“My father will never die. He is eternal.”

“So you say. But I think that when I’m a man, and your father dies, I will take your mother as my wife.”

Joshua made a face now as if he had bitten into an unripe fig. “Don’t say that, Biff.”

“I don’t mind that she’s mad. I like her blue cloak. And her smile. I’ll be a good father, I’ll teach you how to be a stonemason, and I’ll only beat you when you are a snot.”

“I would rather play with lepers than listen to this.” Joshua began to walk away.

“Wait. Be nice to your father, Joshua bar Biff”—my own father used my full name like this when he was trying to make a point—“Is it not the word of Moses that you must honor me?”

Little Joshua spun on his heel. “My name is not Joshua bar Biff, and it is not Joshua bar Joseph either. It’s Joshua bar Jehovah!”

I looked around, hoping that no one had heard him. I didn’t want my only son (I planned to sell Judah and James into slavery) to be stoned to death for uttering the name of God in vain. “Don’t say that again, Josh. I won’t marry your mother.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“She will make an excellent concubine.”

Don’t let anyone tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone. In those early days, before he had become who he would be, Joshua smote me in the nose more than once. That was the first time.

Mary would stay my one true love until I saw the Magdalene.

If the people of Nazareth thought Joshua’s mother was mad, there was little said of it out of respect for her husband, Joseph. He was wise in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and there were few wives in Nazareth who didn’t serve supper in one of his smooth olive-wood bowls. He was fair, strong, and wise. People said that he had once been an Essene, one of the dour, ascetic Jews who kept to themselves and never married or cut their hair, but he did not congregate with them, and unlike them, he still had the ability to smile.