:love::lovesick::love:


~*~

Let it be understood
that I was not unprepared to speak to the priests
of the Great Temple.

Like other children,
I had started school before the age of five,
and in our small synagogue we studied every day
until nightfall
...

By the age of eight,
I could even read the language of the old Israelites,
and I knew the Commandments,
which came down from Moshe,
and the laws derived from the Commandments.

Since each law
gave birth to ten laws,
and each of these to another ten,
there were now ten hundred laws concerning prayer and diet
and the rules of sacrifice
on the altar.

And we also studied Genesis,
Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and the book of
Deuteronomy.

We read the prophecies of Elijah,
and of Elisha and Ezekiel and Isaiah,
and much of what was not in our few scrolls was remembered by our elders and teachers,
who passed it on to us.

Yet on our return to Nazareth following our visit to the Great Temple in my twelfth year,
I decided that if I had been given wisdom enough to speak to the wise men,
that must have come from the spirits of those infants
who were killed because
of my birth.

An even greater weight was upon me.

That was Joseph's story concerning my true father.

I could hardly see myself as the Son.

After school,
on days when we would scuffle with each other,
I would lose such fights as often
as I won.

How, then,
could I be the Son of the Lord?
And this doubt left me in fear of His wrath.

For I remembered
that the Lord had said to Moshe,

"Behold,
these people will forsake Me and break My covenant
and then shall My anger be kindled
against them.

They
shall be burnt with hunger
and devoured with burning
heat
..."

And indeed
the lord's wrath may have been upon me
as a result of having
such thoughts.

The great fever
burned in my flesh soon after.
In my twelfth year,
I was all but devoured by that fever.
When I recovered,
I had lost all memory of what Joseph had told me
and was again like others,
and even a young man,
for now I was thirteen.

I began my labors as an apprentice
in Joseph's shop and spent seven years as a simple apprentice
and seven again as a full apprentice
before I became a young master.

The first seven years
were spent in learning how to make mud~bricks for walls
and put up framing for roofs
and doors and windows.

And I also acquired the skill to build beds and tables,
stools and cabinets, boxes of all sizes, and plows
and yokes for oxen.

In my second apprenticeship I worked,
however, in Tsipporim/Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee, an hour on foot from Nazareth.
There I learned more of my craft by working in fine houses, and Joseph taught us much,
for he knew many arts.

Here too lived Herod Antipas,
the son of Herod, and this Herod Antipas had become King of Galilee,
Idumea, and Judea.

When I would watch him pass in procession,
I did not know why my blood raced like a steed
and I was ready to bolt.

My heart was speaking to me even if my mind was not;
I had no sense of why I should feel such fear at the sight of King Herod Antipas taking his royal passage through the avenues of Tsipporim.

All I knew was that I seemed to have no greater wish afterward
than to propitiate all bad feelings {and good ones} by working with care.
My life was devoted to the practice
of carpentry.

liefdesverdrietverliefdliefdesverdriet

~*~
engel
12 sep 2004 - bewerkt op 31 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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