As Others Saw Him: A Retrospect, A.D. 54 — John Shaqi
As Others Saw Him: A Retrospect, A.D. 54Jacobs, Joseph
Religion
As Others Saw Him: A Retrospect, A.D. 54
Jacobs, Joseph
Bible. New Testament -- History of Biblical events -- Fiction; Biographical fiction; Jesus Christ -- Fiction
Now I will tell thee of a most strange event that happened with me and
this Jesus. A day or two after this, I was sitting in my room and studying
the words of Torah, and had fallen into deep thought on the things of this
life and the next, and gradually I fell thinking of certain words that I
had heard from Jesus the Nazarene, as I have before told you. Hast thou
ever felt, Aglaophonos, as if some one was gazing upon thee, and thou
couldst not refrain from looking round to see who it was? So I felt at
this moment, and I looked up from the sacred scroll, and lo! Jesus the
Nazarene stood before me, gazing upon me with those piercing eyes I can
never forget. His face was pale and indistinct, but the eyes shone forth
as if with tenderness and pity. Then he seemed to lean forward, and spoke
to me in a low yet piercing voice these words: “Awake thou that sleepest,
and arise from the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee.” I had
shrunk back from his gaze, and was, indeed, in all amaze and wonder that
he should be in the room; but when I looked again, behold, he was gone,
there was no man there.
But this is not all the wonder of that event, for, being startled, and,
indeed, somewhat fearful at his sudden appearance and disappearance, I
arose and went out into the highway, and went out to walk on the
Gethsemane road. Now, as I came clear of the city, I saw a group of men
coming down the opposite hill, and when they came near, behold, it was
Jesus and some of his friends. I was astonished and surprised beyond all
measure, for how could Jesus have just been with me, and be now coming
from Gethsemane? And when they were passing me, Jesus glanced at me very
slightly, as at a stranger—he that had spoken to my soul but a few minutes
since.
Now, after they had passed me, there came one running after them whom I
knew—one Meshullam ben Hanoch—and I stopped him and asked him whither he
was going, and he said, “Stay me not. I have run all the way from Bethany
to catch up that man thou seest there, Jesus the Nazarene;” and with that
he took up his running and left me.
I knew not what to think. I had seen and heard Jesus in my own house in
Jerusalem, and lo! at that very same time, as I now learned, he had been
at Bethany. What thinkest thou, Aglaophonos,—can a man be in two places at
one and the same time? or can it be that the mind of man, and the power of
his eye, can go forth from his body and create a vision of another man
that hath all the semblance of reality? I know not what to think; but I
have heard that, even after his death, those who were nearest and dearest
to Jesus saw him and heard him even as I did. Nor do I wonder at this,
after what has occurred to myself.
VIII.
THE REBUKING OF JESUS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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