The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
At the Sea of Galilee (John 6)
- Chapter 98 -
The heathen priest's eloquent defense.
Thereupon I instructed the disciples to teach the people the main fundamentals of My teaching. When also this was soon and easily accomplished, all thanked Me most fervently for such great benefaction. But they also told the Zeus-priest that they distance themselves entirely from his dead gods who never helped anybody and henceforth are not going to visit the temple anymore.
2
But the priest said: "In this I have preempted you! But in this new teaching we will see each other quite often in future and edify us mutually in the name of this living God. For our old gods of stone does not exist anymore, this means that according to time and truth we priests have not believed in them for a long time already, and for us they were as good as non-existent; but they in fact really do not exist any longer, since this Almighty has destroyed them with his will and has also covered the holy lake with solid earth for all times to come. We ourselves have become his disciples and will instead of the old lie, preach to you the new, rock solid truth and will be of use to you by all kinds of useful training, and in this way we will remain good, old friends!"
3
Here the village chairman said: "Everything would be alright; however, there is one thing I do not like about you, especially at this wondrous opportunity! You said that you priests according to time and truth have not believed in the gods for a long time already. This was quite good and wise for you and for your money bags; since you do not believed in the old gods, you imputed to them what you liked. You represent yourselves as the mediators between the gods and us poor, silly and blind people and say: 'This and that the gods require as sin-offering so that they do not strike us with this or that severe disaster!' We, like fools, then willingly sacrificed, - and you devoured instead of the gods who never ever existed, the often copious sacrifices given to the gods! If you then for a long time already never believed in the gods anymore, why then did you carry on with such unjust nonsense and why did you deceived us? - How do you want to repay us for this?
4
What I say here as a poor fisherman myself and as chairman of this small community, I do not speak for myself but for the whole community and you, familiar to me as the first of the five priests, will have to answer me and tell me on which grounds you have treated us as if you would be the almighty gods yourselves and impose a hard punishment on those who as reasonable people themselves dare to question your actions. If you cannot give us a satisfying explanation for this, our future friendship will be on shaky grounds!"
5
Said the priest: "Dear friend, firstly, we did not provided you with the knowledge of the gods, but you have been born and raised in it, and secondly I am asking you now what you would have done with us, if we suddenly got up and with good arguments would have declared your old gods as null and void. We thus had to do what we did, only for the sake of yourself and by all means try to maintain your old superstition in the gods, since otherwise you would not have treated us bodywise too friendly. For as long thus the old believe in the gods existed, we were forced to serve you as fools and were actually, as people otherwise equipped with all sciences, worth twice our remuneration.
6
In addition we had to do what we did out of political reasons for the state. If we would have done something contrary, soon the Roman courts would have asked us, why we are working against the old god-institution and give the people another teaching, which appears nowhere as sanctioned by the state. We would have lost our office and other priests would have been assigned to you, who certainly would not have treated you so gently than we are. And who can provide any guarantee, if we resign as priests, that the state will not soon assign new priests to you, who will torment you quite badly?
7
Of course we old priests will have it easier since we have so many witnesses for what here was effectuated by a living God, and if we from now on steadfastly and firmly believe and do what the teaching will show us, and we ourselves with our purified will are able to effectuate something special, it will place us in a position to reconcile ourselves in front of the alerted courts, and they will then put their swords back into its sheath.
8
Therefore I tell you, the chairman of this village: If we stay friends as we used to, we will be able to exercise for some time undisturbed the new teaching, until we have attained some degree of firmness by the mercy of this true, new God, so that also we can achieve a few things about which, until now, no Roman judge could have had any idea, and he will then, as I have remarked earlier, leave us in peace. - Speak now if I am right or not!"
9
Said the chairman: "You have spoken right, - but the ones who where cheated are nevertheless mainly we; since you knew that the old teaching of gods was nothing, but we did not knew this and regarded them still as very important, while you, through well selected speeches, knew to keep us in the dark. But lets leave it at that, since we all have received such unexpected great charity by this world Saviour, and on top of it his disciples are still occupied to instruct us about the teaching, how a person can attain such extraordinary and actually never before existing abilities of life! But I myself must now learn something about it."
10
Here also the priest went to the teaching disciples and listened with the greatest attention for two hours to the powerful teachers and only now recognized from the words of the disciples, who spoke here quite freely, who I was and what I wanted to achieve with the people.
11
I myself conversed in the meantime with Jored, with the doctor, with the son Jorab and with the earlier armless person, whom Jored, as promised, took with him, and revealed a few things to them which they otherwise could never have understood.