Fifth Gospel(13)

6


YESHUA AND JESUS




Two boys sat on the grass. The priestly child, Jesus, was only twelve springs and fair, for he was a Galilean of mixed blood. The older boy, Yeshua, was fourteen springs and from the lineage of kings. As a Judean of pure blood he was of darker of complexion.

Yeshua watched Jesus play a plaintive song on his flute. One moment, the song wafted downwards over the ridge of the mountain, floating over the Nazirite town-ship below with its rows and rows of houses scattered among figs and pomegranates and grape vines, and another moment, the song soared upwards to the sun’s jewel, whose gleaming fell over the world and came to rest on the squat fig tree beneath which they sat.

Before them plump, white sheep stood silent and obedient in the grass. From the wide spaces there came a sharp breeze, herb-scented and cool, carrying the sound of a flock of doves flapping their wings in time to the dying and becoming of the soulful tune.

Yeshua was restless.

He held a stick in his hand. He made figures with it among the cyclamen and the anemones and in a moment he threw the stick away and fell to watching the rustling leaves of the small tree.

He told himself,

I see all created things because they are; and they are because God sees them, and because God sees them I see them in the world, and because they are perfect, I see them in my heart.

But this thought did not content him.

He looked beyond the sky, to where the clouds melted into the heavens. The flute’s song should have calmed him enough to make him sleep except that a dream in the night still lingered in his heart and filled him with puzzlement and concern. Jesus would know its meaning but he was taken with his flute and so Yeshua would have to wait, for he did not wish to interrupt him.

Years ago when Yeshua and his parents had arrived in Nazareth, Jesus’ family had been the first to befriend them. Discovering a shared lineage had added to their kinship and soon the two households seemed to have no distinction between them. This meant that he and Jesus passed season after season in each other’s company and thereby developed a particular understanding between them.

From the beginning the Essene teachers had singled them out from the other village boys, and had sent for the Chazzan, the officer from the synagogue to instruct them on the Torah, the Mishnah, and the unity of the Law and the Faith. But the teacher soon discovered that a great gulf had divided the two boys.

Yeshua loved reading, singing and praying. The rituals of the festivals and all that could be learnt from papyrus and from the word resounded in his soul and gave clarity to his mind. In truth, the older he became the more he felt one with the destiny and the trials of his people upon whom he knew lay the destiny of all peoples of the world.

Jesus was different.

He was not one for the things of the world. His mind could not take up the teachings that the rabbis prized so highly, for it was flown away with the song of birds or the flight of a butterfly or the angle of the sun as it fell on a leaf. There seemed to be no space in his memory for knowledge and his vision of the world seemed, to Yeshua, like a soft-spoken dream, dusted with the pollen of heaven.

The rabbis were knowledgeable but they were not wise, for they could not fathom Jesus’ soul. They could not see his capacity for love with their hardened minds. They did not realise, therefore, how with one touch of his hand, one look from his far-seeing eyes, one word spoken soft and rounded from his lips he could awaken truth and undo all manner of harm, illness and worry. They could not see it, and so they thought him ‘addled’, a child that could not be taught and concentrated on Yeshua instead, letting go their training of Jesus and allowing him to spend his days as he would spend them, with his sheep and the playing of his flute song.

Now the flute-song came to its end and the silence of afternoon invaded the empty spaces of the day. Yeshua looked at Jesus and Jesus in turn let his eyes – not blue nor green nor brown, but all three in equal measure – meet Yeshua’s dark ones.

Feeling like a boy and forgetting for a moment that he was more knowledgeable than the priests in their synagogues, he said,

‘I wonder what the sheep are thinking?’

Jesus wiped the spit from his flute and looked the sheep a moment.

‘Sheep do not have thoughts, Yeshua,’ he said, all matter of fact.

‘Maze!’ Yeshua said, surprised. ‘No thoughts?’

‘None.’

‘What do they do?’

Jesus gazed out at the sheep, measuring, or so it seemed to Yeshua, what lived in them.

‘They feel…they long for warmer days and greener grass…also,’ His face lit up in a smile, ‘they do not have sympathy for the goats…’