turned people out at the first hint of an eruption, with the result that the leper colonies were filled to overflowing and that many who entered them with some minor ailment ended up condemned along with the rest. Yeshua had apparently understood this situation and addressed himself to it, going out to the colonies to sort out the curable from the truly diseased and treating the former so that they might be allowed to return home.
All this might have been seen as a great public good if not for the outcry of his detractors, who claimed that it was nothing more than devilry to attempt to cure an affliction that the Lord had ordained and that Yeshua’s true intention was rather to render unclean the whole of the population. The situation was compounded by the lepers themselves, who began to hear rumours of miraculous cures and so stole out from their colonies, which were poorly guarded, to mass outside the towns that Yeshua was known to frequent. For the local townspeople, the sight of dozens of lepers huddled outside their gates, people who heretofore had taken all necessary care to hide their uncleanness from the world, provokedgreat concern, and indeed made them fear that perhaps Yeshua had come to visit a pestilence on them.
It was at Korazin that we were first turned away on this account: we arrived there one morning from Kefar Nahum, half a dozen of us, to find several armed men already warned of our approach, standing at the gate to bar our entry. What surprised us was that they were not the henchmen of the local leader, a landowner named Matthias who held most of the townspeople in thrall in one way or another and whose avarice Yeshua had often publicly ridiculed, but rather common peasants, men who a week or a month before had no doubt been among those who had come for Yeshua’s sermons or cures. They looked awkward barring our way, refusing to meet Yeshua’s eye.
“Why are you coming with weapons against me?” Yeshua said, though the truth was they had only a few sticks among them and maybe a dagger or two, still in their sheaths.
“We have to think of our families,” one of the men said. “We don’t say you mean us any harm. But you’re always with the lepers. The law tells us that makes you polluted like them.”
“It’s what’s inside you that pollutes you, not what’s outside,” Yeshua said.
But the men held their ground.
Kephas was with us and seemed ready to come to blows with them.
“Has our master ever lied to you?” he said to them. “Has Matthias ever told you the truth?”
But Yeshua merely bid the men good morning and motioned us on our way.
Clearly Matthias had found the way to turn the townspeople against us. But from the sullen stubbornness of themen at the gate it seemed he had done so more by persuasion than coercion. When the word spread that even the common people of Korazin had gone against Yeshua, his reception in other towns grew cooler, and it began to happen from time to time, coming to a new town, that the authorities had heard of his reputation and did not permit us to enter. Some of his followers began to beg him then to cease visiting the lepers, lest he end up barred from every town in the region. But their arguments only hardened him.
“What kind of a doctor ignores the sick?” he said. As for being barred from the towns, he said if it came to that, then he would preach in the wilderness the way Yohanan had done.
I was inclined to agree at first that he abandon his missions to the lepers, since for the handful he saved among them, he risked losing his entire following. But when I put this to him, he said that if I could make such an argument then I’d understood nothing of his work. The following day, to make his point, he took me with him to visit the colony at Arbela. Normally he made these visits alone, or took along a group of us but left us outside the walls while he went in to do his rounds. But on this day he passed me off as a fellow doctor to the
All this might have been seen as a great public good if not for the outcry of his detractors, who claimed that it was nothing more than devilry to attempt to cure an affliction that the Lord had ordained and that Yeshua’s true intention was rather to render unclean the whole of the population. The situation was compounded by the lepers themselves, who began to hear rumours of miraculous cures and so stole out from their colonies, which were poorly guarded, to mass outside the towns that Yeshua was known to frequent. For the local townspeople, the sight of dozens of lepers huddled outside their gates, people who heretofore had taken all necessary care to hide their uncleanness from the world, provokedgreat concern, and indeed made them fear that perhaps Yeshua had come to visit a pestilence on them.
It was at Korazin that we were first turned away on this account: we arrived there one morning from Kefar Nahum, half a dozen of us, to find several armed men already warned of our approach, standing at the gate to bar our entry. What surprised us was that they were not the henchmen of the local leader, a landowner named Matthias who held most of the townspeople in thrall in one way or another and whose avarice Yeshua had often publicly ridiculed, but rather common peasants, men who a week or a month before had no doubt been among those who had come for Yeshua’s sermons or cures. They looked awkward barring our way, refusing to meet Yeshua’s eye.
“Why are you coming with weapons against me?” Yeshua said, though the truth was they had only a few sticks among them and maybe a dagger or two, still in their sheaths.
“We have to think of our families,” one of the men said. “We don’t say you mean us any harm. But you’re always with the lepers. The law tells us that makes you polluted like them.”
“It’s what’s inside you that pollutes you, not what’s outside,” Yeshua said.
But the men held their ground.
Kephas was with us and seemed ready to come to blows with them.
“Has our master ever lied to you?” he said to them. “Has Matthias ever told you the truth?”
But Yeshua merely bid the men good morning and motioned us on our way.
Clearly Matthias had found the way to turn the townspeople against us. But from the sullen stubbornness of themen at the gate it seemed he had done so more by persuasion than coercion. When the word spread that even the common people of Korazin had gone against Yeshua, his reception in other towns grew cooler, and it began to happen from time to time, coming to a new town, that the authorities had heard of his reputation and did not permit us to enter. Some of his followers began to beg him then to cease visiting the lepers, lest he end up barred from every town in the region. But their arguments only hardened him.
“What kind of a doctor ignores the sick?” he said. As for being barred from the towns, he said if it came to that, then he would preach in the wilderness the way Yohanan had done.
I was inclined to agree at first that he abandon his missions to the lepers, since for the handful he saved among them, he risked losing his entire following. But when I put this to him, he said that if I could make such an argument then I’d understood nothing of his work. The following day, to make his point, he took me with him to visit the colony at Arbela. Normally he made these visits alone, or took along a group of us but left us outside the walls while he went in to do his rounds. But on this day he passed me off as a fellow doctor to the
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