But when the sermon was over, many were appalled, especially the priests, and some of them said, ‘Who can attain blessedness under this? We scribes surely also preach rightly and justly, as Moses once proclaimed the laws to the people from the mountain! But all that is dew and a gentle evening breeze compared with this strict teaching and most powerful sermon. Admittedly, one can scarcely raise a sound objection to such a teaching, but it is simply too harsh, and a person will hardly be able to put it into practice in their own life.
‘Who can love their enemy? Who can do good to someone who does them evil, and who can bless those who hate them and say nothing but evil about them? And if someone wants to borrow something from me, I am not to turn away from him or close my ear and heart to his words, even when I see clearly that the borrower will never be able to repay what he has borrowed! Ah, that is a foolish business! If the idle and work-shy learn of this, will they not immediately come to the well-to-do and borrow from them as long as they have anything? When in this way—and nothing is easier—they have lent everything to the poor, who can never repay what they borrow, and in the end have nothing left themselves, the question is who will do any work in future and from whom the poor will then obtain anything on loan!
‘It is only too clear that by observing such a teaching, set against the entire nature of human institutions, the world would have to become an utter desert in a short time. But if the world is a desert, where will people obtain any education, when all educational institutions must necessarily perish if no one has the means to establish and maintain them?
‘Therefore this teaching will never do! Bad people and the enemies of good people and their good cause must be chastised, and whoever gives me a slap must receive at least two well-measured ones back, so that in future he loses the desire to serve me another slap! The irresponsible borrower should be locked in a labor tower, so that he learns to work and henceforth, as a hardworking person, earns his bread through the diligence of his hands; and the utterly poor should plead for alms, which will not be withheld from them. That is an old but good law under which a human society can exist. But these laws that this supposed Christ has now given are too impractical for human life and therefore cannot possibly be accepted!
‘I would say nothing more about all the rest, however senseless it sounded; but the commanded self-mutilation in cases of possible offense through one’s very own limbs, and in addition the apparently prescribed idleness, according to which no one is to concern themselves about anything, but continually seek only God’s kingdom, while everything else will be given from above! Let us put the matter to a short trial of a couple of months: people are to touch nothing and do no work during that time, and we shall see whether fried fish swim into their mouths!
‘And how foolish, finally, is the prescribed self-mutilation when the limbs give offense! Let someone take a sharp ax in his right hand, chop off his left, and throw it away! But what will he do if his right hand then gives him offense? How will he chop that off? How will he tear out his eyes and, in the end, without hands, chop off the feet that may still give him offense? Ah, away with such a teaching! It would be too bad for a crocodile, let alone for a human being! Just put the consequences together a little, and you must grasp with your hands that such a teaching can be nothing but a product of ancient Jewish fanaticism!
‘And if all the angels came from the heavens and taught people such ways to attain eternal life and the use of such means to gain heaven, then such stupid teachers should be beaten out of the world and devour their stupid heaven themselves! Just look at the inconsistency: he finds “tooth for tooth” and “eye for eye” unjust and cruel; he preaches the greatest gentleness and forbearance, even opens the gate to all thieves by saying, “Whoever demands a coat from you, give him your cloak as well.” A fine teaching! But in return people are to tear out their own eyes and chop off their hands and feet! Your most obedient servant! Which of you has ever heard greater nonsense?’
Here the priest comes closer to Me and says, ‘Master, Your deeds testify that You can do more than an ordinary human being. But if You are at all capable of thinking correctly—which I do not doubt, since I heard You speak very wisely in Irhael’s house—then retract certain highly impractical propositions in this sermon of Yours! Otherwise, despite all Your other deeds worthy of a Messiah, we are compelled openly to regard You as a magician fanatically trained in some ancient Egyptian school and to expel You from among us as an utter profaner of the Messiah!
‘Just consider Your formidable teaching a little more closely Yourself, and You must see that it is entirely useless for gaining eternal life and can never be followed by anyone! For if someone is to earn heaven in this way, he will surely leave heaven alone! It would be better never to be born than to earn for oneself in this way a heaven that one can enter only mutilated! But tell me with complete honesty whether You see this, or whether You are truly serious about Your teaching!’
I say, ‘You are a high priest, yet you are blinder than a mole beneath the earth. What else can one think of and expect from such a one? I gave you images here, and you devour only their matter, which threatens to choke you; but you seem to have no notion of the spirit I placed in these images.
‘Believe Me: we are as wise as you imagine yourselves to be, and we know very well whether a person can and should mutilate themselves in order to obtain eternal life! But we also know that you do not grasp the spirit of this teaching and will not grasp it for a long time yet. Yet we shall not take back our words because of that. You do have ears, but they do not hear what is right; likewise you have eyes, but they remain spiritually blind, and so, with open ears and eyes, you nevertheless hear and see nothing.’