Chapter 6, Notes

If you want to have a fresh think about who Jesus was, you can’t start with him. He is too well-known to be introduced right away, because all the preconceptions and associations about him will dominate the picture.

Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, 1900 AD.

Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, 1900 AD

It is necessary (even if it slows down the narrative) to bring the context to life first, and then slide him into that context. That means giving a sense of the Roman Occupation of Palestine, which had been going on for 100 years by the time of the Gospels.

We have to start with Pontius Pilate and the rulership of the province; what the Romanized cities looked like; how the military presence kept the province from rebellion… and what the whole Occupation felt like, the normal day-to-day existence of people in one of the less important provinces of the Empire.

After that, we need to look at the fault-lines between the occupiers and the occupied, and consider the extent to which the Occupation is or is not impacting the daily lives of the locals. So we move to a small farming and fishing town on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the interior, Capernaum. Get a sense of what their life is like, and how much they interact with or avoid the Romans. This has taken the novel as far as Chapter 6, with the hostile interactions between Romans and Galileans, and the first rumors of some “Teacher”, some “Rabbi”, who gets a lot of respect from the local people.

Now we can prepare to bring Jesus into the story and consider how he acts and talks – because now we have a basic understanding of the environment in which he lives.


Unrelated flash fiction – The Toilet

Posted to a remote corner of Pakistan where he knew he could only expect squat toilets, he went to the bother of bringing a Western porcelain toilet with him on the plane. On arrival at his new home he showed the workmen where he wanted the toilet installed, then left to explore the town. He returned that evening to find that they had dug a pit in the floor of his bathroom, inserted the toilet, and cemented it in. The seat was perfectly level with the floor, and its lid covered it discreetly.