*Pic: Sculpture dating from 1547, nobody expected the Spanish inquisition
Imagine if Jesus had lived to sixty or seventy, instead of dying like Hendrix, Morrison or Joplin at thirty three. Would the disciples have hung around, waiting for their go at management and policy? Peter the rock clearly had his own agenda and later lived a long life in Rome with Mark somewhere close by. Some disciples simply disappeared, some like St James or Santiago are buried at my destination Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Thousands of miles from Jerusalem.
Would the Christian church have prospered without a martyr? The Field Marshall, Gonzo and I tried to think of an answer as we trudged through the rain on a two thousand old Roman military road. Clearly the road had not been repaired since it was built and neither had our brains. I thought Jesus would have become a senior bureaucrat in the Jewish hierarchy, as he rendered unto Caesar with a joint venture amalgamation with the Rabbis. Gonzo implied a swing to the right and the Field Marshall thought he might have taken a holiday in Egypt or Bournemouth.
Martyrdom has an energy that clearly helps the surviving crew, think Che or St Joan, Luke Skywalker and Russell Crowe in any of his movies. This was not going to happen if Jesus was 65 and about to go on benefits.
Who could have helped Jesus get to an old age? I imagine as he was not actually broken on the cross, knees not crushed and a quick end did not help in letting him meet his Dad. Who was the only person who could tell the gambling guards to let him survive and the answer clearly is the Roman Governor, the same fellow who asked the crowd Barabas or Jesus. The Governor had a political plan and to let Jesus survive even though he did not control the result, was maybe his plan from the start.
The destruction of the Jewish temple thirty five years later by the Romans was an outcome that was always going to happen, they had destroyed Carthage, the Greeks and any other culture that opposed them. In any event Jesus didn’t live to see that destruction in Jerusalem, but he may have heard about it. The Egyptians think that Miriam or Mary the mother retired to Alexandria probably with her children?
Some of the disciples are said to have preached in Georgia, Syria and India, most died at the hands of the rulers where they lived and Mary Magdalene some say went to Ephesus, maybe pregnant.
I am going to keep trudging on with Gonzo and the Field Marshall to Bilbao and probably will find that the Guggenheim with a Francis Bacon and Picasso to Velasquez exhibition is more understandable. But always look on the bright side of life. Walking is cathartic and today we met Robert with a crippled knee, Lewis walking barefoot to Santiago de Compostela with 750 kms to go and twenty furtive Sudanese on the outskirts of Bilbao who were tired and desperate. My musings are inconsequential.
To be continued…
*Greg James is a malcontent capitalist. He has employed (and fired) a lot of people and spawned many business opportunities for himself and others. Some have been wild successes and some abject failures. Greg refuses to accept that Tasmania is second rate, it is only the people who occupy it who are second rate. Greg is a self and state educated owner-operator. He has been Chairman and President of State and Federal organizations, has owned a gay bar, built a suburb and wasted his life hoping that others around him would see the light as he see it. His brain is addled, his motives suspect and age has caught up with a life well lived. He writes about himself in the third person.
