The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 135 -
Cyrenius and the delegation of the Arch-Pharisees from the burnt down Caesarea.
After the breakfast is consumed, Cyrenius and Julius ask Me what is now to be done.
2
I say (to Cyrenius), "Wait here a little and there will soon be something to do! Look at the coast! There like lazy cloud formations creep several arch-Pharisees with their arch-disciples. They already know that you are staying here for reasons that are unknown to them. They suppose that you are inspecting the areas on the Sea of Galilee, but are nonetheless holding a sort of camp here. Ouran's splendorous tents confirm them in their hazy opinions. They are now paying attention to see whether you will come over the sea in a ship or perhaps out of a tent. Then they want to entrust you with a plea for compensation, since they believe that the heathens have set their homes on fire.
3
But they will soon and easily learn that you are already here, and we will have them round our necks. Then you can already imagine what a job they will give us to do! I tell you all that only so that I will not be revealed before time! They must first be properly driven into a state, only then will the fear of fears be announced through My revelation. But you will soon find out what effort and debating we will have to sustain with this adulterous lot!
4
Mathael and Raphael will do good service for us; but until the middle of the day we will hardly get rid of them. Therefore let us now be quiet for a short time, and you collect yourself; for you now know what will happen to you!"
5
At this everything becomes quiet, only the soldiers and the servants hurry about the mountain somewhat loudly.
6
After a while Mathael asks Me whether he is allowed to speak to the arch-villains quite without any retention.
7
I say, "Certainly; but you will have to gather yourself exceptionally! I do not believe that it will be easy to deal with these armed heroes of the night; for these are armed to the teeth for every case!" Thus Mathael also began to gather himself.
8
But My disciples also asked Me how they would have to behave in this situation.
9
I say, "You have neither to speak nor to do anything; observe the whole thing as mute witnesses, and if any of the Pharisees ask you something, direct them to Cyrenius and admit that this is none of your business, and they will leave you in peace. I Myself will do the same at the beginning." With this decision the disciples were also satisfied, and we waited for the annoying arrivals in peace.
10
After a short half hour those waiting for Cyrenius on the seashore got the news from a Jew from the city who knew Cyrenius and who had passed by us that Cyrenius was in the garden of the old soldier. At this news all the arch-Pharisees and the other arch-Jews turned around and headed very quickly over to us.
11
When Mathael saw them coming towards him, he said, "Well, my high friend Cyrenius, gather yourself; now the storm will begin! I am very curious to learn what these lads will bring out!"
12
Cyrenius says, "I am no less curious, although I openly admit that I am least fond of dealing with these people; for if you show them even half the little finger they immediately want the whole hand, and that is not possible, of course, because there are other people who are really poor and therefore really need other people to take care of them."
13
At that the petitioner had already arrived, of course with the leader of the synagogue at their head. He recognized the supreme governor immediately and spoke to him thus: "High-ranking, enlightened and all-authorized Lord Supreme Governor of Coelesyria, yes, of all the Jewish lands, of the rest of Asia Minor and Major and of a part of Africa! It will not be unknown to you what an unheard-of misfortune happened this night to us, the inhabitants of the city Caesarea Philippi, ever devoted to God and to the emperor. If we had even the smallest guilt to measure, we could now curse our negligence and cry deeply and further bear with patience what God the All-mighty has let happen to us; but we have not given the slightest cause for this misfortune, as far as we know, but instead the evilness of some mischievous heathens has done it to us! Therefore we are then actually here to beg for a corresponding compensation from you!
14
You will certainly let such a thing come to us by law and fee all the sooner since we are firstly full subjects of Rome like the mischievous heathens, but secondly we as priests and servants of the only true God are capable of turning the people towards the emperor more in our balance for Rome than many thousand swords and lances. But if we are ever anti-Rome, then our tongues achieve more in a few hours than a hundred thousand soldiers in one year. Here one hand washes the other!
15
Fulfill our plea, take away our temporary begging stick and let our destroyed buildings, our teaching and prayer houses be built again at the expense of the State, and you will find in the name of the emperor no ungrateful support, yes, if there is no other way, we oblige ourselves also to pay back to the State such an advance after twenty years with interest. Consider, high supreme governor, our plea and grant it to us! It will be of disadvantage neither to you nor to the emperor; for we know who and what we are, and what we can do! If we are the emperor's friends, he will rule his empire easily; but if we are enemies of the emperor in our closed minds, crown and scepter will soon become an extremely heavy burden to him! Therefore consider our present affliction, consider out pleas as a clever man and act according to your discretion!"
16
Cyrenius says, hardly concealing his inner bitter anger: "Before I say either yes or no, I will first have everything checked most accurately, how and for what reason the city and your houses were set on fire. Whether you are quite so innocent, I could hardly know; for I have just heard this night from someone how you as a result of yesterday's total eclipse of the sun and then later more because of the sudden disappearance of the evening sun the nation began to harangue you because of the imminent judgment of God that is supposed to happen now and was prophesied by one of your prophets. On your part, the priests of the Greeks did not neglect to exploit the strange occurrence of nature to their own favor. Both of your priestly groups have misused the known natural occurrence in order to force the people to the most unheard-of sacrifices because of protection from effective prayers that attain God's will. The people who have been made deaf and blind since childhood did everything in their power that it could do in order to escape the latest judgment announced by you.
17
Luckily there was an intelligent and experienced man there who called some of the superior people from the people whom he knew and then explained the appearance that took place in all peace and calmness with perfectly natural reasons and as something he had often seen. But he also was clever to draw their attention to support his explanation that the priests, if there were some truth in their statement, certainly would refrain from blackmailing the people from huge sacrifices for a few remaining moments of existence on this world full of lies and deception! The never-satisfied greedy and heartless priests knew as well as he did that there was nothing in the whole affair but at most a natural change of weather the following day. They knew the people's superstition and sinned at this opportunity in the most scandalous way!
18
You see, such a thing was told to me in the night by a very most faithful witness! Well, what was the consequence of this wise and very timely lesson? The several with few words well-educated people hurried at this to the desperate nation and screamed at the top of their voices: Comfort, comfort, comfort upon comfort! Listen to us calmly for your best! Then they instructed the nation in a very easy to understand way. The nation, seeing such a thing, was seized by anger and fury against you and prepared then a little bit from Daniel's Day of Judgment for you. Since I see only too well now from this faithful evidence, that actually it was not the mischievousness of the heathens, but only you yourselves, that in this night the otherwise beautiful and significant city becomes ash for the reason of justified anger of the population about your deceptive sense, then you will hopefully see very well that I not only cannot listen to your very cheeky plea, but that I on the contrary as Vice-regent here for the best of my emperor and for the best of the people will hold you to the strictest responsibility and to the full replacement of damage to the people, which I will collect most exactly, and judge - assuming that everything happened as I heard this night from a believable witness! What have you to put forth against this? Speak if you have something that you can say against this!"
19
Already during Cyrenius? tale the black petitioners changed their colors like chameleons, and one noticed easily their inner anger glowing out of their genuine wolf's eyes; and when they should now justify themselves, they could hardly pronounce a word for sheer anger.
20
Cyrenius waited a little while, and since no-one else wanted to speak he became worked up at the grimaces of anger by the petitioners and said in somber seriousness according to the tradition of showing the fullest mercilessness of a genuine Roman, "Speak soon, otherwise I will be forced to take your furious silence as a full admission of what you are accused of and in addition to immediately to pronounce your well-deserved judgment without any further consideration and to commit you to the execution of this judgment! Speak, for you know that we Romans never tend to joke!"
21
Finally the leader says, "Lord, the slander is too great! One cannot gather oneself so quickly and speak in return, but instead it is required to collect oneself and think how such slander is possible, and to consider the most powerful means to beat it into the dust of nothingness. Who can prove to us that we forced the people to make sacrifices?! We preached what we felt and feared ourselves! Who can prove to us that we acted differently to how we had to feel according to the prophecy?! Were the signs not there?! Or does history not show us a quantity of examples where God's patience came to an end and suddenly a most terrible judgment came over the people?! But we have also examples in the largest quantity where God allowed His great mercy and compassion to come to the improved people, despite a determined and unavoidably pronounced judgment, if the people turned back to the true repentance and regret.
22
But if your wise man who instructed the few against us was of such an honest character, why did he then not come to us and show us what he showed to those few unhappy people who are always against us? Only a person who does not know our eminent religion and has no idea about the word of God through the mouth of a prophet and of the effect of such in a time of signs in the heavens, can act so shamefully evilly slanderously against us! And a supreme governor of Rome believes such a person rather us!? They will tell us: If such a wise man had come to you and had taught you as he taught the desperate people, you would not have listened to him and would have judged him or lapidated him! But who can claim such a thing about us before he has tested us!? Only after the deed do we tend to judge and condemn, but before the deed, according to appearance and some evil supposition? Never! Our religion speaks for our behavior; but who can step up and prove to us that we believe differently and act differently?! Malevolent slander or an evil supposition proves nothing for us, and your witness may well have told you whatever he wanted, but we declare his claim to be nothing until he can prove to us that we truly acted differently to what we believed ourselves and that we would have let the wise man go who incited the people against us with his wisdom, if he had come to us!
23
We actively shared the fear of the people; and if the people brought us masses of sacrifices to atone for their sins in the belief that they would appease God in this way, should we not have accepted the sacrifices?! Where is the opposite written?!
24
Noble Governor, consider that you are here dealing with true arch-servants of God and not with templars of the new kind who unfortunately understand only too well how to sway with the wind! We know that well, and the temple is therefore not disposed to us; but unfortunately few of us stick to the old faith, to which night flies, who whisper falsely judged things in your ear, will not part with! We have today certainly a magnificent day of the Lord, and there is nowhere a trace of a divine judgment except that our city has fallen victim to the flames - but not through God's judgment, but through the unfortunately dubious evilness of some constantly hostile pagans. Would it have been that impossible for God to treat this area like what He did with Sodom and Gomorrah? If such a thing were impossible for God, who can step up here and say that after the previous signs it could not have happened?! We don't want to say that God has protected this area from His threatened judgment because of our many prayers and sighs; God can have done it because of some pious person fully unknown to us, because both our prayers and the prayers of the pious have reached the foot of His throne. But who can prove against our religion and against our convictions that it is not so, but fully completely different?! I have now spoken in the name of my people and you, high lord, judge now a just judgment before God and all people!"