The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and the Priests of the Temple (John 5)
- Chapter 16 -
The converted priests dissociate themselves from the temple.
Once the meal had been consumed, everyone gave thanks once again and the Jews headed off to Jerusalem. The templers along with the High Priest raised their eyebrows of course at first when the twenty priests already quite advanced in years announced that they wanted to make a long journey now; but because they left them much gold and silver behind for this, they finally agreed and wished them much luck on their journey. The twenty took their leave quickly and lost themselves in the great city so that they could not be so easily spied upon which path they actually took. They knew a Greek, however, outside the city, who always had Greek clothes to spare and traded with them. They went to him, bought Greek clothes from him and left their old things there, which the Greek wondered at greatly, so out of curiosity he began to ask very suspiciously what these clothes could mean.
2
But they (the priests) said: "Friend, it is better to trade in these clothes, and since the previous income of the Temple now declines from year to year, a clever trade with the foreign Gentile nations must now replace it."
3
Our Greek was quite satisfied with this explanation, received his money and in addition the very good and expensive priestly clothes, was quite perfectly satisfied with that and said no word about it any more. Only the twenty strongly forbade him to ever make mention of it to anyone so that he would not come into great difficulties. After which the Greek was silent as a mouse.
4
But the twenty came back to us again as Greeks on a significantly longer route and arrived in the afternoon, about two hours after midday. When they arrived with us, we were still sitting at the table and had hardly consumed our midday meal. Lazarus, the innkeeper and also My disciples however, wondered how this business could have been so quickly decided.
5
Then one said from among their midst: "Yes, very dear friends, everything goes very quickly where money is concerned; but without money or with too little money we would have had to wait, and on a very long bench at that, and even afterwards very precious little happens! But we left behind quite a lot of gold and silver and thus our business was resolved easily and quickly. The Temple now attracts by no means as much as what it once did when the Samaritans, the Sadducees and now also a large part of the Essenes, to whom one at first paid no attention at all, were not yet separated from us, and so the main templers are now very glad if they can reduce their inner costs from time to time.
6
That is why we got out so very easily; but indeed we also thought that the Lord, who yesterday freed us from our bands, will certainly have helped us according to His holy will so that we could put our plans into action as simply and directly as possible. And behold, it went just as we thought, and therefore also our innermost thanks to You, oh Lord! But where are our other citizens waiting then? There were about twelve or thirteen of them! Could they not get away from their families as easily as we got away from the templers?"
7
I said: "Not so easily, for they are fathers! But they will not leave us waiting long; for they are true men of honour from Jerusalem, of whom there are few. But now sit down with us and eat and drink as Greeks and be cheerful and of good spirit!"
8
The twenty pseudo-Greeks thanked Me, sat down at the table where we were sitting and began to eat and drink with great appetite, and told us many cheerful things from the present condition of the Temple, about the new and false Ark of the Covenant, because the old strangely lost completely its quite miraculous power since the gruesome death of the High Priest of that time, Zachariah. But the new one was already almost thirty years old and in this time period no miracles had been performed at all, and nonetheless the foolish people still worshipped it as the old one.
9
There was also much said about the obvious rejection of Moses' Commandments and the replacement of them with new, nonsensical laws, punishments and atonements, and how instead of the previous true miracles of God now the Indian, Persian and Egyptian performances took over, but with little success, because everywhere disguised Essenes explained them to the people at any opportunity in such a very natural way that even the most foolish person in the end had to tangibly see that the whole miracle was nothing but a very crude and clumsily performed deception. The consequence of that was that the Temple was sinking lower and lower in respect every day, which it noticed itself only too well. For what was to come from this? Today an agreeing well-paid blind man, who however otherwise could see perfectly well as any of us, is made see again by a senior priest before the people - within a few days the lads in the streets and alleys were performing dozens of such miracles.
10
Therefore in the High Counsel of the Temple a petition was tabled to put and end to such actions for a prolonged period of time because of the constant profanations of such performances; for some reasonable and believable reason could be found for this. But all that fell on deaf ears. Miracles must be performed, at least for the sake of the common people - even if already often laughed about in the Temple! What good does a priestly respect, a serious face and the false staff of Aaron do if the miracle in itself is so foolish that even the commonest alley boy begins to laugh about it?!
11
And so in this way our Greeks told us many a thing at which Lazarus, his two sisters and among them even our innkeeper, who had not thought much of the Temple for a long time, began to marvel, and Lazarus, who still bore a certain respect for the Temple, said: "No, I would never have believed that about the Temple! For I must openly confess that I have always visited the Temple as a genuine Jew, and as often as the Temple lords visited me, I could not criticize their good speeches and teachings and often admitted to myself that it would be desirable if the people lived according to such teaching.
12
But now things take on quite a different face! What good are words and teaching if they are pure hypocrisy and the seemingly pious teacher is actually a despicable spurious character?! Such teachers seem to me to be like the wolf in sheep's clothing from the good old fable, who, because he could barely catch the fleet-footed sheep as an obvious wolf, clothed himself in sheep skins in order to catch them with less effort and tear them apart. Well, I will at least secretly note that as a good lesson! - What do You say, oh Lord, to all that?"