The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (Harvest in Translation) Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned into a balloon overnight. Perhaps the real reason for her secretiveness was her fear that someone might connect her pregnancy with the appearance of the mysterious beggar. Such thoughts may strike us as absurd, but in moments of weariness when her mind began to stray, Mary could not help wondering how all this had come about and who was the real father of this child she carried in her womb. As everyone knows, when women are pregnant, they are given to strange cravings and flights of fancy, some of them worse than those of Mary, which we shall not betray lest we tarnish the reputation of this mother-to-be.
    Time passed, the weeks dragged, the month of Elul hot as a furnace, with the scorching winds from the southern deserts stifling the atmosphere, a season when dates and figs turn to trickling honey, and the month of Tishri bringing the first rains of autumn to moisten the soil in time for tilling and sowing, and the following month of Heshvan, when olives are gathered and the days finally turn cool. Unable to make anything grand, Joseph decided to make a simple bed where Mary might at last find rest for her swollen and cumbersome body. Heavy rains fell during the last days of Kislev and throughout most of Tebet, forcing him to interrupt his work in the yard. He took advantage of the dry spells to assemble the larger pieces of wood, but usually he had to work indoors in poor light,
and there he planed and polished the unfinished frame, covering the floor all around him with shavings and sawdust, which Mary would sweep up later and dispose of in the yard.
    In the month of Shebat the almond trees blossomed. In the month of Adar, the feast of Purim had already been celebrated when Roman soldiers appeared in Nazareth, a familiar sight throughout Galilee. Detachments went from village to city and from city to village, while others were dispatched into the country in Herod's kingdom, to inform the people that by order of Caesar Augustus every family domiciled in the provinces governed by the consul Publius Sulpicius Quirinus must participate in a census, which like all the others would bring the records up to date on those who had not yet paid their taxes to Rome. Without exception, every family had to register in their place of birth. Most of the people who gathered in the square to hear the proclamation did not mind the imperial edict, for as natives of Nazareth, settled for generations, they intended to register there. But some families had come from other parts of the kingdom, from Gaulinitis or Samaria, from Judaea, Peraea, or Idumaea, from here and there, from far and wide, and these began making preparations for the long journey, complaining bitterly about the perversity and greed of Rome and asking what would become of their crops, since it was almost time to harvest the flax and barley. And those who had large families, with babes in arms and elderly parents and grandparents, unless they had transportation of their own, wondered from whom they could borrow donkeys, or hire them at a reasonable price, and if there was a long and arduous journey ahead, ample supplies of food would be required, and water bags if they had to cross the desert, and mats and mantles for sleeping, and cooking utensils, and extra clothing, because the cold wet season was not yet over and they might have to spend nights out in the open.
    Joseph learned about the edict only after the soldiers left to carry their glad tidings elsewhere. His next-door neighbor, Ananias, suddenly appeared in a great fluster to tell him what had happened. Fortunately for Ananias, he could register in Nazareth, nor would he be celebrating Passover in Jerusalem this year, because of the harvest, so he was spared both journeys. Ananias came to warn his neighbor, but warned him with such a smug expression, as if bearing good news. Alas, even the best of men can be two-faced, and we do not know this Ananias well enough to decide whether his is a momentary lapse from