Chapter 31.
A second time the master Zachyas, doctor of the
law, said to Joseph and Mary: Give me the boy, and I shall hand
him over to master Levi, who shall teach him his letters and instruct
him. Then Joseph and Mary, soothing Jesus, took Him to the
schools, that He might be taught His letters by old Levi. And as
soon as He went in He held His tongue. And the master Levi said
one letter to Jesus, and, beginning from the first letter Aleph, said
to Him: Answer. But Jesus was silent, and answered
nothing. Wherefore the preceptor Levi was angry, and seized his
storax-tree rod, and struck Him on the head. And Jesus said to
the teacher Levi: Why dost thou strike me? Thou shalt know
in truth, that He who is struck can teach him who strikes Him more than
He can be taught by him. For I can teach you those very things
that you are saying. But all these are blind who speak and hear,
like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, in which there is no perception
of those things which are meant by their sound.1674
And
Jesus in addition said to
Zachyas: Every letter from Aleph even to Thet
1675
| 1675 Tau, and not Teth,
is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. |
is known by its arrangement. Say
thou first, therefore, what Thet is, and I will tell thee what
Aleph is. And again
Jesus said to them: Those who do not
know Aleph, how can they say Thet, the
hypocrites? Tell me what
the first one, Aleph, is; and I shall then believe you when you have
said Beth. And
Jesus began to ask the names of the letters one by
one, and said: Let the master of the
law tell us what the first
letter is, or why it has many triangles, gradate, subacute, mediate,
obduced, produced, erect, prostrate, curvistrate.
1676
| 1676 The
original—triangulos gradatos, subacutos, mediatos, obductos,
productos, erectos, stratos, curvistratos—is hopelessly
corrupt. Compare the passages in the following Apocrypha.
[The Gospel of Thomas, first Greek form, chaps. 6, 7, and parallel
passages.—R.] It obviously, however, refers to the
Pentalpha, Pentacle, or Solomon’s Seal, celebrated in the remains
of the magical books that have come down to us under the names of
Hermas and the Pythagoreans. The Pentalpha was formed by joining
by straight lines the alternate angles of a regular pentagon, and thus
contained numerous triangles. The Pythagoreans called it the
Hygiea or symbol of health, and it was frequently engraved on
amulets and coins. It is still, if the books are to be trusted, a
symbol of power in the higher grades of freemasonry. |
And when
Levi heard this, he was
thunderstruck at such an arrangement of the names of the letters.
Then he began in the hearing of all to
cry out, and say: Ought
such a one to
live on the
earth? Yea, he ought to be hung on the
great
cross. For he can put out
fire, and make sport of other
modes of
punishment. I think that he lived before the
flood, and
was
born before the deluge. For what
womb bore him? or what
mother brought him forth? or what breasts gave him suck? I
flee
before him; I am not able to withstand the words from his mouth, but my
heart is astounded to hear such words. I do not think that any
man can understand what he says, except
God were with him. Now I,
unfortunate
wretch, have given myself up to be a laughing-stock to
him. For when I thought I had a scholar, I, not knowing him, have
found my master. What shall I say? I cannot withstand the
words of this
child: I shall now
flee from this
town, because I
cannot understand them. An old man like me has been beaten by a
boy, because I can find neither beginning nor end of what he
says. For it is no easy matter to find a beginning of
himself.
1677
| 1677 i.e., It is not
wonderful that we do not understand what he says, for we do not know
what he is. |
I tell
you of a certainty, I am not
lying, that to my
eyes the proceedings of
this
boy, the commencement of his conversation, and the upshot of his
intention, seem to have nothing in common with
mortal man. Here
then I do not know whether he be a wizard or a
god; or at least an
angel of
God speaks in him. Whence he is, or where he comes from,
or who he will turn out to be, I know not. Then
Jesus, smiling at
him with a
joyful countenance, said in a commanding voice to all the
sons of
Israel standing by and hearing: Let the
unfruitful bring
forth fruit, and the
blind see, and the
lame walk right, and the
poor
enjoy the good things of this
life, and the dead
live, that each may
return to his original
state, and
abide in Him who is the root of
life
and of perpetual sweetness. And when the child Jesus had said
this, forthwith all who had fallen under malignant diseases were
restored. And they did not dare to say anything more to Him, or
to hear anything from Him.
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