The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 152 -
Stahar relates the assassination of the High Priest Zachariah.
Raphael says, "The point now only is whether you spoke the truth or not! I can certainly say to you that you, simply to test my spirituality further, have now lied quite atrociously and stinkingly in your unbound imagination, and that of all you have told now, not a syllable is true!
2
The imaginary magician is supposed to have guessed your thoughts; and I have now guessed that you have lied to us all! And there the lie about the magicians has now become truth for you!
3
The false magician turned water into wine, according to your lie; look, I can in fact also show you that! Look, there is an empty jug; let's fill it with water! (The jug was filled with water.) Look, it is standing here full of water! I have not touched the jug, and yet the water has become the best wine! Taste it and see whether you like it!"
4
Stahar tastes the water and now seriously finds that it has become the best wine.
5
The angel speaks on, "But the magician then made the wine disappear in another jug; and look, I am not touching the jug, and yet now there is not a drop of wine left in it! (The jug was empty and dry.) But the false magician then made wine again out of the smell; and look, this jug no longer smells of wine, and nevertheless I want it to be full of the best wine again! Look, the jug is full!
6
But you have no bread to go with the wine and may not drink the pure wine easily! Your magician needed several stones in order to change them into bread; I need nothing but my will - and look, already a quantity of bread is lying before you! Try it, and see whether it tastes better than your false bread!
7
You then gave your magician two false pounds of silver; and I will create two hundred pounds of real, quality silver out of the air as a good payment for your lie! Tell me whether you are now satisfied with that!"
8
Stahar raises his eyebrows at this and says after a while, "No, that cannot possibly happen with natural means and powers! Obviously something more than an unfathomable natural force is working here! There is an all-powerful divine will behind it, and you, young man, are either a real, personified angel, or you are one of the greatest prophets of God like Samuel or like Elijah!
9
Yes, now I believe that you are a messenger of God from the heavens to us poor, sinning people, in order to set us who have turned far away from the right path back onto it again!
10
It is true, great, blessed messenger of the Lord, that my story which I just told you about the South-East Asian magician was as good as fabricated by me - but nonetheless only after the pattern that was once told to me by someone else. I only told it in order to test you further, but I found that you can truly look into our hearts and minds, and that for your will even the most impossible thing is child's play.
11
And I also now firmly believe that you are a complete messenger of God, despite your beautiful body, and I now have a great joy in my heart that I have also experienced what is written there in the Book, that the pious fathers also experienced such things now and then in the old days!"
12
The angel says, "But it is not for the first time that you experienced something that the old fathers experienced! Thirty years ago you experienced something similar in the temple, at which the High Priest then fell mainly by your hands between the altar and the Holy of Holies! Why did you not believe then in the obvious miracle, and why did you even become cruel to a High Priest?!"
13
Stahar says, "Dearest, all-powerful messenger of the Lord, do not remind me about a time in which I certainly saw the light of the world only through a curse, and about a deed which I deeply regretted a thousand times afterwards! But it was almost impossible to do otherwise for my soul and to my knowledge!
14
I had already secretly got acquainted with the philosophy of the Greeks again and again, and I knew why I had become a human being. Plato and Socrates, as well as Aristotle, were a thousand times dearer to me than all my dubious and highly mystical prophets whom I even today do not yet understand and will never understand, because they actually cannot be understood, but particularly the Songs of Solomon, which rather resemble that of a lunatic than a wise man. I had felt a proper anger against everything that disagreed even a little with the pure reason of Euclides, by whose works I actually became a mathematician.
15
My all-powerful, heavenly friend! If someone says to me: 2 and 2 are 4, and that the day has light and the night has darkness, then he has spoken the complete truth, and I will press him to my heart as a friend. But if someone comes and claims fixedly to my face that 2 and 2 are 5, and that the day is dark and the night is light, I would beat such an ox to death with one blow; for such a mental murderer seems much worse to me than any thief or mugger or murderer!
16
And you see, so it was then in the temple! They had already begun to claim the most absurd things, and even placed punishments on it if anyone undertook to express the least remark against a wise saying by Solomon, no matter how dubious and foolish!
17
That High Priest was a real follower of Solomon and stuck strictly to the most mystical wisdom; he even began to sing the praises of a brightest light that was coming to the world. This would now illuminate all the darkness of the night so powerfully that even the darkest holes under the Earth would shine brighter than the sun on the brightest midday; but the day of the world would become the darkest night, and the darkness of the day would become so great that men and animals would die from it. The light of the night was already in the world and was already illuminating the darkness of the night, so that even those born blind could see like a seeing person on the brightest day!
18
What I have now said is just a little introduction, which of course is a greatest lie from the ALPHA to the OMEGA, since until today, over a full thirty years I have never noticed any night light apart from the full moon - except yesterday's extended evening light, which could just as well have not occurred, whereby much misfortune would have been avoided. No-one was allowed to ask him what was to be understood by this, and nonetheless he demanded the fullest faith.
19
I could bear this in Jehovah's name - for a little more nonsense on the top of much nonsense matters little, because one can still think purely and truthfully for oneself - but then all at once he began to say: 7 now becomes 1, and 666 becomes 111, and 777 and 1/2 and 1/3 and 1/4. Whoever can count should now count differently; for the old way is now judged and damned!
20
Such nonsense created the greatest worry, fear and anger for me and several scholars of Euclid; we conspired and put an end to the insulting foolishness through a number of well-aimed stones!
21
But we did not gain much by this; for the successors of the murdered man were a hundred times worse. Then the likes of us could no longer remain in the temple; I reflected, pretended to be a big hypocrite, and as a result of that I was soon placed here as a leader with all the rights of a High Priest. But here I let nothing pass me by and outwardly I played the role of a strict believer; but inwardly I was very good and full of good things. There you now have the reason why Zachariah was killed! What do you now say to that?"