The Great Gospel of John
Volume 7
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord on the Mount of Olives. (cont.) Gospel of John, Chapter 8
- Chapter 22 -
The Jewish girl's thirst for knowledge with regard to the Lord.
Only at this point did the beautiful Jewish girl ask Agrikola more seriously, who I and the wondrous youth in reality actually were, and why everybody addressed Me always with "Lord and Master". She could see that I was a deeply wise person; but she still did not know where I came from and who I was.
2
Agrikola replied and said: "My beautiful daughter! Be very attentive to everything, including your parents and your brother, and you will find out who this marvellous man is, where He as well this youth came from as!"
3
Said the Jewish girl: "Do you know yourself with all certainty who this marvellous man actually is? And if you know that, - why don't you tell me?"
4
Said Agrikola: "O my dearest daughter, your wise king Salomon said once: 'Everything in this world has its time, and between time and time man should have patience; as long as the grapes are not ripe one should not take them from the vine!' And see, in the same way you are not be fully ready yet, to know the details abut this marvellous Man; but if you become ready, more detailed information will be revealed to you. As I already have said, pay close attention to what this marvellous Man will say and do, and your heart will tell you, who this marvellous Man is! - Do you understand this?"
5
Said the Jewish girl: "Yes, yes, I completely understand what you have said! The poor person is constantly held out to be patient to become better; the rich and by all the world respected person can always find some means to obtain information, if his patience is wearing thin. Yes, yes, I have known this for quite a long time! Now, now, I will completely follow your good advice, high Lord; but if I will gain anything by it, is an entirely different question!"
6
Here the father of the daughter asked Agrikola for forgiveness and said: "Lord, Lord, forgive the poor child; despite all her kind-heartedness she is sometimes too eager to learn and if you from time to time for good reasons withhold something from her, she becomes slightly indignant. But if the often futile curiosity storm passes, she soon is full of patience and gentleness again and completely submits gladly to every bitterness. Therefore, good and high Lord, overlook this small misdemeanour of our child!"
7
Said Agrikola: "Ah, what do you think of me?! The speech of your lovely daughter pleases me a great deal, since she quite openly and without holding back spoke the truth. From now on I will be even more your friend than before. Therefore, in this regard you can be quite reassured. But your daughter should continue to talk in her own manner, and thereby we shall get to the whole truth."
8
With that the poor parents were completely content and the daughter was now allowed to speak her mind freely.
9
She (the Jewish girl) immediately turned to the Roman and said to him: "O dear, great Lord and friend, you are a very good person, and all your colleagues seem to be the same; but in your great worldly fortune you will never be able to really feel what poverty in all its often very helpless and great suffering means! If a young and by the nature of God not deprived girl does not do what the great and wealthy want, then you are already as good as completely lost. No person will then even look at us, you are insulted and regarded as a vain, stupid and proud being, and if you in your suffering turn to someone for help, you are shown the door and are not allowed to show up in front of any door again. This is and will always be to a high degree unpleasant for us and in the end deprives us of all trust even in the better part of mankind. We are all human and are tainted with all types of weaknesses and imperfections. Is this true or not?"
10
Said Agrikola: "What you have said is fair and completely the truth; but there is something that you have forgotten when describing poverty and suffering! See, whom God loves, is very thoroughly tried by Him, before he is fully helped by Him! And it seems this is what the Lord God has done to you. But when your suffering reached the highest point, His help came to you, and now you have been truly helped. Since I have in the name of God, your and my Lord, promised and shall keep my word given to you, out of love and gratitude to your true God, but certainly not due to any special love and affection for you, as you are a very beautiful Jewish girl. My love for God is very much greater, than I ever have felt for all the beautiful and magnificent things of the world I have encountered. Your concerns need from now on cause you no more anxiety; but that your closer acquaintance with this marvellous Man is held back for a while, has a very wise reason, and we are not in any way hard against you, if we do not tell you straight away everything we are absolutely certain and with the most complete truth know about this Man.
11
That is something very extraordinary about Him, you can imagine yourself; however, what the extraordinary consists of, you shall soon easily and largely find out by yourself anyway, if you only, as I have advised you, be very attentive about everything He is going to say and do. From the very beginning I have drawn your attention to the tableware on our table, how He created it by only using His will. Then you also were a witness, when He, during His explanation of His miracles, called those two golden mugs out of the air into being, which still stand in front of Him and are absolutely similar to those which the landlord Lazarus brought in, when he told us that the youth, sitting at the same small table over there with Lazarus eating and drinking, called them into being out of the air in the same manner as this marvellous man has done the same inside. If you heard and seen all such things, then you, as well as your parents and your brother, should be able to obtain more light about this marvellous Man, who is able to speak so tremendously wise and can perform such extraordinary deeds."
12
Said the Jewish girl: "Yes, yes, you have spoken fair and true; but therein lies for us four the actual problem, which we are not able to solve that easily; he speaks too clear and too wise and performs unheard of extraordinary deeds for even the greatest prophet. For you Romans this is very easy, since you regard and accept such an extraordinary person immediately as a God, in order to revere and praise him. The wisdom of this marvellous man exceeds of course all concepts of man so far and in a similar manner his deeds, and therefore he must have a lot of the pure divine spirit in him; but for that we Jews cannot accept him as a God! - What do you say now?"