Now I will tell thee of a most strange event that happened with me and this Jesus. A day or two after this, I was sitting in my room and studying the words of Torah, and had fallen into deep thought on the things of this life and the next, and gradually I fell thinking of certain words that I had heard from Jesus [pg 96]the Nazarene, as I have before told you. Hast thou ever felt, Aglaophonos, as if some one was gazing upon thee, and thou couldst not refrain from looking round to see who it was? So I felt at this moment, and I looked up from the sacred scroll, and lo! Jesus the Nazarene stood before me, gazing upon me with those piercing eyes I can never forget. His face was pale and indistinct, but the eyes shone forth as if with tenderness and pity. Then he seemed to lean forward, and spoke to me in a low yet piercing voice these words: “Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee.” I had shrunk back from his gaze, and was, indeed, in all amaze and wonder that he should be in the room; but when I looked again, behold, he was gone, there was no man there.

But this is not all the wonder of that event, for, being startled, and, indeed, somewhat fearful at his sudden appearance and disappearance, I arose and went out into the highway, and went out to walk on the Gethsemane road. Now, as I came clear of the city, I saw a group of [pg 97]men coming down the opposite hill, and when they came near, behold, it was Jesus and some of his friends. I was astonished and surprised beyond all measure, for how could Jesus have just been with me, and be now coming from Gethsemane? And when they were passing me, Jesus glanced at me very slightly, as at a stranger—he that had spoken to my soul but a few minutes since.

Now, after they had passed me, there came one running after them whom I knew—one Meshullam ben Hanoch—and I stopped him and asked him whither he was going, and he said, “Stay me not. I have run all the way from Bethany to catch up that man thou seest there, Jesus the Nazarene;” and with that he took up his running and left me.

I knew not what to think. I had seen and heard Jesus in my own house in Jerusalem, and lo! at that very same time, as I now learned, he had been at Bethany. What thinkest thou, Aglaophonos,—can a man be in two places at one and the same time? or can it be that the mind of man, and the power of his eye, can go [pg 98]forth from his body and create a vision of another man that hath all the semblance of reality? I know not what to think; but I have heard that, even after his death, those who were nearest and dearest to Jesus saw him and heard him even as I did. Nor do I wonder at this, after what has occurred to myself.

VIII.
THE REBUKING OF JESUS.

Now, it chanced that about this time I was invited to a feast at the house of Elisha ben Simeon, one of the leaders of the Pharisees in Jerusalem. His son had become thirteen years old that week, and, as is our custom, was received into the holy congregation as a Son of the Covenant on the Sabbath. He had been summoned up to the reading of the Law, and had himself read aloud a portion of it; for from this day onward he was to be treated in all matters of religion as if he were a man. Being a friend of his father, I had attended his synagogue, and heard the lad’s pure voice for the first time in his life declare publicly his faith in the Most High.

After the service in the synagogue, his friends accompanied the father and the lad to their house, and with them went I, who had known the father from our schoolboy days, and the little lad from the time of his birth.

Now, it chanced that, as we came near the door of Elisha’s house, we met Jesus the Nazarene, and two or three with him. So Elisha greeted them, and invited them courteously to join the feast, as is the custom among us. And Jesus and the others assented, and followed into the house with us. “To table, to table!” cried Elisha, pointing to the couches standing round the well-filled board.

When we were all seated, the host and his son came round with an ewer and basin to perform the washing of the hands prescribed by the Law. But when they came to the Galilæan strangers, these refused, saying, “We wash not before meals.”