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Journey to Antioch, However, I Would Never Have Believed Such a Thing

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Table of Contents (Click on the Title) Prologue The Gentile Heart iv Part I The Road North 1 Chapter One The Galilean Fort 2 Chapter Two On the Trail 14 Chapter Three The First Camp 27 Chapter Four Romans Versus Auxilia 37 Chapter Five The Imperial Way Station 48 Chapter Six Around the Campfire 54 Chapter Seven The Lucid Dream 63 Chapter Eight The Reluctant Hero 68 Chapter Nine The Falling Sickness 74 Chapter Ten Stopover In Tyre 82 Part II Dangerous Passage 97 Chapter Eleven Sudden Detour 98 Chapter Twelve Desert Attack 101 Chapter Thirteen The First Oasis 111 Chapter Fourteen The Men in Black 116 Chapter Fifteen The Second Oasis 121 Chapter Sixteen The Men in White 128 Chapter Seventeen Voice in the Desert 132 Chapter Eighteen Dark Domain 136 Chapter Nineteen One Last Battle 145 Chapter Twenty Bandits’ Booty 149 i Chapter Twenty-One Journey to Ecbatana 155 Chapter Twenty-Two The Nomad Mind 162 Chapter Twenty-Three The Slave Auction 165 Part III A New Beginning 180 Chapter Twenty-Four A Vision of Home 181 Chapter Twenty-Five Journey to Tarsus 189 Chapter Twenty-Six Young Saul 195 Chapter Twenty-Seven Fallen from Grace 210 Chapter Twenty-Eight The Roman Escorts 219 Chapter Twenty-Nine The Imperial Fort 229 Chapter Thirty Aurelian 238 Chapter Thirty-One Farewell to Antioch 246 Part IV The Road Home 250 Chapter Thirty-Two Reminiscence 251 Chapter Thirty-Three The Coastal Route 259 Chapter Thirty-Four Return to Nazareth 271 Chapter Thirty-Five Back to Normal 290 Chapter Thirty-Six Tabitha 294 Chapter Thirty-Seven Samuel’s Homecoming Feast 298 Chapter Thirty-Eight The Return of Uriah 306 Chapter Thirty-Nine The Bosom of Abraham 312 Chapter Forty The Call 318 Chapter Forty-One Another Adventure 323 Chapter Forty-Two Who is Jesus? 330 ii Prologue The Gentile Heart When Jesus commissioned me to learn the heart of the Gentiles, he was making the best of a bad situation. Neither Jesus nor my parents wanted me to go on my odyssey, which I refer to now as “Jude’s Folly,” but I had been relentless on my insistence to venture forth on my own. They finally gave up on me and let me go. So, to put a good face on it for my parents, Jesus gave me my commission. What I didn’t know then was how important this assignment would turn out to be. One day, in fact, it would serve me well when I became a disciple of Jesus and then Paul. What did I learn? To begin with, in the most human way, Gentiles are similar to Jews: they can be kind, honest, deceitful, and mean. They are, like Jews, capable of great evil. Where they differ from Jews is in their capricious and carefree attitude when killing their foes. Their proscriptions against murder are not based upon moral imperatives as in our religion. There are no Ten Commandments for Gentiles and only the most vague notion of heaven and hell. I accepted these traits as human if not sinful traits. What drove me to despair at times was their attitude toward our religion. The major reasons for their dislike and distrust was the very nature of our God. The Jewish God, after all, was invisible and unforgiving. He was distant and mysterious. Pagans, of course, were also critical of their own gods. Though superstitious, they appeared to have little or no belief at all. Despite their contempt for their own religions, however, they at least knew what their gods looked like. All the Roman and Greek gods, except the unknown god, looked like mortal men and women. The Egyptian pantheon was filled with all manner of animal and bird headed gods. It also seemed inconceivable to Gentiles that we had only one deity to worship when they had a choice between hundreds of gods. My biggest mistake was when I attempted to explain God. The Lord is, after all, unknowable and appears to be, himself, capricious. This became evident to them when, during our campfire conversations, I told them about my people’s heroes. When, during our fireside chats, I told stories about our scriptural heroes, they had mixed feelings. On the one hand, they could admire a brave man like King David, and yet used the example of Joshua’s murder of women and children during his conquest of Canaan as a reason for flatly not accepting our harsh god. Other reasons, along with God’s invisibility and apparent meanness, were our religions restrictions on food and demand for circumcision. One of their favorite meats was pork, and they ate, with relish, a list of nasty, unscaled, crawling things. The very notion of mutilating their private part was likewise repugnant to them. So I gave up finally in my effort to share with them what I believed. Every once in awhile I would slip and quote a passage, but I tried very hard to fit in with my Gentile friends. As I have recorded in my third volume, the Lord gave me strength I didn’t know I had. During one point in our journey, I was able, in a dream state, to kill six men who attacked our camp. In the end, though, I was never completely accepted by most of the men. I was, in the words of Apollo and Ajax, “that wet-behind-the-ears-Jew.” I could never shake this label off. Through great hardships, which included being captured by bandits and placed on the slave auction block, I saw the very worst of the Gentiles before being rescued by a rich Pharisee. What struck me as ironic was that the man who liberated me considered me tainted because of my association with the desert bandits, yet most of the Gentiles I had known accepted my Jewish eccentricities. They joked about it with me but never condemned me as my Pharisee benefactor had. In hindsight, as I look back, I realize I had learned something very important about the Gentile mind. They had no fixed, preconceived notions about religion. They could, with the right message, be reached. Jesus knew this. I sensed even then, long before I set forth as an iii apostle, that Gentiles were looking for something to fill a void in their lives. I saw it in their eyes when I told them about our belief that there was an afterlife for the faithful, the one thing about my religion I knew the least about. Their gods of stone and wood had failed them, and yet the god of the Torah and as related by the prophets seemed impossible for them to understand. When the simple message of the Way was presented to them, they would have no religious baggage to sift through, as did the Jews. They would flock to Jesus message of redemption and promise of paradise. On my journey to Antioch, however, I would never have believed such a thing. They were the most uncouth and undisciplined people I had ever met. I could not have believed that some of them would remain friends with me for the rest of my life and four of them would one day become followers of the Way. iv Part I The Road North 1 Chapter One The Galilean Fort I raised a trembling hand to shield my eyes from the sun, holding fast on the reigns as I watched Jesus, my father, and their two Roman escorts, Rubrius and Dracho, depart. Doubts crept into my mind as I gave them a final salute. What was I doing? I might not see my family for a long time! Silhouetted in the afternoon light, Jesus, Papa and the two Romans rippled as heat chimeras, vanishing as phantoms in the rising dust. Blowing over me in the warm, Galilean breeze that moment were memories of my family and home: from those important reflections of childhood until this morning when I bid everyone farewell. Foremost in my recollections was Jesus, my oldest brother, the one vote of confidence I took with me now. Jesus had gone on his own journey and understood my desire to see the world. The Roman presence in Nazareth and Jesus’ letters during his trip with Joseph of Arimathea had wetted my appetite for adventure. This was, of course, quite different than Jesus’ trip. He had been on a sightseeing tour with his benefactor and was protected by Joseph’s personal guards. I was enlisting in the army, not boarding a galley for Rome. Though I was recommend by Cornelius, the Commander of the Galilean Cohort, I would make my journey alone. For the first time in my life, I was on my own. I would be, like Moses among the Midianites, a stranger in a strange land. It was both an exhilarating and terrifying experience. I knew I wanted to use my writing and memory skills in the army; I just wasn’t certain how. I couldn’t be a regular soldier, of course. I was, after all, a Jew. My weapon, I promised Papa, would be my pen. But what would I do? Would I write letters for Roman officers, assist in ordering supplies, and be able to use my knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Aramaic as an interpreter as well as a scribe? What if they handed me a shield and sword and ordered me to fight? I had no guarantee in writing for what I was supposed to do. All I had was Cornelius’ high opinion of me, which I hoped preceded me to my new post.
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