Sample Translations – Chapter 1.

Chapter 1

The Sun was rising from behind the Gergesha hills. A mighty sheaf of light stabbed into the sky and at the same time downwards into the depths too, for the sparkling mirror of Lake Kinnereth hurled back the light. Height and depth were in abeyance, for what was above was also below, and the world lay between two sheaves of light, blue, green and brown, weightless, seeming to float in the air.

A red cloud hung above the farther shore like a gigantic water lily. Down below, however, another gleamed likewise, and there was no telling which was the real one: that floating on high or the one in the depths.

Up surged the Sun in the fullness of its mastery and power, in the splendour of its regal pomp, triumphally. In the west the slender sickle of the Moon still hung in a faint silver light, withdrawing wanly before the flood from the east.

Suddenly a thousand voices sang out in the world. Chirpings, cooings, twitterings, plangent whistles, strident cawings, chatterings. The world filled with the sounds of light. Birds, creatures of the light, flew up, took wing from the eucalyptus branches as they shone with the dew of the early spring morning, from the palms that swayed in the light breeze, the perfumed citrus trees and the cover of the undulating reed-beds, and in a tumult of joy scattered towards the blue water and the sky, appearing at the same time in the air above and in the mirror beneath.

To the right the houses of the half-built Tiberias, the new town, gleamed in the dawn light. White cubes on the hillside, white cubes in the shimmering depths, and further along the curving shoreline the white patches of Migdal replied. Above and below, far and near, all was reflection. Nothing but vibrating play, nothing but light. Behind Migdal in a long arc lay green patches of dense forest, and the plain of Galilee sprawled beneath a distant, trembling veil. The houses clustering in nearby Capharnahum sparkled like glass. A horn rang out, the signal of the watchmen at the southern gate that they had opened it. Now melancholy, now powerful, the notes drifted over the lakeside, out across the water, up towards the Sun, merged with the tide of light, and with the horn came the crowing of cocks.

The tiny stream too suddenly spoke out among the shining rocks, as if it had hitherto been silent. It babbled off excitedly its night-time sleepiness and, like a waking child, ran in a silver thread towards the lake, its mother, to be lost in its love as in enfolding maternal arms.

Shimon bar Yonah, the fisherman, stopped and looked around. His thick black beard shook in the breeze, and his brow and body, bare to the waist, shone brown.

“The lake’s like a great heart,” said he in an undertone, as if reluctant to disturb the son et lumière all around.

Andreas, the younger of the brothers, gave lake, shores and sky a long look, scratched his hairy chest and stretched,

LakeKinnerethwas indeed like a heart. Wide in the north, pointed in the south, it drew in a ceaseless flow of the shallow waters of the Jordan and released them again, wide and deep, among the dark trees and thickets, to run across the plain and lose themselves in the lifeless, poisonously salty hell of the Dead Sea, where all life ended, every flicker extinguished, where in rock-strewn desolation every sound and movement was consumed, life came to a halt, and the throat of the Void yawned in blistering heat.

The dark stones now came to life in a moment and slid in hordes into the water. Terrapins. Once, long ago, a poor starving woman had asked a rich woman for bread, but she had not given her any. Then the starving woman had cursed her: may your loaves turn into terrapins! And the loaves, of which the heartless woman had plenty, all became terrapins that moment. From then on, for the rest of her life, every loaf for which she reached, from which she wanted to eat, became a terrapin. So that is why there are so many terrapins, because one woman did not take pity on another.

The two brothers strode in silence across the cold stones among the horde of terrapins as they slid into the water. Their only clothing was a loincloth, while on their heads white keffiyehs fluttered like wings in the chill early morning wind.

The boat, moored to a knobbly root, was moving gently on the waves. The men waded into the icy water as if stepping on knife-blades. They shivered from head to foot at the biting cold of Kinnereth.

Shimon took the oars while Andreas went to the bow. The blue water shattered, and the world hitherto dancing on it broke into a million sudden fragments. They peered around, their eyes mere slits against the blinding light. The rowlocks creaked as the oars dipped into the water and the edges of the land began to rise and fall, to rock. Above the dry land stood a trembling column of light, warmth rising, the glistening vapour quivering like a dangling silken curtain rippling in the cold onshore breeze. A few wildfowl flew up into the rising light, flocked together and then glided down in the direction of the lake and struck into the depths like spears. In the distance the town rumbled quietly, and the bells of a caravan rang softly. Came the croak of a crane, the splash of a duck, the scream of a fishing bird . . . then again silence, tiny ripples under the stern of the clumsy boat, the water dripping from the oars like pearls of light.

It was the two men’s practice to set long nets in the water of an evening and to take them up  and collect the fish that were caught at dawn. Today that was Andreas’s task. As brothers who worked peaceably together they took it in turn to row and to pull in the fish. Then they would pick over the fish and divide them into the sections of the boat; some they ate themselves, and the better part of the catch they handed over to Zabiyah, the wealthy fishing-boat owner. He and his two sons, Yokhanan and Yakob, and their servants used to fish lower down, kept a fish-shop inJerusalem, and  supplied the High Priests’ houses and the kitchens of the Roman officials with fish. They also delivered to the big Greek fish-smoker at Tarichais, from where they were sent on to distant parts, to the ever-hungry Arabs, Bedouin and Syrians. That big business was, of course, in the hands of the Greeks.

They had not gone far from the shore when, under the silken curtain of the rising light, they caught sight of a man wearing a blue robe and a fluttering keffiyeh. A thought flashed into both their minds. Surely it was not he? Shimon stopped rowing and Andreas’s hands paused on the half-raised end of the net. They did not move. The man walking on the shore was so surprisingly tall that he seemed to reach to the Heaven, his feet scarcely touching the ground. Behind the blue-robed figure stood a dark green forest, which in the bright light made the floating garment more dazzling yet. They stared at the newcomer.

It could only be he. Only he walked so lightly, as if his feet did not touch the ground, only he gave that impression of height, though he was of no more than average build.

They exchanged glances. They both remembered the times on the banks of theJordan, remembered Yokhanan, remembered the baptisms, the words of the two masters and the crowds that had flocked to them. And the quiet, profound conversations, the mysteries which the Master had taught some of them, such as the sons of Zabiyah and a few others. Yehoshuah bar Yosif had left Ainavan, or the Place of Springs, with his few followers, and they had returned to Kinnereth and heard hardly anything of him. Just now and then it had been mentioned that he had gone into Samaria, but the people of those parts had driven him away, then he had been wandering in the territory of the Decapolis, mostly along the Jordan, among the fisher folk, and had finally returned to his town, Nazareth, and nothing special had been heard of him. He worked in his brothers’ carpentry shop as he had before, in his youth.

Now, however, there he was on the lakeside, as if his feet did not touch the ground and his head reached as high as the Heaven. It was he, he, it could only be he, even at that distance it was certain.

The two fishermen quivered from head to foot with excitement.

Nevertheless, Andreas asked his brother:

“What are you staring at?”

Shimon said nothing.

“The way he’s standing it’s as if he were floating. And he’s looking at us,” stammered Andreas, as if he were afraid that he might frighten away the blessed vision with his words. So suddenly had it appeared that he could not believe his eyes.

“It’s a trick of the light, that’s why he looks so odd,” muttered Shimon, likewise not daring to believe it. As the elder, he had stepped into his father’s shoes on his death and was a married man of some importance, and liked to teach Andreas things. He had the right. Andreas did not pay much attention to him, ignored him. At one time, when they were children, he had protested, become angry, struggled against him. They had even come to blows. Shimon, however, had had a hard fist and could bend a thick coin in his fingers, and if he was angry thrashed his brother severely. But that had been a long time ago . . . All sorts of things had happened since then!

“He’s a nazir[1] ,” said Andreas uncertainly.

“A nazir, I suppose so. What else? And I . . . I just want to say . . .”

“What do you want to say?”

“Well, that this nazir . . . Is beckoning us!”

The man standing on the shore was raising his arm, beckoning. His robe was blowing out like two huge wings. It seemed that he wanted to fly from the ground.

“Hey!” he called in a friendly, ringing tone. “Come over here!”

“It is him . . .” stammered Shimon.

“Come with me, and you shall catch men, not fish!” went on the nazir, distinctly, but not very loudly.

How ever much they might have doubted, from that they recognised him. It was he, Yehoshuah bar Yosif. The summons was typical of him.

Shimon quickly stepped out of the boat and, ignoring the sharp stones, waded headlong ashore. Andreas quickly followed.

While they were hurrying to the bank the man in blue looked at them with a smile. They had even abandoned the boat and each was trying to reach him first.

“Master! Master!” shouted Shimon.

“It is I,” he replied, pointing with his finger to his chest, as was his custom. He said ‘I’ and ‘is’ with emphasis such as no one ever anywhere had given to those words. Delight flooded the hearts of the brothers on hearing that, and tears came to their eyes. They even forgot to make a proper bow to the Master but competed with one another to embrace him, kissing him on both cheeks, not caring that they were wetting his clothes. He clasped to himself affectionately with both arms, returning kiss for kiss, and then pushed them back a little and looked at them.

A little time went by during which none of them spoke. There was so much that they would have liked to ask the nazir that words would not come.

“What . . . what is your wish now, sir?” Shimon asked at length.

“What I said,” replied Yeshuah pleasantly. His shining, light brown eyes rested on the questioner’s face, and the old light smile played on his lips. “Come with me and you shall fish for souls.”

At that silence fell again, a profound silence. They were moved. They merely looked at the Master, filled with excitement and delight, and he looked and smiled at them.

His figure, wrapped in the thin blue robe, was not tall, but he was slender, muscular and sturdy. His hands were longish and calloused, but finely shaped. His feet were small. His face was brown, like that of a sunburnt Arab, and his shoulder-length hair gleamed in the morning light although it had not yet seen the comb. He wore it as before, parted in the middle after the fashion of the nazir. His forehead, however, seemed higher and smoother – or was that just how the two of them saw it? He did not trim his beard now, but it was not long; it was the sort of beard that suited a healthy young man, silky and wavy, darker than his hair. It was the sort of beard that ageing, much disappointed women might like to stroke, to which children in arms would at once like to cling with happy squeals. And his eyes? If they could have seen nothing of him but his eyes they would have recognised him. Large, slightly projecting, bright as a cut jewel, calm and yet acutely and fearlessly attentive. But in those deep, childishly wondering, attentive eyes it was evident that they had known tears when at night everyone had thought that they were fast asleep. So wonderful were his eyes; sometimes they gleamed with flecks of golden brown, sometimes they were grey-blue like iron. Now they were as soft as pure gold, now hard and cold as a knife.

The nabi[2]  sat down on a smooth rock and the two brothers sat on the grass beside him. They were sitting now as they had done years before at Ainavan, apart from the crowds and immersed in the silence and the mysteries of quiet teaching. The Tetrarch’s new, unfinished palace shone arrogantly above the vine hills of Tiberias, and a single red sail drifted over the water. Yeshuah loosened the kerchief from his head because the air was becoming warm, shook out his hair, smoothed his beard with his calloused carpenter’s fingers, and looked towards the lake. A huge wild fig tree cast a lacy shadow on them, and the light played in the nabi’s eyes as on the mirror of the waters.

“Why are you calling us, Master?” asked Andreas in surprise.

“Yes, why call two poor, ignorant fishermen?” his brother went on. “Some of Yokhanan’s disciples were much more special than us. Some of yours too.”

He said from seemly modesty that they were ignorant. In fact they were educated men, not only because they had attended the beth-hashefer and had often listened to the debaters beneath the columns of the synagogue, but because they had been initiated in the mysteries of Heaven and Earth at the feet of Yeshuah and Yokhanan. They understood the Master’s emphatic declaration ‘I am he’, and knew what it meant that he was calling them to be fishers of men. For all their modesty they drew a deep breath and their hearts swelled. They sensed that a great, decisive event was to come their way.

The Master’s words rolled from his lips in spicy, rounded, Galilean fashion. He related briefly how he had gone into theJordanarea, gone about in Judea too and tried to sow the tiny mustard seed of theKingdomofHeaven, just as much as men could accept. On a number of festivals he had gone up toJerusalemtoo and taken part in debates beneath the columns of the Mishkan. The fullness of time, however, had not yet come. They had not understood him, had not even wished to understand. Indeed, on a number of occasions he had found himself in a dangerous situation. Yokhanan too was hated, but they had not ventured to trouble him. As a person of no importance, however, he, Yeshuah, was freely and cheerfully persecuted both verbally and with menaces. He had returned toNazareth, to his trade, and waited. Now that Yokhanan had been imprisoned, however, his time had come to gather together the best and accomplish his task.

“The king has imprisoned Yokhanan, but I’m at liberty,” said he quietly. “And what he proclaimed, that theKingdomofHeavenis at hand, I must fulfil. TheKingdomofHeavenis here, it has come. The Father is sending me to proclaim it to men. And you will come with me, and be with me to the very end. We shall part no more.”

They had forgotten everything. The boat, abandoned and empty on the water, the net, the fish, the house and their family. They were living in that world which they had come to know beside theJordan, into which the Master had initiated them. They half lay, half sat as they listened to the nabi. They forgot place and time – and yet the whole world was within them.

The sound of a pipe was heard from far away, came closer and, and then the shepherd appeared on the road as he walked, almost danced, ahead of his flock, playing his five-holed pipe, dressed in a sheepskin, his heels throwing up tiny clouds of dust. The jostling, bleating grey-fleeced animals appeared too, the lambs with their childlike cries, the rams with their thick voices, and a few mean-faced, greedy-looking goats. The shepherd took the pipe from his lips now and then to call back encouragement to his sheep as if he knew them individually. An acrid smell spread in the air, golden dust rose among the bushes and a cloud of flies swarmed in the wake of the flock.

Then the dust settled, the pattering of the many little hooves and the bleating died away, and the cheery sound of the pipe faded while they sat on and talked. The nabi raised his hand again and again to give emphasis to his quiet words, and when he did so they could see the white scar of an old cut on his left thumb, the mark of the carpenter. They took pleasure even in that scar.

They looked at him and listened to him, would have liked to sit there on the lakeside for ever. It was as if they had, without noticing it, been transported to the Kingdom of Heaven, where the king was a gentle man and they sat beside him to right and left with their friends around them: the sons of Zabiyah, Levi that worked at the customs house, Philippos from Ephesus, who had come to the Jordan and then settled in Migdal, never returned to his family . . . and the rest, who were far away.

The nabi, however, got up from the rock, stretched, wound the keffiyeh round his head and spoke:

“Well then, my friends, Shimon and Andreas, let’s go. It’ll be midday, they’ll be coming ashore down there and we can meet them. I mean to call them too.”

And as if were the most natural thing the two fishermen also stood up and, as they were, with just loincloths on their bare bodies, set off with the nabi among the basking terrapins and scuttling lizards. They set out on the road as they had gone on the water with their father when they were boys, their hearts full of pleasure and the confidence that they felt in him.

2

On the lakeside the big, awkward boat was just being dragged ashore. The crew were still hauling it up, the stones grinding under the great weight. Zabiyah, a white-haired, powerful, bony man, his two sons and three bearded men, wearing little but keffiyehs, were grouped around the boat. They were stowing the nets and oars and sorting the fish. Young Yokhanan, using a net, was measuring out the wriggling silvery mass of fish and placing them in a small boat alongside.

Their house was a little farther along, a brown building among old wild figs and tamarisks. All around were racks on which nets awaiting repair swung in the breeze as they dried.

“Don’t pull that rope so taut, you blockhead!” Zabiyah’s thick, throaty voice could be heard at a distance. “If the wind comes up it’ll toss the boat about, it’ll get all chafed, don’t you know that? How often do I have to tell you, eh?”

“A good, tidy man,” muttered the nabi with a smile.

“A strong man,” added Shimon.

“And rich,” said Andreas.

“Peace be with you!” called the nabi as they came up.

“Peace, peace,” the men replied in voices thicker and lighter, as they turned their heads to see who had come and touched fingers to their foreheads.

“Ah, it’s you, Shimon, and your brother,” said old Zabiyah in a pleasant tone. “Haven’t you been out today, then?”

Yokhanan called cheerfully as he struggled with the net: “Hey, Shimon, Andreas! Only just up?”

“They’re gentlemen, they get up late,” Yakob laughed.

But suddenly their voices fell silent as they caught sight of the Master and recognised him. Their mouths fell open, their eyes stared. Then they jumped off the boat, crowded around the arrivals and embraced and kissed the nabi. And laughed, simply laughed, for what could they in fact have said? The water ran off them.

“Well, well!” exclaimed the downy-chinned Yokhanan when he had finally got his breath back. “Oh, Master! How did you get here? Where’ve you come from? Where are you going?”

“This is the man I saw in Capharnahum,” said one of the men, puzzled. “Aren’t you the man I saw sitting outside the House of Assembly yesterday?”

“I am he,” the nabi nodded. He pointed at his chest with a finger.

“Well, what an honour, a great honour,” old Zabiyah enthused. “Isn’t it, boys? The honourable nabi, whom we’ve heard so much about? The learned man?”

The Master smiled. He looked around as if he had grown up with these people, and was now returning home having been round the world.

“He whose name must not be spoken has overwhelmed us with delight,” went on Zabiyah, not knowing where to put himself, now turning towards the house, now hovering round the nabi. “Come in, step inside, eat and drink with us, what’s mine is yours! Hey! Hey! Salome! Wife! Girls! I’ve got two wretched daughters as well,” he turned apologetically to Yeshuah. “They take it in turns to work in the fish market in the City.”

The Master, however, declined the eager invitation.

“Adonai keep you, but we won’t come in. We’ve come for Yokhanan and Yakob, your sons.”

A startled silence fell. One could hear the quiet hissing of the waves and the rustle of the leaves in the big trees.

Yokhanan held out his hand and exclaimed: “You have called me, I will go.”

“I’ll go with you as well,” exclaimed Yakob with equal warmth.

Yeshuah places his hands on the shoulders of the two young men. “Do you know where I am calling you to go?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter. Wherever you’re going, we’ll go with you,” Yokhanan assured him.

The Master smiled happily, like a child. Zabiyah, however, scratched the back of his head and hummed and hawed. He looked anxiously now at the Master, now at the others.

“Sir, if I may,” he finally decided to speak. “I need my sons. I’ve got business to attend to at the smoker and inJerusalem. I can’t manage without help. One of them takes the fish to Tarichais, the other to the City, and I’ve got a stall there as well, just by the Fish Gate.”

The Master’s eyes turned convincingly to the anxious man.

“Take no care for tomorrow,” said he quietly.

Zabiyah was reluctant to upset the learned rabbuni, the man of God, but he shifted from one foot to the other and scratched his head. He was accustomed to the movement of an eyebrow being seen as an order – except by his wife – but now he dared not contradict the stranger.

“Sir,” he muttered respectfully but unhappily. “At least take a bite to eat in my house. Speak to their mother. Because in the past we’ve seen nabis who’ve danced, played and sung, and the sort that go from village to village. And we know that Yokhanan’s disciples went about in skins and were as thin as that pole there, where we hang the nets . . . But you, I can see, don’t fast and don’t mortify the flesh . . . So at least have a bit of fish and bread in my house, and a drop of wine to go with it.”

“I will come back, and then you will entertain us,” the Master reassured him. “But now we must go.”

“This boy only came home recently, when Yokhanan was imprisoned, and now you want to take him?”

He pointed at Yokhanan.

The nabi looked seriously at them. The golden glint of his eyes touched now the labourers, who were craning their necks, now the radiantly attentive faces of the brothers and the anxious father. They all felt that there was power in his eyes, that the Spirit of the Lord – blessed be his name for ever – dwelt in him.

“Live in peace,” the nabi took his leave, bowed, touched heart, lips and forehead with his fingers and turned.

The four men went with him without a word.

“Here, at least take some clothes with you! You haven’t even got keffiyehs on your heads!” called Zabiyah after them.

They, however, paid no attention but went. The father stood helplessly, watching them go. So too stood the labourers, half-naked, sunburnt, hefty lads. Perhaps they would have liked to go with them, to have nothing more to do with the boat, the net and the owner? Just to go along the lakeside, among the blossoming hills, under the citrus trees and terebinths . . . to who knows where?