Chapter 2: The Road to Bethlehem

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book I: Early Years
Part One–Child
                                      

The birth was of a virgin, David. Even some of the early friends, the Essenes, who helped Mary and Joseph prepare for the birth, scoffed at this. But is it so unusual? let me explain why it may not be.

It has been observed that a man and woman must come together before a child can be born. But it also has been observed, under carefully controlled and examined circumstances, that every once in a long while, a female animal will give rise to offspring without the help of a male animal. Most often the infant is expelled from the womb long before it is fully developed. But sometimes it stays in, like a normal infant, until it is time for it to be born.

The great Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle observed such an unusual departure from the normal way of reproducing offspring. He told of the case of a young she-fox, penned in a cage for study, who gave birth to another female without contact from any males. And in Rome Pliny the Elder, who died just before you were born, also observed a similar case in a she-bear. I saw these documents, as a young man, in the library at Alexandria.

No, the miracle of the virgin birth was not that it happened. The miracle was that it happened twice. As you may have heard, Jesus’ mother Mary also was born without the aid of a man. Mary’s mother was not a virgin. But she had not slept with her husband for years when Mary was conceived.

Perhaps the ability to conceive without men is an inherited trait like eye color and other bodiy characteristics, and the tendency of such birth passes from the mother to her child. I do not know. I do know this. In the case of Jesus, at least, it surely could not have been accomplished without prayer. Prayers, like the deep mind power of the religious men of the far Hindu and Chinese countries, and like the spells and incantations of our own western sorcerers, can do anything. Even the simplest shepherds and street vendors can make plants grow better, heal wounds faster, and get many of the simple material objects they want in life simply by praying (or, if they follow the mysteries of the witches, through sorcery).

In Jesus’ case, the whole community of Essenes at Mount Carmel had been praying for many years for him to be born. Mount Carmel is a small mountain overlooking the Great Sea, which Rome commands. The mountain is west of Galilee. Some in the community there thought Jesus must come by a selected man and woman. Some others, especially the leader, though that just a selected woman–a virgin–would do.

How Judy, the woman who led these Mount Carmel Essenes, was overjoyed when Mary was brought to her! “A woman-child conceived by no man!” she was reported to have exclaimed. “Here, we may hope, is the instrument for bearing the Christ!”

Therefore, when Mary first appeared among the Essenes at the age of four, she was admitted into the order of young virgins. Each young girl was being prepared as the possible mother of the Christ.

How did the Essenes know Christ was about to be born? By prayer, and communication with the spirit realm. How is this possible? Many people have contacted their loved ones who have passed beyond life. and beyond the other side of the barrier between us and the dead. The dead, after they have died, become spirits. Is it so impossible that these spirits, like us frail humans on earth, make plans?

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David, I must break my narrative here briefly to explain a few things. First, I am impatient with writing about these events without telling you of the words the people themselves spoke.

“How can you know exactly what was spoken,” you might ask of me, “especially since you weren’t even born, yet?” It is a fair question. Do you remember the notes that I already have mentioned? As I said, I started taking down copious notes shortly after Jesus left us. Many of these notes are about Mary’s life. As everyone knows, Mary came to live with me after Jesus left us, just as he told us should be done. Mary and I spent many long days and nights trying to recapture what was said by her, and others around her, throughout those earlier years.

I also talked with many others who were there at Mary’s initiation into the Essenes, at Jesus’ birth and on the trip into Egypt, as well. I wish to take their own words and memories, as well as they could recall them, and give them to you as facts that are almost as accurate as the real events themselves.

Second, you probably are asking, “Why does no one mention the Essenes anymore?” I will tell you. Most of the friends, at least the older ones who still know about the Essenes, are ashamed of them. The southern branch of the Essenes, who were especially numerous in southern Judea from Jerusalem to Hebron and through the wilderness to the Dead Sea, already disagreed with the Mount Carmel group. The southern Essenes believed that the Christ could not be hastened or his birth helped along. Also the southern Essenes generally avoided women. Some of them considered the Mount Carmel people as even evil heretics because of the women in the order Mount Carmel.

As you see, even from the start the southern Essenes were too busy with their nearly all-male desert communities and their rigid rules to ever help Jesus be born. The few who even now hang on are loved neither by the Hebrews or Christians nor by the Romans. They are a stubborn, unsocial group who still await the Christ, though he has been born in Jesus. They have their own truth, certainly, but it is a truth that is very limited.

The other Essenes, the Mount Carmel people, were scattered soon after Jesus’ death by Romans attacking them. Long before that, though, several of them could not believe Mary was a virgin at the time of Jesus’ conception. Some were disappointed when Jesus was growing up because he was not brought up in a strict Essene manner. They felt he was given too much freedom, as a youth, to play and work with other children. They enjoyed it greatly when he stayed with them several years as a young man, but then when he left for his travels, many were displeased with such adventurousness.

It was the final outrage to most Essenes when first John the Forerunner, then Jesus, turned away from them and went out to preach and heal on their own. Except for their Mount Carmel leader, Judy, and a few others, the Essenes officially disowned both the Forerunner and the Christ after the deaths of the two men. The Essenes felt the two had been too much men of the world. In our day they now consider both men imposters.

You can see why many of us older friends rarely talk about the Essenes. The Mount Carmel Essenes made a whole program and practice of choosing a virgin through whom Jesus could come. Many people have trouble, still, in accepting that. And then, a fact most embarrassing to even the twelve ourselves, most of the very Essenes who brought Jesus into this world disowned him!

As a result of these problems, we who have taught about Jesus simply say he was born of a virgin, and let it go at that. That is difficult enough to explain. People are quite willing, usually, to believe in the great power of prayer. But prayer helping to accomplish a virgin birth–that is too much of an idea even for some of the most faithful. One would almost think, to listen to them, that powers like sorcery, seeing others’ thought, and even resurrection of the dead had no scientific basis in fact!

Let me get back, David, to my story. As I said, I wish to give you the words and actions of the people themselves just as they were. I am consulting my notes even as I dictate this letter to you. With the help of them, and the Lord, I will tell you what really happened.

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The birth itself took place in Bethlehem. Everything else had been planned, even down to asking Joseph, one of the older Essenes who was chaste, to be betrothed to Mary. But no one had expected a tax census. The Romans insisted on counting everyone, so Joseph had to go to Bethlehem, his home town, and take Mary with him when Jesus was due. They also took several women to help in the delivery.

At sundown of the night in question, the small group of tired travelers approached the outskirts of Bethlehem, a wind-beaten old village of yellow brick and dust just as it is today. Mary rode a donkey while the others walked. They pushed their way through the crowds quickly, for Mary’s pains already had started. The town was holding at least ten times the number of the actual residents because of the tax census. Pickpockets and thieves were everywhere.

The evening was cold. Mary and the others were wondering if something actually would go wrong in such difficult circumstances. Giving birth to children is never safe, even with the best of midwives, and a hasty birth in a strong place is usually very dangerous. Mary had no assurances that she would live through it. Nor, for that matter, was the life of the unborn Jesus absolutely assured, either. Even angels sometimes change their minds.

Mary’s face was drawn with pain–riding a donkey during labor, and five days before it, is no comfort–and sweat ran down from her forehead. Every so often at regular intervals, a sharp sword of pain shot up her spine. Each time this happened, she held her breath and closed her eyes, wondering if this time she would fall off the donkey.

Between labor contractions, Mary’s dominating feelings were humiliation and resulting anger. She felt humiliated, first, as a woman, because she had to be subjected t such disgraceful crowding. Men and other women eyed her swollen belly, pointed their fingers at her and even jabbed her with their dirty fingertips.

She also felt humiliated as a subject Jew–and provincial servant–of the Romans. These Romans, with one word, made whole nations drop what they were doing and travel for days to villages no longer even their own, just for the sake of having everyone’s name recorded.

The third humiliation, a small one but nevertheless always present like a gnat, was a confusing mix that concerned both virginity and beauty. As a young virgin a year before, she had been greatly praised by the Essene men and women, a community that loved sexual purity. She had also been very beautiful.

As her pregnancy was nearing its end, though, with her belly swollen and her breasts protruding, she had every appearance of being a woman who had slept with a man. Men looked at her knowingly now, as if she were a piece of used flesh. It made her feel unclean.

She also felt extremely ugly. Her body was, to her, a stretched goatskin filled with wne. These last few days, she had been constantly caked with sweat and dirt. An angry, whining look was pinching her face because of the pain and discomfort. At least, that was the way she felt, though everyone else around her kept telling her how beautiful she looked. She tried to avoid looking at others and hoped, in her shame and frustration, that she wouldn’t be noticed.

At one point, though, she made the mistake of accidentally catching the eye of a towering and weak-chinned Roman soldier passing the opposite way.

The soldier elbowed his companion, a fat Syrian merchant with an oily face.

“Look at that soft little doe!” he said to the merchant.

Both men’s eyes traveled down her body. It made her nauseous.

“She’s pregnant,” the oily merchant said, wrinkling his nose. “Too bad. A waste of beauty. She must be sixteen, no more. Only fifteen when it happened.” He turned away so he wouldn’t have to look sat her again. “Ill-used goods,” he told the soldier.

The soldier looked with disappointment at Mary’s swollen belly. Then he noticed Joseph leading the donkey.

“By Jove!” he laughed, “there goes the husband. Look how old he is! Hey grandfather!” he called. “Graybeard! How many times did you have to try it before you could get it up?” He and his companion dissolved in laughter.

Joseph, as befitted an elder Essene and a kind man, ignored them. Even if he had been of fiery temperament, it would have been too dangerous to reply to them in the circumstances.  Roman soldiers and Syrian merchants both carry too much weight with the Roman authorities. They can do as they like.

Mary quickly lowered her eyes and spoke a hasty prayer. Angry humiliation burned her cheeks red. As soon as the two men were far enough past that she couldn’t see them anymore, she looked at the other women.

One of them, Josi, a small, bird-like girl Mary’s own age, met her look and grimaced in sympathy.

Josi was Mary’s best friend. Like Mary, she had been one of the girls chosen as a child to prepare for being mother of the Christ. She had happily accepted it when she was passed over, finally, in favor of Mary. Now, in her quiet and humorous way, she was devoted to Mary.

Mary leaned toward her, wishing suddenly and briefly that she and Josi could trade bodies at least until it was time for the birth.

“Can’t we stop?” Mary hissed at her with surprising force.

“Almost,” Josi answered. “The inn is just around the corner.”

They forced their way through two more blocks of crowded, hilly streets, taking half an hour to do so.

Then they were in front of the inn.

This inn was a good one. It used to be one of the best in Judea. Joseph and the other Essenes had chosen it because the owner happened to be a close friend, and a secret Essene also. He could hide them well if anything went wrong, and he and his entire family knew exactly whom Mary was about to give birth to.

The five travelers turned into the courtyard. In the increasing darkness of evening, they could see the courtyard was clean and neat. A flagged-stone path headed straight up the center to the main door, and straw had been spread everywhere to absorb the muck created by the milling donkeys and horses.

All the travelers heaved a sigh of relief, except Mary. She was in the middle of a contraction. The donkey she was riding, probably happy to be at an inn where he could get some millet fodder for supper, broke away from Joseph and danced up the flagged stones. Mary, who had yet to let out a complaint of any kind, suddenly cried out. A fire of red pain was running up her left side.

The others raced to her.

“Get me down!” she yelled.

They quickly got her down, and one of the midwives carefully felt her belly for damage as several evening strollers casually glanced their way.

“You’re all right,” the midwife told her.

Mary nodded and held back her tears. She couldn’t believe they had finally made it.

Joseph carefully took her weight on his arm that he placed around her and helped her hobble painfully to the inn’s main door. She had to grit her teeth against the heavy ache of her leg muscles, cramped from both labor and so many hours of sitting on her donkey.

Joseph suddenly stooped and put both his arms behind her to lift her. Though he was getting old, he was still strong. He was, after all, a carpenter.

But Mary slapped his arm away.

“I’ll walk!” she snapped. She was long past feeling guilty, by this time, for expressing any of her frustration and anger.

“People mustn’t think I’m weak!” she said.

At that moment the main door of the inn was suddenly flung open. Two big men with dulled eyes and slack jaws stepped forward. They were drunk. They stared at the five travelers before them. Suddenly one of them bawled out.

“Innkeeper. Innkeeper,” he yelled. “Five more bodies to stuff into your cubbyholes and crannies! Where can you find room for five more, you old thief! You stuff us one on top of the other and charge us the normal fee!”

The other drunk winked heavily at the travelers.

“Don’t mind my friend,” he said. “He’s a little excited. Tomorrow we help count heads and figure out how much tax money each man is worth.” He giggled. “We make a percentage, if you get what I mean. That means more money for everyone, especially us!”

Joseph, Mary, and the others drew back in dislike from the two drunks. The two were traitors, for no Hebrew in those days could help the Romans collect taxes and still hold his head proudly among his own countrymen.

The quieter drunk, the second one, leaned close to Joseph and Mary and breathed fumes of wine into their faces.

“Come inside, old fellow,” he said to Joseph. “We’ll find all of you a place to lay your mats.” He took Joseph and Mary each by an arm, tugged them suddenly through the door, and slammed it behind them.

The inside of the inn, as most are in Israel, was a series of rectangles. The largest rectangle now lay in front of, and slightly below, Joseph and Mary, who stood on the landing with the drunk.

They were looking out over the dining hall. It was clean as could be, considering it was filled with hazy smoke, diners, and loud drinkers. There was almost no standing room.

The drunk had not seen Mary very well outside. Now, by the light of the fire in the huge stone fireplace and the olive oil lamps on the walls, he saw how pretty she was. He also noticed her youth. He laughed gleefully.

“Look at the little lady!” he shouted. He flung out his arms to the noisy dining room. “Somebody take this old grandfather! he yelled. “I get his pretty granddaughter!”

The whole room suddenly became quiet as people looked up from the supper bowls and their drinking flagons. Some of the watchers fell silent because of the terrible insult the drunk was offering to the poor girl. They could see she was pregnant, a fact he had obviously missed.

Other people became quiet because they knew, or had heard about, Joseph and Mary. These quiet people were, like the landlord, Essenes or friends of Essenes. They had come ahead of the travelers, for the tax census, and were staying here to help Mary and Joseph if they could.

Some of the people in the room, mainly Roman soldiers, local tax collectors, and other rich thieves simply stared with curious amusement at the spectacle in front of them: a beautiful, young Jewess, very pregnant, traveling with a greying-haired man easily old enough to be her father.

The drunk then turned and examined Mary. For the first time he saw she was pregnant. He blushed a deep red and looked quickly around the room. People were smiling at him with amusement, and some were staring at him with scorn.

He slunk down the stairs and found himself a dark corner where he yelled for more sweet wine.

Joseph, looking tired and slightly bent with age in spite of all his carpenter’s muscles, and Mary, worn and pale from traveling and labor, were both left standing there. They were alone and facing a watching crowd. It was exactly the kind of public notice they had wanted to carefully avoid all along.

some of the soldiers and tax collectors snickered.

“Is that your granddaughter, old man,” one of them called, “or is it really your serving wench?” His voice crudely and suggestively emphasized the word “serving” and his eyebrows went up on it. He gained a few more snickers for his efforts.

A shocked Essene man rose halfway out of his chair.

“They are married!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you know who they are?”

“Be quiet!” a quick voice told him. The owner of the voice pulled him back down in his chair. “It is a secret!” the voice hissed angrily. The word “secret” rang out through the hushed room like a wind blowing from one corner to another.

Joseph turned to go but Mary, who was trembling from head to foot from humiliation, shame, and anger, felt another contraction starting.

Her knees buckled as it grew more intense, and Joseph had to reach out and hold her.

As the contraction built in strength and pain inside her, a little Roman official approached them. He was perfectly dressed in the finest white-wool toga. A hand-wrought gold medallion on a carefully worked gold chain circled his neck. His breath, when he reached the two of them, reeked of mingled stale mind and soured meat. His digestion, apparently, was suffering from too many rich foods.

He carefully looked Mary up and down while Joseph glared at him angrily.

Her contraction was peeking. She kept all sign of it off her face.

Without taking his eyes off her for even an instant, he drawled three slow words at Joseph.

“She is overdue.”

He held out his carefully manicured fingertips, palm upwards.

“Give me your documents,, if you please. I wish to join in your secret, too. If I may.” He sniffed.

Joseph, stiff with dismay and anger, slapped their personal documents into the Roman official’s hand.

“My!” exclaimed the Roman, delicately. “What have we here? A rich man!”

The documents he was holding were made of the finest leather parchment. Poor Jews could not afford such parchment. Joseph, of course, had the financial backing of the Mount Carmel Essene community, which was far from poor. And Mary was from a reasonably comfortable country family who had supported her even when she had begun living at the Essene community. Her dowry, which soon would be Joseph’s, wasn’t a fortune. But it wasn’t small.

The Roman looked at their clothing more carefully.

“For poor Jews you certainly have nice robes,” he sniffed. Their robes, like the Roman’s toga, were made of bleached, fine-woven cloth. Theirs were linen, with an inner lining of thick wool.

The Roman carefully looked through their documents. He seemed to be aware that everyone was watching him. He also seemed to like putting on a show, for he turned to his companion at his dinner table that was separated from the others.

“Well, Publius!” he said loudly. “According to these documents, he certainly isn’t her grandfather!”

Several people snickered and many others grinned.

“And here we have,” said the Roman, oh yes! a marriage document! My, my! Why Publius, this old goat really is married to her. How does he do it!”

He was answered by general laughter and several crude suggestions.

Before he could go on, a sudden commotion in the back of the room made people step to the side. A large man in a thick leather apron was pushing his way like a bull through the crowd. He looked extremely worried. He was the innkeeper, the Essene friend of Joseph, and he knew that Joseph and Mary shouldn’t be so noticeable–especially to Roman officials.

“There’s no room!” he yelled. “There’s no room left in my inn! You must leave! We can’t have extra people, especially a pregnant woman!”

Mary’s mouth dropped open. She looked at Joseph in confusion.

“Excuse me, sir!” said the innkeeper to the little Roman official, “but I must get these two Jews out of here before they try to settle down in the halls!” The innkeeper was half Greek and looked fully so. Greeks were well-respected in the Roman Empire.

The Roman nodded and stepped bac, first handing Joseph the documents.

“Out with you!” the innkeeper yelled. He grabbed them by their arms and pulled them to the door.

“But last week,” Joseph said, “you told me you’d save–”

“I save nothing for nobody!” the innkeeper frantically yelled. “Out, out!”

He dragged them through the door and closed it behind them.

Once they were all outside, he breathed deeply.

“Hfa!” he snorted, and wiped his forehead with his hairy arm. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to get you out!”

Joseph nodded. “But you really do have room for us, don’t you?”

“Of course!” The innkeeper nodded. “Just a minute. Let me catch my breath.”

Mary was shocked–by all this confusion–into having a second contraction immediately following the one she’d just finished. She groaned in agony and bent over.

Josi rushed up to her. “Breathe, Mary, breathe!”

Both Josi and Mary had learned how to control the labor pains–to help Mary go with the pains and breathe deeply while having them. The two women had been saving this careful breathing control for the time when they could be in their room for the night. But now it almost seemed like Mary was going to deliver her baby right in front of the main door of the inn.

“Oh Josi!” Mary groaned. “Help me!”

She and Josi hobbled together toward the donkey, against which Mary leaned by spreading both arms over its saddle and bending her head down.

At this point Mary was convinced that everything was lost. Her life, which she sometimes half-counted on losing anyway during the birth, suddenly seemed unimportant. It was the unborn baby inside her that mattered now. She couldn’t imagine him surviving if he suddenly dropped out right there on the flagged-stone path. No child, not even a Christ child–if there really was a Christ child inside her–could survive that. And it felt like the pain was splitting her into two pieces.

“Breathe, Mary,” Josi repeated. She put her hand on Mary’s arm and squeezed it.

Mary began breathing. She counted for what seemed to her like an eternity, but it was only to forty. Then the contraction was over.

She breathed a final sigh of relief, smiled weakly at Josi, and turned back to the men to see where, and when, they could get their room for the night.

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Aug. 2020.