Before I could reply I heard the distinct sound of a sliding bolt. The door, hung with three leather hinges, opened a few cautious inches at first. Than came a muffled shout of joy from inside.

“Oh, Joseph, Joseph—it has been so long!”

“Martha, Martha!”

Both sisters fitted the sketchy personality profiles I had once constructed from their scant descriptions in Luke and John. Martha was stern, strong-willed, and assertive while her younger sister, Mary, remained timidly in the background, nervously flexing her long thin fingers and nodding frequently in unspoken affirmation of whatever Martha was saying. Both had lovely olive skin and wore their jet-black hair tightly bound at their necks. Their dresses were also alike, made from a dark blue, rough-textured material that reached to the ankles and also covered their arms to the wrists. Martha, I guessed, was around forty years of age; Mary, thirty-five.

We followed the sisters through a narrow entrance hall into a large room that was obviously their central living area. Although it was sparsely furnished, its dimensions were large enough so that it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine all the apostles sleeping in it, if necessary, when their master had visited Bethany. Three curtained openings led into what were probably bedrooms. The house was dark and damp, and Martha apologized for its condition as she heaped charcoal on the red coals of a sunken pit in the center of the tiled floor.

After the typical litany of questions concerning health and relatives that reunited friends always seem to observe, Joseph deftly brought the conversation around to me and the purpose of our visit. To my happy surprise, Martha, with her sister nodding, seemed eager to cooperate, as if she felt it was her duty to tell everyone all that she could about Jesus. I would have bet that she spent many hours of her life in the Temple courtyard seeking out potential converts. Conscious of our scheduled rendezvous with Shem, I scuttled all the background questions I had planned to ask and plunged right into the resurrection of Lazarus, addressing all my questions to Martha.

“When your brother took sick, how did you know where to contact Jesus?”

She was sitting next to me on a long polished bench in front of the fire, with Mary on her left and Joseph on my right. Apparently my question was not the sort she was expecting. Her jaws clenched and she gave me that stare that grade-school teachers reserve for their most hopeless pupils. Finally she leaned forward and looked beyond me toward the old man for guidance. Without turning my head, I knew he’d be nodding his okay to answer.