Chapter 16: Healing in Persia

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book I: Early Years
Part Three–Adventurer
                                      

Jesus did not plan on staying long in Persia. He wished to also visit Babylon and Assyria on his homeward journey. He planned on leaving the caravan with which he was traveling at Persepolis. Several months later he could ride with another caravan to Babylon and beyond.

As the long, winding caravan crossed the plain of Merdusht, the great city of Persepolis appeared suddenly as a shimmering vision of many white buildings interspersed with large grey-stone halls, palaces, and temples.

About the time of Buddha, Persepolis had been the capital of an empire reaching from Greece in the west to India in the far east.

A mountain range hesitated right behind the city. The high peaks were hovering over the stark white splendor of the metropolis, unable to decide whether they should crush it or retreat.

Jesus’ white elephant bellowed a great and echoing blast that rang off the distant mountain walls as they approached. As a result, many hundreds of tall, dark people were gathered at the high-arched gates of the city to greet the white wonder, and the red-haired man on top of it who rode bareheaded.

Jesus was welcomed happily at the main temple, a great grey-brick building with tall columns and huge, arched doorways. He walked past tall relief carvings set into the gold-stuccoed walls, and over beautiful pictures made from brightly colored and glazed tiles set in the floors in the great hall where he was received. He was a well-known person to the Persian priests. Three of them, after all, had been among the magi who visited him at his birth. They were anxious to see the grown man who, they expected, would save the world from its foolishness and its false gods.

After the first day of glad welcoming, feasting, and gift-giving, Jesus was introduced to a tall, thin man in dark robes named Junner. Junner, a Magian priest who had not seen Jesus until this visit, was to be Jesus’ teacher during the coming months. The two men sat down to a lunch of goat-milk curds and coarse barley bread. The priests of Persia, though rich from gaining some of the great wealth of their legendary King Croesus many centuries before, lived simple lives.

Jesus and Junner exchanged information about events of the west in the Roman Empire and Israel, and about the Parthian Empire of which Persia was now a part. Junner also asked Jesus about India and listened pleasantly to Jesus’ brief account of his travels there.

Then Jesus thought of the studying he already had started earlier that morning in his large, white-stucco guest room. He had asked for, and opened, the ancient books written by Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, as his Persian descendants called him. The books were the Persian holy writings. Jesus had studied them before, but never carefully. He was resolved to learn them thoroughly while in Persepolis.

He turned to his new teacher and paused. “Who is your god?” he asked the tall priest.

Junner frowned. His long, hooked nose wrinkled. “You know who our God is, Jesus. It is the same as your Hebrew God of the prophets.”

“But that is the point,” Jesus said. “Your God seems so much further away from humans than ours. Yours is at the other end of the universe. Ours at least comes down to mountaintops, such he did when the children of Israel received Moses’ laws.”

Junner shook his head. His lean, desert-hardened face bore a net of fine wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and on his forehead. He was a man who both frowned and smiled at the same time, spreading his mouth and wrinkling his forehead as he did so. He smiled and frowned at Jesus now, sweeping his rough, dry hands through the air. Motes of dust in the airy room danced through the desert sunlight.

“you know,” he said, “that the God our two countries have in common is the God of the mysteries, the God of everywhere–Egypt, early Greece, India–who started the world and the stars long before humans were alive.”

Jesus nodded. “The God who is Knowing,” he told Junner. “He knows everything because he is everything.”

“And the God who divided,” Junner said, continuing for him. “The God who divided into male and female, earth and sky, angels good and fallen angels who became evil.”

“but who still remains the one God throughout all this,” Jesus added. From their lunch table, he picked up a side of baked mountain fowl, a very common bird in the mountains a few miles away. He nibbled at the soft meat and licked his fingers politely before going on.

“But Junner, our Hebrew God speaks with men and women and comes to the earth as fire and visions. The Greek God sends his angels to speak with human beings and even join in love with them. In India, men and women are encouraged to sense the presence of God as a Mother lying all around them in every animal, plant, and rock. Why do you in Persia make God so distant?”

Junner shrugged. “Our religion is more a moral one,” he explained. “We are concerned with doing good, first. Only second are we concerned with meeting angels or a Mother spirit, or any other form of God.”

“Shouldn’t we be concerned equally with knowing as well as doing?” Jesus asked.

Junner smiled and frowned. The dark skin of his forehead rippled. “Of course,” he said. “But how many men can teach both? Your own Pharisees know only your Laws. They teach morals–too many morals.”

Jesus nodded. Through the open window, he could see a small group of robed men and women climbing up a half-hidden trail at the nearby base of a foothill. Behind it the parent mountain stretched up and away out of sight.

“But your Essenes of which you are a part,” Junner continued, “they are mystics and visionaries. They are so busy knowing God that they have little time for doing good works.”

“Wisdom resides in people,” Jesus said. “People–most of them–are neither priests nor mystics. Yet they can sense truth.”

“People!” Junner exclaimed. He frowned. All trace of smiling was gone. “People know nothing, except hard work and quick pleasures!”

“You have been in your mountain retreats too long, Junner,” Jesus said. “Have you forgotten how people suffer? Suffering and unhappiness lead to wisdom and understanding.”

“Suffering is not the necessary way,” Junner said. He laid his hands flat on the stone table.

“It is the most common way,” Jesus replied.

“Suffering teaches nothing,” Junner said, “unless a person is shown what lies beyond it.”

“Then we will show them,” Jesus answered.

Junner laughed and leaned back on his dining couch. “You have been among the Buddhists too long,” he said. “‘The ceasing of pain.’ Isn’t that what Buddha taught?”

Jesus nodded. “But pain never really will cease, not until we are perfect, Junner.”

The tall, thin man’s eyes opened wide.

“Perfect!” he exclaimed. “We must leave our bodies behind and return to the Knowing God before we can get perfection!”

“No.” Jesus rubbed his chin. It was bristly. He had decided to let a beard grow before returning to Israel, so that when he got home, he would look like other Hebrew teachers. “We can become perfect on earth,” he told Junner.

Junner laughed again. “Sickness! Death! You can make these vanish?”

“Why not?” Jesus asked. He held out his hand. “Look.”

On Jesus’ hand was a small red welt that a goat fly had made by biting him. Goat flies sometimes carried a strange sickness that somehow made people grow sleepy and confused. Jesus stared at the small sore. After a minute the redness began to go. The welt was visibly throbbing from a blood vessel that lay, according to common medical books Jesus had studied in India, below it. In a few more minutes the welt went down and the little mouth of the wound closed, leaving nothing but a small white dot on a normally healthy hand. Kahjian had taught him this.

Junner leaned back. “Very impressive, Jesus of Israel,” he said. “But it is just a small trick you learned from those yogis. So what?”

Jesus’ face flushed. “No one, not even the yogis in India, seem to realize the possibilities of this!” he exclaimed. “If we can heal a wound, then why can’t we heal a whole body of death?”

“Death is too total,” Junner said. “Too different. But tell me. I am curious. How is such healing done?” He pointed at Jesus’ hand.

Jesus looked into Junner’s eyes. “It is a matter of how we concentrate. It took me months to learn this. I practice every day, concentrating with my whole self on different parts of my body. We must feel certain energies moving within us. Then we must find our true self, our part of God within us, and let that part within us control the energies in our body. Then we may make these energies stream to the part of us that needs healing.”

Junner raised his eyebrows. “You will teach me?”

Jesus laughed. “You just want become another yogi, is that it, Junner of Persia?”

Junner smiled and frowned at the same time. “I will take whatever knowledge I can get,” he said, “especially if it comes from you. I will teach you about herbs and other healing foods and substances in exchange.” He clapped his hands loudly in the air.

“I already know most of the herbal lore of the Roman Empire and of India,” Jesus said.

A young servant in priest’s robes quietly tiptoes in.

“The bag of herbs,” Junner told him. Silently the servant went out.

“Our herbs are different in many ways,” Junner told Jesus. “The founders of our religion, Zend and Zoroaster, were herbal masters themselves. Tradition hands down many of their remedies, from one generation to the next.”

The servant politely came back into the airy room and laid a cloth bag filled with odd-shaped bundles on a corner of the stone eating table. He bowed and left.

Junner handed the greyish-white bag to Jesus. Jesus looked inside, sniffed the varied medley of pungent and sweet and sour smells drifting up to him and smiled happily. Then he looked up at Junner.

“But you will also teach me your scriptures?” he asked the priest.

“Of course!” Junner exclaimed. “Why else did you come here?”

“To teach,” Jesus answered. “Always to teach, for I am practicing. Any scholarly learning, however, important, is secondary.”

“Become a healer, too,” Junner said. He pointed at the bag, and at Jesus- just-healed hand. His lips opened and he watched Jesus intensely.

Jesus looked at the bag and his hand in surprise; then he jerked his eyes to Junner’s. “A healer! But I am not a physician!”

“Yes you are,” Junner told him. “You are learning herbs and healing medicines. You are learning how to concentrate on your own body ills and to heal them. Such energies are not bound by the limits of our flesh. Learn to concentrate on other people’s bodies and heal them, too.”

“Maybe,” said Jesus. “I don’t see why I should worry about healing, though. I am a teacher.”

“If you want to end others’ sufferings,” Junner quietly pointed out, “and show them God, too, there is no better way to demonstrate these things than by healing.”

Jesus nodded slowly. “I will try it,” he said. “But if it doesn’t work, then you must forgive me if I stop it immediately.”

Junner smiled and frowned. A high, stray cloud briefly covered the sun outside, making the room shadowy. “It will work,” he told Jesus. “We will see, one way or another, that it does.”

Jesus stayed in Persepolis, itself, much of the time. He made a couple of quick tours of the country to the northeast, and the northwest, through the great mountain chain and the arid plains. But each time he soon returned to the shimmering white city held between two arms of mountains towering to the clouds above.

Jesus frequently taught in the city’s streets. Sometimes he taught in the great, dark-green marble ruins of the huge palace Alexander the Great destroyed three centuries earlier. He would sit between the towering broken pillars and call people to him.

At other times he taught in the markets. Here he saw the busy commerce of the city. Though Persepolis had its poor, the priests who controlled it had made sure for hundreds of years that few people actually went hungry or had no housing. Jesus watched the valley farmers from the surrounding mountain streams and lakes constantly traveling through the old paved streets, selling their hardy fruits, vegetables, barley, and rice midst the fresh the grain-and-vegetable smells. Jesus saw the city people give the farmers, in return, imported goods, salt from the shores of the Great Sea to the south, turquoise jewelry and finely made Persian rugs. The coin of exchange varied, Jesus quickly learned. Sometimes it consisted of silver and gold coins from the Roman Empire to the west. But more often money actually was gold and silver in various shapes, including rings and bracelets, with or without the weight stamped on the outside of the metal. Most often of all, at least among the poor, goods were bought and sold by straight barter.

Much of the marketing, Jesus discovered, went on at the great terrace of huge stone blocks, right at the foot of the mountain. The terrace was so high that he had to rise to it on two great double staircases of stone. The high terrace seemed to spread almost as far as his eyes could see. In the central area of it stood the ancient palaces of Darius the Great and of Xerxes, husband of the renowned Esther of the ancient Hebrew scriptures. Other enormous block buildings also stood there with their sweeping, graceful arches and marching stone columns. Great animals crouched here, too, huge stone monsters on top of columns holding up roofs, and a series of great bull-like beats three times as high as the average man. At night they were terrifying.

Jesus often taught in the market on the great terrace at first. But after a short time, he discovered many people went out in the countryside around Persepolis, too, especially in the summer. The cool breezes in the foothills and the wonderful distances visible from the mountain passes attracted people. He followed them to these places of rest and peace and taught them there.

One of his favorite places was a pool. It lay in a little grassy vale a short distance up a hilly mountain slope. Pines and hardy oaks stood around it. The pool was very cold because its source was a mountain spring. People rested their feet in the waters and sick people bathed in it because the pool had healing virtues.

It was at this pool that Jesus had one of his first great successes as a healer.

A large group of men, women, and children were standing around the shallow edges of the pool one morning when Jesus came up the mountainside. He notices most of the people were very old, sick, or holding onto sick children.

He came up behind the crowd and touched a bent old man on the shoulder. “What is happening today, father?” he asked.

The old man turned and his eyes lit up. “The teacher from the West! Good morning, young master.” He grabbed Jesus’ arm firmly. “Today we wait for the Healing Angel, young master. The Healing Angel visits our pool once a year.”

“Is the Angel here, yet?” Jesus asked. He moved his eyes quickly around the pool. The Persians believed, as did Hebrew Pharisees, in angels. But he saw nothing unusual in or around the pool.

“Oh no!” The old man smiled. “He does not come until this afternoon. But we who are here early will get a better position. The Angel only touches the waters once. Then we must all run into the pool, and many of us will be healed!”

Jesus nodded. “What is wrong with you, father?”

The old man’s smile went away. “My joints ache terribly, young master. I cannot get out of bed in the mornings for at least an hour, often more.”

Jesus held out his hand. “Let me see,” he said.

The old man stared at him and then put his hand in Jesus’.

“The fingers,” the man said.

Jesus looked at them. The joints were swollen and red.

“Come with me,” he told the old man. He led him slowly through the crowd. He stopped at the edge of the pool, bent, and stirred the water with his fingers. It felt smooth and slick. He tasted it. It was drinkable, though it tasted of rocky substances as water from mountain springs often did. He knew such waters sometimes have healing powers of their own, because of the rocky substances.

Jesus lifted a large pouch from his side, opened it, and drew out a jar of mixed powders.

“The Angel of the water hasn’t come yet,” a pale woman beside him said.

“The Angel of the water is already here,” Jesus said. He held up the jar of powders. “For the Angel is a healer, and he also sends his power through these herbs that may help us.”

People turned and stared at him as he worked. The old man beside him smiled happily.

Jesus drew a pinch of his powders out of the jar, dropped them in the pool, and stirred them gently. Then he took the old man’s hand.

“Kneel beside me, father,” he said.

The old man went down on his knees.

Jesus put the man’s hand into the powder-filled part of the water and gently massaged the joints.

“I feel better already, young master!” the man said.

“Sshh. Just wait,” Jesus told him. “It is only the coldness of the water numbing your hand. The powders have not yet had time to work.”

The old man shut his mouth.

Jesus worked at the hand for several minutes while more and more people crowded in to watch.

Finally, he spoke again to the old man. “Raise your hand and wiggle the fingers, father.”

The man did so. He leaped up in surprise. “Why, I am healed! My hand does not hurt. I can bend my fingers again!”

“You must use this powder in water from this pool,” Jesus began.

“The Angel!” someone interrupted. “The Angel is here!”

“I have seen that man!” a crippled boy shouted. “He healed a sore on my leg in the marketplace!”

Suddenly dozens of people were jumping into the pool.

“Wait!” Jesus called. He held up his hand. “It is the powders combined with the waters that might help you!”

“Dump them in!” someone yelled.

Jesus frowned. He reached for the jar and held it carefully before him. It had taken him three afternoons of climbing mountain passes and another morning of buying certain herbs in the marketplace, and mixing them, to make the contents of this jar. He raised his head and looked around at the hundred or more people in the pool and around its grassy edges. They looked back.

He shrugged and tipped the powders into the water. He looked through his bag and brought out three more large jars and several handfuls of small bags, each of which had taken him or others days of work finding, buying, and preparing. These powders and oils were meant to last him many months. He dumped them all in.

Then he strode into the pool, robe and all, mixing the medicines as he walked. Someone had already plugged up the deep recessed outlet for the pool, in preparation for the crowds on this day. Jesus knew his medicines would not drain away.

He walked through the churning, body-filled waters here and there, giving the noisy people instructions and helping some of them.

“Remove all clothes beneath your robe,” he commanded many. “The healing virtues of the water must touch you more freely. Massage the afflicted part,” he said to others. He showed them how if they didn’t know.

He stopped and examined an old woman. She looked up at his face in misery. “This pool and my medicines can do you no good,” he told her. “Your sickness has entered your body too deeply. Go to the priest Junner at the temple. Tell him your trouble. He will give you a mold to take.”

The old woman wiped water from her face. “Thank you,” she said. She left the pool, shivering, and walked away. Three people waiting on the grassy edge of the pool immediately jumped into her place.

Some Jesus cured by touch. These people had sores, running wounds, and other small sicknesses of the kind he could psychically heal. He cured one young woman of a severe headache by placing his hands in the air on either side of her head, then gradually closing them while he imagined he was pushing motes of air into her temples. The headache went away immediately. He told her how to prepare a medicine that would keep it away.

When he found people who were sick because of their attitudes, and there were many of them, he told them of changes in their lives they could make to heal their illnesses, or to avoid repetitions of their illnesses after healing was done. One older woman, whose six young children were gathered around her, complained of lumps in her breasts and, more recently, similar lumps under one armpit. Jesus told her of others who had been healed of such lumps by ridding their lives of all bitterness, envy, and worry, and by careful fasting a day each week on grapes, almonds, and large amounts of water. He also warned her to do it no more than a day each week else the fasting itself might kill her.

Now and then Jesus quietly led someone aside. Then he told them, as gently as possible, that they must prepare for death. Usually he could offer them names of medicines or foods that would delay the time they would die. He cautioned them not to depend on these substances for happiness, though. He told them to draw close to God, and he touched them to bring them a feeling of peace. It was a light touch he offered, from the hands of a healer. He knew certain spots on their bodies that, when pressed individually or in combination, brought an inner sense of secure awareness. This skill especially was one Junner had taught him.

Jesus strode through the cold waters everywhere as people came and went and others replaced them. He was chilled to the bone and doing breathing exercises to avoid shivering. He barely noticed the time as the sun rose to its highest point over the mountain and began falling again, when suddenly he looked around him and realized the pool was less crowded. The banks of the pool, which by this time were becoming slippery, were empty. Many people had gone home.

He heard someone singing. He looked over to a large, white-barked tree and saw a young girl, just entering womanhood, sitting and happily singing as if she were alone. One leg was as thin as a bone and cruelly bent.

He called out to her. “Young lady,” he said, “may I carry you down to the pool?”

She smiled to him and nodded while she sang.

He rose, dripping, out of the water. Coming to her, he lifted her in his strong arms and carried her into the water.

“Why didn’t you come down before?” he asked. “Weren’t you afraid the healing virtues of the water would be used up?”

She looked upon him with large round eyes. “Healing comes where it is offered,” she told him. “I do not worry where my healing shall come from, for the God will cure me whenever my time has come for it. If I am not healed this time, then perhaps it shall happen to me tomorrow.”

Jesus’ heart suddenly felt full. He concentrated on the center of his chest, and the concentration was easy because his chest felt so warm.

“You have great faith in God,” he said, smiling down on her.

“There is no one and nothing else in my life except God,” the young girl told him. “God is in my dreams and in every living thing around me when I am awake.”

Jesus felt like he was overflowing with love. He sat the girl down on the bank and laid both his hands on her thin, crooked leg.

“Oh woman of ancient years whose wisdom is great!” he exclaimed. “You have told me the very thing I have forgotten while I have worked here this day. I wish I could heal you!”

“Try it,” the girl said. She watched him happily.

Jesus bent his head and prayed. He began concentrating all his strength, and the power that came from the center of his chest, into his hands lying on the girl’s leg. His hands began to throb violently and turn red. He pushed the throbbing energy out of them and into her flesh and bones using his concentration. He stroked the leg and was unaware of anything around him, even the girl’s eyes.

A few minutes later, he noticed her leg felt a little fuller. He stroked more. He went into a timeless, dark and light place in his self that was like a blinding shadow. All he could see was the girl’s leg, and his hands stroking it, as if at the far end of a tunnel.

Suddenly he heard a great shout go up in the distance from many people. He came to himself. He realized he was covered by his own sweat in spite of his cold, wet robe. The shout was around him, beside him. People were yelling almost in his face.

He looked down at the girl’s leg. It was healed. Unbelieving, he looked into her eyes. Tears were falling down her cheeks as she stared back at him. She reached out and gently touched his face.

He stood up quickly and felt dizzy. He stumbled several paces away and then turned and looked at the crowd. They were cheering and shouting at him frantically. The girl was standing up and walking. She limped, but he knew it was from lack of use of the leg. He had healed her.

He felt someone tap his shoulder. He turned and there, like a dream, was the face of an Essene he knew from Mount Carmel.

“Jesus!” said the face. “I am glad I found you. You are doing amazing things!”

“Do you want to be healed, too?” Jesus asked. He felt dizzy.

The man’s sun-darkened face tightened. He straightened his shoulders. He was very tanned and muscular.

“No!” he exclaimed. He drew back a step from Jesus and frowned. “I have come,” he said, “to tell you your father, Joseph, has died.”

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Aug. 2020.