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The road out of bethany threw a tawny girdlearound the hill they called the Mount of Olives and the littleparties came up slowly out of the east leading asses withdainty dark feet toward the splendor of Jerusalem. Theycame up all year long from Jericho and the Salt Sea and theMountains of Moab and the north country of Samaria andGalilee in a never-ending procession to the Temple of Herodthe Great. It was a spiritual spawning; a coming home; acommunion with God at his appointed house.
Joseph had never seen such awesome beauty. The eldersin Nazareth had described it as a rare white jewel set inthe green valley between Kidron and Golgotha and he hadasked questions about it but the elders -- and his father too -- seemed to lose themselves in arm waving and superlatives. Now he would see it. He reached the rise of the road, his feettired and dirty from ninety miles of walking, and he unconsciouslypulled the jackass a little faster.
"Are you quiet?" he said. His bride, called Miriam inthe Aramean tongue, and Mary in others, jogged sidewayson the little animal, and said that she was quiet. She felt nopain. This was the fifth day from Nazareth and, from hourto hour, she had progressed from tiredness to fatigue toweariness to the deep anesthesia of exhaustion. She feltnothing. She no longer noticed the chafe of the goatskinagainst her leg, nor the sway of the food bag on the otherside of the animal. Her veiled head hung and she saw millionsof pebbles on the road moving by her brown eyes in ablur, pausing, and moving by again with each step of theanimal.
Sometimes she felt ill at ease and fatigued, but sheswallowed this feeling and concentrated on what a beautifulbaby she was about to have and kept thinking about it, thebathing, the oils, the feeding, the tender pressing of the tinybody against her breast -- and the sickness went away. Sometimesshe murmured the ancient prayers and, for the moment, there was no road and no pebbles and she dwelton the wonder of God and saw him in a fleecy cloud at awindowless wall of an inn or a hummock of trees, walkingbackward in front of her husband, beckoning him on.God was everywhere. It gave Mary confidence to knowthat He was everywhere. She needed confidence.Mary wasfifteen.
Most young ladies of the country were betrothed atthirteen and married at fourteen. A few were not joined inholiness until fifteen or sixteen and these seldom found achoice man and were content to be shepherds' wives, livingin caves in the sides of the hills, raising their children inloneliness, knowing only the great stars of the night liftingover the hills, and the whistle of the shepherd as he turnedto lead his flock to a new pasture. Mary had married a carpenter.He had been apprenticed by his father at bar mitzvah.Now he was nineteen and had his own business.
It wasn't much of a business, even for the Galileancountry. He was young and, even though he was earnest tothe point of being humorless, he was untried and was proneto mistakes in his calculations. In all of Judea there was little lumber. Some stately cedars grew in the powdery alkalinesoil, but, other than date palms and fig trees and some fruitorchards, it was a bald, hilly country. Carpentry was a poorchoice.
A rich priest might afford a house of wood, but mostof the people used the substance only to decorate the interior.The houses were of stone, cut from big depositseighteen inches under the topsoil. It was soft, when firstexposed to air, and could be cut with wooden saws intocubes. These were staggered in courses to make a wall.Windowswere small and placed high on each wall, so that, daily,squares of sunlight walked slowly across the earthen floor.Mary's house, like the average, was small and set against ahill in Nazareth. At the front, there was a stone doorsill. Overit hung a cloth drape. To enter, the drape was pushed aside.
The interior consisted of two rooms. The front onewas Joseph's shop. In it were the workbench, the saws, theauger, the awl and hammers. There were clean-smellingboards and blond curls of shavings on the floor. In the backroom there was an earthen oven to the left, three feet wide,six feet long and two feet high. The cooking was done in the stone-lined interior. The family slept on the earthen top ofthe oven. On chilly nights, the heat seeped through to warmthe sleepers. To the right of the room was a table. There wereno chairs because only rich Jews sat to eat, and they hadlearned this from traveling Greeks. Next to the table was awooden tether for the ass. He was a member of the family, amost important member because he did the carrying of theraw lumber and the finished products, and he was also thesole means of transportation.
He was petted and loved and spoken to. On the tether,he watched Mary go about her duties. He flicked the fliesfrom his ears and sometimes, when he tired of watching, hiseyes closed and he locked his knees so that he would not fall,and he slept standing up. He was not a stubborn animal. Hewas most patient and he would stand while Joseph burdenedhim with a mound of objects.When the bridle strapwas pulled by his master, the ass lowered his head, switchedhis tail against his flanks, and started off, the little hoofsmaking sounds like an inverted cup dropped in the mud ...
The Day Christ Was Born
Excerpted from The Day Christ Was Born: The True Account of the First 24 Hours of Jesus' Life by Jim Bishop
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
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