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There was the Teacher declaring: “That child’s not dead, you hush up, Eleazer, who said he was dead? Eleazer, stop shouting! Whoever could think this child is dead?”
“Brought him back to life, that’s what he did,” said one of theirs.
We were in our courtyard, the entire crowd had pushed in with us, my uncle and Eleazer’s people still screaming at each other, and the Teacher demanding order.
Now my uncles, Alphaeus and Simon, had come. These were Joseph’s brothers. And they’d just woken up. They put up their hands against the crowd. Their mouths were hard and their eyes were big.
My aunts, Salome and Esther and Mary, were there, with all the cousins ru
Then I couldn’t see anymore.
I was in my mother’s arms, and she had taken me into the front room. It was dark. Aunt Esther and Aunt Salome came in with her. I could hear stones hitting the house again. The Teacher raised his voice in Greek.
“There’s blood on your face!” my mother whispered. “Your eye, there’s blood. Your face is cut!” She was crying. “Oh, look what’s happened to you,” she said. She spoke in Aramaic, our tongue which we didn’t speak very much.
“I’m not hurt,” I said. I meant to say it didn’t matter. Again my cousins pressed close, Salome smiling as if to say she knew I could bring him back to life, and I took her hand and squeezed it.
But there was James with his hard look.
The Teacher came into the room backwards with his hands up. Someone ripped the curtain away and the light was very bright. Joseph and his brothers came in. And so did Cleopas. All of us had to move to make room.
“You’re talking about Joseph and Cleopas and Alphaeus, what do you mean drive them out!” said the Teacher to the whole crowd. “They’ve been with us for seven years!”
The angry family of Eleazer came almost into the room. The father himself did come into the room.
“Yes, seven years and why don’t they go back to Galilee, all of them!” Eleazer’s father shouted. “Seven years is too long! That boy is possessed of a demon and I tell you my son was dead!”
“Are you complaining that he’s alive now! What’s the matter with you!” demanded my uncle Cleopas.
“You sound like a madman!” added my uncle Alphaeus.
And thus and so it went, with them shouting back and forth, and making fists at each other, and the women nodding and throwing glances to one another, and far off others joining in.
“Oh, that you say such things!” said the Teacher, saying every word as if we were in the House of Study. “Jesus and James are my finest pupils. And these men are your neighbors, what’s happened to make you turn against them like this! Listen to your own words!”
“Oh, your pupils, your pupils!” cried Eleazer’s father. “But we have to live and work, and there’s more to life than being a pupil!” More of them came into the room.
My mother backed up against the wall, holding me close. I wanted to get away, but I couldn’t. She was too afraid.
“Yes, work, that’s it,” my uncle Cleopas said, “and who’s to say we can’t live here, what do you mean drive us out, just because more of the work goes to us, because we’re better and better at giving people what they want—.”
Suddenly Joseph put up his hands and he roared out the word: “Quiet!”
And they all went quiet.
The whole mob of them fell quiet.
Never had Joseph raised his voice before.
“The Lord made shame for an argument such as this!” Joseph said. “You break the walls of my house.”
No one said anything. Everyone looked at him. Even Eleazer was there and he looked up at him.
Not even the Teacher spoke.
“Now Eleazer is alive,” Joseph said. “And as it happens, we are going home to Galilee.”
Again no one spoke.
“We will leave for the Holy Land as soon as our few jobs are finished here. We’ll bid you farewell, and those jobs that come to us as we prepare to go we’ll send to you by your leave.”
Eleazer’s father stretched his neck, then nodded and opened his hands. He shrugged. He bowed his head, and then he turned. His men turned. Eleazer stared at me, and then all of them went out of the room.
The crowd left the courtyard, and my aunt Mary, the Egyptian, who was Cleopas’ wife, came in and closed the curtain partway.
What was left now was all our people, and the Teacher. The Teacher was not happy. He looked at Joseph. He frowned.
My mother wiped her eyes, and looked to my face, but then the Teacher began to talk. She held me close, her hands shaking violently.
“Leaving to go home?” said the Teacher. “And taking my fine students with you? Taking my fine Jesus? And what will you go home to, may I ask? To the land of milk and honey?”
“You mock our forefathers?” asked my uncle Cleopas.
“Or you mock the Lord Himself?” asked my uncle Alphaeus, whose Greek was as good as the Teacher’s Greek.
“I don’t mock anyone,” said the Teacher, looking at me as he spoke, “but I marvel you can leave Egypt behind so easily over a little hubbub in the street.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Joseph.
“Then why go? Jesus is coming along wonderfully here. Why, Philo is so impressed with his learning and James here is a marvel, and…”
“Yes, and this isn’t Israel, is it?” asked Cleopas. “And it isn’t our home.”
“No, and it’s Greek that you’re teaching them, Scripture in Greek!” said Alphaeus. “And we teach them here at home in Hebrew because you don’t even know Hebrew and you are the Teacher, and this is what the House of Study is here, Greek, and you call it the Torah, and Philo, yes, the great Philo, he gives us work to do, and so do his friends, and all this is very fine, and we’ve done well, and we’re grateful, yes, but he too speaks Greek and reads the Scriptures in Greek, and marvels at what these boys know in Greek—.”
“All the world speaks Greek now,” said the Teacher. “The Jews in every city of the Empire speak Greek and read the Scripture in Greek—.”
“Jerusalem does not speak Greek!” said Alphaeus.
“In Galilee we read the Scripture in Hebrew,” said Cleopas. “Do you even understand Hebrew, and you call yourself a Teacher!”
“Oh, I’m weary of your attacks, why do I put up with you, where are you taking yourselves and these boys, back to some dirt village! You leave Alexandria for that.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Cleopas, “and it’s no dirt village, it’s my father’s house. Do you know one word of Hebrew?” He then sang out in Hebrew the psalm that he loved and had long taught to us. “The Lord shall preserve my going out and my coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.” Following it with “Now do you know what that means?”
“Do you yourself know what that means!” shot back the Teacher. “I’d like to hear you explain it. You know what the scribe in your synagogue taught you what it means, that’s all you know and if you learned enough Greek here to shout in my face, you’re the better for it. What do any of you know, you hardheaded Galilean Jews? Coming to Egypt for refuge, and leaving as hardheaded as you came.”
My mother was anxious.
The Teacher looked at me.
“And to take this child, this brilliant child—.”
“And what would you have us do?” asked Alphaeus.
“Oh, no, don’t ask such a thing!” my mother whispered. It was so unusual for her to speak up.
Joseph glanced at her, and then looked at the Teacher. The Teacher went on.
“It’s always the same,” said the Teacher with a great drawn-out sigh. “In times of trouble, you come down to Egypt, yes, always to Egypt, she receives the dregs of Palestine…”
“The dregs!” Cleopas said. “You call our forefathers the dregs?”
“They didn’t speak Greek either,” said Alphaeus.
Cleopas laughed. “And the Lord on Sinai didn’t speak Greek,” he said.