After this, the orthodox bishops began to investigate Jesus with all their resources, in order to somehow find a way to destroy him. They gathered into a council and began their examination.
They said, “We need to stop this man somehow. He proves his teachings in such a way that if we do not stop him, everyone will believe in him and give up our faith. Already now, half the people have come to believe in him. But if the Jews believe in his teaching that all people are the sons of one father and are brothers, that in our Hebrew nation there is nothing special to separate us from other nations, then the Romans will completely overtake us and there will be no more Hebrew kingdom.”
And the orthodox bishops and scholars were in council for a long time and could not think of what they ought to do. They could not come to a decision on killing him. And then one of them, Caiaphus, who was the chief priest that year, came up with the following argument. He said to them, “We must remember this: it is useful to kill one man so that a whole nation does not perish. If we leave this man alone, then the nation will perish, I can predict that for you, therefore it is better to kill him. Even if the nation does not perish, at the very least it will be scattered and lose its unity of faith if we do not kill Jesus. Therefore it is better to kill him.”
And when Caiaphus said this, everyone agreed that there was nothing else to think about and that they must not fail to kill Jesus. They would have taken Jesus and killed him right then, but he hid from them in the desert.
And the Passover holiday approached. At that time, many people descended on Jerusalem for celebration. And the orthodox bishops counted on the fact that Jesus would come with the people to the celebration. And they announced among the people that if anyone saw Jesus, they should bring him to them.
It happened that six days before Passover Jesus said to his students, “Let us go to Jerusalem.”
And he set off with them.
And his students said to him, “Do not go to Jerusalem; the bishops have now decided to beat you with stones. If you go, they will kill you.”
And Jesus said to them, “I cannot fear anything, because I live in the light of knowledge. And just as any man who walks during the day and not during the night, in order not to stumble, likewise, every man can live by knowledge in order to not doubt or fear anything. Only the one who lives by the flesh can doubt and fear; for the one who lives by knowledge, there is nothing doubtful, nothing frightening.”
And Jesus came to the village of Bethany, not far from Jerusalem, to visit Martha and Mary. And the sisters made dinner for him there. And when he sat down to dinner, Martha served him. And Mary took a quart of expensive, pure, fragrant oil and poured it out onto Jesus’s feet and wiped it with her hair.
And when the smell of the oil had spread throughout the house, Judas Iscariot said, “Mary has wasted that expensive oil in vain. It would have been better to sell that oil for three hundred grivna and give it to the poor.”
And Jesus said, “You will always have the poor with you, but soon, I will not be with you. She has done well, she has prepared my body for burial.”
In the morning Jesus went to Jerusalem. Many people were there for the celebration. And when they discovered Jesus, they surrounded him, began to tear branches from the trees and cast their clothing into the street for him and everyone shouted, “Here he is, our true king, the one who taught us of the true God.”
Jesus sat on a donkey and rode it behind the people as they ran ahead of him, shouting. And that is how Jesus entered Jerusalem.
And when he entered this way into the city, all of the residents became upset and asked, “Who is that?”
Those that knew him, answered, “That is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.”
And Jesus entered the temple and again drove out all of the merchants and buyers.
And the orthodox priests saw all of this and said to each other, “Look what this man is doing. All of the people are following after him.”
But they did not dare to take him directly from the people because they saw that the people supported him, so they began to plot a way to take him by cunning.
Meanwhile Jesus was in the temple, teaching the people. In this group of people, apart from Jews there were Greek gentiles. The Greeks had heard of Jesus’s teaching and understood from it that he taught truth not only for the Jews, but for all people. And they also wanted to be his students, so they told Philip about this and Philip told Andrew. The students were afraid to bring Jesus together with the Greeks. They were afraid that the people would become embittered toward Jesus for not acknowledging the difference between the Jews and other nations, so they avoided telling Jesus for a long time, but then they both told him together.
Hearing that the Greeks wanted to become his students, Jesus became confused. He knew that the people would hate him for not making a distinction between the Jews and the gentiles, for acknowledging himself to be the same as the gentiles.
He said, “The time has come to explain what I mean by the son of man. And it may mean that I will perish for not making a distinction between the Jews and the gentiles in my explanation of this teaching, but I will speak the truth. A wheat kernel will bring forth fruit only after it dies itself. Whoever loves his mortal life will lose his true life, but whoever neglects his mortal life preserves it in eternal life. Whoever wants to work for my teaching, let him do as I do. And whoever does as I do will be rewarded by my father. My soul is struggling now: should I give into the considerations of temporal life or should I fulfill the father’s will now, at this moment. And now that the hour has arrived, and I am still living, can I really say, ‘Father, save me from the thing that I should do!’? No, I cannot say that just because I happen to be living now. And so I say, ‘Father! Show yourself in me!’”
And Jesus said, “From now on the world of people is condemned to death. From now on the thing that controls this world will be destroyed. And when the son of man is glorified above earthly life, then he will unite all people as one.”
And then the Jews said to him, “We understand according to the law that there is an eternal Christ; how is it that you say that the son of man should be glorified? What does it mean to glorify the son of man?”
At this, Jesus answered them, “To glorify the son of man means to live by the light of knowledge that is within you. To glorify the son of man above the earth means to believe in the light, insofar as there is light, in order to be a son of knowledge. He who believes in my teaching does not believe in me, but in that spirit who gave life to the world. And he who understands my teaching understands that spirit who gave life to the world. My teaching is the light of life, which has led people out of darkness.
“If somebody hears my words and does not fulfill them, then I do not blame him, since I came not to condemn but to save. He who does not receive my words is not condemned by my teaching, but by the knowledge that lives within it. That is what condemns him, because I have not spoken my own words, but have spoken what my father, the spirit living within me, inspired me to speak. What I say is only what I was told by the spirit of knowledge. And what I teach is true life.”