The Unnamed Touched by the Galilean
What might have happened to them?
by
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Earlier, light of a new day crept over the courtyard on the quiet feet of dawn.
Rebecca rose from her sleeping mat, and came up behind her husband as he prepared to go out to the field. She quietly put her arms around his chest, pulling her body into his. Feeling her breasts against his muscular back and taking in her familiar female smells always stirred tender feelings in Jared.
“How did I ever deserve you?” she murmured, nuzzling into his neck.
He took her hands in his and pulled her tightly to him. “By being born so beautiful, and able to pleasure my life with your goodness,” he replied softly over his shoulder.
“After all my…”
Jared stopped her, turned and pulled her close. He looked lovingly into her beautiful face. “None of that now. My happiness began the day you came into my life, and it exploded with your openness and change after your encounter with The Galilean by Jacob’s Well that day.”
They had fairly successfully put behind them her troubled past of a decade ago, trying to remember only the best. However, she admitted she could not completely shake the memory of her former wayward life. Now, with just three little words, she had inadvertently reopened that past.
“That day when you came back into the village all excited, telling people what had happened out there out at Jacob’s Well…I guess I was one of the most skeptical in town. I liked our arrangement.”
Back then, Jared’s world had been simple, suited to his background and personality. A bachelor, Jared farmed his patch and sold the results in the market place and lived simply. He thought himself lucky when Rebecca’s last lover threw her out, and that he had been in the right place at the right time. Rebecca needed a place to stay. Middle age approaching, he had no prospects of marriage. He cared little that she had lived with five other men… he was not worried by Rebecca’s reputation. She remained a beguiling beauty. …
It was a compressed memory. He recalled how it all started. She had come up to his market stall, and smiling, asked for a single bit of cheese, and as she received it, touched the hand of an immediately smitten man. The next day he saw her again. … he had never experienced with a girl in his younger days, or for that matter, with any woman since.
Rebecca ran her fingers through his black, curly hair and stroked his broad face. “You took me in when I had no home, and loved and cared for me, whatever the villagers said about me, and on my terms.”
“You found an easy prey, you know. But your love filled every lonely spot in my life. His encircling arms squeezed her gently. He examined her lovely face, unblemished by all that history. “But my dear one, when that day, the day of The Galilean happened that changed everything.”
“I know. For me too. How well you know that. All because of that stranger, The Galilean.”
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About the Book
Struggling humans that Scripture only identifies by what happened to them come alive with names and personalities as their lives unfold. A huge, crazed brute; a beautiful woman of the street; a deaf-mute; a leper; and others are social outcasts drawn together by awesome, transforming experiences they share. Each has been touched by the Galilean. Then some are assaulted, and finally one of their number is killed. This brings the local centurion to champion their cause as suspicion grows that the assaults are part of a conspiracy to destroy their fellowship, The Followers of the Way of the Galilean. We walk the hills with them, step into their courtyards, overhear deeply personal love, and cringe under confrontations of lies. Expansive experiences of nature and humanity’s realities thrust us into Capernaum of Galilee. It is a kaleidoscope of sights and sounds: Aramaic chatter of fishermen, housewives, and shopkeepers in the marketplace; the rattle of soldiers’ armor; and angry confrontations of exposed suspects compete with echoes of donkey hooves and the shrill laughter of children. The enticing aroma of baking barley bread in courtyard ovens mingles with the smell of sweet breezes off Lake Gennesaret. At the center of this substance of first-century Galilee, a mystery unfolds. Is there possibly a conspiracy behind the assaults and assassins, and can faith hold out?
About the Author
In his travels, B. Jay Cannon has made three trips to Capernaum, Palestine, the locus of this novel. He studied at Bradley, Dubuque and Edinburgh Universities, and McCormick, Chicago Lutheran and Pittsburgh Theological Seminaries. After forty years of ministry, he has sailed, skied and fished, become the family genealogist, an accomplished potter and china painter. His published nonfiction works are I Give Up, God; Celebrate Yourself; and Sailing through the Circumstances. His first novel, Veils and Shadows, was published in 2011. Dr. Cannon and his wife of fifty-eight years, Phyllis, have four children and seven grandchildren. The Cannons reside in Sugar Land, Texas.