The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 99 -
The extinguishment of the false sun and its impact.
Some moments before the extinguishing I say loudly to everyone, "Prepare yourselves for the extinguishing, and you, Mark, light now all the oil lamps and tar torches first, otherwise the sudden strong darkness following this strong light would affect your eyes dangerously and painfully!"
2
Mark and his servants now hurry to light the lamps of all sorts, and Cyrenius and Julius order the soldiers to light brushwood, and when everything is burning as it should, I say loudly, "Extinguish, you false light of the air, and rest to you active spirits!"
3
After My call the false sun suddenly disappears, an extremely strong darkness covered in a moment the whole area, and one clearly heard the great howl of fear from the town lying quite nearby.
4
The people saw of course many lights on the mountain on which we were sitting quite comfortably, but none of the thousands summoned up the courage to set even a foot further; for the Jews in their great fear saw the stars fall from the sky in seriousness and several lie on our mountain; but the heathens thought that Pluto had stolen the sun through his fury from Apollo, who had perhaps looked at some female beauty, and now another war of the gods would descend on the earth.
5
But a war of the gods was no desirable appearance on the Earth according to the myths (sagas) of the pagans, because the war that had happened once already was so frightening, in which the enormous gods of the underworld had thrown whole burning mountains with great strength against Olympus, at which of course Zeus naturally did not miss the chance to throw a suitable counter gift of countless lightning bolts and hail the size of mountains and thereby had conquered the evil powers of the Underworld.
6
Since from the town the false sun apparently was above the mountain on which we were standing, but after the extinguishing the mountain seemed to glow with lights and bonfires, the pagans thought that the sun had been hidden by the Furies in this very mountain and the princes of the Underworld had now set up watch with burning Orcus torches, and woe betide him who would draw near to this mountain, which on all sides had really several deep caves and grottoes to one of which Mark"s house was built, and as was known, served Mark as a very spacious cellar and other storage rooms.
7
So the Jews went out of fear of being hit or burnt by stars falling off the mountain, and the pagans moved out of fear of the Furies not to the mountain and moved gradually back to their houses when their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Some soon fell asleep, but others remained awake the whole night out of fear and terror of the expectation of terrible things which should come over the face of the Earth according to Daniel"s prophecies, and the pagans waited for the first bolt of lightning and rolls of thunder from Zeus and for the terrible noise of the world that Apollo would begin against the robber Pluto.
8
In short, in the whole, quite significant town there was confusion which would not have put the once great Babylon (at the confusion of languages) to shame. But things were very comfortable for us on the mountain; for we had the well prepared evening meal brought to us on the mountain. Raphael ensured in a moment that all the tables came to stand on the mountain and also the food, without any effort by Mark and his family, who had had enough to do beforehand with the preparation of the meal. Also the Roman soldiers got enough to eat and were soon very happy.