THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 23 -
Roklus' opinions on gods and priests.
1
(Roklus), "With a few small side leaps we now have two concepts about deities, which compel to laughter an only to some extent awakened human reason. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans are teeming with great and small, good and evil gods; in the case of the Jews only one sits on the throne who is very serious and strictly just, but at the same time good and sometimes merciful. But the Jews, who he calls his people, may not make him angry because once he loses his patience all fun is over with him. In a moment he submerges the whole world under water for one year and then drains the water to god knows where and so millions are healed and have no more headaches! Or he lets lightning, fire and brimstone rain from the sky for a month over some small immoral tribe, and the tribe along with the vice disappears from the face of the earth! The one god of the Jews is also generous with pestilence and other evils; and once he starts swinging his staff over a tribe, there is no question of an early stop! In the case of the Jews all good and bad comes from one god, while for us Greeks many gods have to provide one or the other. Who is better off with their deities might be difficult to decide here.
2
But what gods are either in Heaven or in Orcus and Tartarus!? This all is a smoke screen! The idle and unwilling to work priests are the gods and the one god of the Jews is the high priest of Jerusalem! These people are well equipped with diverse experiences and sciences from which they wisely do not let anything go over to the blind made and henceforth with all force blind kept populace. The often very great experiences of many centuries and the most diverse arts and sciences are kept only in their malicious caste as forever inviolable, holy secrets. With that they loosely palter with people, who must bring them heavy sacrifices, so that they can more easily be deceived as much as possible and be mistreated in all aspects of life. I will give my entire fortune and even the last spark of my life to the one who can factually prove the opposite!
3
In primeval times there might have been here and there more honest and respectable people, who, endowed with an especially keen intellect from birth on and over time enriched by many diverse experiences, willingly and with love shared their spiritual achievements with their not so highly enlightened fellow men and in the end saw the blessings of their brothers accompanied by the best and most lasting successes. It must have been wonderful to live in a community in which no man hid any selfish secret from another man, and all were to their avail privy to everything that the most experienced one among them knew! But how long could such a fortunate situation last?
4
Such a first benefactor of his fellow men was certainly pampered by them and his successor not less than that. In some who loved idleness this also awakened envy and desire to be pampered by fellow men. They too sought to enrich themselves with all sorts of experiences, but started to keep them more and more secret in order to aggrandize themselves in front of their fellow men. Then someone, who was able to stride along for a longer period of time as silent as a fish but with a noble air and who was naturally pressingly questioned by many curious people why he always strolled along so silent and profound, said, 'If you knew, what I know, and had you seen, heard and learned what I have seen, heard and learned, you would be more silent and profound from inner amazement than I am!'
5
When still very simple people burning with curiosity and thirst for knowledge hear something like this from a cunning scoundrel and dawdler, they will give him no rest until he starts making up conditions under which he will disclose just a little of his infinite reserve. The conditions are gladly accepted and through that the smart scoundrel has propelled himself to a prophet and priest among his fellow men to whom he then starts to portray all sorts of mystic things, which neither he nor anybody else understands or can understand because they do not exist anywhere else besides in the quite fanciful brain of our scoundrel, who through his cunning deception silences all the real, old, honest, wise men, and does that mainly by attracting people and making them understand that he alone knows and understands more than ten thousand of their old, wise men.
6
But in order to gain full and lasting access to the people for his deceitful teachings, he may only add several magic pieces, and the poor, good people let themselves be nailed up most firmly with thousand sharp-eyed, sharp-eared and usually almighty gods by him, the heartless and unscrupulous scoundrel!
7
Woe to the fair-minded and well-meaning honest man, who with true knowledge and out of pure, altruistic love for the people said, 'Do not believe this false prophet because every word out of his mouth is a mountainous lie, from which are looking out only burning self-love and the most tyrannical imperiousness, which wants to put your limbs now still free in the heaviest chains as soon as possible! He will saddle you with unbearable laws under the title 'will of the gods' and for their transgression he will assign the heaviest punishments and even death by torture. Under the most powerful pressure of such a fake teacher you and your children will sigh and lament and call out for relief! But your calls will be in vain because it will be difficult to do anything against the power of the tyrant, who has neither a heart nor any humane brotherly love!'
8
No just and healthy human reason can have anything against such anti-indoctrination, which must have taken place often in the beginnings of peoples' subjugation! But the people let themselves be persuaded by several marvels and believed in one or even a multitude of gods and let themselves be most cruelly mistreated by them, that is by their most proud, arrogant, mercilessly power-hungry and selfish representatives, instead of starting to think for themselves and return to the old, all-natural human reason. If one knew this as well as my eleven companions and I do, it would be understandable why I am an atheist."