Draft

CSV: She could not help laughing at what she saw. 'Your boys will not like it much, Lord, not at first. Later they will think I'm your woman and treat me like their sister, but nothing really changes. In years to come 'the disciple Yeshua loved' will be applied to your cousin.'

CSW: The Herodians hated Yeshua when they saw how he and his disciples dined at the house of Miriam in Magdala, breaking down barriers between human beings and God, and breaking down barriers between human beings themselves. Their livelihood consisted of being paid interlocutors.

CSX: Taking no thought of the digestion of those who dined, they said to Yeshua, 'Howbeit you call yourself a disciple of Yohanan, yet are found in the home of a loose woman, one not even of the holy people of God, eating and drinking with a man known to be a tax-collector?'

CSY: Yeshua turned to Mattiyahu and asked of him, in a perfect parody of confusion, 'Levi, please help me, do you see anyone known to be a tax collector here?'

'Not at all, Master,' he replied. 'I see only twelve full-time students who would learn the will of the God of Israel.'

CSZ: Yeshua addressed the Herodians, 'Yohanan was an ascetic and you said he had a devil. I share food and drink with my followers and you say, 'Behold, a friend of sinners, one who gets drunk with harlots.' The worst part is you assume an unmarried woman must be a prostitute.' CTA: One of the Herodians said, 'I think when you cast out devils you're really doing it by the power of Beelzebub himself.'

Yeshua said, 'That fever dream makes no sense at all. If Beelzebub gives me the power to destroy his kingdom, his kingdom is, in fact, being destroyed.'

CTB: The Herodian made one final go at Yeshua, saying, 'Show us a sign that you have authority to baptize to forgive sins.'

Yeshua said, 'God forgives sinners the moment they wish to make amends. The water itself is the sign. You seek a sign only to plug a hole in your belief.'

CTC: The Herodians murmured amongst themselves and departed, but Yeshua's cousins accepted the terms defined by them. Yakob said, 'Yeshi, which of us shall have greater authority in the age to come?' Yeshua called a son of one of the B'nei Elohim in the safe house to draw near.

CTD: He said, 'The teacher is not greater than his students, Yakob. If he teaches well, a teacher and all his students will be on a level. And if you do not conform to the will of God with the same unreserved acceptance as this child, you shall not recline at the Banquet of God.'

CTE: 'Now I will send ten of you out in five pairs to bring the baptism of repentance to the people. I cannot lead you all myself because twelve men and one woman arriving in a village together, while the men are working the fields, would be received with great suspicion, alas.'

CTF: 'Shimon, you and Yosy should go together and return home for a time, to let mother know we are well. As for Yakob and Yohanan, you should travel as another pair, I think, as I could hardly split apart my kinsmen. Teom and Mattiyahu, perhaps you could backtrack to Capernaum.'

CTG: 'As for Barthulumawus and Philippos, I would keep you together since you were disciples of Yohanan before I was ever baptized of him. But Andreia, I cannot keep you together with Rocky. You should go with Yudah, and I propose the west side of the lake, opposite from here.'

CTH: Yeshua had taken to calling the brother of Andreia 'Rocky' to avoid confusing him with his own brother, also named Shimon. He said the pairs should stay no more than two days in each place and accept only food and lodging in payment for baptizing and proclaiming the Kingdom.

CTI: 'For it is written in the Law,' Yeshua told them, 'You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.' And the message the pairs of disciples were to bring to the people was freedom from desires, freedom from fear, freedom from anger, and even freedom from grief.

CTJ: Yeshua said, 'Who is the truly content man, the one who desires everything and cannot obtain all that he grasps for, or the one who wants only what he finds possible to obtain? The one who seeks the whole world, or the one who is happy with one small and peaceful household?'

CTK: For some the message is a bitter pill, because it is a profound affirmation of the imperative against covetousness and the peasants have next to nothing. But those who embrace Yeshua's teaching to be content with what they own discover they are more free than any king.

CTL: As the ten disciples went out into Galilee Yeshua remained in the B'nei Elohim safe house in Magdala to both instruct Shimon and to be instructed in turn by Miriam. Then news came that Yohanan had been executed in Tiberias a few miles to the south. It had been a clean death. CTM: Yohanan had not been mistreated. Antipas liked to listen to him preach. But his wife Herodias could never forgive Yohanan and she maneuvered to have him beheaded. Miriam told Yeshua there were details that survived a thousand years later, but he would not hear them repeated.

CTN: Yeshua's disciples reached so many towns in Galilee that when Antipas received word of them he feared Yohanan the baptizer had been raised from the dead. Others said Yeshua was Elijah returned from heaven. All agreed he was a major prophet on the order of Isaiah or Jeremiah.

CTO: For a year Yeshua and his followers wandered through Lower Galilee and Samaria on the west side of the Jordan river, and also visited Edom and Perea on the east side. Antipas ruled all of these lands, and the religious 'authorities' who favored him ever shadowed Yeshua.

CTP: Yeshua healed a man with a withered hand one Shabbat, and the Herodians said that was a day when no work should be done. Yeshua could hardly believe his ears. He said, 'If your lamb falls in a hole on Shabbat, will you not fetch it out? This man is worth more than a lamb.'

CTQ: The Herodians shambled away again, muttering among themselves as they always did, and Miriam said, 'As I understand your purpose, Lord, none of this changes anything. The problem Herod Antipas had with Yohanan was being called out personally, which you have refused to do.'

CTR: 'No change at all?'

'No, Lord. The Empire endures and even finds the lands far in the west, but it continues to be driven by muscle, and when coal and steam come the ones who prosper from slavery are too powerful. The Empire tears itself apart and the fall of it is great.'

CTS: Yeshua nodded. 'My father and I have found that human history tends to settle into ruts, and one must be very clever to jump from one rut to another.' Then Yeshua led his disciples into Judea to the south, leaving Herod Antipater and his partisans zealous for the Law behind.

CTT: And as Yeshua roamed the countryside making the sick whole, crowds began to grow again as they did in Galilee. He said to them, 'What is the kingdom of God like, and to what shall I compare it? It is like a single seed of mustard which a man took and threw into his garden.

CTU: The forgotten seed grew into the largest shrub in the man's garden, and the birds of heaven came to nest in its branches. The Kingdom of God can be compared to a single pinch of leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it leavened the whole lump.

CTV: Many will seek the Kingdom of God, but few will enter. When the householder has locked the door and you begin to knock, saying, 'Lord, open for us,' he will answer, 'I do not know you.' And you will say, 'Recall we ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.'

CTW: And he will answer, 'Why do you call me Lord when you never did what I told you to do? I tell you that many shall come from east and west to recline at the Banquet of God but you will be thrown outside of the heavenly gate, and there people will weep and gnash their teeth!'

CTX: Yeshua and his disciples began to dwell in Bethany at the house of Shimon, a leper who had been cleansed. And many people in and around Jerusalem started to see Yeshua heal and heard him teach for the first time, as prior to this he remained solely in the north country.

CTY: For his first visit to the temple Yeshua intended to preach from Jeremiah concerning how the temple had become a den of thieves. Not a place where thievery took place, but where thieves went to avoid the consequences of their theft. He was unprepared for the real situation.

CTZ: Without sensing the irony, the Yehudim, alone among all the children of Israel, made a mandatory pilgrimage once a year to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in what began as a harvest festival, but became a celebration of freedom from slavery, all while remaining slaves of Rome.

CUA: As this 'celebration' of liberty was required by the Code of Moshe, but few of the people of Judea were actually involved in raising the animals specified for slaughter, the situation was ripe to be abused, and so it was. The presence of soldiers even spoke of Roman graft.

CUB: Yeshua grew angered to see the outer court was a teeming marketplace. Animals acceptable for sacrifice were sold at a huge markup, and Roman coins were changed, again for a steep fee, into special 'temple money' conveniently acceptable to the priests for the temple tax.

CUC: Yeshua produced one of the silver disks that had been minted by Antipas, with no image whatsoever, but the moneychangers said even that was not acceptable. So Yeshua found some rope and began to prepare it as a whip, while telling his disciples to prepare to be bouncers.

CUD: Yeshua then ripped through the Court of the Gentiles with genuine wrath, flipping tables. He shouted, 'The house of my Father is a place for worship and prayer, but you have turned it into a place to turn a profit!' None of his disciples had ever seen him that way before.

CUE: Yudah of Kerioth could squint his eyes and the Yeshua who was whipping people in the temple courtyard before him almost looked like the one he thought he signed up to follow, the one foreseen by Yohanan to come after him who would settle all Jewish accounts with the Romans. CUF: Sadducees come down to confront this rabble-rouser, Yeshua, the one whom the Herodians had described in their epistles, as now he was attacking their own livelihood. A portion of the profits made in the temple were kicked upstairs to them. They took up stones to strike him.

CUG: 'Destroy this temple,' he said, 'and in three days I will rebuild it!'

By this he was speaking of the 'temple' of his body, but the priests chose to misunderstand him. Still, they could not kill Yeshua for fear of the crowd and the disciples who closed around their master.

CUH: But Yeshua wasn't done playing with his food. He said, 'Behold the land owning priests who crave approval from the Romans, and to be seen in purple robes, to have loud salutations in the marketplace, and a place of honor at the feasts. Truly, they already have their reward!'