Before he witnessed a miracle, he exposed a fraud.

Spring, AD 33. In the weeks after a Galilean teacher is crucified in Jerusalem, a young Arab physician sets out on the road from Damascus to Bethany.

Rafiq al-Tabeeb was trained in Damascus and Alexandria, and he trusts only what he can see. At a famous healing shrine in the gorge below Gadara, he unmasks a staged miracle in front of a crowd of pilgrims, and wins. Then a boy he fights to save teaches him the limits of his own knife, and leaves him with a question no medicine can answer.

As he travels south along the Jordan and climbs the bandit-haunted road from Jericho, the reports gather: a lame servant who walks, a blind beggar who sees, an empty tomb, a man four days dead who lives. Rafiq records each one in his casebook, beside the same two words: Not observed.

Before Bethany is a prequel novella to The Physician's Testament, a trilogy of skepticism, evidence, and slow, hard-won faith. It ends where the novel begins: on the night before Rafiq walks into Bethany.

Before Bethany

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