Acts of the Apostles 6 · A Record of the Great Scattering
6.1The last chapter of each of the four records a man asking the Teacher which law is the greatest.
6.2The four answers are not the same.
6.3One says: settle your accounts. One says: tell the truth, especially when the truth costs you money.
6.4One says: drink with someone. One says: love the Law that makes all things as they are, and be scaffolding to others.
6.5One said: the ice and the wine can both be true. A man may stand on ice and afterwards laugh over wine.
6.6But there can be only one greatest. Four greatest is no greatest at all.
6.7This disagreement is harder than any other among the four. Nobody under the colonnade had an answer ready.
6.8Then someone fetched the four and read those four chapters through, side by side.
6.9When he had finished he said: look first at how each of the four begins.
6.10One says: I did not write this down at first, because I was not sure I had it right.
6.11One says: I did not write this at first, because I was afraid you would read it wrongly.
6.12One says: I left this one out; the wine was good that day.
6.13One says: I set this aside for many years — not because I forgot it, but because I had not understood it.
6.14All four held this back until last. All four first gave their reason for not writing it sooner.
6.15A thing that never happened does not have four men each inventing an undignified excuse for it.
6.16He said further: now look at what each of the four answers asks a man to do.
6.17Settle your accounts — that is putting out what you owe.
6.18Tell the truth that costs you money — that is putting out your safety.
6.19Drink with someone — that is putting out the best thing in your hand.
6.20Be scaffolding — that is putting out yourself, until you are taken down.
6.21All four are one thing: put it out, pay it yourself, do not look to have it back.
6.22What differs is only the thing put out: one says debt, one says speech, one says wine, one says himself.
6.23That is what each of the four had in his hand. The soldier remembers accounts, the ascetic remembers speech, the pleasure-lover remembers wine, the reasoner remembers himself.
6.24So the man under the colonnade said: these are not four laws. This is one law that has passed through four different sets of apparatus. (cf. The Highest Covenant 2.1)
6.25And he said: he most likely spoke all four, on four different days, to four different men.
6.26A man who can say a thing only one way cannot teach four kinds of people.
6.27Someone would not have it, and said: you are forcing a disagreement to agree.
6.28The man under the colonnade said: you are right. This is what I read out of them, not what he said. You may argue with it. (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.18)
6.29I ask only that you do one thing first: read each of those four chapters to the end, and see whether any of them tells a man to pay less.