Part 1: “Whoever is not against you is for you”.
The dead man stubbornly refused to come back and the poor sot owed her a lot of money. Well if at first you don’t succeed, the witch thought… the light of a few candles illuminated a little nude figurine of Astarte, the mother of all whore witches, in one of her favorite caves on the east side of town. Still she was hesitant to use the Rabbi’s name a second time. When he started healing a couple years ago her business had dwindled to the point of desperation. Many of the spirits she knew had warned her about him. She suspected he must be truly powerful, and very important. He may even be what he claimed: The Son of God.
Deity or not, he was cutting into her profits. Recently, she had modified her approach and began using his name, a technique that might not sit well with her sister Witches. Diana had proudly and exclusively worked as a Witch for her entire career. In truth, she was still a virgin at the age of 52 though no one who knew her or her family would ever believe her. The last four generations of her maternal line had been Mediums and Healers, the softest way to say Shrine Whore/Witch. The women of her family had prospered because they believed that discretion is the better part of valor while the Rabbi was anything but discrete. He didn’t charge for his miracles, unless you counted the few dim-witted women he had convinced to bank roll his operation. He was a man who was clearly on a crash course with the religious elite. His miracle working days would likely end in an unfortunate accident at best, or a cut and dry assassination at worst.
Of course she had heard about Lazarus coming back, and a sick girl, and sick boy and yada-yada. She had done her fair share of “raising the dead” as well. Most of the time, they were shallow breathers, or unconscious, or every once in a while a spirit would escort one back for her. But this fellow at her feet was obstinately dead, and yet he still owed her. His estate had been liquidated into 30 pieces of silver which was sitting somewhere in the back room of the temple. “There’s nothing for it,” she said to the dead man before her.
“We’ll see if He can raise the dead without even being around”, she sighed heavily as she lowered to her knees. She attempted to assume the most penitent posture she could muster. Just last week his very own disciples had seen her healing a sick boy with his name. It had worked and she had gotten her payment. Then she’d heard through the grapevine that “Jesus”, she finally allowed herself to say His name in her mind, had said something about those who aren’t against me are for me, or some nonsense like that. All this thinking wasn’t helping her situation. The dead man was still dead.
“Ok… enough dilly-dallying” she said as she closed her eyes, leaving one barely open, and placed her hands on the man’s head, “In the name of Jesus, rise!”
Nothing. No sounds, no wind, no fire… still dead. “Fine.” She muttered as she rose to her feet and headed to the cave entrance. She was out her money and the cheap swindler could lay there in the smug satisfaction that Jesus of Nazareth apparently still wanted him dead. She turned back because she had forgotten to blow out the candles and suddenly she felt like she was losing her balance. It was an earthquake and she was in a cave. She stood still for a couple seconds as the whole cave shook violently stirring up a dust cloud from the walls, floor, and ceiling all at once. As quickly as it started it was over but she was frozen stiff. She either couldn’t move or couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Out of the dust cloud walked the dead man and he was looking right at her.
Part 2: “Surely He was the Son of God”.
“Nathaniel?” asked Diana the witch, taking a cautionary step towards what may only be a hallucination. It took her a few seconds to realize what had happened but once she accepted the simple truth that Jesus’ of Nazareth name really did have the power to raise people from the dead she remembered why she had brought the recently dead man back.
“Yes?” replied Nathaniel as he patted himself down feeling for something. “My tumors are gone!” he exclaimed and jumped into her arms. She hugged him impulisively, then pushed him away.
“I brought you back for a reason.” The witch grabbed her risen debtor by the arm and hurried back to the temple. She wanted the 30 pieces of silver. Rising from the dead is a lot like waking up, only the disorientation lasts much longer. Nathaniel dutifully followed the witch asking only occasional questions.
Menacing dark and sick green clouds filled the sky. “What time is it?” he asked as they approached the city. “I don’t know, afternoon time I suppose, We’ve been in the cave since morning”. She huffed and puffed taking the stone steps of the Sheep Gate two at a time, once they made it through the maze of High Sabbath merchant stalls they would be at the temple.
People were pouring out of the Sheep Gate, so what should have been a brief climb was more akin to salmon swimming up stream. It was clear the earthquake that shook her cave had hit Jerusalem too. The merchants were sweeping up shattered pottery, attempting to put their stalls back together, or chasing livestock all over Solomon’s Porch. One merchant, who was preoccupied herding pigeons, failed to notice Diana reaching down to grab a priestly garment from a stack he was selling at his stall. She handed the robe to Nathaniel. “Put this on.”
The temple was as much a stir as the market around it. Even the Priests and Temple Guards seemed worked up about something going on. “Perfect.” said Diana, “They’re distracted”. She grabbed Nathaniel by the shoulders and stared him in the eye. “Jesus of Nazareth saw to it that you could get a new lease on life today. For whatever reason I couldn’t heal your tumors permanently and they killed you. The way I see it, you still owe me for my services, and especially in light of the fact if it weren’t for me, you would still be dead.”
Nathaniel stared at her for a moment, then felt his arms and abdomen again. “So I am supposed to just walk into the Temple and demand my money back?”
She replied, “With my magic, I will cast a spell on you, so that you look like Caiphas the High Priest himself.” She patted him on the arm reassuringly, “When I finish my spell, go straight into the Temple and find my 30 pieces of silver!”
She raised both hands high into the air and took a deep breath. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs and fell to the floor. Nathaniel had no idea what to do. Guards ran to help. Before they were close enough to see, she opened one eye and whispered, “Now go you fool!” Nathaniel suddenly remembered her spell was to make him look like Caiphas. Walking boldly to the Temple entrance he shouted commands at the guards to help the woman at once. The guards looked at him quizzically, but nonetheless obeyed his orders.
The guards helped Diana to her feet just in time for her to see Nathaniel enter the Temple unimpeded. “Funny,” she said to herself. “All I did was tell him he looked like some one else, where’s the magic in that?”
Part 3 – Covenants
Nathaniel could hardly believe what he was seeing. The enormous curtain was torn in two. He had heard it took 300 priests in order to carry the 60-foot by 30-foot 4 inch thick curtain. How it became torn down the middle was hard to understand. “It must have been that earthquake,” Nathaniel thought. There were a few Priests in the temple but no one seemed to know what to do. Nathaniel couldn’t help himself. He looked through the tear into the Most Holy Place… there was someone in there.
He forgot the 30 pieces of silver he owed Diana the Witch and began walking towards the Most Holy Place. One of the Priests saw where he was headed and shouted “Unclean!”, but as Nathaniel stepped beyond the curtain the entire room seemed to fill with smoke. There was a man there, in the Most Holy Place. The man in the smoke was terribly beaten, bleeding from two gaping wounds in his wrists. He was standing before something Nathaniel had always been told didn’t exist; the Ark of the Covenant. The bleeding man was sprinkling his blood on it.
Nathaniel felt a hand grab his shoulder and pull him back from the Most Holy Place as the ground began to shake even more violently than it had before. A great crack opened in the floor of the temple all the way behind the curtain. Then something struck Nathaniel so hard on the head everything went black.
Diana the Witch was standing over him, he was outside the temple surrounded by Temple guards. “Well?” Diana asked, “Where’s my money?” Before Nathaniel could even think to form a thought some one else spoke up from beyond the ring of guards surrounding the two of them. The guards parted before Caiaphas, the High Priest. He addressed them in his annoying monologue manner of speaking,
“Some very strange things have happened today. Very strange. The earthquakes caused great damage to the temple and I suspect something of great value to Israel has been lost for all time. I know you two had nothing to do with it and in exchange for your discretion in this matter I gratefully accept your donation of 30 pieces of silver to the Temple, I am sure it will go to a good cause… you know had you come for it last night I probably would have had you both imprisoned. For one, you wouldn’t have found it and we were quite busy, but then the money came back just this morning… and so much has changed… and yet nothing has changed.”
The High Priest finished his speech and ordered the guards to follow him into the temple and sent a couple away to find some sturdy ropes good for climbing. Nathaniel stood up, looked at Diana, and hugged her. “Thank you for bringing me back, Jesus of Nazareth you say?”
“Yes” responded Diana, mostly out of shock.
“I’ll have to look him up, I wonder where he is nowadays?”
“Who knows, probably off working miracles,” said Diana the Witch as she shrugged, “So what did you see in there… what was Caiaphas talking about?”
Nathaniel and the Witch started to walk towards the north side of town, to see what all the commotion up there had been about. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.” Diana stopped to think. In the last few hours she had seen a man brought back from the dead, the head of the religious elite talking like a lunatic and suspected the earthquakes were much more than just mere coincidences. She put her arm in Nathaniel’s and said, “Some things are better left a mystery… let’s go find this Jesus character.”
The Witch
Part 1: “Whoever is not against you is for you”.
The dead man stubbornly refused to come back and the poor sot owed her a lot of money. Well if at first you don’t succeed, the witch thought… the light of a few candles illuminated a little nude figurine of Astarte, the mother of all whore witches, in one of her favorite caves on the east side of town. Still she was hesitant to use the Rabbi’s name a second time. When he started healing a couple years ago her business had dwindled to the point of desperation. Many of the spirits she knew had warned her about him. She suspected he must be truly powerful, and very important. He may even be what he claimed: The Son of God.
Deity or not, he was cutting into her profits. Recently, she had modified her approach and began using his name, a technique that might not sit well with her sister Witches. Diana had proudly and exclusively worked as a Witch for her entire career. In truth, she was still a virgin at the age of 52 though no one who knew her or her family would ever believe her. The last four generations of her maternal line had been Mediums and Healers, the softest way to say Shrine Whore/Witch. The women of her family had prospered because they believed that discretion is the better part of valor while the Rabbi was anything but discrete. He didn’t charge for his miracles, unless you counted the few dim-witted women he had convinced to bank roll his operation. He was a man who was clearly on a crash course with the religious elite. His miracle working days would likely end in an unfortunate accident at best, or a cut and dry assassination at worst.
Of course she had heard about Lazarus coming back, and a sick girl, and sick boy and yada-yada. She had done her fair share of “raising the dead” as well. Most of the time, they were shallow breathers, or unconscious, or every once in a while a spirit would escort one back for her. But this fellow at her feet was obstinately dead, and yet he still owed her. His estate had been liquidated into 30 pieces of silver which was sitting somewhere in the back room of the temple. “There’s nothing for it,” she said to the dead man before her.
“We’ll see if He can raise the dead without even being around”, she sighed heavily as she lowered to her knees. She attempted to assume the most penitent posture she could muster. Just last week his very own disciples had seen her healing a sick boy with his name. It had worked and she had gotten her payment. Then she’d heard through the grapevine that “Jesus”, she finally allowed herself to say His name in her mind, had said something about those who aren’t against me are for me, or some nonsense like that. All this thinking wasn’t helping her situation. The dead man was still dead.
“Ok… enough dilly-dallying” she said as she closed her eyes, leaving one barely open, and placed her hands on the man’s head, “In the name of Jesus, rise!”
Nothing. No sounds, no wind, no fire… still dead. “Fine.” She muttered as she rose to her feet and headed to the cave entrance. She was out her money and the cheap swindler could lay there in the smug satisfaction that Jesus of Nazareth apparently still wanted him dead. She turned back because she had forgotten to blow out the candles and suddenly she felt like she was losing her balance. It was an earthquake and she was in a cave. She stood still for a couple seconds as the whole cave shook violently stirring up a dust cloud from the walls, floor, and ceiling all at once. As quickly as it started it was over but she was frozen stiff. She either couldn’t move or couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Out of the dust cloud walked the dead man and he was looking right at her.
Part 2: “Surely He was the Son of God”.
“Nathaniel?” asked Diana the witch, taking a cautionary step towards what may only be a hallucination. It took her a few seconds to realize what had happened but once she accepted the simple truth that Jesus’ of Nazareth name really did have the power to raise people from the dead she remembered why she had brought the recently dead man back.
“Yes?” replied Nathaniel as he patted himself down feeling for something. “My tumors are gone!” he exclaimed and jumped into her arms. She hugged him impulisively, then pushed him away.
“I brought you back for a reason.” The witch grabbed her risen debtor by the arm and hurried back to the temple. She wanted the 30 pieces of silver. Rising from the dead is a lot like waking up, only the disorientation lasts much longer. Nathaniel dutifully followed the witch asking only occasional questions.
Menacing dark and sick green clouds filled the sky. “What time is it?” he asked as they approached the city. “I don’t know, afternoon time I suppose, We’ve been in the cave since morning”. She huffed and puffed taking the stone steps of the Sheep Gate two at a time, once they made it through the maze of High Sabbath merchant stalls they would be at the temple.
People were pouring out of the Sheep Gate, so what should have been a brief climb was more akin to salmon swimming up stream. It was clear the earthquake that shook her cave had hit Jerusalem too. The merchants were sweeping up shattered pottery, attempting to put their stalls back together, or chasing livestock all over Solomon’s Porch. One merchant, who was preoccupied herding pigeons, failed to notice Diana reaching down to grab a priestly garment from a stack he was selling at his stall. She handed the robe to Nathaniel. “Put this on.”
The temple was as much a stir as the market around it. Even the Priests and Temple Guards seemed worked up about something going on. “Perfect.” said Diana, “They’re distracted”. She grabbed Nathaniel by the shoulders and stared him in the eye. “Jesus of Nazareth saw to it that you could get a new lease on life today. For whatever reason I couldn’t heal your tumors permanently and they killed you. The way I see it, you still owe me for my services, and especially in light of the fact if it weren’t for me, you would still be dead.”
Nathaniel stared at her for a moment, then felt his arms and abdomen again. “So I am supposed to just walk into the Temple and demand my money back?”
She replied, “With my magic, I will cast a spell on you, so that you look like Caiphas the High Priest himself.” She patted him on the arm reassuringly, “When I finish my spell, go straight into the Temple and find my 30 pieces of silver!”
She raised both hands high into the air and took a deep breath. Then she screamed at the top of her lungs and fell to the floor. Nathaniel had no idea what to do. Guards ran to help. Before they were close enough to see, she opened one eye and whispered, “Now go you fool!” Nathaniel suddenly remembered her spell was to make him look like Caiphas. Walking boldly to the Temple entrance he shouted commands at the guards to help the woman at once. The guards looked at him quizzically, but nonetheless obeyed his orders.
The guards helped Diana to her feet just in time for her to see Nathaniel enter the Temple unimpeded. “Funny,” she said to herself. “All I did was tell him he looked like some one else, where’s the magic in that?”
Part 3 – Covenants
Nathaniel could hardly believe what he was seeing. The enormous curtain was torn in two. He had heard it took 300 priests in order to carry the 60-foot by 30-foot 4 inch thick curtain. How it became torn down the middle was hard to understand. “It must have been that earthquake,” Nathaniel thought. There were a few Priests in the temple but no one seemed to know what to do. Nathaniel couldn’t help himself. He looked through the tear into the Most Holy Place… there was someone in there.
He forgot the 30 pieces of silver he owed Diana the Witch and began walking towards the Most Holy Place. One of the Priests saw where he was headed and shouted “Unclean!”, but as Nathaniel stepped beyond the curtain the entire room seemed to fill with smoke. There was a man there, in the Most Holy Place. The man in the smoke was terribly beaten, bleeding from two gaping wounds in his wrists. He was standing before something Nathaniel had always been told didn’t exist; the Ark of the Covenant. The bleeding man was sprinkling his blood on it.
Nathaniel felt a hand grab his shoulder and pull him back from the Most Holy Place as the ground began to shake even more violently than it had before. A great crack opened in the floor of the temple all the way behind the curtain. Then something struck Nathaniel so hard on the head everything went black.
Diana the Witch was standing over him, he was outside the temple surrounded by Temple guards. “Well?” Diana asked, “Where’s my money?” Before Nathaniel could even think to form a thought some one else spoke up from beyond the ring of guards surrounding the two of them. The guards parted before Caiaphas, the High Priest. He addressed them in his annoying monologue manner of speaking,
“Some very strange things have happened today. Very strange. The earthquakes caused great damage to the temple and I suspect something of great value to Israel has been lost for all time. I know you two had nothing to do with it and in exchange for your discretion in this matter I gratefully accept your donation of 30 pieces of silver to the Temple, I am sure it will go to a good cause… you know had you come for it last night I probably would have had you both imprisoned. For one, you wouldn’t have found it and we were quite busy, but then the money came back just this morning… and so much has changed… and yet nothing has changed.”
The High Priest finished his speech and ordered the guards to follow him into the temple and sent a couple away to find some sturdy ropes good for climbing. Nathaniel stood up, looked at Diana, and hugged her. “Thank you for bringing me back, Jesus of Nazareth you say?”
“Yes” responded Diana, mostly out of shock.
“I’ll have to look him up, I wonder where he is nowadays?”
“Who knows, probably off working miracles,” said Diana the Witch as she shrugged, “So what did you see in there… what was Caiaphas talking about?”
Nathaniel and the Witch started to walk towards the north side of town, to see what all the commotion up there had been about. “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.” Diana stopped to think. In the last few hours she had seen a man brought back from the dead, the head of the religious elite talking like a lunatic and suspected the earthquakes were much more than just mere coincidences. She put her arm in Nathaniel’s and said, “Some things are better left a mystery… let’s go find this Jesus character.”