The Greatest Story Ever Told by Fulton Oursler

For this night's negotiations Joseph had made great preparations. Behind the curtain at the back of his shop he scrubbed all the sweat from his stocky body. The muscles of Joseph were strong as those of any Nazarene bully. He could put his shoulder under a Roman axle and lift a broken chariot from the mire. Thoroughly he cleansed himself and trimmed his beard and washed the sawdust out of the stiff tangles of his curls. Carrying a gift of Damascus sweets, he set off through the crowded Street of the Coppersmith.

Now Joseph turned to scan the crowded street. There, up and down, in an unending stream, a noisy crowd of men and women tramped in the ooze of the unkempt thoroughfare. Unruly Galilean workmen, some in sandals but most of them barefoot, and all in a hungry hurry, so it seemed, shouldered and elbowed their way home as if rudeness with them were a purpose in life. The air was clamorous with insults in a variety of languages-Greek and Roman for the strangers and piercing, passionate tones of home talk-a frenzied fluency of Aramaic Chaldee. The babel of all three tongues mingled with the bleating of lambs and goats, the hoarse sneezing of camels, and the soft, incessant clonking of their desert bells, And everywhere, underfoot and in corners and doorways, homeless scavenger dogs were snuffling for garbage.