in the Son of God. And they will not understand anything… and will not believe it.
“13 No one has ascended to heaven, except the Son of Man, who is in heaven, descended from heaven” – a crude insertion is obvious, Jesus suddenly jumps from one subject to another, which does not apply at all to what was said in verse 12 – what for is this a separate statement? Well, to again persistently promote the Gnostic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul and, at the same time, of the Eternity of the Word, which we have already analyzed in the Prologue – the author decided leave his mark here too.
“14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes in Him, did not perish, but had eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is already condemned, because he did not believe in the name of the Only Begotten God’s Son "– and here the Jews join the chorus with Moses and the bloody sacrifice “for the sins of the world ": gave the Son where? Oh – to sacrifice Him to himself; here we have the last judgment at the end of times. And the theology of substitution is already in action: the Chosen-ness is taken away from the Jews by God because they did not believe and is handed over to the Christians, who believed in the “Only Begotten Son” – the insertion is clearly a later one, when the final break with Judaism has already been determined.
“19 The judgment is that the light came into the world; but people loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil; 20 for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not go to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil, 21 but he who does what is righteous goes to the light so that his deeds may be made manifest, because they are made in God”– the Gnostics again intervene with their light “Light” from the Prologue, this is another introduction of the Gnostic secret knowledge through Jesus Himself, through his lips. At the same time, everyone has long forgotten what Jesus was talking about at the beginning, they were carried away by a conversation with each other about their innermost. Added to this are general complaints about the injustice of the world and wicked people who did not believe Jesus and His disciples. Plus the general morality, God loves the good, but the bad – not, and these bad ones themselves try to hide their bad deeds in the darkness from God’s Light. Light and darkness are both sacred concepts here, and are used in a figurative symbolic sense of comparing the good in plain sight, and the bad – hiding in the closet, where the corpse is in the closet.
So, all who were not lazy, every cricket hurried to take part, to insert its own chirp, to the real story of Jesus.
“22 After this, Jesus came with His disciples to the land of Judea, and lived there with them and baptized. 23 And John also baptized in Aenon, near Salem, because there was a lot of water; and they came there and were baptized, 24 for John had not yet been imprisoned "– that is, he (Jesus) was in Jerusalem and suddenly came to the” land of Judah”, to which Jerusalem apparently does not belong. Obviously, the two narratives are simply mechanically combined. And he decided to live now in Judea, to baptize the Jews in his faith. And John suddenly from Bethabar near the Dead Sea, where he allegedly baptized Jesus, moved to Salim, to Samaria on the border with Judea, near the Sea of Galilee, where, it turns out, upstream of the Jordan “there was a lot of water” – there was not enough water in the river for him, you see. That is, literally in those few days that Jesus spent in Jerusalem and on the way to it, John suddenly decided to go to baptize closer to the Dead Sea, on a collision course with Jesus. By the way, any public preaching of ANOTHER, non-Jewish god would instantly lead to the death of the preacher. At the time of Jesus in Judea the “fourth sect” of zealots was active, [44]who were absolutely intolerant of all who were not faithful to the faith in the Jewish tribal god Jehovah – these were, in essence, sicarii[45], that is, the dagger-bearers who simply slaughtered to death all who they did not like in relation to their accepted piety.
By the way, one may wonder how the Christian communities in Jerusalem and other Judea survived? We find an indirect answer from Flavius[46]: The head of the Jerusalem community was by no means Peter, but James (Jacob) the Righteous, posing himself as “the brother of the Lord,” but at the same time a native Jerusalemite and a Pharisee known in religious circles. How so? It’s very simple: it was important for the Jews to return the newly-minted Christianity back to Judaism, to turn the “stricter” followers of the Jewish religion into their “progressive” sect, and to believe that the Heavenly Father preached by Jesus is the same Yahweh, only a side view. To do this, they sent their agents: Paul to the emerging Greek-pagan Christianity, and this Jacob to the Jewish, whose main community was the Jerusalem community. And therefore, for the time being, no one touched the Christians, they were under the hidden patronage of the Pharisees, “under the hood of Müller” (the head of secret police in Nazi Germany). This can be seen from the incident described in the 20th book of Flavius, when the new governor of Judea decided to deal with the hated Christians and executed Jacob, throwing him from the roof of the temple. The Pharisees were terribly indignant, declared it unlawful and complained about the arbiter to the emperor himself – you can read about this yourself in the “Antiquities of the Jews”.
“25 Then the disciples of John had a dispute with the Jews about cleansing”. Where, in Galilee? Because as soon as John (later) thrust himself closer to Judea in Salem, he was immediately captured and killed. So he still calmly remained in Galilee in the same place. And how did these Jewish debaters end up in Galilee?
“26 And they came to John and said to him: Rabbi! The One who was with you at the Jordan and about whom you testified, here He baptizes, and everyone is coming to Him”– who came? Apparently the Jews – because the disciples were with John. Wow, how worried the Jews are for the reputation of the Baptist, a preacher of another, non-Jewish, faith.
“27 John answered,” A man cannot take anything upon himself unless it is given to him from heaven. 28 You yourselves are witnesses to me that I said: I am not Christ, but I am sent before Him. 29 He who has a bride is a bridegroom. but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. This – that my joy was fulfilled. 30 He must grow, but I must decrease. 31 He who comes from above is above all; but he who is from the earth is earthly and speaks as who is from the earth; He who comes from heaven is above all, 32 and what he has seen and heard, of that he also testifies; and no one accepts His testimony”. What about is this self-deprecating hysteria of John, who at the same time continued his mission of baptism” for the remission of sins “in spite of the discovery by him of the One by whose discovery his mission should end (according to his own words – John 1, 30—33)? If John himself did not believe Him, then why are these belated praises of Jesus? And if he did, why did he not give up the completed “mission” and didn’t leave it all, the water baptism, and did not follow Jesus to Him as a disciple? The answer is simple: the purpose of this fictional passage put into the mouth of John is propaganda, and “proof from John” that both Jesus and John are good Jews, the prophets of Yahweh, in pleasing whom one preceded the other, repetition is the mother of learning.
And further in the same spirit:
“33 He who has received His testimony has sealed that God is true, 34 for He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God does not give the Spirit by measure.35 The
