Herein he followed the exemplar of our prophets. Only in Israel have the men who have led us farthest reviled us most. As our God, who has been to us a Father, has chastened us while he loved us, so our prophets have rebuked us their brethren. Many generations of men have passed since the last of the prophets spake his words of loving reproof. Now has appeared this Jesus, who again takes up their work.
But in one thing, and that a great thing, he differs from our prophets. All these spake never but as messengers of the Most High. This man alone of the prophets speaketh in his own name: therefore he hath been a stumbling-block and an of[pg 206]fence unto us. He spake as one having authority, and it seemed to us as arrogance. And when we would speak with him in the gates, and know his own thought, he evaded our questionings and eluded our testings. He seemed aloof from us and our desires. All Israel was pining to be freed from the Roman yoke, and he would have us pay tribute to Rome for aye. Did he feel himself in some way as not of our nation? I know not; but in all ways we failed to know him.
And as I was communing thus, the sun shone forth from a rift in the clouds and illumined for a space the crown of Calvary, and I stretched forth my hands to the figures on the cross, and cried aloud in my perplexity, “Jesus, what art thou?” And then I bethought me, and my hands fell to my side, and I said, “What wert thou, Jesus?” Naught answered me but the distant rumbling from the gloomy clouds.
But the sun was setting over Israel, and I turned to my father’s house, there once more to celebrate the Feast of the Deliverance from Egypt.
EPILOGUE.
Thus far had I written to thee, Aglaophonos, as to what I knew of that Jesus the Nazarene about whom thou hast made so earnest inquiry. I had minded to hand it to Alphæus ben Simon, my cousin, who goeth this week in the galley to Cyprus, and thence would have passed it on to thee by the hands of one of our brethren who visit Greece from year to year. But there has happened to me an event which has given me much to think of with regard to this very matter of Jesus. It chanced that the day before yesterday I went from the Jewish quarter in this city of Alexandria for my usual walk along the Lochias, which adjoins it. There it is my custom to catch the sea air and to watch the vessels put into the Inner Port. Now, it chanced that as I came upon the Lochias, the vessel of Joppa had just hoved-to in the Inner Port, and the passengers were being landed up the Broad Steps. Now [pg 208]these, by their talith and their faces, I knew to be Jews, and I went up to them, and greeted them with the greeting of peace. But among them one came to me with the look of recognition in his eyes, and said, “Knowest thou me not, Meshullam ben Zadok?” And, behold, it was Rufus ben Simon, whom I had known before I left the Holy City. So I welcomed him, and brought him home to this house of mine. And here he remaineth till the morrow, when he starteth forth to go to Cyrene.
Now, in my inquiries about old friends left behind, and new things that had happened since I went away, I failed not to ask about the followers of the Nazarene. To my wonder, I found that this Rufus had become one of them, even though he was but a child when Jesus died. Yet is he a good Jew in all else. He eateth only our meat, and keepeth our Sabbaths and festivals. But he avers that the Anointed One, whom we expect, has already appeared, and that he was Jesus the Nazarene. And upon my inquiry how he could know aught of Jesus but from the common [pg 209]talk, he put in my hand some Memorabilia of him, written down in Hebrew by one of his chief followers, Matathias.[12] This have I read again and again, and pondered much thereon. Nor have I been able to sleep these two nights for the new thoughts about Jesus that have come to me from reading these memoirs of him.
For, behold, he appeareth in these records of him by his own followers in far other wise than he showed himself to us in public at Jerusalem. In all his public acts among us he was full of scornful rebukes; among his own followers he was tender and loving. Scarcely ever could we get him to speak out to us plainly his views about matters of public concern. He would always give us an answer full of evasion and enigma, but to his followers he would explain all his meaning over and over again, illustrated with parable. There at Jerusalem he almost always turned to the people his harsher side. I saw him on every occasion on which he appeared in [pg 210]public in Jerusalem, and, save only in his sermons, he was always rebuking one or another, just like the prophets of old. And the manner of his rebuking towards us was as with scorpions, whereas among his own he would mingle tenderness even with his reproaches. Nor, saving his sermons, which few heard but those who already followed him, had he aught novel to tell us about the things of life. He seemed to us as if he would destroy the temple of our faith, nor in his public actions did he give any promise of building it up anew. Yet to those with him he would continually be telling what to do and how to do it, till, behold, a new manner of life, fair and seemly, stood before them, fulfilled of Jewish righteousness, with a tender mercy which was the man’s very own.