Chapter 1: From Jesus' Beloved Disciple, John

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book I: Early Years
Part One–Child
                 

The elder, John, one of Jesus' twelve disciples, to David whom I love in truth.

Beloved friend, I am glad to hear more of your new turn to faith. I know that your soul is in the right place. The friends of Jesus Christ who have seen you in Rome have commented, after returning, that you carry your faith well both as a man and as a soldier of Rome, hard as the latter may be.

As you know, there are many among the friends who wish you were not a soldier. This is why some of them fail in their trust in you, for they say, “How can a good man come out of Rome?” But I know for a fact that your faith is like a brilliant young star shining in the midst of a dark night, even in your Roman company of soldiers. This is how it appeared to me when you were still stationed here at Ephesus.

Therefore your doubts are a great blow to my heart, even though ultimately my confidence in you is undimmed. I imagine your doubts occur because of the doubts of so many others around you. I do not wish to merely scoff at these doubts of yours, and then cast them away as if they were dirty bathwater to be thrown outside, leaving the clean man behind. That won’t work. Faith alone is insufficient. Doubts should be answered. Are we to believe, without question or criticism, in a man and a God–Jesus Christ–whom most of us have never even seen? Witnesses should be heard.

I am a witness. I walked with him. It is for this reason, more than any other, that my writings and my letters to the young churches are taken seriously. I am no more blessed or made holy than many other of the good people among the friends. My writings are no more inspired than, for example, Paul’s who wrote and traveled so much for the sake of spreading the faith, and yet never saw Jesus in the flesh!

But because I walked with our beloved Jesus Christ for two years and more, I can better describe than most people what, exactly, he was like as a man. It is these doubts–about Jesus as a living man and teacher–on which most of your questions seem to center.

I am glad you have written to me to ask me to help you clear them up. I wish to answer each question as accurately as I can.

I know, as you suggest, that no one has written an adequate description of what Jesus looked like. This probably is so because, until recently, so many of those who saw him were still alive! But it is almost seventy years since he died and was resurrected, and most of us who walked with him in the flesh are gone.

Therefore I offer you this description. He was tall, as you have guessed. His body was rugged and well-proportioned, not particularly wide in the torso but thick at the wrist and ankle so you knew he was an especially strong man. His hands gave him away. They were large and beautiful.

Some people say he was the most handsome man alive. But they saw him only in the days of his greatest power and personal force when he was able to heal the sick and even raise the dead. (Yes, David, he actually did this. I will explain it thoroughly as this letter progresses.) At the peak of his power, he stood tall and beautiful, gently lifting his handsome sun-browned speaker’s arms in graceful movements and occasionally stroking his sun-flecked beard.

As you know, his hair was both red and long. Besides the beard and the generous sun-bleached hair on his arms, his head hair was long and curly. It was golden brown or, perhaps, a honey red–it was reddish in hue but, with the sun on it, it actually glowed as if it were a sun fire by itself. It descended straight and clean from the top of his head to his ears, where it became curly. In increasing curliness it continued past the back of his fair neck and stopped at the lowest point of his shoulders.

As you can perhaps tell from my descriptions, I loved him very much. Yet my love for him was manly, not as a woman for her husband or a maiden for her betrothed. It was rather as a younger brother for his older, and as a friend. He treated me often as a younger brother and a friend with much affection and clasping of my shoulders with his powerful arms. In this I was not alone. Many felt the power and security of his physical touch. With me, he was perhaps more protective (because of my youth and inexperience at the time), hence his name for me by I am known–“the beloved.”

There was also the other side of his looks–the ugly side–which the few of us who risked our lives to be at the crucifixion saw. It lasted only a few hours, but during it he looked even worse than he often did after spending too many hours healing people or speaking endlessly to them, thus wearing himself down.

During the crucifixion, though he never lost the sweetness nor the intense strength of character that were natural to him, he was very frail. His skin, in spite of his sun-browned and reddish complexion, was a pale, fishy grey. He had lost a great deal of weight from the whippings, forced fasting, and sweating while he was in the power of the authorities. This loss of weight made his grey skin sag, as if it had become a loose fleshy sack clinging to the outlined muscles and bones underneath.

On the cross, his face and neck were bloody and dirt-caked, and his body had large blackish-blue bruises on it in several places. It is as well, perhaps, that many of the twelve and other friends kept away for fear of their lives, because Jesus the Christ truly looked like what the authorities claimed he was–a wretched, skinny pretender and weakling who had no command over himself, let alone over the Kingdom of God that he said was his own. Even his eyes were glazed by a white film, probably from the pain, the heat, and the total exhaustion to which he was subjected. He looked more helpless than the most pitiful beggar he had ever helped.

It was in this way that he died. Just before he actually left his damaged body, he did revive somewhat. His eyes cleared, his skin took back a little of his healthy color, and his body straightened. Some of us who were gathered below him thought this was finally the time when he would revive himself totally and leap off the cross, completely healed and powerful. We had seen him do as much before, especially after the times he had accidentally been cut or bruised by the rocks that were always under our feet as we walked everywhere.

Yet he didn’t revive totally. He spoke to me, and then to God, and he cried out. Then he died, becoming even more a lump of pale-grey clay that not even the body snatchers, with their poisonous recipes made from the remains of corpses, would want to steal for their evil uses.

Later, on the road to Emmaus and at the other places where we saw him in his resurrected body, he looked like many men. That is, his physical appearance altered from visit to visit. It did usually keep some similarity to the old body–for it really was the old body made new. But the power of making a new body and maintaining it also changed this body’s appearance from time to time. I know you have many questions about this, David, and about the time Jesus also spent in the tomb before leaving it. I will answer them all at a later time, in proper sequence, when I am through describing the events of his life before then. You have so many questions!

Before I can go on to adequately describe the years of Jesus’ life as you have asked, I feel I should answer your questions about me, first.

Yes, the pain is still with me always. As you know, the Romans tried to kill me by boiling me in oil. I thank the Christ that I am not only alive but still able to use my limbs. But of course the boiling shrank and dried out my skin, leaving it stretched too tight and too dry over my old muscles and bones. Whenever I move, my skin hurts. Even breathing is a pain when I do not breathe shallowly.

As to your other questions, more and more people are visiting me here at my villa. Though the Romans still keep a guard on me and confine me to Ephesus, I am free to go between home and places in the town. But it is easier to stay home. The townspeople, especially the rich Greeks, are shocked at the way I look from the beatings I received. I am profoundly ugly and disfigured, as you so diplomatically point out, and I am thankful for your concern. But my disfigurement does not keep the friends and other learned men from visiting me. As usual I pray with those who need it, talk a little about Jesus, and give funds to the poor.

On that point, the funds, you need not offer assistance. I still have much more than you, so you should give what money is yours to the poor among the friends in Rome. You do not know the source of my funds. My father was a rich man. He ran a large fishing business. I and my brother James, who was also a close follower of Jesus, inherited the business when he died. It has grown and brings in more money than ever each year, so my funds, as you see, are practically unending.

I also would like to ask some questions of you. Are you able to withstand better, now, the merciless jibes of the other soldiers who think you have become a Jew? You must make them understand that the Christian faith is not a Hebrew cult as most of them believe. Though certainly our Hebrew roots are important, they do not make us stay just among Hebrews. Christians are–universal. Already many other peoples have joined the friends, even Greeks and Romans. Therefore rather than let your fellow soldiers scoff at your “Jewish” religion, try to teach them about Jesus. Though of course death on a cross is not likely to seem heroic to Roman soldiers because it is the way of executing common criminals, still there is a surprising resemblance between Jesus and the Roman soldiers’ own warrior-god Mithras. This is especially true since Mithras, like Jesus, was also said to have been resurrected from the dead. With such kind and reasonable words in your mouth, and with your stern, soldierly face beside your long shield and your strong body in its chain links of armor, how could they ever doubt that you are not the perfect soldier?

As for your activities with women, what can I ask? I am afraid to inquire if you have yet found one woman with whom you can settle down. Your answer might be, “No, I am still going with whatever woman suits my fancy.” I hope you aren’t.

It is not that we are feeble, impotent old men concerning this issue of what a man and a woman do together. I’m afraid, to many of you younger friends, our brother in Christ the beloved Paul has made it sound as if all Christians must abstain from each other. Paul, as the apostle Peter pointed out, must speak with the wisdom that has been given to him. But however he speaks, he does not forbid sexual love. The general belief among us who were the closest followers of Jesus is that sexual love is good. Jesus taught that. He did also point out to us that not being committed to one woman alone can often lead to great disruptions of the spiritual life. This, several of us followers learned from our own experiences, is very true. It is simply that we would rather people be most connected to their own selves, to another self close to them, and to God, rather than be connected instead by lust to several dozen women or men, whether of the opposite sex or of the same sex as many Romans do. It is a matter of inner connections between souls, and wasting our inner energy.

If I cannot encourage you to change your ways immediately, I hope you will at least gradually draw in our energies and not spend them so freely. Perhaps, may I ask this?, you could start searching for that one woman you need, possibly among the friends there in Rome? But if you absolutely find you must choose a nonbeliever because, as that Greek playwright Aeschylus wrote, she is such “ripe tender fruit,” then go ahead. Only please be sure she will not take your own energies and spend them freely elsewhere with other men, thus draining both herself and you at once.

I have one other question, David. When are you returning to Ephesus? I ask this because, though I am in good health except for the pain, I have seen the day of my own death and it is soon. Do not distress yourself. By the world’s time it is at least several years off. It will take place in the spring, according to the vision given me, sometime before the initiation into manhood that my great-grandnephew Roaz, by my grandniece Sarah, shall still have in the Jewish custom. I would like to see you before I go.

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Since I am soon to die, David, may I take your questions as an opportunity to write my last comments about our Jesus? My scribe, who also is named John, is ready to write down whatever I dictate to him, even day and night if I desire it. Your questions provide a fine opportunity to do what I have wanted to do since my scribe and I finished writing the Revelation Jesus gave me years ago. I have already written some of my comments in my letters to the churches and in the short history, similar to those written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which I dictated.

But now I would like to describe parts of Jesus the Christ’s life which those of us among the twelve have not written about. Though all the young churches now have many letters and documents describing Jesus’ life, from those of us who were with him, still there are parts that all of us have left out. We have trusted too much to word of mouth. We thought Jesus might be returning immediately, or soon after his death, to establish the kingdom of God on earth. We misunderstood him. The time is not yet. Meanwhile, almost every one of those who walked with him in person are dead. The words they wrote become ever more distorted as they are passed through the mouths of the proceeding generations, and through different translations into other languages by men who don’t understand them

I wish to help write down certain truths that already are being forgotten, and certain of Jesus’ actions that show him to be both more human, and more the Christ, than many of the younger friends allow. Your questions are ideally suited for this purpose.

You might ask why I don’t just give my lengthy notes and diaries to the Church before I die. I would, David. I have several large boxes of these notes, both in Egyptian papyrus and fine leather parchment, which I started writing soon after Jesus left us. But the Romans have insisted on keeping a guard over them. Though the present Roman proconsul of the provice here is fascinated with my scholarly learning and allows me to study my own notes, I am not allowed to remove them from the room of my villa in which they are kept. I am told that Trajan, Emperor of Rome, has been informed of these notes and has ruled that they are too dangerous. They will, I must tell you in great sadness, be destroyed when I die.

Strangely enough, the Romans will allow me to send any form or manner of letters to my friends, no matter how long. That is how a government of too many laws and lawmakers, such as the Romans have, works. My letters are just as “dangerous” as, perhaps more so than, my diaries. In a letter I can bend all my powers of honest persuasion to suit my hearers’ ears, but a diary is just written to oneself. Now, David, it is your ear which I wish to suit, and the ears of the generations that follow us.

You now know my most important reason for wishing to write long answers to your questions. I wish to transcribe much of what is in my notes, into my letters to you. I trust you will have the patience for this. If it pleases our Lord and you agree, I would like you to hand my letters, when you are finished with them, to the head of our church in Rome. I will not name him here because he is yet little heard of and often keeps his faith a secret because of the persecutions. It is dangerous enough, though I know you love such danger, to send you such letters as this. No one, in the early days, expected Christians to become objects of such hatred and repression.

However, seeing that you are a Roman citizen, it is unlikely my letters to you will be opened. In this way perhaps the church as a whole will be able to preserve my words. In the mouth of the eagle, Rome, my letters will probably be the safest because they will least be expected to reside there. Have the friends make copies, and all may eventually see them.

Now, David, my beloved friend and future keeper of my words, I wish to begin answering your long list of questions. Let me proceed in my own way, and you shall learn ten times what you ask.

Your first question, as I wish to answer it, is about Jesus’ birth. I will tell as much of it as I can.

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Most recent revision of text: 13 Oct. 2020.