Now, when the family of Jesus heard that their relative was gaining a name among men, they sent to Jesus, asking him to go with them unto his cousin; but he, as I have heard, at first refused, saying, “Wherein have I sinned, that I should be baptized of Jochanan?” Yet afterwards he consented unto this, and went out to be baptized of his cousin. And when he saw the power for good that Jochanan exercised, his spirit was exalted, and he felt that he too had within him the same power. Many strange things have I heard of what happened to this Jesus when he submitted to be baptized by his cousin. And as none but Jesus would have known his feelings on that occasion, these reports must have come from him. Among us it is the custom that each Jew should select from the Psalms some _stichos_ which should serve as the motto of his life, and identify him when he appeareth before the Angel of Death. Now, it would appear that as Jesus was being baptized of Jochanan he heard the Daughter(5) of the Voice of God say to him the _stichos_ of the psalm, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.” Whether this was a protest of his soul against the slur cast upon his birth, what man shall say? But henceforth he spake of the fatherhood of God as if it had to him a deeper sense than to most of us Jews, though with us, as I have oft explained to thee, it is the central feeling of our faith. Jesus did not remain long out in the wilderness with his cousin; he, indeed, early recognized his superiority, though he was his master and his teacher. For at the first the teaching of Jesus differed but in little from the teaching of Jochanan. He summed up his whole aim in the words which I had heard his followers use in the Temple: “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;” and this he must have learnt from his cousin. So, too, like Jochanan, he mingled with the tax‐gatherers and the soldiery, and above all addressed himself to the poor, and, as I was to see, exhorted the rich to distribute their possessions. In all these things he was but the follower of his cousin Jochanan. It is no wonder, therefore, that when Jesus separated himself from Jochanan, and began to be a teacher of men, many left Jochanan and followed after Jesus; and until this Jochanan met with a violent end at the hands of the rulers, there was in some sort a rivalry if not between the men themselves, at least between the followers of Jochanan and of Jesus.