It’s true that your Jesus came back. His bar mitzvah coincided with the end of the First World War. As eldest scion of second generation Nazarene immigrants, he no doubt had his work cut out for him in the heartlands of a newly ruined Germany.
As you’d expect it was his talk brought the grief, the trouble. Said he had such news as would overturn the world and so forth. In short, words best whispered, or better yet, left unsaid. Those who rejoiced to hear them would soon lose their ears. And soon enough he and his raggletaggle crew were among the ten thousand others on the slow train east.
He did everything he could, your Jesus. But it was no good. Some clocked him as a collaborator – owing to that enemylove spiel of his. The bread not in his belly started to show on his face; but still he shared what few scraps he could procure, making himself no friends by doing so.
As for his ‘fate’: it came without warning, during morning roll-call: he was hanged along with two others before the work detail set off. His executioner was a man known as ‘Ape’ – a sobriquet supposedly derived from his reputation for “going ape” when beating people to death. ‘Ape’ himself was promoted to captain shortly before the end of the war. He disappeared soon after.
Geraint Jonathan
(Image by Christopher J Ananias)
Saragun Springs 
Geraint
This is stunning, and, damn it, I do not know what to think of it. I recently learned that the word gadzooks is not a gentle cuss words, but goes back to “god’s hooks” meaning the nails the Romans knocked into Jesus.
But I know I admire this for the relentless imagery.
And if there is a Jesus I hope to him that I gave the right person credit for the picture.
Leila
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Leila
Yes, the picture is a CJA masterpiece
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A parable? An alternate history? An accusation? All three, and very well done.
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Geraint, in one fell swoop you managed to offend most of the religious and English- and Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking world. Maybe. Probably. Yes. Cool! And thanks for the morsel of arcane data about Gadzooks! Fun facts to know and tell!
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Geraint
This feels like a Nietzschean parable that Jim Morrison would have obsessed over. “Thought-provoking” doesn’t do it justice – mentally haunting is more like it. It is about NOW, back then, and tomorrow.
Emerson said, “Men’s creeds are a disease of the will.”
Lao Tzu said, “The existence of beauty depends on the existence of ugliness.”
Emerson wrote (in “Brahma”), “If the red slayer think he slays, / Or if the slain think he is slain, / They know not well the subtle ways / I keep, and pass, and turn again /…
I am the doubter and the doubt, / I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.”
Dale
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