Chapter 20: The Two Cousins Make Plans

               
5th Gospel--Told by Jesus' Beloved Apostle

               
A Novel by Richard Jewell

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Book I: Early Years
Part Three–Adventurer
                                      

“Why didn’t you take the final degree before me?” Jesus asked John. “After all, you finished the other degrees first.”

He and John were walking along the streets of Heliopolis, not far from the low and rambling whitewashed school of medicine. Jesus had just enrolled there for further instruction in methods of healing. As he and John walked, their dusty robes flapped around their ankles and their Egyptian sandals made a soft patting sound against the sandy grit of the street.

“The honor was yours,” John said. “After all, you are the Messiah. And when you were here in Egypt several years ago, you passed the first three degrees much faster than I was able.” He looked sharply at Jesus and paused in his stride. “They tell me that during the fifth test, when they fed you the poison and sent you down among the wild beasts and bats, that you worked miracles. They say you somehow cleansed the poison from your body, and that you made light appear between your hands.”

“Yes,” Jesus said.

John shook his shaggy-haired head and lengthened his stride again. They were walking in a street of merchants and landowners. Some of the more curious men they passed greeted them with a nod, and Egyptian women sometimes turned their heads and smiled at the two tall young men.

“I cannot do such miracles,” John said.

“How did you pass the test?” Jesus asked.

“I didn’t know the beasts were really priests making noises,” John answered. “After listening to them for a while, I got tired of their soft walking and growls. I bellowed back at them. That stopped them. Then I started walking toward them while I was still yelling. I entirely forgot about the chains. When I looked down at my wrists and ankles, all I saw were dangling, broken reeds. I realized the poison had made me believe the reeds were chains, just like they told me. I was still poisoned, I knew, and I got mad. I heard one of the beasts running away from me, so I chased it and I grabbed its tail. The tail turned out to be a robe.”

Jesus laughed. “What if it had been a real lion?”

John shrugged. “It would have been on the heads of the priests,” the thinner man answered. “The test was for courage, not caution. They shouldn’t feed such poison to people if they don’t want them doing dangerous things.”

“And the sixth degree, the test of married love,” Jesus said. His voice grew quieter. “How did you do in that?”

John glanced at him quickly and then looked away. “It took me three days,” he said.

“Three days!” Jesus exclaimed. “But it took me weeks!”

John smiled gently. “I do not love the world as much as you, my cousin. I was born to the hills and desert, and to eating little. Unlike other men, I have no use for most of the world’s ways.”

“Is it better that way, John?”

“You are the Messiah. You answer that,” John said.

Jesus slowly shook his head. In the distance he could see the spiraling dust of the marketplace. The houses around them were becoming steadily smaller and more stained.

“A messiah does not understand everything,” he told John. “I am human.”

“The son of God,” John stated. He rolled the words carefully off his tongue.

“And still your cousin,” Jesus said.

John slapped him on the back. “If you are still so human,” he said, “let’s go to the market! It is right ahead! I will buy you those honeyed slices of onion that you like so much.”

Jesus’ eyes lit up. He had not discovered honeyed onion slices until this second visit of his, as a man, to Egypt.

“Wouldn’t you like some fried camel bits?” he asked John.

The shorter man screws up his face. “I would rather eat sand,” he answered.

They went quickly down the main road leading directly into the marketplace. They passed old women with full reed baskets of fresh vegetables and cooked foods, who were coming back from buying.

“Stay here, John, and study with me for another year,” Jesus said.

“No,” John answered. “You know of my vision in the tombs of the dead which I spoke of to everyone afterward. I saw a hand reaching out and setting me on the Jordan River, not far from where it flows into the Dead Sea. Then I saw myself pouring water over people’s heads, and immersing them in the water, as do the Essenes with whom I lived by the Dead Sea.”

“But your vision did not tell you how soon to start,” Jesus said. He carefully walked around a muscular young boy who was stooped over a tumbled pile of roots and vegetables he had dropped.

“I feel drawn to it right away,” John replied. “Do you remember that in my vision I also saw all the people–whom I had washed–streaming to a white figure whose brilliance lighted the ground he stood on more than the sun?”

Jesus nodded.

“I didn’t say this after the initiation,” said John, “but I believe that white figure was you.”

“Yes,” Jesus answered. “You are the Forerunner.”

“I am. And you are the Messiah.”

“Do you believe that now, John?”

“Yes. You have performed miracles here in the temple.”

“They are just skills I have learned in my studies, John.”

The lean Forerunner shook his head. “They are more than skills, my friend. Perhaps to you they are. But few other men can do them so well.”

Jesus frowned. “A messiah is more than a miracle worker, though. How can you accept me with such small proof?”

John laughed, and the sound of it echoed back from the stone warehouses on the opposite side of the street. The warehouses rose above the dusty pavement just before it widened into the central square, built by the Romans, for the market’s stalls and booths.

“Now,” said John, “that you have convinced me, Messiah, do you argue against yourself? I believe in you because you do what the ancient prophecies predict. That is how to tell a messiah!”

“No, John. I have decided that a messiah is someone who can heal even death.”

John’s eyebrows rose, and he stared at Jesus. “Where did you get that idea?”

“It also is spoken of by the ancient prophets.”

“Only by one of them,” John argued.

Jesus swept his hand around the busy square where a thousand buyers and sellers of all ages, colors, and countries were jostling against each other.

“Look!” Jesus said. “Over there by that rainbow booth! There is a scholar from Greece, teaching the poor. He knows more of books in this life than most people learn in ten lives on earth.”

John nodded.

“And there,” Jesus continued, “is a man from Persia, just arrived. I have heard he can heal people of almost anything! What need is there for me when such men as that exist?”

“You can lead our whole nation to better ways,” John said.

Jesus looked deeply into John’s eyes. “The best way,” he said, “is to turn even the smallest parts of our flesh to God. God wants unending life for us, not just in our spirit but in our bodies as well. That means teaching people to rid themselves of death. With death conquered, John, the earth will become our playground rather than our prison. We will come and go as we please, the way it was in the beginning.”

John nodded vigorously, then stopped himself and looked with a gleam in his eye at Jesus. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think I like you most because you can beat anyone in an argument.”

Jesus put his arm around John’s shoulders. “Do not leave now,” he asked John. “We are just beginning to really understand what we want to do with all our learning.”

John nodded. “Yes. But am your Forerunner, remember? I go to await you in Judea, and to prepare the way for you. There we can be together again.”

They stopped in front of the brown hide booth of the wiry little Egyptian who sold sweets and candies from many countries. John reached into his leather purse hanging from his belt, and he paid in silver for several thick slices of honeyed onions. He handed most of them to Jesus and kept one for himself.

“Come soon,” he told Jesus. “I am starting your job in our homeland, even before you are there to do it yourself.”

“I will see you in two years,” Jesus said, “when I am through studying here and I have been with my family once again in Capernaum.”

He bit into his onion. “It will be good to work with you, John. I have been looking forward t it for many years.”

“We have the rest of our lives together,” John answered, smiling.

The two men ate their onions in satisfied silence.

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Most recent revision of text: 1 Aug. 2020.