The Joseph Dialogues. Alan Sorem

      The Joseph Dialogues

      A novel

      Copyright © 2015 Alan Sorem. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3835-9

      hardcover ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3837-3

      ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4982-3836-6

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Some of the text in this novel first appeared in Time: Jesus in Relationships, copyright © 2013 Alan Sorem.

      With thanksgiving to God

      for the lives of my brother,

      David Nelson Sorem

      1934–2012,

      and his son, my nephew,

      Jeffery Nelson Sorem

      1960–2015.

      Fides et Fortis

      1

      I am still in shock from the news. A week ago Joseph visited me in southern Syria. There was the usual purchase of lumber. Today a traveler from the south brought word of Joseph’s funeral yesterday in Nazareth.

      My dear friend, a man I regarded as a brother, is gone. I cannot control my legs, my arms, my whole body from shaking. Our conversations about politics, religion, and lumber—abruptly ended. “Dialogues” he called them, smiling as he pronounced the word.

      Oh, Joseph. Why have you left me? Where is there justice in a God who would do such a thing!

      Mere days ago my energetic and robust friend took his leave in the late afternoon. My warning about the storm clouds building behind Mount Hermon fell on deaf ears. Delighted at the price we had agreed on for a cartload of quality cedar, he was eager to get it home to his carpentry shop in Nazareth. He had a commission for a fishing vessel and the time line was short even with the help of his sons. I assisted him with his first hull. In the forty or more years since, fishing vessels always brought a gleam to his eyes.

      Forty years of friendship.

      I have aged today. My housekeeper brought me my cane when I could not stand without it. But Joseph, still young even as he approached his sixtieth birthday, possessed the exuberance and outlook of a much younger man. In his last conversation with me he spoke of new possibilities for his family and his trade.

      I will hold my right hand with my left this evening to calm it so that I can lift a cup of my finest wine to toast him.

      Until I met Joseph I held no religious beliefs at all except the worth of Roman coins in my cash box. Roman, Greek, Jewish gods—what value do they have in the marketplace?

      Yet Joseph was my dear friend. A week ago I urged him to stay the night as usual. As enticement I offered good wine and fresh lamb prepared by my housekeeper.

      We both enjoyed the dialogues we had that often lasted into the late evening. We were two men of a world much larger than the small villages in which we lived. His trade took him throughout Galilee, and he was familiar with Jerusalem and Alexandria as well. I knew the sights and streets of Damascus and of Tyre on the coast. As a youth, with my father and older brothers, I had visited cities much farther north: Antioch and the metropolis of Ephesus, for example.

      I anticipated another evening of good conversation that day a week ago. But no, even though it was already late afternoon, this one time he was eager to be on the road to Nazareth with his prized cargo.

      I looked to the south and cautioned him. Dark clouds were mounting up that threatened to spill over Mount Hermon and bring heavy rainfall to Galilee. He laughed at my fears and said he would push the horse to a fast trot and be home with Mary and his children that night.

      And so he went on with a final wave as he turned from the lane onto the main road.

      He did not outrun the chilling rain that fell. By the time he reached Nazareth he had a hoarse cough and took to bed immediately. Within the week he was dead, the traveler told me. In the telling, the traveler’s eyes were moist and his words halting. For him, too, Joseph had been a good friend.

      I urged the messenger to stay a night so that we might commiserate together, but he was bound for Antioch and wanted to move along.

      Joseph is gone and what I write expresses my deep sorrow. To honor our friendship I feel I must do something more.

      I will write about our dialogues in the evenings we had together.

      2

      Joseph’s carpenter father first approached me in the year that the Senate in Rome named Octavian “Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus.” Fine Latin words that are meaningless to those who are far from Rome. Our trade in the prosperous regions of the East continues to be conducted in Greek; those who pride themselves on bilingual excellence tell me that the words mean “Emperor Caesar Augustus the Divine Son.” We knew him simply by his Greek name, Sebastos.

      Other than recurring tax levies, the affairs of Rome in those days caused few ripples for us on the eastern shore of the Great Sea. From Rome, Augustus controlled Egypt and other wealthy lands in North Africa. As Julius Caesar’s stepson he had inherited two-thirds of the assassinated emperor’s wealth. In every crisis he had ample funds to resolve matters quickly. In the West, the Iberian tribes were a recent conquest. The concerns of ever-expansive Rome at the time I write involve battles for conquest of the Germanic tribes along the Rhine.

      For men of our times, destiny was determined at birth. I grow and sell timber, as did a host of ancestors that stretch back to a military man, Demostrate, who cut trees and constructed bridges for Alexander and his army along his long march of conquest.

      What is known and revered in family lore is this: when Alexander died in the East and his army made their way back to Macedonia, Demostrate chose to settle along the way, as did many others. He purchased land in the south of the province of Syria, land filled with trees valuable for woodworking—cedar, cypress, poplar, oak, and olive.

      For fourteen generations of sons with Greek names, we have been wood merchants. Illness took my two older brothers and now I, Alexios, am the final son in this trade. It will end with me. Years ago my beloved Sophia died in childbirth, as did my stillborn son. My heart has never found joy in the thought of marrying another. The family trade will end with me.

      But I digress.

      For