The Childhood of Jesus
The Gospel of James
Biographical Gospel of the Lord
- Chapter 56 -
Maronius Pilla Discards Some Pagan Views
SOON AFTER these wondrous words of the Baby, Cyrenius turned to the constantly more paling Maronius and asked him,
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'Maronius Pilla, what do you say to this Child? Have you ever seen or heard anything like it?
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Is that not obviously more than our myth about Zeus, according to which he was suckled by a she-goat on an island?
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Or by far more than the questionable tradition of the founders of Rome, suckled by a shewolf?
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Speak, what do you think of this? For that is why you are my companion, so you should hear, see, and learn something and then express an opinion about it before me!'
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At this Maronius Pilla gathered his wits as well as he could and replied,
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'Exalted ruler of Asia and Egypt, what shall I, a poor simpleton say here, when the greatest of the old philosophers would have to fall silent and the wisdom of Apollo and Minerva is humbled as pitifully as tin is hammered thin on the glowing anvil of Vulkan?
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Here I can only say: It has pleased the gods to put a most wise God out of their midst on the earth; and Egypt as the old cradle favored by all the gods, a land in which snow and ice are unknown, must also be the homeland of this God from the midst of all the gods!'
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Cyrenius, smiling a little, said, 'In a way you are right;
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but see here, you seem to have erred in that you called this Child a child from the midst of all the gods.
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Now mark this, here on both sides of me sit the Child's father and mother, and they are after all human beings like both of us.
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How then should a God-Child from the midst of all the gods come into being by them?
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Besides, the lofty inhabitants of Olympus would obviously have put a very dangerous bee in their bonnet, since the enormous superiority of the Child's wisdom would soon have caused their downfall.
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I therefore beg you to reconsider, for otherwise you will run the risk that all the gods will assail you at once for expressing yourself thus and will set you, while still alive, before Minos, Aeakus and Rhadamantus and thereafter place you at the side of Tantalus!'
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At this Maronius was startled and replied after a while, 'Consular, imperial highness! I believe that the court of the three judges of the underworld has just about ceased to exist, and the gods, as it appears to me, also seem to have deserted their Olympus in considerable numbers.
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If we honored only wise men, who surely did not get their wisdom from mud puddles, we would soon learn to get along without the advice of our gods.
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Truly, the words of this wonder-Child already mean more to me than three Olympi full of freshly-baked gods!'
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Here Cyrenius said, 'Maronius, if you really mean that, then everything is forgiven you - but first we will have to discuss the matter at much greater length! But no more for the present.'