Lord Jesus Christ, his beloved son, have walked on either side of me in mountain passes where robbers lie in wait. We are nearer to God in hunger and thirst than when the mouth is full, in fatigue rather than in rest, and to know oneself to be God's servant is good cheer for the traveller, better than the lights of the inn showing over the horizon, for false brethren may await him in the inn, some that will hale him before rulers, but if he knows that he is God's servant he will be secure in his own heart, where alone security abides.
MANAHEM: From this day I am pledged to the Lord Jesus.
sHALLUM: God is not an unjust God, and the world will not be destroyed before all have heard of the Lord Jesus.
cALEB: We will carry tidings of him to Italy and to Spain.
ELIAKIM: Teach us, Paul, teach us. We would learn the new Gospel; we're weary of the old.
OTHER ESSENES: Teach us! Teach us!
MANAHEM: So that we in our turn may teach. (To Mathias.) We are weary of thy interpretations of the Scriptures.
MATHIAS: So because ye are weary of the Scriptures ye would accept a Gospel that a misadventure on the hills has cast among you. And ye would go out and preach it before ye know it, confident that the peoples ye go among will accept it as easily as ye have done. Questions will be put to you; they will ask for proof of the resurrection from the dead.
saddoc: Be not hasty, brethren. Paul has not told you whence the Redeemer came, nor of the witnesses of his resurrection.
PAUL: Witnesses are not lacking. He has many times returned to his disciples, and clothed in the light of the spirit he has walked with them and talked with them, yea, and eaten and drunk with them, and the greater part of the city of Jerusalem saw him hanging on the cross.
MATHIAS: It is strange that the story thou tellest should not have reached us, for Kerith is but ten leagues from Jerusalem.
Paul: Ye live among the rocks out of reach of tidings; but God sent me hither, for he wished the Essenes to hear the Gospel of the Lord Jesus, and from his Apostle.
