The Great Gospel of John
Volume 4
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi (cont.)
- Chapter 69 -
Zorel as murderer of his mother.
Says Johannes: "Yes, yes, you did that later; but in the beginning you were only minded as I have said it! The suggestion that you helped yourself with the girls in only a gentle manner, is also now a coarse lie! Only one you have handled a little more gentle, and this was the last one, when your lecherousness failed you the contemptible service; the first four you have not spared in the slightest, but have served them very dreadfully! Can you deny this? - See, you keep quiet and are shaking! Afterwards the girls attracted a dangerous leprosy, which of course accelerated death; but also for that your lecherousness was the actual and only debt bearer! But this chapter is closed and we are moving now to something else!
2
You know, there is still something which lies on your conscience and is something which of course is not attached to your will; but the deed and the consequence is there! Therefore a person should never act in rage; since bad consequences always follow the deeds carried out during a rage like a shadow on the heels. Can you still remember when especially your mother Agla, who was a very responsible person and cautioned you seriously to stop your dissolute pranks and let go of your nefarious society, what you did to her?"
3
Says Zorel: "O gods! I can vaguely remember something like in a dream; but I can't say anything specifically about it! Therefore keep on speaking, since you are at it! I know that, that I never did something evil with a premeditated evil will; however, that I am suffering from violent rage, I can't help it just as little as a tiger can help it, that he is a blood thirsty, tearing beast! - You can speak now!"
4
Says Johannes: "We will address this only later; but at that time you seized a pot which was lying on a bank and flung it with all your strength against the head of your mother, so that she sank to the ground completely dazed. But you, instead of helping her, took the said gold pounds and escaped on a pirate ship to here and joined for a few years the nice pirates craft, at which opportunity you also became a slave trader. Shortly afterwards your mother died, partly as a result of a severe brain skull injury and partly from grief about your incorrigibility. And as such you also have, alongside all your many other sins, a mother murderer on your conscience, and as a crown for your many evil deeds the most bitter curse from your father as well as from your siblings rests on your head! - Now you have been completely revealed; what are you saying to all this as a person with a sound reason?"
5
Says Zorel: "What should I say to all this? Done is done and cannot be undone anymore! I now see some of the things of my earlier actions which were highly wrong; but what use is all this insight to me? It is the same as if you could make out of a tiger an insightful person, who looks back, and sees what bloodiest horrors he committed; to what use is this all to him?! Could he make what is done undone, he surely would go through every conceivable trouble to do so; but how could he helped it during his tiger state, that he in fact was a tiger and not a lamb?! There is also the remorse for a despicable deed and the best will to completely rectify any wrongdoing, which is so in vain as the stupid trouble to make yesterday the current day. From now on I can become an entirely different and better person; but there, where I was an evil person, I can impossibly make a better person of myself than I was. Should I shed bitter tears of pain for the many evil deeds I have committed? This would be so ridiculous as if a tiger who became a human, would shed the most bitter tears of remorse, for being a tiger before!"