Preview Chapter 1

Preview the First Chapter of Bethlehem Boys

(Note: As Bethlehem Boys is narrated by a Jewish man living in a Jewish village more than thirty years before Christianity began, transliterated Hebrew is used for names and places and religious ideas and concepts to create a more authentic feel for its time and setting. To aid in comprehension, English translations for many of these Hebrew words-and a few locales in Latin named by the Romans who occupied Judea at the time-appear in footnotes in the paperback version and clickable notes in the Kindle version.) Like what you read? Buy it today!

Chapter One

"Wake up! The Messiah has been robbed!”

Over the years I’ve been shaken from sleep many times by people shouting through the door of my house in the middle of the night. Normally I ignore them, or, if they persist, I respond, in a voice that is anything but helpful, that I am off duty.

But this unusual plea piqued my interest. Trying not to disturb Naomi, my wife, I navigated gingerly through the darkness, stubbing my bad left knee against the leg of a table along the way. By the time I opened the door I was ready to release a stream of curses at the drunkard, beggar or fool who had dared to interrupt my precious slumber.

Moonlight blinded me for a moment, until my night vision adjusted to reveal an old man holding an oil lamp.

“I’m off duty. Constable Elihu is on night patrol.”

He shook his head. “I will not seek the aid of that pompous fanatic. He sneers at me whenever he passes, as if I were a leper.”

It took a moment for my sluggish memory to identify him. “You’re the saltseller, right?”

“I’m Uriel ben Teman. I was once Yehud’s[1] leading purveyor of the life-giving mineral, but I am retired.” His free hand grabbed my arm. “Now come!”

From across the room I heard a sleepy murmur. “Who’s here, Gidon?”

“Uriel the saltseller,” I replied.

“Retired!” chirped Uriel.

“Oh. Tell him we’re all stocked up for the week,” murmured Naomi before falling back to sleep.

Once again, Uriel pulled my arm. “Come! We must find the thieves before they make off with the Messiah’s treasures!”

Sighing, I threw on my cloak and skullcap, grabbed my blue sash and truncheon, closed the door and followed the old man. Even though it was spring it was unusually cold and I cursed myself for not bringing gloves. As we walked along the road that encircled the city, past small stone homes abutting tiny huts with thatched roofs on one side and three-story apartment buildings on the other, I was reminded of Bethlehem’s unwritten rule of home ownership: If you can afford the land, build whatever you want on it.

Trying to make conversation, I said, “So. This messiah. Someone we know? Ariah ben Rani? Or Yehudah the Magician, perhaps?”

“No, no, no!” Uriel snapped. “Imposters, all of them! He is the true Chosen One.”

Uriel was a relative newcomer to our small village. A widower who had lived most of his life in the coastal town of Ashdod where he had made a fortune harvesting salt from the shores of the Mare Nostrum[2] and selling it to our Roman occupiers. For reasons no one understood he decided to retire in Bethlehem. There were rumors that he was a spy for the Kumran Isiyim,[3] that strange tribe of religious ascetics who lived in caves in the desert surrounding the large, foul-smelling body of water we Yehudim[4] called Yam ha-Melah,[5] the Sea of Salt.

For an old man Uriel walked very fast. Then again, he wasn’t hampered by a limp, as I was, the legacy of a war wound that had never healed properly. When he was nearly twenty feet ahead of me I shouted, “Slow down!”

He stopped and waved at me with a bony hand. “Hurry! Hurry!”

Hoping that conversation might slow his pace, I asked, “So, what makes you think this messiah is the real thing?”

He pointed to the sky. “Do you not see the star that journeys here from the East? Two hundred years ago the Prophet Shimon of Adhasa said that the appearance of such a star would mean that the time of the Messiah is here!”

I had never heard of this particular Prophet, but the “galloping star” had been the talk of the town ever since it had appeared in the eastern horizon last month and slowly began making its way westward across the sky. Doomsayers interpreted it as a sign that the end of the world was near. Optimists like Uriel apparently believed that it signaled the arrival of the long-awaited savior of the Yehudim. And what about the rest of us-the farmers, carpenters, masons, butchers, fishermen, birdsellers, merchants and laborers who didn’t have the luxury of spending our days sitting around tables in the synagogue debating the significance of stellar portents? Well, we just hoped it didn’t fall from the sky and kill us.

“I studied the Torah[6] and the Prophets and Judges for many years and I never encountered the name of Shimon of Adhasa,” I said.

Uriel shook his head in contempt. “Of course you didn’t. Your Sedukim[7] masters would never include in their canon the words of a Prophet championed by the Isiyim.”

Ahhh, I thought. “So what they say about you and the Isiyim is true.”

He scoffed. “Do I look like a wild-haired, cave-dwelling hermit who lives on nuts and berries? I am not an Isiyim. But that doesn’t mean I don’t share many of their beliefs.”

I was too tired to discuss theology so I silently followed him until we reached a large stone building surrounded by a wooden fence. At the gate six men were yelling at a short fat man clad in a tunic.

“How could you let this happen, Sagiv?”

“A plague upon your inn!”

“May Elohim[8] strike you dead!”

Wielding my truncheon, I pushed through the crowd. The fat man’s panicked expression changed to relief. “Ahhh! Praise Elyon[9] the Watch is here! Can you please ask these hooligans to leave me alone? They’re disturbing my guests!”

Sagiv ben Dan was the owner of Bethlehem’s largest inn and a respected member of our little village. He was the last person you’d expect to be the target of a mob.

“What’s going on here?” I demanded, scanning their familiar faces. They were all merchants and tradesmen. Some of them I had known my entire life.

“Arrest the innkeeper, Gidon!” demanded Erez, a flower seller.

“That’s Senior Constable Gidon to you,” I replied, fingering my sash.

“Why should we trust a puppet of the filthy Roman heathen?” shouted Raz, the teenage son of Meir the candlemaker.

The other men backed away from the boy. Insulting the Watch was foolish. But publicly cursing our hot-tempered occupiers was suicidal.

Stepping closer to Raz, I replied, “I am employed by the Bethlehem Town Watch, which reports directly to the Sanhedrin[10] in Yerushalayim.[11] They’re my puppetmasters. Who are yours?”

The boy started to approach me but stopped when I waved the truncheon menacingly. “You recognize my official weapon, don’t you? You were there when I used it to knock some sense into your older brother Nachum when he got drunk and tried to steal a donkey from Dov the blacksmith.”

This seemed to quell his anger. He spat on the ground and stalked off. Turning to Uriel, I said, “You brought me out here in the middle of the night to report a theft. Tell me what happened.”

Waving a finger at Sagiv, Uriel said, “This man failed to protect the Messiah!”

The innkeeper shook his head. “This is not true, Senior Constable!”

“Yes it is! The theft took place here, at your inn! Do you deny it?”

“I don’t deny the theft but it didn’t happen in the inn.”

“But the victims were your lodgers, nonetheless, and that makes you-”

“Quiet!” I snapped. My leg was hurting and I wanted to sit down. Even more, I wanted to go back to sleep. I wasn’t even supposed to be here right now. Turning to Sagiv, I said, “Did a theft take place on this property?”

Sagiv shrugged. “Such a claim has been made although there is no proof.”

“No proof?” Uriel exploded. “There’s plenty of-”

Waving my hands, I said, “Enough! Sagiv, take me to the room where the theft took place.”

“Allegedly took place,” Sagiv weakly protested.

After warning the mob to stay outside the gate I followed Sagiv and Uriel to a large fenced-in area behind the inn. There was a small plot of winter wheat, a well and a barn with a sliding door. A wooden mezuzah[12] had been nailed to the doorpost.

Uriel knocked on the door. “We wish to come in.”

From within I heard a muffled voice. “Yes.”

Uriel slid open the door. My nostrils filled with the odors of hay, manure and animal sweat. A scrawny mule watched us from a narrow stall. Three goats and a ram were lazily chewing their cud in a small pen. In another half a dozen chickens gazed at us from their roosts.

In the middle of the barn was a large blanket upon which sat a middle-aged man and a young girl. He was thin and gangly, with a wild mane of gray hair and an unkempt beard that extended halfway down his chest. His cloak and skullcap were frayed and caked with dust and his long fingers twirled one of the four blue tzitzit[13] that trailed from the corners of his undergarment. His brown eyes stared into the distance, barely registering our presence.

The mother was a tiny teenage girl dressed in a dusty brown frock with a long blue shawl. She was clasping something in a blanket. Unlike her husband, her expression was alert and peaceful. She acknowledged our presence with a nod.

I approached the man and said, “I am Senior Constable Gidon ben Einan of the Bethlehem Town Watch.”

The man looked up at me and said, “I am Yosef ben Yaakov of Notseret.”[14]

Pursing my lips, I said, “You are a long way from home.”

He nodded. “We are here for the census.”

“You were born in Bethlehem?”

“No, but I am a descendant of King Dovid.”[15]

I sighed. Yet another “census pilgrim” coming home to be counted in the census of Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, the Roman governor of Assyria[16] and Yehud. What was supposed to be a straightforward way of counting the Yehudi[17] population to justify increasing our crippling taxes had been transformed by rumor and chicanery into a clarion call for all Yehudim to return to their ancestral towns and villages to be documented as official residents.

Most Yehudim stayed put, since there was no real incentive to leave your home and pottery business in Yericho[18] just to be counted as a resident of your father’s village of Yaffa.[19] Unless, of course, you claimed to a descendant of Dovid. The second king of Yisroel[20] had been born right here in Bethlehem, although once he took over the throne he never returned to his hometown. Our little community might have forever remained a backwater were it not for the epidemic of messiah fever that had infected so many Yehudim in recent years. Its main symptom was a fervent belief that somewhere out there a righteous man, anointed by Adonai [21],would emerge from humble origins and lead a mass uprising that would drive the gentiles out of our ancient land and re-establish the true kingdom of Yisroel. Supposedly, the coming of the Messiah was foretold by the Prophets, who predicted that this savior would be born in Bethlehem and a direct descendant of King Dovid.

Well, we Yehudim had been waiting for the Messiah for many generations and over the years there had been no shortage of candidates. It seemed as if after every drought, plague or earthquake some filthy, wild-eyed man would wander into town from the desert and proclaim himself the true king of Adonai’s chosen people. If his ancestral credentials checked out, he’d garner a small group of followers who’d stick around until they discovered that he was either a fraud or simply insane and then cast him aside like an olive pit.

A village like Bethlehem could take in and spit out one or two of these charlatans a year without incident. But the census had really turned up the heat. Hundreds of fathers who claimed patrilineal descent from King Dovid had brought their pregnant wives from every corner of Yehud, Someron[22] and the Galil[23] to be counted by the census and to make sure that their unborn son-who after all, might one day grow up to be the actual Messiah-would be born here. These census pilgrims now occupied every available room at our inns and apartment buildings. Those who couldn’t find rooms leased small plots of land where they could pitch their tents.

Then there were the Yosefs of the world. “Why are you lodging in a barn? This isn’t a healthy place for a child.”

I knew what his answer would be even as I asked the question. “We are poor. We don’t own a tent and can’t afford to stay at an inn.”

I turned to Sagiv. “You couldn’t spare a room for a woman with child?”

“Every woman staying at my inn is pregnant,” he answered. “This is the only sheltered space I had left.”

“And how much are you charging them?” I asked.

“One shekel a week.”

“For a filthy, unheated barn? If any member of this family dies I will bring you before the Sanhedrin to face charges of negligence!”

Sagiv’s face paled. Pointing at the girl, he replied, “The mother says they will not be harmed because Elyon watches over the child.”

I sighed. Elyon. Elohim. Adonai. How could we Yehudim ever hope to re-conquer our ancient land when we couldn’t even agree on a single name for our god?

“Perhaps,” I said. “But I would like to see for myself.” Turning to Yosef, I said, “May I view the child?”

Yosef nodded. “Miryam, show our son to the constable.”

The girl pulled aside the blanket. A baby boy wrapped in a swaddle was suckling at her breast. “His name is Yeshua ben Yosef.”

I raised an eyebrow. Most Yehudim didn’t publicly reveal the names of their sons until they were circumcised on their eighth day of life. But maybe they did things differently in backwater villages like Notseret.

Leaning in closer to take a look at the child, I was surprised at his appearance. I had seen enough newborn children to know what they should look like. This one didn’t bear the wrinkles, baldness and swarthy pallor of recent childbirth. His skin was smooth and his head sported a thick mane of curly brown hair. “He was born when?”

“Two nights ago,” said Yosef. “In this barn.”

The baby detached himself from his mother and gazed at me with large brown eyes. Maybe it was my imagination, but his facial expression seemed to convey the wisdom of a grown man. Instinctively, I reached down to pat his hair.

“Do not touch him!” screamed Uriel. “He has been chosen by The Almighty!”

I told Sagiv to wait for us at the gate and gently guided Uriel by the elbow outside the barn where we could speak without being overheard.

“Uriel, King Dovid had twenty sons. By now there must be thousands of his descendants alive in Yehud today. Half of them are probably right here in Bethlehem and the other half are on their way. What makes this infant any different than the dozens of other boys who will be born here?”

“Because he is the Chosen One!” Uriel snapped.

I rolled my eyes. Oh well, that explains everything.

Sensing my skepticism, he added, “The scholars said so, too.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Scholars? What scholars?”

“That’s why you’re here. Earlier this evening three of them came to pray to the child and give him precious treasures.”

“Were they from Yerushalayim?”

He spat on the ground. “Ha! Those ignorant Sedukim wouldn’t know the Messiah if He rode in on the angel Gavriel’s[24] wings. These scholars were foreigners.”

“And what kinds of gifts did they bring?”

“Gold and precious ointments and scents.”

“Did you meet these scholars?””

He paused. “No. But Yosef told me about their visit. And he showed me the chests. Before they were stolen.”

“Did you see the actual treasures inside the chests?”

“Of course not! They didn't belong to me.”

“And were you with the family when the theft took place?”

He shook his head. “No. I went home to rest. Several hours later, Yosef came to my door telling me that the treasures had been stolen while they slept. After I returned here to confirm that they were gone I came to get you.”

“Did anyone witness the theft?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s your job to find out.”

I sighed. It was going to be a long night. “I need to talk to the father. Bring him out, please.”

While Uriel went inside, I leaned against a wall and gazed at the inn. It was a large stone structure with two floors. On each corner of the roof was a small chimney. Wisps of smoke were billowing from three of them.

I heard a rustling noise and turned. A rat was squeezing through a hole in the barn wall. Yosef emerged, followed by the saltseller.

“Uriel, go back inside,” I ordered.

“I must be here to witness your-”

“The mother needs protection. And company. Go.”

I closed the door and motioned for Yosef to follow me to the well. “Uriel has told me his version of what happened earlier this evening. I want to hear yours. The full story, starting with the day you decided to come to Bethlehem.”

He nodded. “My wife was seven months’ pregnant when we first heard about the census. I didn’t want to come here but she insisted.”

“Why?”

“I am a descendant of King Dovid. For this reason she insisted that our son be born in Bethlehem.”

“Do you always do everything your wife demands?”

He lowered his head. “I am a poor carpenter who lives in a tiny hut with a dirt floor and a grass roof. It’s a miracle that Miryam’s father agreed to let her marry me at all. I will do anything for her, even if I must journey a thousand miles and share a barn with goats and fowl.”

“So, when did you leave Notseret?”

“Two weeks ago. We walked the entire way, carrying our few possessions on our backs.”

“When did you arrive in Bethlehem?”

“Two days ago. I had spent nearly all of what little money I had on food for Miryam. She was in the grip of childbirth and I begged the innkeeper to let us have a room, but he said the only space he had left was in his barn. Yeshua was born the first night we arrived.”

“Did a midwife help with the birth?”

He nodded. “Yes, one arrived just as he was emerging from my wife’s womb. She cut the cord and bathed and swaddled him and guided him to Miryam’s breast.”

I didn’t even want to guess where the bathwater came from. “After the child was born did anyone visit you?”

“The innkeeper gave us some stale bread and shriveled dates.”

I reminded myself to have a stern word with Sagiv later. “And these scholars. Tell me about them. When did they come?”

“Shortly after sundown.”

“What were their names?”

“I don’t remember.”

“How did they arrive?”

“On asses.”

“Describe them.”

“They had long gray hair on the back and white hair on their bellies and large ears-”

I rolled my eyes. “The scholars, not the asses.”

He blushed. “Oh. They had long beards and wore colorful robes.”

“What kind of scholars were they?”

He thought for a minute. “The kind that tell the future by looking at the stars.”

“Astrologers.”

He nodded. “Yes. They said they found us by following the trail of the roaming angel.”

“The what?”

He pointed upward. Right, right, the roving star. It did seem to be hovering in the center of the sky above our heads. But I was a watchman. We didn’t deal with angels in the sky. We dealt with facts on the ground. “Tell me about the gifts.”

“They brought three wooden chests.”

“What did they contain?”

“One had many gold coins. Another was filled with pieces of a yellow ointment one of them called myrrh. The other had sticks of incense they called-uhm, let me think-fren-frin-”

“Frankincense.”

“Yes, frankincense! I had never heard of such wondrous things.”

“And these scholars said they were gifts. For your son.”

He nodded, vigorously. “Yes! They said they had come from Persia and Ethiopia and the Hindoo lands to pay homage to him.”

“How long were they here?”

“Only for a short time. I invited them to stay but they said they needed to return home. I think they just didn’t want to spend the night in a barn. Who could blame them? It’s dirty and stinks of manure and with all the bleating and clucking I barely get any sleep.”

“Did anyone else besides you and your wife see these men?”

“No.”

“I find it hard to believe that neither Sagiv nor anyone else staying at the inn saw or heard these visitors.”

He shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps they were very quiet?”

“Did anyone else besides you and your wife see these chests?”

“Yes. Uriel ben Teman did.”

“When did he see them?”

“Not long after the scholars left.”

“Had he visited you before?”

“No. Miryam was feeling faint and asked for some salt. The innkeeper told me that Uriel ben Teman was a saltseller. I went to his house to ask for his help and he brought some salt, bread and wine. That’s when he saw the chests.”

“Were they still here when he left?”

“Yes. We went to sleep after that. When I woke up the chests were gone.”

I rubbed my chin. “You didn’t hear anyone enter the barn?”

“No. We were all very tired.”

I stared at him for a long moment. I am a cynical man but I couldn’t detect anything but naivete in his demeanor. “I want to take a closer look.”

Yosef followed me into the barn. Uriel was standing next to the goat pen. “Now do you see? A great crime-”

“Shh!” I snapped. Turning to Yosef, I said, “Show me where the chests were located.”

He walked over to a wall. “We placed them here so no one would trip over them.”

As Uriel watched me suspiciously, I lit a candle and knelt down to examine the area, wincing at a stab of pain in my knee. I looked for impressions the edges of a wooden box would have made in the soil and for wood shavings and sawdust. I sniffed the air, trying to identify the lingering scent of myrrh and frankincense. I had no idea what they smelled like but I figured that they’d leave some kind of aroma that stood out from the stench of the livestock.

After nearly ten minutes, I found nothing. No marks. No slivers. No smells.

I stood up and gazed at the mother who was resting on the blanket. She had moved the baby to a small wooden cradle.

“Is that cradle yours?”

Yosef shook his head. “A man gave it to us.”

“Hebel the parchment maker,” added Uriel. “Once he knew the Messiah was here he wanted to help him. His children are grown so he no longer needed it.”

To both Yosef and Uriel I said, “Chests of gold and expensive ointments. Why didn’t you place them in storage at the inn?”

Yosef shrugged. “I never thought that anyone would steal an offering to the Messiah.”

Simpleton! I wanted to scream. What do you think happens when three thousand census pilgrims swarm into a town with storage chests full of clothes, household utensils, food and wine? That’s why we’ve barely heard any reports of bandits attacking people on the road-they all lurk in the shadows and wait to rob them here while they sleep.

I sighed. The chests were probably halfway to Perea[25] right now. Still, I had to go through the motions. “Do you have any idea who might have stolen them?”

Yosef shook his head. “No. We don’t know anyone here.”

I turned to Uriel. “How about you?”

The saltseller grimaced. “Obviously, it must have been a Roman, Arab or some other heathen. No Yehudi would dare steal from the Chosen One!”

The old man was beginning to get on my nerves. “How long will you be staying here?” I asked Yosef.

“Until we have been counted in the census.”

With more than a million Yehudim living in hundreds of towns and villages in the Holy Land, it might be months before the Romans finally got around to Bethlehem. This family couldn’t stay in a barn all that time.

I left to find Sagiv. More than twenty men now stood by the gate. Several carried loaves of bread. One held two roasted turtledoves. My stomach gurgled in hunger. A man clutching a bushel of grapes approached me and said, “Are you done speaking to the Messiah’s father? We wish to pay homage as well.”

Hmmm, I smirked. Where were all of you when these poor wretches couldn’t find anyone to take them in? And why are you just offering them food, instead of giving them shelter in your homes?

Sagiv was sitting on the inn’s doorstep. “Move the Notsrim[26] into a room. One with a fireplace. And make sure all of them are fed.”

He stood up in protest. “I told you, I have no rooms-”

“Oh, yes you do,” I replied. “Every innkeeper keeps his best room unoccupied, just in case a king or Roman general happens to drop in unexpectedly. I know that yours is on the second floor. There’s no smoke flowing from its chimney.”

He sighed. “Fine. They can stay. And who will pay for their lodging and food?”

Motioning to the crowd, I said, “Ask them. If they really care about the family they’ll be willing to donate more than a few loaves of stale bread.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then you will shoulder the costs yourself. Unless you’d rather have me take you to the magistrate.”

He frowned. “I will lose a fortune lodging these Galilim.”[27]

Placing a hand on his shoulder, I smiled and replied, “Look on the bright side. If Uriel turns out to be right about this boy, imagine how much people will pay to stay at the inn where the Messiah was born?”

Did that pique your interest? Get your copy of Bethlehem Boys in paperback or Kindle format today!

Footnotes

[1]Judea.

[2]The Mediterranean Sea.

[3]The Essenes of Qumran.

[4]Jews.

[5]The Dead Sea.

[6]The first five books of the Old Testament.

[7]Sadduccees, the most traditionalist sect of Judaism.

[8]One of many Hebrew names for God.

[9]One of the many Hebrew names for God.

[10]A council of learned community leaders responsible for managing all aspects of judicial, ecclesiastical and administrative life in Judea. Most larger towns had their own Sanhedrin. Smaller villages, like Bethlehem, fell under the authority of regional councils.

[11]Jerusalem.

[12]A decorative case holding a parchment with prayers. One was mounted on the doorpost of a Jewish dwelling, as mandated in Deuteronomy 6:9.

[13]Tassels of blue thread that hung from the corners of a garment, as mandated in Numbers 15:37.

[14]Nazareth.

[15]David.

[16]A general name Jews would have used for the lands north of ancient Judea that at one time encompassed parts of modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey.

[17]A Jew (proper noun) or Jewish (adjective).

[18]Jericho.

[19]Jaffa.

[20]Israel.

[21]One of many Hebrew names for God.

[22]Samaria.

[23]Galilee.

[24]Gabriel.

[25]A region east of the Jordan River that at one time was under the rule of King Herod.

[26]Nazarenes.

[27]Galileans.