# As others saw Him/epilogue

EPILOGUE.
Thus far had I written to thee, Aglaophonos, as to what I knew of that Jesus the Nazarene about whom thou hast made so earnest inquiry. I had minded to hand it to Alphæus ben Simon, my cousin, who goeth this week in the galley to Cyprus, and thence would have passed it on to thee by the hands of one of our brethren who visit Greece from year to year. But there has happened to me an event which has given me much to think of with regard to this very matter of Jesus. It chanced that the day before yesterday I went from the Jewish quarter in this city of Alexandria for my usual walk along the Lochias, which adjoins it. There it is my custom to catch the sea air and to watch the vessels put into the Inner Port. Now, it chanced that as I came upon the Lochias, the vessel of Joppa had just hoved-to in the Inner Port, and the passengers were being landed up the Broad Steps. Now ​these, by their talith and their faces, I knew to be Jews, and I went up to them, and greeted them with the greeting of peace. But among them one came to me with the look of recognition in his eyes, and said, "Knowest thou me not, Meshullam ben Zadok?" And, behold, it was Rufus ben Simon, whom I had known before I left the Holy City. So I welcomed him, and brought him home to this house of mine. And here he remaineth till the morrow, when he starteth forth to go to Cyrene.
Now, in my inquiries about old friends left behind, and new things that had happened since I went away, I failed not to ask about the followers of the Nazarene. To my wonder, I found that this Rufus had become one of them, even though he was but a child when Jesus died. Yet is he a good Jew in all else. He eateth only our meat, and keepeth our Sabbaths and festivals. But he avers that the Anointed One, whom we expect, has already appeared, and that he was Jesus the Nazarene. And upon my inquiry how he could know aught of Jesus but from the common ​talk, he put in my hand some Memorabilia of him, written down in Hebrew by one of his chief followers, Matathias. This have I read again and again, and pondered much thereon. Nor have I been able to sleep these two nights for the new thoughts about Jesus that have come to me from reading these memoirs of him.
For, behold, he appeareth in these records of him by his own followers in far other wise than he showed himself to us in public at Jerusalem. In all his public acts among us he was full of scornful rebukes; among his own followers he was tender and loving. Scarcely ever could we get him to speak out to us plainly his views about matters of public concern. He would always give us an answer full of evasion and enigma, but to his followers he would explain all his meaning over and over again, illustrated with parable. There at Jerusalem he almost always turned to the people his harsher side. I saw him on every occasion on which he appeared in ​public in Jerusalem, and, save only in his sermons, he was always rebuking one or another, just like the prophets of old. And the manner of his rebuking towards us was as with scorpions, whereas among his own he would mingle tenderness even with his reproaches. Nor, saving his sermons, which few heard but those who already followed him, had he aught novel to tell us about the things of life. He seemed to us as if he would destroy the temple of our faith, nor in his public actions did he give any promise of building it up anew. Yet to those with him he would continually be telling what to do and how to do it, till, behold, a new manner of life, fair and seemly, stood before them, fulfilled of Jewish righteousness, with a tender mercy which was the man's very own.
I need not detail to thee, Aglaophonos, what these acts and words were which have given me an altogether new light as to the character and thoughts of the man Jesus. From certain words of thine in thy letter, which I understood not then when I first read it, I can see now that thou must have had some such account of the life and ​death of Jesus before thee as this which Rufus hath shown unto me. Now I can understand wherefore thou hast inquired about this Jesus with such eager insistence. And to thee as a Gentile the revelation of his character would come with more attractive force than to us that be Jews. For in almost every way this Jesus fulfilleth the idea of a Jew as we have it in these later days. Working with his hands, yet teaching with his voice; obedient to the Law, yet ever eager to take a new law upon himself; doing acts of love among men, yet rebuking in love their ill acts, and doing all things as in the presence of the Glory;—in all this Jesus was as the best of our Sages.
"Wherefore, then, did ye suffer him to be killed?" thou wilt ask me, and indeed I ask myself. If I were to answer thee in the way Jesus was wont to answer us, I would say, "Why did ye Hellenes condemn Socrates to the hemlock?" For he was as much the Ideal of the Hellenes as Jesus of the Jews. Every Hellene would be eloquent and reasonable, and that was Socrates. Every Jew would be wise and ​good and pious, and that was Jesus. Yet each of these men, if I read their lives aright, died the death of a criminal, because he cared not for that which his fellow-countrymen cared for most. Socrates died because he would force his countrymen to examine by their reason the ideas and ideals which they all accepted. Jesus died for the same reason, but also for another—for that he cared naught for our national hopes. We were all panting for national freedom; he would have naught of it. Whether it was that he felt in some sort to be not of our nation, I know not; but in all his teaching he dealt with us as men, not as Jews. It is this, I can see, that has attracted thee to his doctrine, whereas thou wert always scornful of our Jewish pretensions, as thou calledst them.
Yet herein again was he at one with the best thoughts of our Sages. Our God is the God of all, and his Law shall be one day the Law of all. If we yearn for the universal realm of the Messiah, it is as much for the sake of the world as for ourselves. But methinks I see in the thoughts of this Jesus an idea quite other than ours ​as to what the Anointed One shall be and shall do. We hope for him as a Deliverer and a Conqueror with force of arms by God's aid. Now, Jesus seemed not to think of the Anointed One in any way like this. His mind seemed to be filled rather with the picture of the Servant of God as drawn by the Prophet Esaias. Thou knowest the passage, Aglaophonos; I remember thy laughter when first I read it thee, that men could look forward to contempt and hatred as a good. Truly the idea is far different from the saying of the barbarian, "Woe to the conquered!" And surely to us all, Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, the greatest of joys is this—to worst an equal foe in fair fight. But to Esaias the prophet, and to Jesus the Nazarene after him, the higher victory is with him that is worsted in the battle of life. That will come as good tidings to nine out of every ten of men.
Therefore, if Jesus thought of himself as the Anointed One, it was as being anointed with the woes of the vanquished, with the sweat and the blood of the lowly and despised. Now I know why he seemed so ​sad when he was greeted at Jerusalem as a victor. He had spent his life in trying to impress a new ideal upon his people, and they had welcomed him only as the fulfilment of the old ideal which he desired to replace. None of thy poets have given a drama with more of eironeia in it than this.
Yet why did he remain silent before us as to these ideas of his? If, indeed, these were his ideas; for even with the new light given by the Hebrew Memorabilia, I can see his thought but dimly. Why spake he not his own thought to the people in Jerusalem, and tell us no longer to hope for worldly dominion as the best means for spreading the Law of the Lord, but rather to be as servants of God, even as Esaias the Prophet hath spoken? Was it that he wished to carry out the description of the prophet even to every iota of his text? For, behold, the prophet sayeth, "He let himself be humbled, and opened not his mouth." If so, then was the death of Jesus but a sublime suicide.
For surely by this silence he has committed a grievous sin against us his people. ​For if we committed aught of sin and crime that handed him over to the Romans as a pretender to empire, he indeed shared our sin and crime by his silence. Ye Hellenes were at least greater in fault than we in the matter of Socrates; for ye condemned him after he had spoken his whole mind and made known his whole thought to his people; whereas we condemned one who, I make bold to say, was even greater than thy Socrates, mainly because of what seemed to us his sullen and arrogant silence, broken only by a confession of guilt when he knew he was not guilty.
But yet, let me not be as harsh in judgment upon him after his death, as perhaps I was when I allowed the sentence to be declared against him without protest. He, least of all men, could have died with a lie upon his lips. In some sort and in some way he must have combined the thought of the triumphant Messiah and of the despised Servant of God. For in those Memorabilia of him which have come into my hands during the last days as being a message from him that is dead, I find ​these two things combined. He speaketh ever of the blessedness of the poor and the humble and the despised, even as the Ebionim speak. So that if a man would be blessed, he would choose a lowly career, even as did Jesus. Yet withal he speaketh oft of himself as the Son of Man, and every Jew that heard him would think he knew what he thereby claimed. For in the Prophets Daniel and Enoch it is clearly said that the Son of Man would come in victory over the world; and what other could this universal victor be than the Anointed One whom the prophets had foretold? If Jesus put another meaning upon the prophetic words, why spake he not his meaning fully unto the people? All we may have gone like sheep astray, but he that might have been our shepherd went apart alone with God.
O Jesus, why didst thou not show thyself to thy people in thy true character? Why didst thou seem to care not for aught that we at Jerusalem cared for? Why, arraigned before the appointed judges of thy people, didst thou keep silence before ​us, and, by thus keeping silent, share in pronouncing judgment upon thyself? We have slain thee as the Hellenes have slain Socrates their greatest, and our punishment will be as theirs. Then will Israel be even as thou wert, despised and rejected of men—a nation of sorrows among the nations. But Israel is greater than any of his sons, and the day will come when he will know thee as his greatest. And in that day he will say unto thee, "My sons have slain thee, O my son, and thou hast shared our guilt."