The Logos Scripture · Acts of the Apostles

The Quarrel in the Painted Stoa

Acts of the Apostles 5 · A Record of the Great Scattering

5.1In the nineteenth year after the Teacher, the four Gospels were circulating apart, and the places where they did not agree became known.

5.2The Cynics and the Cyrenaics met beneath the Painted Stoa, each holding a book, and read it out line by line at the other.

5.3One side read: the Teacher stood barefoot on the ice.

5.4One side read: the Teacher filled the cups and laughed.

5.5One side read: the Teacher hurled the purse into a ravine.

5.6One side read: the Teacher accepted the rich man's figs and wine.

5.7They read until sundown, and neither side gave way.

5.8A man struck the table and said: one of them must be a forgery. Burn it, and set the canon right.

5.9As they moved to do it, an old woman came out from behind a pillar.

5.10She was Melitta, the weaver who had sat by the city gate. She was past seventy then.

5.11She said: "I was present at both. I saw both things with my own eyes."

5.12"He stood on the ice. He also laughed in the wine. These are not two men."

5.13They asked her: "Then which of them is true?"

5.14She said: "Both are true."

5.15"He never taught you how much to take. He taught you not to be taken."

5.16The Stoa was silent a long while.

5.17On that day the Order laid down its first rule:

5.18Whoever would burn another of the books is expelled from the Order.

5.19Whoever can recite all four, and still stand upright where they contradict one another, may be called a Co-Soarer.

5.20From that day the Order was no longer one house, but a forest.

5.21A house dies out. A forest does not.