On the way Simon Peter says at one point, ‘Now all these wonders upon wonders are beginning to make me quite dizzy! No! Whoever still does not see that this Jesus of Nazareth is the bodily Son of Jehovah must either be struck with tenfold Pharaonic blindness or be completely dead! The sick are completely healed through the word alone, the blind are made to see, the deaf and mute to hear, and the lame to walk, and those full of the most incurable leprosy become as clean as if they had never sinned!
‘On top of all this, the heavens open, and multitudes of the most glorious angels float swiftly down, serve, and act with us as though they had never left the earth since the first human being came into existence. And they are so beautiful that one could perish from sheer delight at the sight of them! And when He speaks in wisdom never heard before, how full these most beautiful servants of Jehovah are of the sweetest, most contrite attentiveness and holy devotion, and yet as lively as swallows on the most beautiful summer days! Truly, whoever can say, “This Jesus is merely a magician and nothing else,” should be slaughtered like an ox! For such a person cannot be a human being, but only an animal capable of speech, and therefore should die not like a human being but like a domestic animal!’
While Simon Peter is thus rhapsodizing to himself, without noticing what is happening around him, an unbelieving citizen of this city taps him quite hard on the shoulder and says, ‘If so, then as an honest man I should dutifully prophesy to you that you will die as an utter ox! For if in your life you have not yet got far enough to see all that a proper magician can accomplish, then you should not even open your mouth in a place where people rich in experience and knowledge live!’
Peter says, ‘Tell me, you coarse, dark spirit! Can your magicians also suddenly heal all the sick through the word and open the high heavens, where no magician’s hand or understanding reaches?’
The citizen says, ‘Oh, you stupid, blind Galilean! Do you not know that a proper magician can make a fish or a snake out of any wooden stick? Only recently there was one here from Egypt. He threw sticks into the water, and they immediately became fish; but when he threw the sticks onto land, they became snakes and vipers. Then he breathed into the air, and it became full of locusts and other flying vermin. After that he took white stones and threw them into the air, and they became doves that flew away. Then he took a handful of dust from the road and flung it against the wind, and look, in an instant the air was full of gnats, so that one could hardly see the sun through them. But when he then blew into these gnats, a strong wind arose and drove the gnats away like a cloud! He then led us to a pond beyond the stream where he had previously brought fish out of sticks; there he touched the water with his staff, and look, it immediately became blood. Then he touched it again, and it became water once more! But in the evening he called to the stars, and they flew like tame doves into his hands! He commanded them, and they flew back to the high firmament! Yet you say, “Where is a human being whose hands could reach the heavens?” I can have a hundred witnesses confirm to you that all this happened here. But what do you now say about your Son of God from Nazareth, whom I know well—whose son he is and where he learned all this?’
Peter says, ‘If you have not lied like a crocodile with its childlike whimpering, and bought yourself a hundred witnesses for your lie for a few groschen, then these many people who have now clearly recognized Christ in Jesus of Nazareth must also know something of this magician whose wondrous deeds you have told me about! I shall ask Jonael at once! But woe to you if you have lied to me!’
The citizen says, ‘They will be unable to enlighten you about it, since they did not attend such performances out of sheer fear that the magician accomplished it all with the devil’s help and that the devil could harm them! Only we few courageous ones went out, who believe in no devil, since we know the forces of nature somewhat more closely, and saw for ourselves with great astonishment all that is possible for a human being!’
Peter says, ‘You are a fine customer indeed, but I tell you: from now on you will not get away from me or escape your chastisement! Just come now to this city’s high priest; before him we shall settle and straighten out our affairs!’
The citizen says, ‘What has this high priest to do with me? I am a Galilean, and indeed more Greek than Jew. But this high priest is a stupid zealot, while his four older daughters, with their mother’s consent, as people say, carry on shameful business at night and give themselves to sexual immorality. What should I do with such a fool? Art and science stand above everything for me, and I honor all true scholars and artists above all else, but they must not make more of themselves than they are.
‘If your Master, truly very skilled and learned in all sorts of art and science, remained what he is, he would be one of the most respected men among Jews, Greeks, and Romans! But he makes a god of himself, and that is very stupid and belongs back in the old dark times!
‘But you people, though honest and upright souls in your way, seem to have little knowledge or experience beyond catching fish. Therefore let us leave our further dispute aside. You may believe what you wish, but you will hardly put anything over on us, for we possess knowledge and all sorts of sciences, are not entirely unversed in magic, and thus know what to think of your Master!’
Peter says, ‘Friend, you are trying in vain to wash the Moor within you white! The question here is not at all whether you regard my Master as this or that, and now want, through seemingly reasonable talk, to make me forget that you thoroughly lied to me a little while ago. Let the high priest be whatever zealot you please, but as a public person in this little city he must know whether such a magician as you described to me has recently performed here! For everything depends on this for me, since from it I want to learn what I am then to think of my Master!
‘Look, I and many of us have left everything, even wife and children, and followed Him unconditionally, because we saw Him perform deeds that surely could never be possible for any human being, and also heard Him speak so wisely as no human being had ever spoken before Him, and scarcely anyone will ever speak after Him.
‘But in your account you have set another master against my Master, one who, if not exactly surpassing my Master, nevertheless equaled Him and performed deeds for which every person must have the deepest respect! The question now is quite simply whether it can be validly and visibly proved to me that such a magician really performed the deeds you have told me about!
‘If your statement is true, I give you my most sacred word that I shall immediately leave my Master, to whom I attribute wholly pure divine power, and go home to my family! For I shall follow a vagrant magician not one step further, since I am still a true Jew and believe Moses more than hundreds of thousands of the ancient, most proven magicians. But if, as I quite undoubtedly suspect, you have lied out of purely evil intent to make my most honorable Master suspect to me, then—as I have already threatened you—woe to you! You shall learn that I too, through the grace of my divine Master, am already able to accomplish quite a few things, without ever presenting myself to anyone as a miracle worker because of it!
‘So come quite willingly with me to the high priest, who is just now discussing something with your toll collector Matthew, who will surely also know something about your magician, for he too was constantly here in the city and must know something of it! So come quite willingly, or I shall use force against you!’
The citizen says, ‘Why force, if I do not wish to? Look over there: several hundred stand behind me! If you dare lay a hand on me, it will truly go badly for you!’
Peter says, ‘I shall not lay my hand on your body as you laid yours rather roughly on mine earlier, but you will nevertheless be drawn there! Multitudes of God’s angels go with us, whom you do not seem to see. Only a sign is needed, and they will immediately have you where I want and must have you!’
The citizen says, ‘Are these white-clad boys accompanying you supposed to be your angels? Ha, ha, ha! Well, if these are your guard, then we need only hand out a couple of dozen flicks on the nose at most, and you will be lying outside the city walls together with your white protector boys!’
This remark enrages Peter, and he immediately summons a young man to chastise the citizen. But the young man says, ‘I would gladly do so if it were the Lord’s will, but the Lord has not yet given me a sign, and so I cannot comply with your demand yet. First go to the Lord and tell Him this. If He wills it, I shall act.’
Peter immediately went a little ahead to Me and told Me his trouble. But just as I stopped before Jonael’s house, I said, ‘Go and bring the man here to Me!’
A stone immediately fell from Peter’s heart, and he hurried back and said to the young man, ‘It is His will!’
Here the young man looked at the citizen, who began to tremble and, driven by the young man, followed Peter to Me without objection. But I looked at him, and the citizen confessed that he had lied and had never seen such a magician, but had only heard people speak of such a magician and had merely wanted to test this disciple to see whether he was firm in his faith; otherwise he had had no evil intention at all.
I say, ‘You are someone who tries to help himself out of the first lie with a second, and thus you belong to the devil! Go, and let him give you your reward, since you are such a faithful servant to him!’
Immediately an evil spirit came to the citizen and began tormenting him miserably. But the citizen cried out very loudly, ‘Lord, help me! I openly confess that I have sinned!’
But I say, ‘From whom did you hear that Jonael’s four eldest daughters were whores? Confess it aloud, or I shall let you be tormented until the end of the world!’
The citizen says, ‘Oh Lord, I never heard it from anyone. I myself once met the four daughters at night as they were carrying water from Jacob’s well, and spoke to them because I wanted to have a wicked affair with them. But the daughters rebuked my intention in such a way that I was glad to leave them alone. Yet afterwards I swore revenge on them, invented this shamefulness about them out of my evil heart, and myself spread such a rumor about them everywhere! The daughters are wholly virgins! Oh Lord, I alone am bad; all the others are good and pure.’
Here I command the evil spirit to leave the citizen, but in return the citizen must make amends to Jonael. He is a merchant, and goes back and brings the daughters ten times as much as I prescribed, and asks Jonael and the daughters for forgiveness.
But I say to him, ‘The gift alone is not enough to atone for such injustice! Go and retract all the evil you have said about them anywhere; only after that shall your sins be forgiven. So let it be and be done!’
The citizen promises to do all this at once. He only suggests that if some stranger had heard of it whom he did not know and whose place of residence he also did not know, I might forgive him if he could not issue a retraction to such a person.
But I say, ‘Do what is possible for you; I shall do everything else, and no sin will remain with you any longer.’
The citizen is satisfied with this and goes to make good all the evil he had caused.