“Deceivers! The prophet Isaiah spoke the truth of you: ‘Because this people only prostrates itself before me in words and honors me with its tongue, while its heart is far from me, and because its fear before me is only a requirement of man, which it has memorized, for that I will perform an amazing and peculiar act for this people: the wisdom of its wise men will tumble and the intelligence of its educated ones will fade. Woe to those who trouble themselves to hide their desires from the Eternal and who perform their acts in the dark.’
“Just so, you leave behind what is important in the law, the portion that is God’s commandment, and you live your own human traditions, cleaning off cups.”
And Jesus called together all the people and said, “Listen all of you, and understand. There is nothing in the world that can enter into a person and defile him, but what comes out of him, that is what defiles a person. Let there be love and charity in your soul and then everything will be clean. Try to understand this.”
And when he returned home, his students asked him what those words meant.
And he said, “Even you did not understand? Don’t you understand that all things external and mortal cannot defile a person? Because it enters his belly and not his soul. It enters his belly and exits out of his rear with the excrement. Only what comes out of a person, what comes out of his soul, can defile a person.
“This is because evil comes from a person’s souclass="underline" fornication, bawdiness, murder, thievery, greed, malice, deceit, insolence, jealousy, slander, pride and all kinds of foolishness. All of this evil comes from a person’s soul and only these things can defile a person.”
After this, Passover approached and Jesus came to Jerusalem and went into the temple.
At the porch of the temple there stood livestock: cows, bulls, and rams. A cage for doves had been built there as well. Behind this, booths were set up for moneychangers with their money. All of this was necessary in order to make offerings to God. They killed and made the offering in the temple. This was the method of prayer for the Jews, as it had been taught to them by the orthodox legalists.
Jesus entered the temple, brandished a whip, drove out all the livestock from the porch, set free all of the doves and scattered all of the money. And he commanded that none of these things be carried into the temple.
He said, “The prophet Isaiah said to you, ‘The house of God is not the temple in Jerusalem, but the whole world of God’s people.’ And in addition, the prophet Jeremiah said to you, ‘Do not believe false speeches concerning how this is the home of the Eternal. Do not believe that, but instead change your life and do not judge falsely, do not oppress the traveler, the widow or the orphan, do not spill innocent blood and do not come to the house of God and say: Now we can do our obscenities in peace. Do not think that a den of bandits could be the home of the father.’”
And the Jews took up the argument and said to him, “You say that our worship service is incorrect; how are you going to prove this?”
And, turning to address them, Jesus said, “Tear down this temple and in three days I will raise a new, living temple.”
And the Jews said, “How will you make a new temple now, when it took forty-six years to build this one?”
And Jesus told them, “I am speaking to you about something that is more important than the temple. You would not be saying these things if you understood what these words of the prophets mean: ‘I, God, do not rejoice in your offerings, but I rejoice in your love one to another.’ The living temple is the whole world of people when they love one another.”
And then in Jerusalem, many people began to believe in what he had said. But he himself did not believe in anything external because he knew that all things are within a person. He did not need anybody to teach him about man, because he knew that inside of a man is a soul.
And once, Jesus had to travel through Samaria. He walked by the village of the Samaritan Sychar, nearby the place that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was located there. Jesus was weary from the road and sat down at the well, and his students went into the city for bread.
And a woman came out from the Sychar for water. Jesus asked her for something to drink.
And she said to him, “How is it that you are asking me for something to drink? After all, you Jews don’t associate with us Samaritans.”
And he said to her, “If you knew me and knew what I teach, you would not say this, but would give me something to drink and I would give you the water of life. Whoever drinks his fill of your water will become thirsty again. But whoever drinks his fill of my water will be satisfied forever, and this water of mine will lead him to eternal life.”
The woman understood that he was speaking of the divine and said to him, “I see that you are a prophet, if you want to, teach me. But how can you teach me the divine when you are a Jew and I am a Samaritan? Our people pray to God on this mountain and you Jews say that God’s house is only in Jerusalem. You cannot teach me the divine because you have one faith and we have another.”
And Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, the time has already arrived when people will cease to pray to the father either here on this mountain or in Jerusalem. Because if they pray to God, then they pray to that which they do not know, but if they pray to the father, then they pray to someone who is impossible not to know.
“The time has come that the real venerators of God will not worship God, but will worship the father in spirit and in action. These are the kind of venerators that the father needs. God is a spirit, and we must worship him in spirit and in action.”
The woman could not make out what he had said to her so she said, “I heard that God’s messenger was coming, he who is called the anointed one. He will then tell us everything.”
And Jesus said to her, “I am that very one, speaking with you now. Do not wait for anyone else.”
After that, Jesus came to the land of Judea and lived there with his students and taught. At that time, John taught the people near Salim and bathed them in the river Aenon. Because John still had not been put in prison.
And a debate started up between John’s students and Jesus’s students about which is better: John’s cleansing in water or Jesus’s teachings.
And they came to John and said to him, “Now, you purify with water and Jesus only teaches; yet everyone goes to him. What do you say about him?”
John said, “A man cannot teach anything, if God does not teach him. Whoever speaks about earthly things is earthly but if someone speaks of God, then he is from God. It is impossible to prove whether the words they are speaking are from God or not from God. God is a spirit, he is impossible to measure and impossible to prove. Whoever understands the words of the spirit will be able to prove with this understanding that he is from the spirit.
“The father, loving the son, gave everything to him. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life; and whoever does not believe in the son does not have life. God is the spirit within man.”
After that, one orthodox believer came to Jesus and invited him into his home for breakfast. He went in and sat at the table. The orthodox believer noticed that he did not wash before breakfast and was amazed.
And Jesus said to him, “You orthodox wash everything on the outside: but are you clean on the inside? Be charitable toward people and all will be clean.”
And as he was sitting in the home of the orthodox believer, a woman who had been unfaithful arrived from the city. She had discovered that Jesus was in the home of the orthodox believer and so she went there and brought a flask with perfumes. She knelt at his feet, began to cry and shed tears on his feet, wiped them with her hair and poured perfume from the flask.
The orthodox believer saw this and thought to himself, “He cannot really be a prophet. If he were really a prophet, he would realize what kind of woman this is washing his feet, he would realize that this is an unfaithful woman and he would not allow her to come close enough to touch him.”