Romans. Let me remind you that you are in the Temple of the Lord and not on some battlefield. The Lord is the God of legions. True, but do not forget that God imposed His condition. What condition. The Lord said, So long as you observe my laws and keep my commandments. But what are these laws and commandments we have ignored, that we should accept Roman rule as just and necessary punishment for our sins. The Lord must know. Yes, the Lord must know, and how often man sins without knowing, but would you care to explain why the Lord should make use of the Roman army to punish us instead of confronting His chosen people and punishing us Himself. The Lord knows His intentions and chooses His means. So you're trying to tell me that the Lord wants the Romans to govern Israel. Yes. Well, if that is so, then the rebels fighting the Romans are opposing the Lord and His holy will. You jump to the wrong conclusion. And you, scribe, contradict yourself. God's will may be not-to-will, and that not-to-will may be His will. So the will of man is genuine yet of no importance in the eyes of God. That's right. So man is free. Yes, free so that he might be punished. A murmur went up among the bystanders, some stared at the person who had asked the questions, based on the texts yet politically inopportune, and they looked at him accusingly, as if he were the one who should answer for the sins of all Israel, while the skeptical were reassured by the victory of the scribe, who acknowledged their praise and applause with a complacent smile. The scribe looked around him confidently and asked if there were other questions, like a gladiator who, having dispatched a weak opponent, seeks a more worthy opponent in order to gain greater glory. Another hand went up, and a different question was raised, The Lord spoke to Moses and told him, The stranger in your midst shall be treated as one of your own and you will love him as you love yourselves, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. But before the man could finish speaking, the scribe, still flushed from his victory, interrupted in a sarcastic voice, I hope you are not about to ask me why we do not treat the Romans as our compatriots since they, too, are foreigners. No, what I want to ask is whether the Romans would treat us as their compatriots if both sides spent less time arguing about the differences between their laws and gods. So you too have come here to anger the Lord with blasphemous interpretations of His holy word, said the scribe. On the contrary, all I ask is whether you truly believe that we are obeying the holy word of the Lord when strangers are strangers not so much to the land in which we live as to the religion we profess. To which strangers do you refer. To some in our own day and age, to many in the past, and probably many more in the years to come. I've no time to waste on enigmas and parables, make yourself clear. When we arrived from Egypt, there were other nations living in the land we now call Israel, whom we had to fight, and in those days we were the strangers, and the Lord commanded us to exterminate the people who opposed His will. The land was promised to us but had to be conquered, we did not buy it, nor was it offered to us. And now we find ourselves living under foreign rule, we have lost the land we made our own. Israel fives forever in the spirit of the Lord, so that wherever His people may be, whether united or dispersed, there the land of Israel will be. In other words, wherever we Jews find ourselves, others will always be the stranger. Certainly, in the eyes of the Lord. But the stranger who lives among us, according to the word of the Lord, must be our compatriot and we must love him as we love ourselves, for we were once strangers in Egypt. That is what the Lord said. In that case, the stranger we are expected to love must also be those who, living among us, are not so powerful that they can rule us, as at present with the Romans. Yes, I agree. Then tell me, do you believe that if one day we become powerful, the Lord will permit us to oppress the stranger He commanded us to love. All Israel can do is obey the will of the Lord, and since the children of Israel are His chosen people, the Lord wills only what is good for them. Even if it means not loving those we should. Yes, if so willed. Willed by whom, the Lord or Israel. By both, for they are one and the same. Thou shalt not violate the stranger's rights, says the Lord. When that stranger has rights and we acknowledge them, replied the scribe. Once again, those present murmured their approval, and the scribe's eyes gleamed like those of a champion wrestler, discus thrower, gladiator, or charioteer.
Jesus raised his hand. No one present found it strange that a boy his age should come forward to question a scribe or doctor of the Temple, the young have been plagued by doubts ever since the time of Cain and Abel, they tend to ask questions to which adults respond with a condescending smile and a pat on the shoulder, When you grow up, young man, you'll stop worrying about such matters, while the more understanding will say, When I was your age, I thought the same. Some moved away, and others were preparing to do so, which vexed the scribe, who did not want to see his attentive audience leave, but Jesus' question caused many to turn back and listen, What I want to discuss is guilt. You mean your own guilt. No, guilt in general, but also the guilt a man may feel without having sinned himself. Explain yourself more clearly. The Lord said that parents will not die for their children or children for their parents and that each man will be judged for his own crime. This was a precept for those ancient times when an entire family, however innocent, paid for the crime of any one of its members. But if the word of the Lord is forever, there is no end to guilt, and as you yourself just said, saying man is free so that he might be punished, then one is right to believe that the father's guilt, even after his punishment, does not cease but is passed on to his children, just as all of us who are alive today have inherited the guilt of Adam and Eve, our first parents. I am amazed that a boy of your age and humble circumstances should know so much about the scriptures and be able to debate these matters with such ease. I only know what I was taught. Where are you from. From Nazareth of Galilee. I thought as much from your manner of speaking. Please answer my question. We may assume that the gravest sin of Adam and Eve, when they disobeyed the Lord, was not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but, rather, its consequence, because their sin prevented the Lord from carrying out the plan He had in mind when He created first man and then woman. Whereupon the second man who asked a question challenged the scribe with another gem of sophistry, which the carpenter's son would never have had the courage to voice in public, Do you mean to say that every human act, such as that of the disobedience in Eden, can interfere with God's will, which is like an island in the ocean assailed on all sides by the turbulent waves of human will. Not exactly, the scribe replied cautiously, the will of the Lord is not content only to prevail over all things, His will makes everything what it is. But you yourself said that it is because of Adam's disobedience that we do not know the plan God conceived for him. That is what our reason tells us, but the will of God, the creator and ruler of the universe, embraces all possible wills, His own as well as that of every man born into this world. If this is so, intervened Jesus with sudden insight, then each man is a part of God. Probably, but even if all men were united as one, that combined part would be but a grain of sand in the infinite desert that is God. Sitting on the ground surrounded by men who watch him with mixed feelings of awe and fear, as if they are in the presence of a magician who has unwittingly conjured up powers greater than his own, the scribe looks less complacent. With drooping shoulders and doleful expression, his hands resting on his knees, his entire body seems to ask that he be left alone with his anguish. People in the group started rising to their feet, some made their way to the Court of the Israelites, some to join other groups still engaged in discussion. Jesus said, You didn't answer my question. The scribe stared at him like someone coming out of a trance, then after a long, tense silence replied, Guilt is a wolf that eats her cub after devouring its father. The wolf of which you speak has already devoured my father. Then it will soon be your turn. And what about you, were you ever devoured. Not only devoured but also spewed up.
Jesus rose to his feet and left. Heading for the gate through which he had entered, he paused and looked back. The column of smoke coming from the sacrificial fires climbed into the heavens, where it dispersed and vanished, as if sucked in by God's mighty lungs. It was mid-morning, more and more people were arriving, while inside the Temple sat a man broken by a sense of emptiness, waiting to regain his composure so that he could reply calmly to one who came wanting to know if the pillar of salt that Lot's wife turned into was rock salt or sea salt, or if Noah got drunk on white wine or red wine. Outside the Temple, Jesus asked the way to Bethlehem, his second destination. He lost his way twice amid the confusion of streets and people before he found the gate through which he had passed while inside his mother's womb thirteen years earlier, almost ready to enter the world. But this was not in Jesus' mind, because the obvious, as we all know, clips the wings of the restless bird of imagination, if any reader of this gospel were to look at a photograph of his pregnant mother when she was carrying him, for example, could he possibly imagine himself inside that womb. Jesus descends in the direction of Bethlehem, now he can reflect on the scribe's answers not just to his own question but also to the questions raised by others. What worries him is the feeling that all those questions were really one question, and that the reply given to each answered all, especially the last reply, which summed up the rest, the insatiable hunger of the wolf of guilt that is forever gnawing, devouring, and spewing up. Thanks to the fickleness of memory we often do not know, or know but try to forget, what caused our guilt, or, speaking metaphorically like the scribe, the lair of the wolf that pursues us. But Jesus knows, and that is where he is going. He has no idea what he'll do when he gets there, but this is better than announcing, I am here, and waiting for someone to ask, What do you want, punishment, pardon, or oblivion.
Like his father and mother before him, he stopped at Rachel's tomb to pray. Then, feeling his heart beat faster and faster, he resumed his journey. The first houses of Bethlehem were within sight, this is the main road into the village, taken by his homicidal father and the soldiers in his dream night after night. In daylight it doesn't
