Page 3 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)

T he world was in chaos, and in the wake of it, Valerius wanted both to run home and make certain his family was safe and to stand still, his gaze on the man who hung lifeless before him.

His heart had already sprinted toward the Roman sector of Jerusalem, toward his precious Mariana and their two children.

Had the quake shaken their home as it had this hill?

What if the walls had come crumbling down around them, over them?

What if they were injured—or worse? His gaze searched the road toward the city, but other than clouds of dust filling the lightening sky, he saw no obvious destruction. Even so, his feet itched to run.

But duty held him rooted to the ground on this hill the locals called Golgotha, the Place of the Skull.

Duty…and wonder, all focused on the man who now hung lifeless from the middle of the three crosses.

He knew the man—Jesus of Nazareth. Knew Him better than he was generally comfortable admitting.

He had followed His teachings for the last two years, albeit mostly in secret.

Surely the time for secrecy was over. Nature itself had responded to this man—darkness covering the world as He suffered, the very earth shaking in protest as He breathed His last. But…He had breathed His last. Died. What did that mean?

“Surely this is the Son of God.” Valerius had spoken the words aloud a few minutes ago, as he fought to keep on his feet on the bucking landscape. They’d been aimed at Longinus, at the observers gathered, at his own confused heart.

He was still learning who God was, had been learning it ever since he and his wife first moved to Judea so he could accept this post as centurion.

They’d been here seven years already—long enough to see zealots rise and fall, to crush rebellions, to become dreadfully familiar with the hatred leveled at him by most Jews he passed, simply because he was Roman.

“Pagan dogs,” they called him and his soldiers. He could understand that. The Romans were the conquerors, the ones who had stolen the Jews’ right to enforce their own laws, who kept them carefully pinned under the rule of Rome.

But they spat the same words at his wife and the two little ones who had been born here, who had never even seen their homeland, and that was unacceptable.

People could call him anything they wanted.

But sweet little Livia? Precious baby Felix?

They were innocents. Roman by birth, yes, but Judea was the only home they knew.

He and Mariana were raising them to worship the one true God.

The attitude wasn’t so different from the very ones in which the Romans held the Jews—disdain.

That was why it had taken several years for him to realize that this God of the Jews was different from the gods of Rome, despite how alike His followers were to anyone else in their hatred and bitterness.

To realize that the One they claimed was the sole Creator of the whole world and all who had ever dwelled within it was, by that very definition, his God too, if he chose to accept Him.

A God not of a city, not of a nation, but of the world. A God not of thunder or rain, of fertility or harvest, of war or music, but of all . A God who willed peace and harmony. A God who loved His creation.

Loved him . It hadn’t been fathomable when he began to study the ways of this people from his first post in Capernaum.

Gods didn’t love mankind. Some were generous, some treated humanity kindly, but love was what men were to give to them, expecting nothing in return but favor now and then.

Mostly, people just prayed against the evils of misfortune and pain and poverty.

Gods used men as nothing more than pieces on a game board, acting out their own desires and whims, which could change with the tide.

This God—the God of the Jews—was something different.

That was when he had declared his own war—a war on the prejudice of both sides.

He had defied all expectations of his Roman upbringing and begun to seek out the devout Jews in Capernaum, where he’d been stationed before this recent promotion to Jerusalem.

He’d asked for instruction in the way of the Lord, and he had even used some of his family’s legacy to build a much-needed synagogue.

It had won him friends there in Capernaum.

Friends he missed every day, and certainly every week when he tried to learn more about God.

Gentiles were allowed into the outermost court of the temple, yes, but no farther.

In Jerusalem, none of the priests or scribes seemed to have any interest in speaking with and instructing the handful of Gentiles who collected in that court every Sabbath.

Longinus stepped to his side, his spear still dripping with the blood and water of the supposed heretic. His hand, clutching the wooden shaft, trembled. “I owe you an apology, Valerius,” he said. His gaze too was locked on the man whose death he’d just confirmed.

On another day, Valerius might have smiled.

Of all the Romans in Judea, of all the centurions he served with in the legion, Longinus was the one he counted as his closest friend, yes, even when they’d lived twenty miles apart and saw each other only rarely.

But that didn’t mean Longinus had understood as Valerius stopped offering sacrifices to Jupiter and Apollo.

Certainly not as he’d begun to follow the teachings of the unassuming Rabbi from a random backwater.

Valerius had tried for the last year, after his promotion to Jerusalem, to get his friend to see what his own heart insisted—the man was more than a teacher.

Teachers do not heal the blind.

Teachers do not cast out demons.

Teachers do not raise the dead.

“Son of God.” This time, as the words fell from Valerius’s lips, they were more prayer than statement.

“I thought…I thought I would grant you prophet, at some point. The Jewish definition of one, that is. Certainly not an oracle like the ones we know. But the very earth does not lurch at the death of a prophet.” His friend wiped at his eyes, blinked a few times.

“But I do not even know what that phrase means— Son of God . How does this one God have a son? How could He if He is so unlike Roman gods? If He does not have affairs with human women as Jupiter or Apollo did in the days of the heroes, how could a son even be conceived?”

“I do not know.” Valerius had been struggling with that ever since Jesus had actually paused to hear his request, sent through those hard-won friends in Capernaum.

Since He had granted him the healing that Gaius had so desperately needed.

Since He had praised Valerius’s faith as greater than what He could find in Israel.

Valerius had known, as he’d rushed home after his messengers returned from intercepting the Teacher and found Gaius not only out of danger but on his feet, laughing with Mariana and playing with Livia, that prophet wasn’t a strong enough word either.

He’d read the accounts of the Jewish prophets.

They too had saved people from death, yes. But not by a mere word from miles away.

He hadn’t known, then, what to call Jesus. Even now, the words that sounded right from his lips carried more mystery than answer. “I do not know,” he said again, “but I intend to learn.”

Longinus shook his head. “How? You have been learning their ways for years already, studying under whatever rabbi will allow you to. You have said it yourself—they have no more answers than anyone else about the things this man taught.”

Valerius was Roman, from the heart of the empire, the heart of education. He knew how to discover what he needed to know, once he’d landed upon the questions that he should ask. He would simply do what he’d done before when he wanted to learn about God.

He’d go straight to the people who should know and demonstrate that he was their friend.

“His disciples will have the answers.” He turned to the small knot of them under the Rabbi’s cross, though that only made him frown.

The man had a dozen core disciples, and hundreds of others who followed Him too, wherever He went.

Yet the only ones beneath the cross were a few women and one young man.

He couldn’t just stride up and ask the mourners for a lesson.

One of the weeping women was Jesus’s mother, he was all but certain.

He couldn’t intrude on her grief like that—he could only imagine how his own mother would feel if she’d witnessed his execution.

Broken. Distraught. Undone. Certainly not ready to answer theological questions from a stranger.

His determination leaked out in a sigh. “Another day. We had better see to the other two as quickly as we can. I want to get home and make certain everyone is all right.”

Crucifixions were certainly not enjoyable, but he’d volunteered to oversee this one when he learned that the rebel Barabbas had been released and the Teacher offered up in his place.

Valerius had known very well that it was jealousy from the religious leaders of the Jews that had led to this, nothing more.

The Teacher, the man so much more than a teacher, had been guilty of no crime against either Rome or Judea.

Valerius had wanted to be sure someone was present to deal respectfully with Him—and with the others too, for that matter.

The label criminal did not mean the men weren’t still men deserving of that last consideration.

The legs of the two convicts flanking Jesus had already been broken, and without that meager support, life hadn’t lingered long. Valerius waved a few of his soldiers over to help him lower each of the crosses and remove the men from the beams.

Relief and panic warred in his blood when he heard a familiar voice call out, “Master!”