The Great Gospel of John
Volume 1
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Back in Nazareth
- Chapter 114 -
The Lord's words to Jairus about proper thanking. Peter's public testimony to the resurrection of the dead. Return to Mary's house at Nazareth. Peter's and Nathaniel's advice to Judas. Cain's spirit in Judas. Courage as a vice. The heathens as examples.
After this instruction, Jairus once again stepped over to Me, saying, 'Dear Master! By giving me back my daughter, You have given me more than if You had given me my own life a hundredfold, if it were possible. How can I thank You for this and how reward You? What can I do for You?'
2
Say I, 'Nothing more than that in future you should not be offended in Me when hearing this or that about Me, therefore! Because the whole world cannot give you and do for you what I have given and done for you! You shall once understand how and why I was able to do that for you. Remember Me in your heart!'
3
Jairus wept for joy and his wife and daughter sobbed as I resumed My journey back to Nazareth with My disciples. They accompanied Me to where the other disciples and a great crowd were tarrying for Me.
4
Arriving, there was many a questioner who had nothing better to do than regale us thick and fast with questions about the state of the school-principal's deceased daughter.
5
But Peter spoke, saying, 'You blind ones! Here, behold, this is the maiden who was dead and now lives! What more do you want?!' - Thereupon many turned to the principal, asking him if this were true.
6
And the principal spoke strongly, 'Yes, you blind and unbelieving fools! An hour ago I was weeping the loss of this my beloved and only daughter; and now you see me happy beyond measure, as I once again have my daughter! Is this obvious proof not enough for you?'
7
Upon these words all were exceedingly amazed. And when I started to move on with My disciples, the whole huge crowd of some three thousand accompanied Me to Nazareth.
8
It was however quite late at night by the time we arrived home; yet Mary and the brethren and sisters were still up. A well cooked dinner was awaiting us, coming in handy for quite a few of us; not having had anything since the morning, our considerable hunger was excusable.
9
Judas however also was in the house, sleeping on a straw Mt. Being woken with our talk, he got up, asking us no more than how the catch had been.
10
Peter said to him, 'Go outside and look!' Judas went outside, seeing nothing other than the huge crowd settling down around My house. Soon he returns to the room, asking Peter where the fish were, because he had been around the house, seeing no fish.
11
To this Peter says, 'Have you never heard that the blind see nothing, the deaf hear nothing and the foolish understand nothing besides the needs of the stomach?! Behold, you blind usurer, those people camping out there by the thousands are the choice fish I mean!'
12
Says Judas, 'Is that so! Well, this of course is no mean catch for a particular purpose; but for ordinary life I prefer a one hundred pound whaler to all those people out there! Because for such fish I can get four groschen everywhere; but for those out there no one would give me a stater.'
13
Says Peter, 'You will become fully Satan's yet, with your profiteering! Are you actually above the human race, to which the likes of us still belong? We all live without profiteering and you are living with us, eating from the same platter, which costs you no more than the actual effort of eating. If however you subsist here without your foolish money, what good then the money to you?!'
14
Says Judas, 'Do I not have wife and children? Who would maintain them if I were to earn nothing? Do you expect these to survive on air?'
15
Replies Peter, 'Look here, I can put up with just about anything, but not an outrageous lie! You might indeed in Jerusalem, where they know of you no more than being a Galilean, pose as a caring family man; but it will do in no way with me here. Because I and all those who were and still are our neighbours know you and your domestic affairs only too well for believing a single word of yours. Your wife and children have always had to live in want, earning their meagre daily bread through hard labour! They enjoyed mighty little of your catch of fish; their clothing they got off me and how long is it since from our mercy we almost completely restored your family's totally dilapidated house, whilst you were roaming the markets? How much did you give us for it? And this you call caring for your wife and children? You should be ashamed of yourself for ten years for daring to so impudently lie to us, who know you so intimately!'
16
Here Judas' face looks stunned and he says not another word, as Peter had cut him to the quick. He went outside to think about it, returning after a while to ask us all to forgive him! He promised to completely change from now on, wanting quite seriously to be My disciple; only, would we not cast him out! - Here Nathanael, who spoke little and rarely, said, 'The spirit of Cain dwells in you, do you get me? And this spirit shall not change on this earth; because Cain's spirit is the world and no improvement can be expected from same!'
17
Says Judas, 'Yes, yes, yes, you with your old spirit of Cain! Where is Cain and where are we? The generation of Cain perished; Noah alone remained, and in his descendants there is no longer even a drop of Cain's blood, but only the pure blood of the children of God flows in our veins. And where the blood is pure, there the spirit is pure too, for man's spirit always originates in his blood, and thus the spirit is always quite as pure as the blood.'
18
Says Nathanael, 'That is your old, already familiar nonsense and does not count with me. Go to the Sadducees; there you can cause a sensation with your nonsense! With us, however, the blood is putrid matter and the spirit is and remains forever spirit. What use is to you the blood of a child of God if a most impure spirit dwells within it as is the case with you? Do you understand me?'
19
Says Judas, 'Indeed, indeed, you could be right and I shall endeavour to follow your teaching; yet if your teaching is built on altruism, coming over with patience and gentleness, then I don't think it necessary that you should all constantly try to get rid of me with all kinds of quarrelling! Because, what is any teaching without disciples? Thin air, going unnoticed! Hence every teaching needs its disciples just as much as all disciples need a good teaching; and hence I maintain that every disciple is worth whatever any teaching in itself is worth! And so I don't think it would be too remiss on the part of you all to show me, your fellow disciple, a bit more patience!
20
As quite wise people in your own right, you hopefully shall understand my still being grounded in my old precepts; for this very reason I want to grasp your teaching, in order to therewith shed my old teaching of not much faith. If then I sometimes bring up something here and there against your new teaching, since I am not yet an initiate, I trust you are going to find this natural?!
21
Once I shall, like yourselves, become initiated into the principles of your teaching, finding them like yourselves incontrovertibly good and true, I shall become a proponent tenfold of you all in aggregate, since I possess courage and can confront all, fearing no humans. And if I were fearing, I would have stopped coming over to you a long time since, because you have been, together with your Master, showing me only too clearly that I should spare you my company! But I once and for all do not fear and so I keep coming. You are of course always thoroughly annoyed about it, but this does not bother me and I remain a disciple of this new teaching just like yourselves. What can you put against that?'
22
Replies Nathanael, 'Much and nothing, whichever way you want it! Your virtue of fearlessness is not worthy of much praise, since Satan also must be fearless, otherwise he would not remain disobedient to God the Lord eternity after eternity. We can observe something like that also in the animals of this earth, of which some obviously are more daring than others. Behold a lion, a tiger, a panther, wolf, hyena or bear and compare these to a lamb, a goat, a deer or rabbit and other such timid animals! Tell me to which of these animal groups you would count yourself?!'
23
Says Judas, 'That surely should be obvious that, like everyone else, I should incline towards the gentler animals and not towards the rapacious, wild beasts; because the lion's courage is everyone's death!'
24
Says Nathanael, 'And yet you praise courage, thinking to become a competent disciple therewith?! Courage, in the actual sense of the word is, I tell you, a great vice, because it is the fruit of arrogance, which is a contempt for everything not part of one's own self. Hence in our teaching, fearless human courage shall never be regarded as a virtue, as it is the exact opposite of what our teaching demands of man!
25
Who is it that wages warfare? Behold - all those so-called heroes, not fearing even death! Let the world be filled with heroes, and eternal war shall be passing over the earth's fields constantly; because every hero not only wants to be a co-hero of the other heroes, but a hero of his own, and shall not rest until all other heroes either submit to him or he has dispatched them from the world one by one!
26
Compare this with a mankind innocent as lambs and you have a paradise on earth.
27
When a hero faces the timorous, he will not pursue him; because the timorous does not contest his fame. But where one hero confronts another, they soon shall challenge each other to a fight and neither shall rest until one or the other has subdued the adversary! And behold, this in a nutshell is the blessing of courage!
28
If therefore you want to be our fellow-disciple, then put aside your most superficial courage and rather be full of love, patience and gentleness, and you shall be as befits a disciple of the Lord.'
29
Says Judas, 'Very well, you are not altogether wrong; I shall consider the matter further and let you all know tomorrow what I intend doing, whether to stay with you or leave!'
30
With these words Judas goes outside, seeks out several acquaintances among the big crowd, discussing nearly all night what he heard of Nathanael; but they all are on Nathanael's side, saying, 'Nathanael is a true sage!' and they know there is no guile in his soul! - We in the house however took our rest.