He had me. “Very well,” I conceded, “but there is another strange aspect to this mysterious behavior of your brother. According to your mother, Jesus said, ‘I must needs be in the place which belongs to my Father,’ and according to your father he said, ‘I must be about my Father’s business.’ Are you positive that, whichever were his true words, both parents recall his use of the word ‘must’?”

“Of that I am certain.”

“Doesn’t that sound to you as if Jesus believed he was under a mandate or order of some kind to be in the Temple? Perhaps it was this, most of all, that concerned your parents.”

His brown eyes flickered and he placed one hand gently on my knee. “Matthias, you are a rarity among men.”

“He is indeed!” contributed Joseph, who had remained silent until now.

“Why?” I asked.

“You have eyes to see—and you see. You have ears to hear—and you hear. Blessed be the womb that bore you.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled, but I just couldn’t let that important event get closed out with only a few kind words. I probed again. “James, you were the brother closest to Jesus in age. Brothers are always confiding in each other. Didn’t the two of you ever speak of this matter?”

“I plagued him often about it, as a child might do, but all he would ever discuss was the sacrifice of our lamb in the Temple.”

“Oh? And how did he speak of that?”

“With great sadness and distaste for the entire ceremony. He could not forget the bloodstained robes of the priests when they presented our lamb for God’s blessing by slitting its throat, draining its blood in a cup, and pouring it upon the altar. And after the animal’s small body had been returned to our family, Jesus could not bring himself to assist our father with the lamb’s special preparation for roasting at sunset. What he later talked about, with disgust, was the manner prescribed by our laws for the hanging of the sacrificial lamb above the roasting coals.”

“I don’t understand.”

“He said that he watched our father push two pomegranate skewers through the lamb’s flesh, one through the breast and the other through the front legs, for support over the flames. These two pieces of wood, embedded to form a cross, reminded him of Rome’s method of executing those who oppose the rule of Caesar. He had never forgotten the crucified rebel we had seen, a few years before, while visiting our kin in Capernaum. The sight and smell of that rotting body, its vulture-plucked flesh hanging on two crossed beams of wood, had frightened us both so much that we awoke sobbing for many nights afterward.”