From here the Spirit of G-d did not take
me to diverse other Bible heroes of faith, not even to Daniel, the greatly
beloved one, but to – Nazareth, to that precise moment in time when Yeshua
stood before all his neighbors and 
acquaintances
in his neighborhood synagogue, from the Bimah103
reading from the Parsha of that Shabbat104.
He was handed a Haftorah scroll, namely that of the prophet Isaiah, and
read to them from Isaiah 61:1, then he sat down again. The eyes of all
in the synagogue were fixed on Him.
Then He said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing.”
They all wondered at the gracious words spoken
by Him, and were saying complimentary things about Him to each other, for
most of them knew Him since the time that He came back from Egypt with
his parents.
Since
Yeshua’s youth he had been working with Joseph in his carpenter shop, making
chairs and tables and other furniture, fixing doors and window frames.
Everybody knew Him by name and he knew everybody by name as well.
“Is not this Joseph’s son?” one asked his neighbor,
astounded, while several others were shaking their heads in amazement and
noted, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Miriam, and brother of Yaacov
and Yoses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”
“Where then did he get all these things, and this
wisdom,” they asked each other with astonishment, “seeing he never sat
at the feet of the great teacher Gamaliel105
or any other great rabbi? And how does he, the carpenter, work such miracles
as we have heard that he has performed with his hands?”106
And they took offense at Him that He was acting
like He was “somebody” when in fact he was just the carpenter’s son, and
as the rumor alleged, born out of wedlock107.
It was believed that Joseph was His natural father.
However, rumors persisted that He had been conceived out of wedlock. The
gossipers and slanderers of the town would not let such a delicious morsel
of scandal subside into oblivion. Especially the self-righteous ones, pretending
to be wholly devoted to the Law and appalled by Miriam’s “trespass,” indulged
in tittle-tattle about her and her son.
And now He was telling them - they who were born
to properly married parents – that their ancestors were not good enough
in the sight of G-d in the days of Eliyah, when there was a great famine,
because G-d sent him to Zarephat, to a widow woman in Sidon and not to
one in Israel. He moreover mentioned Elisha having cleansed only Naaman,
the Syrian, from leprosy, but none of the many lepers in Israel.
Furthermore,
the carpenter – for that’s who He was in the sight of all listening to
Him – had the incredible impudence to refer to Himself as a prophet Who
was not welcome in his hometown Nazareth, implying that they were just
as undeserving of Him as Israel had been in the days of Eliyah and Elisha.
They were infuriated! Just who did this ‘mamzer’108
think he was? Holier than thou? A prophet? Perhaps the one prophesied about
in the book of Isaiah He just had read from to them? For did He not say,
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing?”
What sort of a “bunny-trail” was this man on whom
they all knew as the carpenter, but who seemed to think that He was a man
sent by G-d to save Israel?
Now they all shouted to each other and at Him,
and in utter rage rushed upon Him, driving the ‘blasphemer’ out of town
toward the edge of the hill upon which Nazareth is built, intending to
throw Him down the cliff.
But this was not the way the Father had ordained
for His Son to die, nor was it the appointed time. In swift flight angels
came who, while not seen by the raging crowd, covered Yeshua with their
wings and bodies while He passed through the midst of His attackers and
went away109.
The Holy Spirit took me in rapid succession from
scene to scene, through the whole three years of Yeshua walking among His
people, preaching, teaching, healing, delivering, saving, feeding the hungry
and raising the dead.
Each time when He was in the presence of people
who thought themselves important, of being somebody of standing and influence,
invariably they took offense at Him. Especially the religious leaders and
the Pharisees found it intolerable that this nobody of a carpenter from
Nazareth was trying to convince the people that He was the Messiah they
expected, that He was sent by G-d and that, in fact, He was actually the
Son of G-d.
While He undeniably performed great and most astonishing
miracles, there was no way this man was the Messiah, and most certainly
not the Son of G-d but rather a mamzer, according to reliable reports from
Nazareth. The man was totally deluded, pursuing the bunny-trail of a madman,
and therefore dangerous. Sure, the people loved and adored Him, they believed
in Him but – what did they know? They were ignorant!
No matter how great His deeds, how prophetic Scriptures
were conspicuously fulfilled by works and words no one had ever done or
spoken in Israel, they insisted that Yeshu of Nazareth (they refused to
say His full Name as they knew perfectly well that it means “salvation”)
was an impostor110 on a very dangerous
“bunny-trail.” They claimed that He was possessed by Beelzebub and that
He did His miracles by the power of this demon111
and not by the power of G-d, and hence steadfastly refused to believe in
Him, no matter what.
| 103 Elevated
podium from which to read from the Torah and Haftorah scrolls on every
Shabbat and commanded holidays. |
| 104 Lk
4:16-19; as a visiting citizen of Nazareth He was invited to make an “Aliyah,”
which is “going up” to the Bimah to read a portion of the Parsha. |
| 105 Gamaliel
was Yeshua’s contemporary as well as the teacher of Paul the apostle when
he was still known only as Shaul of Tarsus; Ac 5:34; 22:3 |
| 106 Mark
6:2 |
107 Lk
4:22; Mk 6:3 |
| 108 ‘Mamzer’
is the Hebrew word for “bastard”; it is a person born of relations
between whom marriage was forbidden by the Mosaic law; as well as of.one
who was conceived and born out of wedlock. However, there are more appropriate
interpretations of this term extant. Whatever the correct meaning,
it was and is used as an insult, while in modern Israel the term “ben-sonah”/”son
of a prostitute” is more commonly used to insult someone. |
| 110 Matt.
27:63; the KJV translated the Gr. word “planos” as “deceiver”; it implies
a “roving imposter, deceiver, misleader” |
| 111 Matthew
12:24; Mark 3:21-22 |
