The Gospel of the Twin by Ron Cooper Read Free Book Online

our people humiliated by the soldiers in Jerusalem. On that day, though, we witnessed the bloody, vivid horror of occupation. Jesus and I walked home in silence, one of many times in which words would have been crude.

Chapter Five
    Verse One
    At twenty years of age, Jesus and I were skilled stone-cutters. Joseph, on the other hand, could hardly shape a decent block, and even then his corners were never sharp. When the services of my brother and I were contracted for, Jesus would bargain to get a common laborer’s job—fetching water and stone, holding planks as they were sawed—for our father. The first time he did this, I questioned him.
    â€œWhy can’t we just leave him home? I’d rather be away from him and, if anything, he slows us down.”
    â€œHe is still our father, Thomas. You know nothing makes him as irritable as being out of work. He is a proud man. Wouldn’t you rather put up with him at the job site than come home in the evening and find he’s been brooding all day?”
    â€œNo. That’s ten hours at work but only maybe two hours at home.”
    Jesus raised an eyebrow and made a slight frown, like a teacher suggesting disappointment in a student. “What are you forgetting, Thomas?”
    I thought for a moment. “He’s with Mother all day.” I realized how selfish I’d been, but I was relieved to think that Jesus was more concerned with Mother than with Joseph. We tried to keep these arrangements secret from him, but I suspect he must have known.
    Occasionally, when things were slow, contractors could not hire both Jesus and me for the same job. That meant, of course, that they also could not hire Joseph.
    Once, a man named Zebulun stopped me in the street as I was on my way home from the market. “Why are you here?” he asked. “I just left you to work at my house.”
    â€œThat was not I,” I said. “It’s my twin brother. You’re Zebulun, right? Jesus told me that he was to begin working for you today. Now I must take this flour and oil to our mother.”
    â€œYou lie,” he said. “I recognize you.”
    â€œTake me to your house and you’ll see.”
    We arrived at Zebulun’s home shortly, but Jesus was not there. “You liar! Do you not want to work?” Zebulun asked. “I’ll tell others not to hire you, for you do not honor your duty.”
    â€œSir, my brother is not like other men,” I said. “He shall do the work he promised you, but sometimes he honors duties that other men do not know. If he is not about, then he has found a higher duty for the moment, or at least as it seems to him. Show me what you had him do, and I’ll do the work until he returns.”
    The truth was that Jesus sometimes wandered off on his own. It wasn’t that he was easily distracted, but that he liked spending time alone. Usually, he never let this penchant for solitude interrupt his work, though, and I worried that maybe that day he had.
    Just then we heard voices from the outside. We left the house to find Jesus by the man’s back gate talking to beggars. “Away from here!” Zebulun yelled to the beggars. They stood, but Jesus gestured for them to sit.
    Zebulun said to me, “So, you tell the truth. You have a twin, and he is not like others, for he attracts dogs that other men kick and scorn.” He turned to Jesus and said, “Why have you called these thieves to my gate?”
    â€œThey hunger,” said Jesus.
    â€œSo do thousands more,” Zebulun said. “You can spend your whole life feeding the hungry, and do you know what you’ll get? Even more of them! Let them feed themselves.”
    â€œI have flour and oil,” I said. “We can make bread for them.”
    â€œMy employer is right, Thomas,” said Jesus. “They should feed themselves, but bread is not enough.”
    â€œBut we have no other food,” I