The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord on the Mount of Olives (John Chapter 8)
- Chapter 222 -
Pure and impure food.
While the several pharisees continued their discussions with the disciples, I conferred with Lazarus and his innkeeper about totally unimportant earthly matters. However, the many present toll-collectors and their colleagues paid attention to everything I, Lazarus and the innkeeper talked about, and found out quite a lot what they could use for their agriculture and their cattle breeding.
2
I drew their attention to many root fruits, which they quite well recognized from My descriptions, and which they could plant and prepare afterwards for consumption. I also made them familiar how to prepare the meat of pigs, deers, roe deer, chamois, gazelles, the wild and tame hares and many different species of birds, so that they could eat it and the food would not harm them. I also showed them how and at what time one could catch and kill these animals quite easily, and how one can preserve their meat for a longer period of time for enjoyment by proper pickling and smoking.
3
This also the Romans heard and our Agrikola came from his table to Me and said: "Lord and Master, I also overheard these instructions and became very joyful about it, that You also in such matters have taught us! See, we used to feed the criminals in the dungeons with river- and sea crayfish! These animals, if you can get them, are cooked in salted water with thyme herbs mixed in. If they become red, they are already sufficiently cooked. When thus prepared, they are handed to the prisoners as food. Initially, as it was observed, only severe hunger drove the prisoners to eat them; however, in time they started to like it very much, and they became very healthy, looked from day to day better, and finally everyone was looking forward to eat crayfish. Those, however, who completed their jail time, also afterwards ate nearly nothing else than crayfish, if they just could get hold of them. What are You saying to such food? Is it also advisable that it could be enjoyed by other people?"
4
Said I: "O, certainly, - however only during the certain month familiar to you, and they have to be fresh and alive obviously! The method of preparation is quite good! However, the river crayfish is better than those from the sea."
5
With that Agrikola was quite content.
6
Some of the disciples started to speak among each other and said: "Just look at our Lord and Master! For a long time He hasn't spoken about such matters! How can it please Him now?"
7
However also the pharisees who talked about Me with the disciples, noticed My speech, shook their heads and said: "Why does He now speaks against the laws of Moses and the Romans does not say anything against it, when they just now reproached us that we have rejected the laws of Moses and set up our own instead! Doesn't he know what Moses has ordered and that the meat of impure animals already defiles a person if he only touches it? Preparation here, preparation there! What is impure also stays impure, irrespective of the best preparation and defiles him who enjoys it! Ha, strange about him that he speaks like that!"
8
Said Jacobus secretly to Me: "Lord, don't You hear how the pharisees praise you? Say something against it!"
9
Said I: "what do I care about the talk of the blind pharisees! They are blind leaders of the blind! However, where a blind guides another, both are going to fall into the ditch, and neither can help the other. Therefore, do not take note of their talk!"
10
But also the pharisees heard this and they began to ask each other, whether I referred to them, since they had become believers now.
11
But I got up and said to them: "Yes, I also mean the likes of you! You blind fools! What goes through the mouth in and through the mouth into the body and leaves the body again through the natural way, does not defiles a person; however, what comes out of the mouth from the heart, like evil thoughts, bad and scurrilous talk, dishonouring, perjury, lies of all kind, deception, jealousy, stinginess, fornication, whoring and adultery, gormandising and gluttony, also with your pure foods, really defiles the whole person!
12
Look it up in the scriptures and you will find why Moses has recommended the enjoyment of only cleans foods! He did this because of your too great meat voraciousness and because of your unbound sensuousness and lecherousness. But I say now, that for him who is pure in the heart, also everything else is pure, however, to the impure everything else is impure.
13
What you eat or drink for the necessary strengthening of the body, will not make you either blessed nor unblessed, but only what you believe and what you do! If you believe wrong things, you really cannot do any right and truly good things; since the truth is not in you. But therefore your soul will not remain in judgement; since then all heathens would be lost, which is not at all the case! However, if you hear the truth and also understands it, but still acts according to your falseness, the truth will judge you, however not for life but for the death of your soul! For just as the light is the death of the night, also the truth is the death of the lie and falseness. When now the day of your soul has come, why do you want to go back into the night of judgement and death?!"
14
Said the scribe: "Master, I already know that you speak the truth; but you have accused us that we discarded the laws of Moses and put others in its place! And see, we do not deny it, because it is truly so; however, if you now allow all Jews to also eat the meat of the animals indicated by Moses as impure, even if specifically prepared, you also abolish with regard to this point the laws of Moses, just like you do not keep them very strictly, since you also heal the sick on a Sabbath! Since it is written: 'You should work for six days, the seventh you should celebrate and dedicate to God the Lord!' With what right are you yourself doing this?"
15
Said I: "If I am as what I have come into this world, then I do this with the very same right, as the right with which the Father, who is in Me, gave once to Moses in the desert the laws for you Jews. But I do not at all abolish any laws of Moses, however I Myself fulfill the law in all its aspects. But I only show to you your disability to understand and to assess the laws of the prophet. You ride the letter, which kills, and do not know the spirit which makes alive. I however reveal to you now the all alive making spirit; how can you then say that I abolish the laws of Moses?
16
You letter riders wet-nurse perhaps with your letters mosquitoes and swallow camels instead; because if you then cling so steadfast to the letters of the laws of Moses, how can you then for a lot of money and other sacrifices provide for the rich Jews dispensations (pay ransom to be free from the law)?!
17
You yourself eat acidulated bread even on a Sabbath, eat wild poultry and even allow your apostles to eat everything what people in other countries eat. You do so for your earthly advantage and therefore break the law; but I recommend this to the people out of pure love and mercy and for such dispensation I do not demand a sacrifice and therefore does not abolish the law of Moses! For if man satisfies his hunger with whatever eatable food, he does not sin against any law of Moses. However, if a Jew out of pure lickerishness and because of futile palatal tickle to the annoyance of his fellow-men, eats the meat from impure or suffocated animals, while having sufficient meat from animals indicated as pure, sins, because he annoyed his weak fellow-men.
18
I hereby say nothing else than: Man in an emergency can also eat the meat from all the animals indicated by Me and does not need to have a bad conscience about it; but he should first prepare it as I have indicated it earlier, and it will not harm him! However, the blood from especially suffocated animals, nobody should eat, since it contains many hidden evil spirits (poisons)! You know such quite well, but secretly you still eat the meat of suffocated chicken, calves and lambs, because it tastes better and you become intoxicated and randy and finally entirely without feeling.
19
First think about yourselves what you are doing, and only then you can tell Me whether I have abolished the laws of Moses! How can you say to your neighbour: 'Come, so that I can pull the splinter from your eye!', and in your own eye is tuck a beam?! Fool! Pull first the beam from your own I, and then see how you can deal with the splinter in the eye of your neighbour! Everyone first sweeps before his own door, then he can go to his neighbour and say to him: 'It is now clean in front of my dwelling's door; if you want I can also sweep your portal, so that passers-by are not take exception about our dirt.'"