Galilee of the Gentiles it was called in the Scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.
“Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those in distress. In the past He humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future He will honor the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations:
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death,
a light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation
and increased its joy.
The people rejoice before You
as they rejoice at harvest time,
as men rejoice in dividing the plunder.”
Galilee had been part of the ancient kingdom of Israel, and Samaria had been the other part. Long, long ago, King Solomon had given twenty towns to the Phoenicians, and not as long, but still long ago, the Assyrian emperors had destroyed the old land of Israel and scattered the mothers and fathers of the Jews to the ends of the earth. Some few had remained to mix their blood and their ways with who was left and who was brought, but most had fled to Judah, which became Judea as its Isrealites became Jews.
For years the Persians ruled Judea, and after them the Greeks, and then under the Hasmoneans Judea had known glorious freedom, and those priests kings had conquered the lands around them, taking vengeance on old Edom and what remained of Philistia. They had taken back Samaria and, at last, Galilee of the Gentiles, and colonized it, sending Jews to live in what had been, so long ago, their northern kingdom.
Galilee was mostly Jewish, but recently so, and in the world Jesus and John had grown up, a Greek temple, a pagan image, an Ionian town, was never far off. But as they traveled north, now, they stumbled into old shrines, very ancient temples which reminded them that, no matter what the scrolls written by the people of Judah had said, long ago the children of Israel, their blood as much of Canaan as of Jacob, worshiped the wide hipped and bare breasted Mother, and the daughters of Leah and Rachel still did it today, by the light of the moon, in their own circles, far from men’s eyes. All through Galilee, but especially here in the north, the temples and ruins of temples, the shrines outdoors and indoors, reminded them that this may have once been an Israelite land, long, long, long ago, but that it was only recently Jewish, and only on the very surface level. And as they entered the northern region, leaving behind Galilee for the realm of Philip, the first husband of Herodias, they came to a land scarcely Jewish at all, a land where many called Jews had been just recently converted, and converted most shallowly at that.
The capital city of these lands, pointing like a spearhead into Mount Hermon, that beginning of the mountain chains on which one side was Lebanon and the other Syria, was Caesaria Phillipi.
“But that is the new name for it,” Judas said. “The ancient name is Baal Zephon, but the common name is Banias, or Panias.”
“For their god Pan,” John said. “Pan the God of Wild things.”
“Some would say the God of All Things,” said Judas.
“Oh, Master, why have you brought us here?” Peter wondered.
“To do the same as Yochanon,” said Jesus, looking back from his beige and cream robes.
“When he was on the Jordan, when he lived, when he called men to repentance, it was as the days before we crossed into this land. He took his people back in time that they might begin again. But now his people are my people, now you all are my people, and so he went south to the Jordan’s end, but we go north to its source, to its beginning. We must go back further in time. Before it all, Father Abraham came from Aram, and beyond, and it was to Aram that he sent for a wife for his son. From the north, from these waters came Jacob with his wives, Rachel and Leah, Zilpah and Bilhah. Before the Temple in Jerusalem, there was the wellspring here. Before Temple scrolls and the God in his Temple, God roamed the world in a thousand faces.”
Incongruously, surprising to see so far north, they passed a lonely row of crosses with men dying on them, so far gone they scarcely moved and were blackened in the sun. The sight of crosses was at once so horrifying and so seldom, it took one’s breath away. Jesus stood at the feet of these dying men, murmuring his prayers while Seth and John stood on either side, and the miracle he gave these was that, as he left each one, the man sighed and sank into death.
“Who is this?” the few soldiers who were there whispered to Seth, and the others who had traveled north with the disciples.
And he said, “This is Jesus the Prophet, of Nazareth.”
The soldiers had heard of him, and left him to his work, and when the disciples moved on, going northward to a preserve of green trees, they ate and rested by the cold roaring Jordan, green with the reflection of the woods.
That night, the campfire light shining on his robes like white gold and illuminating his face, Jesus asked,
“Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like.”
Simon Peter said to him, “You are like a righteous angel.”
Matthew said to him, “You are like a wise philosopher.”
Thomas said to him, “Master, No. I cannot… My mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.”
The Jordan frothed and rushed behind them and Jesus said, “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out.”
Jesus rose and took Thomas by the hand, and they disappeared into the dark of the forest and returned only a few moments later. John did not dare ask what had happened. He only looked to Seth, and the young man shrugged.
And then Jesus said, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
“Some say John the Baptist;” Andrew tore a hunk of bread and laughed. “Others say Elijah.”
“And some say Jeremiah returned,” someone else offered. “Or one of the other great prophets.”
“Elisha!”
“Jonah… After all, you talked about the sign of Jonah!”
“Moses himself, After all, none ever found his grave!”
“Why stop there?” Judas murmured, “why not the very Isaiah himself?”
Jesus cleared his throat.
“But what about you?” he asked.
They were still laughing when he repeated, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?”
John looked to Seth again. He wished Magdalene were here. Magdalene was like a high tower struck by the lightning of God, and she feared to say nothing, but right now John feared to speak, and he was horrified when he heard the words he feared come out of Simon Peter’s mouth.
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
For the rest of his life there would be a small rage in him that he had not spoken thus, but now Jesus turned and gripped Peter’s shoulder in the night.
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my House, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”
The fast flowing waters of the jellid Jordan splashed heavily in the night.
“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
Then he said, in a lower voice, looking on the Twelve, looking on his brother and Cleophas and the boys, “Tell no one of this.”
Later, Jesus went walking through the pine and cedar scented night, and Seth, going to Alphaeus and John, begged them to come walking in the night with him. When they returned, Jesus was still not back, and Matthew and Nathanael were speaking to Thomas while the other were on their way to sleep.
.“What did Jesus say to you?” Philip asked.
Thomas said, “If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; and a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.”
When Jesus returned, he smelled of the woods, and he saw John and Seth and Alphaeus all piled in a great pallet, under one blanket. John woke up and leaned on one elbow, indicating space for him, and Jesus, carrying his robe, laid it down and unwrapped his mantle so that naked, and barely wet, he climbed into the space beside John.
“You have been bathing.”
“I have given myself the second and the third baptism and only the fourth remains.”
“You are full of strangeness,” John said, shifting to remove his shift so that he pressed his naked flesh to Jesus’s.
“You’ve always know that,” Jesus said.
“I am irked.”
“About.”
“My mouth was forming the very words that Peter said, but forever they will be Peter’s words.”
“Perhaps they were not meant to be your words.”
“But still, I would that they had been.”
“Well, then the fault is on your mouth, and not Peter’s.”
“Make love to me.”
“I am tired. I’ve been out in those woods all night.”
“Make love to me.”
“We’ll wake the others.”
“Do it slowly,” said John, who was already pressing and kissing him.
“I am...”
“Love me.”
Jesus sighed, more in the delight of giving in than from weariness.
Embracing John, he said, “Alright.”
CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER NINETEEN
