The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 6 -
Exchange of opinions between the Pharisees and Julius about Jesus.
The young Pharisee and all the others with him say, "Then praised be God in the highest, that He has given man such power which can be the salvation of the weak mortal! It is written in the prophets that God will send the people of Israel a Messiah. Well, what is that, if we should recognize him as such? A Messiah according to the promises is not allowed to be born in Galilee and to come from there; but that is just a prophet"s language which one basically, as far as the spirit is concerned, does not fully understand! We have never really seen why no prophet or any other great man should come from Galilee; since the Galileans can't do anything about the fact that they are Galileans. But that is how it is written! Whoever wants to believe it, believes it; but whoever does not want to believe it should forget it - and we belong to the latter for the most part, so that it therefore doesn't confuse us in the least to accept this savior from Nazareth as a Messiah in the best shape and form.
2
But in a certain way it is a somewhat highly extraordinary special thing and a great question how this man came to such extraordinarily high and divine characteristics! For as far as we have found out from our research about him and his background, he is the son of a carpenter who always, until his thirtieth year, stayed at home and did carpentry with his father and some other brothers, sometimes here, sometimes there, and no-one has ever discovered anything extraordinary about him; he has never been seen reading or writing or counting, also his behavior with other people seems to have been very taciturn and nothing less than intellectual!
3
Yes, we were told in Nazareth itself that his father and his mother had often quarreled with him because for one they could not easily bring him to the synagogue, and ten he never wanted to read aloud and had little or no respect for the Sabbath. His favorite thing was nature and a mute observance of the things of the Earth.
4
Also fishing was supposed to be one of his favorite activities and he always fished with good success, thus the fishermen were glad to have him with them.
5
In brief, what we could ever find out about him at all pointed towards the fact that firstly he had never been to school anywhere and secondly it was well-known that he had always been a person from whom only a very low level of any education emerged.
6
But all of a sudden he awoke and showed such wisdom that one could say with the greatest conviction that the world had never borne a wiser man.
7
Well, we have found out that, and naturally a lot more, from the truest sources, we now find him here and are convincing ourselves that he is a very unusually extraordinary man; and it cannot therefore be held against us if we ask: How did he come to such unheard-of characteristics which no person ever possessed before him and certainly will never possess again?"
8
Julius says, "But who knows the goal and the measure of God"s spirit, how much it wants to unite with the spirit of a person?! Can it not happen that the all-powerful spirit of God in all its fullness of power unites with a human spirit and then acts and works, as a pure man can naturally never act or work because he is not a god?!
9
But where God Himself speaks, acts and works through the infinitely strengthened spirit of a rarely suitable person, naturally nothing but wonder upon wonder must appear for us weak mortals. Word and deed are one - we can neither imitate the one nor the other; for we are only humans according to body and limited spirit. He, however, is only in the body a person like us; but in the spirit He is a God in the highest degree and possesses the whole infinity!"
10
But since - that is, according to our Roman theosophical concepts - the recognized pure divine is to be most highly honored and worshipped, however and wherever it appears, it is also clear here that we must act quite differently to the way in which act among ourselves with a person through whom the whole fullness of the all-powerful spirit of God works visibly and tangibly; that will probably be very enlightening for you!?
11
And from that you can see why we high-ranking Romans give Him from the depths of our hearts the highest possible adoration, love and respect and why we recognize and praise Him completely as the Lord of the whole world. Tell me if that doesn't seem to you to be necessary and extremely enlightening!"
12
The young Pharisee says, "Oh yes, definitely; for in many ways we like your theosophy very much and in the circumstances it is quite appropriate. Only, naturally, according to the actual teachings of Moses that would not be quite so good and dubious to accept; for there it is said most clearly and expressly: "I alone am the Lord, and you shall have no other gods besides Me!"
13
Julius says, "Quite right; but one must understand Moses not only by the sound of his words, but much more according to the true spirit, and one will then soon easily find that Moses and his clear teaching can find no contradiction here, if I state the principle that man should always recognize and honor some comment or other - but always by one and the same spirit of God with whom Moses spoke - for which reason the Egyptians, the Greeks and we Romans, if finally going a little too far through a type of blind superstition, show divine adoration to all people and creatures in whom they discover any special, unusual power and effect.
14
Well, but then we thought: For the pure everything is pure! If the somewhat superstitious humankind through their honoring of the divine with all sorts of images simply does nothing bad - which unfortunately the constantly growing domineeringness and greed of the priests often leads them too - to pacify the incensed gods with cruel human sacrifices, one cannot even count their somewhat pious superstition as a crude spiritual crime; for in my opinion it is better in the end for a man to believe something which still has a good reason, than to believe finally nothing and brand oneself as an animal which has neither a correct superstition nor any at all.
15
A person who will not and cannot accept any beliefs can also never achieve any true education of his mind. For whoever wants to build a house must look around for the necessary construction material beforehand. But how will anyone construct even the very simplest fisherman"s hut without any materials? If there is no system to the material at the beginning, this can still come along later if only there is some material there at all; but where there is a complete lack of material, all the system is useless.
16
Thus I say to you that in the end even a superstition is of more use to a person than no beliefs at all; for in the end even straw is better than nothing at all! You can still make something out of straw; on the other hand, out of nothing can only ever be made nothing. For this reason the Romans often permitted your nation the very darkest superstition because we still see some use in it for the people.
17
But the people from the temple themselves are an abomination to us, because we know very well that they do not believe anything and therefore make the nation believe that the most absurd things are highly divine instead of the truth and impose even the most unbearable punishments on these people who as a result of their natural enlightenment despite all moral forcing finally still cannot believe that beauty is ugliness, that the sun shines black rather than white, and that blood flows in the river Kidron! I consider this to be a most shameful malice, but not at all any sort of superstition of a person!
18
Yes, if one has some ability and a good opportunity to bring some light to the blind people, then that is certainly of inestimable value; but as long as one is not in this position, one should leave the people to their pious opinion! For if one cannot give the nation anything better, then at least one should leave him what he has!"