herod this week. From the throne, he pointed and told them: "Go to Bethlehem, which is David's hometown, and there you will find the newborn Messiah."
"The new King!" said one of the wise men.
"The Messiah," said Herod.
He further requested that after they located the Messiah, or Christ, they return to Jerusalem and share the good news with the priests and of course the king.
"I too wish to worship the Messiah and bow at his feet," said King Herod.
Proving that they really are wise, the five visitors without hesitation said they would do this small favor for King Herod, and departed, bearing gifts of frankincense and myrrh, which were purchased from local merchants, who advertise in the Times.
And were forgotten. A month went by and one day Herod said, "What news from those Eastern wise guys?"
A courtier with military connections said that a garrison had reported that a small caravan with those men had left from the country just north of Jerusalem a few weeks before.
Herod said, "Nobody tells me anything!"
"Nobody thought it was important; people come and go through here all the time."
"But I told them to come back and tell me the location of the Messiah!" Herod stroked his beard. "What does this mean?"
"Probably, your majesty, they realized they made a mistake and went off elsewhere, following their star."
Herod nodded and smiled, "And they were too ashamed, after having made a big fuss, to come back here and admit their mistake to me!"
That made him happy for a day But at a dinner of Church and State, Herod was next to the Chief Priest and suddenly asked, "But what about the prophecy? Has that come true?"
"In God's own time," the priest replied.
"But the star; our astrologers saw it too."
"It could mean anything."
I could see Herod stewing. Next morning I saw a company of soldiers run out the gate.
"Whither goest they?" I asked an old sergeant.
"Herod sent them to Bethlehem with orders to kill all male infants two years or younger," he said with a scowl.
I put two and two together and realized that Herod may be a fool but that made him feel threatened all the more and determined to protect his throne. So he thought he could kill the Messiah, God's Chosen One! Only because the Jews had already killed a lot of prophets, why not kill one more, until God sends one that we can't kill, then we'll know he's really the Messiah? That's the way the priests supported Herod's move.
They killed the babies. Herod thought the threat was over.
But he didn't watch behind him, for death snuck up and claimed him one night. We all had to wail and moan for a week until his son claimed the throne -- with the Romans' permission. But the editorial in my paper made it sound as if God appointed the kid."I SHALL RULE AS IF I WERE MY FATHER," SAYS HEROD II
With his anointment today, Herod II replaced his father on the throne of Israel, a holy chair whose inhabitants kneel only to God. It was God Who, at the Prophet Elijah's request, named Saul as the first king and it is God who maintains the line of kings...
And then we got to be happy again and have parties. I covered a lot of parties at which I saw Pharisees and other high-and-mighty types. Doing what's politically best. At this point in time. Made me so mad I got drunk too often and had to get out of Jerusalem, so I asked for an assignment out of town.
From the novel Reporting Jesus