Chapter 3 — The Boy Jesus Questions the Scribes

DTT.01_003,01 When I had thus won the freedom to speak, I addressed the elders and scribes. They indicated that I should now speak and ask whatever I wished, and that they would answer as duty required. So I returned to My opening question and said, “However confidently you speak, your words cannot calm the sea or command the roaring winds to be still! Only a blind man fails to see the signs of these times, and only someone stone deaf cannot hear the mighty thunder of events in this most momentous time in all the earth’s history. Carmel and Zion have already bowed their heads before the King of glory who has come, and Horeb lets milk and honey flow from its high peaks. Yet you, who ought to be the first to know of it and tell the waiting people, know not a word!”

DTT.01_003,02 At this they all stared wide-eyed, looking now at Me and now at one another. They did not know what to say in reply.

DTT.01_003,03 After a while one of them said, “Then go on and tell us what you know about it!”

DTT.01_003,04 I said, “I certainly know what I know. I did not ask you to explain what I know already. I asked you to show Me who the pregnant virgin of the prophet Isaiah is, of whom the Son of the Most High is to be born. Why will she give Him the name ‘Immanuel’ (God with us)? Why will He eat milk and honey so that He may reject evil and choose good? As scribes, surely you must understand whom the prophet meant by the virgin who conceived and was to bear the son he describes.

DTT.01_003,05 I still think there is more to that account of the birth in Bethlehem than you suppose. I think the parents are alive and well, the well-known carpenter Joseph of Nazareth and the virgin he later married, together with the son born in Bethlehem. Through the wise intervention of Cornelius, who was then a Roman centurion, they escaped the cruelty of old Herod and now live safe and sound in Nazareth in Galilee.

DTT.01_003,06 I know this as a boy of twelve, and could it be unknown to you, who know everything? Joseph, one of the most skilful master carpenters, has been given work for Jerusalem every year, and you know him very well, as you do his wife, who is from Jerusalem and was brought up in the Temple until her fourteenth year. Is she not the daughter of Anna and Joachim, whose birth, according to your chronicles, was a miracle? Anna was already advanced in age, and without a miracle there could hardly have been any thought of her conceiving.

DTT.01_003,07 Now this couple and the newborn boy lived in Egypt for about three years immediately after fleeing Bethlehem. They stayed near the little town of Ostrazine, called Austrazhina in the old Egyptian language, which means something like ‘a work of terror’. It was a fortress that brought death to every enemy in the days of the Pharaohs. Later, the more powerful enemies of ancient Egypt captured this place of terror along with much else. In our day nothing of the once-terrifying place and structure remains except the old, worn-down name, which the Romans, of course, have interpreted differently from the ancient Egyptians.

DTT.01_003,08 But that is beside the point. I mentioned what I know only to tell you more precisely where the parents in question spent those three years. From there they are said to have returned on foot to Nazareth in obedience to a secret instruction from above. They now live there as quietly as possible, wholly devoted to God, although people there tell many remarkable stories about the boy, whom I too have the honour of knowing well. Even the elements obey Him, and the wildest animals of the forests and deserts flee at His glance faster than they would before a thousand hunters. In that respect He is a thousand times a Nimrod! Can you seriously know nothing of it? Tell Me plainly and truthfully whether you really have heard nothing of all this!”

DTT.01_003,09 Another elder, who was of a somewhat better disposition, said, “Yes, we have heard some talk of this, and we have also heard that the carpenter we know so well has settled in Nazareth with his young wife Mary. But we do not know whether the wonder-working boy is the one who was born in a stable in Bethlehem twelve years ago, and we very much doubt that he is the same. And how could that boy possibly be the Immanuel of the prophet?”

DTT.01_003,10 I said, “If He is not, where does the power He exercises over all the elements come from? And who is the prophet’s ‘virgin’, and who is ‘Immanuel’?”

DTT.01_003,11 The wealthy man from Bethany said, “Listen, this boy has a prodigious intellect! It occurs to me that he might be a young Elijah, sent ahead by that wonder-working boy from Nazareth to prepare us all for the prophet’s Immanuel, who is already here. Has any of us ever heard a boy of twelve speak so wisely, apart from Samuel?

DTT.01_003,12 So you will have to give this boy a more direct answer, or we shall never be rid of him. You will have to explain the prophet to him more clearly, and look into the case of the Virgin Mary, that remarkable daughter of Joachim and Anna. When they died, they left all their considerable property to the Temple. In fact, the Temple forcibly seized it as ownerless property, claiming it in payment for raising their daughter Mary.

DTT.01_003,13 What do you honestly think about this virgin? If a prophet is to be taken seriously, then the time he described so exactly must surely be here, and the wonders surrounding the virgin in question can no longer be denied. If there is anything in it, it would be terribly impious of us all to fail to look into it more closely and thoroughly!”

DTT.01_003,14 The angry elder said, “You understand nothing of it. In backing the boy, you speak of it like a man who is completely blind speaking of the splendour of beautiful colours!”

DTT.01_003,15 I interjected, “It is a curious thing indeed that a hungry man imagines everything he meets is hungry! A foolish man always thinks others even more foolish than himself. To a blind man everyone is blind, however sharp their sight may be, and to a deaf man everyone else is deaf.

DTT.01_003,16 Do you think, you angry old man, that no one but you can know anything? Oh, you are very much mistaken! Look, I am only a boy, yet I could tell you things that are perfectly true and correct, things your sour wisdom has never dreamed of.

DTT.01_003,17 Why should My wealthy Simon from Bethany, who has travelled to India, Persia, Arabia, Egypt, Spain, Rome and Athens, not know something you have never dreamed of? And if that is so, what right have you to accuse him of ignorance? I tell you that his judgement is quite sound, and you ought to do what he asks of you for all the money he has paid.

DTT.01_003,18 If someone hires a servant for a job, the servant must do what his master hired him to do. If the servant will not or cannot do it, surely the master has the right to demand back the agreed wages from his idle or unskilled servant. You let yourselves be well paid and either will do nothing in return or cannot do it. Does Simon not now have the right to ask you to return the money he gave you?”

DTT.01_003,19 A Roman commissioner and judge who was present and well versed in the law said, “Just look at this boy! He is an accomplished lawyer and could at once act as judge in any disputed matter. His legal opinion is fully grounded in our law, and if Simon of Bethany asks it of me, I must clearly grant him an exequatur, an order for enforcement!”

DTT.01_003,20 He then came up to Me, caressed and embraced Me and said, “Listen, my dearest curly-haired boy, I am utterly fond of you! I would gladly use all my means to provide for you and raise you to become someone great.”

DTT.01_003,21 I said, “I know very well that you love Me, for a faithful and good heart beats within you. You can also be sure that I love you dearly! But you need not worry about My future. There is already One who takes care of that.”

DTT.01_003,22 Simon of Bethany also came up to Me and asked in astonishment, “Tell me, my most handsome, dear and lovely boy, how did you learn my name and all the places I have been?”

DTT.01_003,23 I said, “Oh, do not be surprised at that. If I wish to know something, it is in My very nature to know it. You would not yet understand how. But now back to the matter at hand and to our ‘virgin’! Will you priests and scribes shed more light on it or not?”

DTT.01_003,24 One of the clearer minds among the many elders said, “Yes, yes, there is nothing for it but to start speaking plainly to the boy. Explain his Isaiah to him according to the Kabbalistic doctrine of correspondences, and he will find no way to ask another question.”

DTT.01_003,25 Thereupon a very wise scribe stepped forward and said, “Now, inquisitive boy, give me your full attention, listen and understand. By the ‘virgin’ the prophet meant no virgin of flesh and blood, but only the teaching that God gave the children of this world through Moses. In the narrowest sense we priests now embody this teaching and the law.

DTT.01_003,26 We, however, as the living Word of God, are filled with the highest hope that this teaching will now be born from us into the whole world and refresh the Gentiles. This living, genuine hope is the pregnancy of the virgin that the prophet had in mind. The son she is to bear and will bear is all the Gentiles who will accept our teaching. They will then say, and will be called, ‘Immanuel’, that is, ‘God is with us too!’ This took place before our time and is happening now with all the more life and zeal.

DTT.01_003,27 But this son will eat honey and milk, reject evil and choose good. By ‘honey’ the prophet meant pure love and the true good that springs from it. By ‘milk’ he meant wisdom from God, which comes to a person through observing the teaching and the law. Once people have made love and wisdom from God a living part of themselves, they freely abhor all evil and of their own accord desire and choose what is good.

DTT.01_003,28 You see, my dear boy, according to the innermost wisdom and truth, this is how the spiritual words, sayings and discourses of the prophets are to be understood. They all have only an inner, spiritual meaning, which only someone truly versed in Scripture can discover in their material symbols and images through the faithful and true doctrine of correspondences. A layman cannot do that. If he could, all the higher schools would be quite unnecessary, and Moses would have had no need to appoint priests and scholars to administer the teachings and laws of God. Do you now understand this one true and correct interpretation of the prophet you did not understand?”