THE ANSWER FOR

    

  QUESTION

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  SIXTEEN

 

 

RETURN TO

  
 

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  THE QUESTION:  Just what was so different with these particular six years that so set it apart from your earlier years in Egypt?  Where you in contact with some of your earlier friends and scholars?  

 

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  THE ANSWER:  As smart and precocious as I was in the intellectual arena, I was still a bit arrested in my social skills.  I’m sure that much of what I had missed was due in large part to my own choices, in that I would ever so rarely associate with anyone close to my own age; most of the other children, with rare exception, never seemed to be on the same mental, educational or spiritual level.  When I first returned to Egypt, the friends I had left behind so unlike me had made all sorts of discoveries that were beyond just the academics.  I was almost instantly barraged with inquiries as you whether I had discovered that very most “exciting” sexual part of my being; I now understand just how natural all of this was and still is and what I had certainly missed by being so naturally disinterested, but at the time I was still more focused on what I had learned than what to do with my body in a sexual manner.  I probably wouldn’t even be addressing any of this except for that, that which is a most natural part of any man’s maturity seemed to have been totally avoided, especially by those who later reported so much of my own private life as though my supposedly being a ‘god’ somehow precluded such carnal knowledge.  It was in reality, as a man, that I was quite normal in most all aspects even if some things came to me a bit slower than it did for others.  What I had left behind me in Egypt at that age of fourteen were mostly male friends, but it was at my return that I was quickly initiated into having that first sexual experience with some of these closer friends.  This practice of congenial sex between male friends just didn’t carry with it the same sense of forbidden fruit as it was later so unnecessarily burdened by so many church prohibitions; it was all quite natural and I must add, quite pleasurable.  Having done the male thing, I was also quickly introduced to the added pleasures that only a women could provide and; of course, these were young prostitutes, as any regular girl was expected to ‘save’ her sexual behavior only for the one to whom she was to be betrothed, as it was in my own homeland and with my own people.  I was often teased with the idea of taking an Egyptian bride, but the real purpose of my return to Egypt was the completion of my education.  I never was quite sure exactly what this education was to have necessarily included and in many ways just being apart from my own people for a period time gave me the opportunity to become more objective about their actual spiritual needs and desires without that burdensome and constant harassment of the Pharisees looking over your shoulder and telling you exactly what you were to be thinking much less the mass amount of traditional and cultural behaviors demanded of any Hebrew man.  With the freedom to exploring alternatives and no actual constraints on the time frame in which to learn so many new things, I was able to organize my thoughts and soon began to understand just what I might have wanted to accomplish when I returned to Judea.  The Greeks had developed several philosophies that were more focused on the individual that were not so terribly laden with the need, pretense or presence of some god to rule over the daily routine of living.  I was particularly taken with the practical applications of so many of the Stoics, as they seemed so real in their approach to living and still living with a keen sense of others and their recognition without so many cultural constraints.  What the Stoics seem to be lacking was some fundamental reason to live their lives and a justification for treating others with the same respect that they treated themselves.  I found the solution within my own religion and it was a respect for one’s neighbors; even an obligation to treat them as though they might be of your same blood family.  Much of my time was actually spent just ‘living’ and ‘practicing’ what I was discovering.  I guess that is possibly why it took me some six years to be sure that what I had concluded just wasn’t some ideal that wasn’t at all applicable to a real life experience; I think that I must have nearly ran some of my friends crazy and at the same time this new-found behavior did appear to work and I found myself with more friends than I knew what to do with.  What I had truly learned from all of this was that most simple rule of loving one’s neighbor did not necessarily mean that you had to love every signal one of your neighbors as this would most naturally be impossible because of the shear numbers alone.  My other unexpected discovery was just how pleasurable all of this was for my own being.  I was actually happy in most things that I accomplished and even the work that I had undertaken to sustain my existence seemed less of a choir than before.  I was tempted to remain in Egypt for an extended period of time, but I still had the underlying urge to return to Judea and see if I might bring some of this experienced joy to my own people, especially those who appeared so downtrodden.  It seemed that six years was far more time than was actually needed in Egypt, but it was such a pleasant experience that it was, at times, so singularly difficult to finally leave, but out of a nagging necessity I did eventually return to Judea and it was after all, the right thing to do, as my own Hebrew friends and family had reached a point of breaking down under that awful rule of Rome.

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