Gospel was simply looking for a place to cram this episode into – and on the formal basis of Nicodemus, as a Pharisee and Jewish teacher, he put it together with Jesus’ stay in Jerusalem. Or he simply came up with the entourage of a Jewish teacher in a fabricated dialogue in order to bring the words of Jesus, His important words about the Birth from Above by the Holy Spirit. The trick, by the way, is constantly encountered and repeated in the gospels.
In general, upon careful reading of Ev. John, emerges the structure of multiple iterations of its compilation, at first by authors unknown to us, but, apparently, first made from the words of a living witness of Jesus, who remembered some important events that actually took place in his presence. We supposedly consider the younger disciple of Jesus, one of the first two called by Him, John Zebedee, who was later named John the Theologian. That is, people surrounding him (he himself was most likely illiterate) recorded in the form of notes the memories of individual events that he himself witnessed, and secondly, scattered sayings of Jesus, remembered by him. Then, apparently, this initial circle of authors came up with the idea to combine records on topics into some extensive monologues of Jesus and His dialogues with someone: with the disciples, with the Jews, and so on. These were subsequently repeatedly supplemented with new “utterances” in order to advance their understanding of the Teachings of Jesus, and then simply to establish their own ideas backed by His authority, presenting them as His utterances. The artificiality of this construct is noticeable in the complete contradiction and even opposition of Jesus’ statements, often in the neighboring records of the constructed dialogue. Later, someone apparently came up with the idea of combining these disparate passages into a single narrative, assembled from events and lengthy discourses, for which it was necessary to arrange them supposedly in chronological order and fill in the time gaps with fictional events, which are sharply different in form from vivid memories of “John” by the obsession of the propaganda component. All this multi-stage editing was carried out very roughly due to the technology available at that time: the text could only be cut into fragments, compiled again from the cut and added, something from oneself and then rewrite from scratch – a truly titanic work that took years. At the same time, it was too late to remove the absurdities and inconsistencies that escaped the attention of the editors, and, as such, they remained to be the evidence of deliberate rude interference in the previous version of the text. Later, previous versions were destroyed, or simply no longer rewritten and disappeared in the abyss of time. And so the generally accepted church canon gradually developed, including John (and others) gospel, which is a very distant and distorted version of what could be considered the Teachings of Jesus, and filled with numerous layers of sewage sediments of other religions and philosophical and religious ideas, introduced into the gospel by those in whose hands the original versions turned out.
Therefore, when reading Ev. Jn. you need to be aware that this is an artificial narrative construct with a conditional chronology, some of the events of which are fictitious for the sake of chronological coherence, and at the same time – there is a purpose of introduction into the mind of the reader of that image of Jesus and His Teachings, which was beneficial to the next editors and compilers, and was imposed by them on the reader. Which is very rude and reckless of inconsistencies, full of obvious absurdity of the insoluble logical contradictions that arise in the text. With such an approach to the compilation of the gospels, one can only be surprised that at least something of what really related to Jesus, His Teachings, His words and events connected with Him could reach us. With the help of God, we will pull all such artificial inserts” into the sun.”
So, the third chapter of ev. John, a meeting with Nicodemus, which is not clear when and where it took place, and whether it took place at all – but is still a very important and living testimony about Jesus and His Teachings.
“1 Among the Pharisees there was someone named Nicodemus, one of the rulers of the Jews2 He came to Jesus at night and said to Him: Rabbi! we know that you are a teacher who came from God; for such miracles as You do, no one can do if God is not with him”– this is an obvious story smoothing link that can be simply omitted. Moreover, Jesus was still unknown at that time and did not perform any specific “such miracles” in Jerusalem (where he had not yet been at that time, as will be seen later).
“3 Jesus answered and said to him: Truly, truly, I say to you, if someone is not born again (from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of God 4 Nicodemus says to Him: how can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? " – what is it all about? Oh – about the mystical experience of Adoption to God through the Baptism of the Spirit and Birth from Above, experienced personally by Jesus, who was born from Above as the Son of God. Which is now revealed by Jesus to all who believed Him. Jesus shares HIS experience, which is summarized by Him in the realization of the need to be Born from Above for every person seeking the Heaven Kingdom and Eternal Life – you cannot enter the Heaven without being born again.
“5 Jesus answered: truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, cannot enter the Kingdom of God” – this obsessive repetition of what has already been said is aimed at mentioning WATER (which has nothing to do with it, the Spirit in no way depends on water), as a necessary condition for the Baptism of the Spirit. Here one can immediately feel the biased hand of the students of John the Baptist, the Nazarenes, who wanted to include a mention of the mission of their first teacher, who baptized “for the remission of sins,” as, supposedly, without this the Spirit will not deign – an obvious forgery and fake. However, from what follows, it is clear that Jesus Himself did not baptize anyone with water – and, if so, where did the water come from and why it was mentioned together with the Spirit, which “breathes where it wants (Jn 3.8)” regardless of any water.
“6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be surprised that I told you: you must be born again. 8 The Spirit breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from and where goes: this is the case with everyone born of the Spirit”– these are the priceless grains of Jesus’ personal mystical experience, which, apparently, He shared not with some Jewish sage who dropped by to sit by the fire, but rather with the closest circle of his disciples. Who, by the way, were the disciples of John before Him, and from old affiliations could not resist writing about Water as a condition for “forgiveness of sins.” In this utterance, Jesus very clearly points out the impossibility of the Spirit to be born from flesh, the idea by which all the Gnostic and Hellenic wisdom of the Christian trinitological constructs is refuted and overturned, sent into the roadside ditch of history, with just this one phrase. This is a very important and deep idea: in the world of matter Spirit does not exist, and matter does not exist in the World of Spirit. A person with his Mind is born spiritually by the Spirit not into the world of matter, but into the Kingdom of Heaven, and begins his stay in it from the moment of birth from Above, that is, eternal life for him has already begun here and now, and not sometime in an uncertain future. A person hears the voice of the Spirit only in his own mind, which (this mind) is already “reflected” in the Heaven and therefore is subject to the Spirit – and nowhere else.
“9 Nicodemus answered and said to him: how can this be? 10 Jesus answered and said to him: you are the teacher of Israel, and do you not know this? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and we testify what you have seen, but you do not accept Our testimony. “These “we” are echoes of the subsequent Gnostic “revelations” to the disciples after the departure of Jesus, as well as the disputes between Jesus’ disciples and the Jews and their resentment against them for not being interested in the preaching of Jesus. Where and when exactly these disputes took place is unknown, but the compilers tied them to the very first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem, which, most likely, I repeat, did not happen at all – we will see this from what follows.
“12 If
