Thus, the two accounts of the healing of the paralytics, those of the Synoptics and those of John, are very similar, but differ in details. In the synoptic Gospels, the sick person is surrounded by people who take care of him, who bring him in, dig up the roof to lower the bed on which he lies. In the Gospel of John, the paralytic is alone, forsaken by everyone. After answering Jesus' question, "Yes," he adds: "But I have no man to lower me into the pool." The Person who gives him a helping hand is Jesus Himself. At the same time, the miracle of healing does not take place against the background of the fact that the Angel of the Lord disturbs the water, but against the background of a pagan sanctuary. Christ stands in the middle of this sanctuary among people who, from the point of view of an orthodox Jew, are inferior, unworthy, and it is here that He enters into conversation with the unfortunate.

This text has, so to speak, a scandalous connotation. The scene takes place in a place where a pious Jew could not even go, because not only the expectation of a miracle, but also the very presence here was considered as idolatry, as a gross violation of the first commandment. The healing of the paralytic takes place on Saturday. Jesus not only heals the sick man, but tells him: "Get up, take up your bed and walk." It seems to provoke a violation of the commandment about the Sabbath, according to which on this day nothing can be carried in the hands. The Jews are quite tolerant of the healed, they only do not like that he takes his bed on the day when it is forbidden. (Amazingly, the prohibition to wear one's own bed on the Sabbath can be found in the Talmud, so there is a kind of living echo of the religious tradition known to us from the Gospel texts.)

The healing of the paralytic at the font is not the only case in the Gospels when Jesus performs a miracle on the Sabbath. Why? The answer to this question is contained in verse 17: "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," Jesus says to the Jews. In other words, God continues to create the world every day: children are born, flowers bloom, trees continue to grow, etc., not only on ordinary days, but also on the Sabbath. In the Synodal translation, the Greek verb "poyein" is translated as "to do." However, it should be noted that in the semantics of this Greek verb there is something "muscular" that speaks of work, in contrast to the rather vague semantic field of the Russian verb "to do". Therefore, when comparing the Greek text and the Russian translation, this difference is very felt. Jesus tells the congregation that His Father works daily like a workman, and so does He, Jesus.

A manifested miracle is always a sign that the creative act continues, that God remains the Creator even today, in contrast to the ideas of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks and other peoples, in whose ideas, having once created the world, God retired to rest and no longer participates in its life. In ancient mythologies, the god Demiurge, the god of craftsmanship, the god of creator dwells in his palaces – for example, Amun, Khnum or Ptah among the Egyptians. The world is ruled by Zeus and other ancient Greek gods.

In the biblical worldview, everything is different. God's creation is not limited by any specific dates, and the miracles that are happening today only remind us that the creative act is not finished. In fact, it cannot be completed if it is done outside of time. The idea that the Earth was created once and for all is a manifestation of paganism. This separation of creation from the rest of life introduces something mechanical into the picture of the world, which is absent in the Gospels.

In the Gospel of John, there is another place where the miracle of healing is told. This is the healing of the man born blind in the 9th chapter. Jesus says, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said this, He spat on the ground, made clay from spittle, and anointed the eyes of the blind man with spittle, and said to him, "Go and wash..." All interpreters of the New Testament pay attention to this moment, when Jesus, spitting on the earth, put it to the eyes of the blind man. On the one hand, there are ideas about the healing properties of saliva and earth. But on the other hand, God creates man from the dust of the earth in the book of Genesis: "And God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his face the breath of life" (Gen. 1:7). Jesus, spitting, blows on the dust of the earth, and the earth mixes with His breath, and as if "not completely" created man acquires fullness: his eyes are opened. There is a clear parallel between the text about the creation of man and the story of the healing of the man born blind. And when Jesus says, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," it is clear that this is an ongoing act of creation.

And then the scandal begins. "And the Jews sought to kill Him all the more, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God His Father, making Himself equal with God" (John 5:18).

Is it not possible to call God Father?

If we take the books of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Psalter, we will see that in many places in the Old Testament God is called the Father. For example, "My Father" is in Isaiah and Jeremiah. It would seem that the first words of the prayer "Our Father..." taken from the Old Testament. A similar form can be found in the Jewish prayer book – the Siddur, where half of the prayers begin, if not with the words "Blessed is our God, King of the Universe...", then with the formula "Our Father". This means that for someone who was at least somewhat familiar not even with the Sidur, but simply with the Old Testament, these words were not something absurd and did not give cause for indignation. So, this is not the case.

In solving this riddle, we will probably be helped by the Epistle to the Galatians and the Gospel of Matthew, in their part that speaks of Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and where the Aramaic "abba" is used, i.e. not just "Father", but an affectionate word from everyday life, something like "daddy" or "tyatenka" (in the Russian language there are no words that would accurately convey the appeal of Jesus to the Father). "Abba," Jesus addresses God in prayer, and presumably this is how He calls God when He speaks to the Jews. The Greek translator did not have the courage to convey Jesus' address as it sounds in Aramaic: "My daddy..." That is why the Jews were furious—they heard Jesus address God "fraternally." That is the reason for their anger.

Jesus had a predecessor, a semi-legendary Galilean miracle worker named Hanan Ganehba. In the Talmudic tractate Taanit, several stories have been preserved about this strange eccentric, through whose prayers God performed miracles. In particular, there is such a story. Children during a drought asked Annas to pray that God would send rain. The children say, addressing him: "Daddy, daddy, send us rain." And then Annas prayed. "Send rain," he said to God, "on the earth, that they may understand the difference between a daddy who sends rain and a daddy who can't do it." The situation is somewhat similar to the Gospel. In the center of it is a rather original man, a simpleton from Galilee, almost illiterate, but whom God hears because of his purity. But Hanan is more of a legendary figure than a historical one.

As for the Jerusalem crowd, they simply perceived the words of Jesus as something inadmissible, provocative, familiar. In verse 18 of the fifth chapter, it should not be translated "making Himself equal with God," but "speaking to God in a brotherly manner" (defiantly, as with a friend, as a capricious child with his father, and so on). It is not about the equality of the Son with the Father, but about a special, unique and inimitable relationship between God and man, the meaning of which is simply impossible to understand from the outside.

One of the French writers of the 20th century was indignant at new translations of the Bible and Liturgy. He said that the Bible, where God is addressed as "You," should not be read, just as one should not go to church, where the same thing happens. The fact is that in the old French Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments, God the Father, Jesus and the Mother of God were always addressed only as "You". Therefore, today reading biblical texts in old French editions is simply funny. It is enough to try, for example, in a verse sounding in Slavonic: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to the command of Thy mercy...", to replace "have mercy" with "have mercy" and "Yours" with "Yours"... Such a text will evoke nothing but a smile in us.

Meeting the healed man in the temple, Jesus says to him: "Sin no more, lest something worse happen to you" (5:14). We will hear similar words again soon. In chapter 8, Jesus says to a woman who has been brought to Him while she was meeting with her lover: "And I do not condemn you, go and sin no more" (8:11).