Back in 2009, one of my writing endeavours had me focused on the conundrum posed by Jesus of
the Christian faith and his place in history.
Did such a figure ever really exist?
What if the Jesus of the New Testament fame had been adapted from a Hebrew prototype, a Rabbi
named Yeshua?
Such questions have resulted in a novella focusing on the last 24 hours of his life, from the moment
of his arrest in Gethsemane, to after his crucifixion and entombment in the burial chambers of
Yosef of Arimathea.
It is commonly agreed that the gospel writers were heavily inspired by the Five Books of Moses –
known as the Torah – and by the Book of [Hebrew] Prophets.
So am I – but from a secular perspective.
As a result of this inspiration, a flow-on project became the short novelisation of the last twenty-four
hours in the life of Yeshua/Jesus.
This piece, titled From Gethsemane to Arimathea begins moments before Yeshua’s arrest in the
gardens of Gethsemane. The last scene takes place in the garden belonging to Yosef of Arimathea
for it is on this land that, hewn out of the cliff face, stood the rich merchant’s family burial chambers
– one of which, it is said, he made available for the body of Yeshua.
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Culturally and religiously speaking, the womenfolk closest to Yeshua [his wife, Myriam Magdalene,
his mother, Myriam, and his sister, Salome] could not visit the rock burial chamber until after the
Jewish celebrations of Pesach and the compulsory days of ‘sitting shiva’ had been observed.
Thus, it was on the 29th day of Nissan [fifteen days after Yeshua died on a Roman cross] that the
women, the first mourners to pay their respects, went to the chamber and were most surprised to
find it empty.
Morning light beamed down from the opening in the high ceiling. The air inside the burial chamber
was dry. In the chiaroscuro, two stone benches were easily discernible. Perhaps, it was there that
the women’s eyes had expected to find the shrouded body of Yeshua, but both benches were
empty.
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Salome pointed to what appeared to be a length of white linen neatly folded in a corner near the
head of one of the benches. Her heartbeat quickened by anticipation of the shrouded, inert body of
her husband, her breath suspended by its unexpected absence, Myriam Magdalene stepped
further, but dizzily, into the cave. The smell of death filled the chamber but where was the body of
her beloved husband?
This point in the retelling of events, the [alleged] Ascension, as it came to be known in Christian
faith, has shaped more than two thousand years of secular western culture in ways that are
sometimes difficult to fathom – and in that lies my newfound enthusiasm for the topic