The men traded astonished looks, and it seemed to Simon that their eyes were shaking off a sluggish indolence.
‘There, you see?’ Simon said, vindicated. He put down his rope and stood. ‘What’s his name?’
‘John the Baptiser,’ Philip told him.
Simon nodded. ‘John the Baptiser,’ he said, rubbing his speckled beard, ‘John the Baptiser!’ he said it again, as if contriving to make that name fit a shape held in his mind. ‘This is a sign!’ he said finally. ‘We must go and hear this man speak, this John the Baptiser, for it seems that he speaks true.’
Young John paused his liming. ‘I will come!’
Andrew frowned his annoyance at the boy, ‘That is because you do not like liming boats, that you will go!’
John smiled in answer.
‘But what of your precious fish, Simon?’ James said, half in jest and half in seriousness. ‘Will we leave them uncaught in the sea? What of my father’s livelihood?’
‘Yes…old Zebedee will curse us! After all, who will take care of the nets and the boats?’ Philip added.
‘What of the customers and the merchants that come from every place?’ Andrew threw in.
Simon paused to look out at the sea’s glimmer skipping over the calm lapping of the waves and made his resolve.
‘These things shall take care of themselves.’
‘But shall we leave our homes, our wives and families and the sea, to become homeless men?’ James said to him. ‘Well, for my part, I say this will come to no good!’
‘Why should we not become homeless men for a time, James? Look at us, we do this stinking work, day in and day out, is there not more to be known in the world, than the beauty of this sea and the smell of fish? Are we always to remain like children who are three years old and lulled by a song?’
Philip thought this through. ‘For my part lads, I have always been of the mind to trust Simon. He has a good sense for things, but this…I don’t know. This is something new.’
Andrew made a sigh. ‘We have always listened to your good counsel, Simon.’
‘Yes,’ added young John, ‘he always knows where to cast the nets, so that we do not go hungry like other fishermen.’
James looked around him, incredulous. ‘And all of you suppose that we should go then and leave everything behind?’
The men looked at one another, as if contemplating a lunacy that confounded human explanation, and yet a lunacy full of logic to their minds.
James nodded then smiled and rubbed his beard. ‘Well, I am outnumbered it seems, perhaps all will be well for a day or two.’
The five men now looked to Simon.
Simon nodded. ‘We go then.’
And they resolved to make their preparations.
27
THE ISRAELITE
At the same moment that Simon in Galilee was making his resolve to go in search of John the Baptist, in Jerusalem, a Pharisee called Nicodemus, sat in the judgement hall of the Temple among those who were gathered to judge the Baptiser.
While the priests of the Sanhedrin conducted the various opening formulas, Nicodemus looked about the vast hall.
It was made in a long rectangle created out of great slabs of stone, with round stone pillars supporting a lofty ceiling. In between these pillars, upon stone benches, were seated the Levites, scribes and shorthand note takers. At the front of the great hall upon a dais sat a semi circle of judges. They faced the middle of the hall and the laity, which on this day could not be contained and was spilling out of the oaken doors to the terrace beyond.
The Great Sanhedrin was indeed the highest tribunal of the land and was made up of seventy-one members. Nicodemus had always felt very fortunate to be counted among them and to be called an Israelite, a representative of Israel. In truth, every Jew was united by a common memory through the blood of Abraham. In this blood was imprinted all the abilities and disabilities of their people all the laws and transgressions, even the air, the sky, and the soil of the Promised Land! Because of this, all Jews could say ‘we’.
But an Israelite could do more. His blood was like an open book, in which the archangels glanced to make their decisions about the future of the people. For this reason, an Israelite considered himself not only one with those of the blood of Abraham, but also, and more importantly, one with the God of Abraham himself.
A voice tore him away from his thoughts now, and he realised how long he had been daydreaming. In the centre of the hall one of Herod’s captains, not long returned from troubles in Dothain, was recounting something about John the Baptist.
‘He tells the people to repent, to change their hearts, for The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. He tells them this, but then the people do not suffer the heathens that dwell among them and they burn their idols and cause havoc and this has made the prince of Sidon send his armies to protect the idolaters from John’s disciples.’