Volume 2

Beelzebub 363
father to whom we must sacrifice our evil inclinations, and
who asks no other offering from us than that of our own
heart. When addressing the pagans, Jesus always said to
them more plainly than He did to the Jews, that God has no
need of our offerings. He exhorted them to contrition and
penance, to thanksgiving for benefits received, and to compassion
toward the suffering. Returned to the Jewish
quarter, He terminated the exercises of the Sabbath and
took a repast, after which began a fast in atonement for the
adoration of the golden calf. It was celebrated on the 8th of
Tisri because the 7th, the fast day proper, fell this year on
the Sabbath.
Jesus left the city the next afternoon. The pagans whose
children He had cured thanked Him again outside their
own quarter. He blessed them, and with twelve disciples
went down through the valley to the south of Gadara. He
crossed a mountain and reached a little stream flowing from
the range below Betharamphtha-Julias where the nlines
were. It was three hours from Gadara to the inn near the
stream at which Jesus and the disciples put up. The Jews
dwelling around that part of the country were engaged in
gathering in the fruits. Jesus instructed them. There was
also a band of pagans near the stream busy gathering white
flowers from a blooming hedge, but it was not the flowers
alone that they gathered, but also great, ugly beetles and
other insects. When Jesus approached them, they drew
back as if in fear . It was shown nle that these insects were
intended for the idol Beelzebub at Dion. I saw the idol outside
the gate of the city, sitting under a large willow. It had
a figure something like a monkey with short arms and
slender legs, and it was seated like a human being. Its head
was pointed and furnished with two little horns bent like a
crescent, and the face with its extremely long nose was horrible.
The chin was short but projecting, the mouth large
and like that of a beast, the body lank, the legs long and thin
with clawed toes. It wore an apron. In one hand it grasped a