Present
Jerusalem, Spring AD 66
...
“Let us in!”
My head jerks upward, but it is too late. They have just burst in, blasting through the poor lock I had fashioned, and I jump back as the tallest man swings his staff across my workbench, scrambling all of my writing utensils so the dark ink poured like a sea over the scroll. It was ruined.
“You’re under arrest,” says the smaller man. He is not wearing his usual Pharisaical garments, but I can see where the phylactery usually sat on his forehead, the thin white band of skin untouched by the sun.
“Under what charges?” I ask, stiffening, still holding the one remaining scroll near my chest.
Here, in Jerusalem, we have no rights. Only Romans, and then some Pharisees, and a fringe group of those with wealth and commercial ties to the Empire.
“For spreading lies and fomenting insurrection,” says the biggest man, who was tapping his staff against his palm.
I feel I have seen him before, inside the temple, bowing low in prayer, his face to the ground as he wailed towards heaven.
“I have done no such thing,” I say. Although I am glad, partially, that the ink has blotted out the page.
These have just begun to circulate, one week ago. I and several others throughout the city are copying them discreetly, and then they are spirited away to be read at secret gatherings.
It is nothing illegal, per se, but here, the law is like a caged lion, and those who own it can turn it loose on whomever they choose.
