MEETING JESUS

Dr. Helena Arendt had already traveled into the past once.

Her first journey had taken her to Vienna in the early nineteenth century, where she had spent several weeks with Ludwig van Beethoven. She had brought back many hours of video showing the composer not as the remote genius preserved in portraits and biographies, but as a living man: brilliant, difficult, suspicious, funny, impatient, and unmistakably human. Meeting him had taught Helena that seeing a historical figure up close did not necessarily diminish greatness. Sometimes it made greatness easier to understand.

Her second journey would ask a far more consequential question. This time, the destination was Judea, approximately AD 30.

The subject was Jesus of Nazareth.

Even if she had second thoughts or trepidations, there was no going back at this point. 

As she had in Vienna, Helena brought a video camera. There was no reason to conceal it. To people of the first century it was simply a strange object from a distant place. When people asked what it was, she told them it was an instrument that remembered what it saw. She brought numerous other accoutrements of the future as well.

For nearly two thousand years, humanity had argued about events for which no contemporary recording existed. Had Jesus actually healed incurable disease? Had he raised the dead? Did he possess knowledge unavailable to ordinary people of his century? Was he, as billions would eventually believe, divine?

Helena had promised herself that she would approach the issue in a neutral state with no preconceived bias. If Jesus performed a miracle, she would record it. If he demonstrated knowledge no person of his age could possibly possess, she would record that, also.

And if he proved to be only a man, the camera would record that as well.

She first heard him speak outside Capernaum.

He was lean, sun-darkened and plainly dressed in a robe and sandals. There was nothing physically imposing about him. His power appeared only when he began speaking.

He told of a traveler who had been attacked, robbed and abandoned beside a road. Respectable men saw the victim and continued on their way. The man who stopped was a Samaritan.

Helena understood immediately what later centuries would largely forget. In her own time, a "Good Samaritan" simply meant a kind stranger. Here, making a Samaritan the hero was provocative, since they were mostly thought of in a negative light. Jesus had deliberately placed compassion in the person his audience was inclined to distrust.

She watched the faces around him. Some nodded. Others plainly disliked the story. Jesus noticed both.

Helena found herself smiling. Whatever else he was, he understood an audience.

The first healing she investigated seriously involved a woman who had suffered from bleeding for many years. Helena was nearby when it happened. The woman forced her way through the crowd and touched Jesus' robe.

Jesus stopped. “Who touched me?”

His followers seemed puzzled. People were pressing against him from every direction. The woman came forward trembling.

She told him about the bleeding. She had suffered for years. She had sought help and spent money on treatments that had accomplished nothing.

Jesus listened carefully. He then told her that her faith had healed her.

The woman's expression changed. She began crying. “It has stopped,” she said. 

People around her murmured in astonishment.

Jesus continued on. Helena remained behind.

There was no possible way for anyone there to know that the bleeding had stopped. No examination had been performed. No time had passed in which the claim could be tested. The woman simply believed herself healed. Helena recorded her name and learned where she lived.

Four days later she went to see her. The woman recognized her.

“You were with the teacher.”

“Yes.”

“He healed me.”

Helena sat beside her.

“Has the bleeding stopped?”

The woman's smile disappeared. For several seconds she said nothing. Then she shook her head. It had returned that same evening.

“Does Jesus know?”

“No.”

“Why haven't you told him?”

The woman looked embarrassed.

“Perhaps my faith was not strong enough.”

Helena felt a sudden revelation. Here was the mechanism by which miracles could survive their own failure. When the symptom improved, the healer received the credit. When it returned, the patient blamed herself.

Helena asked more questions. The bleeding had occurred unpredictably for years. The woman bruised easily. She sometimes bled excessively from small wounds.

A platelet abnormality, Helena thought. A coagulation-factor deficiency. Perhaps also a gynecologic disorder. There was no way to determine which. But there was one thing she could determine. The woman had not been healed.

The camera had recorded a supposed miracle. Follow-up had erased it.

Not long afterward Helena witnessed something much more dramatic. A young girl had become gravely ill. By the time Jesus arrived at the family's house, relatives were already mourning. Someone told him she was dead.

Jesus went inside. Helena followed with her camera. The girl lay motionless. Jesus took her hand. He spoke to her.

“Little girl, get up.”

The girl's eyes opened. She inhaled sharply. Her mother cried out. The girl stood up and walked around the room.

The family erupted in awe and astonishment. Helena herself felt her heart racing. This was different. She had recorded it. A dead child had apparently returned to life.

But as the others celebrated, Helena moved closer to the girl. Her skin was warm. Her color was good. There was no evidence that circulation had ever stopped. No one had checked a pulse. No one had listened for a heartbeat. No one present possessed even the most elementary criteria for establishing death.

The girl had been unconscious, no doubt. However, Helena observed that while she lay “dead,” there were visible pulsations in her neck consistent with a rapid carotid pulse.

From her medical experience, Dr. Arendt strongly suspected POTS syndrome, a condition common in teenage girls which causes episodes of syncope caused by a rapid heart rate and drop in blood pressure. It was a well-known abnormality of the autonomic nervous system, at least in the modern era. 

But the child awakening from unconsciousness was not a resurrection. The people in the room had made one enormous incorrect assumption before Jesus arrived. They had believed she was dead, without evidence.

Soon after that, another medical event occurred that would be documented in the future New Testament. Helena recognized it, but it disturbed her more than the others because of her medical knowledge.

A man came running, begging Jesus to help. His son had collapsed, “possessed by a wild, angry spirit.” The boy’s young body stiffened. His arms jerked violently. His jaw clenched. Saliva appeared at his mouth.

People shouted and screamed. 

Jesus knelt beside the boy, and asked the father, “Does this happen frequently?”

The father, with anguish in his voice, answered, “Yes, frequently. He often falls into the fire or the water. I brought him to your disciples but they could not heal him.”

Jesus immediately rebuked the demon, saying, “Evil demon, get out of this boy!”

Helena moved forward. “Don't hold him down.”

A man looked at her in confusion.

“Move those stones away from his head.”

The seizure continued. Jesus prayed.

Helena watched the boy's breathing and waited. Eventually the movements slowed. Then stopped. The child lay exhausted.

Jesus helped him sit up. The crowd erupted in relief.

“The spirit has left him,” someone said.

Helena turned to Jesus. “There was no spirit.”

He looked at her.

“The boy was possessed.”

“No. His brain caused it.”

Jesus frowned.

“His brain?”

Helena touched the side of her own head.

“There are illnesses of the brain. Sometimes its activity becomes disordered for a short time. The person falls. The muscles contract. The body shakes. Then it stops.”

Jesus looked at the boy.

“Have you seen this before?”

“Many times.”

“And there is no demon?”

“No.”

“What causes it?”

“Many things. Sometimes an injury. Sometimes disease. Sometimes something inherited from the parents. Often we don't know.”

Jesus considered this.

“Can your people cure it?”

“Yes, sometimes. More often we control it with medicine.”

“Medicine rebukes the spirit?”

“The medicine prevents the seizure. There is no spirit.”

Jesus stared at her. Not angrily, but out of curiously.

Helena realized that she was watching something no theologian had ever imagined. Jesus was learning about epilepsy.

Later that evening he found her sitting outside. “Tell me again about the illness of the brain.”

She did. He asked questions. Good questions. But they were the questions of someone hearing the concept for the first time. That mattered.

A few nights later, above Bethany, Helena decided to perform a small experiment of her own.

She removed a metal cylinder from her bag. Jesus looked at it.

“What is that?”

“A lamp. We call it a flashlight.”

There was no flame, no wick, no oil. Helena pointed it toward a distant olive tree and pressed the switch. Brilliant white light struck the tree.

Jesus stood. Several men nearby cried out. He approached her.

“Is there a fire inside it?”

“No.”

She handed him the flashlight. He found the switch and pressed it. Darkness returned. He pressed it again. The olive tree leapt into light.

“How does it make light without fire?”

“It would take a long time to explain.”

“Please try.”

Helena laughed. She attempted a crude explanation of electricity, particles and the production of light. Jesus listened carefully.

“Your people understand this?”

“Some do. Children know how to use it.”

He swept the beam slowly across the hillside.

“Your world must be very wise.”

Helena hesitated.

“No, not wise. Only knowledgeable.”

Jesus looked at her.

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes, a very large one.”

He smiled.

“Then perhaps our worlds are not so different.”

Helena looked upward. Thousands of stars filled the sky.

“What are the stars?” she asked.

“Lights in the heavens.”

“What are they made of?”

“I don't know.”

She told him. They were suns. Some vastly larger than their own. There were numbers of them beyond comprehension, scattered through a universe of unimaginable size. They only seemed like simple points of light because of their enormous distance from Earth.

Jesus listened with wonder. He had not known. And Helena felt no pleasure in proving it.

There was nothing shameful about his ignorance. No human being of his century could reasonably have possessed knowledge of modern astronomy, neurology or physics.

But that was precisely the difficulty. He knew what a first-century man could know. He did not know what a first-century man could not know.

“Jesus, I have a question for you. In one of your parables, you mentioned that a man’s faith is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed in the world. Were you aware that mustard seeds are not even close to being the smallest seed? There are seeds that are hundreds of times smaller. The problem is that you can’t see them unless you use a special instrument that magnifies things.”

Jesus admitted that he had not known that. 

Then Helena asked the question that finally settled the matter for her.

“When will the Kingdom of God come?”

“Soon.”

“How soon?”

“There are some living now who will see it.”

Jesus, I hate to have to tell you this, but rather than a kingdom coming, in about 40 years from now, the Romans are going to destroy Jerusalem and scatter the majority of the inhabitants throughout the Roman Empire. It’s going to lead to 2000 years of exile for the Jews of Israel, repeated war and abuse, culminating in a worldwide calamity we call the Holocaust. Only about one third of the Jews will survive. Only then will Israel be reborn.”

Jesus sat in astonishment. 

For Helena, that astonishment spoke more effectively than a million words. A human prophet could misunderstand the future. A divine one could not.

She returned to her own century with hundreds of hours of video. The recordings caused an upheaval.

The woman with the bleeding disorder became one of the most studied episodes. The original footage showed her declaring herself healed. Helena's follow-up, four days later, showed the same woman quietly admitting that the bleeding had never truly stopped.

The girl who had supposedly been raised from the dead was much more likely suffering from POTS syndrome. 

The boy freed from a spirit or demon displayed typical epileptic seizures that ended spontaneously while Jesus prayed.

There were other healings. There were other claims. But nowhere in hundreds of hours of footage was there a single demonstration of a violation of the laws of physics.

Nor did Jesus possess hidden knowledge of the universe. He was astonished by light and electricity. He did not know what stars were. He understood seizures as possession by demons until Helena explained epilepsy to him.

And he had expected God's Kingdom within the lifetime of his generation.

Instead, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the majority of the population.

Helena's conclusion was unavoidable. Jesus of Nazareth was not divine. As a prophet, he had been wrong repeatedly.

Yet the camera had recorded something else. It had recorded the Samaritan. Jesus had understood that morality became easiest when applied to people one already loved and most difficult when applied to those one had been taught to despise. He understood hypocrisy, status, greed, forgiveness and the strange human appetite for judging others. He understood that people could obey every religious rule available to them and still fail at kindness.

None of that required supernatural knowledge. It required observation. And Jesus had been an exceptional observer of human beings.

Years later Helena occasionally returned to one particular recording. It was not a healing. It was the night above Bethany when Jesus took the flashlight and the olive tree burst from the darkness. He stared at the little metal cylinder in amazement.

Helena had traveled two thousand years into the past looking for God. The camera had found no miracles, no omniscience and no infallible prophet.

But it had also found a teacher who saw through some of the oldest evasions of the human heart.

Helena had gone looking for God. She had found a man instead. In time, she came to realize that this was, in a way, more interesting.