"Like every good Hebrew boy, Yeshua had been taught not to desire women beyond his own chosen people. Especially not the dark-skinned daughters of Ham, whose avaricious ancestors had enslaved his own so many centuries ago. But as he gazed upon the Egyptian dancer Mery-Amun in the street, who animated her dark mahogany body with smooth grace to the rhythm of African drums, he could not deny a blazing craving within him. And then there was the way she winked back as she swayed and shook her hips."

So this is a sketch of Jesus of Nazareth sometime in this twenties (we'll say five years before his biblical ministry), when he first lays eyes on the lady whom history would remember as Mary Magdalene. The planks of wood he's carrying represent his original job as a carpenter before he switched to preaching and charity.

Of course I'm working with the idea of Jesus as a flesh-and-blood human being who could have conceivably lived in Roman-occupied Judea, rather than the morally unblemished demigod known from Christian scripture. I will say though that the Jesus in the gospels comes across as a generous and compassionate character, at least by the standards of his time and place (more than can be said for many of his later followers), so I don't plan to mock him anytime soon.