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 102 -
The cunning wives of the heathen priests.
In the morning already a lot of people waited in front of the house to see Me; but I remained with the disciples in the hall and this time did not went outside before the morning meal.
2
However, Jored nevertheless came to us to check whether we were still asleep. And when found us fully awake he said: "Lord and Master, the morning meal is prepared; if it pleases You I will order it immediately to be brought in! Also the five priests and our doctor are already there and want to see and greet You. Then my house is surrounded by quite a large crowd and demand nothing less than to see You only once. Lord, what is here Your will ?"
3
Said I: "Let the morning meal be brought in and allow the doctor and the priests to join us and of course your family whom I became quite fond of! But the curios people should wait; since for the time being they do not loose or gain anything by just looking at Me. Do thus accordingly; after the morning meal we will see what can be done!"
4
Thereupon immediately happened what I have ordered. The doctor and the priests entered and we sat at the table. Then immediately the well prepared food was served since the seven wives of Jored were quite good cooks and we again ate and drank with a good appetite and drank the wine after the fish.
5
After half an hour the morning meal was finished and one of the priests asked Me if he could speak.
6
But I said to him: "My friend, you can speak for yourself as much as you like; but I make here the remark for you that I anyway, from word to word, precisely know what you want to say to Me and what you want to ask Me and as such you can save yourself the trouble to open your mouth in this highly insignificant matter!
7
See and listen! When you at night - of course already at dawn - arrived at home, you heard howling and wailing in your grove and even heard threatening words to the extend how the gods, whom you have left perjured, will take revenge on you. With no little fear you hurried to your wives and told them what you have heard and thereby really added water to their mills (Already during the times of Jacob did such mills existed.)
8
Do you know why your canny wives and children and servants came here yesterday evening to fetch you? See, they prepared such a haunting for you and would have liked to set you up even earlier! They were angered because you have left them waiting for too long for the fright they had prepared for you.
9
Although I only too clearly knew about it, just like now, what the wives had planned, I still allowed it to happen, however not to frighten you for a few hours longer by your wives, but to thereby help you to place your wives and children and servants on the right path.
10
I therefore have spellbound the cunning tools of your wives to their locations until we soon will arrive there and to convince your wives to their faces about the miracles they effectuated for you at night time by cats fastened by their tails to the bushes and with some hired venal servants and prostitutes who were sitting on the thick tree branches.
11
When in the morning you came to Me, your wives and children quickly went into the grove and are doing everything they can to free the for you set up haunting tools; but this will not work until we get their and have spoken quite a few perceptible and powerful words to the faces of the haunting artists and only then free their magical tools. Now, friend, speak, if it is not so and if it was not what you wanted to tell Me!"
12
Said the priest: "Yes, great Lord and Master, it was precisely so! I most ardently thank You for this clarification; since truly, we were not in a small fear and thought by ourselves: Now then, if this continues not before long we are once again going to experience the old war of the gods, in which we de facto have never believed in, however regarded it as something to the extend that in primeval times large revolutions of the earth and elements took place on this earth, of which the existence and occurrence was kept by the then surely simple nature people in all kinds of pictures and quaint legends for their descendants. But yesterday we nearly started to believe in the reality of these fables, especially when yesterday we have seen and heard what a divine power, even if residing only in a person, is able to effectuate. We already saw You and Your disciples flinging burning mountains and gigantic oak trees towards heaven with a dreadful strength. Such foolishness has left us already and I am already delighted how You, o Lord and Master, will bring our too stultified wives into a better order!"
13
Said I: "You rightly mentioned that your wives are too stultified; but who is carrying the guilt for it? You have made them like that and therefore the guilt for the way your wives and children behave, lies with yourself, and you must now, however with love and patience, undo in them what you have tainted in them! I will do My part, alright, but then you must also do yours. With love and patience you will achieve a lot, - however with your old habitual severity nothing!"
14
Said the Zeus priest: "Lord and Master, we impossibly could have tainted a great deal our wives; they were already from their childhood wedged into the gods to such a degree, that they always were our correctors if in any way we omitted something, what so to speak only as a pure secondary matter belonged to our ceremonial cult and what definitely could have been left out."
15
Said I: "This is true indeed, but you will also remember the time when you still courted for your wives! You then found out that they as daughters of a priest in Sidon were reading the scriptures of the Jews and had a high regard for them, just like their father, although only by himself in secrecy. At that stage you praised this to win the favour of the daughters; but once they became your wives, you started to undermine their teaching of the Jews day by day more and more, showed them all kinds of false miracles and maintained that all this was done by the gods. Then you tried by all means to drive the phantasy of the wives to the highest culmination point, whereby they finally experienced all kinds of dreams and visions. These dreams and visions you always knew to interpret for them to your advantage through your art of speaking, that they precisely meant and had to indicate what you actually wanted from them. Think about this and then say who carries the main guilt of the stultification of your wives!
16
But I also add this and this consists of the following: Secretly your wives are not at all so very stupid as you imagine; for if they would be like that and by themselves believed in the help of the gods, they never would have dared to prepare such a quite natural haunting for you in the name of the gods, which would have made them angry. But because very secretly they never really regarded the pagan gods as important and now even less so, for at good opportunities as your most trusted and necessary assistants in all kinds of magical arts, they were initiated by yourselves, and as such they have learned in what manner your gods perform their miracles. Thus see and realize who carries the actual guilt of the stultification of your wives!
17
But this doesn't matter now; because in future your wives, children and servants will surpass you by far regarding the truth which now has risen in you through Me. However, lets now go to the grove and there I will free your wives, children and servants from their great embarrassment and near desperation! Because now they themselves start to believe that the gods are punishing them because they unbelievingly trespassed against them in the holy grove. And with that lets get up and quickly go there!"
19
Among the people also our Judas was present, who wanted to present Me for a few groschen profit, since the people could not have known Me personally. But this was completely thwarted for the perfidious and profit addicted disciple, because we chose a back-road to get to the grove.