self and into such great harshness of mind that in Nazareth when my mother came with my brothers and sisters to the synagogue I said, woman, I have no need of thee, and when Joseph of Arimathea returned to me after a long attendance by his father’s bedside (his father had lain in a great sickness for many months; it was through Joseph’s care that he had been saved from death, Joseph was a good son), I told him he must learn to hate his father and his mother if he would become worthy to follow me.  But my passion was so great in those days that I did not see that my teaching was not less than blasphemy against God, for God has created the world for us to live in it, and he has put love of parents into our hearts because he wishes us to love our parents, and if he has put into the heart of man love of woman, and into the heart of woman love of man, it is because he wishes both to enjoy that love.

I fear to think of the things I said at that time, but I must speak of them.  One man asked me before he left all things to follow me if he might not bury his father first.  I answered, leave the dead to bury their dead, and to another who said, my hand is at the plough, may I not drive it to the headland, I answered:  leave all things and follow me.  My teaching grew more and more violent.  It is not peace, I said, that I bring to you, but a sword, and I come as a brand wherewith to set the world in flame.  I said, too, that I came to divide the house; to set father against mother, brother against brother, sister against sister.  I can see that my remembrance of him who once was wounds the dear brethren with whom I have lived so long; I knew it would be hard for you to hear that an Essene had broken the rules of a holy order, and it is hard for me to stand before you and tell that I, who was instructed by Hazael in all the pious traditions of our race, should have blasphemed against God’s creation and God’s own self.  You will thrust me through the door as an unworthy brother, saying, go, live in the wilderness, and I shall not cry out against my expulsion through the hills and valleys, but continue to repent my sins in silence till death leads me into silence that never ends.  You are perhaps asking yourselves why I returned here:  was it to hide myself from Pilate and the Jews?  No, but to repent of the evil seed that I had sown that I returned here; and it was because he wished me to repent that God took me down from the cross and cured me of my wounds in Joseph’s house and sent me here to lead the sheep over the hills, and it was he who put this last confession into my mouth.