The Great Gospel of John
Volume 4
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi (cont.)
- Chapter 201 -
The moor and Oubratouvishar hand over their treasures to Cyrenius.
Here, the moor, recovering from his first fright, bends down and placed the quite heavy lump on the table, undid the reed and the linen and within a short time the gold lump was lying naked on the table; and many went and looked at this rich treasure. Also our Judas Ischariot could not tame his curiosity, looked at the treasure and regretted secretly very much that he was not the owner of it.
2
When the treasure had been looked at and admired enough, the moor asked the angel, who would be most worthy to whom he could give this lump as a present, because he did not want to carry it all the way back home.
3
And the angel pointed to Cyrenius and said: "See there, to the right of the Lord sits the upper governor of Rome! He is in charge of Asia and a large part of Africa; the whole of Egypt resorts under him, and therefore also the governor of Memphis! To him give this treasure! Also you, Oubratouvishar, would do better to hand over your stone to this upper governor than to the governor in Memphis, who does value this kind of treasures only very little or not at all! - By the way, this is only my advice, and you can do as you please!"
4
Says the leader: "Your wise advice is already a command to me, what I also would execute at any price, since you only can give me the most wise and best advice anyway!"
5
With that both rise - the sceptic with the gold lump and the leader with his large diamond - and go to Cyrenius.
6
When arriving there, the leader says: "Earlier I did not know who you are. I also did not asked for anyone else, then only the Lord, since I thought by myself: 'Only one can be the Lord and ruler, and all the others are his servants and attendants!' But now this shining white wondrous youth told me, that you, earthly seen, are a great lord and ruler, and therefore I and this my colleague have according to the wise advice of this loveliest most wondrous youth, freely decided, to give to you our so miraculously brought treasure for your disposal, for which you nevertheless can give us some necessary and useful house tools, so that also we can furnish our houses to produce bread, which tastes so good.
7
Our hacking and cutting tools are bad and getting blunt quite easily; since they are made from wood and animal bones. In Memphis we have learned about all kinds of cutting tools, which even stones cannot make blunt so easily, - and those tools we could use better than our yellow shining metal, which is soft and useless! - Therefore, be so good and accept these two pieces!"
8
Says Cyrenius: "Good, friends, I accept these two exceedingly precious pieces from you; however not for me, but on behalf of these impoverished Galilee people, who are already in considerable arrear with Rome regarding their taxes! With theses two pieces Rome is in anyway covered for ten consecutive years with taxes for this country in advance, and the country can recover during this time period.
9
If you return home again, I will take care that a just amount of all kinds of the most necessary and useful tools and appliances will be given to you, and if you wanted to place yourself voluntary under Roman protection, you would from year to year be issued with new tools and appliances! Otherwise you had to at least every few years issue yourself with it in Memphis, of course by trading for those metals!"
10
Says the leader: "To decide on that, we had to hold a general peoples council, which is always a difficult matter with us, because our country is very large and the inhabitants are living in many and often quite difficult accessible corners, and therefore it is very difficult to call a national council. The better will be, however, that from time to time we will collect what we need most in Memphis.
11
Your Roman laws might be quite good; however, they would not be suitable for our land and people. The governor in Memphis has already made the same proposal to us, which we could not accept just like we cannot accept yours now. Even if you could penetrate our country, it would serve you no purpose! You would wander around in the glowing hot desert and perish by the hundreds and would still find no people, but find hundreds of herds of lions, panthers and tigers who would tear you to pieces; you also would not survive the fight with the snakes and adders!"
12
Says Cyrenius: "How are you then getting along with so many tearing beasts? Are they in all seriousness not harming you?"
13
Says the leader: "Just now you have heard from the mouth of the youth and from the most holy mouth of the Lord himself, how we are created! How can you beyond that, also ask me about it? It is, like the Lord Himself has said about us; how, whereby and why, - we do not know ourselves! I therefore ask you, to spare these kind of questions; since the answers would not be of any use to you!"
14
Hereupon both bowed deeply before us and returned immediately to their companions and told them everything what they had talked with Me.