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  THE QUESTION:  There have been a great number of good things that have come from what you taught, even if there were those who committed so much terrible travesties.  What happened after Egypt?  

 

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  THE ANSWER:  My family eventually returned to Judea and, for about the first four years there, everything was quite normal on the home front in that my brother, James and I now spent much of our time just working with our father as carpenters.  I would often, on any days that I had for myself, seek to spend time with some of the more congenial clergy, as they were perhaps the most educated of our own people.  We didn’t have any actual scholars that existed outside the temples, as our schools were all related to the Hebrew religion and focused almost entirely on its sacred writings.  In my own native tradition, the knowledge of God was the only source of any academic exercise.  In most cases, these Hebrew scholars had no idea of even the existence of any of the Greek philosophers or their philosophies that I had been exposed to while in Egypt, and if they did, they certainly didn't let on to it.  It was often frustrating for me, as I had no one with whom to share what I had learned, and even worse, when I did share things, it was more often than not passed off as some pagan idea that didn’t even merit the most minute amount of time for any possible or even realistic consideration.  I remember feeling quite rejected much of the time by my own people and learned quickly just to keep my own thoughts to myself.  It soon became so frustrating that at about the age of twenty I took leave of my family and returned on my own to Egypt where I would more apt be in the company of those who understood where my own mind and thoughts were.  I had always maintained a great respect for the very basis of my own Hebrew traditions and actually saw little conflict between it and what I had also learned in Egypt.  It is interesting that my Egyptian friends never rejected my Hebrew upbringing nor me; it was only the opposite that had distressed me so much.  I will say that those four rather frustrating years in Judea did solidify my Hebrew education as I was then old enough to appreciate my heritage and was convinced more than ever that somehow I would eventually expand my own broadened ideas on the future to actually include the people of my roots.  I still had no idea that I would eventually seek to enlighten those very people that were often less appreciated and certainly those that were amongst the less educated.   If you had asked during the fervor of my youth, I wouldn't have probably imagined myself amongst the most educated of any society to which I might have been associated; even though I knew that I had been gifted with the ability to learn beyond the education of my own parents.  It only comes with age and some maturity of the spirit that one eventually gains a sense of humility that gives one those respected values of what is really most important, not only to the spiritual well-being of one’s own existence but certainly to those people with whom you hope to share your knowledge and love.  My leaving Judea at that time was sort of a way for me to get away and gather my thoughts about what I had hoped to accomplish in my own lifetime.  Had I remained, I would have no doubt been caught up in the Hebrew traditions, taken a bride and simply resigned myself to the usual fare of things as they were in that day.  I certainly would have never accomplished those needed final touches to my education and certainly not in that limited environment where only the other Hebrew were willing or even had anything to offer a humble Jew.  The Romans that were present throughout Judea had this superior feeling that they were somehow better than anyone else in the world, and even though there were a few educated Romans throughout Judea, they were not apt to take some Jewish boy under their wing and share their rather limited bits of education.  The other problem with the Romans is that in their own egotistical sense, many of them tended to reject almost anything that was associated directly with the Greeks, and that attitude would have necessarily eliminated much of what would have been of any value to my own personal advancement.  So, it was off to Egypt for what would be about another six years of any remaining youthfulness, and I might add, that I did indeed loose any remaining youthful naiveté during those six rather eventful years in Egypt.