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Title: The Life of Jesus
Author: Renan, Ernest, 1823-1892
Language: English
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THE
LIFE
OF
JESUS
BY
ERNEST RENAN
INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN HAYNES HOLMES
[Transcriber's note: Introduction by John Haynes Holmes not included
in this etext due to copyright restrictions.]
MODERN LIBRARY
NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY THE MODERN LIBRARY, INC.
_Random House_ IS THE PUBLISHER OF
THE MODERN LIBRARY
BENNETT A. CERF * DONALD S. KLOPPER * ROBERT K. HAAS
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed by Parkway Printing Company * Bound by H. Wolff
TO THE PURE SOUL OF
MY SISTER HENRIETTE
_Who Died at Byblus on the 24th of September, 1861_
Dost thou recall, from the bosom of God where thou reposest, those
long days at Ghazir, in which, alone with thee, I wrote these pages,
inspired by the places we had visited together? Silent at my side,
thou didst read and copy each sheet as soon as I had written it,
whilst the sea, the villages, the ravines, and the mountains, were
spread at our feet. When the overwhelming light had given place to the
innumerable army of stars, thy shrewd and subtle questions, thy
discreet doubts, led me back to the sublime object of our common
thoughts. One day thou didst tell me that thou wouldst love this
book--first, because it had been composed with thee, and also because
it pleased thee. Though at times thou didst fear for it the narrow
judgments of the frivolous, yet wert thou ever persuaded that all
truly religious souls would ultimately take pleasure in it. In the
midst of these sweet meditations, the Angel of Death struck us both
with his wing: the sleep of fever seized us at the same time--I awoke
alone!... Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy
Byblus and the sacred stream where the women of the ancient mysteries
came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius, to me whom
thou lovedst, those truths which conquer death, deprive it of terror,
and make it almost beloved.
PREFACE
In presenting an English version of the celebrated work of M. Renan,
the translator is aware of the difficulty of adequately rendering a
work so admirable for its style and beauty of composition. It is not
an easy task to reproduce the terseness and eloquence which
characterize the original. Whatever its success in these respects may
be, no pains have been spared to give the author's meaning. The
translation has been revised by highly competent persons; but although
great care has been taken in this respect, it is possible that a few
errors may still have escaped notice.
The great problem of the present age is to preserve the religious
spirit, whilst getting rid of the superstitions and absurdities that
deform it, and which are alike opposed to science and common sense.
The works of Mr. F.W. Newman and of Bishop Colenso, and the "Essays
and Reviews," are rendering great service in this direction. The work
of M. Renan will contribute to this object; and, if its utility may be
measured by the storm which it has created amongst the _obscurantists_
in France, and the heartiness with which they have condemned it, its
merits in this respect must be very great. It needs only to be added,
that whilst warmly sympathizing with the earnest spirit which pervades
the book, the translator by no means wishes to be identified with all
the opinions therein expressed.
_December 8, 1863._
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction, by John Haynes Holmes 15
Introduction, in Which the Sources of This History Are Principally
Treated 25
CHAPTER I
Place of Jesus in the History of the World 67
CHAPTER II
Infancy and Youth of Jesus--His First Impressions 81
CHAPTER III
Education of Jesus 89
CHAPTER IV
The Order of Thought Which Surrounded the Development
of Jesus 99
CHAPTER V
The First Saying of Jesus--His Ideas of a Divine Father
and of a Pure Religion--First Disciples 119
CHAPTER VI
John the Baptist--Visit of Jesus to John, and His Abode in
the Desert of Judea--Adoption of the Baptism of John 135
CHAPTER VII
Development of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom
of God 148
CHAPTER VIII
Jesus at Capernaum 160
CHAPTER IX
The Disciples of Jesus 173
CHAPTER X
The Preachings on the Lake 184
CHAPTER XI
The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the
Poor 194
CHAPTER XII
Embassy from John in Prison to Jesus--Death of John--Relations
of His School with That of Jesus 206
CHAPTER XIII
First Attempts on Jerusalem 213
CHAPTER XIV
Intercourse of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans 227
CHAPTER XV
Commencement of the Legends Concerning Jesus--His Own
Idea of His Supernatural Character 235
CHAPTER XVI
Miracles 248
CHAPTER XVII
Definitive Form of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom
of God 259
CHAPTER XVIII
Institutions of Jesus 273
CHAPTER XIX
Increasing Progression of Enthusiasm and of Exaltation 285
CHAPTER XX
Opposition to Jesus 295
CHAPTER XXI
Last Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem 305
CHAPTER XXII
Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus 319
CHAPTER XXIII
Last Week of Jesus 329
CHAPTER XXIV
Arrest and Trial of Jesus 344
CHAPTER XXV
Death of Jesus 360
CHAPTER XXVI
Jesus in the Tomb 370
CHAPTER XXVII
Fate of the Enemies of Jesus 376
CHAPTER XXVIII
Essential Character of the Work of Jesus 381
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION,
In Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated
A history of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to embrace all the
obscure, and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which extend
from the first beginnings of this religion up to the moment when its
existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of
all. Such a history would consist of four books. The first, which I
now present to the public, treats of the particular fact which has
served as the starting-point of the new religion, and is entirely
filled by the sublime person of the Founder. The second would treat of
the apostles and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the
revolutions which religious thought underwent in the first two
generations of Christianity. I would close this about the year 100, at
the time when the last friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the
books of the New Testament were fixed almost in the forms in which we
now read them. The third would exhibit the state of Christianity under
the Antonines. We should see it develop itself slowly, and sustain an
almost permanent war against the empire, which had just reached the
highest degree of administrative perfection, and, governed by
philosophers, combated in the new-born sect a secret and theocratic
society which obstinately denied and incessantly undermined it. This
book would cover the entire period of the second century. Lastly, the
fourth book would show the decisive progress which Christianity made
from the time of the Syrian emperors. We should see the learned
system of the Antonines crumble, the decadence of the ancient
civilization become irrevocable, Christianity profit from its ruin,
Syria conquer the whole West, and Jesus, in company with the gods and
the deified sages of Asia, take possession of a society for which
philosophy and a purely civil government no longer sufficed. It was
then that the religious ideas of the races grouped around the
Mediterranean became profoundly modified; that the Eastern religions
everywhere took precedence; that the Christian Church, having become
very numerous, totally forgot its dreams of a millennium, broke its
last ties with Judaism, and entered completely into the Greek and
Roman world. The contests and the literary labors of the third
century, which were carried on without concealment, would be described
only in their general features. I would relate still more briefly the
persecutions at the commencement of the fourth century, the last
effort of the empire to return to its former principles, which denied
to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would only
foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, reversed the
position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious movement
an official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its turn.
I know not whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to
complete a plan so vast. I shall be satisfied if, after having written
the _Life of Jesus_, I am permitted to relate, as I understand it, the
history of the apostles, the state of the Christian conscience during
the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the formation of the
cycle of legends concerning the resurrection, the first acts of the
Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of
Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the
foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation
of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor
originated by John. Everything pales by the side of that marvellous
first century. By a peculiarity rare in history, we see much better
what passed in the Christian world from the year 50 to the year 75,
than from the year 100 to the year 150.
The plan followed in this history has prevented the introduction into
the text of long critical dissertations upon controverted points. A
continuous system of notes enables the reader to verify from the
authorities all the statements of the text. These notes are strictly
limited to quotations from the primary sources; that is to say, the
original passages upon which each assertion or conjecture rests. I
know that for persons little accustomed to studies of this kind many
other explanations would have been necessary. But it is not my
practice to do over again what has been already done well. To cite
only books written in French, those who will consult the following
excellent writings[1] will there find explained a number of points
upon which I have been obliged to be very brief:
_Études Critiques sur l'Évangile de saint Matthieu_, par M.
Albert Réville, pasteur de l'église Wallonne de
Rotterdam.[2]
_Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique_,
par M. Reuss, professeur à la Faculté de Théologie et au
Séminaire Protestant de Strasbourg.[3]
_Des Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs pendant les Deux
Siècles Antérieurs à l'Ère Chrétienne_, par M. Michel
Nicolas, professeur à la Faculté de Théologie Protestante de
Montauban.[4]
_Vie de Jésus_, par le Dr. Strauss; traduite par M. Littré,
Membre de l'Institut.[5]
_Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Chrétienne_, publiée
sous la direction de M. Colani, de 1850 à 1857.--_Nouvelle
Revue de Théologie_, faisant suite à la précédente depuis
1858.[6]
[Footnote 1: While this work was in the press, a book has appeared
which I do not hesitate to add to this list, although I have not read
it with the attention it deserves--_Les Évangiles_, par M. Gustave
d'Eichthal. Première Partie: _Examen Critique et Comparatif des Trois
Premiers Évangiles_. Paris, Hachette, 1863.]
[Footnote 2: Leyde, Noothoven van Goor, 1862. Paris, Cherbuliez. A
work crowned by the Society of The Hague for the defence of the
Christian religion.]
[Footnote 3: Strasbourg, Treuttel and Wurtz. 2nd edition. 1860. Paris,
Cherbuliez.]
[Footnote 4: Paris, Michel Lévy frères, 1860.]
[Footnote 5: Paris, Ladrange. 2nd edition, 1856.]
[Footnote 6: Strasbourg, Treuttel and Wurtz. Paris, Cherbuliez.]
The criticism of the details of the Gospel texts especially, has been
done by Strauss in a manner which leaves little to be desired.
Although Strauss may be mistaken in his theory of the compilation of
the Gospels;[1] and although his book has, in my opinion, the fault of
taking up the theological ground too much, and the historical ground
too little,[2] it will be necessary, in order to understand the
motives which have guided me amidst a crowd of minutiæ, to study the
always judicious, though sometimes rather subtle argument, of the
book, so well translated by my learned friend, M. Littré.
[Footnote 1: The great results obtained on this point have only been
acquired since the first edition of Strauss's work. The learned critic
has, besides, done justice to them with much candor in his after
editions.]
[Footnote 2: It is scarcely necessary to repeat that not a word in
Strauss's work justifies the strange and absurd calumny by which it
has been attempted to bring into disrepute with superficial persons, a
work so agreeable, accurate, thoughtful, and conscientious, though
spoiled in its general parts by an exclusive system. Not only has
Strauss never denied the existence of Jesus, but each page of his book
implies this existence. The truth is, Strauss supposes the individual
character of Jesus less distinct for us than it perhaps is in
reality.]
I do not believe I have neglected any source of information as to
ancient evidences. Without speaking of a crowd of other scattered
data, there remain, respecting Jesus, and the time in which he lived,
five great collections of writings--1st, The Gospels, and the
writings of the New Testament in general; 2d, The compositions called
the "Apocrypha of the Old Testament;" 3d, The works of Philo; 4th,
Those of Josephus; 5th, The Talmud. The writings of Philo have the
priceless advantage of showing us the thoughts which, in the time of
Jesus, fermented in minds occupied with great religious questions.
Philo lived, it is true, in quite a different province of Judaism to
Jesus, but, like him, he was very free from the littlenesses which
reigned at Jerusalem; Philo is truly the elder brother of Jesus. He
was sixty-two years old when the Prophet of Nazareth was at the height
of his activity, and he survived him at least ten years. What a pity
that the chances of life did not conduct him into Galilee! What would
he not have taught us!
Josephus, writing specially for pagans, is not so candid. His short
notices of Jesus, of John the Baptist, of Judas the Gaulonite, are dry
and colorless. We feel that he seeks to present these movements, so
profoundly Jewish in character and spirit, under a form which would be
intelligible to Greeks and Romans. I believe the passage respecting
Jesus[1] to be authentic. It is perfectly in the style of Josephus,
and if this historian has made mention of Jesus, it is thus that he
must have spoken of him. We feel only that a Christian hand has
retouched the passage, has added a few words--without which it would
almost have been blasphemous[2]--has perhaps retrenched or modified
some expressions.[3] It must be recollected that the literary fortune
of Josephus was made by the Christians, who adopted his writings as
essential documents of their sacred history. They made, probably in
the second century, an edition corrected according to Christian
ideas.[4] At all events, that which constitutes the immense interest
of Josephus on the subject which occupies us, is the clear light which
he throws upon the period. Thanks to him, Herod, Herodias, Antipas,
Philip, Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate are personages whom we can touch
with the finger, and whom we see living before us with a striking
reality.
[Footnote 1: _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]
[Footnote 2: "If it be lawful to call him a man."]
[Footnote 3: In place of [Greek: christos outos ên], he certainly had
these [Greek: christos outos elegeto].--Cf. _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]
[Footnote 4: Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl._, i. 11, and _Demonstr. Evang._,
iii. 5) cites the passage respecting Jesus as we now read it in
Josephus. Origen (_Contra Celsus_, i. 47; ii. 13) and Eusebius (_Hist.
Eccl._, ii. 23) cite another Christian interpolation, which is not
found in any of the manuscripts of Josephus which have come down to
us.]
The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, especially the Jewish part
of the Sibylline verses, and the Book of Enoch, together with the Book
of Daniel, which is also really an Apocrypha, have a primary
importance in the history of the development of the Messianic
theories, and for the understanding of the conceptions of Jesus
respecting the kingdom of God. The Book of Enoch especially, which was
much read at the time of Jesus,[1] gives us the key to the expression
"Son of Man," and to the ideas attached to it. The ages of these
different books, thanks to the labors of Alexander, Ewald, Dillmann,
and Reuss, is now beyond doubt. Every one is agreed in placing the
compilation of the most important of them in the second and first
centuries before Jesus Christ. The date of the Book of Daniel is still
more certain. The character of the two languages in which it is
written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise, dated
announcement of events, which reach even to the time of Antiochus
Epiphanes, the incorrect descriptions of Ancient Babylonia, there
given, the general tone of the book, which in no respect recalls the
writings of the captivity, but, on the contrary, responds, by a crowd
of analogies, to the beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of
the time of the Seleucidæ; the Apocalyptic form of the visions, the
place of the book in the Hebrew canon, out of the series of the
prophets, the omission of Daniel in the panegyrics of Chapter xlix. of
Ecclesiasticus, in which his position is all but indicated, and many
other proofs which have been deduced a hundred times, do not permit of
a doubt that the Book of Daniel was but the fruit of the great
excitement produced among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. It
is not in the old prophetical literature that we must class this book,
but rather at the head of Apocalyptic literature, as the first model
of a kind of composition, after which come the various Sibylline
poems, the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of John, the Ascension of
Isaiah, and the Fourth Book of Esdras.
[Footnote 1: Jude Epist. 14.]
In the history of the origin of Christianity, the Talmud has hitherto
been too much neglected. I think with M. Geiger, that the true notion
of the circumstances which surrounded the development of Jesus must be
sought in this strange compilation, in which so much precious
information is mixed with the most insignificant scholasticism. The
Christian and the Jewish theology having in the main followed two
parallel ways, the history of the one cannot well be understood
without the history of the other. Innumerable important details in the
Gospels find, moreover, their commentary in the Talmud. The vast Latin
collections of Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Buxtorf, and Otho contained
already a mass of information on this point. I have imposed on myself
the task of verifying in the original all the citations which I have
admitted, without a single exception. The assistance which has been
given me for this part of my task by a learned Israelite, M. Neubauer,
well versed in Talmudic literature, has enabled me to go further, and
to clear up the most intricate parts of my subject by new researches.
The distinction of epochs is here most important, the compilation of
the Talmud extending from the year 200 to about the year 500. We have
brought to it as much discernment as is possible in the actual state
of these studies. Dates so recent will excite some fears among persons
habituated to accord value to a document only for the period in which
it was written. But such scruples would here be out of place. The
teaching of the Jews from the Asmonean epoch down to the second
century was principally oral. We must not judge of this state of
intelligence by the habits of an age of much writing. The Vedas, and
the ancient Arabian poems, have been preserved for ages from memory,
and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form.
In the Talmud, on the contrary, the form has no value. Let us add that
before the _Mishnah_ of Judas the Saint, which has caused all others
to be forgotten, there were attempts at compilation, the commencement
of which is probably much earlier than is commonly supposed. The style
of the Talmud is that of loose notes; the collectors did no more
probably than classify under certain titles the enormous mass of
writings which had been accumulating in the different schools for
generations.
It remains for us to speak of the documents which, presenting
themselves as biographies of the Founder of Christianity, must
naturally hold the first place in a _Life of Jesus_. A complete
treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels would be a work of
itself. Thanks to the excellent researches of which this question has
been the object during thirty years, a problem which was formerly
judged insurmountable has obtained a solution which, though it leaves
room for many uncertainties, fully suffices for the necessities of
history. We shall have occasion to return to this in our Second Book,
the composition of the Gospels having been one of the most important
facts for the future of Christianity in the second half of the first
century. We will touch here only a single aspect of the subject, that
which is indispensable to the completeness of our narrative. Leaving
aside all which belongs to the portraiture of the apostolic times, we
will inquire only in what degree the data furnished by the Gospels may
be employed in a history formed according to rational principles.[1]
[Footnote 1: Persons who wish to read more ample explanations, may
consult, in addition to the work of M. Réville, previously cited, the
writings of Reuss and Scherer in the _Revue de Théologie_, vol. x.,
xi., xv.; new series, ii., iii., iv.; and that of Nicolas in the
_Revue Germanique_, Sept. and Dec., 1862; April and June, 1863.]
That the Gospels are in part legendary, is evident, since they are
full of miracles and of the supernatural; but legends have not all the
same value. No one doubts the principal features of the life of
Francis d'Assisi, although we meet the supernatural at every step. No
one, on the other hand, accords credit to the _Life of Apollonius of
Tyana_, because it was written long after the time of the hero, and
purely as a romance. At what time, by what hands, under what
circumstances, have the Gospels been compiled? This is the primary
question upon which depends the opinion to be formed of their
credibility.
Each of the four Gospels bears at its head the name of a personage,
known either in the apostolic history, or in the Gospel history
itself. These four personages are not strictly given us as the
authors. The formulæ "according to Matthew," "according to Mark,"
"according to Luke," "according to John," do not imply that, in the
most ancient opinion, these recitals were written from beginning to
end by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,[1] they merely signify that
these were the traditions proceeding from each of these apostles, and
claiming their authority. It is clear that, if these titles are exact,
the Gospels, without ceasing to be in part legendary, are of great
value, since they enable us to go back to the half century which
followed the death of Jesus, and in two instances, even to the
eye-witnesses of his actions.
[Footnote 1: In the same manner we say, "The Gospel according to the
Hebrews," "The Gospel according to the Egyptians."]
Firstly, as to Luke, doubt is scarcely possible. The Gospel of Luke is
a regular composition, founded on anterior documents.[1] It is the
work of a man who selects, prunes, and combines. The author of this
Gospel is certainly the same as that of the Acts of the Apostles.[2]
Now, the author of the Acts is a companion of St. Paul,[3] a title
which applies to Luke exactly.[4] I know that more than one objection
may be raised against this reasoning; but one thing, at least, is
beyond doubt, namely, that the author of the third Gospel and of the
Acts was a man of the second apostolic generation, and that is
sufficient for our object. The date of this Gospel can moreover be
determined with much precision by considerations drawn from the book
itself. The twenty-first chapter of Luke, inseparable from the rest of
the work, was certainly written after the siege of Jerusalem, and but
a short time after.[5] We are here, then, upon solid ground; for we
are concerned with a work written entirely by the same hand, and of
the most perfect unity.
[Footnote 1: Luke i. 1-4.]
[Footnote 2: _Acts_ i. 1. Compare Luke i. 1-4.]
[Footnote 3: From xvi. 10, the author represents himself as
eye-witness.]
[Footnote 4: 2 Tim. iv. 11; Philemon 24; Col. iv. 14. The name of
_Lucas_ (contraction of _Lucanus_) being very rare, we need not fear
one of those homonyms which cause so many perplexities in questions of
criticism relative to the New Testament.]
[Footnote 5: Verses 9, 20, 24, 28, 32. Comp. xxii. 36.]
The Gospels of Matthew and Mark have not nearly the same stamp of
individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author
totally disappears. A proper name written at the head of works of this
kind does not amount to much. But if the Gospel of Luke is dated,
those of Matthew and Mark are dated also; for it is certain that the
third Gospel is posterior to the first two and exhibits the character
of a much more advanced compilation. We have, besides, on this point,
an excellent testimony from a writer of the first half of the second
century--namely, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave man, a man of
traditions, who was all his life seeking to collect whatever could be
known of the person of Jesus.[1] After having declared that on such
matters he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two
writings on the acts and words of Christ: First, a writing of Mark,
the interpreter of the apostle Peter, written briefly, incomplete, and
not arranged in chronological order, including narratives and
discourses, ([Greek: lechthenta ê prachthenta],) composed from the
information and recollections of the apostle Peter; second, a
collection of sentences ([Greek: logia]) written in Hebrew[2] by
Matthew, "and which each one has translated as he could." It is
certain that these two descriptions answer pretty well to the general
physiognomy of the two books now called "Gospel according to Matthew,"
"Gospel according to Mark"--the first characterized by its long
discourses; the second, above all, by anecdote--much more exact than
the first upon small facts, brief even to dryness, containing few
discourses, and indifferently composed. That these two works, such as
we now read them, are absolutely similar to those read by Papias,
cannot be sustained: Firstly, because the writings of Matthew were to
Papias solely discourses in Hebrew, of which there were in circulation
very varying translations; and, secondly, because the writings of Mark
and Matthew were to him profoundly distinct, written without any
knowledge of each other, and, as it seems, in different languages.
Now, in the present state of the texts, the "Gospel according to
Matthew" and the "Gospel according to Mark" present parallel parts so
long and so perfectly identical, that it must be supposed, either that
the final compiler of the first had the second under his eyes, or
_vice versa_, or that both copied from the same prototype. That which
appears the most likely, is, that we have not the entirely original
compilations of either Matthew or Mark; but that our first two Gospels
are versions in which the attempt is made to fill up the gaps of the
one text by the other. Every one wished, in fact, to possess a
complete copy. He who had in his copy only discourses, wished to have
narratives, and _vice versa_. It is thus that "the Gospel according to
Matthew" is found to have included almost all the anecdotes of Mark,
and that "the Gospel according to Mark" now contains numerous
features which come from the _Logia_ of Matthew. Every one, besides,
drew largely on the Gospel tradition then current. This tradition was
so far from having been exhausted by the Gospels, that the Acts of the
Apostles and the most ancient Fathers quote many words of Jesus which
appear authentic, and are not found in the Gospels we possess.
[Footnote 1: In Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 39. No doubt whatever
can be raised as to the authenticity of this passage. Eusebius, in
fact, far from exaggerating the authority of Papias, is embarrassed at
his simple ingenuousness, at his gross millenarianism, and solves the
difficulty by treating him as a man of little mind. Comp. Irenæus,
_Adv. Hær._, iii. 1.]
[Footnote 2: That is to say, in the Semitic dialect.]
It matters little for our present object to push this delicate
analysis further, and to endeavor to reconstruct in some manner, on
the one hand, the original _Logia_ of Matthew, and, on the other, the
primitive narrative such as it left the pen of Mark. The _Logia_ are
doubtless represented by the great discourses of Jesus which fill a
considerable part of the first Gospel. These discourses form, in fact,
when detached from the rest, a sufficiently complete whole. As to the
narratives of the first and second Gospels, they seem to have for
basis a common document, of which the text reappears sometimes in the
one and sometimes in the other, and of which the second Gospel, such
as we read it to-day, is but a slightly modified reproduction. In
other words, the scheme of the _Life of Jesus_, in the synoptics,
rests upon two original documents--first, the discourses of Jesus
collected by Matthew; second, the collection of anecdotes and personal
reminiscences which Mark wrote from the recollections of Peter. We may
say that we have these two documents still, mixed with accounts from
another source, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without
reason, the name of the "Gospel _according_ to Matthew" and of the
"Gospel _according_ to Mark."
What is indubitable, in any case, is, that very early the discourses
of Jesus were written in the Aramean language, and very early also his
remarkable actions were recorded. These were not texts defined and
fixed dogmatically. Besides the Gospels which have come to us, there
were a number of others professing to represent the tradition of
eye-witnesses.[1] Little importance was attached to these writings,
and the preservers, such as Papias, greatly preferred oral
tradition.[2] As men still believed that the world was nearly at an
end, they cared little to compose books for the future; it was
sufficient merely to preserve in their hearts a lively image of him
whom they hoped soon to see again in the clouds. Hence the little
authority which the Gospel texts enjoyed during one hundred and fifty
years. There was no scruple in inserting additions, in variously
combining them, and in completing some by others. The poor man who has
but one book wishes that it may contain all that is clear to his
heart. These little books were lent, each one transcribed in the
margin of his copy the words, and the parables he found elsewhere,
which touched him.[3] The most beautiful thing in the world has thus
proceeded from an obscure and purely popular elaboration. No
compilation was of absolute value. Justin, who often appeals to that
which he calls "The Memoirs of the Apostles,"[4] had under his notice
Gospel documents in a state very different from that in which we
possess them. At all events, he never cares to quote them textually.
The Gospel quotations in the pseudo-Clementinian writings, of
Ebionite origin, present the same character. The spirit was
everything; the letter was nothing. It was when tradition became
weakened, in the second half of the second century, that the texts
bearing the names of the apostles took a decisive authority and
obtained the force of law.
[Footnote 1: Luke i. 1, 2; Origen, _Hom. in Luc._ 1 init.; St. Jerome,
_Comment. in Matt._, prol.]
[Footnote 2: Papias, in Eusebius, _H.E._, iii. 39. Comp. Irenæus,
_Adv. Hær._, III. ii. and iii.]
[Footnote 3: It is thus that the beautiful narrative in John viii.
1-11 has always floated, without finding a fixed place in the
framework of the received Gospels.]
[Footnote 4: [Greek: Ta apomnêmoneumata tôn apostolôn, a kaleitai
euangelia]. Justin, _Apol._ i. 33, 66, 67; _Dial. cum Tryph._, 10,
100-107.]
Who does not see the value of documents thus composed of the tender
remembrances, and simple narratives, of the first two Christian
generations, still full of the strong impression which the illustrious
Founder had produced, and which seemed long to survive him? Let us
add, that the Gospels in question seem to proceed from that branch of
the Christian family which stood nearest to Jesus. The last work of
compilation, at least of the text which bears the name of Matthew,
appears to have been done in one of the countries situated at the
northeast of Palestine, such as Gaulonitis, Auranitis, Batanea, where
many Christians took refuge at the time of the Roman war, where were
found relatives of Jesus[1] even in the second century, and where the
first Galilean tendency was longer preserved than in other parts.
[Footnote 1: Julius Africanus, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, i. 7.]
So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels named the synoptics.
There remains a fourth, that which bears the name of John. Concerning
this one, doubts have a much better foundation, and the question is
further from solution. Papias--who was connected with the school of
John, and who, if not one of his auditors, as Irenæus thinks,
associated with his immediate disciples, among others, Aristion, and
the one called _Presbyteros Joannes_--says not a word of a _Life of
Jesus_, written by John, although he had zealously collected the oral
narratives of both Aristion and _Presbyteros Joannes_. If any such
mention had been found in his work, Eusebius, who points out
everything therein that can contribute to the literary history of the
apostolic age, would doubtless have mentioned it.
The intrinsic difficulties drawn from the perusal of the fourth Gospel
itself are not less strong. How is it that, side by side with
narration so precise, and so evidently that of an eye-witness, we find
discourses so totally different from those of Matthew? How is it that,
connected with a general plan of the life of Jesus, which appears much
more satisfactory and exact than that of the synoptics, these singular
passages occur in which we are sensible of a dogmatic interest
peculiar to the compiler, of ideas foreign to Jesus, and sometimes of
indications which place us on our guard against the good faith of the
narrator? Lastly, how is it that, united with views the most pure, the
most just, the most truly evangelical, we find these blemishes which
we would fain regard as the interpolations of an ardent sectarian? Is
it indeed John, son of Zebedee, brother of James (of whom there is not
a single mention made in the fourth Gospel), who is able to write in
Greek these lessons of abstract metaphysics to which neither the
synoptics nor the Talmud offer any analogy? All this is of great
importance; and for myself, I dare not be sure that the fourth Gospel
has been entirely written by the pen of a Galilean fisherman. But
that, as a whole, this Gospel may have originated toward the end of
the first century, from the great school of Asia Minor, which was
connected with John, that it represents to us a version of the life of
the Master, worthy of high esteem, and often to be preferred, is
demonstrated, in a manner which leaves us nothing to be desired, both
by exterior evidences and by examination of the document itself.
And, firstly, no one doubts that, toward the year 150, the fourth
Gospel did exist, and was attributed to John. Explicit texts from St.
Justin,[1] from Athenagorus,[2] from Tatian,[3] from Theophilus of
Antioch,[4] from Irenæus,[5] show that thenceforth this Gospel mixed
in every controversy, and served as corner-stone for the development
of the faith. Irenæus is explicit; now, Irenæus came from the school
of John, and between him and the apostle there was only Polycarp. The
part played by this Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system
of Valentinus,[6] in Montanism,[7] and in the quarrel of the
Quartodecimans,[8] is not less decisive. The school of John was the
most influential one during the second century; and it is only by
regarding the origin of the Gospel as coincident with the rise of the
school, that the existence of the latter can be understood at all. Let
us add that the first epistle attributed to St. John is certainly by
the same author as the fourth Gospel,[9] now, this epistle is
recognized as from John by Polycarp,[10] Papias,[11] and Irenæus.[12]
[Footnote 1: _Apol._, 32, 61; _Dial. cum Tryph._, 88.]
[Footnote 2: _Legatio pro Christ_, 10.]
[Footnote 3: _Adv. Græc._, 5, 7; Cf. Eusebius, _H.E._, iv. 29;
Theodoret, _Hæretic. Fabul._, i. 20.]
[Footnote 4: _Ad Autolycum_, ii. 22.]
[Footnote 5: _Adv. Hær._, II. xxii. 5, III. 1. Cf. Eus., _H.E._, v.
8.]
[Footnote 6: Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, I. iii. 6; III. xi. 7; St.
Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_ VI. ii. 29, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, III. xi. 9.]
[Footnote 8: Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, v. 24.]
[Footnote 9: John, i. 3, 5. The two writings present the most complete
identity of style, the same peculiarities, the same favorite
expressions.]
[Footnote 10: _Epist. ad Philipp._, 7.]
[Footnote 11: In Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, III. 39.]
[Footnote 12: _Adv. Hær._, III. xvi. 5, 8; Cf. Eusebius, _Hist.
Eccl._, v. 8.]
But it is, above all, the perusal of the work itself which is
calculated to give this impression. The author always speaks as an
eye-witness; he wishes to pass for the apostle John. If, then, this
work is not really by the apostle, we must admit a fraud of which the
author convicts himself. Now, although the ideas of the time
respecting literary honesty differed essentially from ours, there is
no example in the apostolic world of a falsehood of this kind.
Besides, not only does the author wish to pass for the apostle John,
but we see clearly that he writes in the interest of this apostle. On
each page he betrays the desire to fortify his authority, to show that
he has been the favorite of Jesus;[1] that in all the solemn
circumstances (at the Lord's supper, at Calvary, at the tomb) he held
the first place. His relations on the whole fraternal, although not
excluding a certain rivalry with Peter;[2] his hatred, on the
contrary, of Judas,[3] a hatred probably anterior to the betrayal,
seems to pierce through here and there. We are tempted to believe that
John, in his old age, having read the Gospel narratives, on the one
hand, remarked their various inaccuracies,[4] on the other, was hurt
at seeing that there was not accorded to him a sufficiently high place
in the history of Christ; that then he commenced to dictate a number
of things which he knew better than the rest, with the intention of
showing that in many instances, in which only Peter was spoken of, he
had figured with him and even before him.[5] Already during the life
of Jesus, these trifling sentiments of jealousy had been manifested
between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples. After the death
of James, his brother, John remained sole inheritor of the intimate
remembrances of which these two apostles, by the common consent, were
the depositaries. Hence his perpetual desire to recall that he is the
last surviving eye-witness,[6] and the pleasure which he takes in
relating circumstances which he alone could know. Hence, too, so many
minute details which seem like the commentaries of an annotator--"it
was the sixth hour;" "it was night;" "the servant's name was Malchus;"
"they had made a fire of coals, for it was cold;" "the coat was
without seam." Hence, lastly, the disorder of the compilation, the
irregularity of the narration, the disjointedness of the first
chapters, all so many inexplicable features on the supposition that
this Gospel was but a theological thesis, without historic value, and
which, on the contrary, are perfectly intelligible, if, in conformity
with tradition, we see in them the remembrances of an old man,
sometimes of remarkable freshness, sometimes having undergone strange
modifications.
[Footnote 1: John xiii. 23, xix. 26, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20.]
[Footnote 2: John xviii. 15-16, xx. 2-6, xxi. 15-16. Comp. i. 35, 40,
41.]
[Footnote 3: John vi. 65, xii. 6, xiii. 21, and following.]
[Footnote 4: The manner in which Aristion and _Presbyteros Joannes_
expressed themselves on the Gospel of Mark before Papias (Eusebius,
_H.E._, III. 39) implies, in effect, a friendly criticism, or, more
properly, a sort of excuse, indicating that John's disciples had
better information on the same subject.]
[Footnote 5: Compare John xviii. 15, and following, with Matthew xxvi.
58; John xx. 2 to 6, with Mark xvi. 7. See also John xiii. 24, 25.]
[Footnote 6: Chap. i. 14, xix. 35, xxi. 24, and following. Compare the
First Epistle of St. John, chap. i. 3, 5.]
A primary distinction, indeed, ought to be made in the Gospel of John.
On the one side, this Gospel presents us with a rough draft of the
life of Jesus, which differs considerably from that of the synoptics.
On the other, it puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses of which the
tone, the style, the treatment, and the doctrines have nothing in
common with the _Logia_ given us by the synoptics. In this second
respect, the difference is such that we must make choice in a decisive
manner. If Jesus spoke as Matthew represents, he could not have
spoken as John relates. Between these two authorities no critic has
ever hesitated, or can ever hesitate. Far removed from the simple,
disinterested, impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John
shows incessantly the preoccupation of the apologist--the mental
reservation of the sectarian, the desire to prove a thesis, and to
convince adversaries.[1] It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy,
badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus
founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us that Matthew
wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural,
ineffable truth, the charm beyond comparison of the discourses in the
synoptics, their profoundly Hebraistic idiom, the analogies which they
present with the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their
perfect harmony with the natural phenomena of Galilee--all these
characteristics, compared with the obscure Gnosticism, with the
distorted metaphysics, which fill the discourses of John, would speak
loudly enough. This by no means implies that there are not in the
discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits which truly come
from Jesus.[2] But the mystic tone of these discourses does not
correspond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as
we picture it according to the synoptics. A new spirit has breathed;
Gnosticism has already commenced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of
God is finished; the hope of the near advent of Christ is more
distant; we enter on the barrenness of metaphysics, into the darkness
of abstract dogma. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and, if the son
of Zebedee has truly traced these pages, he had certainly, in writing
them, quite forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth, and the charming
discourses which he had heard upon its shores.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, chaps. ix. and xi. Notice especially,
the effect which such passages as John xix. 35, xx. 31, xxi. 20-23,
24, 25, produce, when we recall the absence of all comments which
distinguishes the synoptics.]
[Footnote 2: For example, chap. iv. 1, and following, xv. 12, and
following. Many words remembered by John are found in the synoptics
(chap. xii. 16, xv. 20).]
One circumstance, moreover, which strongly proves that the discourses
given us by the fourth Gospel are not historical, but compositions
intended to cover with the authority of Jesus certain doctrines dear
to the compiler, is their perfect harmony with the intellectual state
of Asia Minor at the time when they were written. Asia Minor was then
the theatre of a strange movement of syncretical philosophy; all the
germs of Gnosticism existed there already. John appears to have drunk
deeply from these strange springs. It may be that, after the crisis of
the year 68 (the date of the Apocalypse) and of the year 70 (the
destruction of Jerusalem), the old apostle, with an ardent and plastic
spirit, disabused of the belief in a near appearance of the Son of Man
in the clouds, may have inclined toward the ideas that he found around
him, of which several agreed sufficiently well with certain Christian
doctrines. In attributing these new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a
very natural tendency. Our remembrances are transformed with our
circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have known changes as we
change.[1] Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could
not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the
truth.
[Footnote 1: It was thus that Napoleon became a liberal in the
remembrances of his companions in exile, when these, after their
return, found themselves thrown in the midst of the political society
of the time.]
If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had
little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than
by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes,
coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very
different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. In fact, certain
portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the
entire twenty-first chapter,[1] in which the author seems to wish to
render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to
the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from
the death of John himself, (ver. 21-23.) Many other places bear the
trace of erasures and corrections.[2] It is impossible at this
distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many
surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate
the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than
once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a
decisive test. Every one who sets himself to write the Life of Jesus
without any predetermined theory as to the relative value of the
Gospels, letting himself be guided solely by the sentiment of the
subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narration of
John to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus
especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of
the passion, unintelligible in the synoptics,[3] resume both
probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On
the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of Jesus with any
meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner
of incessantly preaching and demonstrating himself, this perpetual
argumentation, this stage-effect devoid of simplicity, these long
arguments after each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the
tone of which is so often false and unequal,[4] would not be tolerated
by a man of taste compared with the delightful sentences of the
synoptics. There are here evidently artificial portions,[5] which
represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render
us the conversations of Socrates. They are, so to speak, the
variations of a musician improvising on a given theme. The theme is
not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination
of the artist has given itself full scope. We are sensible of the
factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.[6] Let us add
that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of
which we speak. The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so
familiar to the Master,[7] occurs there but once.[8] On the other
hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth
Gospel, presents the most complete analogy with that of the Epistles
of St. John; we see that in writing the discourses, the author
followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat monotonous
movement of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is
introduced, a language of which the synoptics had not the least idea
("world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.). If Jesus had
ever spoken in this style, which has nothing of Hebrew, nothing
Jewish, nothing Talmudic in it, how, if I may thus express myself, is
it that but a single one of his hearers should have so well kept the
secret?
[Footnote 1: The verses, chap. xx. 30, 31, evidently form the original
conclusion.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. vi. 2, 22, vii. 22.]
[Footnote 3: For example, that which concerns the announcement of the
betrayal by Judas.]
[Footnote 4: See, for example, chaps. ii. 25, iii. 32, 33, and the
long disputes of chapters vii., viii., and ix.]
[Footnote 5: We feel often that the author seeks pretexts for
introducing certain discourses (chaps. iii., v., viii., xiii., and
following).]
[Footnote 6: For example, chap. xvii.]
[Footnote 7: Besides the synoptics, the Acts, the Epistles of St.
Paul, and the Apocalypse, confirm it.]
[Footnote 8: John iii. 3, 5.]
Literary history offers, besides, another example, which presents the
greatest analogy with the historic phenomenon we have just described,
and serves to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, never wrote, is
known to us by two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato, the first
corresponding to the synoptics in his clear, transparent, impersonal
compilation; the second recalling the author of the fourth Gospel, by
his vigorous individuality. In order to describe the Socratic
teaching, should we follow the "dialogues" of Plato, or the
"discourses" of Xenophon? Doubt, in this respect, is not possible;
every one chooses the "discourses," and not the "dialogues." Does
Plato, however, teach us nothing about Socrates? Would it be good
criticism, in writing the biography of the latter, to neglect the
"dialogues"? Who would venture to maintain this? The analogy,
moreover, is not complete, and the difference is in favor of the
fourth Gospel. The author of this Gospel is, in fact, the better
biographer; as if Plato, who, whilst attributing to his master
fictitious discourses, had known important matters about his life,
which Xenophon ignored entirely.
Without pronouncing upon the material question as to what hand has
written the fourth Gospel, and whilst inclined to believe that the
discourses, at least, are not from the son of Zebedee, we admit still,
that it is indeed "the Gospel according to John," in the same sense
that the first and second Gospels are the Gospels "according to
Matthew," and "according to Mark." The historical sketch of the fourth
Gospel is the Life of Jesus, such as it was known in the school of
John; it is the recital which Aristion and _Presbyteros Joannes_ made
to Papias, without telling him that it was written, or rather
attaching no importance to this point. I must add, that, in my
opinion, this school was better acquainted with the exterior
circumstances of the life of the Founder than the group whose
remembrances constituted the synoptics. It had, especially upon the
sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem, data which the others did not possess.
The disciples of this school treated Mark as an indifferent
biographer, and devised a system to explain his omissions.[1] Certain
passages of Luke, where there is, as it were, an echo of the
traditions of John,[2] prove also that these traditions were not
entirely unknown to the rest of the Christian family.
[Footnote 1: Papias, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 2: For example, the pardon of the adulteress; the knowledge
which Luke has of the family of Bethany; his type of the character of
Martha responding to the [Greek: diêchouei] of John (chap. xii. 2);
the incident of the woman who wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair;
an obscure notion of the travels of Jesus to Jerusalem; the idea that
in his passion he was seen by three witnesses; the opinion of the
author that some disciples were present at the crucifixion; the
knowledge which he has of the part played by Annas in aiding Caiaphas;
the appearance of the angel in the agony (comp. John xii. 28, 29).]
These explanations will suffice, I think, to show, in the course of my
narrative, the motives which have determined me to give the preference
to this or that of the four guides whom we have for the _Life of
Jesus_. On the whole, I admit as authentic the four canonical Gospels.
All, in my opinion, date from the first century, and the authors are,
generally speaking, those to whom they are attributed; but their
historic value is very diverse. Matthew evidently merits an unlimited
confidence as to the discourses; they are the _Logia_, the identical
notes taken from a clear and lively remembrance of the teachings of
Jesus. A kind of splendor at once mild and terrible--a divine
strength, if we may so speak, emphasizes these words, detaches them
from the context, and renders them easily distinguishable. The person
who imposes upon himself the task of making a continuous narrative
from the gospel history, possesses, in this respect, an excellent
touchstone. The real words of Jesus disclose themselves; as soon as we
touch them in this chaos of traditions of varied authenticity, we feel
them vibrate; they betray themselves spontaneously, and shine out of
the narrative with unequaled brilliancy.
The narrative portions grouped in the first Gospel around this
primitive nucleus have not the same authority. There are many not well
defined legends which have proceeded from the zeal of the second
Christian generation.[1] The Gospel of Mark is much firmer, more
precise, containing fewer subsequent additions. He is the one of the
three synoptics who has remained the most primitive, the most
original, the one to whom the fewest after-elements have been added.
In Mark, the facts are related with a clearness for which we seek in
vain amongst the other evangelists. He likes to report certain words
of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean.[2] He is full of minute observations,
coming doubtless from an eye-witness. There is nothing to prevent our
agreeing with Papias in regarding this eye-witness, who evidently had
followed Jesus, who had loved him and observed him very closely, and
who had preserved a lively image of him, as the apostle Peter himself.
[Footnote 1: Chaps. i., ii., especially. See also chap. xxvii. 3, 19,
51, 53, 60, xxviii. 2, and following, in comparing Mark.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. v. 41, vii. 34, xv. 24. Matthew only presents this
peculiarity once (chap. xxvii. 46).]
As to the work of Luke, its historical value is sensibly weaker. It is
a document which comes to us second-hand. The narrative is more
mature. The words of Jesus are there, more deliberate, more
sententious. Some sentences are distorted and exaggerated.[1] Writing
outside of Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem,[2]
the author indicates the places with less exactitude than the other
two synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he
represents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions.[3]
He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives
agree;[4] he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on
account of a more exalted idea of the divinity of Christ;[5] he
exaggerates the marvellous;[6] commits errors in chronology;[7] omits
Hebraistic comments;[8] quotes no word of Jesus in this language, and
gives to all the localities their Greek names. We feel we have to do
with a compiler--with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses,
but who labors at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree.
Luke had probably under his eyes the biographical collection of Mark,
and the _Logia_ of Matthew. But he treats them with much freedom;
sometimes he fuses two anecdotes or two parables in one;[9] sometimes
he divides one in order to make two.[10] He interprets the documents
according to his own idea; he has not the absolute impassibility of
Matthew and Mark. We might affirm certain things of his individual
tastes and tendencies; he is a very exact devotee;[11] he insists that
Jesus had performed all the Jewish rites,[12] he is a warm Ebionite
and democrat, that is to say, much opposed to property, and persuaded
that the triumph of the poor is approaching;[13] he likes especially
all the anecdotes showing prominently the conversion of sinners--the
exaltation of the humble;[14] he often modifies the ancient traditions
in order to give them this meaning;[15] he admits into his first pages
the legends about the infancy of Jesus, related with the long
amplifications, the spiritual songs, and the conventional proceedings
which form the essential features of the Apocryphal Gospels. Finally,
he has in the narrative of the last hours of Jesus some circumstances
full of tender feeling, and certain words of Jesus of delightful
beauty,[16] which are not found in more authentic accounts, and in
which we detect the presence of legend. Luke probably borrowed them
from a more recent collection, in which the principal aim was to
excite sentiments of piety.
[Footnote 1: Chap. xiv. 26. The rules of the apostolate (chap. x.)
have there a peculiar character of exaltation.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. xix. 41, 43, 44, xxi. 9, 20, xxiii. 29.]
[Footnote 3: Chap. ii. 37, xviii. 10, and following, xxiv. 53.]
[Footnote 4: For example, chap. iv. 16.]
[Footnote 5: Chap. iii. 23. He omits Matt. xxiv. 36.]
[Footnote 6: Chap. iv. 14, xxii. 43, 44.]
[Footnote 7: For example, in that which concerns Quirinius, Lysanias,
Theudas.]
[Footnote 8: Compare Luke i. 31 with Matt. i. 21.]
[Footnote 9: For example, chap. xix. 12-27.]
[Footnote 10: Thus, of the repast at Bethany he gives two narratives,
chap. vii. 36-48, and x. 38-42.]
[Footnote 11: Chap. xxiii. 56.]
[Footnote 12: Chap. ii. 21, 22, 39, 41, 42. This is an Ebionitish
feature. Cf. _Philosophumena_ VII. vi. 34.]
[Footnote 13: The parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Compare chap.
vi. 20, and following, 24, and following, xii. 13, and following, xvi.
entirely, xxii. 35. _Acts_ ii. 44, 45, v. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 14: The woman who anoints his feet, Zaccheus, the penitent
thief, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and the prodigal
son.]
[Footnote 15: For example, Mary of Bethany is represented by him as a
sinner who becomes converted.]
[Footnote 16: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the bloody sweat, the
meeting of the holy women, the penitent thief, &c. The speech to the
women of Jerusalem (xxiii. 28, 29) could scarcely have been conceived
except after the siege of the year 70.]
A great reserve was naturally enforced in presence of a document of
this nature. It would have been as uncritical to neglect it as to
employ it without discernment. Luke has had under his eyes originals
which we no longer possess. He is less an evangelist than a biographer
of Jesus, a "harmonizer," a corrector after the manner of Marcion and
Tatian. But he is a biographer of the first century, a divine artist,
who, independently of the information which he has drawn from more
ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a
happiness of treatment, with a uniform inspiration, and a distinctness
which the other two synoptics do not possess. In the perusal of his
Gospel there is the greatest charm; for to the incomparable beauty of
the foundation, common to them all, he adds a degree of skill in
composition which singularly augments the effect of the portrait,
without seriously injuring its truthfulness.
On the whole, we may say that the synoptical compilation has passed
through three stages: First, the original documentary state ([Greek:
logia] of Matthew, [Greek: lechthenta ê prachthenta] of Mark), primary
compilations which no longer exist; second, the state of simple
mixture, in which the original documents are amalgamated without any
effort at composition, without there appearing any personal bias of
the authors (the existing Gospels of Matthew and Mark); third, the
state of combination or of intentional and deliberate compiling, in
which we are sensible of an attempt to reconcile the different
versions (Gospel of Luke). The Gospel of John, as we have said, forms
a composition of another orders and is entirely distinct.
It will be remarked that I have made no use of the Apocryphal Gospels.
These compositions ought not in any manner to be put upon the same
footing as the canonical Gospels. They are insipid and puerile
amplifications, having the canonical Gospels for their basis, and
adding nothing thereto of any value. On the other hand, I have been
very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by the Fathers of the
Church, of the ancient Gospels which formerly existed parallel with
the canonical Gospels, and which are now lost--such as the Gospel
according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the
Gospels styled those of Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two are
principally important because they were written in Aramean, like the
_Logia_ of Matthew, and appear to constitute one version of the Gospel
of this apostle, and because they were the Gospel of the
_Ebionim_--that is, of those small Christian sects of Batanea who
preserved the use of Syro-Chaldean, and who appear in some respects to
have followed the course marked out by Jesus. But it must be confessed
that in the state in which they have come to us, these Gospels are
inferior, as critical authorities, to the compilation of Matthew's
Gospel which we now possess.
It will now be seen, I think, what kind of historical value I
attribute to the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the
manner of Suetonius, nor fictitious legends in the style of
Philostratus; they are legendary biographies. I should willingly
compare them with the Legends of the Saints, the Lives of Plotinus,
Proclus, Isidore, and other writings of the same kind, in which
historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are
combined in various degrees. Inexactitude, which is one of the
features of all popular compositions, is there particularly felt. Let
us suppose that ten or twelve years ago three or four old soldiers of
the Empire had each undertaken to write the life of Napoleon from
memory. It is clear that their narratives would contain numerous
errors, and great discordances. One of them would place Wagram before
Marengo: another would write without hesitation that Napoleon drove
the government of Robespierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit
expeditions of the highest importance. But one thing would certainly
result with a great degree of truthfulness from these simple recitals,
and that is the character of the hero, the impression which he made
around him. In this sense such popular narratives would be worth more
than a formal and official history. We may say as much of the Gospels.
Solely attentive to bring out strongly the excellency of the Master,
his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists display entire
indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus.
The contradictions respecting time, place, and persons were regarded
as insignificant; for the higher the degree of inspiration attributed
to the words of Jesus, the less was granted to the compilers
themselves. The latter regarded themselves as simple scribes, and
cared but for one thing--to omit nothing they knew.[1]
[Footnote 1: See the passage from Papias, before cited.]
Unquestionably certain preconceived ideas associated themselves with
such recollections. Several narratives, especially in Luke, are
invented in order to bring out more vividly certain traits of the
character of Jesus. This character itself constantly underwent
alteration. Jesus would be a phenomenon unparalleled in history if,
with the part which he played, he had not early become idealized. The
legends respecting Alexander were invented before the generation of
his companions in arms became extinct; those respecting St. Francis
d'Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid metamorphosis operated in the
same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of
Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the peculiarities of an ideal
legend. Death adds perfection to the most perfect man; it frees him
from all defect in the eyes of those who have loved him. With the wish
to paint the Master, there was also the desire to explain him. Many
anecdotes were conceived to prove that in him the prophecies regarded
as Messianic had had their accomplishment. But this procedure, of
which we must not deny the importance, would not suffice to explain
everything. No Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies
exactly declaring what the Messiah should accomplish. Many Messianic
allusions quoted by the evangelists are so subtle, so indirect, that
one cannot believe they all responded to a generally admitted
doctrine. Sometimes they reasoned thus: "The Messiah ought to do such
a thing; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore Jesus has done such a
thing." At other times, by an inverse process, it was said: "Such a
thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such
a thing was to happen to the Messiah."[1] Too simple explanations are
always false when analyzing those profound creations of popular
sentiment which baffle all systems by their fullness and infinite
variety. It is scarcely necessary to say that, with such documents, in
order to present only what is indisputable, we must limit ourselves to
general features. In almost all ancient histories, even in those which
are much less legendary than these, details open up innumerable
doubts. When we have two accounts of the same fact, it is extremely
rare that the two accounts agree. Is not this a reason for
anticipating many difficulties when we have but one? We may say that
amongst the anecdotes, the discourses, the celebrated sayings which
have been given us by the historians, there is not one strictly
authentic. Were there stenographers to fix these fleeting words? Was
there an analyst always present to note the gestures, the manners, the
sentiments of the actors? Let any one endeavor to get at the truth as
to the way in which such or such contemporary fact has happened; he
will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by different
eye-witnesses differ essentially. Must we, therefore, reject all the
coloring of the narratives, and limit ourselves to the bare facts
only? That would be to suppress history. Certainly, I think that if we
except certain short and almost mnemonic axioms, none of the
discourses reported by Matthew are textual; even our stenographic
reports are scarcely so. I freely admit that the admirable account of
the Passion contains many trifling inaccuracies. Would it, however, be
writing the history of Jesus to omit those sermons which give to us in
such a vivid manner the character of his discourses, and to limit
ourselves to saying, with Josephus and Tacitus, "that he was put to
death by the order of Pilate at the instigation of the priests"? That
would be, in my opinion, a kind of inexactitude worse than that to
which we are exposed in admitting the details supplied by the texts.
These details are not true to the letter, but they are true with a
superior truth, they are more true than the naked truth, in the sense
that they are truth rendered expressive and articulate--truth
idealized.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, John xix. 23-24.]
I beg those who think that I have placed an exaggerated confidence in
narratives in great part legendary, to take note of the observation I
have just made. To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it
were confined to that which is materially certain? Even partly
erroneous traditions contain a portion of truth which history cannot
neglect. No one has blamed M. Sprenger for having, in writing the life
of Mahomet, made much of the _hadith_ or oral traditions concerning
the prophet, and for often having attributed to his hero words which
are only known through this source. Yet the traditions respecting
Mahomet are not superior in historical value to the discourses and
narratives which compose the Gospels. They were written between the
year 50 and the year 140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish
schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth
of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of
attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel the maxims ascribed to them
by the _Mishnah_ and the _Gemara_, although these great compilations
were written many hundreds of years after the time of the doctors in
question.
As to those who believe, on the contrary, that history should consist
of a simple reproduction of the documents which have come down to us,
I beg to observe that such a course is not allowable. The four
principal documents are in flagrant contradiction one with another.
Josephus rectifies them sometimes. It is necessary to make a
selection. To assert that an event cannot take place in two ways at
once, or in an impossible manner, is not to impose an _à priori_
philosophy upon history. The historian ought not to conclude that a
fact is false because he possesses several versions of it, or because
credulity has mixed with them much that is fabulous. He ought in such
a case to be very cautious--to examine the texts, and to proceed
carefully by induction. There is one class of narratives especially,
to which this principle must necessarily be applied. Such are
narratives of supernatural events. To seek to explain these, or to
reduce them to legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of
theory; it is to make the observation of facts our groundwork. None of
the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under
scientific conditions. Observation, which has never once been
falsified, teaches us that miracles never happen but in times and
countries in which they are believed, and before persons disposed to
believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the presence of men capable
of testing its miraculous character. Neither common people nor men of
the world are able to do this. It requires great precautions and long
habits of scientific research. In our days have we not seen almost all
respectable people dupes of the grossest frauds or of puerile
illusions? Marvellous facts, attested by the whole population of small
towns, have, thanks to a severer scrutiny, been exploded.[1] If it is
proved that no contemporary miracle will bear inquiry, is it not
probable that the miracles of the past, which have all been performed
in popular gatherings, would equally present their share of illusion,
if it were possible to criticise them in detail?
[Footnote 1: See the _Gazette des Tribunaux_, 10th Sept. and 11th
Nov., 1851, 28th May, 1857.]
It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the
name of universal experience, that we banish miracle from history. We
do not say, "Miracles are impossible." We say, "Up to this time a
miracle has never been proved." If to-morrow a thaumaturgus present
himself with credentials sufficiently important to be discussed, and
announce himself as able, say, to raise the dead, what would be done?
A commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons
accustomed to historical criticism, would be named. This commission
would choose a corpse, would assure itself that the death was real,
would select the room in which the experiment should be made, would
arrange the whole system of precautions, so as to leave no chance of
doubt. If, under such conditions, the resurrection were effected, a
probability almost equal to certainty would be established. As,
however, it ought to be possible always to repeat an experiment--to do
over again what has been done once; and as, in the order of miracle,
there can be no question of ease or difficulty, the thaumaturgus would
be invited to reproduce his marvellous act under other circumstances,
upon other corpses, in another place. If the miracle succeeded each
time, two things would be proved: First, that supernatural events
happen in the world; second, that the power of producing them belongs,
or is delegated to, certain persons. But who does not see that no
miracle ever took place under these conditions? but that always
hitherto the thaumaturgus has chosen the subject of the experiment,
chosen the spot, chosen the public; that, besides, the people
themselves--most commonly in consequence of the invincible want to see
something divine in great events and great men--create the marvellous
legends afterward? Until a new order of things prevails, we shall
maintain then this principle of historical criticism--that a
supernatural account cannot be admitted as such, that it always
implies credulity or imposture, that the duty of the historian is to
explain it, and seek to ascertain what share of truth or of error it
may conceal.
Such are the rules which have been followed in the composition of
this work. To the perusal of documentary evidences I have been able to
add an important source of information--the sight of the places where
the events occurred. The scientific mission, having for its object the
exploration of ancient Phoenicia, which I directed in 1860 and
1861,[1] led me to reside on the frontiers of Galilee and to travel
there frequently. I have traversed, in all directions, the country of
the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria; scarcely
any important locality of the history of Jesus has escaped me. All
this history, which at a distance seems to float in the clouds of an
unreal world, thus took a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The
striking agreement of the texts with the places, the marvellous
harmony of the Gospel ideal with the country which served it as a
framework, were like a revelation to me. I had before my eyes a fifth
Gospel, torn, but still legible, and henceforward, through the
recitals of Matthew and Mark, in place of an abstract being, whose
existence might have been doubted, I saw living and moving an
admirable human figure. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir,
in Lebanon, to take a little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the
image which had appeared to me, and from them resulted this history.
When a cruel bereavement hastened my departure, I had but a few pages
to write. In this manner the book has been composed almost entirely
near the very places where Jesus was born, and where his character was
developed. Since my return, I have labored unceasingly to verify and
check in detail the rough sketch which I had written in haste in a
Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me.
[Footnote 1: The work which will contain the results of this mission
is in the press.]
Many will regret, perhaps, the biographical form which my work has
thus taken. When I first conceived the idea of a history of the origin
of Christianity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of
doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a
place. Jesus would scarcely have been named; I should have endeavored
to show how the ideas which have grown under his name took root and
covered the world. But I have learned since that history is not a
simple game of abstractions; that men are more than doctrines. It was
not a certain theory on justification and redemption which brought
about the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism,
Judaism might have been able to have combined under every form; the
doctrines of the Resurrection and of the Word might have developed
themselves during ages without producing this grand, unique, and
fruitful fact, called Christianity. This fact is the work of Jesus, of
St. Paul, of St. John. To write the history of Jesus, of St. Paul, of
St. John is to write the history of the origin of Christianity. The
anterior movements belong to our subject only in so far as they serve
to throw light upon these extraordinary men, who naturally could not
have existed without connection with that which preceded them.
In such an effort to make the great souls of the past live again, some
share of divination and conjecture must be permitted. A great life is
an organic whole which cannot be rendered by the simple agglomeration
of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all,
moulding them into perfect unity. The method of art in a similar
subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would know how
to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is, that
they shall form a living system of which all the parts are mutually
dependent and related.
In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth
is, to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that
they shall constitute a logical, probable narrative, harmonious
throughout. The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic
products, of the melting of minute distinctions, ought to be consulted
at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the
material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify, but the very
soul of history; what must be sought is not the petty certainty about
trifles, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the
truthfulness of the coloring. Each trait which departs from the rules
of classic narration ought to warn us to be careful; for the fact
which has to be related has been living, natural, and harmonious. If
we do not succeed in rendering it such by the recital, it is surely
because we have not succeeded in seeing it aright. Suppose that, in
restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced a
dry, jarring, artificial whole; what must we conclude? Simply that the
texts want an appreciative interpretation; that we must study them
quietly until they dovetail and furnish a whole in which all the parts
are happily blended. Should we then be sure of having a perfect
reproduction of the Greek statue? No; but at least we should not have
the caricature of it; we should have the general spirit of the
work--one of the forms in which it could have existed.
This idea of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our
guide in the general arrangement of the narrative. The perusal of the
Gospels would suffice to prove that the compilers, although having a
very true plan of the _Life of Jesus_ in their minds, have not been
guided by very exact chronological data; Papias, besides, expressly
teaches this.[1] The expressions: "At this time ... after that ...
then ... and it came to pass ...," etc., are the simple transitions
intended to connect different narratives with each other. To leave all
the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which
tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as
the history of a celebrated man would be written, by giving pell-mell
the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his
maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner,
fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has yielded
its secret to an ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which
the fragments were composed has been discovered so as to leave little
room for doubt. Such a rearrangement is much more difficult in the
case of the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and
less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Meanwhile, the
attempt to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to
be taxed with gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of
hypothesis in supposing that a founder of a new religion commences by
attaching himself to the moral aphorisms already in circulation in his
time, and to the practices which are in vogue; that, when riper, and
in full possession of his idea, he delights in a kind of calm and
poetical eloquence, remote from all controversy, sweet and free as
pure feeling; that he warms by degrees, becomes animated by
opposition, and finishes by polemics and strong invectives. Such are
the periods which may plainly be distinguished in the Koran. The order
adopted with an extremely fine tact by the synoptics, supposes an
analogous progress. If Matthew be attentively read, we shall find in
the distribution of the discourses, a gradation perfectly analogous to
that which we have just indicated. The reserved turns of expression of
which we make use in unfolding the progress of the ideas of Jesus will
also be observed. The reader may, if he likes, see in the divisions
adopted in doing this, only the indispensable breaks for the
methodical exposition of a profound, complicated thought.
[Footnote 1: _Loc. cit._]
If the love of a subject can help one to understand it, it will also,
I hope, be recognized that I have not been wanting in this condition.
To write the history of a religion, it is necessary, firstly, to have
believed it (otherwise we should not be able to understand how it has
charmed and satisfied the human conscience); in the second place, to
believe it no longer in an absolute manner, for absolute faith is
incompatible with sincere history. But love is possible without faith.
To abstain from attaching one's self to any of the forms which
captivate the adoration of men, is not to deprive ourselves of the
enjoyment of that which is good and beautiful in them. No transitory
appearance exhausts the Divinity; God was revealed before Jesus--God
will reveal Himself after him. Profoundly unequal, and so much the
more Divine, as they are grander and more spontaneous, the
manifestations of God hidden in the depths of the human conscience are
all of the same order. Jesus cannot belong solely to those who call
themselves his disciples. He is the common honor of all who share a
common humanity. His glory does not consist in being relegated out of
history; we render him a truer worship in showing that all history is
incomprehensible without him.
LIFE OF JESUS
CHAPTER I.
PLACE OF JESUS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
The great event of the History of the world is the revolution by which
the noblest portions of humanity have passed from the ancient
religions, comprised under the vague name of Paganism, to a religion
founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the
Son of God. It has taken nearly a thousand years to accomplish this
conversion. The new religion had itself taken at least three hundred
years in its formation. But the origin of the revolution in question
with which we have to do is a fact which took place under the reigns
of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a superior
personage, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was
able to inspire, became the object and fixed the starting-point of the
future faith of humanity.
As soon as man became distinguished from the animal, he became
religious; that is to say, he saw in Nature something beyond the
phenomena, and for himself something beyond death. This sentiment,
during some thousands of years, became corrupted in the strangest
manner. In many races it did not pass beyond the belief in sorcerers,
under the gross form in which we still find it in certain parts of
Oceania. Among some, the religious sentiment degenerated into the
shameful scenes of butchery which form the character of the ancient
religion of Mexico. Amongst others, especially in Africa, it became
pure Fetichism, that is, the adoration of a material object, to which
were attributed supernatural powers. Like the instinct of love, which
at times elevates the most vulgar man above himself, yet sometimes
becomes perverted and ferocious, so this divine faculty of religion
during a long period seems only to be a cancer which must be
extirpated from the human race, a cause of errors and crimes which the
wise ought to endeavor to suppress.
The brilliant civilizations which were developed from a very remote
antiquity in China, in Babylonia, and in Egypt, caused a certain
progress to be made in religion. China arrived very early at a sort of
mediocre good sense, which prevented great extravagances. She neither
knew the advantages nor the abuses of the religious spirit. At all
events, she had not in this way any influence in directing the great
current of humanity. The religions of Babylonia and Syria were never
freed from a substratum of strange sensuality; these religions
remained, until their extinction in the fourth and fifth centuries of
our era, schools of immorality, in which at intervals glimpses of the
divine world were obtained by a sort of poetic intuition. Egypt,
notwithstanding an apparent kind of Fetichism, had very early
metaphysical dogmas and a lofty symbolism. But doubtless these
interpretations of a refined theology were not primitive. Man has
never, in the possession of a clear idea, amused himself by clothing
it in symbols: it is oftener after long reflections, and from the
impossibility felt by the human mind of resigning itself to the
absurd, that we seek ideas under the ancient mystic images whose
meaning is lost. Moreover, it is not from Egypt that the faith of
humanity has come. The elements which, in the religion of a Christian,
passing through a thousand transformations, came from Egypt and Syria,
are exterior forms of little consequence, or dross of which the most
purified worships always retain some portion. The grand defect of the
religions of which we speak was their essentially superstitious
character. They only threw into the world millions of amulets and
charms. No great moral thought could proceed from races oppressed by a
secular despotism, and accustomed to institutions which precluded the
exercise of individual liberty.
The poetry of the soul--faith, liberty, virtue, devotion--made their
appearance in the world with the two great races which, in one sense,
have made humanity, viz., the Indo-European and the Semitic races. The
first religious intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially
naturalistic. But it was a profound and moral naturalism, a loving
embrace of Nature by man, a delicious poetry, full of the sentiment of
the Infinite--the principle, in fine, of all that which the Germanic
and Celtic genius, of that which a Shakespeare and a Goethe should
express in later times. It was neither theology nor moral
philosophy--it was a state of melancholy, it was tenderness, it was
imagination; it was, more than all, earnestness, the essential
condition of morals and religion. The faith of humanity, however,
could not come from thence, because these ancient forms of worships
had great difficulty in detaching themselves from Polytheism, and
could not attain to a very clear symbol. Brahminism has only survived
to the present day by virtue of the astonishing faculty of
conservation which India seems to possess. Buddhism failed in all its
approaches toward the West. Druidism remained a form exclusively
national, and without universal capacity. The Greek attempts at
reform, Orpheism, the Mysteries, did not suffice to give a solid
aliment to the soul. Persia alone succeeded in making a dogmatic
religion, almost Monotheistic, and skilfully organized; but it is very
possible that this organization itself was but an imitation, or
borrowed. At all events, Persia has not converted the world; she
herself, on the contrary, was converted when she saw the flag of the
Divine unity as proclaimed by Mohammedanism appear on her frontiers.
It is the Semitic race[1] which has the glory of having made the
religion of humanity. Far beyond the confines of history, resting
under his tent, free from the taint of a corrupted world, the Bedouin
patriarch prepared the faith of mankind. A strong antipathy against
the voluptuous worships of Syria, a grand simplicity of ritual, the
complete absence of temples, and the idol reduced to insignificant
_theraphim_, constituted his superiority. Among all the tribes of the
nomadic Semites, that of the Beni-Israel was already chosen for
immense destinies. Ancient relations with Egypt, whence perhaps
resulted some purely material ingredients, did but augment their
repulsion to idolatry. A "Law" or _Thora_, very anciently written on
tables of stone, and which they attributed to their great liberator
Moses, had become the code of Monotheism, and contained, as compared
with the institutions of Egypt and Chaldea, powerful germs of social
equality and morality. A chest or portable ark, having staples on each
side to admit of bearing poles, constituted all their religious
_matériel_; there were collected the sacred objects of the nation, its
relics, its souvenirs, and, lastly, the "book,"[2] the journal of the
tribe, always open, but which was written in with great discretion.
The family charged with bearing the ark and watching over the portable
archives, being near the book and having the control of it, very soon
became important. From hence, however, the institution which was to
control the future did not come. The Hebrew priest did not differ much
from the other priests of antiquity. The character which essentially
distinguishes Israel among theocratic peoples is, that its priesthood
has always been subordinated to individual inspiration. Besides its
priests, each wandering tribe had its _nabi_ or prophet, a sort of
living oracle who was consulted for the solution of obscure questions
supposed to require a high degree of clairvoyance. The _nabis_ of
Israel, organized in groups or schools, had great influence. Defenders
of the ancient democratic spirit, enemies of the rich, opposed to all
political organization, and to whatsoever might draw Israel into the
paths of other nations, they were the true authors of the religious
preeminence of the Jewish people. Very early they announced unlimited
hopes, and when the people, in part the victims of their impolitic
counsels, had been crushed by the Assyrian power, they proclaimed that
a kingdom without bounds was reserved for them, that one day Jerusalem
would be the capital of the whole world, and the human race become
Jews. Jerusalem and its temples appeared to them as a city placed on
the summit of a mountain, toward which all people should turn, as an
oracle whence the universal law should proceed, as the centre of an
ideal kingdom, in which the human race, set at rest by Israel, should
find again the joys of Eden.[3]
[Footnote 1: I remind the reader that this word means here simply the
people who speak or have spoken one of the languages called Semitic.
Such a designation is entirely defective; but it is one of those
words, like "Gothic architecture," "Arabian numerals," which we must
preserve to be understood, even after we have demonstrated the error
that they imply.]
[Footnote 2: I Sam. x. 25.]
[Footnote 3: Isa. ii. 1-4, and especially chaps. xl., and following,
lx., and following; Micah iv. 1, and following. It must be recollected
that the second part of the book of Isaiah, beginning at chap. xl., is
not by Isaiah.]
Mystical utterances already made themselves heard, tending to exalt
the martyrdom and celebrate the power of the "Man of Sorrows."
Respecting one of those sublime sufferers, who, like Jeremiah, stained
the streets of Jerusalem with their blood, one of the inspired wrote a
song upon the sufferings and triumph of the "servant of God," in which
all the prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed
concentrated.[1] "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness. He
is despised and rejected of men; and we hid, as it were, our faces
from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath
borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of
our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was
oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. And he made his grave with the
wicked. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall
see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in his hand."
[Footnote 1: Isa. lii. 13, and following, and liii. entirely.]
Important modifications were made at the same time in the _Thora_. New
texts, pretending to represent the true law of Moses, such as
Deuteronomy, were produced, and inaugurated in reality a very
different spirit from that of the old nomads. A marked fanaticism was
the dominant feature of this spirit. Furious believers unceasingly
instigated violence against all who wandered from the worship of
Jehovah--they succeeded in establishing a code of blood, making death
the penalty for religious faults. Piety brings, almost always,
singular contradictions of vehemence and mildness. This zeal, unknown
to the coarser simplicity of the time of the Judges, inspired tones of
moving prophecy and tender unction, which the world had never heard
till then. A strong tendency toward social questions already made
itself felt; Utopias, dreams of a perfect society, took a place in the
code. The Pentateuch, a mixture of patriarchal morality and ardent
devotion, primitive intuitions and pious subtleties, like those which
filled the souls of Hezekiah, of Josiah, and of Jeremiah, was thus
fixed in the form in which we now see it, and became for ages the
absolute rule of the national mind.
This great book once created, the history of the Jewish people
unfolded itself with an irresistible force. The great empires which
followed each other in Western Asia, in destroying its hope of a
terrestrial kingdom, threw it into religious dreams, which it
cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the
national dynasty or political independence, it accepted all
governments which permitted it to practise freely its worship and
follow its usages. Israel will henceforward have no other guidance
than that of its religious enthusiasts, no other enemies than those of
the Divine unity, no other country than its Law.
And this Law, it must be remarked, was entirely social and moral. It
was the work of men penetrated with a high ideal of the present life,
and believing that they had found the best means of realizing it. The
conviction of all was, that the _Thora_, well observed, could not fail
to give perfect felicity. This _Thora_ has nothing in common with the
Greek or Roman "Laws," which, occupying themselves with scarcely
anything but abstract right, entered little into questions of private
happiness and morality. We feel beforehand that the results which will
proceed from it will be of a social, and not a political order, that
the work at which this people labors is a kingdom of God, not a civil
republic; a universal institution, not a nationality or a country.
Notwithstanding numerous failures, Israel admirably sustained this
vocation. A series of pious men, Ezra, Nehemiah, Onias, the Maccabees,
consumed with zeal for the Law, succeeded each other in the defense of
the ancient institutions. The idea that Israel was a holy people, a
tribe chosen by God and bound to Him by covenant, took deeper and
firmer root. An immense expectation filled their souls. All
Indo-European antiquity had placed paradise in the beginning; all its
poets had wept a vanished golden age. Israel placed the age of gold in
the future. The perennial poesy of religious souls, the Psalms,
blossomed from this exalted piety, with their divine and melancholy
harmony. Israel became truly and specially the people of God, while
around it the pagan religions were more and more reduced, in Persia
and Babylonia, to an official charlatanism, in Egypt and Syria to a
gross idolatry, and in the Greek and Roman world to mere parade. That
which the Christian martyrs did in the first centuries of our era,
that which the victims of persecuting orthodoxy have done, even in the
bosom of Christianity, up to our time, the Jews did during the two
centuries which preceded the Christian era. They were a living protest
against superstition and religious materialism. An extraordinary
movement of ideas, ending in the most opposite results, made of them,
at this epoch, the most striking and original people in the world.
Their dispersion along all the coast of the Mediterranean, and the use
of the Greek language, which they adopted when out of Palestine,
prepared the way for a propagandism, of which ancient societies,
divided into small nationalities, had never offered a single example.
Up to the time of the Maccabees, Judaism, in spite of its persistence
in announcing that it would one day be the religion of the human race,
had had the characteristic of all the other worships of antiquity, it
was a worship of the family and the tribe. The Israelite thought,
indeed, that his worship was the best, and spoke with contempt of
strange gods; but he believed also that the religion of the true God
was made for himself alone. Only when a man entered into the Jewish
family did he embrace the worship of Jehovah.[1] No Israelite cared to
convert the stranger to a worship which was the patrimony of the sons
of Abraham. The development of the pietistic spirit, after Ezra and
Nehemiah, led to a much firmer and more logical conception. Judaism
became the true religion in a more absolute manner; to all who wished,
the right of entering it was given;[2] soon it became a work of piety
to bring into it the greatest number possible.[3] Doubtless the
refined sentiment which elevated John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul
above the petty ideas of race, did not yet exist; for, by a strange
contradiction, these converts were little respected and were treated
with disdain.[4] But the idea of a sovereign religion, the idea that
there was something in the world superior to country, to blood, to
laws--the idea which makes apostles and martyrs--was founded. Profound
pity for the pagans, however brilliant might be their worldly fortune,
was henceforth the feeling of every Jew.[5] By a cycle of legends
destined to furnish models of immovable firmness, such as the
histories of Daniel and his companions, the mother of the Maccabees
and her seven sons,[6] the romance of the race-course of
Alexandria[7]--the guides of the people sought above all to inculcate
the idea, that virtue consists in a fanatical attachment to fixed
religious institutions.
[Footnote 1: Ruth i. 16.]
[Footnote 2: Esther ix. 27.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiii. 15; Josephus, _Vita_, 23; _B.J._, II. xvii.
10, VII. iii. 3; _Ant._, XX. ii. 4; Horat., Sat. I., iv., 143; Juv.,
xiv. 96, and following; Tacitus, _Ann._, II. 85; _Hist._, V. 5; Dion
Cassius, xxxvii. 17.]
[Footnote 4: Mishnah, _Shebiit_, X. 9; Talmud of Babylon, _Niddah_,
fol. 13 _b_; _Jebamoth_, 47 _b_, _Kiddushim_, 70 _b_; Midrash, _Jalkut
Ruth_, fol. 163 _d_.]
[Footnote 5: Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, _Cod. pseud.,
V.T._, ii., 147, and following.]
[Footnote 6: II. Book of Maccabees, ch. vii. and the _De Maccabæis_,
attributed to Josephus. Cf. Epistle to the Hebrews xi. 33, and
following.]
[Footnote 7: III. Book (Apocr.) of Maccabees; Rufin, Suppl. ad Jos.,
_Contra Apionem_, ii. 5.]
The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes made this idea a passion,
almost a frenzy. It was something very analogous to that which
happened under Nero, two hundred and thirty years later. Rage and
despair threw the believers into the world of visions and dreams. The
first apocalypse, "The Book of Daniel," appeared. It was like a
revival of prophecy, but under a very different form from the ancient
one, and with a much larger idea of the destinies of the world. The
Book of Daniel gave, in a manner, the last expression to the Messianic
hopes. The Messiah was no longer a king, after the manner of David and
Solomon, a theocratic and Mosaic Cyrus; he was a "Son of man"
appearing in the clouds[1]--a supernatural being, invested with human
form, charged to rule the world, and to preside over the golden age.
Perhaps the _Sosiosh_ of Persia, the great prophet who was to come,
charged with preparing the reign of Ormuzd, gave some features to this
new ideal.[2] The unknown author of the Book of Daniel had, in any
case, a decisive influence on the religious event which was about to
transform the world. He supplied the _mise-en-scène_, and the
technical terms of the new belief in the Messiah; and we might apply
to him what Jesus said of John the Baptist: Before him, the prophets;
after him, the kingdom of God.
[Footnote 1: Chap. vii. 13, and following.]
[Footnote 2: _Vendidad_, chap. xix. 18, 19; _Minokhired_, a passage
published in the "_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft_," chap. i. 263; _Boundehesch_, chap. xxxi. The want of
certain chronology for the Zend and Pehlvis texts leaves much doubt
hovering over the relations between the Jewish and Persian beliefs.]
It must not, however, be supposed that this profoundly religious and
soul-stirring movement had particular dogmas for its primary impulse,
as was the case in all the conflicts which have disturbed the bosom of
Christianity. The Jew of this epoch was as little theological as
possible. He did not speculate upon the essence of the Divinity; the
beliefs about angels, about the destinies of man, about the Divine
personality, of which the first germs might already be perceived, were
quite optional--they were meditations, to which each one surrendered
himself according to the turn of his mind, but of which a great number
of men had never heard. They were the most orthodox even, who did not
share in these particular imaginations, and who adhered to the
simplicity of the Mosaic law. No dogmatic power analogous to that
which orthodox Christianity has given to the Church then existed. It
was only at the beginning of the third century, when Christianity had
fallen into the hands of reasoning races, mad with dialectics and
metaphysics, that that fever for definitions commenced which made the
history of the Church but the history of one immense controversy.
There were disputes also among the Jews--excited schools brought
opposite solutions to almost all the questions which were agitated;
but in these contests, of which the Talmud has preserved the principal
details, there is not a single word of speculative theology. To
observe and maintain the law, because the law was just, and because,
when well observed, it gave happiness--such was Judaism. No _credo_,
no theoretical symbol. One of the disciples of the boldest Arabian
philosophy, Moses Maimonides, was able to become the oracle of the
synagogue, because he was well versed in the canonical law.
The reigns of the last Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the
excitement grow still stronger. They were filled by an uninterrupted
series of religious movements. In the degree that power became
secularized, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish
people lived less and less for the earth, and became more and more
absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating in their
midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge
of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds
abreast of their age were, however, better informed. The tender and
clear-sighted Virgil seems to answer, as by a secret echo, to the
second Isaiah. The birth of a child throws him into dreams of a
universal palingenesis.[1] These dreams were of every-day occurrence,
and shaped into a kind of literature which was designated Sibylline.
The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination; the
great era of peace on which it entered, and that impression of
melancholy sensibility which the mind experiences after long periods
of revolution, gave birth on all sides to unlimited hopes.
[Footnote 1: Egl. iv. The _Cumæum carmen_ (v. 4) was a sort of
Sibylline apocalypse, borrowed from the philosophy of history familiar
to the East. See Servius on this verse, and _Carmina Sibyllina_, iii.
97-817; cf. Tac., _Hist._, v. 13.]
In Judea expectation was at its height. Holy persons--among whom may
be named the aged Simeon, who, legend tells us, held Jesus in his
arms; Anna, daughter of Phanuel, regarded as a prophetess[1]--passed
their life about the temple, fasting, and praying, that it might
please God not to take them from the world without having seen the
fulfillment of the hopes of Israel. They felt a powerful presentiment;
they were sensible of the approach of something unknown.
[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 25, and following.]
This confused mixture of clear views and dreams, this alternation of
deceptions and hopes, these ceaseless aspirations, driven back by an
odious reality, found at last their interpretation in the incomparable
man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of
God, and that with justice, since he has advanced religion as no other
has done, or probably ever will be able to do.
CHAPTER II.
INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS--HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
Jesus was born at Nazareth,[1] a small town of Galilee, which before
his time had no celebrity.[2] All his life he was designated by the
name of "the Nazarene,"[3] and it is only by a rather embarrassed and
round-about way,[4] that, in the legends respecting him, he is made
to be born at Bethlehem. We shall see later[5] the motive for this
supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence of the Messianic
character attributed to Jesus.[6] The precise date of his birth is
unknown. It took place under the reign of Augustus, about the Roman
year 750, probably some years before the year 1 of that era which all
civilized people date from the day on which he was born.[7]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 54, and following; Mark vi. 1, and following;
John i. 45-46.]
[Footnote 2: It is neither named in the writings of the Old Testament,
nor in Josephus, nor in the Talmud.]
[Footnote 3: Mark i. 24; Luke xviii. 37; John xix. 19; _Acts_ ii. 22,
iii. 6. Hence the name of _Nazarenes_ for a long time applied to
Christians, and which still designates them in all Mohammedan
countries.]
[Footnote 4: The census effected by Quirinus, to which legend
attributes the journey from Bethlehem, is at least ten years later
than the year in which, according to Luke and Matthew, Jesus was born.
The two evangelists in effect make Jesus to be born under the reign of
Herod (Matt. ii. 1, 19, 22; Luke i. 5). Now, the census of Quirinus
did not take place until after the deposition of Archelaus, _i.e._,
ten years after the death of Herod, the 37th year from the era of
Actium (Josephus, _Ant._, XVII. xiii. 5, XVIII. i. 1, ii. 1). The
inscription by which it was formerly pretended to establish that
Quirinus had levied two censuses is recognized as false (see Orelli,
_Inscr. Lat._, No. 623, and the supplement of Henzen in this number;
Borghesi, _Fastes Consulaires_ [yet unpublished], in the year 742).
The census in any case would only be applied to the parts reduced to
Roman provinces, and not to the tetrarchies. The texts by which it is
sought to prove that some of the operations for statistics and tribute
commanded by Augustus ought to extend to the dominion of the Herods,
either do not mean what they have been made to say, or are from
Christian authors who have borrowed this statement from the Gospel of
Luke. That which proves, besides, that the journey of the family of
Jesus to Bethlehem is not historical, is the motive attributed to it.
Jesus was not of the family of David (see Chap. XV.), and if he had
been, we should still not imagine that his parents should have been
forced, for an operation purely registrative and financial, to come to
enrol themselves in the place whence their ancestors had proceeded a
thousand years before. In imposing such an obligation, the Roman
authority would have sanctioned pretensions threatening her safety.]
[Footnote 5: Chap. XIV.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. ii. 1, and following; Luke ii. 1, and following.
The omission of this narrative in Mark, and the two parallel passages,
Matt. xiii. 54, and Mark vi. 1, where Nazareth figures as the
"country" of Jesus, prove that such a legend was absent from the
primitive text which has furnished the rough draft of the present
Gospels of Matthew and Mark. It was to meet oft-repeated objections
that there were added to the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew
reservations, the contradiction of which with the rest of the text was
not so flagrant, that it was felt necessary to correct the passages
which had at first been written from quite another point of view.
Luke, on the contrary (chap. iv. 16), writing more carefully, has
employed, in order to be consistent, a more softened expression. As to
John, he knows nothing of the journey to Bethlehem; for him, Jesus is
merely "of Nazareth" or "Galilean," in two circumstances in which it
would have been of the highest importance to recall his birth at
Bethlehem (chap. i. 45, 46, vi. 41, 42).]
[Footnote 7: It is known that the calculation which serves as basis of
the common era was made in the sixth century by _Dionysius the Less_.
This calculation implies certain purely hypothetical data.]
The name of _Jesus_, which was given him, is an alteration from
_Joshua_. It was a very common name; but afterward mysteries, and an
allusion to his character of Saviour, were naturally sought for in
it.[1] Perhaps he, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect.
It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been
caused by a name given to a child without premeditation. Ardent
natures never bring themselves to see aught of chance in what concerns
them. God has regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of
the supreme will in the most insignificant circumstances.
[Footnote 1: Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 31.]
The population of Galilee was very mixed, as the very name of the
country[1] indicated. This province counted amongst its inhabitants,
in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews (Phoenicians, Syrians,
Arabs, and even Greeks).[2] The conversions to Judaism were not rare
in these mixed countries. It is therefore impossible to raise here any
question of race, and to seek to ascertain what blood flowed in the
veins of him who has contributed most to efface the distinction of
blood in humanity.
[Footnote 1: _Gelil haggoyim_, "Circle of the Gentiles."]
[Footnote 2: Strabo, XVI. ii. 35; Jos., _Vita_, 12.]
He proceeded from the ranks of the people.[1] His father, Joseph, and
his mother, Mary, were people in humble circumstances, artisans living
by their labor,[2] in the state so common in the East, which is
neither ease nor poverty. The extreme simplicity of life in such
countries, by dispensing with the need of comfort, renders the
privileges of wealth almost useless, and makes every one voluntarily
poor. On the other hand, the total want of taste for art, and for that
which contributes to the elegance of material life, gives a naked
aspect to the house of him who otherwise wants for nothing. Apart from
something sordid and repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with
it, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much
differ from what it is to-day.[3] We see the streets where he played
when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways which separate
the dwellings. The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor
shops, lighted by the door, serving at once for shop, kitchen, and
bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one
or two clay pots, and a painted chest.
[Footnote 1: We shall explain later (Chap. XIV.) the origin of the
genealogies intended to connect him with the race of David. The
Ebionites suppressed them (Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, XXX. 14).]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3; John vi. 42.]
[Footnote 3: The rough aspect of the ruins which cover Palestine
proves that the towns which were not constructed in the Roman manner
were very badly built. As to the form of the houses, it is, in Syria,
so simple and so imperiously regulated by the climate, that it can
scarcely ever have changed.]
The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was
rather numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters,[1] of whom he seems
to have been the eldest.[2] All have remained obscure, for it appears
that the four personages who were named as his brothers, and among
whom one, at least--James--had acquired great importance in the
earliest years of the development of Christianity, were his
cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary,[3] who
married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to
designate the same person[4]), and was the mother of several sons who
played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These
cousins-german who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers
opposed him,[5] took the title of "brothers of the Lord."[6] The real
brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his
death.[7] Even then they do not appear to have equaled in importance
their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose
character seems to have had more originality. Their names were so
little known, that when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of
Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural
relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented
themselves to him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 46, and following, xiii. 55, and following;
Mark iii. 31, and following, vi. 3; Luke viii. 19, and following; John
ii. 12, vii. 3, 5, 10; _Acts_ i. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 25.]
[Footnote 3: That these two sisters should bear the same name is a
singular fact. There is probably some error arising from the habit of
giving the name of Mary indiscriminately to Galilean women.]
[Footnote 4: They are not etymologically identical. [Greek: Alphaios]
is the transcription of the Syro-Chaldean name Halphaï; [Greek:
Klôpas] or [Greek: Kleopas] is a shortened form of [Greek:
Kleopatros]. But there might have been an artificial substitution of
one for the other, just as Joseph was called "Hegissippus," the
Eliakim "Alcimus," &c.]
[Footnote 5: John vii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 6: In fact, the four personages who are named (Matt. xiii.
55, Mark vi. 3) as sons of Mary, mother of Jesus, Jacob, Joseph or
Joses, Simon, and Jude, are found again a little later as sons of Mary
and Cleophas. (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; _Gal._ i. 19; _Epist.
James_ i. 1; _Epist. Jude_ 1; Euseb., _Chron._ ad ann. R. DCCCX.;
_Hist. Eccl._, iii. 11, 32; _Constit. Apost._, vii. 46.) The
hypothesis we offer alone removes the immense difficulty which is
found in supposing two sisters having each three or four sons bearing
the same names, and in admitting that James and Simon, the first two
bishops of Jerusalem, designated as brothers of the Lord, may have
been real brothers of Jesus, who had begun by being hostile to him and
then were converted. The evangelist, hearing these four sons of
Cleophas called "brothers of the Lord," has placed by mistake their
names in the passage _Matt._ xiii. 5 = _Mark_ vi. 3, instead of the
names of the real brothers, which have always remained obscure. In
this matter we may explain how the character of the personages called
"brothers of the Lord," of James, for instance, is so different from
that of the real brothers of Jesus as they are seen delineated in John
vii. 2, and following. The expression "brother of the Lord" evidently
constituted, in the primitive Church, a kind of order similar to that
of the apostles. See especially 1 _Cor._ ix. 5.]
[Footnote 7: _Acts_ i. 14.]
His sisters were married at Nazareth,[1] and he spent the first years
of his youth there. Nazareth was a small town in a hollow, opening
broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain
of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four
thousand, and it can never have varied much.[2] The cold there is
sharp in winter, and the climate very healthy. The town, like all the
small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without
style, and would exhibit that harsh and poor aspect which villages in
Semitic countries now present. The houses, it seems, did not differ
much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance,
which still cover the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which,
surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are still very agreeable. The
environs, moreover, are charming; and no place in the world was so
well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. Even in our times
Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in
Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden
which oppresses it in this unequaled desolation. The people are
amiable and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr,
at the end of the sixth century, drew an enchanting picture of the
fertility of the environs, which he compared to paradise.[3] Some
valleys on the western side fully justify his description. The
fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little town were
concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a
muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the
evening--that beauty which was remarked even in the sixth century, and
which was looked upon as a gift of the Virgin Mary[4]--is still most
strikingly preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its languid grace.
No doubt Mary was there almost every day, and took her place with her
jar on her shoulder in the file of her companions who have remained
unknown. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, generally
disdainful to Christians, were here full of affability. Even now
religious animosity is weaker at Nazareth than elsewhere.
[Footnote 1: Mark vi. 3.]
[Footnote 2: According to Josephus (_B.J._, III. iii. 2), the smallest
town of Galilee had more than five thousand inhabitants. This is
probably an exaggeration.]
[Footnote 3: _Itiner._, § 5.]
[Footnote 4: Ant. Martyr, _Itiner._, § 5.]
The horizon from the town is limited. But if we ascend a little the
plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which overlooks the highest
houses, the prospect is splendid. On the west are seen the fine
outlines of Carmel, terminated by an abrupt point which seems to
plunge into the sea. Before us are spread out the double summit which
towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with
their holy places of the patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the
small, picturesque group to which are attached the graceful or
terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its
beautiful rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a
depression between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the
valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peræa, which form a
continuous line from the eastern side. On the north, the mountains of
Safed, in inclining toward the sea conceal St. Jean d'Acre, but permit
the Gulf of Khaïfa to be distinguished. Such was the horizon of Jesus.
This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his
world. Even in his later life he departed but little beyond the
familial limits of his childhood. For yonder, northward, a glimpse is
caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Cæsarea-Philippi, his
furthest point of advance into the Gentile world; and here southward,
the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the
dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a scorching wind of
desolation and death.
If the world, remaining Christian, but attaining to a better idea of
the esteem in which the origin of its religion should be held, should
ever wish to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal
sanctuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is
upon this height of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There,
at the birthplace of Christianity, and in the centre of the actions of
its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all
Christians may worship. There, also, on this spot where sleep Joseph,
the carpenter, and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes who never passed
beyond the horizon of their valley, would be a better station than any
in the world beside for the philosopher to contemplate the course of
human affairs, to console himself for their uncertainty, and to
reassure himself as to the Divine end which the world pursues through
countless falterings, and in spite of the universal vanity.
CHAPTER III.
EDUCATION OF JESUS.
This aspect of Nature, at once smiling and grand, was the whole
education of Jesus. He learned to read and to write,[1] doubtless,
according to the Eastern method, which consisted in putting in the
hands of the child a book, which he repeated in cadence with his
little comrades, until he knew it by heart.[2] It is doubtful,
however, if he understood the Hebrew writings in their original
tongue. His biographers make him quote them according to the
translations in the Aramean tongue;[3] his principles of exegesis, as
far as we can judge of them by those of his disciples, much resembled
those which were then in vogue, and which form the spirit of the
_Targums_ and the _Midrashim_.[4]
[Footnote 1: John viii. 6.]
[Footnote 2: _Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs_, Levi. 6.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34.]
[Footnote 4: Jewish translations and commentaries of the Talmudic
epoch.]
The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the _hazzan_, or reader
in the synagogues.[1] Jesus frequented little the higher schools of
the scribes or _sopherim_ (Nazareth had perhaps none of them), and he
had none of those titles which confer, in the eyes of the vulgar, the
privileges of knowledge.[2] It would, nevertheless, be a great error
to imagine that Jesus was what we call ignorant. Scholastic education
among us draws a profound distinction, in respect of personal worth,
between those who have received and those who have been deprived of
it. It was not so in the East, nor, in general, in the good old
times. The state of ignorance in which, among us, owing to our
isolated and entirely individual life, those remain who have not
passed through the schools, was unknown in those societies where moral
culture, and especially the general spirit of the age, was transmitted
by the perpetual intercourse of man with man. The Arab, who has never
had a teacher, is often, nevertheless, a very superior man; for the
tent is a kind of school always open, where, from the contact of
well-educated men, there is produced a great intellectual and even
literary movement. The refinement of manners and the acuteness of the
intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call
education. It is the men from the schools, on the contrary, who are
considered badly trained and pedantic. In this social state,
ignorance, which, among us, condemns a man to an inferior rank, is the
condition of great things and of great originality.
[Footnote 1: Mishnah, _Shabbath_, i. 3.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 54, and following; John vii. 15.]
It is not probable that Jesus knew Greek. This language was very
little spread in Judea beyond the classes who participated in the
government, and the towns inhabited by pagans, like Cæsarea.[1] The
real mother tongue of Jesus was the Syrian dialect mixed with Hebrew,
which was then spoken in Palestine.[2] Still less probably had he any
knowledge of Greek culture. This culture was proscribed by the doctors
of Palestine, who included in the same malediction "he who rears
swine, and he who teaches his son Greek science."[3] At all events it
had not penetrated into little towns like Nazareth. Notwithstanding
the anathema of the doctors, some Jews, it is true, had already
embraced the Hellenic culture. Without speaking of the Jewish school
of Egypt, in which the attempts to amalgamate Hellenism and Judaism
had been in operation nearly two hundred years, a Jew--Nicholas of
Damascus--had become, even at this time, one of the most distinguished
men, one of the best informed, and one of the most respected of his
age. Josephus was destined soon to furnish another example of a Jew
completely Grecianized. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus
declares that he himself was an exception among his contemporaries;[4]
and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a degree
from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in
the Talmud or in Jewish tradition. Certain it is that Greek was very
little studied at Jerusalem, that Greek studies were considered as
dangerous, and even servile, that they were regarded, at the best, as
a mere womanly accomplishment.[5] The study of the Law was the only
one accounted liberal and worthy of a thoughtful man.[6] Questioned as
to the time when it would be proper to teach children "Greek wisdom,"
a learned rabbi had answered, "At the time when it is neither day nor
night; since it is written of the Law, Thou shalt study it day and
night."[7]
[Footnote 1: Mishnah, _Shekalim_, iii. 2; Talmud of Jerusalem,
_Megilla_, halaca xi.; _Sota_, vii. 1; Talmud of Babylon, _Baba Kama_,
83 _a_; _Megilla_, 8 _b_, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matthew xxvii. 46; Mark iii. 17, v. 41, vii. 34, xiv. 36,
xv. 34. The expression [Greek: ê patrios phônê] in the writers of the
time, always designates the Semitic dialect, which was spoken in
Palestine (II. Macc. vii. 21, 27, xii. 37; _Acts_ xxi. 37, 40, xxii.
2, xxvi. 14; Josephus, _Ant._, XVIII. vi. 10, xx. sub fin.; _B.J._,
prooem I; V. vi. 3, V. ix. 2, VI. ii. 1: _Against Appian_, I. 9; _De
Macc._, 12, 16). We shall show, later, that some of the documents
which served as the basis for the synoptic Gospels were written in
this Semitic dialect. It was the same with many of the Apocrypha (IV.
Book of Macc. xvi. ad calcem, &c.). In fine, the sects issuing
directly from the first Galilean movement (Nazarenes, _Ebionim_, &c.),
which continued a long time in Batanea and Hauran, spoke a Semitic
dialect (Eusebius, _De Situ et Nomin. Loc. Hebr._, at the word [Greek:
Chôba]; Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxix. 7, 9, xxx. 3; St. Jerome, _In
Matt._, xii. 13; _Dial. adv. Pelag._, iii. 2).]
[Footnote 3: Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, xi. 1; Talmud of Babylon, _Baba
Kama_, 82 _b_ and 83 _a_; _Sota_, 49 _a_ and _b_; _Menachoth_, 64 _b_;
comp. II. Macc. iv. 10, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._ XX. xi. 2.]
[Footnote 5: Talmud of Jerusalem, _Peah_, i. 1.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, _loc. cit._; Orig., _Contra Celsum_, ii.
34.]
[Footnote 7: Talmud of Jerusalem, _Peah_, i. 1; Talmud of Babylon,
_Menachoth_, 99 _b_.]
Neither directly nor indirectly, then, did any element of Greek
culture reach Jesus. He knew nothing beyond Judaism; his mind
preserved that free innocence which an extended and varied culture
always weakens. In the very bosom of Judaism he remained a stranger to
many efforts often parallel to his own. On the one hand, the
asceticism of the Essenes or the Therapeutæ;[1] on the other, the fine
efforts of religious philosophy put forth by the Jewish school of
Alexandria, and of which Philo, his contemporary, was the ingenious
interpreter, were unknown to him. The frequent resemblances which we
find between him and Philo, those excellent maxims about the love of
God, charity, rest in God,[2] which are like an echo between the
Gospel and the writings of the illustrious Alexandrian thinker,
proceed from the common tendencies which the wants of the time
inspired in all elevated minds.
[Footnote 1: The _Therapeutæ_ of Philo are a branch of the Essenes.
Their name appears to be but a Greek translation of that of the
_Essenes_ ([Greek: Essaioi], _asaya_, "doctors"). Cf. Philo, _De Vita
Contempl._, init.]
[Footnote 2: See especially the treatises _Quis Rerum Divinarum Hæres
Sit_ and _De Philanthropia_ of Philo.]
Happily for him, he was also ignorant of the strange scholasticism
which was taught at Jerusalem, and which was soon to constitute the
Talmud. If some Pharisees had already brought it into Galilee, he did
not associate with them, and when, later, he encountered this silly
casuistry, it only inspired him with disgust. We may suppose, however,
that the principles of Hillel were not unknown to him. Hillel, fifty
years before him, had given utterance to aphorisms very analogous to
his own. By his poverty, so meekly endured, by the sweetness of his
character, by his opposition to priests and hypocrites, Hillel was the
true master of Jesus,[1] if indeed it may be permitted to speak of a
master in connection with so high an originality as his.
[Footnote 1: _Pirké Aboth_, chap. i. and ii.; Talm. of Jerus.,
_Pesachim_, vi. 1; Talm. of Bab., _Pesachim_, 66 _a_; _Shabbath_, 30
_b_ and 31 _a_; _Joma_, 35 _b_.]
The perusal of the books of the Old Testament made much impression
upon him. The canon of the holy books was composed of two principal
parts--the Law, that is to say, the Pentateuch, and the Prophets, such
as we now possess them. An extensive allegorical exegesis was applied
to all these books; and it was sought to draw from them something that
was not in them, but which responded to the aspirations of the age.
The Law, which represented not the ancient laws of the country, but
Utopias, the factitious laws and pious frauds of the time of the
pietistic kings, had become, since the nation had ceased to govern
itself, an inexhaustible theme of subtle interpretations. As to the
Prophets and the Psalms, the popular persuasion was that almost all
the somewhat mysterious traits that were in these books had reference
to the Messiah, and it was sought to find there the type of him who
should realize the hopes of the nation. Jesus participated in the
taste which every one had for these allegorical interpretations. But
the true poetry of the Bible, which escaped the puerile exegetists of
Jerusalem, was fully revealed to his grand genius. The Law does not
appear to have had much charm for him; he thought that he could do
something better. But the religious lyrics of the Psalms were in
marvellous accordance with his poetic soul; they were, all his life,
his food and sustenance. The prophets--Isaiah in particular, and his
successor in the record of the time of the captivity,--with their
brilliant dreams of the future, their impetuous eloquence, and their
invectives mingled with enchanting pictures, were his true teachers.
He read also, no doubt, many apocryphal works--_i.e._, writings
somewhat modern, the authors of which, for the sake of an authority
only granted to very ancient writings, had clothed themselves with the
names of prophets and patriarchs. One of these books especially struck
him, namely, the Book of Daniel. This book, composed by an
enthusiastic Jew of the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, under the name of
an ancient sage,[1] was the _résumé_ of the spirit of those later
times. Its author, a true creator of the philosophy of history, had
for the first time dared to see in the march of the world and the
succession of empires, only a purpose subordinate to the destinies of
the Jewish people. Jesus was early penetrated by these high hopes.
Perhaps, also, he had read the books of Enoch, then revered equally
with the holy books,[2] and the other writings of the same class,
which kept up so much excitement in the popular imagination. The
advent of the Messiah, with his glories and his terrors--the nations
falling down one after another, the cataclysm of heaven and
earth--were the familiar food of his imagination; and, as these
revolutions were reputed near, and a great number of persons sought to
calculate the time when they should happen, the supernatural state of
things into which such visions transport us, appeared to him from the
first perfectly natural and simple.
[Footnote 1: The legend of Daniel existed as early as the seventh
century B.C. (Ezekiel xiv. 14 and following, xxviii. 3). It was for
the necessities of the legend that he was made to live at the time of
the Babylonian captivity.]
[Footnote 2: _Epist. Jude_, 14 and following; 2 Peter ii. 4, 11;
_Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs_, Simeon, 5; Levi, 14, 16; Judah,
18; Zab., 3; Dan, 5; Naphtali, 4. The "Book of Enoch" still forms an
integral part of the Ethiopian Bible. Such as we know it from the
Ethiopian version, it is composed of pieces of different dates, of
which the most ancient are from the year 130 to 150 B.C. Some of these
pieces have an analogy with the discourses of Jesus. Compare chaps.
xcvi.-xcix. with Luke vi. 24, and following.]
That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is apparent
from each feature of his most authentic discourses. The earth appeared
to him still divided into kingdoms warring with one another; he seemed
to ignore the "Roman peace," and the new state of society which its
age inaugurated. He had no precise idea of the Roman power; the name
of "Cæsar" alone reached him. He saw building, in Galilee or its
environs, Tiberias, Julias, Diocæsarea, Cæsarea, gorgeous works of the
Herods, who sought, by these magnificent structures, to prove their
admiration for Roman civilization, and their devotion toward the
members of the family of Augustus, structures whose names, by a
caprice of fate, now serve, though strangely altered, to designate
miserable hamlets of Bedouins. He also probably saw Sebaste, a work of
Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would lead to the belief
that it had been carried there ready made, like a machine which had
only to be put up in its place. This ostentatious piece of
architecture arrived in Judea by cargoes; these hundreds of columns,
all of the same diameter, the ornament of some insipid "_Rue de
Rivoli_" these were what he called "the kingdoms of the world and all
their glory." But this luxury of power, this administrative and
official art, displeased him. What he loved were his Galilean
villages, confused mixtures of huts, of nests and holes cut in the
rocks, of wells, of tombs, of fig-trees, and of olives. He always
clung close to Nature. The courts of kings appeared to him as places
where men wear fine clothes. The charming impossibilities with which
his parables abound, when he brings kings and the mighty ones on the
stage,[1] prove that he never conceived of aristocratic society but as
a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his
simplicity.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, Matt. xxii. 2, and following.]
Still less was he acquainted with the new idea, created by Grecian
science, which was the basis of all philosophy, and which modern
science has greatly confirmed, to wit, the exclusion of capricious
gods, to whom the simple belief of ancient ages attributed the
government of the universe. Almost a century before him, Lucretius had
expressed, in an admirable manner, the unchangeableness of the general
system of Nature. The negation of miracle--the idea that everything in
the world happens by laws in which the personal intervention of
superior beings has no share--was universally admitted in the great
schools of all the countries which had accepted Grecian science.
Perhaps even Babylon and Persia were not strangers to it. Jesus knew
nothing of this progress. Although born at a time when the principle
of positive science was already proclaimed, he lived entirely in the
supernatural. Never, perhaps, had the Jews been more possessed with
the thirst for the marvellous. Philo, who lived in a great
intellectual centre, and who had received a very complete education,
possessed only a chimerical and inferior knowledge of science.
Jesus, on this point, differed in no respect from his companions. He
believed in the devil, whom he regarded as a kind of evil genius,[1]
and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were
produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him. The
marvellous was not the exceptional for him; it was his normal state.
The notion of the supernatural, with its impossibilities, is
coincident with the birth of experimental science. The man who is
strange to all ideas of physical laws, who believes that by praying he
can change the path of the clouds, arrest disease, and even death,
finds nothing extraordinary in miracle, inasmuch as the entire course
of things is to him the result of the free will of the Divinity. This
intellectual state was constantly that of Jesus. But in his great soul
such a belief produced effects quite opposed to those produced on the
vulgar. Among the latter, the belief in the special action of God led
to a foolish credulity, and the deceptions of charlatans. With him it
led to a profound idea of the familiar relations of man with God, and
an exaggerated belief in the power of man--beautiful errors, which
were the secret of his power; for if they were the means of one day
showing his deficiencies in the eyes of the physicist and the chemist,
they gave him a power over his own age of which no individual had been
possessed before his time, or has been since.
[Footnote 1: Matt. vi. 13.]
His distinctive character very early revealed itself. Legend delights
to show him even from his infancy in revolt against paternal
authority, and departing from the common way to fulfill his
vocation.[1] It is certain, at least, that he cared little for the
relations of kinship. His family do not seem to have loved him,[2]
and at times he seems to have been hard toward them.[3] Jesus, like
all men exclusively preoccupied by an idea, came to think little of
the ties of blood. The bond of thought is the only one that natures of
this kind recognize. "Behold my mother and my brethren," said he, in
extending his hand toward his disciples; "he who does the will of my
Father, he is my brother and my sister." The simple people did not
understand the matter thus, and one day a woman passing near him cried
out, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which gave thee
suck!" But he said, "Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word
of God, and keep it."[4] Soon, in his bold revolt against nature, he
went still further, and we shall see him trampling under foot
everything that is human, blood, love, and country, and only keeping
soul and heart for the idea which presented itself to him as the
absolute form of goodness and truth.
[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 42 and following. The Apocryphal Gospels are
full of similar histories carried to the grotesque.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 57; Mark vi. 4; John vii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 48; Mark iii. 33; Luke viii. 21; John ii. 4;
Gospel according to the Hebrews, in St. Jerome, _Dial. adv. Pelag._,
iii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xi. 27, and following.]
CHAPTER IV.
THE ORDER OF THOUGHT WHICH SURROUNDED THE DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.
As the cooled earth no longer permits us to understand the phenomena
of primitive creation, because the fire which penetrated it is
extinct, so deliberate explanations have always appeared somewhat
insufficient when applying our timid methods of induction to the
revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of
humanity. Jesus lived at one of those times when the game of public
life is freely played, and when the stake of human activity is
increased a hundredfold. Every great part, then, entails death; for
such movements suppose liberty and an absence of preventive measures,
which could not exist without a terrible alternative. In these days,
man risks little and gains little. In heroic periods of human
activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or
at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such,
form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold;
characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal
types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no
historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed,
to develop those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and
which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril.
If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the
greatest philosopher were the man best fitted to tell his fellows
what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection
that those great moral and dogmatic truths called religions would
proceed. But it is not so. If we except Cakya-Mouni, the great
religious founders have not been metaphysicians. Buddhism itself,
whose origin is in pure thought, has conquered one-half of Asia, by
motives wholly political and moral. As to the Semitic religions, they
are as little philosophical as possible. Moses and Mahomet were not
men of speculation; they were men of action. It was in proposing
action to their fellow-countrymen, and to their contemporaries, that
they governed humanity. Jesus, in like manner, was not a theologian,
or a philosopher, having a more or less well-composed system. In order
to be a disciple of Jesus, it was not necessary to sign any formulary,
or to pronounce any confession of faith; one thing only was
necessary--to be attached to him, to love him. He never disputed about
God, for he felt Him directly in himself. The rock of metaphysical
subtleties, against which Christianity broke from the third century,
was in nowise created by the Founder. Jesus had neither dogma nor
system, but a fixed personal resolution, which, exceeding in intensity
every other created will, directs to this hour the destinies of
humanity.
The Jewish people had the advantage, from the captivity of Babylon up
to the Middle Ages, of being in a state of the greatest tension. This
is why the interpreters of the spirit of the nation during this long
period seemed to write under the action of an intense fever, which
placed them constantly either above or below reason, rarely in its
middle path. Never did man seize the problem of the future and of his
destiny with a more desperate courage, more determined to go to
extremes. Not separating the lot of humanity from that of their
little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought for a
general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined
within itself, and solely attentive to petty quarrels, has had
admirable historians; but before the Roman epoch, it would be in vain
to seek in her a general system of the philosophy of history,
embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a kind of
prophetic sense which renders the Semite at times marvellously apt to
see the great lines of the future, has made history enter into
religion. Perhaps he owes a little of this spirit to Persia. Persia,
from an ancient period, conceived the history of the world as a series
of evolutions, over each of which a prophet presided. Each prophet had
his _hazar_, or reign of a thousand years (chiliasm), and from these
successive ages, analogous to the Avatär of India, is composed the
course of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end of the
time when the cycle of chiliasms shall be exhausted, the complete
paradise will come. Men then will live happy; the earth will be as one
plain; there will be only one language, one law, and one government
for all. But this advent will be preceded by terrible calamities.
Dahak (the Satan of Persia) will break his chains and fall upon the
world. Two prophets will come to console mankind, and to prepare the
great advent.[1] These ideas ran through the world, and penetrated
even to Rome, where they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems, of which
the fundamental ideas were the division of the history of humanity
into periods, the succession of the gods corresponding to these
periods--a complete renovation of the world, and the final advent of a
golden age.[2] The book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and certain
parts of the Sibylline books,[3] are the Jewish expression of the same
theory. These thoughts were certainly far from being shared by all;
they were only embraced at first by a few persons of lively
imagination, who were inclined toward strange doctrines. The dry and
narrow author of the book of Esther never thought of the rest of the
world except to despise it, and to wish it evil.[4] The disabused
epicurean who wrote Ecclesiastes, thought so little of the future,
that he considered it even useless to labor for his children; in the
eyes of this egotistical celibate, the highest stroke of wisdom was to
use his fortune for his own enjoyment.[5] But the great achievements
of a people are generally wrought by the minority. Notwithstanding all
their enormous defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow,
subtle, and sophistical, the Jewish people are the authors of the
finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm which history records.
Opposition always makes the glory of a country. The greatest men of a
nation are those whom it puts to death. Socrates was the glory of the
Athenians, who would not suffer him to live amongst them. Spinoza was
the greatest Jew of modern times, and the synagogue expelled him with
ignominy. Jesus was the glory of the people of Israel, who crucified
him.
[Footnote 1: _Yaçna_, xiii. 24: Theopompus, in Plut., _De Iside et
Osiride_, sec. 47; _Minokhired_, a passage published in the
_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, i., p.
263.]
[Footnote 2: Virg., Ecl. iv.; Servius, at v. 4 of this Eclogue;
Nigidius, quoted by Servius, at v. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Book iii., 97-817.]
[Footnote 4: Esther vi. 13, vii. 10, viii. 7, 11-17, ix. 1-22; and in
the apocryphal parts, ix. 10, 11, xiv. 13, and following, xvi. 20,
24.]
[Footnote 5: Eccl. i. 11, ii. 16, 18-24, iii. 19-22, iv. 8, 15, 16, v.
17, 18, vi. 3, 6, viii. 15, ix. 9, 10.]
A gigantic dream haunted for centuries the Jewish people, constantly
renewing its youth in its decrepitude. A stranger to the theory of
individual recompense, which Greece diffused under the name of the
immortality of the soul, Judea concentrated all its power of love and
desire upon the national future. She thought she possessed divine
promises of a boundless future; and as the bitter reality, from the
ninth century before our era, gave more and more the dominion of the
world to physical force, and brutally crushed these aspirations, she
took refuge in the union of the most impossible ideas, and attempted
the strangest gyrations. Before the captivity, when all the earthly
hopes of the nation had become weakened by the separation of the
northern tribes, they dreamt of the restoration of the house of David,
the reconciliation of the two divisions of the people, and the triumph
of theocracy and the worship of Jehovah over idolatry. At the epoch of
the captivity, a poet, full of harmony, saw the splendor of a future
Jerusalem, of which the peoples and the distant isles should be
tributaries, under colors so charming, that one might say a glimpse of
the visions of Jesus had reached him at a distance of six
centuries.[1]
[Footnote 1: Isaiah lx. &c.]
The victory of Cyrus seemed at one time to realize all that had been
hoped. The grave disciples of the Avesta and the adorers of Jehovah
believed themselves brothers. Persia had begun by banishing the
multiple _dévas_, and by transforming them into demons (_divs_), to
draw from the old Arian imaginations (essentially naturalistic) a
species of Monotheism. The prophetic tone of many of the teachings of
Iran had much analogy with certain compositions of Hosea and Isaiah.
Israel reposed under the Achemenidae,[1] and under Xerxes (Ahasuerus)
made itself feared by the Iranians themselves. But the triumphal and
often cruel entry of Greek and Roman civilization into Asia, threw it
back upon its dreams. More than ever it invoked the Messiah as judge
and avenger of the people. A complete renovation, a revolution which
should shake the world to its very foundation, was necessary in order
to satisfy the enormous thirst of vengeance excited in it by the sense
of its superiority, and by the sight of its humiliation.[2]
[Footnote 1: The whole book of Esther breathes a great attachment to
this dynasty.]
[Footnote 2: Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, _Cod. pseud.,
V.T._, ii. p. 147, and following.]
If Israel had possessed the spiritualistic doctrine, which divides man
in two parts--the body and the soul--and finds it quite natural that
while the body decays, the soul should survive, this paroxysm of rage
and of energetic protestation would have had no existence. But such a
doctrine, proceeding from the Grecian philosophy, was not in the
traditions of the Jewish mind. The ancient Hebrew writings contain no
trace of future rewards or punishments. Whilst the idea of the
solidarity of the tribe existed, it was natural that a strict
retribution according to individual merits should not be thought of.
So much the worse for the pious man who happened to live in an epoch
of impiety; he suffered, like the rest, the public misfortunes
consequent on the general irreligion. This doctrine, bequeathed by the
sages of the patriarchal era, constantly produced unsustainable
contradictions. Already at the time of Job it was much shaken; the old
men of Teman who professed it were considered behind the age, and the
young Elihu, who intervened in order to combat them, dared to utter as
his first word this essentially revolutionary sentiment, "Great men
are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment."[1]
With the complications which had taken place in the world since the
time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still
more intolerable.[2] Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law,
and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus.
Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of meaning,
would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the
unfaithfulness of the people.[3] What! these victims who died for
their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons,
will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the
corruption of the grave?[4] Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might
possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage,
like Antigonus of Soco,[5] might indeed maintain that we must not
practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we
must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be
contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle of
philosophical immortality, imagined the righteous living in the memory
of God, glorious forever in the remembrance of men, and judging the
wicked who had persecuted them.[6] "They live in the sight of God; ...
they are known of God."[7] That was their reward. Others, especially
the Pharisees, had recourse to the doctrine of the resurrection.[8]
The righteous will live again in order to participate in the Messianic
reign. They will live again in the flesh, and for a world of which
they will be the kings and the judges; they will be present at the
triumph of their ideas and at the humiliation of their enemies.
[Footnote 1: Job xxxiii. 9.]
[Footnote 2: It is nevertheless remarkable that Jesus, son of Sirach,
adheres to it strictly (chap. xvii. 26-28, xxii. 10, 11, xxx. 4, and
following, xli. 1, 2, xliv. 9). The author of the book of _Wisdom_
holds quite opposite opinions (iv. 1, Greek text).]
[Footnote 3: Esth. xiv. 6, 7 (apocr.); the apocryphal Epistle of
Baruch (Fabricius, _Cod. pseud., V.T._, ii. p. 147, and following).]
[Footnote 4: 2 _Macc._ vii.]
[Footnote 5: _Pirké Aboth._, i. 3.]
[Footnote 6: _Wisdom_, ii.-vi.; _De Rationis Imperio_, attributed to
Josephus, 8, 13, 16, 18. Still we must remark that the author of this
last treatise estimates the motive of personal recompense in a
secondary degree. The primary impulse of martyrs is the pure love of
the Law, the advantage which their death will procure to the people,
and the glory which will attach to their name. Comp. _Wisdom_, iv. 1,
and following; _Eccl._ xliv., and following; Jos., _B.J._, II. viii.
10, III. viii. 5.]
[Footnote 7: _Wisdom_, iv. 1; _De Rat. Imp._, 16, 18.]
[Footnote 8: 2 _Macc._, vii. 9, 14, xii. 43, 44.]
We find among the ancient people of Israel only very indecisive traces
of this fundamental dogma. The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was
in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee,
the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator. But in
religion it is always the zealous sect which innovates, which
progresses, and which has influence. Besides this, the resurrection,
an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul,
proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the
position of the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its
elements.[1] In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah,
and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed
those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the
orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them),
pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from
one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of
dogmatic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at
one time, even upon so primary a point Sometimes the righteous were to
await the resurrection;[2] sometimes they were to be received at the
moment of death into Abraham's bosom;[3] sometimes the resurrection
was to be general;[4] sometimes it was to be reserved only for the
faithful;[5] sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new
Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the
universe.
[Footnote 1: Theopompus, in _Diog. Laert._, Proem, 9. _Boundehesch_,
xxxi. The traces of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Avesta are
very doubtful.]
[Footnote 2: John xi. 24.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xvi. 22. Cf. _De Rationis Imp._, 13, 16, 18.]
[Footnote 4: Dan. xii. 2.]
[Footnote 5: 2 _Macc._ vii. 14.]
Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning
atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just
stated. These ideas were taught in no school; but they were in the
very air, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations
and our doubts never reached him. On this summit of the mountain of
Nazareth, where no man can sit to-day without an uneasy, though it may
be a frivolous, feeling about his destiny, Jesus sat often untroubled
by a doubt. Free from selfishness--that source of our troubles, which
makes us seek with eagerness a reward for virtue beyond the tomb--he
thought only of his work, of his race, and of humanity. Those
mountains, that sea, that azure sky, those high plains in the horizon,
were for him not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates
Nature upon her fate, but the certain symbol, the transparent shadow,
of an invisible world, and of a new heaven.
He never attached much importance to the political events of his time,
and he probably knew little about them. The court of the Herods formed
a world so different to his, that he doubtless knew it only by name.
Herod the Great died about the year in which Jesus was born, leaving
imperishable remembrances--monuments which must compel the most
malevolent posterity to associate his name with that of Solomon;
nevertheless, his work was incomplete, and could not be continued.
Profanely ambitious, and lost in a maze of religious controversies,
this astute Idumean had the advantage which coolness and judgment,
stripped of morality, give over passionate fanatics. But his idea of a
secular kingdom of Israel, even if it had not been an anachronism in
the state of the world in which it was conceived, would inevitably
have miscarried, like the similar project which Solomon formed, owing
to the difficulties proceeding from the character of the nation. His
three sons were only lieutenants of the Romans, analogous to the
rajahs of India under the English dominion. Antipater, or Antipas,
tetrarch of Galilee and of Peræa, of whom Jesus was a subject all his
life, was an idle and useless prince,[1] a favorite and flatterer of
Tiberius,[2] and too often misled by the bad influence of his second
wife, Herodias.[3] Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanea, into
whose dominions Jesus made frequent journeys, was a much better
sovereign.[4] As to Archelaus, ethnarch of Jerusalem, Jesus could not
know him, for he was about ten years old when this man, who was weak
and without character, though sometimes violent, was deposed by
Augustus.[5] The last trace of self-government was thus lost to
Jerusalem. United to Samaria and Idumea, Judea formed a kind of
dependency of the province of Syria, in which the senator Publius
Sulpicius Quirinus, well known as consul,[6] was the imperial legate.
A series of Roman procurators, subordinate in important matters to
the imperial legate of Syria--Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius Rufus,
Valerius Gratus, and lastly (in the twenty-sixth year of our era),
Pontius Pilate[7]--followed each other, and were constantly occupied
in extinguishing the volcano which was seething beneath their feet.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, VIII. v. 1, vii. 1 and 2; Luke iii. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., XVIII. ii. 3, iv. 5, v. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., XVIII. vii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., XVIII. iv. 6.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., XVII. xii. 2; and _B.J._, II. vii. 3.]
[Footnote 6: Orelli, _Inscr. Lat._, No. 3693; Henzen, _Suppl._, No.
7041; _Fasti prænestini_, on the 6th of March, and on the 28th of
April (in the _Corpus Inscr. Lat._, i. 314, 317); Borghesi, _Fastes
Consulaires_ (yet unedited), in the year 742; R. Bergmann, _De Inscr.
Lat. ad. P.S. Quirinium, ut videtur, referenda_ (Berlin, 1851). Cf.
Tac., _Ann._, ii. 30, iii. 48; Strabo, XII. vi. 5.]
[Footnote 7: Jos., _Ant._, l. XVIII.]
Continual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, did not cease,
in fact, to agitate Jerusalem during all this time.[1] The death of
the seditious was certain; but death, when the integrity of the Law
was in question, was sought with avidity. To overturn the Roman eagle,
to destroy the works of art raised by the Herods, in which the Mosaic
regulations were not always respected[2]--to rise up against the
votive escutcheons put up by the procurators, the inscriptions of
which appeared tainted with idolatry[3]--were perpetual temptations to
fanatics, who had reached that degree of exaltation which removes all
care for life. Judas, son of Sariphea, Matthias, son of Margaloth, two
very celebrated doctors of the law, formed against the established
order a boldly aggressive party, which continued after their
execution.[4] The Samaritans were agitated by movements of a similar
nature.[5] The Law had never counted a greater number of impassioned
disciples than at this time, when he already lived who, by the full
authority of his genius and of his great soul, was about to abrogate
it. The "Zelotes" (Kenaïm), or "Sicarii," pious assassins, who imposed
on themselves the task of killing whoever in their estimation broke
the Law, began to appear.[6] Representatives of a totally different
spirit, the Thaumaturges, considered as in some sort divine, obtained
credence in consequence of the imperious want which the age
experienced for the supernatural and the divine.[7]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., the books XVI. and XVIII. entirely, and _B.J._,
books I. and II.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XV. x. 4. Compare Book of Enoch, xcvii. 13,
14.]
[Footnote 3: Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, § 38.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVII. vi. 2, and following; _B.J._, I.
xxxiii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, ix. 6; John xvi. 2; Jos., _B.J._,
book IV., and following.]
[Footnote 7: _Acts_ viii. 9. Verse 11 leads us to suppose that Simon
the magician was already famous in the time of Jesus.]
A movement which had much more influence upon Jesus was that of Judas
the Gaulonite, or Galilean. Of all the exactions to which the country
newly conquered by Rome was subjected, the census was the most
unpopular.[1] This measure, which always astonishes people
unaccustomed to the requirements of great central administrations, was
particularly odious to the Jews. We see that already, under David, a
numbering of the people provoked violent recriminations, and the
menaces of the prophets.[2] The census, in fact, was the basis of
taxation; now taxation, to a pure theocracy, was almost an impiety.
God being the sole Master whom man ought to recognize, to pay tithe to
a secular sovereign was, in a manner, to put him in the place of God.
Completely ignorant of the idea of the State, the Jewish theocracy
only acted up to its logical induction--the negation of civil society
and of all government. The money of the public treasury was accounted
stolen money.[3] The census ordered by Quirinus (in the year 6 of the
Christian era) powerfully reawakened these ideas, and caused a great
fermentation. An insurrection broke out in the northern provinces. One
Judas, of the town of Gamala, upon the eastern shore of the Lake of
Tiberias, and a Pharisee named Sadoc, by denying the lawfulness of the
tax, created a numerous party, which soon broke out in open revolt.[4]
The fundamental maxims of this party were--that they ought to call no
man "master," this title belonging to God alone; and that liberty was
better than life. Judas had, doubtless, many other principles, which
Josephus, always careful not to compromise his co-religionists,
designedly suppresses; for it is impossible to understand how, for so
simple an idea, the Jewish historian should give him a place among the
philosophers of his nation, and should regard him as the founder of a
fourth school, equal to those of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the
Essenes. Judas was evidently the chief of a Galilean sect, deeply
imbued with the Messianic idea, and which became a political movement.
The procurator, Coponius, crushed the sedition of the Gaulonite; but
the school remained, and preserved its chiefs. Under the leadership of
Menahem, son of the founder, and of a certain Eleazar, his relative,
we find them again very active in the last contests of the Jews
against the Romans.[5] Perhaps Jesus saw this Judas, whose idea of the
Jewish revolution was so different from his own; at all events, he
knew his school, and it was probably to avoid his error that he
pronounced the axiom upon the penny of Cæsar. Jesus, more wise, and
far removed from all sedition, profited by the fault of his
predecessor, and dreamed of another kingdom and another deliverance.
[Footnote 1: Discourse of Claudius at Lyons, Tab. ii. sub fin. De
Boisseau, _Inscr. Ant. de Lyon_, p. 136.]
[Footnote 2: 2 Sam. xxiv.]
[Footnote 3: Talmud of Babylon, _Baba Kama_, 113 _a_; _Shabbath_, 33
_b_.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. i. 1 and 6; _B.J._, II. viii. 1;
_Acts_ v. 37. Previous to Judas the Gaulonite, the _Acts_ place
another agitator, Theudas; but this is an anachronism, the movement of
Theudas took place in the year 44 of the Christian era (Jos., _Ant._,
XX. v. 1).]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _B.J._, II. xvii. 8, and following.]
Galilee was thus an immense furnace wherein the most diverse elements
were seething.[1] An extraordinary contempt of life, or, more properly
speaking, a kind of longing for death,[2] was the consequence of these
agitations. Experience counts for nothing in these great fanatical
movements. Algeria, at the commencement of the French occupation, saw
arise, each spring, inspired men, who declared themselves
invulnerable, and sent by God to drive away the infidels; the
following year their death was forgotten, and their successors found
no less credence. The Roman power, very stern on the one hand, yet
little disposed to meddle, permitted a good deal of liberty. Those
great, brutal despotisms, terrible in repression, were not so
suspicious as powers which have a faith to defend. They allowed
everything up to the point when they thought it necessary to be
severe. It is not recorded that Jesus was even once interfered with by
the civil power, in his wandering career. Such freedom, and, above
all, the happiness which Galilee enjoyed in being much less confined
in the bonds of Pharisaic pedantry, gave to this district a real
superiority over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the
belief in the Messiah, caused here a general fermentation. Men deemed
themselves on the eve of the great renovation; the Scriptures,
tortured into divers meanings, fostered the most colossal hopes. In
each line of the simple writings of the Old Testament they saw the
assurance, and, in a manner, the programme of the future reign, which
was to bring peace to the righteous, and to seal forever the work of
God.
[Footnote 1: Luke xiii. 1. The Galilean movement of Judas, son of
Hezekiah, does not appear to have been of a religious character;
perhaps, however, its character has been misrepresented by Josephus
(_Ant._, XVII. x. 5).]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVI. vi. 2, 3; XVIII. i. 1.]
From all time, this division into two parties, opposed in interest and
spirit, had been for the Hebrew nation a principle which contributed
to their moral growth. Every nation called to high destinies ought to
be a little world in itself, including opposite poles. Greece
presented, at a few leagues' distance from each other, Sparta and
Athens--to a superficial observer, the two antipodes; but, in reality,
rival sisters, necessary to one another. It was the same with Judea.
Less brilliant in one sense than the development of Jerusalem, that of
the North was on the whole much more fertile; the greatest
achievements of the Jewish people have always proceeded thence. A
complete absence of the love of Nature, bordering upon something dry,
narrow, and ferocious, has stamped all the works purely Hierosolymite
with a degree of grandeur, though sad, arid, and repulsive. With its
solemn doctors, its insipid canonists, its hypocritical and
atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem has not conquered humanity. The North
has given to the world the simple Shunammite, the humble Canaanite,
the impassioned Magdalene, the good foster-father Joseph, and the
Virgin Mary. The North alone has made Christianity; Jerusalem, on the
contrary, is the true home of that obstinate Judaism which, founded by
the Pharisees, and fixed by the Talmud, has traversed the Middle Ages,
and come down to us.
A beautiful external nature tended to produce a much less austere
spirit--a spirit less sharply monotheistic, if I may use the
expression, which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all
the dreams of Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps
the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the contrary, was a very
green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs,
and the songs of the well-beloved.[1] During the two months of March
and April, the country forms a carpet of flowers of an incomparable
variety of colors. The animals are small, and extremely
gentle--delicate and lively turtle-doves, blue-birds so light that
they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, crested larks which
venture almost under the feet of the traveller, little river tortoises
with mild and lively eyes, storks with grave and modest mien, which,
laying aside all timidity, allow man to come quite near them, and seem
almost to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the
mountains spread themselves out with more harmony, or inspire higher
thoughts. Jesus seems to have had a peculiar love for them. The most
important acts of his divine career took place upon the mountains. It
was there that he was the most inspired;[2] it was there that he held
secret communion with the ancient prophets; and it was there that his
disciples witnessed his transfiguration.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jos., _B.J._, III. iii. 1. The horrible state to which
the country is reduced, especially near Lake Tiberias, ought not to
deceive us. These countries, now scorched, were formerly terrestrial
paradises. The baths of Tiberias, which are now a frightful abode,
were formerly the most beautiful places in Galilee (Jos., _Ant._,
XVIII. ii. 3.) Josephus (_Bell. Jud._, III. x. 8) extols the beautiful
trees of the plain of Gennesareth, where there is no longer a single
one. Anthony the Martyr, about the year 600, consequently fifty years
before the Mussulman invasion, still found Galilee covered with
delightful plantations, and compares its fertility to that of Egypt
(_Itin._, § 5).]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 1, xiv. 23; Luke vi. 12.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 1, and following;
Luke ix. 28, and following.]
This beautiful country has now become sad and gloomy through the
ever-impoverishing influence of Islamism. But still everything which
man cannot destroy breathes an air of freedom, mildness, and
tenderness, and at the time of Jesus it overflowed with happiness and
prosperity. The Galileans were considered energetic, brave, and
laborious.[1] If we except Tiberias, built by Antipas in honor of
Tiberius (about the year 15), in the Roman style,[2] Galilee had no
large towns. The country was, nevertheless, well peopled, covered with
small towns and large villages, and cultivated in all parts with
skill.[3] From the ruins which remain of its ancient splendor, we can
trace an agricultural people, no way gifted in art, caring little for
luxury, indifferent to the beauties of form and exclusively
idealistic. The country abounded in fresh streams and in fruits; the
large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the gardens were
filled with trees bearing apples, walnuts, and pomegranates.[4] The
wine was excellent, if we may judge by that which the Jews still
obtain at Safed, and they drank much of it.[5] This contented and
easily satisfied life was not like the gross materialism of our
peasantry, the coarse pleasures of agricultural Normandy, or the heavy
mirth of the Flemish. It spiritualized itself in ethereal dreams--in a
kind of poetic mysticism, blending heaven and earth. Leave the
austere Baptist in his desert of Judea to preach penitence, to inveigh
without ceasing, and to live on locusts in the company of jackals. Why
should the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is
with them? Joy will be a part of the kingdom of God. Is she not the
daughter of the humble in heart, of the men of good will?
[Footnote 1: Jos., _B.J._, III. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii. 2; _B.J._, II. ix. 1; _Vita_,
12, 13, 64.]
[Footnote 3: Jos., _B.J._, III. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: We may judge of this by some enclosures in the
neighborhood of Nazareth. Cf. Song of Solomon ii. 3, 5, 13, iv. 13,
vi. 6, 10, vii. 8, 12, viii. 2, 5; Anton. Martyr, _l.c._ The aspect of
the great farms is still well preserved in the south of the country of
Tyre (ancient tribe of Asher). Traces of the ancient Palestinian
agriculture, with its troughs, threshing-floors, wine-presses, mills,
&c., cut in the rock, are found at every step.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. ix. 17, xi. 19; Mark ii. 22; Luke v. 37, vii. 34;
John ii. 3, and following.]
The whole history of infant Christianity has become in this manner a
delightful pastoral. A Messiah at the marriage festival--the courtezan
and the good Zaccheus called to his feasts--the founders of the
kingdom of heaven like a bridal procession; that is what Galilee has
boldly offered, and what the world has accepted. Greece has drawn
pictures of human life by sculpture and by charming poetry, but always
without backgrounds or distant receding perspectives. In Galilee were
wanting the marble, the practiced workmen, the exquisite and refined
language. But Galilee has created the most sublime ideal for the
popular imagination; for behind its idyl moves the fate of humanity,
and the light which illumines its picture is the sun of the kingdom of
God.
Jesus lived and grew amidst these enchanting scenes. From his infancy,
he went almost annually to the feast at Jerusalem.[1] The pilgrimage
was a sweet solemnity for the provincial Jews. Entire series of psalms
were consecrated to celebrate the happiness of thus journeying in
family companionship[2] during several days in the spring across the
hills and valleys, each one having in prospect the splendors of
Jerusalem, the solemnities of the sacred courts, and the joy of
brethren dwelling together in unity.[3] The route which Jesus
ordinarily took in these journeys was that which is followed to this
day through Ginæa and Shechem.[4] From Shechem to Jerusalem the
journey is very tiresome. But the neighborhood of the old sanctuaries
of Shiloh and Bethel, near which the travellers pass, keeps their
interest alive. _Ain-el-Haramie_,[5] the last halting-place, is a
charming and melancholy spot, and few impressions equal that
experienced on encamping there for the night. The valley is narrow and
sombre, and a dark stream issues from the rocks, full of tombs, which
form its banks. It is, I think, the "valley of tears," or of dropping
waters, which is described as one of the stations on the way in the
delightful Eighty-fourth Psalm,[6] and which became the emblem of life
for the sad and sweet mysticism of the Middle Ages. Early the next day
they would be at Jerusalem; such an expectation even now sustains the
caravan, rendering the night short and slumber light.
[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 41.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ii. 42-44.]
[Footnote 3: See especially Ps. lxxxiv., cxxii., cxxxiii. (Vulg.,
lxxxiii., cxxi., cxxxii).]
[Footnote 4: Luke ix. 51-53, xvii. 11; John iv. 4; Jos., _Ant._, XX.
vi. 1; _B.J._, II. xii. 3; _Vita_, 52. Often, however, the pilgrims
came by Peræa, in order to avoid Samaria, where they incurred dangers;
Matt. xix. 1; Mark x. 1.]
[Footnote 5: According to Josephus (_Vita_, 52) it was three days'
journey. But the stage from Shechem to Jerusalem was generally divided
into two.]
[Footnote 6: lxxxiii. according to the Vulgate, v. 7.]
These journeys, in which the assembled nation exchanged its ideas, and
which were almost always centres of great agitation, placed Jesus in
contact with the mind of his countrymen, and no doubt inspired him
whilst still young with a lively antipathy for the defects of the
official representatives of Judaism. It is supposed that very early
the desert had great influence on his development, and that he made
long stays there.[1] But the God he found in the desert was not his
God. It was rather the God of Job, severe and terrible, accountable
to no one. Sometimes Satan came to tempt him. He returned, then, into
his beloved Galilee, and found again his heavenly Father in the midst
of the green hills and the clear fountains--and among the crowds of
women and children, who, with joyous soul and the song of angels in
their hearts, awaited the salvation of Israel.
[Footnote 1: Luke iv. 42, v. 16.]
CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS--HIS IDEAS OF A DIVINE FATHER AND OF A PURE
RELIGION--FIRST DISCIPLES.
Joseph died before his son had taken any public part. Mary remained,
in a manner, the head of the family, and this explains why her son,
when it was wished to distinguish him from others of the same name,
was most frequently called the "son of Mary."[1] It seems that having,
by the death of her husband, been left friendless at Nazareth, she
withdrew to Cana,[2] from which she may have come originally. Cana[3]
was a little town at from two to two and a half hours' journey from
Nazareth, at the foot of the mountains which bound the plain of
Asochis on the north.[4] The prospect, less grand than at Nazareth,
extends over all the plain, and is bounded in the most picturesque
manner by the mountains of Nazareth and the hills of Sepphoris. Jesus
appears to have resided some time in this place. Here he probably
passed a part of his youth, and here his greatness first revealed
itself.[5]
[Footnote 1: This is the expression of Mark vi. 3; cf. Matt. xiii. 55.
Mark did not know Joseph. John and Luke, on the contrary, prefer the
expression "son of Joseph." Luke iii. 23, iv. 22; John i. 45, iv. 42.]
[Footnote 2: John ii. 1, iv. 46. John alone is informed on this
point.]
[Footnote 3: I admit, as probable, the idea which identifies Cana of
Galilee with _Kana el Djélil_. We may, nevertheless, attach value to
the arguments for _Kefr Kenna_, a place an hour or an hour and a
half's journey N.N.E. of Nazareth.]
[Footnote 4: Now _El-Buttauf_.]
[Footnote 5: John ii. 11, iv. 46. One or two disciples were of Cana,
John xxi. 2; Matt. x. 4; Mark iii. 18.]
He followed the trade of his father, which was that of a
carpenter.[1] This was not in any degree humiliating or grievous. The
Jewish customs required that a man devoted to intellectual work should
learn a trade. The most celebrated doctors did so;[2] thus St. Paul,
whose education had been so carefully tended, was a tent-maker.[3]
Jesus never married. All his power of love centred upon that which he
regarded as his celestial vocation. The extremely delicate feeling
toward women, which we remark in him, was not separated from the
exclusive devotion which he had for his mission. Like Francis d'Assisi
and Francis de Sales, he treated as sisters the women who were loved
of the same work as himself; he had his St. Clare, his Frances de
Chantal. It is, however, probable that these loved him more than the
work; he was, no doubt, more beloved than loving. Thus, as often
happens in very elevated natures, tenderness of the heart was
transformed in him into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, and a
universal charm. His relations, free and intimate, but of an entirely
moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by
the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which
made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could
contribute to it.[4]
[Footnote 1: Mark vi. 3; Justin, _Dial. cum Tryph._, 88.]
[Footnote 2: For example, "Rabbi Johanan, the shoemaker, Rabbi Isaac,
the blacksmith."]
[Footnote 3: _Acts_ xviii. 3.]
[Footnote 4: Luke vii. 37, and following; John iv. 7, and following;
viii. 3, and following.]
What was the progress of the ideas of Jesus during this obscure period
of his life? Through what meditations did he enter upon the prophetic
career? We have no information on these points, his history having
come to us in scattered narratives, without exact chronology. But the
development of character is everywhere the same; and there is no
doubt that the growth of so powerful individuality as that of Jesus
obeyed very rigorous laws. A high conception of the Divinity--which he
did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been in all its parts
the creation of his great mind--was in a manner the source of all his
power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to
us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In
order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of
Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and
ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology.
The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of
Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by
lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of
everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of
modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact,
is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have
peculiar relations with God is a "visionary," and as the physical and
physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are
illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the
great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in
suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the
living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best
comprehended God--Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi,
and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)--Deists or
Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and
metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to
them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in
the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus
had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of Himself;
God was in him; he felt himself with God, and he drew from his heart
all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by constant
communication with Him; he saw Him not, but he understood Him, without
need of the thunder and the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing
tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar
genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The
imagination and the hallucination of a St. Theresa, for example, are
useless here. The intoxication of the Soufi proclaiming himself
identical with God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave
utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed
himself to be in direct communion with God; he believed himself to be
the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in
the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus.
We understand, on the other hand, how Jesus, starting with such a
disposition of spirit, could never be a speculative philosopher like
Cakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the
Gospel.[1] The speculations of the Greek fathers on the Divine essence
proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as
Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a
theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought
to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his disciples;[2] he
demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his
opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds
often present, associated with much elevation, that character of
perpetual attention to themselves, and extreme personal
susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women.[3] Their
conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with
them, is so strong, that they have no fear of obtruding themselves
upon others; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others,
which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. This
exaltation of self is not egotism; for such men, possessed by their
idea, give their lives freely, in order to seal their work; it is the
identification of self with the object it has embraced, carried to its
utmost limit. It is regarded as vain-glory by those who see in the new
teaching only the personal phantasy of the founder; but it is the
finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by
side here with the inspired man, only the fool never succeeds. It has
not yet been given to insanity to influence seriously the progress of
humanity.
[Footnote 1: The discourses which the fourth Gospel attributes to
Jesus contain some germs of theology. But these discourses being in
absolute contradiction with those of the synoptical Gospels, which
represent, without any doubt, the primitive _Logia_, ought to count
simply as documents of apostolic history, and not as elements of the
life of Jesus.]
[Footnote 2: See Matt. ix. 9, and other analogous accounts.]
[Footnote 3: See, for example, John xxi. 15, and following.]
Doubtless, Jesus did not attain at first this high affirmation of
himself. But it is probable that, from the first, he regarded his
relationship with God as that of a son with his father. This was his
great act of originality; in this he had nothing in common with his
race.[1] Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has understood this
delightful theology of love. The God of Jesus is not that tyrannical
master who kills us, damns us, or saves us, according to His pleasure.
The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him in listening to the gentle
inspiration which cries within us, "Abba, Father."[2] The God of Jesus
is not the partial despot who has chosen Israel for His people, and
specially protects them. He is the God of humanity. Jesus was not a
patriot, like the Maccabees; or a theocrat, like Judas the Gaulonite.
Boldly raising himself above the prejudices of his nation, he
established the universal fatherhood of God. The Gaulonite maintained
that we should die rather than give to another than God the name of
"Master;" Jesus left this name to any one who liked to take it, and
reserved for God a dearer name. Whilst he accorded to the powerful of
the earth, who were to him representatives of force, a respect full of
irony, he proclaimed the supreme consolation--the recourse to the
Father which each one has in heaven--and the true kingdom of God,
which each one bears in his heart.
[Footnote 1: The great soul of Philo is in sympathy here, as on so
many other points, with that of Jesus. _De Confus. Ling._, § 14; _De
Migr. Abr._, § 1; _De Somniis_, ii. § 41; _De Agric. Noë_, § 12; _De
Mutatione Nominum_, § 4. But Philo is scarcely a Jew in spirit.]
[Footnote 2: Galatians iv. 6.]
This name of "kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven,"[1] was the
favorite term of Jesus to express the revolution which he brought into
the world.[2] Like almost all the Messianic terms, it came from the
book of Daniel. According to the author of this extraordinary book,
the four profane empires, destined to fall, were to be succeeded by a
fifth empire, that of the saints, which should last forever.[3] This
reign of God upon earth naturally led to the most diverse
interpretations. To Jewish theology, the "kingdom of God" is most
frequently only Judaism itself--the true religion, the monotheistic
worship, piety.[4] In the later periods of his life, Jesus believed
that this reign would be realized in a material form by a sudden
renovation of the world. But doubtless this was not his first idea.[5]
The admirable moral which he draws from the idea of God as Father, is
not that of enthusiasts who believe the world is near its end, and who
prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is
that of men who have lived, and still would live. "The kingdom of God
is within you," said he to those who sought with subtlety for external
signs.[6] The realistic conception of the Divine advent was but a
cloud, a transient error, which his death has made us forget. The
Jesus who founded the true kingdom of God, the kingdom of the meek and
the humble, was the Jesus of early life[7]--of those chaste and pure
days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer
tones. It was then for some months, perhaps a year, that God truly
dwelt upon the earth. The voice of the young carpenter suddenly
acquired an extraordinary sweetness. An infinite charm was exhaled
from his person, and those who had seen him up to that time no longer
recognized him.[8] He had not yet any disciples, and the group which
gathered around him was neither a sect nor a school; but a common
spirit, a sweet and penetrating influence was felt. His amiable
character, accompanied doubtless by one of those lovely faces[9] which
sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination
from which no one in the midst of these kindly and simple populations
could escape.
[Footnote 1: The word "heaven" in the rabbinical language of that time
is synonymous with the name of "God," which they avoided pronouncing.
Compare Matt. xxi. 25; Luke xv. 18, xx. 4.]
[Footnote 2: This expression occurs on each page of the synoptical
Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul. If it only appears
once in John (iii. 3, 5), it is because the discourses related in the
fourth Gospel are far from representing the true words of Jesus.]
[Footnote 3: Dan. ii. 44, vii. 13, 14, 22, 27.]
[Footnote 4: Mishnah, _Berakoth_, ii. 1, 3; Talmud of Jerusalem,
_Berakoth_, ii. 2; _Kiddushin_, i. 2; Talm. of Bab., _Berakoth_, 15
_a_; _Mekilta_, 42 _b_; _Siphra_, 170 _b_. The expression appears
often in the _Medrashim_.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 33, xii. 28, xix. 12; Mark xii. 34; Luke xii.
31.]
[Footnote 6: Luke xvii. 20, 21.]
[Footnote 7: The grand theory of the revelation of the Son of Man is
in fact reserved, in the synoptics, for the chapters which precede the
narrative of the Passion. The first discourses, especially in Matthew,
are entirely moral.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xiii. 54 and following; Mark vi. 2 and following;
John v. 43.]
[Footnote 9: The tradition of the plainness of Jesus (Justin, _Dial.
cum Tryph._, 85, 88, 100) springs from a desire to see realized in him
a pretended Messianic trait (Isa. liii. 2).]
Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of
the young Master had not far transcended the level of ordinary
goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the
human race. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral
consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite
feeling. Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined
toward consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise
aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and
strange.[1] Some of these maxims come from the books of the Old
Testament. Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially
those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which
had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs.
The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sentences, which
formed a kind of current proverbial literature.[2] Jesus adopted
almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior
spirit.[3] Exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders,
he demanded perfection. All the virtues of humility--forgiveness,
charity, abnegation, and self-denial--virtues which with good reason
have been called Christian, if we mean by that that they have been
truly preached by Christ, were in this first teaching, though
undeveloped. As to justice, he was content with repeating the
well-known axiom--"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do
ye even so to them."[4] But this old, though somewhat selfish wisdom,
did not satisfy him. He went to excess, and said--"Whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any
man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloak also."[5] "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee."[6] "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you,
pray for them that persecute you."[7] "Judge not, that ye be not
judged."[8] "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven."[9] "Be ye therefore
merciful as your Father also is merciful."[10] "It is more blessed to
give than to receive."[11] "Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be
abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."[12]
[Footnote 1: The _Logia_ of St. Matthew joins several of these axioms
together, to form lengthened discourses. But the fragmentary form
makes itself felt notwithstanding.]
[Footnote 2: The sentences of the Jewish doctors of the time are
collected in the little book entitled, _Pirké Aboth_.]
[Footnote 3: The comparisons will be made afterward as they present
themselves. It has been sometimes supposed that--the compilation of
the Talmud being later than that of the Gospels--parts may have been
borrowed by the Jewish compilers from the Christian morality. But this
is inadmissible--a wall of separation existed between the Church and
the Synagogue. The Christian and Jewish literature had scarcely any
influence on one another before the thirteenth century.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. vii. 12; Luke vi. 31. This axiom is in the book of
_Tobit_, iv. 16. Hillel used it habitually (Talm. of Bab., _Shabbath_,
31 _a_), and declared, like Jesus, that it was the sum of the Law.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 39, and following; Luke vi. 29. Compare
Jeremiah, _Lamentations_ iii. 30.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 29, 30, xviii. 9; Mark ix. 46.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. v. 44; Luke vi. 27. Compare Talmud of Babylon,
_Shabbath_, 88 _b_; _Joma_, 23 _a_.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. vii. 1; Luke vi. 37. Compare Talmud of Babylon,
_Kethuboth_, 105 _b_.]
[Footnote 9: Luke vi. 37. Compare _Lev._ xix. 18; _Prov._ xx. 22;
_Ecclesiasticus_ xxviii. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 10: Luke vi. 36; Siphré, 51 _b_ (Sultzbach, 1802).]
[Footnote 11: A saying related in _Acts_ xx. 35.]
[Footnote 12: Matt. xxiii. 12; Luke xiv. 11, xviii. 14. The sentences
quoted by St. Jerome from the "Gospel according to the Hebrews"
(Comment. in _Epist. ad Ephes._, v. 4; in Ezek. xviii.; _Dial. adv.
Pelag._, iii. 2), are imbued with the same spirit.]
Upon alms, pity, good works, kindness, peacefulness, and complete
disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the doctrine of
the synagogue.[1] But he placed upon them an emphasis full of unction,
which made the old maxims appear new. Morality is not composed of more
or less well-expressed principles. The poetry which makes the precept
loved, is more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract truth.
Now it cannot be denied that these maxims borrowed by Jesus from his
predecessors, produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that
in the ancient Law, in the _Pirké Aboth_, or in the Talmud. It is
neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed
the world. Little original in itself--if we mean by that that one
might recompose it almost entirely by the aid of older maxims--the
morality of the Gospels remains, nevertheless, the highest creation of
human conscience--the most beautiful code of perfect life that any
moralist has traced.
[Footnote 1: _Deut._ xxiv., xxv., xxvi., &c.; Isa. lviii. 7; _Prov._
xix. 17; _Pirké Aboth_, i.; Talmud of Jerusalem, _Peah_, i. 1; Talmud
of Babylon, _Shabbath_, 63 _a_.]
Jesus did not speak against the Mosaic law, but it is clear that he
saw its insufficiency, and allowed it to be seen that he did so. He
repeated unceasingly that more must be done than the ancient sages had
commanded.[1] He forbade the least harsh word;[2] he prohibited
divorce,[3] and all swearing;[4] he censured revenge;[5] he condemned
usury;[6] he considered voluptuous desire as criminal as adultery;[7]
he insisted upon a universal forgiveness of injuries.[8] The motive on
which he rested these maxims of exalted charity was always the
same.... "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good. For if
ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the
publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye
more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."[9]
[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 20, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 22.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 31, and following. Compare Talmud of Babylon,
_Sanhedrim_, 22 _a_.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. v. 33, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 38, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 42. The Law prohibited it also (_Deut._ xv. 7,
8), but less formally, and custom authorized it (Luke vii. 41, and
following).]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxvii. 28. Compare Talmud, _Masséket Kalla_ (edit.
Fürth, 1793), fol. 34 _b_.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. v. 23, and following.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. v. 45, and following. Compare _Lev._ xi. 44, xix.
2.]
A pure worship, a religion without priests and external observances,
resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of
God,[1] on the direct relation of the conscience with the heavenly
Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from
this bold conclusion, which made him a thorough revolutionist in the
very centre of Judaism. Why should there be mediators between man and
his Father? As God only sees the heart, of what good are these
purifications, these observances relating only to the body?[2] Even
tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jews, is nothing compared to
sincerity.[3] The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned
their heads to see if they were observed, who gave their alms with
ostentation, and put marks upon their garments, that they might be
recognized as pious persons--all these grimaces of false devotion
disgusted him. "They have their recompense," said he; "but thou, when
thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
doeth, that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in
secret, Himself shall reward thee openly."[4] "And when thou prayest,
thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray
standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that
they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their
reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and
thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. But when
ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think
that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of before ye ask Him."[5]
[Footnote 1: Compare Philo, _De Migr. Abr._, § 23 and 24; _De Vita
Contemp._, the whole.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xv. 11, and following; Mark vii. 6, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Mark vii. 6, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. vi. 1, and following. Compare _Ecclesiasticus_
xvii. 18, xxix. 15; Talm. of Bab., _Chagigah_, 5 _a_; _Baba Bathra_, 9
_b_.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 5-8.]
He did not affect any external signs of asceticism, contenting himself
with praying, or rather meditating, upon the mountains, and in the
solitary places, where man has always sought God.[1] This high idea of
the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even after him,
have been capable, is summed up in a prayer which he taught to his
disciples:[2]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 23; Luke iv. 42, v. 16, vi. 12.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vi. 9, and following; Luke xi. 2, and following.]
"Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom
come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day
our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; deliver us from the
evil one."[1] He insisted particularly upon the idea, that the
heavenly Father knows better than we what we need, and that we almost
sin against Him in asking Him for this or that particular thing.[2]
[Footnote 1: _i.e._, the devil.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xi. 5, and following.]
Jesus in this only carried out the consequences of the great
principles which Judaism had established, but which the official
classes of the nation tended more and more to despise. The Greek and
Roman prayers were almost always mere egotistical verbiage. Never had
Pagan priest said to the faithful, "If thou bring thy offering to the
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee;
leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be
reconciled with thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."[1]
Alone in antiquity, the Jewish prophets, especially Isaiah, had, in
their antipathy to the priesthood, caught a glimpse of the true nature
of the worship man owes to God. "To what purpose is the multitude of
your sacrifices unto me: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and
the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or
of lambs, or of he-goats.... Incense is an abomination unto me: for
your hands are full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek
judgment, and then come."[2] In later times, certain doctors, Simeon
the just,[3] Jesus, son of Sirach,[4] Hillel,[5] almost reached this
point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness. Philo,
in the Judæo-Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus ideas
of a high moral sanctity, the consequence of which was the disregard
of the observances of the Law.[6] Shemaïa and Abtalion also more than
once proved themselves to be very liberal casuists.[7] Rabbi Johanan
ere long placed works of mercy above even the study of the Law![8]
Jesus alone, however, proclaimed these principles in an effective
manner. Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a
greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of
protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by
this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if
religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine
rank the world has accorded to him. An absolutely new idea, the idea
of a worship founded on purity of heart, and on human brotherhood,
through him entered into the world--an idea so elevated, that the
Christian Church ought to make it its distinguishing feature, but an
idea which, in our days, only few minds are capable of embodying.
[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 23, 24.]
[Footnote 2: Isaiah i. 11, and following. Compare ibid., lviii.
entirely; Hosea vi. 6; Malachi i. 10, and following.]
[Footnote 3: _Pirké Aboth_, i. 2.]
[Footnote 4: _Ecclesiasticus_ xxxv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Talm. of Jerus., _Pesachim_, vi. 1. Talm. of Bab., the
same treatise 66 _a_; _Shabbath_, 31 _a_.]
[Footnote 6: _Quod Deus Immut._, § 1 and 2; _De Abrahamo_, § 22;
_Quis Rerum Divin. Hæres_, § 13, and following; 55, 58, and following;
_De Profugis_, § 7 and 8; _Quod Omnis Probus Liber_, entirely; _De
Vita Contemp._, entirely.]
[Footnote 7: Talm. of Bab., _Pesachim_, 67 _b_.]
[Footnote 8: Talmud of Jerus., _Peah_, i. 1.]
An exquisite sympathy with Nature furnished him each moment with
expressive images. Sometimes a remarkable ingenuity, which we call
wit, adorned his aphorisms; at other times, their liveliness consisted
in the happy use of popular proverbs. "How wilt thou say to thy
brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a
beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out
of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote
out of thy brother's eye."[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. vii. 4, 5. Compare Talmud of Babylon, _Baba
Bathra_, 15 _b_, _Erachin_, 16 _b_.]
These lessons, long hidden in the heart of the young Master, soon
gathered around him a few disciples. The spirit of the time favored
small churches; it was the period of the Essenes or Therapeutæ.
Rabbis, each having his distinctive teaching, Shemaïa, Abtalion,
Hillel, Shammai, Judas the Gaulonite, Gamaliel, and many others, whose
maxims form the Talmud,[1] appeared on all sides. They wrote very
little; the Jewish doctors of this time did not write books;
everything was done by conversations, and in public lessons, to which
it was sought to give a form easily remembered.[2] The proclamation by
the young carpenter of Nazareth of these maxims, for the most part
already generally known, but which, thanks to him, were to regenerate
the world, was therefore no striking event. It was only one rabbi more
(it is true, the most charming of all), and around him some young men,
eager to hear him, and thirsting for knowledge. It requires time to
command the attention of men. As yet there were no Christians; though
true Christianity was founded, and, doubtless, it was never more
perfect than at this first period. Jesus added to it nothing durable
afterward. Indeed, in one sense, he compromised it; for every
movement, in order to triumph, must make sacrifices; we never come
from the contest of life unscathed.
[Footnote 1: See especially _Pirké Aboth_, ch. i.]
[Footnote 2: The Talmud, a _résumé_ of this vast movement of the
schools, was scarcely commenced till the second century of our era.]
To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to
succeed amongst men. To accomplish this, less pure paths must be
followed. Certainly, if the Gospel was confined to some chapters of
Matthew and Luke, it would be more perfect, and would not now be open
to so many objections; but would Jesus have converted the world
without miracles? If he had died at the period of his career we have
now reached, there would not have been in his life a single page to
wound us; but, greater in the eyes of God, he would have remained
unknown to men; he would have been lost in the crowd of great unknown
spirits, himself the greatest of all; the truth would not have been
promulgated, and the world would not have profited from the great
moral superiority with which his Father had endowed him. Jesus, son of
Sirach, and Hillel, had uttered aphorisms almost as exalted as those
of Jesus. Hillel, however, will never be accounted the true founder of
Christianity. In morals, as in art, precept is nothing, practice is
everything. The idea which is hidden in a picture of Raphael is of
little moment; it is the picture itself which is prized. So, too, in
morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and
only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact. Men of
indifferent morality have written very good maxims. Very virtuous men,
on the other hand, have done nothing to perpetuate in the world the
tradition of virtue. The palm is his who has been mighty both in words
and in works, who has discerned the good, and at the price of his
blood has caused its triumph. Jesus, from this double point of view,
is without equal; his glory remains entire, and will ever be renewed.
CHAPTER VI.
JOHN THE BAPTIST--VISIT OF JESUS TO JOHN, AND HIS ABODE IN THE DESERT
OF JUDEA--ADOPTION OF THE BAPTISM OF JOHN.
An extraordinary man, whose position, from the absence of documentary
evidence, remains to us in some degree enigmatical, appeared about
this time, and was unquestionably to some extent connected with Jesus.
This connection tended rather to make the young prophet of Nazareth
deviate from his path; but it suggested many important accessories to
his religious institution, and, at all events, furnished a very strong
authority to his disciples in recommending their Master in the eyes of
a certain class of Jews.
About the year 28 of our era (the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius) there spread throughout Palestine the reputation of a
certain Johanan, or John, a young ascetic full of zeal and enthusiasm.
John was of the priestly race,[1] and born, it seems, at Juttah near
Hebron, or at Hebron itself.[2] Hebron, the patriarchal city _par
excellence_, situated at a short distance from the desert of Judea,
and within a few hours' journey of the great desert of Arabia, was at
this period what it is to-day--one of the bulwarks of Semitic ideas,
in their most austere form. From his infancy, John was _Nazir_--that
is to say, subjected by vow to certain abstinences.[3] The desert by
which he was, so to speak, surrounded, early attracted him.[4] He led
there the life of a Yogi of India, clothed with skins or stuffs of
camel's hair, having for food only locusts and wild honey.[5] A
certain number of disciples were grouped around him, sharing his life
and studying his severe doctrine. We might imagine ourselves
transported to the banks of the Ganges, if particular traits had not
revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the great prophets of
Israel.
[Footnote 1: Luke i. 5; passage from the Gospel of the Ebionites,
preserved by Epiphanius, (_Adv. Hær._, xxx. 13.)]
[Footnote 2: Luke i. 39. It has been suggested, not without
probability, that "the city of Juda" mentioned in this passage of
Luke, is the town of _Jutta_ (Josh. xv. 55, xxi. 16). Robinson
(_Biblical Researches_, i. 494, ii. 206) has discovered this _Jutta_,
still bearing the same name, at two hours' journey south of Hebron.]
[Footnote 3: Luke i. 15.]
[Footnote 4: Luke i. 80.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. iii. 4; Mark i. 6; fragm. of the Gospel of the
Ebionites, in Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxx. 13.]
From the time that the Jewish nation had begun to reflect upon its
destiny with a kind of despair, the imagination of the people had
reverted with much complacency to the ancient prophets. Now, of all
the personages of the past, the remembrance of whom came like the
dreams of a troubled night to awaken and agitate the people, the
greatest was Elias. This giant of the prophets, in his rough solitude
of Carmel, sharing the life of savage beasts, dwelling in the hollows
of the rocks, whence he came like a thunderbolt, to make and unmake
kings, had become, by successive transformations, a sort of superhuman
being, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, and as one who had not
tasted death. It was generally believed that Elias would return and
restore Israel.[1] The austere life which he had led, the terrible
remembrances he had left behind him--the impression of which is still
powerful in the East[2]--the sombre image which, even in our own time,
causes trembling and death--all this mythology, full of vengeance and
terror, vividly struck the mind of the people, and stamped as with a
birth-mark all the creations of the popular mind. Whoever aspired to
act powerfully upon the people, must imitate Elias; and, as solitary
life had been the essential characteristic of this prophet, they were
accustomed to conceive "the man of God" as a hermit. They imagined
that all the holy personages had had their days of penitence, of
solitude, and of austerity.[3] The retreat to the desert thus became
the condition and the prelude of high destinies.
[Footnote 1: Malachi iv. 5, 6; (iii. 23, 24, according to the Vulg.);
_Ecclesiasticus_ xlviii. 10; Matt. xvi. 14, xvii. 10, and following;
Mark vi. 15, viii. 28, ix. 10, and following; Luke ix. 8, 19; John i.
21, 25.]
[Footnote 2: The ferocious Abdallah, pacha of St. Jean d'Acre, nearly
died from fright at seeing him in a dream, standing erect on his
mountain. In the pictures of the Christian churches, he is surrounded
with decapitated heads. The Mussulmans dread him.]
[Footnote 3: _Isaiah_ ii. 9-11.]
No doubt this thought of imitation had occupied John's mind.[1] The
anchorite life, so opposed to the spirit of the ancient Jewish people,
and with which the vows, such as those of the Nazirs and the
Rechabites, had no relation, pervaded all parts of Judea. The Essenes
or Therapeutæ were grouped near the birthplace of John, on the eastern
shores of the Dead Sea.[2] It was imagined that the chiefs of sects
ought to be recluses, having rules and institutions of their own, like
the founders of religious orders. The teachers of the young were also
at times species of anchorites,[3] somewhat resembling the
_gourous_[4] of Brahminism. In fact, might there not in this be a
remote influence of the _mounis_ of India? Perhaps some of those
wandering Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first
Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and
converting people who knew not their language, might have turned their
steps toward Judea, as they certainly did toward Syria and Babylon?[5]
On this point we have no certainty. Babylon had become for some time a
true focus of Buddhism. Boudasp (Bodhisattva) was reputed a wise
Chaldean, and the founder of Sabeism. _Sabeism_ was, as its etymology
indicates,[6] _baptism_--that is to say, the religion of many
baptisms--the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of
St. John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call _el-Mogtasila_, "the
Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The
sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism,
which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first
centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular
problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have
come down to us. We may believe, at all events, that many of the
external practices of John, of the Essenes,[9] and of the Jewish
spiritual teachers of this time, were derived from influences then but
recently received from the far East. The fundamental practice which
characterized the sect of John, and gave it its name, has always had
its centre in lower Chaldea, and constitutes a religion which is
perpetuated there to the present day.
[Footnote 1: Luke i. 17.]
[Footnote 2: Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, v. 17; Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xix. 1
and 2.]
[Footnote 3: Josephus, _Vita_, 2.]
[Footnote 4: Spiritual preceptors.]
[Footnote 5: I have developed this point elsewhere. _Hist. Génér. des
Langues Sémitiques_, III. iv. 1; _Journ. Asiat._, February-March,
1856.]
[Footnote 6: The Aramean word _seba_, origin of the name of _Sabians_,
is synonymous with [Greek: baptizô].]
[Footnote 7: I have treated of this at greater length in the _Journal
Asiatique_, Nov.-Dec., 1853, and August-Sept., 1855. It is remarkable
that the Elchasaïtes, a Sabian or Baptist sect, inhabited the same
district as the Essenes, (the eastern bank of the Dead Sea), and were
confounded with them (Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xix. 1, 2, 4, xxx. 16, 17,
liii. 1, 2; _Philosophumena_, IX. iii. 15, 16, X. xx. 29).]
[Footnote 8: See the remarks of Epiphanius on the Essenes,
Hemero-Baptists, Nazarites, Ossenes, Nazarenes, Ebionites, Samsonites
(_Adv. Hær._, books i. and ii.), and those of the author of the
_Philosophumena_ on the Elchasaïtes (books ix. and x).]
[Footnote 9: Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xix., xxx., liii.]
This practice was baptism, or total immersion. Ablutions were already
familiar to the Jews, as they were to all religions of the East.[1]
The Essenes had given them a peculiar extension.[2] Baptism had become
an ordinary ceremony on the introduction of proselytes into the bosom
of the Jewish religion, a sort of initiatory rite.[3] Never before
John the Baptist, however, had either this importance or this form
been given to immersion. John had fixed the scene of his activity in
that part of the desert of Judea which is in the neighborhood of the
Dead Sea.[4] At the periods when he administered baptism, he went to
the banks of the Jordan,[5] either to Bethany or Bethabara,[6] upon
the eastern shore, probably opposite to Jericho, or to a place called
_Ænon_, or "the Fountains,"[7] near Salim, where there was much
water.[8] Considerable crowds, especially of the tribe of Judah,
hastened to him to be baptized.[9] In a few months he thus became one
of the most influential men in Judea, and acquired much importance in
the general estimation.
[Footnote 1: Mark vii. 4; Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. v. 2; Justin, _Dial.
cum Tryph._, 17, 29, 80; Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xvii.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _B.J._, II. viii. 5, 7, 9, 13.]
[Footnote 3: Mishnah, _Pesachim_, viii. 8; Talmud of Babylon,
_Jebamoth_, 46 _b_; _Kerithuth_, 9 _a_; _Aboda Zara_, 57 _a_;
_Masséket Gérim_ (edit. Kirchheim, 1851), pp. 38-40.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. iii. 1; Mark i. 4.]
[Footnote 5: Luke iii. 3.]
[Footnote 6: John i. 28, iii. 26. All the manuscripts say _Bethany_;
but, as no one knows of Bethany in these places, Origen (_Comment. in
Joann._, vi. 24) has proposed to substitute _Bethabara_, and his
correction has been generally accepted. The two words have, moreover,
analogous meanings, and seem to indicate a place where there was a
ferry-boat to cross the river.]
[Footnote 7: _Ænon_ is the Chaldean plural, _Ænawan_, "fountains."]
[Footnote 8: John iii. 23. The locality of this place is doubtful. The
circumstance mentioned by the evangelist would lead us to believe that
it was not very near the Jordan. Nevertheless, the synoptics are
agreed in placing the scene of the baptisms of John on the banks of
that river (Matt. iii. 6; Mark i. 5; Luke iii. 3). The comparison of
verses 22 and 23 of chap. iii. of John, and of verses 3 and 4 of chap.
iv. of the same Gospel, would lead us to believe that Salim was in
Judea, and consequently in the oasis of Jericho, near the mouth of the
Jordan; since it would be difficult to find in any other district of
the tribe of Judah a single natural basin in which any one might be
totally immersed. Saint Jerome wishes to place Salim much more north,
near Beth-Schean or Scythopolis. But Robinson (_Bibl. Res._, iii. 333)
has not been able to find anything at these places that justifies this
assertion.]
[Footnote 9: Mark i. 5; Josephus, _Ant._, XVIII. v. 2.]
The people took him for a prophet,[1] and many imagined that it was
Elias who had risen again.[2] The belief in these resurrections was
widely spread;[3] it was thought that God would raise from the tomb
certain of the ancient prophets to guide Israel toward its final
destiny. Others held John to be the Messiah himself, although he made
no such pretensions.[4] The priests and the scribes, opposed to this
revival of prophetism, and the constant enemies of enthusiasts,
despised him. But the popularity of the Baptist awed them, and they
dared not speak against him.[5] It was a victory which the ideas of
the multitude gained over the priestly aristocracy. When the chief
priests were compelled to declare themselves explicitly on this point,
they were considerably embarrassed.[6]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 5, xxi. 26.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vi. 14; Mark vi. 15; John i. 21.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiv. 2; Luke ix. 8.]
[Footnote 4: Luke iii. 15, and following; John i. 20.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxi. 25, and following; Luke vii. 30.]
[Footnote 6: Matt., _loc. cit._]
Baptism with John was only a sign destined to make an impression, and
to prepare the minds of the people for some great movement. No doubt
he was possessed in the highest degree with the Messianic hope, and
that his principal action was in accordance with it. "Repent," said
he, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."[1] He announced a "great
wrath," that is to say, terrible calamities which should come to
pass,[2] and declared that the axe was already laid at the root of the
tree, and that the tree would soon be cast into the fire. He
represented the Messiah with a fan in his hand, collecting the good
wheat and burning the chaff. Repentance, of which baptism was the
type, the giving of alms, the reformation of habits,[3] were in John's
view the great means of preparation for the coming events, though we
do not know exactly in what light he conceived them. It is, however,
certain that he preached with much power against the same adversaries
as Jesus, against rich priests, the Pharisees, the doctors, in one
word, against official Judaism; and that, like Jesus, he was specially
welcomed by the despised classes.[4] He made no account of the title
"son of Abraham," and said that God could raise up sons unto Abraham
from the stones of the road.[5] It does not seem that he possessed
even the germ of the great idea which led to the triumph of Jesus, the
idea of a pure religion; but he powerfully served this idea in
substituting a private rite for the legal ceremonies which required
priests, as the Flagellants of the Middle Ages were the precursors of
the Reformation, by depriving the official clergy of the monopoly of
the sacraments and of absolution. The general tone of his sermons was
stern and severe. The expressions which he used against his
adversaries appear to have been most violent.[6] It was a harsh and
continuous invective. It is probable that he did not remain quite a
stranger to politics. Josephus, who, through his teacher Banou, was
brought into almost direct connection with John, suggests as much by
his ambiguous words,[7] and the catastrophe which put an end to John's
life seems to imply this. His disciples led a very austere life,[8]
fasted often, and affected a sad and anxious demeanor. We have at
times glimpses of communism--the rich man being ordered to share all
that he had with the poor.[9] The poor man appeared as the one who
would be specially benefited by the kingdom of God.
[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. iii. 7.]
[Footnote 3: Luke iii. 11-14; Josephus, _Ant._ XVIII. v. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxi. 32; Luke iii. 12-14.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. iii. 9.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7.]
[Footnote 7: _Ant._ XVIII. v. 2. We must observe that, when Josephus
described the secret and more or less seditious doctrines of his
countrymen, he suppressed everything which had reference to the
Messianic beliefs, and, in order not to give umbrage to the Romans,
spread over these doctrines a vulgar and commonplace air, which made
all the heads of Jewish sects appear as mere professors of morals or
stoics.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. ix. 14.]
[Footnote 9: Luke iii. 11.]
Although the centre of John's action was Judea, his fame quickly
penetrated to Galilee and reached Jesus, who, by his first discourses,
had already gathered around himself a small circle of hearers.
Enjoying as yet little authority, and doubtless impelled by the desire
to see a teacher whose instruction had so much in common with his own,
Jesus quitted Galilee and repaired with his small group of disciples
to John.[1] The newcomers were baptized like every one else. John
welcomed this group of Galilean disciples, and did not object to their
remaining distinct from his own. The two teachers were young; they had
many ideas in common; they loved one another, and publicly vied with
each other in exhibitions of kindly feeling. At the first glance, such
a fact surprises us in John the Baptist, and we are tempted to call it
in question. Humility has never been a feature of strong Jewish minds.
It might have been expected that a character so stubborn, a sort of
Lamennais always irritated, would be very passionate, and suffer
neither rivalry nor half adhesion. But this manner of viewing things
rests upon a false conception of the person of John. We imagine him an
old man; he was, on the contrary, of the same age as Jesus,[2] and
very young according to the ideas of the time. In mental development,
he was the brother rather than the father of Jesus. The two young
enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to
make common cause, and mutually to support each other. Certainly an
aged teacher, seeing a man without celebrity approach him, and
maintain toward him an aspect of independence, would have rebelled; we
have scarcely an example of a leader of a school receiving with
eagerness his future successor. But youth is capable of any sacrifice,
and we may admit that John, having recognized in Jesus a spirit akin
to his own, accepted him without any personal reservation. These good
relations became afterward the starting-point of a whole system
developed by the evangelists, which consisted in giving the Divine
mission of Jesus the primary basis of the attestation of John. Such
was the degree of authority acquired by the Baptist, that it was not
thought possible to find in the world a better guarantee. But far from
John abdicating in favor of Jesus, Jesus, during all the time that he
passed with him, recognized him as his superior, and only developed
his own genius with timidity.
[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 13, and following; Mark i. 9, and following;
Luke iii. 21, and following; John i. 29, and following; iii. 22, and
following. The synoptics make Jesus come to John, before he had played
any public part. But if it is true, as they state, that John
recognized Jesus from the first and welcomed him, it must be supposed
that Jesus was already a somewhat renowned teacher. The fourth Gospel
brings Jesus to John twice, the first time while yet unknown, the
second time with a band of disciples. Without touching here the
question of the precise journeys of Jesus (an insoluble question,
seeing the contradictions of the documents and the little care the
evangelists had in being exact in such matters), and without denying
that Jesus might have made a journey to John when he had as yet no
notoriety, we adopt the information furnished by the fourth Gospel
(iii. 22, and following), namely, that Jesus, before beginning to
baptize like John, had formed a school. We must remember, besides,
that the first pages of the fourth Gospel are notes tacked together
without rigorous chronological arrangement.]
[Footnote 2: Luke i., although indeed all the details of the
narrative, especially those which refer to the relationship of John
with Jesus, are legendary.]
It seems, in fact, that, notwithstanding his profound originality,
Jesus, during some weeks at least, was the imitator of John. His way
as yet was not clear before him. At all times, moreover, Jesus yielded
much to opinion, and adopted many things which were not in exact
accordance with his own ideas, or for which he cared little, merely
because they were popular; but these accessories never injured his
principal idea, and were always subordinate to it. Baptism had been
brought by John into very great favor; Jesus thought himself obliged
to do like John; therefore he baptized, and his disciples baptized
also.[1] No doubt he accompanied baptism with preaching, similar to
that of John. The Jordan was thus covered on all sides with Baptists,
whose discourses were more or less successful. The pupil soon equaled
the master, and his baptism was much sought after. There was on this
subject some jealousy among the disciples;[2] the disciples of John
came to complain to him of the growing success of the young Galilean,
whose baptism would, they thought, soon supplant his own. But the two
teachers remained superior to this meanness. The superiority of John
was, besides, too indisputable for Jesus, still little known, to think
of contesting it. Jesus only wished to increase under John's
protection; and thought himself obliged, in order to gain the
multitude, to employ the external means which had given John such
astonishing success. When he recommenced to preach after John's
arrest, the first words put into his mouth are but the repetition of
one of the familiar phrases of the Baptist.[3] Many other of John's
expressions may be found repeated verbally in the discourses of
Jesus.[4] The two schools appear to have lived long on good terms with
each other;[5] and after the death of John, Jesus, as his trusty
friend, was one of the first to be informed of the event.[6]
[Footnote 1: John iii. 22-26, iv. 1, 2. The parenthesis of ver. 2
appears to be an interpolation, or perhaps a tardy scruple of John
correcting himself.]
[Footnote 2: John iii. 26, iv. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. iii. 2, iv. 17.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. iii. 7, xii. 34, xxiii. 33.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 2-13.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xiv. 12.]
John, in fact, was soon cut short in his prophetic career. Like the
ancient Jewish prophets, he was, in the highest degree, a censurer of
the established authorities.[1] The extreme vivacity with which he
expressed himself at their expense could not fail to bring him into
trouble. In Judea, John does not appear to have been disturbed by
Pilate; but in Perea, beyond the Jordan, he came into the territory of
Antipas. This tyrant was uneasy at the political leaven which was so
little concealed by John in his preaching. The great assemblages of
men gathered around the Baptist, by religious and patriotic
enthusiasm, gave rise to suspicion.[2] An entirely personal grievance
was also added to these motives of state, and rendered the death of
the austere censor inevitable.
[Footnote 1: Luke iii. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. v. 2.]
One of the most strongly marked characters of this tragical family of
the Herods was Herodias, granddaughter of Herod the Great. Violent,
ambitious, and passionate, she detested Judaism, and despised its
laws.[1] She had been married, probably against her will, to her uncle
Herod, son of Mariamne,[2] whom Herod the Great had disinherited,[3]
and who never played any public part. The inferior position of her
husband, in respect to the other persons of the family, gave her no
peace; she determined to be sovereign at whatever cost.[4] Antipas was
the instrument of whom she made use. This feeble man having become
desperately enamored of her, promised to marry her, and to repudiate
his first wife, daughter of Hareth, king of Petra, and emir of the
neighboring tribes of Perea. The Arabian princess, receiving a hint of
this design, resolved to fly. Concealing her intention, she pretended
that she wished to make a journey to Machero, in her father's
territory, and caused herself to be conducted thither by the officers
of Antipas.[5]
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. v. 4.]
[Footnote 2: Matthew (chap. xiv. 3, in the Greek text) and Mark (chap.
vi. 17) have it that this was Philip; but this is certainly an
inadvertency (see Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. v. 1, 4). The wife of Philip
was Salome, daughter of Herodias.]
[Footnote 3: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iv. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., XVIII. vii. 1, 2, _B.J._, II. ix. 6.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., XVIII. v. 1.]
Makaur,[1] or Machero, was a colossal fortress built by Alexander
Jannaeus, and rebuilt by Herod, in one of the most abrupt wâdys to the
east of the Dead Sea.[2] It was a wild and desolate country, filled
with strange legends, and believed to be haunted by demons.[3] The
fortress was just on the boundary of the lands of Hareth and of
Antipas. At that time it was in the possession of Hareth.[4] The
latter having been warned, had prepared everything for the flight of
his daughter, who was conducted from tribe to tribe to Petra.
[Footnote 1: This form is found in the Talmud of Jerusalem (_Shebiit_,
ix. 2), and in the Targums of Jonathan and of Jerusalem (_Numb._ xxii.
35).]
[Footnote 2: Now Mkaur, in the wâdy Zerka Main. This place has not
been visited since Seetzen was there.]
[Footnote 3: Josephus, _De Bell. Jud._, VII. vi. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. v. 1.]
The almost incestuous[1] union of Antipas and Herodias then took
place. The Jewish laws on marriage were a constant rock of offence
between the irreligious family of the Herods and the strict Jews.[2]
The members of this numerous and rather isolated dynasty being obliged
to marry amongst themselves, frequent violations of the limits
prescribed by the Law necessarily took place. John, in energetically
blaming Antipas, was the echo of the general feeling.[3] This was more
than sufficient to decide the latter to follow up his suspicions. He
caused the Baptist to be arrested, and ordered him to be shut up in
the fortress of Machero, which he had probably seized after the
departure of the daughter of Hareth.[4]
[Footnote 1: _Lev._ xviii. 16.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XV. vii. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiv. 4; Mark vi. 18; Luke iii. 19.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. v. 2.]
More timid than cruel, Antipas did not desire to put him to death.
According to certain rumors, he feared a popular sedition.[1]
According to another version,[2] he had taken pleasure in listening to
the prisoner, and these conversations had thrown him into great
perplexities. It is certain that the detention was prolonged, and that
John, in his prison, preserved an extended influence. He corresponded
with his disciples, and we find him again in connection with Jesus.
His faith in the near approach of the Messiah only became firmer; he
followed with attention the movements outside, and sought to discover
in them the signs favorable to the accomplishment of the hopes which
he cherished.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Mark vi. 20. I read [Greek: êporei], and not [Greek:
epoiei].]
CHAPTER VII.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
Up to the arrest of John, which took place about the summer of the
year 29, Jesus did not quit the neighborhood of the Dead Sea and of
the Jordan. An abode in the desert of Judea was generally considered
as the preparation for great things, as a sort of "retreat" before
public acts. Jesus followed in this respect the example of others, and
passed forty days with no other companions than savage beasts,
maintaining a rigorous fast. The disciples speculated much concerning
this sojourn. The desert was popularly regarded as the residence of
demons.[1] There exist in the world few regions more desolate, more
abandoned by God, more shut out from life, than the rocky declivity
which forms the western shore of the Dead Sea. It was believed that
during the time which Jesus passed in this frightful country, he had
gone through terrible trials; that Satan had assailed him with his
illusions, or tempted him with seductive promises; that afterward, in
order to recompense him for his victory, the angels had come to
minister to him.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Tobit_ viii. 3; Luke xi. 24.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. iv. 1, and following; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1,
and following. Certainly, the striking similarity that these
narratives present to the analogous legends of the _Vendidad_ (farg.
xix.) and of the _Lalitavistara_ (chap. xvii., xviii., xxi.) would
lead us to regard them only as myths. But the meagre and concise
narrative of Mark, which evidently represents on this point the
primitive compilation, leads us to suppose a real fact, which
furnished later the theme of legendary developments.]
It was probably in coming from the desert that Jesus learned of the
arrest of John the Baptist. He had no longer any reason to prolong his
stay in a country which was partly strange to him. Perhaps he feared
also being involved in the severities exercised toward John, and did
not wish to expose himself, at a time in which, seeing the little
celebrity he had, his death could in no way serve the progress of his
ideas. He regained Galilee,[1] his true home, ripened by an important
experience, and having, through contact with a great man, very
different from himself, acquired a consciousness of his own
originality.
[Footnote 1: Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 14; Luke iv. 14; John iv. 3.]
On the whole, the influence of John had been more hurtful than useful
to Jesus. It checked his development; for everything leads us to
believe that he had, when he descended toward the Jordan, ideas
superior to those of John, and that it was by a sort of concession
that he inclined for a time toward baptism. Perhaps if the Baptist,
whose authority it would have been difficult for him to escape, had
remained free, Jesus would not have been able to throw off the yoke of
external rites and ceremonies, and would then, no doubt, have remained
an unknown Jewish sectary; for the world would not have abandoned its
old ceremonies merely for others of a different kind. It has been by
the power of a religion, free from all external forms, that
Christianity has attracted elevated minds. The Baptist once
imprisoned, his school was soon diminished, and Jesus found himself
left to his own impulses. The only things he owed to John, were
lessons in preaching and in popular action. From this moment, in fact,
he preached with greater power, and spoke to the multitude with
authority.[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. vii. 29; Mark i. 22; Luke iv. 32.]
It seems also that his sojourn with John had, not so much by the
influence of the Baptist, as by the natural progress of his own
thought, considerably ripened his ideas on "the kingdom of heaven."
His watchword, henceforth, is the "good tidings," the announcement
that the kingdom of God is at hand.[1] Jesus is no longer simply a
delightful moralist, aspiring to express sublime lessons in short and
lively aphorisms; he is the transcendent revolutionary, who essays to
renovate the world from its very basis, and to establish upon earth
the ideal which he had conceived. "To await the kingdom of God" is
henceforth synonymous with being a disciple of Jesus.[2] This phrase,
"kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven," was, as we have said,
already long familiar to the Jews. But Jesus gave it a moral sense, a
social application, which even the author of the Book of Daniel, in
his apocalyptic enthusiasm, had scarcely dared to imagine.
[Footnote 1: Mark i. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 2: Mark xv. 43.]
He declared that in the present world evil is the reigning power.
Satan is "the prince of this world,"[1] and everything obeys him. The
kings kill the prophets. The priests and the doctors do not that which
they command others to do; the righteous are persecuted, and the only
portion of the good is weeping. The "world" is in this manner the
enemy of God and His saints:[2] but God will awaken and avenge His
saints. The day is at hand, for the abomination is at its height. The
reign of goodness will have its turn.
[Footnote 1: John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11. (Comp. 2 _Cor._ iv. 4;
_Ephes._ ii. 2.)]
[Footnote 2: John i. 10, vii. 7, xiv. 17, 22, 27, xv. 18, and
following; xvi. 8, 20, 33, xvii. 9, 14, 16, 25. This meaning of the
word "world" is especially applied in the writings of Paul and John.]
The advent of this reign of goodness will be a great and sudden
revolution. The world will seem to be turned upside down; the actual
state being bad, in order to represent the future, it suffices to
conceive nearly the reverse of that which exists. The first shall be
last.[1] A new order shall govern humanity. Now the good and the bad
are mixed, like the tares and the good grain in a field. The master
lets them grow together; but the hour of violent separation will
arrive.[2] The kingdom of God will be as the casting of a great net,
which gathers both good and bad fish; the good are preserved, and the
rest are thrown away.[3] The germ of this great revolution will not be
recognizable in its beginning. It will be like a grain of
mustard-seed, which is the smallest of seeds, but which, thrown into
the earth, becomes a tree under the foliage of which the birds
repose;[4] or it will be like the leaven which, deposited in the meal,
makes the whole to ferment.[5] A series of parables, often obscure,
was designed to express the suddenness of this event, its apparent
injustice, and its inevitable and final character.[6]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xix. 30, xx. 16; Mark x. 31; Luke xiii. 30.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiii. 47, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xiii. 31, and following; Mark iv. 31, and
following; Luke xiii. 19, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xiii. 33; Luke xiii. 21.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xiii. entirely; xviii. 23, and following; xx. 1,
and following; Luke xiii. 18, and following.]
Who was to establish this kingdom of God? Let us remember that the
first thought of Jesus, a thought so deeply rooted in him that it had
probably no beginning, and formed part of his very being, was that he
was the Son of God, the friend of his Father, the doer of his will.
The answer of Jesus to such a question could not therefore be
doubtful. The persuasion that he was to establish the kingdom of God
took absolute possession of his mind. He regarded himself as the
universal reformer. The heavens, the earth, the whole of nature,
madness, disease, and death, were but his instruments. In his paroxysm
of heroic will, he believed himself all powerful. If the earth would
not submit to this supreme transformation, it would be broken up,
purified by fire, and by the breath of God. A new heaven would be
created, and the entire world would be peopled with the angels of
God.[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxii. 30.]
A radical revolution,[1] embracing even nature itself, was the
fundamental idea of Jesus. Henceforward, without doubt, he renounced
politics; the example of Judas, the Gaulonite, had shown him the
inutility of popular seditions. He never thought of revolting against
the Romans and tetrarchs. His was not the unbridled and anarchical
principle of the Gaulonite. His submission to the established powers,
though really derisive, was in appearance complete. He paid tribute to
Cæsar, in order to avoid disturbance. Liberty and right were not of
this world, why should he trouble his life with vain anxieties?
Despising the earth, and convinced that the present world was not
worth caring for, he took refuge in his ideal kingdom; he established
the great doctrine of transcendent disdain,[2] the true doctrine of
liberty of souls, which alone can give peace. But he had not yet said,
"My kingdom is not of this world." Much darkness mixed itself with
even his most correct views. Sometimes strange temptations crossed his
mind. In the desert of Judea, Satan had offered him the kingdoms of
the earth. Not knowing the power of the Roman empire, he might, with
the enthusiasm there was in the heart of Judea, and which ended soon
after in so terrible an outbreak, hope to establish a kingdom by the
number and the daring of his partisans. Many times, perhaps, the
supreme question presented itself--will the kingdom of God be realized
by force or by gentleness, by revolt or by patience? One day, it is
said, the simple men of Galilee wished to carry him away and make him
king,[3] but Jesus fled into the mountain and remained there some time
alone. His noble nature preserved him from the error which would have
made him an agitator, or a chief of rebels, a Theudas or a Barkokeba.
[Footnote 1: [Greek: Apochatastasis pantôn], _Acts_ iii. 21.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xvii. 23-26; xxii. 16-22.]
[Footnote 3: John vi. 15.]
The revolution he wished to effect was always a moral revolution; but
he had not yet begun to trust to the angels and the last trumpet for
its execution. It was upon men and by the aid of men themselves that
he wished to act. A visionary who had no other idea than the proximity
of the last judgment, would not have had this care for the
amelioration of man, and would not have given utterance to the finest
moral teaching that humanity has received. Much vagueness no doubt
tinged his ideas, and it was rather a noble feeling than a fixed
design, that urged him to the sublime work which was realized by him,
though in a very different manner to what he imagined.
It was indeed the kingdom of God, or in other words, the kingdom of
the Spirit, which he founded; and if Jesus, from the bosom of his
Father, sees his work bear fruit in the world, he may indeed say with
truth, "This is what I have desired." That which Jesus founded, that
which will remain eternally his, allowing for the imperfections which
mix themselves with everything realized by humanity, is the doctrine
of the liberty of the soul. Greece had already had beautiful ideas on
this subject.[1] Various stoics had learned how to be free even under
a tyrant. But in general the ancient world had regarded liberty as
attached to certain political forms; freedom was personified in
Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius. The true Christian
enjoys more real freedom; here below he is an exile; what matters it
to him who is the transitory governor of this earth, which is not his
home? Liberty for him is truth.[2] Jesus did not know history
sufficiently to understand that such a doctrine came most opportunely
at the moment when republican liberty ended, and when the small
municipal constitutions of antiquity were absorbed in the unity of the
Roman empire. But his admirable good sense, and the truly prophetic
instinct which he had of his mission, guided him with marvelous
certainty. By the sentence, "Render unto Cæsar the things which are
Cæsar's, and to God the things which are God's," he created something
apart from politics, a refuge for souls in the midst of the empire of
brute force. Assuredly, such a doctrine had its dangers. To establish
as a principle that we must recognize the legitimacy of a power by the
inscription on its coins, to proclaim that the perfect man pays
tribute with scorn and without question, was to destroy republicanism
in the ancient form, and to favor all tyranny. Christianity, in this
sense, has contributed much to weaken the sense of duty of the
citizen, and to deliver the world into the absolute power of existing
circumstances. But in constituting an immense free association, which
during three hundred years was able to dispense with politics,
Christianity amply compensated for the wrong it had done to civic
virtues. The power of the state was limited to the things of earth;
the mind was freed, or at least the terrible rod of Roman omnipotence
was broken forever.
[Footnote 1: See Stobæus, _Florilegium_, ch. lxii., lxxvii., lxxxvi.,
and following.]
[Footnote 2: John viii. 32, and following.]
The man who is especially preoccupied with the duties of public life,
does not readily forgive those who attach little importance to his
party quarrels. He especially blames those who subordinate political
to social questions, and profess a sort of indifference for the
former. In one sense he is right, for exclusive power is prejudicial
to the good government of human affairs. But what progress have
"parties" been able to effect in the general morality of our species?
If Jesus, instead of founding his heavenly kingdom, had gone to Rome,
had expended his energies in conspiring against Tiberius, or in
regretting Germanicus, what would have become of the world? As an
austere republican, or zealous patriot, he would not have arrested the
great current of the affairs of his age, but in declaring that
politics are insignificant, he has revealed to the world this truth,
that one's country is not everything, and that the man is before, and
higher than, the citizen.
Our principles of positive science are offended by the dreams
contained in the programme of Jesus. We know the history of the earth;
cosmical revolutions of the kind which Jesus expected are only
produced by geological or astronomical causes, the connection of which
with spiritual things has never yet been demonstrated. But, in order
to be just to great originators, they must not be judged by the
prejudices in which they have shared. Columbus discovered America,
though starting from very erroneous ideas; Newton believed his foolish
explanation of the Apocalypse to be as true as his system of the
world. Shall we place an ordinary man of our time above a Francis
d'Assisi, a St. Bernard, a Joan of Arc, or a Luther, because he is
free from errors which these last have professed? Should we measure
men by the correctness of their ideas of physics, and by the more or
less exact knowledge which they possess of the true system of the
world? Let us understand better the position of Jesus and that which
made his power. The Deism of the eighteenth century, and a certain
kind of Protestantism, have accustomed us to consider the founder of
the Christian faith only as a great moralist, a benefactor of mankind.
We see nothing more in the Gospel than good maxims; we throw a prudent
veil over the strange intellectual state in which it was originated.
There are even persons who regret that the French Revolution departed
more than once from principles, and that it was not brought about by
wise and moderate men. Let us not impose our petty and commonplace
ideas on these extraordinary movements so far above our every-day
life. Let us continue to admire the "morality of the gospel"--let us
suppress in our religious teachings the chimera which was its soul;
but do not let us believe that with the simple ideas of happiness, or
of individual morality, we stir the world. The idea of Jesus was much
more profound; it was the most revolutionary idea ever formed in a
human brain; it should be taken in its totality, and not with those
timid suppressions which deprive it of precisely that which has
rendered it efficacious for the regeneration of humanity.
The ideal is ever a Utopia. When we wish nowadays to represent the
Christ of the modern conscience, the consoler, and the judge of the
new times, what course do we take? That which Jesus himself did
eighteen hundred and thirty years ago. We suppose the conditions of
the real world quite other than what they are; we represent a moral
liberator breaking without weapons the chains of the negro,
ameliorating the condition of the poor, and giving liberty to
oppressed nations. We forget that this implies the subversion of the
world, the climate of Virginia and that of Congo modified, the blood
and the race of millions of men changed, our social complications
restored to a chimerical simplicity, and the political stratifications
of Europe displaced from their natural order. The "restitution of all
things"[1] desired by Jesus was not more difficult. This new earth,
this new heaven, this new Jerusalem which comes from above, this cry:
"Behold I make all things new!"[2] are the common characteristics of
reformers. The contrast of the ideal with the sad reality, always
produces in mankind those revolts against unimpassioned reason which
inferior minds regard as folly, till the day arrives in which they
triumph, and in which those who have opposed them are the first to
recognize their reasonableness.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ iii. 21.]
[Footnote 2: _Rev._ xxi. 1, 2, 5.]
That there may have been a contradiction between the belief in the
approaching end of the world and the general moral system of Jesus,
conceived in prospect of a permanent state of humanity, nearly
analogous to that which now exists, no one will attempt to deny.[1] It
was exactly this contradiction that insured the success of his work.
The millenarian alone would have done nothing lasting; the moralist
alone would have done nothing powerful. The millenarianism gave the
impulse, the moralist insured the future. Hence Christianity united
the two conditions of great success in this world, a revolutionary
starting-point, and the possibility of continuous life. Everything
which is intended to succeed ought to respond to these two wants; for
the world seeks both to change and to last. Jesus, at the same time
that he announced an unparalleled subversion in human affairs,
proclaimed the principles upon which society has reposed for eighteen
hundred years.
[Footnote 1: The millenarian sects of England present the same
contrast, I mean the belief in the near end of the world,
notwithstanding much good sense in the conduct of life, and an
extraordinary understanding of commercial affairs and industry.]
That which in fact distinguishes Jesus from the agitators of his time,
and from those of all ages, is his perfect idealism. Jesus, in some
respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government.
That government seemed to him purely and simply an abuse. He spoke of
it in vague terms, and as a man of the people who had no idea of
politics. Every magistrate appeared to him a natural enemy of the
people of God; he prepared his disciples for contests with the civil
powers, without thinking for a moment that there was anything in this
to be ashamed of.[1] But he never shows any desire to put himself in
the place of the rich and the powerful. He wishes to annihilate riches
and power, but not to appropriate them. He predicts persecution and
all kinds of punishment to his disciples;[2] but never once does the
thought of armed resistance appear. The idea of being all-powerful by
suffering and resignation, and of triumphing over force by purity of
heart, is indeed an idea peculiar to Jesus. Jesus is not a
spiritualist, for to him everything tended to a palpable realization;
he had not the least notion of a soul separated from the body. But he
is a perfect idealist, matter being only to him the sign of the idea,
and the real, the living expression of that which does not appear.
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 17, 18; Luke xii. 11.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 10, and following; x. entirely; Luke vi. 22, and
following; John xv. 18, and following; xvi. 2, and following, 20, 33;
xvii. 14.]
To whom should we turn, to whom should we trust to establish the
kingdom of God? The mind of Jesus on this point never hesitated. That
which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of
God.[1] The founders of the kingdom of God are the simple. Not the
rich, not the learned, not priests; but women, common people, the
humble, and the young.[2] The great characteristic of the Messiah is,
that "the poor have the gospel preached to them."[3] The idyllic and
gentle nature of Jesus here resumed the superiority. A great social
revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority
in this world will be humiliated, was his dream. The world will not
believe him; the world will kill him. But his disciples will not be of
the world.[4] They will be a little flock of the humble and the
simple, who will conquer by their very humility. The idea which has
made "Christian" the antithesis of "worldly," has its full
justification in the thoughts of the master.[5]
[Footnote 1: Luke xvi. 15.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 3, 10, xviii. 3, xix. 14, 23, 24, xxi. 31, xxii.
2, and following; Mark x. 14, 15, 23-25; Luke iv. 18, and following;
vi. 20, xviii. 16, 17, 24, 25.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xi. 5.]
[Footnote 4: John xv. 19, xvii. 14, 16.]
[Footnote 5: See especially chapter xvii. of St. John, expressing, if
not a real discourse delivered by Jesus, at least a sentiment which
was very deeply rooted in his disciples, and which certainly came from
him.]
CHAPTER VIII.
JESUS AT CAPERNAUM.
Beset by an idea, gradually becoming more and more imperious and
exclusive, Jesus proceeds henceforth with a kind of fatal
impassibility in the path marked out by his astonishing genius and the
extraordinary circumstances in which he lived. Hitherto he had only
communicated his thoughts to a few persons secretly attracted to him;
henceforward his teaching was sought after by the public. He was about
thirty years of age.[1] The little group of hearers who had
accompanied him to John the Baptist had, doubtless, increased, and
perhaps some disciples of John had attached themselves to him.[2] It
was with this first nucleus of a church that he boldly announced, on
his return into Galilee, the "good tidings of the kingdom of God."
This kingdom was approaching, and it was he, Jesus, who was that "Son
of Man" whom Daniel had beheld in his vision as the divine herald of
the last and supreme revelation.
[Footnote 1: Luke iii. 23; Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiph., _Adv.
Hær._, xxx. 13.]
[Footnote 2: John i. 37, and following.]
We must remember, that in the Jewish ideas, which were averse to art
and mythology, the simple form of man had a superiority over that of
_Cherubs_, and of the fantastic animals which the imagination of the
people, since it had been subjected to the influence of Assyria, had
ranged around the Divine Majesty. Already in Ezekiel,[1] the Being
seated on the supreme throne, far above the monsters of the
mysterious chariot, the great revealer of prophetic visions, had the
figure of a man. In the book of Daniel, in the midst of the vision of
the empires, represented by animals, at the moment when the great
judgment commences, and when the books are opened, a Being "like unto
a Son of Man," advances toward the Ancient of days, who confers on him
the power to judge the world, and to govern it for eternity.[2] _Son
of Man_, in the Semitic languages, especially in the Aramean dialects,
is a simple synonym of _man_. But this chief passage of Daniel struck
the mind; the words, _Son of Man_, became, at least in certain
schools,[3] one of the titles of the Messiah, regarded as judge of the
world, and as king of the new era about to be inaugurated.[4] The
application which Jesus made of it to himself was therefore the
proclamation of his Messiahship, and the affirmation of the coming
catastrophe in which he was to figure as judge, clothed with the full
powers which had been delegated to him by the Ancient of days.[5]
[Footnote 1: Chap. i. 5, 26, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Daniel vii. 13, 14; comp. viii. 15, x. 16.]
[Footnote 3: In John xii. 34, the Jews do not appear to be aware of
the meaning of this word.]
[Footnote 4: Book of Enoch, xlvi. 1-3, xlviii. 2, 3, lxii. 9, 14, lxx.
1 (division of Dilmann); Matt. x. 23, xiii. 41, xvi. 27, 28, xix. 28,
xxiv. 27, 30, 37, 39, 44, xxv. 31, xxvi. 64; Mark xiii. 26, xiv. 62;
Luke xii. 40, xvii. 24, 26, 30, xxi. 27, 36, xxii. 69; _Acts_ vii. 55.
But the most significant passage is John v. 27, compared with _Rev._
i. 13, xiv. 14. The expression "Son of woman," for the Messiah, occurs
once in the book of Enoch, lxii. 5.]
[Footnote 5: John v. 22, 27.]
The success of the teaching of the new prophet was this time decisive.
A group of men and women, all characterized by the same spirit of
juvenile frankness and simple innocence, adhered to him, and said,
"Thou art the Messiah." As the Messiah was to be the son of David,
they naturally conceded him this title, which was synonymous with the
former. Jesus allowed it with pleasure to be given to him, although
it might cause him some embarrassment, his birth being well known. The
name which he preferred himself was that of "Son of Man," an
apparently humble title, but one which connected itself directly with
the Messianic hopes. This was the title by which he designated
himself,[1] and he used "The Son of Man" as synonymous with the
pronoun "I," which he avoided. But he was never thus addressed,
doubtless because the name in question would be fully applicable to
him only on the day of his future appearance.
[Footnote 1: This title occurs eighty-three times in the Gospels, and
always in the discourses of Jesus.]
His centre of action, at this epoch of his life, was the little town
of Capernaum, situated on the shore of the lake of Gennesareth. The
name of Capernaum, containing the word _caphar_, "village," seems to
designate a small town of the ancient character, in opposition to the
great towns built according to the Roman method, like Tiberias.[1]
That name was so little known that Josephus, in one passage of his
writings,[2] takes it for the name of a fountain, the fountain having
more celebrity than the village situated near it. Like Nazareth,
Capernaum had no history, and had in no way participated in the
profane movement favored by the Herods. Jesus was much attached to
this town, and made it a second home.[3] Soon after his return, he
attempted to commence his work at Nazareth, but without success.[4] He
could not perform any miracle there, according to the simple remark
of one of his biographers.[5] The knowledge which existed there about
his family, not an important one, injured his authority too much.
People could not regard as the son of David, one whose brother,
sister, and brother-in-law they saw every day, and it is remarkable
besides, that his family were strongly opposed to him, and plainly
refused to believe in his mission.[6] The Nazarenes, much more
violent, wished, it is said, to kill him by throwing him from a steep
rock.[7] Jesus aptly remarked that this treatment was the fate of all
great men, and applied to himself the proverb, "No one is a prophet in
his own country."
[Footnote 1: It is true that Tell-Houm, which is generally identified
with Capernaum, contains the remains of somewhat fine monuments. But,
besides this identification being doubtful, these monuments may be of
the second or third century after Christ.]
[Footnote 2: _B.J._, III. x. 8.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. ix. 1; Mark ii. 1.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xiii. 54, and following; Mark vi. 1, and following;
Luke iv. 16, and following, 23-24; John iv. 44.]
[Footnote 5: Mark vi. 5; cf. Matt. xii. 58; Luke iv. 23.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xiii. 57; Mark vi. 4; John vii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Luke iv. 29. Probably the rock referred to here is the
peak which is very near Nazareth, above the present church of the
Maronites, and not the pretended _Mount of Precipitation_, at an
hour's journey from Nazareth. See Robinson, ii. 335, and following.]
This check far from discouraged him. He returned to Capernaum,[1]
where he met with a much more favorable reception, and from thence he
organized a series of missions among the small surrounding towns. The
people of this beautiful and fertile country were scarcely ever
assembled except on Saturday. This was the day which he chose for his
teaching. At that time each town had its synagogue, or place of
meeting. This was a rectangular room, rather small, with a portico,
decorated in the Greek style. The Jews not having any architecture of
their own, never cared to give these edifices an original style. The
remains of many ancient synagogues still exist in Galilee.[2] They are
all constructed of large and good materials; but their style is
somewhat paltry, in consequence of the profusion of floral ornaments,
foliage, and twisted work, which characterize the Jewish buildings.[3]
In the interior there were seats, a chair for public reading, and a
closet to contain the sacred rolls.[4] These edifices, which had
nothing of the character of a temple, were the centre of the whole
Jewish life. There the people assembled on the Sabbath for prayer, and
reading of the law and the prophets. As Judaism, except in Jerusalem,
had, properly speaking, no clergy, the first comer stood up, gave the
lessons of the day (_parasha_ and _haphtara_), and added thereto a
_midrash_, or entirely personal commentary, in which he expressed his
own ideas.[5] This was the origin of the "homily," the finished model
of which we find in the small treatises of Philo. The audience had the
right of making objections and putting questions to the reader; so
that the meeting soon degenerated into a kind of free assembly. It had
a president,[6] "elders,"[7] a _hazzan_, _i.e._, a recognized reader,
or apparitor,[8] deputies,[9] who were secretaries or messengers, and
conducted the correspondence between one synagogue and another, a
_shammash_, or sacristan.[10] The synagogues were thus really little
independent republics, having an extensive jurisdiction. Like all
municipal corporations, up to an advanced period of the Roman empire,
they issued honorary decrees,[11] voted resolutions, which had the
force of law for the community, and ordained corporal punishments, of
which the _hazzan_ was the ordinary executor.[12]
[Footnote 1: Matt. iv. 13; Luke iv. 31.]
[Footnote 2: At Tell-Houm, Irbid (Arbela), Meiron (Mero), Jisch
(Giscala), Kasyoun, Nabartein, and two at Kefr-Bereim.]
[Footnote 3: I dare not decide upon the age of those buildings, nor
consequently affirm that Jesus taught in any of them. How great would
be the interest attaching to the synagogue of Tell-Houm were we to
admit such an hypothesis! The great synagogue of Kefr-Bereim seems to
me the most ancient of all. Its style is moderately pure. That of
Kasyoun bears a Greek inscription of the time of Septimus Severus. The
great importance which Judaism acquired in Upper Galilee after the
Roman war, leads us to believe that several of these edifices only
date back to the third century--a time in which Tiberias became a sort
of capital of Judaism.]
[Footnote 4: 2 _Esdras_ viii. 4; Matt. xxiii. 6; Epist. James ii. 3;
Mishnah, _Megilla_, iii. 1; _Rosh Hasshana_, iv. 7, etc. See
especially the curious description of the synagogue of Alexandria in
the Talmud of Babylon, _Sukka_, 51 _b_.]
[Footnote 5: Philo, quoted in Eusebius, _Præp. Evang._, viii. 7, and
_Quod Omnis Probus Liber_, § 12; Luke iv. 16; _Acts_ xiii. 15, xv. 21;
Mishnah, _Megilla_, iii. 4, and following.]
[Footnote 6: [Greek: Archisunagôgos].]
[Footnote 7: [Greek: Presbyteroi].]
[Footnote 8: [Greek: Hupêretês].]
[Footnote 9: [Greek: Apostoloi], or [Greek: angeloi].]
[Footnote 10: [Greek: Diakonos]. Mark v. 22, 35, and following; Luke
iv. 20, vii. 3, viii. 41, 49, xiii. 14; _Acts_ xiii. 15, xviii. 8, 17;
_Rev._ ii. 1; Mishnah, _Joma_, vii. 1; _Rosh Hasshana_, iv. 9; Talm.
of Jerus., _Sanhedrim_, i. 7; Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxx. 4, 11.]
[Footnote 11: Inscription of Berenice, in the _Corpus Inscr. Græc._,
No. 5361; inscription of Kasyoun, in the _Mission de Phenicie_, book
iv. [in the press.]]
[Footnote 12: Matt. v. 25, x. 17, xxiii. 34; Mark xiii. 9; Luke xx.
11, xxi. 12; _Acts_ xxii. 19, xxvi. 11; 2 _Cor._ xi. 24; Mishnah,
_Maccoth_, iii. 12; Talmud of Babylon, _Megilla_, 7 _b;_ Epiph., _Adv.
Hær._, xxx. 11.]
With the extreme activity of mind which has always characterized the
Jews, such an institution, notwithstanding the arbitrary rigors it
tolerated, could not fail to give rise to very animated discussions.
Thanks to the synagogues, Judaism has been able to sustain intact
eighteen centuries of persecution. They were like so many little
separate worlds, in which the national spirit was preserved, and which
offered a ready field for intestine struggles. A large amount of
passion was expended there. The quarrels for precedence were of
constant occurrence. To have a seat of honor in the first rank was the
reward of great piety, or the most envied privilege of wealth.[1] On
the other hand, the liberty, accorded to every one, of instituting
himself reader and commentator of the sacred text, afforded marvelous
facilities for the propagation of new ideas. This was one of the
great instruments of power wielded by Jesus, and the most habitual
means he employed to propound his doctrinal instruction.[2] He entered
the synagogue, and stood up to read; the _hazzan_ offered him the
book, he unrolled it, and reading the _parasha_ or the _haphtara_ of
the day, he drew from this reading a lesson in conformity with his own
ideas.[3] As there were few Pharisees in Galilee, the discussion did
not assume that degree of vivacity, and that tone of acrimony against
him, which at Jerusalem would have arrested him at the outset. These
good Galileans had never heard discourses so adapted to their cheerful
imaginations.[4] They admired him, they encouraged him, they found
that he spoke well, and that his reasons were convincing. He answered
the most difficult objections with confidence; the charm of his speech
and his person captivated the people, whose simple minds had not yet
been cramped by the pedantry of the doctors.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxiii. 6; Epist. James ii. 3; Talmud of Bab.,
_Sukka_, 51 _b_.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. iv. 23, ix. 35; Mark i. 21, 39, vi. 2; Luke iv. 15,
16, 31, 44, xiii. 10; John xviii. 20.]
[Footnote 3: Luke iv. 16, and following. Comp. Mishnah, _Joma_, vii.
1.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. vii. 28, xiii. 54; Mark i. 22, vi. 1; Luke iv. 22,
32.]
The authority of the young master thus continued increasing every day,
and, naturally, the more people believed in him, the more he believed
in himself. His sphere of action was very limited. It was confined to
the valley in which the Lake of Tiberias is situated, and even in this
valley there was one region which he preferred. The lake is five or
six leagues long and three or four broad; although it presents the
appearance of an almost perfect oval, it forms, commencing from
Tiberias up to the entrance of the Jordan, a sort of gulf, the curve
of which measures about three leagues. Such is the field in which the
seed sown by Jesus found at last a well-prepared soil. Let us run
over it step by step, and endeavor to raise the mantle of aridity and
mourning with which it has been covered by the demon of Islamism.
On leaving Tiberias, we find at first steep rocks, like a mountain
which seems to roll into the sea. Then the mountains gradually recede;
a plain (_El Ghoueir_) opens almost at the level of the lake. It is a
delightful copse of rich verdure, furrowed by abundant streams which
proceed partly from a great round basin of ancient construction
(_Ain-Medawara_). At the entrance of this plain, which is, properly
speaking, the country of Gennesareth, there is the miserable village
of _Medjdel_. At the other extremity of the plain (always following
the sea), we come to the site of a town (_Khan-Minyeh_), with very
beautiful streams (_Ain-et-Tin_), a pretty road, narrow and deep, cut
out of the rock, which Jesus often traversed, and which serves as a
passage between the plain of Gennesareth and the northern slopes of
the lake. A quarter of an hour's journey from this place, we cross a
stream of salt water (_Ain-Tabiga_), issuing from the earth by several
large springs at a little distance from the lake, and entering it in
the midst of a dense mass of verdure. At last, after a journey of
forty minutes further, upon the arid declivity which extends from
Ain-Tabiga to the mouth of the Jordan, we find a few huts and a
collection of monumental ruins, called _Tell-Houm_.
Five small towns, the names of which mankind will remember as long as
those of Rome and Athens, were, in the time of Jesus, scattered in the
space which extends from the village of Medjdel to Tell-Houm. Of these
five towns, Magdala, Dalmanutha, Capernaum, Bethsaida, and
Chorazin,[1] the first alone can be found at the present time with
any certainty. The repulsive village of Medjdel has no doubt preserved
the name and the place of the little town which gave to Jesus his most
faithful female friend.[2] Dalmanutha[3] was probably near there. It
is possible that Chorazin was a little more inland, on the northern
side.[4] As to Bethsaida and Capernaum, it is in truth almost at
hazard that they have been placed at Tell-Houm, Ain-et-Tin,
Khan-Minyeh, and Ain-Medawara.[5] We might say that in topography, as
well as in history, a profound design has wished to conceal the traces
of the great founder. It is doubtful whether we shall ever be able,
upon this extensively devastated soil, to ascertain the places where
mankind would gladly come to kiss the imprint of his feet.
[Footnote 1: The ancient Kinnereth had disappeared or changed its
name.]
[Footnote 2: We know in fact that it was very near Tiberias.--Talmud
of Jerusalem, _Maasaroth_, iii. 1; _Shebiit_, ix. 1; _Erubin_, v. 7.]
[Footnote 3: Mark viii. 10. Comp. Matt. xv. 39.]
[Footnote 4: In the place named _Khorazi_ or _Bir-kerazeh_, above
Tell-Houm.]
[Footnote 5: The ancient hypothesis which identified Tell-Houm with
Capernaum, though strongly disputed some years since, has still
numerous defenders. The best argument we can give in its favor is the
name of _Tell-Houm_ itself, _Tell_ entering into the names of many
villages, and being a substitute for _Caphar_. It is impossible, on
the other hand, to find near Tell-Houm a fountain corresponding to
that mentioned by Josephus (_B.J._, III. x. 8.) This fountain of
Capernaum seems to be Ain-Medawara, but Ain-Medawara is half an hour's
journey from the lake, while Capernaum was a fishing town on the
borders of the lake (Matt. iv. 13; John vi. 17.) The difficulties
about Bethsaida are still greater; for the hypothesis, somewhat
generally admitted, of two Bethsaidas, the one on the eastern, the
other on the western shore of the lake, and at two or three leagues
from one another, is rather singular.]
The lake, the horizon, the shrubs, the flowers, are all that remain of
the little canton, three or four leagues in extent, where Jesus
founded his Divine work. The trees have totally disappeared. In this
country, in which the vegetation was formerly so brilliant that
Josephus saw in it a kind of miracle--Nature, according to him, being
pleased to bring hither side by side the plants of cold countries, the
productions of the torrid zone, and the trees of temperate climates,
laden all the year with flowers and fruits[1]--in this country
travellers are obliged now to calculate a day beforehand the place
where they will the next day find a shady resting-place. The lake has
become deserted. A single boat in the most miserable condition now
ploughs the waves once so rich in life and joy. But the waters are
always clear and transparent.[2] The shore, composed of rocks and
pebbles, is that of a little sea, not that of a pond, like the shores
of Lake Huleh. It is clean, neat, free from mud, and always beaten in
the same place by the light movement of the waves. Small promontories,
covered with rose laurels, tamarisks, and thorny caper bushes, are
seen there; at two places, especially at the mouth of the Jordan, near
Tarichea, and at the boundary of the plain of Gennesareth, there are
enchanting parterres, where the waves ebb and flow over masses of turf
and flowers. The rivulet of Ain-Tabiga makes a little estuary, full of
pretty shells. Clouds of aquatic birds hover over the lake. The
horizon is dazzling with light. The waters, of an empyrean blue,
deeply imbedded amid burning rocks, seem, when viewed from the height
of the mountains of Safed, to lie at the bottom of a cup of gold. On
the north, the snowy ravines of Hermon are traced in white lines upon
the sky; on the west, the high, undulating plateaux of Gaulonitis and
Perea, absolutely arid, and clothed by the sun with a sort of velvety
atmosphere, form one compact mountain, or rather a long and very
elevated terrace, which from Cæsarea Philippi runs indefinitely toward
the south.
[Footnote 1: _B.J._, III. x. 8.]
[Footnote 2: _B.J._, III. x. 7; Jac. de Vitri, in the _Gesta Dei per
Francos_, i. 1075.]
The heat on the shore is now very oppressive. The lake lies in a
hollow six hundred and fifty feet below the level of the
Mediterranean,[1] and thus participates in the torrid conditions of
the Dead Sea.[2] An abundant vegetation formerly tempered these
excessive heats; it would be difficult to understand that a furnace,
such as the whole basin of the lake now is, commencing from the month
of May, had ever been the scene of great activity. Josephus, moreover,
considered the country very temperate.[3] No doubt there has been
here, as in the _campagna_ of Rome, a change of climate introduced by
historical causes. It is Islamism, and especially the Mussulman
reaction against the Crusades, which has withered as with a blast of
death the district preferred by Jesus. The beautiful country of
Gennesareth never suspected that beneath the brow of this peaceful
wayfarer its highest destinies lay hidden.
[Footnote 1: This is the estimate of Captain Lynch (in Ritter,
_Erdkunde_ xv., 1st part, p. 20.) It nearly agrees with that of M. de
Bertou (_Bulletin de la Soc. de Geogr._, 2d series, xii., p. 146.)]
[Footnote 2: The depression of the Dead Sea is twice as much.]
[Footnote 3: _B.J._, III. x. 7 and 8.]
Dangerous countryman! Jesus has been fatal to the country which had
the formidable honor of bearing him. Having become a universal object
of love or of hate, coveted by two rival fanaticisms, Galilee, as the
price of its glory, has been changed to a desert. But who would say
that Jesus would have been happier, if he had lived obscure in his
village to the full age of man? And who would think of these
ungrateful Nazarenes, if one of them had not, at the risk of
compromising the future of their town, recognized his Father, and
proclaimed himself the Son of God?
Four or five large villages, situated at half an hour's journey from
one another, formed the little world of Jesus at the time of which we
speak. He appears never to have visited Tiberias, a city inhabited for
most part by Pagans, and the habitual residence of Antipas.[1]
Sometimes, however, he wandered from his favorite region. He went by
boat to the eastern shore, to Gergesa, for instance.[2] Toward the
north we see him at Paneas or Cæsarea Philippi,[3] at the foot of
Mount Hermon. Lastly, he journeyed once in the direction of Tyre and
Sidon,[4] a country which must have been marvellously flourishing at
that time. In all these countries he was in the midst of Paganism.[5]
At Cæsarea, he saw the celebrated grotto of _Panium_, thought to be
the source of the Jordan, and with which the popular belief had
associated strange legends;[6] he could admire the marble temple which
Herod had erected near there in honor of Augustus;[7] he probably
stopped before the numerous votive statues to Pan, to the Nymphs, to
the Echo of the Grotto, which piety had already begun to accumulate in
this beautiful place.[8]
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii. 3; _Vita_, 12, 13, 64.]
[Footnote 2: I adopt the opinion of Dr. Thomson (_The Land and the
Book_, ii. 34, and following), according to which the Gergesa of
Matthew viii. 28, identical with the Canaanite town of _Girgash_
(_Gen._ x. 16, xv. 21; _Deut._ vii. 1; _Josh._ xxiv. 11), would be the
site now named _Kersa_ or _Gersa_, on the eastern shore, nearly
opposite Magdala. Mark v. 1, and Luke viii. 26, name _Gadara_ or
_Gerasa_ instead of Gergesa. _Gerasa_ is an impossible reading, the
evangelists teaching us that the town in question was near the lake
and opposite Galilee. As to Gadara, now _Om-Keis_, at a journey of an
hour and a half from the lake and from the Jordan, the local
circumstances given by Mark and Luke scarcely suit it. It is possible,
moreover, that _Gergesa_ may have become _Gerasa_, a much more common
name, and that the topographical impossibilities which this latter
reading offered may have caused Gadara to be adopted.--Cf. Orig.,
_Comment. in Joann._, vi. 24, x. 10; Eusebius and St. Jerome, _De situ
et nomin. loc. hebr._, at the words [Greek: Gergesa], [Greek:
Gergasei].]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvi. 13; Mark viii. 27.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xv. 21; Mark vii. 24, 31.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _Vita_, 13.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XV. x. 3; _B.J._, I. xxi. 3, III. x. 7;
Benjamin of Tudela, p. 46, edit. Asher.]
[Footnote 7: Jos., _Ant._, XV. x. 3.]
[Footnote 8: _Corpus inscr. gr._, Nos. 4537, 4538, 4538 _b_, 4539.]
A rationalistic Jew, accustomed to take strange gods for deified men
or for demons, would consider all these figurative representations as
idols. The seductions of the naturalistic worships, which intoxicated
the more sensitive nations, never affected him. He was doubtless
ignorant of what the ancient sanctuary of Melkarth, at Tyre, might
still contain of a primitive worship more or less analogous to that of
the Jews.[1] The Paganism which, in Phoenicia, had raised a temple and
a sacred grove on every hill, all this aspect of great industry and
profane riches,[2] interested him but little. Monotheism takes away
all aptitude for comprehending the Pagan religion; the Mussulman,
thrown into polytheistic countries, seems to have no eyes. Jesus
assuredly learned nothing in these journeys. He returned always to his
well-beloved shore of Gennesareth. There was the centre of his
thoughts; there he found faith and love.
[Footnote 1: Lucianus (ut fertur), _De Dea Syria_, 3.]
[Footnote 2: The traces of the rich Pagan civilization of that time
still cover all the Beled-Besharrah, and especially the mountains
which form the group of Cape Blanc and Cape Nakoura.]
CHAPTER IX.
THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.
In this terrestrial paradise, which the great revolutions of history
had till then scarcely touched, there lived a population in perfect
harmony with the country itself, active, honest, joyous, and
tender-hearted. The Lake of Tiberias is one of the best supplied with
fish of any in the world.[1] Very productive fisheries were
established, especially at Bethsaida, and at Capernaum, and had
produced a certain degree of wealth. These families of fishermen
formed a gentle and peaceable society, extending by numerous ties of
relationship through the whole district of the lake which we have
described. Their comparatively easy life left entire freedom to their
imagination. The ideas about the kingdom of God found in these small
companies of worthy people more credence than anywhere else. Nothing
of that which we call civilization, in the Greek and worldly sense,
had reached them. Neither was there any of our Germanic and Celtic
earnestness; but, although goodness amongst them was often superficial
and without depth, their habits were quiet, and they were in some
degree intelligent and shrewd. We may imagine them as somewhat
analogous to the better populations of the Lebanon, but with the gift,
not possessed by the latter, of producing great men. Jesus met here
his true family. He installed himself as one of them; Capernaum
became "his own city;"[2] in the centre of the little circle which
adored him, he forgot his sceptical brothers, ungrateful Nazareth and
its mocking incredulity.
[Footnote 1: Matt. iv. 18; Luke v. 44, and following; John i. 44, xxi.
1, and following; Jos., _B.J._, III. x. 7; Jac. de Vitri, in the
_Gesta Dei per Francos_, i. p. 1075.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 1; Mark ii. 1, 2.]
One house especially at Capernaum offered him an agreeable refuge and
devoted disciples. It was that of two brothers, both sons of a certain
Jonas, who probably was dead at the period when Jesus came to stay on
the borders of the lake. These two brothers were Simon, surnamed
_Cephas_ or _Peter_, and Andrew. Born at Bethsaida,[1] they were
established at Capernaum when Jesus commenced his public life. Peter
was married and had children; his mother-in-law lived with him.[2]
Jesus loved this house and dwelt there habitually.[3] Andrew appears
to have been a disciple of John the Baptist, and Jesus had perhaps
known him on the banks of the Jordan.[4] The two brothers continued
always, even at the period in which it seems they must have been most
occupied with their master, to follow their business as fishermen.[5]
Jesus, who loved to play upon words, said at times that he would make
them fishers of men.[6] In fact, among all his disciples he had none
more faithfully attached.
[Footnote 1: John i. 44.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. viii. 14; Mark i. 30; Luke iv. 38; 1 _Cor._ ix. 5;
1 Peter v. 13; Clem. Alex., _Strom._, iii. 6, vii. 11; Pseudo-Clem.,
_Recogn._, vii. 25; Eusebius, _H.E._, iii. 30.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. viii. 14, xvii. 24; Mark i. 29-31; Luke iv. 38.]
[Footnote 4: John i. 40, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. iv. 18; Mark i. 16; Luke v. 3; John xxi. 3.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. iv. 19; Mark i. 17; Luke v. 10.]
Another family, that of Zabdia or Zebedee, a well-to-do fisherman and
owner of several boats,[1] gave Jesus a welcome reception. Zebedee had
two sons: James, who was the elder, and a younger son, John, who later
was called to play so prominent a part in the history of infant
Christianity. Both were zealous disciples. Salome, wife of Zebedee,
was also much attached to Jesus, and accompanied him until his
death.[2]
[Footnote 1: Mark i. 20; Luke v. 10, viii. 3; John xix. 27.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40, xvi. 1.]
Women, in fact, received him with eagerness. He manifested toward them
those reserved manners which render a very sweet union of ideas
possible between the two sexes. The separation of men from women,
which has prevented all refined development among the Semitic peoples,
was no doubt then, as in our days, much less rigorous in the rural
districts and villages than in the large towns. Three or four devoted
Galilean women always accompanied the young master, and disputed the
pleasure of listening to and of tending him in turn.[1] They infused
into the new sect an element of enthusiasm and of the marvellous, the
importance of which had already begun to be understood. One of them,
Mary of Magdala, who has rendered the name of this poor town so
celebrated in the world, appears to have been of a very enthusiastic
temperament. According to the language of the time, she had been
possessed by seven demons.[2] That is, she had been affected with
nervous and apparently inexplicable maladies. Jesus, by his pure and
sweet beauty, calmed this troubled nature. The Magdalene was faithful
to him, even unto Golgotha, and on the day but one after his death,
played a prominent part; for, as we shall see later, she was the
principal means by which faith in the resurrection was established.
Joanna, wife of Chuza, one of the stewards of Antipas, Susanna, and
others who have remained unknown, followed him constantly and
ministered unto him.[3] Some were rich, and by their fortune enabled
the young prophet to live without following the trade which he had
until then practiced.[4]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 55, 56; Mark xv. 40, 41; Luke viii. 2, 3,
xxiii. 49.]
[Footnote 2: Mark xvi. 9; Luke viii. 2; cf. _Tobit_ iii. 8, vi. 14.]
[Footnote 3: Luke viii. 3, xxiv. 10.]
[Footnote 4: Luke viii. 3.]
Many others followed him habitually, and recognized him as their
master--a certain Philip of Bethsaida; Nathanael, son of Tolmai or
Ptolemy, of Cana, perhaps a disciple of the first period;[1] and
Matthew, probably the one who was the Xenophon of the infant
Christianity. The latter had been a publican, and, as such, doubtless
handled the _Kalam_ more easily than the others. Perhaps it was this
that suggested to him the idea of writing the _Logia_,[2] which are
the basis of what we know of the teachings of Jesus. Among the
disciples are also mentioned Thomas, or Didymus,[3] who doubted
sometimes, but who appears to have been a man of warm heart and of
generous sympathies;[4] one Lebbæus, or Thaddeus; Simon Zelotes,[5]
perhaps a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite, belonging to the party of
the _Kenaïm_, which was formed about that time, and which was soon to
play so great a part in the movements of the Jewish people. Lastly,
Judas, son of Simon, of the town of Kerioth, who was an exception in
the faithful flock, and drew upon himself such a terrible notoriety.
He was the only one who was not a Galilean. Kerioth was a town at the
extreme south of the tribe of Judah,[6] a day's journey beyond Hebron.
[Footnote 1: John i. 44, and following; xxi. 2. I admit the
identification of Nathanael with the apostle who figures in the lists
under the name of Bartholomew.]
[Footnote 2: Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 39.]
[Footnote 3: This second name is the Greek translation of the first.]
[Footnote 4: John xi. 16, xx. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. x. 4; Mark iii. 18; Luke vi. 15; _Acts_ i. 13;
Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiphanes, _Adv. Hær._, xxx. 13.]
[Footnote 6: Now _Kuryétein_, or _Kereitein_.]
We have seen that in general the family of Jesus were little inclined
toward him.[1] James and Jude, however, his cousins by Mary Cleophas,
henceforth became his disciples, and Mary Cleophas herself was one of
the women who followed him to Calvary.[2] At this period we do not see
his mother beside him. It was only after the death of Jesus that Mary
acquired great importance,[3] and that the disciples sought to attach
her to themselves.[4] It was then, also, that the members of the
family of the founder, under the title of "brothers of of the Lord,"
formed an influential group, which was a long time at the head of the
church of Jerusalem, and which, after the sack of the city, took
refuge in Batanea.[5] The simple fact of having been familiar with him
became a decisive advantage, in the same manner as, after the death of
Mahomet, the wives and daughters of the prophet, who had no importance
in his life, became great authorities.
[Footnote 1: The circumstance related in John xix. 25-27 seems to
imply that at no period of the public life of Jesus did his own
brothers become attached to him.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; John xix. 25.]
[Footnote 3: _Acts_ i. 14. Compare Luke i. 28, ii. 35, already
implying a great respect for Mary.]
[Footnote 4: John xix. 25, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Julius Africanus, in Eusebius, _H.E._, i. 7.]
In this friendly group Jesus had evidently his favorites, and, so to
speak, an inner circle. The two sons of Zebedee, James and John,
appear to have been in the first rank. They were full of fire and
passion. Jesus had aptly surnamed them "sons of thunder," on account
of their excessive zeal, which, if it could have controlled the
thunder, would often have made use of it.[1] John, especially, appears
to have been on very familiar terms with Jesus. Perhaps the warm
affection which the master felt for this disciple has been
exaggerated in his Gospel, in which the personal interests of the
writer are not sufficiently concealed.[2] The most significant fact
is, that, in the synoptical Gospels, Simon Bar-jona, or Peter, James,
son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, form a sort of intimate
council, which Jesus calls at certain times, when he suspects the
faith and intelligence of the others.[3] It seems, moreover, that they
were all three associated in their fishing.[4] The affection of Jesus
for Peter was strong. The character of the latter--upright, sincere,
impulsive--pleased Jesus, who at times permitted himself to smile at
his resolute manners. Peter, little of a mystic, communicated to the
master his simple doubts, his repugnances, and his entirely human
weaknesses,[5] with an honest frankness which recalls that of
Joinville toward St. Louis. Jesus chided him, in a friendly manner,
full of confidence and esteem. As to John, his youth,[6] his exquisite
tenderness of heart,[7] and his lively imagination,[8] must have had a
great charm. The personality of this extraordinary man, who has
exerted so peculiar an influence on infant Christianity, did not
develop itself till afterward. When old, he wrote that strange
Gospel,[9] which contains such precious teaching, but in which, in our
opinion, the character of Jesus is falsified upon many points. The
nature of John was too powerful and too profound for him to bend
himself to the impersonal tone of the first evangelists. He was the
biographer of Jesus, as Plato was of Socrates. Accustomed to ponder
over his recollections with the feverish restlessness of an excited
mind, he transformed his master in wishing to describe him, and
sometimes he leaves it to be suspected (unless other hands have
altered his work) that perfect good faith was not invariably his rule
and law in the composition of this singular writing.
[Footnote 1: Mark iii. 17, ix. 37, and following; x. 35, and
following; Luke ix. 49, and following; 54, and following.]
[Footnote 2: John xiii. 23, xviii. 15, and following, xix. 26, 27, xx.
2, 4, xxi. 7, 20, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvii. 1, xxvi. 37; Mark v. 37, ix. 1, xiii. 3, xiv.
33; Luke ix. 28. The idea that Jesus had communicated to these three
disciples a Gnosis, or secret doctrine, was very early spread. It is
singular that John, in his Gospel, does not once mention James, his
brother.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. iv. 18-22; Luke v. 10; John xxi. 2, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xiv. 28, xvi. 22; Mark viii. 32, and following.]
[Footnote 6: He appears to have lived till near the year 100. See his
Gospel, xxi. 15-23, and the ancient authorities collected by Eusebius,
_H.E._, iii. 20, 23.]
[Footnote 7: See the epistles attributed to him, which are certainly
by the same author as the fourth Gospel.]
[Footnote 8: Nevertheless we do not mean to affirm that the Apocalypse
is by him.]
[Footnote 9: The common tradition seems sufficiently justified to me
on this point. It is evident, besides, that the school of John
retouched his Gospel (see the whole of chap. xxi.)]
No hierarchy, properly speaking, existed in the new sect. They were to
call each other "brothers;" and Jesus absolutely proscribed titles of
superiority, such as _rabbi_, "master," father--he alone being master,
and God alone being father. The greatest was to become the servant of
the others.[1] Simon Bar-jona, however, was distinguished amongst his
fellows by a peculiar degree of importance. Jesus lived with him, and
taught in his boat;[2] his house was the centre of the Gospel
preaching. In public he was regarded as the chief of the flock; and it
is to him that the overseers of the tolls address themselves to
collect the taxes which were due from the community.[3] He was the
first who had recognized Jesus as the Messiah.[4] In a moment of
unpopularity, Jesus, asking of his disciples, "Will ye also go away?"
Simon answered, "Lord, to whom should we go? Thou hast the words of
eternal life."[5] Jesus, at various times, gave him a certain priority
in his church;[6] and gave him the Syrian surname of _Kepha_ (stone),
by which he wished to signify by that, that he made him the
corner-stone of the edifice.[7] At one time he seems even to promise
him "the keys of the kingdom of heaven," and to grant him the right of
pronouncing upon earth decisions which should always be ratified in
eternity.[8]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xviii. 4, xx. 25-26, xxiii. 8-12; Mark ix. 34, x.
42-46.]
[Footnote 2: Luke v. 3.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvii. 23.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xvi. 16, 17.]
[Footnote 5: John vi. 68-70.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 2; Luke xxii. 32; John xxi. 15, and following;
_Acts_ i., ii., v., etc.; _Gal._ i. 18, ii. 7, 8.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xvi. 18; John i. 42.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 19. Elsewhere, it is true (Matt. xviii. 18),
the same power is granted to all the apostles.]
No doubt, this priority of Peter excited a little jealousy. Jealousy
was kindled especially in view of the future--and of this kingdom of
God, in which all the disciples would be seated upon thrones, on the
right and on the left of the master, to judge the twelve tribes of
Israel.[1] They asked who would then be nearest to the Son of man, and
act in a manner as his prime minister and assessor. The two sons of
Zebedee aspired to this rank. Preoccupied with such a thought, they
prompted their mother Salome, who one day took Jesus aside, and asked
him for the two places of honor for her sons.[2] Jesus evaded the
request by his habitual maxim that he who exalteth himself shall be
humbled, and that the kingdom of heaven will be possessed by the
lowly. This created some disturbance in the community; there was great
discontent against James and John.[3] The same rivalry appears to show
itself in the Gospel of John, where the narrator unceasingly declares
himself to be "the disciple whom Jesus loved," to whom the master in
dying confided his mother, and seeks systematically to place himself
near Simon Peter, and at times to put himself before him, in important
circumstances where the older evangelists had omitted mentioning
him.[4]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xviii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 33; Luke ix. 46,
xxii. 30.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xx. 20, and following; Mark x. 35, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Mark x. 41.]
[Footnote 4: John xviii. 15, and following, xix. 26, 27, xx. 2, and
following, xxi. 7, 21. Comp. i. 35, and following, in which the
disciple referred to is probably John.]
Among the preceding personages, all those of whom we know anything had
begun by being fishermen. At all events, none of them belonged to a
socially elevated class. Only Matthew or Levi, son of Alpheus,[1] had
been a publican. But those to whom they gave this name in Judea were
not the farmers-general of taxes, men of elevated rank (always Roman
patricians), who were called at Rome _publicani_.[2] They were the
agents of these contractors, employés of low rank, simply officers of
the customs. The great route from Acre to Damascus, one of the most
ancient routes of the world, which crossed Galilee, skirting the
lake,[3] made this class of employé very numerous there. Capernaum,
which was perhaps on the road, possessed a numerous staff of them.[4]
This profession is never popular, but with the Jews it was considered
quite criminal. Taxation, new to them, was the sign of their
subjection; one school, that of Judas the Gaulonite, maintained that
to pay it was an act of paganism. The customs-officers, also, were
abhorred by the zealots of the law. They were only named in company
with assassins, highway robbers, and men of infamous life.[5] The Jews
who accepted such offices were excommunicated, and became incapable of
making a will; their money was accursed, and the casuists forbade the
changing of money with them.[6] These poor men, placed under the ban
of society, visited amongst themselves. Jesus accepted a dinner
offered him by Levi, at which there were, according to the language of
the time, "many publicans and sinners." This gave great offense.[7] In
these ill-reputed houses there was a risk of meeting bad society. We
shall often see him thus, caring little to shock the prejudices of
well-disposed persons, seeking to elevate the classes humiliated by
the orthodox, and thus exposing himself to the liveliest reproaches of
the zealots.
[Footnote 1: Matt. ix. 9, x. 3; Mark ii. 14, iii. 18; Luke v. 27, vi.
15; _Acts_ i. 13. Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiph., _Adv. Hær._,
xxx. 13. We must suppose, however strange it may seem, that these two
names were borne by the same personage. The narrative, Matt. ix. 9,
conceived in accordance with the ordinary model of legends, describing
the call to apostleship, is, it is true, somewhat vague, and has
certainly not been written by the apostle in question. But we must
remember that, in the existing Gospel of Matthew, the only part which
is by the apostle consists of the Discourses of Jesus. See Papias, in
Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, III. 39.]
[Footnote 2: Cicero, _De Provinc. Consular._, 5; _Pro Plancio_, 9;
Tac., _Ann._, IV. 6; Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XII. 32; Appian, _Bell.
Civ._, II. 13.]
[Footnote 3: It remained celebrated, up to the time of the Crusades,
under the name of _Via Maris_. Cf. Isaiah ix. 1; Matt. iv. 13-15;
Tobit, i. 1. I think that the road cut in the rock near Ain-et-Tin
formed part of it, and that the route was directed from thence toward
the _Bridge of the Daughters of Jacob_, just as it is now. A part of
the road from Ain-et-Tin to this bridge is of ancient construction.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. ix. 9, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 46, 47, ix. 10, 11, xi. 19, xviii. 17, xxi. 31,
32; Mark ii. 15, 16; Luke v. 30, vii. 34, xv. 1, xviii. 11, xix. 7;
Lucian, _Necyomant_, ii.; Dio Chrysost., orat. iv., p. 85, orat. xiv.,
p. 269 (edit. Emperius); Mishnah, _Nedarim_, iii. 4.]
[Footnote 6: Mishnah, _Baba Kama_, x. 1; Talmud of Jerusalem, _Demai_,
ii. 3; Talmud of Bab., _Sanhedrim_, 25 _b_.]
[Footnote 7: Luke v. 29, and following.]
Jesus owed these numerous conquests to the infinite charm of his
person and his speech. A penetrating word, a look falling upon a
simple conscience, which only wanted awakening, gave him an ardent
disciple. Sometimes Jesus employed an innocent artifice, which Joan of
Arc also used: he affected to know something intimate respecting him
whom he wished to gain, or he would perhaps recall to him some
circumstance dear to his heart. It was thus that he attracted
Nathanael,[1] Peter,[2] and the Samaritan woman.[3] Concealing the
true source of his strength--his superiority over all that surrounded
him--he permitted people to believe (in order to satisfy the ideas of
the time--ideas which, moreover, fully coincided with his own) that a
revelation from on high revealed to him all secrets and laid bare all
hearts. Every one thought that Jesus lived in a sphere superior to
that of humanity. They said that he conversed on the mountains with
Moses and Elias;[4] they believed that in his moments of solitude the
angels came to render him homage, and established a supernatural
intercourse between him and heaven.[5]
[Footnote 1: John i. 48, and following.]
[Footnote 2: John i. 42.]
[Footnote 3: John iv. 17, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xvii. 3; Mark ix. 3; Luke ix. 30-31.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. iv. 11; Mark i. 13.]
CHAPTER X.
THE PREACHINGS ON THE LAKE.
Such was the group which, on the borders of the lake of Tiberias,
gathered around Jesus. The aristocracy was represented there by a
customs-officer and by the wife of one of Herod's stewards. The rest
were fishermen and common people. Their ignorance was extreme; their
intelligence was feeble; they believed in apparitions and spirits.[1]
Not one element of Greek culture had penetrated this first assembly of
the saints. They had very little Jewish instruction; but heart and
good-will overflowed. The beautiful climate of Galilee made the life
of these honest fishermen a perpetual delight. They truly preluded the
kingdom of God--simple, good, and happy--rocked gently on their
delightful little sea, or at night sleeping on its shores. We do not
realize to ourselves the intoxication of a life which thus glides away
in the face of heaven--the sweet yet strong love which this perpetual
contact with Nature gives, and the dreams of these nights passed in
the brightness of the stars, under an azure dome of infinite expanse.
It was during such a night that Jacob, with his head resting upon a
stone, saw in the stars the promise of an innumerable posterity, and
the mysterious ladder by which the angels of God came and went from
heaven to earth. At the time of Jesus the heavens were not closed, nor
the earth grown cold. The cloud still opened above the Son of man;
the angels ascended and descended upon his head;[2] the visions of
the kingdom of God were everywhere, for man carried them in his heart.
The clear and mild eyes of these simple souls contemplated the
universe in its ideal source. The world unveiled perhaps its secret to
the divinely enlightened conscience of these happy children, whose
purity of heart deserved one day to behold God.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 26; Mark vi. 49; Luke xxiv. 39; John vi. 19.]
[Footnote 2: John i. 51.]
Jesus lived with his disciples almost always in the open air.
Sometimes he got into a boat, and instructed his hearers, who were
crowded upon the shore.[1] Sometimes he sat upon the mountains which
bordered the lake, where the air is so pure and the horizon so
luminous. The faithful band led thus a joyous and wandering life,
gathering the inspirations of the master in their first bloom. An
innocent doubt was sometimes raised, a question slightly sceptical;
but Jesus, with a smile or a look, silenced the objection. At each
step--in the passing cloud, the germinating seed, the ripening
corn--they saw the sign of the Kingdom drawing nigh, they believed
themselves on the eve of seeing God, of being masters of the world;
tears were turned into joy; it was the advent upon earth of universal
consolation.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 1, 2; Mark iii. 9, iv. 1; Luke v. 3.]
"Blessed," said the master, "are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for
they shall be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of
God.
"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven."[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 3-10; Luke vi. 20-25.]
His preaching was gentle and pleasing, breathing Nature and the
perfume of the fields. He loved the flowers, and took from them his
most charming lessons. The birds of heaven, the sea, the mountains,
and the games of children, furnished in turn the subject of his
instructions. His style had nothing of the Grecian in it, but
approached much more to that of the Hebrew parabolists, and especially
of sentences from the Jewish doctors, his contemporaries, such as we
read them in the "_Pirké Aboth_." His teachings were not very
extended, and formed a species of sorites in the style of the Koran,
which, joined together, afterward composed those long discourses which
were written by Matthew.[1] No transition united these diverse pieces;
generally, however, the same inspiration penetrated them and made them
one. It was, above all, in parable that the master excelled. Nothing
in Judaism had given him the model of this delightful style.[2] He
created it. It is true that we find in the Buddhist books parables of
exactly the same tone and the same character as the Gospel
parables;[3] but it is difficult to admit that a Buddhist influence
has been exercised in these. The spirit of gentleness and the depth of
feeling which equally animate infant Christianity and Buddhism,
suffice perhaps to explain these analogies.
[Footnote 1: This is what the [Greek: Logia kuriaka] were called.
Papias, in Eusebius, _H.E._, iii. 39.]
[Footnote 2: The apologue, as we find it in _Judges_ ix. 8, and
following, 2 _Sam._ xii. 1, and following, only resembles the Gospel
parable in form. The profound originality of the latter is in the
thought with which it is filled.]
[Footnote 3: See especially the _Lotus of the Good Law_, chap. iii.
and iv.]
A total indifference to exterior life and the vain appanage of the
"comfortable," which our drearier countries make necessary to us, was
the consequence of the sweet and simple life lived in Galilee. Cold
climates, by compelling man to a perpetual contest with external
nature, cause too much value to be attached to researches after
comfort and luxury. On the other hand, the countries which awaken few
desires are the countries of idealism and of poesy. The accessories of
life are there insignificant compared with the pleasure of living. The
embellishment of the house is superfluous, for it is frequented as
little as possible. The strong and regular food of less generous
climates would be considered heavy and disagreeable. And as to the
luxury of garments, what can rival that which God has given to the
earth and the birds of heaven? Labor in climates of this kind appears
useless; what it gives is not equal to what it costs. The animals of
the field are better clothed than the most opulent man, and they do
nothing. This contempt, which, when it is not caused by idleness,
contributes greatly to the elevation of the soul, inspired Jesus with
some charming apologues: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon
earth," said he, "where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves
break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do
not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also.[1] No man can serve two masters: for either he
will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to one and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.[2] Therefore I say
unto you, take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the
life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of
the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better
than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his
stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of
the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet
I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought,
saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal
shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek;
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God,[3] and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take
therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought
of the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof."[4]
[Footnote 1: Compare Talm. of Bab., _Baba Bathra_, 11 _a_.]
[Footnote 2: The god of riches and hidden treasures, a kind of Plutus
in the Phoenician and Syrian mythology.]
[Footnote 3: I here adopt the reading of Lachmann and Tischendorf.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. vi. 19-21, 24-34. Luke xii. 22-31, 33, 34, xvi. 13.
Compare the precepts in Luke x. 7, 8, full of the same simple
sentiment, and Talmud of Babylon, _Sota_, 48 _b_.]
This essentially Galilean sentiment had a decisive influence on the
destiny of the infant sect. The happy flock, relying on the heavenly
Father for the satisfaction of its wants, had for its first principle
the regarding of the cares of life as an evil which choked the germ of
all good in man.[1] Each day they asked of God the bread for the
morrow.[2] Why lay up treasure? The kingdom of God is at hand. "Sell
that ye have and give alms," said the master. "Provide yourselves bags
which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not."[3]
What more foolish than to heap up treasures for heirs whom thou wilt
never behold?[4] As an example of human folly, Jesus loved to cite the
case of a man who, after having enlarged his barns and amassed wealth
for long years, died before having enjoyed it![5] The brigandage which
was deeply rooted in Galilee,[6] gave much force to these views. The
poor, who did not suffer from it, would regard themselves as the
favored of God; whilst the rich, having a less sure possession, were
the truly disinherited. In our societies, established upon a very
rigorous idea of property, the position of the poor is horrible; they
have literally no place under the sun. There are no flowers, no grass,
no shade, except for him who possesses the earth. In the East, these
are gifts of God which belong to no one. The proprietor has but a
slender privilege; nature is the patrimony of all.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 22; Mark iv. 19; Luke viii. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vi. 11; Luke xi. 3. This is the meaning of the word
[Greek: epiousios].]
[Footnote 3: Luke xii. 33, 34.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xii. 20.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xii. 16, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XVII. x. 4, and following: _Vita_, 11,
etc.]
The infant Christianity, moreover, in this only followed the footsteps
of the Essenes, or Therapeutæ, and of the Jewish sects founded on the
monastic life. A communistic element entered into all these sects,
which were equally disliked by Pharisees and Sadducees. The Messianic
doctrine, which was entirely political among the orthodox Jews, was
entirely social amongst them. By means of a gentle, regulated,
contemplative existence, leaving its share to the liberty of the
individual, these little churches thought to inaugurate the heavenly
kingdom upon earth. Utopias of a blessed life, founded on the
brotherhood of men and the worship of the true God, occupied elevated
souls, and produced from all sides bold and sincere, but short-lived
attempts to realize these doctrines.
Jesus, whose relations with the Essenes are difficult to determine
(resemblances in history not always implying relations), was on this
point certainly their brother. The community of goods was for some
time the rule in the new society.[1] Covetousness was the cardinal
sin.[2] Now it must be remarked that the sin of covetousness, against
which Christian morality has been so severe, was then the simple
attachment to property. The first condition of becoming a disciple of
Jesus was to sell one's property and to give the price of it to the
poor. Those who recoiled from this extremity were not admitted into
the community.[3] Jesus often repeated that he who has found the
kingdom of God ought to buy it at the price of all his goods, and that
in so doing he makes an advantageous bargain. "The kingdom of heaven
is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found,
he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and
buyeth that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a
merchantman seeking goodly pearls; who, when he had found one pearl of
great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it."[4] Alas!
the inconveniences of this plan were not long in making themselves
felt. A treasurer was wanted. They chose for that office Judas of
Kerioth. Rightly or wrongly, they accused him of stealing from the
common purse;[5] it is certain that he came to a bad end.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ iv. 32, 34-37; v. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 22; Luke xii. 15, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xix. 21; Mark x. 21, and following, 29, 30; Luke
xviii. 22, 23, 28.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xiii. 44-46.]
[Footnote 5: John xii. 6.]
Sometimes the master, more versed in things of heaven than those of
earth, taught a still more singular political economy. In a strange
parable, a steward is praised for having made himself friends among
the poor at the expense of his master, in order that the poor might in
their turn introduce him into the kingdom of heaven. The poor, in
fact, becoming the dispensers of this kingdom, will only receive those
who have given to them. A prudent man, thinking of the future, ought
therefore to seek to gain their favor. "And the Pharisees also," says
the evangelist, "who were covetous, heard all these things: and they
derided him."[1] Did they also hear the formidable parable which
follows? "There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple
and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a
certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of
sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich
man's table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came
to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into
Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;[2] and in
hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar
off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham,
have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his
finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst
thy good things; and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is
comforted and thou art tormented."[3] What more just? Afterward this
parable was called that of the "wicked rich man." But it is purely and
simply the parable of the "rich man." He is in hell because he is
rich, because he does not give his wealth to the poor, because he
dines well, while others at his door dine badly. Lastly, in a less
extravagant moment, Jesus does not make it obligatory to sell one's
goods and give them to the poor except as a suggestion toward greater
perfection. But he still makes this terrible declaration: "It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter into the kingdom of God."[4]
[Footnote 1: Luke xvi. 1-14.]
[Footnote 2: See the Greek text.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xvi. 19-25. Luke, I am aware, has a very decided
communistic tendency (comp. vi. 20, 21, 25, 26), and I think he has
exaggerated this shade of the teaching of Jesus. But the features of
the [Greek: Logia] of Matthew are sufficiently significant.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xix. 24; Mark x. 25; Luke xviii. 25. This
proverbial phrase is found in the Talmud (Bab., _Berakoth_, 55 _b_,
_Baba metsia_, 38 _b_) and in the Koran (Sur., vii. 38.) Origen and
the Greek interpreters, ignorant of the Semitic proverb, thought that
it meant a cable ([Greek: kamilos]).]
An admirable idea governed Jesus in all this, as well as the band of
joyous children who accompanied him and made him for eternity the true
creator of the peace of the soul, the great consoler of life. In
disengaging man from what he called "the cares of the world," Jesus
might go to excess and injure the essential conditions of human
society; but he founded that high spiritualism which for centuries
has filled souls with joy in the midst of this vale of tears. He saw
with perfect clearness that man's inattention, his want of philosophy
and morality, come mostly from the distractions which he permits
himself, the cares which besiege him, and which civilization
multiplies beyond measure.[1] The Gospel, in this manner, has been the
most efficient remedy for the weariness of ordinary life, a perpetual
_sursum corda_, a powerful diversion from the miserable cares of
earth, a gentle appeal like that of Jesus in the ear of
Martha--"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many
things; but one thing is needful." Thanks to Jesus, the dullest
existence, that most absorbed by sad or humiliating duties, has had
its glimpse of heaven. In our busy civilizations the remembrance of
the free life of Galilee has been like perfume from another world,
like the "dew of Hermon,"[2] which has prevented drought and
barrenness from entirely invading the field of God.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 22.]
[Footnote 2: Psalm cxxxiii. 3.]
CHAPTER XI.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD CONCEIVED AS THE INHERITANCE OF THE POOR.
These maxims, good for a country where life is nourished by the air
and the light, and this delicate communism of a band of children of
God reposing in confidence on the bosom of their Father, might suit a
simple sect constantly persuaded that its Utopia was about to be
realized. But it is clear that they could not satisfy the whole of
society. Jesus understood very soon, in fact, that the official world
of his time would by no means adopt his kingdom. He took his
resolution with extreme boldness. Leaving the world, with its hard
heart and narrow prejudices on one side, he turned toward the simple.
A vast substitution of classes would take place. The kingdom of God
was made--1st, for children, and those who resemble them; 2d, for the
outcasts of this world, victims of that social arrogance which
repulses the good but humble man; 3d, for heretics and schismatics,
publicans, Samaritans, and Pagans of Tyre and Sidon. An energetic
parable explained this appeal to the people and justified it.[1] A
king has prepared a wedding feast, and sends his servants to seek
those invited. Each one excuses himself; some ill-treat the
messengers. The king, therefore, takes a decided step. The great
people have not accepted his invitation. Be it so. His guests shall be
the first comers; the people collected from the highways and byways,
the poor, the beggars, and the lame; it matters not who, the room must
be filled. "For I say unto you," said he, "that none of those men
which were bidden shall taste of my supper."
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxii. 2, and following; Luke xiv. 16, and
following. Comp. Matt. viii. 11, 12, xxi. 33, and following.]
Pure _Ebionism_--that is, the doctrine that the poor (_ebionim_) alone
shall be saved, that the reign of the poor is approaching--was,
therefore, the doctrine of Jesus. "Woe unto you that are rich," said
he, "for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are
full, for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall
mourn and weep."[1] "Then said he also to him that bade him, When thou
makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren,
neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they also bid thee
again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast,
call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be
blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be
recompensed at the resurrection of the just."[2] It is perhaps in an
analogous sense that he often repeated, "Be good bankers"[3]--that is
to say, make good investments for the kingdom of God, in giving your
wealth to the poor, conformably to the old proverb, "He that hath pity
upon the poor, lendeth unto the Lord."[4]
[Footnote 1: Luke vi. 24, 25.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xiv. 12, 14.]
[Footnote 3: A saying preserved by very ancient tradition, and much
used, Clement of Alexandria, _Strom._ i. 28. It is also found in
Origen, St. Jerome, and a great number of the Fathers of the Church.]
[Footnote 4: Prov. xix. 17.]
This, however, was not a new fact. The most exalted democratic
movement of which humanity has preserved the remembrance (the only
one, also, which has succeeded, for it alone has maintained itself in
the domain of pure thought), had long disturbed the Jewish race. The
thought that God is the avenger of the poor and the weak, against the
rich and the powerful, is found in each page of the writings of the
Old Testament. The history of Israel is of all histories that in which
the popular spirit has most constantly predominated. The prophets, the
true, and, in one sense, the boldest tribunes, had thundered
incessantly against the great, and established a close relation, on
the one hand, between the words "rich, impious, violent, wicked," and,
on the other, between the words "poor, gentle, humble, pious."[1]
Under the Seleucidæ, the aristocrats having almost all apostatized and
gone over to Hellenism, these associations of ideas only became
stronger. The Book of Enoch contains still more violent maledictions
than those of the Gospel against the world, the rich, and the
powerful.[2] Luxury is there depicted as a crime. The "Son of man," in
this strange Apocalypse, dethrones kings, tears them from their
voluptuous life, and precipitates them into hell.[3] The initiation of
Judea into secular life, the recent introduction of an entirely
worldly element of luxury and comfort, provoked a furious reaction in
favor of patriarchal simplicity. "Woe unto you who despise the humble
dwelling and inheritance of your fathers! Woe unto you who build your
palaces with the sweat of others! Each stone, each brick, of which it
is built, is a sin."[4] The name of "poor" (_ebion_) had become a
synonym of "saint," of "friend of God." This was the name that the
Galilean disciples of Jesus loved to give themselves; it was for a
long time the name of the Judaizing Christians of Batanea and of the
Hauran (Nazarenes, Hebrews) who remained faithful to the tongue, as
well as to the primitive instructions of Jesus, and who boasted that
they possessed amongst themselves the descendants of his family.[5] At
the end of the second century, these good sectaries, having remained
beyond the reach of the great current which had carried away all the
other churches, were treated as heretics (_Ebionites_), and a
pretended heretical leader (_Ebion_) was invented to explain their
name.[6]
[Footnote 1: See, in particular, Amos ii. 6; Isa. lxiii. 9; Ps. xxv.
9, xxxvii. 11, lxix. 33; and, in general, the Hebrew dictionaries, at
the words:
[Hebrew: evion, dal, ani, anav, chasid, ashir, holelim,
aritz].]
[Footnote 2: Ch. lxii., lxiii., xcvii., c., civ.]
[Footnote 3: _Enoch_, ch. xlvi. 4-8.]
[Footnote 4: _Enoch_, xcix. 13, 14.]
[Footnote 5: Julius Africanus in Eusebius, _H.E._, i. 7; Eus., _De
situ et nom. loc. hebr._, at the word [Greek: Chôba]; Orig., _Contra
Celsus_, ii. 1, v. 61; Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxix. 7, 9, xxx. 2, 18.]
[Footnote 6: See especially Origen, _Contra Celsus_, ii. 1; _De
Principiis_, iv. 22. Compare Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxx. 17. Irenæus,
Origen, Eusebius, and the apostolic Constitutions, ignore the
existence of such a personage. The author of the _Philosophumena_
seems to hesitate (vii. 34 and 35, x. 22 and 23.) It is by Tertullian,
and especially by Epiphanes, that the fable of one _Ebion_ has been
spread. Besides, all the Fathers are agreed on the etymology, [Greek:
Ebiôn] = [Greek: ptôchos].]
We may see, in fact, without difficulty, that this exaggerated taste
for poverty could not be very lasting. It was one of those Utopian
elements which always mingle in the origin of great movements, and
which time rectifies. Thrown into the centre of human society,
Christianity very easily consented to receive rich men into her bosom,
just as Buddhism, exclusively monkish in its origin, soon began, as
conversions multiplied, to admit the laity. But the mark of origin is
ever preserved. Although it quickly passed away and became forgotten,
_Ebionism_ left a leaven in the whole history of Christian
institutions which has not been lost. The collection of the _Logia_,
or discourses of Jesus, was formed in the Ebionitish centre of
Batanea.[1] "Poverty" remained an ideal from which the true followers
of Jesus were never after separated. To possess nothing was the truly
evangelical state; mendicancy became a virtue, a holy condition. The
great Umbrian movement of the thirteenth century, which, among all the
attempts at religious construction, most resembles the Galilean
movement, took place entirely in the name of poverty. Francis
d'Assisi, the man who, more than any other, by his exquisite goodness,
by his delicate, pure, and tender intercourse with universal life,
most resembled Jesus, was a poor man. The mendicant orders, the
innumerable communistic sects of the middle ages (_Pauvres de Lyon_,
_Bégards_, _Bons-Hommes_, _Fratricelles_, _Humiliés_, _Pauvres
évangéliques_, &c.) grouped under the banner of the "Everlasting
Gospel," pretended to be, and in fact were, the true disciples of
Jesus. But even in this case the most impracticable dreams of the new
religion were fruitful in results. Pious mendicity, so impatiently
borne by our industrial and well-organized communities, was in its
day, and in a suitable climate, full of charm. It offered to a
multitude of mild and contemplative souls the only condition suited to
them. To have made poverty an object of love and desire, to have
raised the beggar to the altar, and to have sanctified the coat of the
poor man, was a master-stroke which political economy may not
appreciate, but in the presence of which the true moralist cannot
remain indifferent. Humanity, in order to bear its burdens, needs to
believe that it is not paid entirely by wages. The greatest service
which can be rendered to it is to repeat often that it lives not by
bread alone.
[Footnote 1: Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xix., xxix., and xxx., especially
xxix. 9.]
Like all great men, Jesus loved the people, and felt himself at home
with them. The Gospel, in his idea, is made for the poor; it is to
them he brings the glad tidings of salvation.[1] All the despised ones
of orthodox Judaism were his favorites. Love of the people, and pity
for its weakness (the sentiment of the democratic chief, who feels the
spirit of the multitude live in him, and recognize him as its natural
interpreter), shine forth at each moment in his acts and
discourses.[2]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xi. 5; Luke vi. 20, 21.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 36; Mark vi. 34.]
The chosen flock presented, in fact, a very mixed character, and one
likely to astonish rigorous moralists. It counted in its fold men with
whom a Jew, respecting himself, would not have associated.[1] Perhaps
Jesus found in this society, unrestrained by ordinary rules, more mind
and heart than in a pedantic and formal middle-class, proud of its
apparent morality. The Pharisees, exaggerating the Mosaic
prescriptions, had come to believe themselves defiled by contact with
men less strict than themselves; in their meals they almost rivalled
the puerile distinctions of caste in India. Despising these miserable
aberrations of the religious sentiment, Jesus loved to eat with those
who suffered from them;[2] by his side at table were seen persons said
to lead wicked lives, perhaps only so called because they did not
share the follies of the false devotees. The Pharisees and the doctors
protested against the scandal. "See," said they, "with what men he
eats!" Jesus returned subtle answers, which exasperated the
hypocrites: "They that be whole need not a physician."[3] Or again:
"What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them,
doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after
that which is lost until he find it? And when he hath found it, he
layeth it on his shoulders rejoicing."[4] Or again: "The Son of Man is
come to save that which was lost."[5] Or again: "I am not come to call
the righteous, but sinners."[6] Lastly, that delightful parable of the
prodigal son, in which he who is fallen is represented as having a
kind of privilege of love above him who has always been righteous.
Weak or guilty women, surprised at so much that was charming, and
realizing, for the first time, the attractions of contact with virtue,
approached him freely. People were astonished that he did not repulse
them. "Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spake
within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have
known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she
is a sinner." Jesus replied by the parable of a creditor who forgives
his debtors' unequal debts, and he did not hesitate to prefer the lot
of him to whom was remitted the greater debt.[7] He appreciated
conditions of soul only in proportion to the love mingled therein.
Women, with tearful hearts, and disposed through their sins to
feelings of humility, were nearer to his kingdom than ordinary
natures, who often have little merit in not having fallen. We may
conceive, on the other hand, that these tender souls, finding in their
conversion to the sect an easy means of restoration, would
passionately attach themselves to him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. ix. 10, and following; Luke xv. entirely.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 11; Mark ii. 16; Luke v. 30.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. ix. 12.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xv. 4, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xviii. 11; Luke xix. 10.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. ix. 13.]
[Footnote 7: Luke vii. 36, and following. Luke, who likes to bring out
in relief everything that relates to the forgiveness of sinners (comp.
x. 30, and following, xv. entirely, xvii. 16, and following, xix. 2,
and following, xxiii. 39-43), has included in this narrative passages
from another history, that of the anointing of feet, which took place
at Bethany some days before the death of Jesus. But the pardon of
sinful women was undoubtedly one of the essential features of the
anecdotes of the life of Jesus.--Cf. John viii. 3, and following;
Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 30.]
Far from seeking to soothe the murmurs stirred up by his disdain for
the social susceptibilities of the time, he seemed to take pleasure in
exciting them. Never did any one avow more loftily this contempt for
the "world," which is the essential condition of great things and of
great originality. He pardoned a rich man, but only when the rich man,
in consequence of some prejudice, was disliked by society.[1] He
greatly preferred men of equivocal life and of small consideration in
the eyes of the orthodox leaders. "The publicans and the harlots go
into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you and ye
believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him."[2]
We can understand how galling the reproach of not having followed the
good example set by prostitutes must have been to men making a
profession of seriousness and rigid morality.
[Footnote 1: Luke xix. 2, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 31, 32.]
He had no external affectation or show of austerity. He did not fly
from pleasure; he went willingly to marriage feasts. One of his
miracles was performed to enliven a wedding at a small town. Weddings
in the East take place in the evening. Each one carries a lamp; and
the lights coming and going produce a very agreeable effect. Jesus
liked this gay and animated aspect, and drew parables from it.[1] Such
conduct, compared with that of John the Baptist, gave offence.[2] One
day, when the disciples of John and the Pharisees were observing the
fast, it was asked, "Why do the disciples of John and the Pharisees
fast, but thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the
children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But
the days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them,
and then they shall fast in those days."[3] His gentle gaiety found
expression in lively ideas and amiable pleasantries. "But whereunto,"
said he, "shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children
sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We
have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you,
and ye have not lamented.[4] For John came neither eating nor
drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating
and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber,
a friend of publicans and sinners. But Wisdom is justified of her
children."[5]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Mark ii. 18; Luke v. 33.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. ix. 14, and following; Mark ii. 18, and following;
Luke v. 33, and following.]
[Footnote 4: An allusion to some children's game.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 16, and following; Luke vii. 34, and following.
A proverb which means "The opinion of men is blind. The wisdom of the
works of God is only proclaimed by His works themselves." I read
[Greek: ergôn], with the manuscript B. of the Vatican, and not [Greek:
teknôn].]
He thus traversed Galilee in the midst of a continual feast. He rode
on a mule. In the East this is a good and safe mode of traveling; the
large, black eyes of the animal, shaded by long eyelashes, give it an
expression of gentleness. His disciples sometimes surrounded him with
a kind of rustic pomp, at the expense of their garments, which they
used as carpets. They placed them on the mule which carried him, or
extended them on the earth in his path.[1] His entering a house was
considered a joy and a blessing. He stopped in the villages and the
large farms, where he received an eager hospitality. In the East, the
house into which a stranger enters becomes at once a public place. All
the village assembles there, the children invade it, and though
dispersed by the servants, always return. Jesus could not permit these
simple auditors to be treated harshly; he caused them to be brought to
him and embraced them.[2] The mothers, encouraged by such a reception,
brought him their children in order that he might touch them.[3] Women
came to pour oil upon his head, and perfume on his feet. His disciples
sometimes repulsed them as troublesome; but Jesus, who loved the
ancient usages, and all that indicated simplicity of heart, repaired
the ill done by his too zealous friends. He protected those who wished
to honor him.[4] Thus children and women adored him. The reproach of
alienating from their families these gentle creatures, always easily
misled, was one of the most frequent charges of his enemies.[5]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxi. 7, 8.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xix. 13, and following; Mark ix. 35, x. 13, and
following; Luke xviii. 15, 16.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 7, and following; Mark xiv. 3, and following;
Luke vii. 37, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Gospel of Marcion, addition to ver. 2 of chap. xxiii. of
Luke (Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xlii. 11). If the suppressions of Marcion
are without critical value, such is not the case with his additions,
when they proceed, not from a special view, but from the condition of
the manuscripts which he used.]
The new religion was thus in many respects a movement of women and
children. The latter were like a young guard around Jesus for the
inauguration of his innocent royalty, and gave him little ovations
which much pleased him, calling him "son of David," crying
_Hosanna_,[1] and bearing palms around him. Jesus, like Savonarola,
perhaps made them serve as instruments for pious missions; he was
very glad to see these young apostles, who did not compromise him,
rush into the front and give him titles which he dared not take
himself. He let them speak, and when he was asked if he heard, he
replied in an evasive manner that the praise which comes from young
lips is the most agreeable to God.[2]
[Footnote 1: A cry which was raised at the feast of tabernacles,
amidst the waving of palms. Mishnah, _Sukka_, iii. 9. This custom
still exists among the Israelites.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 15, 16.]
He lost no opportunity of repeating that the little ones are sacred
beings,[1] that the kingdom of God belongs to children,[2] that we
must become children to enter there,[3] that we ought to receive it as
a child,[4] that the heavenly Father hides his secrets from the wise
and reveals them to the little ones.[5] The idea of disciples is in
his mind almost synonymous with that of children.[6] On one occasion,
when they had one of those quarrels for precedence, which were not
uncommon, Jesus took a little child, placed him in their midst, and
said to them, "Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little
child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven."[7]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xviii. 5, 10, 14; Luke xvii. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xix. 14; Mark x. 14; Luke xviii. 16.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xviii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 33, and
following; Luke ix. 46.]
[Footnote 4: Mark x. 15.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 25; Luke x. 21.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 42, xviii. 5, 14; Mark ix. 36; Luke xvii. 2.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xviii. 4; Mark ix. 33-36; Luke ix. 46-48.]
It was infancy, in fact, in its divine spontaneity, in its simple
bewilderments of joy, which took possession of the earth. Every one
believed at each moment that the kingdom so much desired was about to
appear. Each one already saw himself seated on a throne[1] beside the
master. They divided amongst themselves the positions of honor in the
new kingdom,[2] and strove to reckon the precise date of its advent.
This new doctrine was called the "Good Tidings;" it had no other name.
An old word, "_paradise_," which the Hebrew, like all the languages of
the East, had borrowed from the Persian, and which at first designated
the parks of the Achæmenidæ, summed up the general dream; a delightful
garden, where the charming life which was led here below would be
continued forever.[3] How long this intoxication lasted we know not.
No one, during the course of this magical apparition, measured time
any more than we measure a dream. Duration was suspended; a week was
an age. But whether it filled years or months, the dream was so
beautiful that humanity has lived upon it ever since, and it is still
our consolation to gather its weakened perfume. Never did so much joy
fill the breast of man. For a moment humanity, in this the most
vigorous effort she ever made to rise above the world, forgot the
leaden weight which binds her to earth and the sorrows of the life
below. Happy he who has been able to behold this divine unfolding, and
to share, were it but for one day, this unexampled illusion! But still
more happy, Jesus would say to us, is he who, freed from all illusion,
shall reproduce in himself the celestial vision, and, with no
millenarian dream, no chimerical paradise, no signs in the heavens,
but by the uprightness of his will and the poetry of his soul, shall
be able to create anew in his heart the true kingdom of God!
[Footnote 1: Luke xxii. 30.]
[Footnote 2: Mark x. 37, 40, 41.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xxiii. 43; 2 _Cor._ xii. 4. Comp. _Carm. Sibyll.,
prooem_, 36; Talm. of Bab., _Chagigah_, 14 _b_.]
CHAPTER XII.
EMBASSY FROM JOHN IN PRISON TO JESUS--DEATH OF JOHN--RELATIONS OF HIS
SCHOOL WITH THAT OF JESUS.
Whilst joyous Galilee was celebrating in feasts the coming of the
well-beloved, the sorrowful John, in his prison of Machero, was pining
away with expectation and desire. The success of the young master,
whom he had seen some months before as his auditor, reached his ears.
It was said that the Messiah predicted by the prophets, he who was to
re-establish the kingdom of Israel, was come, and was proving his
presence in Galilee by marvelous works. John wished to inquire into
the truth of this rumor, and as he communicated freely with his
disciples, he chose two of them to go to Jesus in Galilee.[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xi. 2, and following; Luke vii. 18, and following.]
The two disciples found Jesus at the height of his fame. The air of
gladness which reigned around him surprised them. Accustomed to fasts,
to persevering prayer, and to a life of aspiration, they were
astonished to see themselves transported suddenly into the midst of
the joys attending the welcome of the Messiah.[1] They told Jesus
their message: "Art thou he that should come? Or do we look for
another?" Jesus, who from that time hesitated no longer respecting his
peculiar character as Messiah, enumerated the works which ought to
characterize the coming of the kingdom of God--such as the healing of
the sick, and the good tidings of a speedy salvation preached to the
poor. He did all these works. "And blessed is he," said Jesus,
"whosoever shall not be offended in me." We know not whether this
answer found John the Baptist living, or in what temper it put the
austere ascetic. Did he die consoled and certain that he whom he had
announced already lived, or did he remain doubtful as to the mission
of Jesus? There is nothing to inform us. Seeing, however, that his
school continued to exist a considerable time parallel with the
Christian churches, we are led to think that, notwithstanding his
regard for Jesus, John did not look upon him as the one who was to
realize the divine promises. Death came, moreover, to end his
perplexities. The untamable freedom of the ascetic was to crown his
restless and stormy career by the only end which was worthy of it.
[Footnote 1: Matt. ix. 14, and following.]
The leniency which Antipas had at first shown toward John was not of
long duration. In the conversations which, according to the Christian
tradition, John had had with the tetrarch, he did not cease to declare
to him that his marriage was unlawful, and that he ought to send away
Herodias.[1] We can easily imagine the hatred which the granddaughter
of Herod the Great must have conceived toward this importunate
counsellor. She only waited an opportunity to ruin him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 4, and following; Mark vi. 18, and following;
Luke iii. 19.]
Her daughter, Salome, born of her first marriage, and like her
ambitious and dissolute, entered into her designs. That year (probably
the year 30) Antipas was at Machero on the anniversary of his
birthday. Herod the Great had constructed in the interior of the
fortress a magnificent palace, where the tetrarch frequently
resided.[1] He gave a great feast there, during which Salome executed
one of those dances in character which were not considered in Syria as
unbecoming a distinguished person. Antipas being much pleased, asked
the dancer what she most desired, and she replied, at the instigation
of her mother, "Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger."[2]
Antipas was sorry, but he did not like to refuse. A guard took the
dish, went and cut off the head of the prisoner, and brought it.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jos., _De Bello jud._, VII. vi. 2.]
[Footnote 2: A portable dish on which liquors and viands are served in
the East.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiv. 3, and following; Mark vi. 14-29; Jos.,
_Ant._, XVIII. v. 2.]
The disciples of the Baptist obtained his body and placed it in a
tomb, but the people were much displeased. Six years after, Hareth,
having attacked Antipas, in order to recover Machero and avenge the
dishonor of his daughter, Antipas was completely beaten; and his
defeat was generally regarded as a punishment for the murder of
John.[1]
[Footnote 1: Josephus, _Ant._, XVIII. v. 1, 2.]
The news of John's death was brought to Jesus by the disciples of the
Baptist.[1] John's last act toward Jesus had effectually united the
two schools in the most intimate bonds. Jesus, fearing an increase of
ill-will on the part of Antipas, took precautions and retired to the
desert,[2] where many people followed him. By exercising an extreme
frugality, the holy band was enabled to live there, and in this there
was naturally seen a miracle.[3] From this time Jesus always spoke of
John with redoubled admiration. He declared unhesitatingly[4] that he
was more than a prophet, that the Law and the ancient prophets had
force only until he came,[5] that he had abrogated them, but that the
kingdom of heaven would displace him in turn. In fine, he attributed
to him a special place in the economy of the Christian mystery, which
constituted him the link of union between the Old Testament and the
advent of the new reign.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 12.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiv. 13.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiv. 15, and following; Mark vi. 35, and following;
Luke ix. 11, and following; John vi. 2, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 7, and following; Luke vii. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 12, 13; Luke xvi. 16.]
The prophet Malachi, whose opinion in this matter was soon brought to
bear,[1] had announced with much energy a precursor of the Messiah,
who was to prepare men for the final renovation, a messenger who
should come to make straight the paths before the elected one of God.
This messenger was no other than the prophet Elias, who, according to
a widely spread belief, was soon to descend from heaven, whither he
had been carried, in order to prepare men by repentance for the great
advent, and to reconcile God with his people.[2] Sometimes they
associated with Elias, either the patriarch Enoch, to whom for one or
two centuries they had attributed high sanctity;[3] or Jeremiah,[4]
whom they considered as a sort of protecting genius of the people,
constantly occupied in praying for them before the throne of God.[5]
This idea, that two ancient prophets should rise again in order to
serve as precursors to the Messiah, is discovered in so striking a
form in the doctrine of the Parsees that we feel much inclined to
believe that it comes from that source.[6] However this may be, it
formed at the time of Jesus an integral portion of the Jewish theories
about the Messiah. It was admitted that the appearance of "two
faithful witnesses," clothed in garments of repentance, would be the
preamble of the great drama about to be unfolded, to the astonishment
of the universe.[7]
[Footnote 1: Malachi iii. and iv.; _Ecclesiasticus_ xlviii. 10. See
_ante_, Chap. VI.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xi. 14, xvii. 10; Mark vi. 15, viii. 28, ix. 10,
and following; Luke ix. 8, 19.]
[Footnote 3: _Ecclesiasticus_ xliv. 16.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xvi. 14.]
[Footnote 5: 2 _Macc._ v. 13, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Texts cited by Anquetil-Duperron, _Zend-Avesta_, i. 2d
part, p. 46, corrected by Spiegel, in the _Zeitschrift der deutschen
morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, i. 261, and following; extracts from
the _Jamasp-Nameh_, in the _Avesta_ of Spiegel, i., p. 34. None of the
Parsee texts, which truly imply the idea of resuscitated prophets and
of precursors, are ancient; but the ideas contained in them appear to
be much anterior to the time of the compilation itself.]
[Footnote 7: _Rev._ xi. 3, and following.]
It will be seen that, with these ideas, Jesus and his disciples could
not hesitate about the mission of John the Baptist. When the scribes
raised the objection that the Messiah could not have come because
Elias had not yet appeared,[1] they replied that Elias was come, that
John was Elias raised from the dead.[2] By his manner of life, by his
opposition to the established political authorities, John in fact
recalled that strange figure in the ancient history of Israel.[3]
Jesus was not silent on the merits and excellencies of his forerunner.
He said that none greater was born among the children of men. He
energetically blamed the Pharisees and the doctors for not having
accepted his baptism, and for not being converted at his voice.[4]
[Footnote 1: Mark ix. 10.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xi. 14, xvii. 10-13; Mark vi. 15, ix. 10-12; Luke
ix. 8; John i. 21-25.]
[Footnote 3: Luke i. 17.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxi. 32; Luke vii. 29, 30.]
The disciples of Jesus were faithful to these principles of their
master. This respect for John continued during the whole of the first
Christian generation.[1] He was supposed to be a relative of Jesus.[2]
In order to establish the mission of the latter upon testimony
admitted by all, it was declared that John, at the first sight of
Jesus, proclaimed him the Messiah; that he recognized himself his
inferior, unworthy to unloose the latchets of his shoes; that he
refused at first to baptize him, and maintained that it was he who
ought to be baptized by Jesus.[3] These were exaggerations, which are
sufficiently refuted by the doubtful form of John's last message.[4]
But, in a more general sense, John remains in the Christian legend
that which he was in reality--the austere forerunner, the gloomy
preacher of repentance before the joy on the arrival of the
bridegroom, the prophet who announces the kingdom of God and dies
before beholding it. This giant in the early history of Christianity,
this eater of locusts and wild honey, this rough redresser of wrongs,
was the bitter which prepared the lip for the sweetness of the kingdom
of God. His beheading by Herodias inaugurated the era of Christian
martyrs; he was the first witness for the new faith. The worldly, who
recognized in him their true enemy, could not permit him to live; his
mutilated corpse, extended on the threshold of Christianity, traced
the bloody path in which so many others were to follow.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ xix. 4.]
[Footnote 2: Luke i.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. iii. 14, and following; Luke iii. 16; John i. 15,
and following, v. 32, 33.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 2, and following; Luke vii. 18, and following.]
The school of John did not die with its founder. It lived some time
distinct from that of Jesus, and at first a good understanding existed
between the two. Many years after the death of the two masters, people
were baptized with the baptism of John. Certain persons belonged to
the two schools at the same time--for example, the celebrated Apollos,
the rival of St. Paul (toward the year 50), and a large number of the
Christians of Ephesus.[1] Josephus placed himself (year 53) in the
school of an ascetic named Banou,[2] who presents the greatest
resemblance to John the Baptist, and who was perhaps of his school.
This Banou[3] lived in the desert, clothed with the leaves of trees;
he supported himself only on wild plants and fruits, and baptized
himself frequently, both day and night, in cold water, in order to
purify himself. James, he who was called the "brother of the Lord"
(there is here perhaps some confusion of homonyms), practised a
similar asceticism.[4] Afterward, toward the year 80, Baptism was in
strife with Christianity, especially in Asia Minor. John the
evangelist appears to combat it in an indirect manner.[5] One of the
Sibylline[6] poems seems to proceed from this school. As to the sects
of Hemero-baptists, Baptists, and Elchasaïtes (_Sabiens Mogtasila_ of
the Arabian writers[7]), who, in the second century, filled Syria,
Palestine and Babylonia, and whose representatives still exist in our
days among the Mendaites, called "Christians of St. John;" they have
the same origin as the movement of John the Baptist, rather than an
authentic descent from John. The true school of the latter, partly
mixed with Christianity, became a small Christian heresy, and died out
in obscurity. John had foreseen distinctly the destiny of the two
schools. If he had yielded to a mean rivalry, he would to-day have
been forgotten in the crowd of sectaries of his time. By his
self-abnegation he has attained a glorious and unique position in the
religious pantheon of humanity.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ xviii. 25, xix. 1-5. Cf. Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxx.
16.]
[Footnote 2: _Vita_, 2.]
[Footnote 3: Would this be the Bounaï who is reckoned by the Talmud
(Bab., _Sanhedrim_, 43 _a_) amongst the disciples of Jesus?]
[Footnote 4: Hegesippus, in Eusebius, _H.E._, ii. 23.]
[Footnote 5: Gospel, i. 26, 33, iv. 2; 1st Epistle, v. 6. Cf. _Acts_
x. 47.]
[Footnote 6: Book iv. See especially v. 157, and following.]
[Footnote 7: _Sabiens_ is the Aramean equivalent of the word
"Baptists." _Mogtasila_ has the same meaning in Arabic.]
CHAPTER XIII.
FIRST ATTEMPTS ON JERUSALEM.
Jesus, almost every year, went to Jerusalem for the feast of the
passover. The details of these journeys are little known, for the
synoptics do not speak of them,[1] and the notes of the fourth Gospel
are very confused on this point.[2] It was, it appears, in the year
31, and certainly after the death of John, that the most important of
the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem took place. Many of the disciples
followed him. Although Jesus attached from that time little value to
the pilgrimage, he conformed himself to it in order not to wound
Jewish opinion, with which he had not yet broken. These journeys,
moreover, were essential to his design; for he felt already that in
order to play a leading part, he must go from Galilee, and attack
Judaism in its stronghold, which was Jerusalem.
[Footnote 1: They, however, imply them obscurely (Matt. xxiii. 37;
Luke xiii. 34). They knew as well as John the relation of Jesus with
Joseph of Arimathea. Luke even (x. 38-42) knew the family of Bethany.
Luke (ix. 51-54) has a vague idea of the system of the fourth Gospel
respecting the journeys of Jesus. Many discourses against the
Pharisees and the Sadducees, said by the synoptics to have been
delivered in Galilee, have scarcely any meaning, except as having been
given at Jerusalem. And again, the lapse of eight days is much too
short to explain all that happened between the arrival of Jesus in
that city and his death.]
[Footnote 2: Two pilgrimages are clearly indicated (John ii. 13, and
v. 1), without speaking of his last journey (vii. 10), after which
Jesus returned no more to Galilee. The first took place while John was
still baptizing. It would belong consequently to the Easter of the
year 29. But the circumstances given as belonging to this journey are
of a more advanced period. (Comp. especially John ii. 14, and
following, and Matt. xxi. 12, 13; Mark xi. 15-17; Luke xix. 45, 46.)
There are evidently transpositions of dates in these chapters of John,
or rather he has mixed the circumstances of different journeys.]
The little Galilean community were here far from being at home.
Jerusalem was then nearly what it is to-day, a city of pedantry,
acrimony, disputes, hatreds, and littleness of mind. Its fanaticism
was extreme, and religious seditions very frequent. The Pharisees were
dominant; the study of the Law, pushed to the most insignificant
minutiæ, and reduced to questions of casuistry, was the only study.
This exclusively theological and canonical culture contributed in no
respect to refine the intellect. It was something analogous to the
barren doctrine of the Mussulman fakir, to that empty science
discussed round about the mosques, and which is a great expenditure of
time and useless argumentation, by no means calculated to advance the
right discipline of the mind. The theological education of the modern
clergy, although very dry, gives us no idea of this, for the
Renaissance has introduced into all our teachings, even the most
irregular, a share of _belles lettres_ and of method, which has
infused more or less of the _humanities_ into scholasticism. The
science of the Jewish doctor, of the _sofer_ or scribe, was purely
barbarous, unmitigatedly absurd, and denuded of all moral element.[1]
To crown the evil, it filled with ridiculous pride those who had
wearied themselves in acquiring it. The Jewish scribe, proud of the
pretended knowledge which had cost him so much trouble, had the same
contempt for Greek culture which the learned Mussulman of our time has
for European civilization, and which the old catholic theologian had
for the knowledge of men of the world. The tendency of this
scholastic culture was to close the mind to all that was refined, to
create esteem only for those difficult triflings on which they had
wasted their lives, and which were regarded as the natural occupation
of persons professing a degree of seriousness.[2]
[Footnote 1: We may judge of it by the Talmud, the echo of the Jewish
scholasticism of that time.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XX. xi. 2.]
This odious society could not fail to weigh heavily on the tender and
susceptible minds of the north. The contempt of the Hierosolymites for
the Galileans rendered the separation still more complete. In the
beautiful temple which was the object of all their desires, they often
only met with insult. A verse of the pilgrim's psalm,[1] "I had rather
be a doorkeeper in the house of my God," seemed made expressly for
them. A contemptuous priesthood laughed at their simple devotion, as
formerly in Italy the clergy, familiarized with the sanctuaries,
witnessed coldly and almost jestingly the fervor of the pilgrim come
from afar. The Galileans spoke a rather corrupt dialect; their
pronunciation was vicious; they confounded the different aspirations
of letters, which led to mistakes which were much laughed at.[2] In
religion, they were considered as ignorant and somewhat heterodox;[3]
the expression, "foolish Galileans," had become proverbial.[4] It was
believed (not without reason) that they were not of pure Jewish blood,
and no one expected Galilee to produce a prophet.[5] Placed thus on
the confines of Judaism, and almost outside of it, the poor Galileans
had only one badly interpreted passage in Isaiah to build their hopes
upon.[6] "Land of Zebulon, and land of Naphtali, way of the sea,
Galilee of the nations! The people that walked in darkness have seen a
great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon
them hath the light shined." The reputation of the native city of
Jesus was particularly bad. It was a popular proverb, "Can there any
good thing come out of Nazareth?"[7]
[Footnote 1: Ps. lxxxiv. (Vulg. lxxxiii.) 11.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 73; Mark xiv. 70; _Acts_ ii. 7; Talm. of
Bab., _Erubin_, 53 _a_, and following; Bereschith Rabba, 26 _c_.]
[Footnote 3: Passage from the treatise _Erubin_, _loc. cit._]
[Footnote 4: _Erubin_, _loc. cit._, 53 _b_.]
[Footnote 5: John vii. 52.]
[Footnote 6: Isa. ix. 1, 2; Matt. iv. 13, and following.]
[Footnote 7: John i. 46.]
The parched appearance of Nature in the neighborhood of Jerusalem must
have added to the dislike Jesus had for the place. The valleys are
without water; the soil arid and stony. Looking into the valley of the
Dead Sea, the view is somewhat striking; elsewhere it is monotonous.
The hill of Mizpeh, around which cluster the most ancient historical
remembrances of Israel, alone relieves the eye. The city presented, at
the time of Jesus, nearly the same form that it does now. It had
scarcely any ancient monuments, for, until the time of the Asmoneans,
the Jews had remained strangers to all the arts. John Hyrcanus had
begun to embellish it, and Herod the Great had made it one of the most
magnificent cities of the East. The Herodian constructions, by their
grand character, perfection of execution, and beauty of material, may
dispute superiority with the most finished works of antiquity.[1] A
great number of superb tombs, of original taste, were raised at the
same time in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.[2] The style of these
monuments was Grecian, but appropriate to the customs of the Jews, and
considerably modified in accordance with their principles. The
ornamental sculptures of the human figure which the Herods had
sanctioned, to the great discontent of the purists, were banished, and
replaced by floral decorations. The taste of the ancient inhabitants
of Phoenicia and Palestine for monoliths in solid stone seemed to be
revived in these singular tombs cut in the rock, and in which Grecian
orders are so strangely applied to an architecture of troglodytes.
Jesus, who regarded works of art as a pompous display of vanity,
viewed these monuments with displeasure.[3] His absolute spiritualism,
and his settled conviction that the form of the old world was about to
pass away, left him no taste except for things of the heart.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XV. viii.-xi.; _B.J._, V. v. 6; Mark xiii.
1, 2.]
[Footnote 2: Tombs, namely, of the Judges, Kings, Absalom, Zechariah,
Jehoshaphat, and of St. James. Compare the description of the tomb of
the Maccabees at Modin (1 Macc. xiii. 27, and following).]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiii. 27, 29, xxiv. 1, and following; Mark xiii.
1, and following; Luke xix. 44, xxi. 5, and following. Compare _Book
of Enoch_, xcvii. 13, 14; Talmud of Babylon, _Shabbath_, 33 _b_.]
The temple, at the time of Jesus, was quite new, and the exterior
works of it were not completed. Herod had begun its reconstruction in
the year 20 or 21 before the Christian era, in order to make it
uniform with his other edifices. The body of the temple was finished
in eighteen months; the porticos took eight years;[1] and the
accessory portions were continued slowly, and were only finished a
short time before the taking of Jerusalem.[2] Jesus probably saw the
work progressing, not without a degree of secret vexation. These hopes
of a long future were like an insult to his approaching advent.
Clearer-sighted than the unbelievers and the fanatics, he foresaw that
these superb edifices were destined to endure but for a short time.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XV. xi. 5, 6.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 7; John ii. 20.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiv. 2, xxvi. 61, xxvii. 40; Mark xiii. 2, xiv.
58, xv. 29; Luke xxi. 6; John ii. 19, 20.]
The temple formed a marvelously imposing whole, of which the present
_haram_,[1] notwithstanding its beauty, scarcely gives us any idea.
The courts and the surrounding porticos served as the daily rendezvous
for a considerable number of persons--so much so, that this great
space was at once temple, forum, tribunal, and university. All the
religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical
instruction, even the legal processes and civil causes--in a word, all
the activity of the nation was concentrated there.[2] It was an arena
where arguments were perpetually clashing, a battlefield of disputes,
resounding with sophisms and subtle questions. The temple had thus
much analogy with a Mahometan mosque. The Romans at this period
treated all strange religions with respect, when kept within proper
limits,[3] and carefully refrained from entering the sanctuary; Greek
and Latin inscriptions marked the point up to which those who were not
Jews were permitted to advance.[4] But the tower of Antonia, the
headquarters of the Roman forces, commanded the whole enclosure, and
allowed all that passed therein to be seen.[5] The guarding of the
temple belonged to the Jews; the entire superintendence was committed
to a captain, who caused the gates to be opened and shut, and
prevented any one from crossing the enclosure with a stick in his
hand, or with dusty shoes, or when carrying parcels, or to shorten his
path.[6] They were especially scrupulous in watching that no one
entered within the inner gates in a state of legal impurity. The
women had an entirely separate court.
[Footnote 1: The temple and its enclosure doubtless occupied the site
of the mosque of Omar and the _haram_, or Sacred Court, which
surrounds the mosque. The foundation of the haram is, in some parts,
especially at the place where the Jews go to weep, the exact base of
the temple of Herod.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ii. 46, and following; Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, x. 2.]
[Footnote 3: Suet., _Aug._ 93.]
[Footnote 4: Philo, _Legatio ad Caium_, § 31; Jos., _B.J._, V. v. 2,
VI. ii. 4; _Acts_ xxi. 28.]
[Footnote 5: Considerable traces of this tower are still seen in the
northern part of the haram.]
[Footnote 6: Mishnah, _Berakoth_, ix. 5; Talm. of Babyl., _Jebamoth_,
6 _b_; Mark xi. 16.]
It was in the temple that Jesus passed his days, whilst he remained at
Jerusalem. The period of the feasts brought an extraordinary concourse
of people into the city. Associated in parties of ten to twenty
persons, the pilgrims invaded everywhere, and lived in that disordered
state in which Orientals delight.[1] Jesus was lost in the crowd, and
his poor Galileans grouped around him were of small account. He
probably felt that he was in a hostile world which would receive him
only with disdain. Everything he saw set him against it. The temple,
like much-frequented places of devotion in general, offered a not very
edifying spectacle. The accessories of worship entailed a number of
repulsive details, especially of mercantile operations, in consequence
of which real shops were established within the sacred enclosure.
There were sold beasts for the sacrifices; there were tables for the
exchange of money; at times it seemed like a bazaar. The inferior
officers of the temple fulfilled their functions doubtless with the
irreligious vulgarity of the sacristans of all ages. This profane and
heedless air in the handling of holy things wounded the religious
sentiment of Jesus, which was at times carried even to a scrupulous
excess.[2] He said that they had made the house of prayer into a den
of thieves. One day, it is even said, that, carried away by his anger,
he scourged the vendors with a "scourge of small cords," and
overturned their tables.[3] In general, he had little love for the
temple. The worship which he had conceived for his Father had nothing
in common with scenes of butchery. All these old Jewish institutions
displeased him, and he suffered in being obliged to conform to them.
Except among the Judaizing Christians, neither the temple nor its site
inspired pious sentiments. The true disciples of the new faith held
this ancient sanctuary in aversion. Constantine and the first
Christian emperors left the pagan construction of Adrian existing
there,[4] and only the enemies of Christianity, such as Julian,
remembered the temple.[5] When Omar entered into Jerusalem, he found
the site designedly polluted in hatred of the Jews.[6] It was
Islamism, that is to say, a sort of resurrection of Judaism in its
exclusively Semitic form, which restored its glory. The place has
always been anti-Christian.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3. Comp. Ps. cxxxiii.
(Vulg. cxxxii.)]
[Footnote 2: Mark xi. 16.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxi. 12, and following; Mark xi. 15, and following;
Luke xix. 45, and following; John ii. 14, and following.]
[Footnote 4: _Itin. a Burdig. Hierus._, p. 152 (edit. Schott); S.
Jerome, in _Is._ i. 8, and in Matt. xxiv. 15.]
[Footnote 5: Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 1.]
[Footnote 6: Eutychius, _Ann._, II. 286, and following (Oxford 1659).]
The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered
his stay in Jerusalem painful. In the degree that the great ideas of
Israel ripened, the priesthood lost its power. The institution of
synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a
great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at
Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual,
almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were
surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the _sofer_
or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men
of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the
ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true,
a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the
head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity
had already been degraded by Herod,[1] became more and more a Roman
functionary,[2] who was frequently removed in order to divide the
profits of the office. Opposed to the Pharisees, who were very warm
lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say,
members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around
the temple, and which lived by the altar, while they saw the vanity of
it.[3] The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the
national sentiment and from the great religious movement which dragged
the people along, that the name of "Sadducee" (_sadoki_), which at
first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok,
had become synonymous with "Materialist" and with "Epicurean."
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XV. iii. 1, 3.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., XVIII. ii.]
[Footnote 3: _Acts_ iv. 1, and following, v. 17; Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix.
1; _Pirké Aboth_, i. 10.]
A still worse element had begun, since the reign of Herod the Great,
to corrupt the high-priesthood. Herod having fallen in love with
Mariamne, daughter of a certain Simon, son of Boëthus of Alexandria,
and having wished to marry her (about the year 28 B.C.), saw no other
means of ennobling his father-in-law and raising him to his own rank
than by making him high-priest. This intriguing family remained
master, almost without interruption, of the sovereign pontificate for
thirty-five years.[1] Closely allied to the reigning family, it did
not lose the office until after the deposition of Archelaus, and
recovered it (the year 42 of our era) after Herod Agrippa had for some
time re-enacted the work of Herod the Great. Under the name of
_Boëthusim_,[2] a new sacerdotal nobility was formed, very worldly,
and little devotional, and closely allied to the Sadokites. The
_Boëthusim_, in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings, are depicted
as a kind of unbelievers, and always reproached as Sadducees.[3] From
all this there resulted a miniature court of Rome around the temple,
living on politics, little inclined to excesses of zeal, even rather
fearing them, not wishing to hear of holy personages or of innovators,
for it profited from the established routine. These epicurean priests
had not the violence of the Pharisees; they only wished for quietness;
it was their moral indifference, their cold irreligion, which revolted
Jesus. Although very different, the priests and the Pharisees were
thus confounded in his antipathies. But a stranger, and without
influence, he was long compelled to restrain his discontent within
himself, and only to communicate his sentiments to the intimate
friends who accompanied him.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._ XV. ix. 3, XVII. vi. 4, xiii. 1, XVIII. i.
1, ii. 1, XIX. vi. 2, viii. 1.]
[Footnote 2: This name is only found in the Jewish documents. I think
that the "Herodians" of the gospel are the _Boëthusim_.]
[Footnote 3: The treatise of _Aboth Nathan_, 5; _Soferim_, iii., hal.
5; Mishnah, _Menachoth_, x. 3; Talmud of Babylon, _Shabbath_, 118 _a_.
The name of _Boëthusim_ is often changed in the Talmudic books with
that of the Sadducees, or with the word _Minim_ (heretics). Compare
Thosiphta, _Joma_, i., with the Talm. of Jerus., the same treatise, i.
5, and Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 19 _b_; Thos. _Sukka_, iii. with
the Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 43 _b_; Thos. ibid., further on,
with the Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 48 _b_; Thos. _Rosh hasshana_,
i. with Mishnah, same treatise ii. 1; Talm. of Jerus., same treatise,
ii. 1; and Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 22 _b_; Thos. _Menachoth_, x.
with Mishnah, same treatise, x. 3; Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 65
_a_; Mishnah, _Chagigah_, ii. 4; and Megillath Taanith, i.; Thos.
_Iadaim_, ii. with Talm. of Jerus.; _Baba Bathra_, viii. 1; Talm. of
Bab., same treatise, 115 _b_; and Megillath Taanith, v.]
Before his last stay, which was by far the longest of all that he made
at Jerusalem, and which was terminated by his death, Jesus endeavored,
however, to obtain a hearing. He preached; people spoke of him; and
they conversed respecting certain deeds of his which were looked upon
as miraculous. But from all that, there resulted neither an
established church at Jerusalem nor a group of Hierosolymite
disciples. The charming teacher, who forgave every one provided they
loved him, could not find much sympathy in this sanctuary of vain
disputes and obsolete sacrifices. The only result was that he formed
some valuable friendships, the advantage of which he reaped afterward.
He does not appear at that time to have made the acquaintance of the
family of Bethany, which, amidst the trials of the latter months of
his life, brought him so much consolation. But very early he attracted
the attention of a certain Nicodemus, a rich Pharisee, a member of the
Sanhedrim, and a man occupying a high position in Jerusalem.[1] This
man, who appears to have been upright and sincere, felt himself
attracted toward the young Galilean. Not wishing to compromise
himself, he came to see Jesus by night, and had a long conversation
with him.[2] He doubtless preserved a favorable impression of him, for
afterward he defended Jesus against the prejudices of his
colleagues,[3] and, at the death of Jesus, we shall find him tending
with pious care the corpse of the master.[4] Nicodemus did not become
a Christian; he had too much regard for his position to take part in a
revolutionary movement which as yet counted no men of note amongst its
adherents. But he evidently felt great friendship for Jesus, and
rendered him service, though unable to rescue him from a death which
even at this period was all but decreed.
[Footnote 1: It seems that he is referred to in the Talmud. Talm. of
Bab., _Taanith_, 20 _a_; _Gittin_, 56 _a_; _Ketuboth_, 66 _b_;
treatise _Aboth Nathan_, vii.; Midrash Rabba, _Eka_, 64 _a_. The
passage _Taanith_ identifies him with Bounaï, who, according to
_Sanhedrim_ (see ante, p. 212, note 2), was a disciple of Jesus. But
if Bounaï is the Banou of Josephus, this identification will not hold
good.]
[Footnote 2: John iii. 1, and following, vii. 50. We are certainly
free to believe that the exact text of the conversation is but a
creation of John's.]
[Footnote 3: John vii. 50, and following.]
[Footnote 4: John xix. 39.]
As to the celebrated doctors of the time, Jesus does not appear to
have had any connection with them. Hillel and Shammai were dead; the
greatest authority of the time was Gamaliel, grandson of Hillel. He
was of a liberal spirit, and a man of the world, not opposed to
secular studies, and inclined to tolerance by his intercourse with
good society.[1] Unlike the very strict Pharisees, who walked veiled
or with closed eyes, he did not scruple to gaze even upon Pagan
women.[2] This, as well as his knowledge of Greek, was tolerated
because he had access to the court.[3] After the death of Jesus, he
expressed very moderate views respecting the new sect.[4] St. Paul sat
at his feet,[5] but it is not probable that Jesus ever entered his
school.
[Footnote 1: Mishnah, _Baba Metsia_, v. 8; Talm. of Bab., _Sota_, 49
_b_.]
[Footnote 2: Talm. of Jerus., _Berakoth_, ix. 2.]
[Footnote 3: Passage _Sota_, before cited, and _Baba Kama_, 83 _a_.]
[Footnote 4: _Acts_ v. 34, and following.]
[Footnote 5: _Acts_ xxii. 3.]
One idea, at least, which Jesus brought from Jerusalem, and which
henceforth appears rooted in his mind, was that there was no union
possible between him and the ancient Jewish religion. The abolition of
the sacrifices which had caused him so much disgust, the suppression
of an impious and haughty priesthood, and, in a general sense, the
abrogation of the law, appeared to him absolutely necessary. From this
time he appears no more as a Jewish reformer, but as a destroyer of
Judaism. Certain advocates of the Messianic ideas had already admitted
that the Messiah would bring a new law, which should be common to all
the earth.[1] The Essenes, who were scarcely Jews, also appear to have
been indifferent to the temple and to the Mosaic observances. But
these were only isolated or unavowed instances of boldness. Jesus was
the first who dared to say that from his time, or rather from that of
John,[2] the Law was abolished. If sometimes he used more measured
terms,[3] it was in order not to offend existing prejudices too
violently. When he was driven to extremities, he lifted the veil
entirely, and declared that the Law had no longer any force. On this
subject he used striking comparisons. "No man putteth a piece of new
cloth into an old garment, neither do men put new wine into old
bottles."[4] This was really his chief characteristic as teacher and
creator. The temple excluded all except Jews from its enclosure by
scornful announcements. Jesus had no sympathy with this. The narrow,
hard, and uncharitable Law was only made for the children of Abraham.
Jesus maintained that every well-disposed man, every man who received
and loved him, was a son of Abraham.[5] The pride of blood appeared to
him the great enemy which was to be combated. In other words, Jesus
was no longer a Jew. He was in the highest degree revolutionary; he
called all men to a worship founded solely on the fact of their being
children of God. He proclaimed the rights of man, not the rights of
the Jew; the religion of man, not the religion of the Jew; the
deliverance of man, not the deliverance of the Jew.[6] How far removed
was this from a Gaulonite Judas or a Matthias Margaloth, preaching
revolution in the name of the Law! The religion of humanity,
established, not upon blood, but upon the heart, was founded. Moses
was superseded, the temple was rendered useless, and was irrevocably
condemned.
[Footnote 1: _Orac. Sib._, book iii. 573, and following, 715, and
following, 756-58. Compare the Targum of Jonathan, Isa. xii. 3.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xvi. 16. The passage in Matt. xi. 12, 13, is less
clear, but can have no other meaning.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 17, 18 (Cf. Talm. of Bab., _Shabbath_, 116 _b_).
This passage is not in contradiction with those in which the abolition
of the Law is implied. It only signifies that in Jesus all the types
of the Old Testament are realized. Cf. Luke xvi. 17.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. ix. 16, 17; Luke v. 36, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xix. 9.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xxiv. 14, xxviii. 19; Mark xiii. 10, xvi. 15; Luke
xxiv. 47.]
CHAPTER XIV.
INTERCOURSE OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS AND THE SAMARITANS.
Following out these principles, Jesus despised all religion which was
not of the heart. The vain practices of the devotees,[1] the exterior
strictness, which trusted to formality for salvation, had in him a
mortal enemy. He cared little for fasting.[2] He preferred forgiveness
to sacrifice.[3] The love of God, charity and mutual forgiveness, were
his whole law.[4] Nothing could be less priestly. The priest, by his
office, ever advocates public sacrifice, of which he is the appointed
minister; he discourages private prayer, which has a tendency to
dispense with his office.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xv. 9.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 14, xi. 19.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 23, and following, ix. 13, xii. 7.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 37, and following; Mark xii. 28, and
following; Luke x. 25, and following.]
We should seek in vain in the Gospel for one religious rite
recommended by Jesus. Baptism to him was only of secondary
importance;[1] and with respect to prayer, he prescribes nothing,
except that it should proceed from the heart. As is always the case,
many thought to substitute mere good-will for genuine love of
goodness, and imagined they could win the kingdom of heaven by saying
to him, "Rabbi, Rabbi." He rebuked them, and proclaimed that his
religion consisted in doing good.[2] He often quoted the passage in
Isaiah, which says: "This people honor me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me."[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 15; 1 _Cor._ i. 17.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vii. 21; Luke vi. 46.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xv. 8; Mark vii. 6. Cf. Isaiah xxix. 13.]
The observance of the Sabbath was the principal point upon which was
raised the whole edifice of Pharisaic scruples and subtleties. This
ancient and excellent institution had become a pretext for the
miserable disputes of casuists, and a source of superstitious
beliefs.[1] It was believed that Nature observed it; all intermittent
springs were accounted "Sabbatical."[2] This was the point upon which
Jesus loved best to defy his adversaries.[3] He openly violated the
Sabbath, and only replied by subtle raillery to the reproaches that
were heaped upon him. He despised still more a multitude of modern
observances, which tradition had added to the Law, and which were
dearer than any other to the devotees on that very account. Ablutions,
and the too subtle distinctions between pure and impure things, found
in him a pitiless opponent: "There is nothing from without a man,"
said he, "that entering into him can defile him: but the things which
come out of him, those are they that defile the man." The Pharisees,
who were the propagators of these mummeries, were unceasingly
denounced by him. He accused them of exceeding the Law, of inventing
impossible precepts, in order to create occasions of sin: "Blind
leaders of the blind," said he, "take care lest ye also fall into the
ditch." "O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good
things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."[4]
[Footnote 1: See especially the treatise _Shabbath_ of the Mishnah and
the _Livre des Jubilés_ (translated from the Ethiopian in the
_Jahrbücher_ of Ewald, years 2 and 3), chap. I.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _B.J._, VII. v. 1; Pliny, _H.N._, xxxi. 18. Cf.
Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, i. 406, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 1-14; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 1-5, xiii. 14,
and following, xiv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 34, xv. 1, and following, 12, and following,
xxiii. entirely; Mark vii. 1, and following, 15, and following; Luke
vi. 45, xi. 39, and following.]
He did not know the Gentiles sufficiently to think of founding
anything lasting upon their conversion. Galilee contained a great
number of pagans, but, as it appears, no public and organized worship
of false gods.[1] Jesus could see this worship displayed in all its
splendor in the country of Tyre and Sidon, at Cæsarea Philippi and in
the Decapolis, but he paid little attention to it. We never find in
him the wearisome pedantry of the Jews of his time, those declamations
against idolatry, so familiar to his co-religionists from the time of
Alexander, and which fill, for instance, the book of "Wisdom."[2] That
which struck him in the pagans was not their idolatry, but their
servility.[3] The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with
Judas the Gaulonite, and admitting no master but God, was hurt at the
honors with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the
frequently mendacious titles given to them. With this exception, in
the greater number of instances in which he comes in contact with
pagans, he shows great indulgence to them; sometimes he professes to
conceive more hope of them than of the Jews.[4] The kingdom of God
would be transferred to them. "When the lord, therefore, of the
vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these husbandmen? He will
miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard
unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their
seasons."[5] Jesus adhered so much the more to this idea, as the
conversion of the Gentiles was, according to Jewish ideas, one of the
surest signs of the advent of the Messiah.[6] In his kingdom of God he
represents, as seated at a feast, by the side of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, men come from the four winds of heaven, whilst the lawful heirs
of the kingdom are rejected.[7] Sometimes, it is true, there seems to
be an entirely contrary tendency in the commands he gives to his
disciples: he seems to recommend them only to preach salvation to the
orthodox Jews,[8] he speaks of pagans in a manner conformable to the
prejudices of the Jews.[9] But we must remember that the disciples,
whose narrow minds did not share in this supreme indifference for the
privileges of the sons of Abraham, may have given the instruction of
their master the bent of their own ideas. Besides, it is very possible
that Jesus may have varied on this point, just as Mahomet speaks of
the Jews in the Koran, sometimes in the most honorable manner,
sometimes with extreme harshness, as he had hope of winning their
favor or otherwise. Tradition, in fact, attributes to Jesus two
entirely opposite rules of proselytism, which he may have practised in
turn: "He that is not against us is on our part." "He that is not with
me, is against me."[10] Impassioned conflict involves almost
necessarily this kind of contradictions.
[Footnote 1: I believe the pagans of Galilee were found especially on
the frontiers--at Kedes, for example; but that the very heart of the
country, the city of Tiberias excepted, was entirely Jewish. The line
where the ruins of temples end, and those of synagogues begin, is
to-day plainly marked as far north as Lake Huleh (Samachonites). The
traces of pagan sculpture, which were thought to have been found at
Tell-Houm, are doubtful. The coast--the town of Acre, in
particular--did not form part of Galilee.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. XIII. and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xx. 25; Mark x. 42; Luke xxii. 25.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 5, and following, xv. 22, and following; Mark
vii. 25, and following; Luke iv. 25, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxi. 41; Mark xii. 9; Luke xx. 16.]
[Footnote 6: Isa. ii. 2, and following, lx.; Amos ix. 11, and
following; Jer. iii. 17; Mal. i. 11; _Tobit_, xiii. 13, and following;
_Orac. Sibyll._, iii. 715, and following. Comp. Matt. xxiv. 14; _Acts_
xv. 15, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. viii. 11, 12, xxi. 33, and following, xxii. 1, and
following.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. vii. 6, x. 5, 6, xv. 24, xxi. 43.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. v. 46, and following, vi. 7, 32, xviii. 17; Luke
vi. 32, and following, xii. 30.]
[Footnote 10: Matt. xii. 30; Mark ix. 39; Luke ix. 50, xi. 23.]
It is certain that he counted among his disciples many men whom the
Jews called "Hellenes."[1] This word had in Palestine divers meanings.
Sometimes it designated the pagans; sometimes the Jews, speaking
Greek, and dwelling among the pagans;[2] sometimes men of pagan origin
converted to Judaism.[3] It was probably in the last-named category of
Hellenes that Jesus found sympathy.[4] The affiliation with Judaism
had many degrees; but the proselytes always remained in a state of
inferiority in regard to the Jew by birth. Those in question were
called "proselytes of the gate," or "men fearing God," and were
subject to the precepts of Noah, and not to those of Moses.[5] This
very inferiority was doubtless the cause which drew them to Jesus, and
gained them his favor.
[Footnote 1: Josephus confirms this (_Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3). Comp.
John vii. 35, xii. 20, 21.]
[Footnote 2: Talm. of Jerus., _Sota_, vii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: See in particular, John vii. 35, xii. 20; _Acts_ xiv. 1,
xvii. 4, xviii. 4, xxi. 28.]
[Footnote 4: John xii. 20; _Acts_ viii. 27.]
[Footnote 5: Mishnah, _Baba Metsia_, ix. 12; Talm. of Bab., _Sanh._,56
_b_; _Acts_ viii. 27, x. 2, 22, 35, xiii. 16, 26, 43, 50, xvi. 14,
xvii. 4, 17, xviii. 7; Gal. ii. 3; Jos., _Ant._, XIV. vii. 2.]
He treated the Samaritans in the same manner. Shut in, like a small
island, between the two great provinces of Judaism (Judea and
Galilee), Samaria formed in Palestine a kind of enclosure in which was
preserved the ancient worship of Gerizim, closely resembling and
rivalling that of Jerusalem. This poor sect, which had neither the
genius nor the learned organization of Judaism, properly so called,
was treated by the Hierosolymites with extreme harshness.[1] They
placed them in the same rank as pagans, but hated them more.[2] Jesus,
from a feeling of opposition, was well disposed toward Samaria, and
often preferred the Samaritans to the orthodox Jews. If, at other
times, he seems to forbid his disciples preaching to them, confining
his gospel to the Israelites proper,[3] this was no doubt a precept
arising from special circumstances, to which the apostles have given
too absolute a meaning. Sometimes, in fact, the Samaritans received
him badly, because they thought him imbued with the prejudices of his
co-religionists;[4]--in the same manner as in our days the European
free-thinker is regarded as an enemy by the Mussulman, who always
believes him to be a fanatical Christian. Jesus raised himself above
these misunderstandings.[5] He had many disciples at Shechem, and he
passed at least two days there.[6] On one occasion he meets with
gratitude and true piety from a Samaritan only.[7] One of his most
beautiful parables is that of the man wounded on the way to Jericho. A
priest passes by and sees him, but goes on his way; a Levite also
passes, but does not stop; a Samaritan takes pity on him, approaches
him, and pours oil into his wounds, and bandages them.[8] Jesus argues
from this that true brotherhood is established among men by charity,
and not by creeds. The "neighbor" who in Judaism was specially the
co-religionist, was in his estimation the man who has pity on his kind
without distinction of sect. Human brotherhood in its widest sense
overflows in all his teaching.
[Footnote 1: _Ecclesiasticus_ l. 27, 28; John viii. 48; Jos., _Ant._,
IX. xiv. 3, XI. viii. 6, XII. v. 5; Talm. of Jerus., _Aboda zara_, v.
4; _Pesachim_, i. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 5; Luke xvii. 18. Comp. Talm. of Bab., _Cholin_,
6 _a_.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 5, 6.]
[Footnote 4: Luke ix. 53.]
[Footnote 5: Luke ix. 56.]
[Footnote 6: John iv. 39-43.]
[Footnote 7: Luke xvii. 16.]
[Footnote 8: Luke x. 30, and following.]
These thoughts, which beset Jesus on his leaving Jerusalem, found
their vivid expression in an anecdote which has been preserved
respecting his return. The road from Jerusalem into Galilee passes at
the distance of half an hour's journey from Shechem,[1] in front of
the opening of the valley commanded by mounts Ebal and Gerizim. This
route was in general avoided by the Jewish pilgrims, who preferred
making in their journeys the long detour through Perea, rather than
expose themselves to the insults of the Samaritans, or ask anything of
them. It was forbidden to eat and drink with them.[2] It was an axiom
of certain casuists, that "a piece of Samaritan bread is the flesh of
swine."[3] When they followed this route, provisions were always laid
up beforehand; yet they rarely avoided conflict and ill-treatment.[4]
Jesus shared neither these scruples nor these fears. Having come to
the point where the valley of Shechem opens on the left, he felt
fatigued, and stopped near a well. The Samaritans were then as now
accustomed to give to all the localities of their valley names drawn
from patriarchal reminiscences. They regarded this well as having been
given by Jacob to Joseph; it was probably the same which is now called
_Bir-Iakoub_. The disciples entered the valley and went to the city to
buy provisions. Jesus seated himself at the side of the well, having
Gerizim before him.
[Footnote 1: Now Nablous.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ix. 53; John iv. 9.]
[Footnote 3: Mishnah, _Shebiit_, viii. 10.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XX. v. 1; _B.J._, II. xii. 3; _Vita_, 52.]
It was about noon. A woman of Shechem came to draw water. Jesus asked
her to let him drink, which excited great astonishment in the woman,
the Jews generally forbidding all intercourse with the Samaritans. Won
by the conversation of Jesus, the woman recognized in him a prophet,
and expecting some reproaches about her worship, she anticipated him:
"Sir," said she, "our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say
that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith
unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in
this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth."[1]
[Footnote 1: John iv. 21-23. Verse 22, at least the latter clause of
it, which expresses an idea opposed to that of verses 21 and 23,
appears to have been interpolated. We must not insist too much on the
historical reality of such a conversation, since Jesus, or his
interlocutor, alone would have been able to relate it. But the
anecdote in chapter iv. of John, certainly represents one of the most
intimate thoughts of Jesus, and the greater part of the circumstances
have a striking appearance of truth.]
The day on which he uttered this saying, he was truly Son of God. He
pronounced for the first time the sentence upon which will repose the
edifice of eternal religion. He founded the pure worship, of all ages,
of all lands, that which all elevated souls will practice until the
end of time. Not only was his religion on this day the best religion
of humanity, it was the absolute religion; and if other planets have
inhabitants gifted with reason and morality, their religion cannot be
different from that which Jesus proclaimed near the well of Jacob. Man
has not been able to maintain this position: for the ideal is realized
but transitorily. This sentence of Jesus has been a brilliant light
amidst gross darkness; it has required eighteen hundred years for the
eyes of mankind (what do I say! for an infinitely small portion of
mankind) to become accustomed to it. But the light will become the
full day, and, after having run through all the cycles of error,
mankind will return to this sentence, as the immortal expression of
its faith and its hope.
CHAPTER XV.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE LEGENDS CONCERNING JESUS--HIS OWN IDEA OF HIS
SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER.
Jesus returned to Galilee, having completely lost his Jewish faith,
and filled with revolutionary ardor. His ideas are now expressed with
perfect clearness. The innocent aphorisms of the first part of his
prophetic career, in part borrowed from the Jewish rabbis anterior to
him, and the beautiful moral precepts of his second period, are
exchanged for a decided policy. The Law would be abolished; and it was
to be abolished by him.[1] The Messiah had come, and he was the
Messiah. The kingdom of God was about to be revealed; and it was he
who would reveal it. He knew well that he would be the victim of his
boldness; but the kingdom of God could not be conquered without
violence; it was by crises and commotions that it was to be
established.[2] The Son of man would reappear in glory, accompanied by
legions of angels, and those who had rejected him would be confounded.
[Footnote 1: The hesitancy of the immediate disciples of Jesus, of
whom a considerable portion remained attached to Judaism, might cause
objections to be raised to this. But the trial of Jesus leaves no room
for doubt. We shall see that he was there treated as a "corrupter."
The Talmud gives the procedure adopted against him as an example of
that which ought to be followed against "corrupters," who seek to
overturn the Law of Moses. (Talm. of Jerus., _Sanhedrim_, xiv. 16;
Talm. of Bab., _Sanhedrim_, 43 _a_, 67 _a_.)]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xi. 12; Luke xvi. 16.]
The boldness of such a conception ought not to surprise us. Long
before this, Jesus had regarded his relation to God as that of a son
to his father. That which in others would be an insupportable pride,
ought not in him to be regarded as presumption.
The title of "Son of David" was the first which he accepted, probably
without being concerned in the innocent frauds by which it was sought
to secure it to him. The family of David had, as it seems, been long
extinct;[1] the Asmoneans being of priestly origin, could not pretend
to claim such a descent for themselves; neither Herod nor the Romans
dreamt for a moment that any representative whatever of the ancient
dynasty existed in their midst. But from the close of the Asmonean
dynasty the dream of an unknown descendant of the ancient kings, who
should avenge the nation of its enemies, filled every mind. The
universal belief was, that the Messiah would be son of David, and like
him would be born at Bethlehem.[2] The first idea of Jesus was not
precisely this. The remembrance of David, which was uppermost in the
minds of the Jews, had nothing in common with his heavenly reign. He
believed himself the Son of God, and not the son of David. His
kingdom, and the deliverance which he meditated, were of quite another
order. But public opinion on this point made him do violence to
himself. The immediate consequence of the proposition, "Jesus is the
Messiah," was this other proposition, "Jesus is the son of David." He
allowed a title to be given him, without which he could not hope for
success. He ended, it seems, by taking pleasure therein, for he
performed most willingly the miracles which were asked of him by
those who used this title in addressing him.[3] In this, as in many
other circumstances of his life, Jesus yielded to the ideas which were
current in his time, although they were not precisely his own. He
associated with his doctrine of the "kingdom of God" all that could
warm the heart and the imagination. It was thus that we have seen him
adopt the baptism of John, although it could not have been of much
importance to him.
[Footnote 1: It is true that certain doctors--such as Hillel,
Gamaliel--are mentioned as being of the race of David. But these are
very doubtful allegations. If the family of David still formed a
distinct and prominent group, how is it that we never see it figure,
by the side of the Sadokites, Boëthusians, the Asmoneans, and Herods,
in the great struggles of the time?]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ii. 5, 6, xxii. 42; Luke i. 32; John vii. 41, 42;
_Acts_ ii. 30.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. ix. 27, xii. 23, xv. 22, xx. 30, 31; Mark x. 47,
52; Luke xviii. 38.]
One great difficulty presented itself--his birth at Nazareth, which
was of public notoriety. We do not know whether Jesus strove against
this objection. Perhaps it did not present itself in Galilee, where
the idea that the son of David should be a Bethlehemite was less
spread. To the Galilean idealist, moreover, the title of "son of
David" was sufficiently justified, if he to whom it was given revived
the glory of his race, and brought back the great days of Israel. Did
Jesus authorize by his silence the fictitious genealogies which his
partisans invented in order to prove his royal descent?[1] Did he know
anything of the legends invented to prove that he was born at
Bethlehem; and particularly of the attempt to connect his Bethlehemite
origin with the census which had taken place by order of the imperial
legate, Quirinus?[2] We know not. The inexactitude and the
contradictions of the genealogies[3] lead to the belief that they
were the result of popular ideas operating at various points, and that
none of them were sanctioned by Jesus.[4] Never does he designate
himself as son of David. His disciples, much less enlightened than he,
frequently magnified that which he said of himself; but, as a rule, he
had no knowledge of these exaggerations. Let us add, that during the
first three centuries, considerable portions of Christendom[5]
obstinately denied the royal descent of Jesus and the authenticity of
the genealogies.
[Footnote 1: Matt. i. 1, and following; Luke iii. 23, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ii. 1, and following; Luke ii. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 3: The two genealogies are quite contradictory, and do not
agree with the lists of the Old Testament. The narrative of Luke on
the census of Quirinus implies an anachronism. See ante, p. 81, note
4. It is natural to suppose, besides, that the legend may have laid
hold of this circumstance. The census made a great impression on the
Jews, overturned their narrow ideas, and was remembered by them for a
long period. Cf. _Acts_ v. 37.]
[Footnote 4: Julius Africanus (in Eusebius, _H.E._, i. 7) supposes
that it was the relations of Jesus, who, having taken refuge in
Batanea, attempted to recompose the genealogies.]
[Footnote 5: The _Ebionites_, the "Hebrews," the "Nazarenes," Tatian,
Marcion. Cf. Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxix. 9, xxx. 3, 14, xlvi. 1;
Theodoret, _Hæret. fab._, i. 20; Isidore of Pelusium, Epist. i. 371,
ad Pansophium.]
The legends about him were thus the fruit of a great and entirely
spontaneous conspiracy, and were developed around him during his
lifetime. No great event in history has happened without having given
rise to a cycle of fables; and Jesus could not have put a stop to
these popular creations, even if he had wished to do so. Perhaps a
sagacious observer would have recognized from this point the germ of
the narratives which were to attribute to him a supernatural birth,
and which arose, it may be, from the idea, very prevalent in
antiquity, that the incomparable man could not be born of the ordinary
relations of the two sexes; or, it may be, in order to respond to an
imperfectly understood chapter of Isaiah,[1] which was thought to
foretell that the Messiah should be born of a virgin; or, lastly, it
may be in consequence of the idea that the "breath of God," already
regarded as a divine hypostasis, was a principle of fecundity.[2]
Already, perhaps, there was current more than one anecdote about his
infancy, conceived with the intention of showing in his biography the
accomplishment of the Messianic ideal;[3] or, rather, of the
prophecies which the allegorical exegesis of the time referred to the
Messiah. At other times they connected him from his birth with
celebrated men, such as John the Baptist, Herod the Great, Chaldean
astrologers, who, it was said, visited Jerusalem about this time,[4]
and two aged persons, Simeon and Anna, who had left memories of great
sanctity.[5] A rather loose chronology characterized these
combinations, which for the most part were founded upon real facts
travestied.[6] But a singular spirit of gentleness and goodness, a
profoundly popular sentiment, permeated all these fables, and made
them a supplement to his preaching.[7] It was especially after the
death of Jesus that such narratives became greatly developed; we may,
however, believe that they circulated even during his life, exciting
only a pious credulity and simple admiration.
[Footnote 1: Matt. i. 22, 23.]
[Footnote 2: Gen. i. 2. For the analogous idea among the Egyptians,
see Herodotus, iii. 28; Pomp. Mela, i. 9: Plutarch, _Quæst. symp._,
VIII. i. 3; _De Isid. et Osir._, 43.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. i. 15, 23; Isa. vii. 14, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. ii. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Luke ii. 25, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Thus the legend of the massacre of the Innocents probably
refers to some cruelty exercised by Herod near Bethlehem. Comp. Jos.,
_Ant._, XIV. ix. 4.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. i., ii.; Luke i., ii.; S. Justin, _Dial. cum
Tryph._, 78, 106; _Protoevang. of James_ (Apoca.), 18 and following.]
That Jesus never dreamt of making himself pass for an incarnation of
God, is a matter about which there can be no doubt. Such an idea was
entirely foreign to the Jewish mind; and there is no trace of it in
the synoptical gospels,[1] we only find it indicated in portions of
the Gospel of John, which cannot be accepted as expressing the
thoughts of Jesus. Sometimes Jesus even seems to take precautions to
put down such a doctrine.[2] The accusation that he made himself God,
or the equal of God, is presented, even in the Gospel of John, as a
calumny of the Jews.[3] In this last Gospel he declares himself less
than his Father.[4] Elsewhere he avows that the Father has not
revealed everything to him.[5] He believes himself to be more than an
ordinary man, but separated from God by an infinite distance. He is
Son of God, but all men are, or may become so, in divers degrees.[6]
Every one ought daily to call God his father; all who are raised again
will be sons of God.[7] The divine son-ship was attributed in the Old
Testament to beings whom it was by no means pretended were equal with
God.[8] The word "son" has the widest meanings in the Semitic
language, and in that of the New Testament.[9] Besides, the idea Jesus
had of man was not that low idea which a cold Deism has introduced. In
his poetic conception of Nature, one breath alone penetrates the
universe; the breath of man is that of God; God dwells in man, and
lives by man, the same as man dwells in God, and lives by God.[10]
The transcendent idealism of Jesus never permitted him to have a very
clear notion of his own personality. He is his Father, his Father is
he. He lives in his disciples; he is everywhere with them;[11] his
disciples are one, as he and his Father are one.[12] The idea to him
is everything; the body, which makes the distinction of persons, is
nothing.
[Footnote 1: Certain passages, such as _Acts_ ii. 22, expressly
exclude this idea.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xix. 17; Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19.]
[Footnote 3: John v. 18, and following, x. 33, and following.]
[Footnote 4: John xiv. 28.]
[Footnote 5: Mark xiii. 35.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 9, 45; Luke iii. 38, vi. 35, xx. 36; John i. 12,
13, x. 34, 35. Comp. _Acts_ xvii. 28, 29; Rom. viii. 14, 19, 21, ix.
26; 2 Cor. vi. 18; Gal. iii. 26; and in the Old Testament, _Deut._
xiv. 1; and especially _Wisdom_, ii. 13, 18.]
[Footnote 7: Luke xx. 36.]
[Footnote 8: Gen. vi. 2; Job i. 6, ii. 1, xxviii. 7; Ps. ii. 7,
lxxxii. 6; 2 Sam. vii. 14.]
[Footnote 9: The child of the devil (Matt. xiii. 38; _Acts_ xiii. 10);
the children of this world (Mark iii. 17; Luke xvi. 8, xx. 34); the
children of light (Luke xvi. 8; John xii. 36); the children of the
resurrection (Luke xx. 36); the children of the kingdom (Matt. viii.
12, xiii. 38); the children of the bride-chamber (Matt. ix. 15; Mark
ii. 19; Luke v. 34); the children of hell (Matt. xxiii. 15); the
children of peace (Luke x. 6), &c. Let us remember that the Jupiter of
paganism is [Greek: patêr andrôn te theôn te].]
[Footnote 10: Comp. _Acts_ xvii. 28.]
[Footnote 11: Matt. xviii. 20, xxviii. 20.]
[Footnote 12: John x. 30, xvii. 21. See in general the later
discourses of John, especially chap. xvii., which express one side of
the psychological state of Jesus, though we cannot regard them as true
historical documents.]
The title "Son of God," or simply "Son,"[1] thus became for Jesus a
title analogous to "Son of man," and, like that, synonymous with the
"Messiah," with the sole difference that he called himself "Son of
man," and does not seem to have made the same use of the phrase, "Son
of God."[2] The title, Son of man, expressed his character as judge;
that of Son of God his power and his participation in the supreme
designs. This power had no limits. His Father had given him all power.
He had the power to alter even the Sabbath.[3] No one could know the
Father except through him.[4] The Father had delegated to him
exclusively the right of judging.[5] Nature obeyed him; but she obeys
also all who believe and pray, for faith can do everything.[6] We must
remember that no idea of the laws of Nature marked the limit of the
impossible, either in his own mind, or in that of his hearers. The
witnesses of his miracles thanked God "for having given such power
unto men."[7] He pardoned sins;[8] he was superior to David, to
Abraham, to Solomon, and to the prophets.[9] We do not know in what
form, nor to what extent, these affirmations of himself were made.
Jesus ought not to be judged by the law of our petty
conventionalities. The admiration of his disciples overwhelmed him and
carried him away. It is evident that the title of _Rabbi_, with which
he was at first contented, no longer sufficed him; even the title of
prophet or messenger of God responded no longer to his ideas. The
position which he attributed to himself was that of a superhuman
being, and he wished to be regarded as sustaining a higher
relationship to God than other men. But it must be remarked that these
words, "superhuman" and "supernatural," borrowed from our petty
theology, had no meaning in the exalted religious consciousness of
Jesus. To him Nature and the development of humanity were not limited
kingdoms apart from God--paltry realities subjected to the laws of a
hopeless empiricism. There was no supernatural for him, because there
was no Nature. Intoxicated with infinite love, he forgot the heavy
chain which holds the spirit captive; he cleared at one bound the
abyss, impossible to most, which the weakness of the human faculties
has created between God and man.
[Footnote 1: The passages in support of this are too numerous to be
referred to here.]
[Footnote 2: It is only in the Gospel of John that Jesus uses the
expression "Son of God," or "Son," in speaking of himself.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 8; Luke vi. 5.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 27.]
[Footnote 5: John v. 22.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xvii. 18, 19; Luke xvii. 6.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. ix. 8.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. ix. 2, and following; Mark ii. 5, and following;
Luke v. 20, vii. 47, 48.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. xii. 41, 42; xxii. 43, and following; John viii.
52, and following.]
We cannot mistake in these affirmations of Jesus the germ of the
doctrine which was afterward to make of him a divine hypostasis,[1] in
identifying him with the Word, or "second God,"[2] or eldest Son of
God,[3] or _Angel Metathronos_,[4] which Jewish theology created apart
from him.[5] A kind of necessity caused this theology, in order to
correct the extreme rigor of the old Monotheism, to place near God an
assessor, to whom the eternal Father is supposed to delegate the
government of the universe. The belief that certain men are
incarnations of divine faculties or "powers," was widespread; the
Samaritans possessed about the same time a thaumaturgus named Simon,
whom they identified with the "great power of God."[6] For nearly two
centuries, the speculative minds of Judaism had yielded to the
tendency to personify the divine attributes, and certain expressions
which were connected with the Divinity. Thus, the "breath of God,"
which is often referred to in the Old Testament, is considered as a
separate being, the "Holy Spirit." In the same manner the "Wisdom of
God" and the "Word of God" became distinct personages. This was the
germ of the process which has engendered the _Sephiroth_ of the
Cabbala, the _Æons_ of Gnosticism, the hypostasis of Christianity, and
all that dry mythology, consisting of personified abstractions, to
which Monotheism is obliged to resort when it wishes to pluralize the
Deity.
[Footnote 1: See especially John xiv., and following. But it is
doubtful whether we have here the authentic teaching of Jesus.]
[Footnote 2: Philo, cited in Eusebius, _Præp. Evang._, vii. 13.]
[Footnote 3: Philo, _De migr. Abraham_, § 1; _Quod Deus immut._, § 6;
_De confus. ling._, § 9, 14 and 28; De profugis, § 20; _De Somniis_,
i. § 37; _De Agric. Noë_, § 12; _Quis rerum divin. hæres_, § 25, and
following, 48, and following, &c.]
[Footnote 4: [Greek: Metathronos], that is, sharing the throne of God;
a kind of divine secretary, keeping the register of merits and
demerits; _Bereshith Rabba_, v. 6 _c_; Talm. of Bab., _Sanhedr._, 38
_b_; _Chagigah_, 15 _a_; Targum of Jonathan, _Gen._, v. 24.]
[Footnote 5: This theory of the [Greek: Logos] contains no Greek
elements. The comparisons which have been made between it and the
_Honover_ of the Parsees are also without foundation. The _Minokhired_
or "Divine Intelligence," has much analogy with the Jewish [Greek:
Logos]. (See the fragments of the book entitled _Minokhired_ in
Spiegel, _Parsi-Grammatik_, pp. 161, 162.) But the development which
the doctrine of the _Minokhired_ has taken among the Parsees is
modern, and may imply a foreign influence. The "Divine Intelligence"
(_Maiyu-Khratû_) appears in the Zend books; but it does not there
serve as basis to a theory; it only enters into some invocations. The
comparisons which have been attempted between the Alexandrian theory
of the Word and certain points of Egyptian theology may not be
entirely without value. But nothing indicates that, in the centuries
which preceded the Christian era, Palestinian Judaism had borrowed
anything from Egypt.]
[Footnote 6: _Acts_ viii. 10.]
Jesus appears to have remained a stranger to these refinements of
theology, which were soon to fill the world with barren disputes. The
metaphysical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of
his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldean Targums, and even in the book
of "Wisdom,"[1] is neither seen in the _Logia_ of Matthew, nor in
general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words
of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common
with Messianism. The "Word" of Philo, and of the Targums, is in no
sense the Messiah. It was John the Evangelist, or his school, who
afterward endeavored to prove that Jesus was the Word, and who
created, in this sense, quite a new theology, very different from that
of the "kingdom of God."[2] The essential character of the Word was
that of Creator and of Providence. Now, Jesus never pretended to have
created the world, nor to govern it. His office was to judge it, to
renovate it. The position of president at the final judgment of
humanity was the essential attribute which Jesus attached to himself,
and the character which all the first Christians attributed to
him.[3] Until the great day, he will sit at the right hand of God, as
his Metathronos, his first minister, and his future avenger.[4] The
superhuman Christ of the Byzantine apsides, seated as judge of the
world, in the midst of the apostles in the same rank with him, and
superior to the angels who only assist and serve, is the exact
representation of that conception of the "Son of man," of which we
find the first features so strongly indicated in the book of Daniel.
[Footnote 1: ix. 1, 2, xvi. 12. Comp. vii. 12, viii. 5, and following,
ix., and in general ix.-xi. These prosopopoeia of Wisdom personified
are found in much older books. Prov. viii., ix.; Job xxviii.; _Rev._
xix. 13.]
[Footnote 2: John, Gospel, i. 1-14; 1 Epistle v. 7; moreover, it will
be remarked, that, in the Gospel of John, the expression of "the Word"
does not occur except in the prologue, and that the narrator never
puts it into the mouth of Jesus.]
[Footnote 3: _Acts_ x. 42.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xvi. 19; Luke xxii. 69; _Acts_ vii.
55; Rom. viii. 34; Ephes. i. 20; Coloss. iii. 1; Heb. i. 3, 13, viii.
1, x. 12, xii. 2; 1 Peter iii. 22. See the passages previously cited
on the character of the Jewish Metathronos.]
At all events, the strictness of a studied theology by no means
existed in such a state of society. All the ideas we have just stated
formed in the mind of the disciples a theological system so little
settled, that the Son of God, this species of divine duplicate, is
made to act purely as man. He is tempted--he is ignorant of many
things--he corrects himself[1]--he is cast down, discouraged--he asks
his Father to spare him trials--he is submissive to God as a son.[2]
He who is to judge the world does not know the day of judgment.[3] He
takes precautions for his safety.[4] Soon after his birth, he is
obliged to be concealed to avoid powerful men who wish to kill him.[5]
In exorcisms, the devil cheats him, and does not come out at the first
command.[6] In his miracles we are sensible of painful effort--an
exhaustion, as if something went out of him.[7] All these are simply
the acts of a messenger of God, of a man protected and favored by
God.[8] We must not look here for either logic or sequence. The need
Jesus had of obtaining credence, and the enthusiasm of his disciples,
heaped up contradictory notions. To the Messianic believers of the
millenarian school, and to the enthusiastic readers of the books of
Daniel and of Enoch, he was the Son of man--to the Jews holding the
ordinary faith, and to the readers of Isaiah and Micah, he was the Son
of David--to the disciples he was the Son of God, or simply the Son.
Others, without being blamed by the disciples, took him for John the
Baptist risen from the dead, for Elias, for Jeremiah, conformable to
the popular belief that the ancient prophets were about to reappear,
in order to prepare the time of the Messiah.[9]
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 5, compared with xxviii. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 39; John xii. 27.]
[Footnote 3: Mark xiii. 32.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 14-16, xiv. 13; Mark iii. 6, 7, ix. 29, 30;
John vii. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. ii. 20.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xvii. 20; Mark ix. 25.]
[Footnote 7: Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33, 38.]
[Footnote 8: _Acts_ ii. 22.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. xiv. 2, xvi. 14, xvii. 3, and following; Mark vi.
14, 15, viii. 28; Luke ix. 8, and following, 19.]
An absolute conviction, or rather the enthusiasm, which freed him from
even the possibility of doubt, shrouded all these boldnesses. We
little understand, with our cold and scrupulous natures, how any one
can be so entirely possessed by the idea of which he has made himself
the apostle. To the deeply earnest races of the West, conviction means
sincerity to one's self. But sincerity to one's self has not much
meaning to Oriental peoples, little accustomed to the subtleties of a
critical spirit. Honesty and imposture are words which, in our rigid
consciences, are opposed as two irreconcilable terms. In the East,
they are connected by numberless subtle links and windings. The
authors of the Apocryphal books (of "Daniel" and of "Enoch," for
instance), men highly exalted, in order to aid their cause,
committed, without a shadow of scruple, an act which we should term a
fraud. The literal truth has little value to the Oriental; he sees
everything through the medium of his ideas, his interests, and his
passions.
History is impossible, if we do not fully admit that there are many
standards of sincerity. All great things are done through the people;
now we can only lead the people by adapting ourselves to its ideas.
The philosopher who, knowing this, isolates and fortifies himself in
his integrity, is highly praiseworthy. But he who takes humanity with
its illusions, and seeks to act with it and upon it, cannot be blamed.
Cæsar knew well that he was not the son of Venus; France would not be
what it is, if it had not for a thousand years believed in the Holy
Ampulla of Rheims. It is easy for us, who are so powerless, to call
this falsehood, and, proud of our timid honesty, to treat with
contempt the heroes who have accepted the battle of life under other
conditions. When we have effected by our scruples what they
accomplished by their falsehoods, we shall have the right to be severe
upon them. At least, we must make a marked distinction between
societies like our own, where everything takes place in the full light
of reflection, and simple and credulous communities, in which the
beliefs that have governed ages have been born. Nothing great has been
established which does not rest on a legend. The only culprit in such
cases is the humanity which is willing to be deceived.
CHAPTER XVI.
MIRACLES.
Two means of proof--miracles and the accomplishment of
prophecies--could alone, in the opinion of the contemporaries of
Jesus, establish a supernatural mission. Jesus, and especially his
disciples, employed these two processes of demonstration in perfect
good faith. For a long time, Jesus had been convinced that the
prophets had written only in reference to him. He recognized himself
in their sacred oracles; he regarded himself as the mirror in which
all the prophetic spirit of Israel had read the future. The Christian
school, perhaps even in the lifetime of its founder, endeavored to
prove that Jesus responded perfectly to all that the prophets had
predicted of the Messiah.[1] In many cases, these comparisons were
quite superficial, and are scarcely appreciable by us. They were most
frequently fortuitous or insignificant circumstances in the life of
the master which recalled to the disciples certain passages of the
Psalms and the Prophets, in which, in consequence of their constant
preoccupation, they saw images of him.[2] The exegesis of the time
consisted thus almost entirely in a play upon words, and in quotations
made in an artificial and arbitrary manner. The synagogue had no
officially settled list of the passages which related to the future
reign. The Messianic references were very liberally created, and
constituted artifices of style rather than serious reasoning.
[Footnote 1: For example, Matt. i. 22, ii. 5, 6, 15, 18, iv. 15.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 23, iv. 6, 14, xxvi. 31, 54, 56, xxvii. 9, 35;
Mark xiv. 27, xv. 28; John xii. 14. 15, xviii. 9, xix. 19, 24, 28,
36.]
As to miracles, they were regarded at this period as the indispensable
mark of the divine, and as the sign of the prophetic vocation. The
legends of Elijah and Elisha were full of them. It was commonly
believed that the Messiah would perform many.[1] In Samaria, a few
leagues from where Jesus was, a magician, named Simon, acquired an
almost divine character by his illusions.[2] Afterward, when it was
sought to establish the reputation of Apollonius of Tyana, and to
prove that his life had been the sojourn of a god upon the earth, it
was not thought possible to succeed therein except by inventing a vast
cycle of miracles.[3] The Alexandrian philosophers themselves,
Plotinus and others, are reported to have performed several.[4] Jesus
was, therefore, obliged to choose between these two
alternatives--either to renounce his mission, or to become a
thaumaturgus. It must be remembered that all antiquity, with the
exception of the great scientific schools of Greece and their Roman
disciples, accepted miracles; and that Jesus not only believed
therein, but had not the least idea of an order of Nature regulated by
fixed laws. His knowledge on this point was in no way superior to that
of his contemporaries. Nay, more, one of his most deeply rooted
opinions was, that by faith and prayer man has entire power over
Nature.[5] The faculty of performing miracles was regarded as a
privilege frequently conferred by God upon men,[6] and it had nothing
surprising in it.
[Footnote 1: John vii. 34; _IV. Esdras_, xiii. 50.]
[Footnote 2: _Acts_ viii. 9, and following.]
[Footnote 3: See his biography by Philostratus.]
[Footnote 4: See the Lives of the Sophists, by Eunapius; the Life of
Plotinus, by Porphyry; that of Proclus, by Marinus; and that of
Isidorus, attributed to Damascius.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xvii. 19, xxi. 21, 22; Mark xi. 23, 24.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. ix. 8.]
The lapse of time has changed that which constituted the power of the
great founder of Christianity into something offensive to our ideas,
and if ever the worship of Jesus loses its hold upon mankind, it will
be precisely on account of those acts which originally inspired belief
in him. Criticism experiences no embarrassment in presence of this
kind of historical phenomenon. A thaumaturgus of our days, unless of
an extreme simplicity, like that manifested by certain stigmatists of
Germany, is odious; for he performs miracles without believing in
them; and is a mere charlatan. But, if we take a Francis d'Assisi, the
question becomes altogether different; the series of miracles
attending the origin of the order of St. Francis, far from offending
us, affords us real pleasure. The founder of Christianity lived in as
complete a state of poetic ignorance as did St. Clair and the _tres
socii_. The disciples deemed it quite natural that their master should
have interviews with Moses and Elias, that he should command the
elements, and that he should heal the sick. We must remember, besides,
that every idea loses something of its purity, as soon as it aspires
to realize itself. Success is never attained without some injury being
done to the sensibility of the soul. Such is the feebleness of the
human mind that the best causes are ofttimes gained only by bad
arguments. The demonstrations of the primitive apologists of
Christianity are supported by very poor reasonings. Moses, Christopher
Columbus, Mahomet, have only triumphed over obstacles by constantly
making allowance for the weakness of men, and by not always giving the
true reasons for the truth. It is probable that the hearers of Jesus
were more struck by his miracles than by his eminently divine
discourses. Let us add, that doubtless popular rumor, both before and
after the death of Jesus, exaggerated enormously the number of
occurrences of this kind. The types of the gospel miracles, in fact,
do not present much variety; they are repetitions of each other and
seem fashioned from a very small number of models, accommodated to the
taste of the country.
It is impossible, amongst the miraculous narratives so tediously
enumerated in the Gospels, to distinguish the miracles attributed to
Jesus by public opinion from those in which he consented to play an
active part. It is especially impossible to ascertain whether the
offensive circumstances attending them, the groanings, the
strugglings, and other features savoring of jugglery,[1] are really
historical, or whether they are the fruit of the belief of the
compilers, strongly imbued with theurgy, and living, in this respect,
in a world analogous to that of the "spiritualists" of our times.[2]
Almost all the miracles which Jesus thought he performed, appear to
have been miracles of healing. Medicine was at this period in Judea,
what it still is in the East, that is to say, in no respect
scientific, but absolutely surrendered to individual inspiration.
Scientific medicine, founded by Greece five centuries before, was at
the time of Jesus unknown to the Jews of Palestine. In such a state of
knowledge, the presence of a superior man, treating the diseased with
gentleness, and giving him by some sensible signs the assurance of his
recovery, is often a decisive remedy. Who would dare to say that in
many cases, always excepting certain peculiar injuries, the touch of
a superior being is not equal to all the resources of pharmacy? The
mere pleasure of seeing him cures. He gives only a smile, or a hope,
but these are not in vain.
[Footnote 1: Luke viii. 45, 46; John xi. 33 and 38.]
[Footnote 2: _Acts_ ii. 2, and following, iv. 31, viii. 15, and
following, x. 44 and following. For nearly a century, the apostles and
their disciples dreamed only of miracles. See the _Acts_, the writings
of St. Paul, the extracts from Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._,
iii. 39, &c. Comp. Mark iii. 15, xvi. 17, 18, 20.]
Jesus had no more idea than his countrymen of a rational medical
science; he believed, like every one else, that healing was to be
effected by religious practices, and such a belief was perfectly
consistent. From the moment that disease was regarded as the
punishment of sin,[1] or as the act of a demon,[2] and by no means as
the result of physical causes, the best physician was the holy man who
had power in the supernatural world. Healing was considered a moral
act; Jesus, who felt his moral power, would believe himself specially
gifted to heal. Convinced that the touching of his robe,[3] the
imposition of his hands,[4] did good to the sick, he would have been
unfeeling, if he had refused to those who suffered, a solace which it
was in his power to bestow. The healing of the sick was considered as
one of the signs of the kingdom of God, and was always associated with
the emancipation of the poor.[5] Both were the signs of the great
revolution which was to end in the redress of all infirmities.
[Footnote 1: John v. 14, ix. 1, and following, 34.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 32, 33, xii. 22; Luke xiii. 11, 16.]
[Footnote 3: Luke viii. 45, 46.]
[Footnote 4: Luke iv. 40.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 5, xv. 30, 31; Luke ix. 1, 2, 6.]
One of the species of cure which Jesus most frequently performed, was
exorcism, or the expulsion of demons. A strange disposition to believe
in demons pervaded all minds. It was a universal opinion, not only in
Judea, but in the whole world, that demons seized hold of the bodies
of certain persons and made them act contrary to their will. A Persian
_div_, often named in the Avesta,[1] _Aeschma-daëva_, the "div of
concupiscence," adopted by the Jews under the name of Asmodeus,[2]
became the cause of all the hysterical afflictions of women.[3]
Epilepsy, mental and nervous maladies,[4] in which the patient seems
no longer to belong to himself, and infirmities, the cause of which is
not apparent, as deafness, dumbness,[5] were explained in the same
manner. The admirable treatise, "On Sacred Disease," by Hippocrates,
which set forth the true principles of medicine on this subject, four
centuries and a half before Jesus, had not banished from the world so
great an error. It was supposed that there were processes more or less
efficacious for driving away the demons; and the occupation of
exorcist was a regular profession like that of physician.[6] There is
no doubt that Jesus had in his lifetime the reputation of possessing
the greatest secrets of this art.[7] There were at that time many
lunatics in Judea, doubtless in consequence of the great mental
excitement. These mad persons, who were permitted to go at large, as
they still are in the same districts, inhabited the abandoned
sepulchral caves, which were the ordinary retreat of vagrants. Jesus
had great influence over these unfortunates.[8] A thousand singular
incidents were related in connection with his cures, in which the
credulity of the time gave itself full scope. But still these
difficulties must not be exaggerated. The disorders which were
explained by "possessions" were often very slight. In our times, in
Syria, they regard as mad or possessed by a demon (these two ideas
were expressed by the same word, _medjnoun_[9]) people who are only
somewhat eccentric. A gentle word often suffices in such cases to
drive away the demon. Such were doubtless the means employed by Jesus.
Who knows if his celebrity as exorcist was not spread almost without
his own knowledge? Persons who reside in the East are occasionally
surprised to find themselves, after some time, in possession of a
great reputation, as doctors, sorcerers, or discoverers of treasures,
without being able to account to themselves for the facts which have
given rise to these strange fancies.
[Footnote 1: _Vendidad_, xi. 26; _Yaçna_, x. 18.]
[Footnote 2: _Tobit_, iii. 8, vi. 14; Talm. of Bab., _Gittin_, 68
_a_.]
[Footnote 3: Comp. Mark xvi. 9; Luke viii. 2; _Gospel of the Infancy_,
16, 33; Syrian Code, published in the _Anecdota Syriaca_ of M. Land,
i., p. 152.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Bell. Jud._, VII. vi. 3; Lucian, _Philopseud._,
16; Philostratus, _Life of Apoll._, iii. 38, iv. 20; Aretus, _De
causis morb. chron._, i. 4.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. ix. 33, xii. 22; Mark ix. 16, 24; Luke xi. 14.]
[Footnote 6: _Tobit_, viii. 2, 3; Matt. xii. 27; Mark ix. 38; _Acts_
xix. 13; Josephus, _Ant._, VIII. ii. 5; Justin, _Dial. cum Tryph._,
85; Lucian, Epigr., xxiii. (xvii. Dindorf).]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xvii. 20; Mark ix. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. viii. 28, ix. 34, xii. 43, and following, xvii. 14,
and following, 20; Mark v. 1, and following; Luke viii. 27, and
following.]
[Footnote 9: The phrase, _Dæmonium habes_ (Matt. xi. 18: Luke vii. 33;
John vii. 20, viii. 48, and following, x. 20, and following) should be
translated by: "Thou art mad," as we should say in Arabic: _Medjnoun
enté_. The verb [Greek: daimonan] has also, in all classical
antiquity, the meaning of "to be mad."]
Many circumstances, moreover, seem to indicate that Jesus only became
a thaumaturgus late in life and against his inclination. He often
performs his miracles only after he has been besought to do so, and
with a degree of reluctance, reproaching those who asked them for the
grossness of their minds.[1] One singularity, apparently inexplicable,
is the care he takes to perform his miracles in secret, and the
request he addresses to those whom he heals to tell no one.[2] When
the demons wish to proclaim him the Son of God, he forbids them to
open their mouths; but they recognize him in spite of himself.[3]
These traits are especially characteristic in Mark, who is
pre-eminently the evangelist of miracles and exorcisms. It seems that
the disciple, who has furnished the fundamental teachings of this
Gospel, importuned Jesus with his admiration of the wonderful, and
that the master, wearied of a reputation which weighed upon him, had
often said to him, "See thou say nothing to any man." Once this
discordance evoked a singular outburst,[4] a fit of impatience, in
which the annoyance these perpetual demands of weak minds caused
Jesus, breaks forth. One would say, at times, that the character of
thaumaturgus was disagreeable to him, and that he sought to give as
little publicity as possible to the marvels which, in a manner, grew
under his feet. When his enemies asked a miracle of him, especially a
celestial miracle, a "sign from heaven," he obstinately refused.[5] We
may therefore conclude that his reputation of thaumaturgus was imposed
upon him, that he did not resist it much, but also that he did nothing
to aid it, and that, at all events, he felt the vanity of popular
opinion on this point.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 39, xvi. 4, xvii. 16; Mark viii. 17, and
following, ix. 18; Luke ix. 41.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. viii. 4, ix. 30, 31, xii. 16, and following; Mark
i. 44, vii. 24, and following, viii. 26.]
[Footnote 3: Mark i. 24, 25, 34, iii. 12; Luke iv. 41.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xvii. 16; Mark ix. 18; Luke ix. 41.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xii. 38, and following, xvi. 1, and following; Mark
viii. 11.]
We should neglect to recognize the first principles of history if we
attached too much importance to our repugnances on this matter, and
if, in order to avoid the objections which might be raised against the
character of Jesus, we attempted to suppress facts which, in the eyes
of his contemporaries, were considered of the greatest importance.[1]
It would be convenient to say that these are the additions of
disciples much inferior to their Master who, not being able to
conceive his true grandeur, have sought to magnify him by illusions
unworthy of him. But the four narrators of the life of Jesus are
unanimous in extolling his miracles; one of them, Mark, interpreter of
the apostle Peter,[2] insists so much on this point, that, if we trace
the character of Christ only according to this Gospel, we should
represent him as an exorcist in possession of charms of rare efficacy,
as a very potent sorcerer, who inspired fear, and whom the people
wished to get rid of.[3] We will admit, then, without hesitation, that
acts which would now be considered as acts of illusion or folly, held
a large place in the life of Jesus. Must we sacrifice to these
uninviting features the sublimer aspect of such a life? God forbid. A
mere sorcerer, after the manner of Simon the magician, would not have
brought about a moral revolution like that effected by Jesus. If the
thaumaturgus had effaced in Jesus the moralist and the religious
reformer, there would have proceeded from him a school of theurgy, and
not Christianity.
[Footnote 1: Josephus, _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]
[Footnote 2: Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 39.]
[Footnote 3: Mark iv. 40, v. 15, 17, 33, 36, vi. 50, x. 32; cf. Matt.
viii. 27, 34, ix. 8, xiv. 27, xvii. 6, 7, xxviii. 5, 10; Luke iv. 36,
v. 17, viii. 25, 35, 37, ix. 34. The Apocryphal Gospel, said to be by
Thomas the Israelite, carries this feature to the most offensive
absurdity. Compare the _Miracles of the Infancy_, in Philo, _Cod.
Apocr. N.T._, p. cx., note.]
The problem, moreover, presents itself in the same manner with respect
to all saints and religious founders. Things now considered morbid,
such as epilepsy and seeing of visions, were formerly principles of
power and greatness. Physicians can designate the disease which made
the fortune of Mahomet.[1] Almost in our own day, the men who have
done the most for their kind (the excellent Vincent de Paul himself!)
were, whether they wished it or not, thaumaturgi. If we set out with
the principle that every historical personage to whom acts have been
attributed, which we in the nineteenth century hold to be irrational
or savoring of quackery, was either a madman or a charlatan, all
criticism is nullified. The school of Alexandria was a noble school,
but, nevertheless, it gave itself up to the practices of an
extravagant theurgy. Socrates and Pascal were not exempt from
hallucinations. Facts ought to explain themselves by proportionate
causes. The weaknesses of the human mind only engender weakness; great
things have always great causes in the nature of man, although they
are often developed amidst a crowd of littlenesses which, to
superficial minds, eclipse their grandeur.
[Footnote 1: _Hysteria Muscularis_ of Shoenlein.]
In a general sense, it is therefore true to say that Jesus was only
thaumaturgus and exorcist in spite of himself. Miracles are ordinarily
the work of the public much more than of him to whom they are
attributed. Jesus persistently shunned the performance of the wonders
which the multitude would have created for him; the greatest miracle
would have been his refusal to perform any; never would the laws of
history and popular psychology have suffered so great a derogation.
The miracles of Jesus were a violence done to him by his age, a
concession forced from him by a passing necessity. The exorcist and
the thaumaturgus have alike passed away; but the religious reformer
will live eternally.
Even those who did not believe in him were struck with these acts, and
sought to be witnesses of them.[1] The pagans, and persons
unacquainted with him, experienced a sentiment of fear, and sought to
remove him from their district.[2] Many thought perhaps to abuse his
name by connecting it with seditious movements.[3] But the purely
moral and in no respect political tendency of the character of Jesus
saved him from these entanglements. His kingdom was in the circle of
disciples, whom a like freshness of imagination and the same foretaste
of heaven had grouped and retained around him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 1, and following; Mark vi. 14; Luke ix. 7,
xxiii. 8.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. viii. 34; Mark v. 17, viii. 37.]
[Footnote 3: John vi. 14, 15.]
CHAPTER XVII.
DEFINITIVE FORM OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
We suppose that this last phase of the activity of Jesus continued
about eighteen months from the time of his return from the Passover of
the year 31, until his journey to the feast of tabernacles of the year
32.[1] During this time, the mind of Jesus does not appear to have
been enriched by the addition of any new element; but all his old
ideas grew and developed with an ever-increasing degree of power and
boldness.
[Footnote 1: John v. 1, vii. 2. We follow the system of John,
according to whom the public life of Jesus lasted three years. The
synoptics, on the contrary, group all the facts within the space of
one year.]
The fundamental idea of Jesus from the beginning, was the
establishment of the kingdom of God. But this kingdom of God, as we
have already said, appears to have been understood by Jesus in very
different senses. At times, we should take him for a democratic leader
desiring only the triumph of the poor and the disinherited. At other
times, the kingdom of God is the literal accomplishment of the
apocalyptic visions of Daniel and Enoch. Lastly, the kingdom of God is
often a spiritual kingdom, and the approaching deliverance is a
deliverance of the spirit. In this last sense the revolution desired
by Jesus was the one which has really taken place; the establishment
of a new worship, purer than that of Moses. All these thoughts appear
to have existed at the same time in the mind of Jesus. The first one,
however--that of a temporal revolution--does not appear to have
impressed him much; he never regarded the earth or the riches of the
earth, or material power, as worth caring for. He had no worldly
ambition. Sometimes by a natural consequence, his great religious
importance was in danger of being converted into mere social
importance. Men came requesting him to judge and arbitrate on
questions affecting their material interests. Jesus rejected these
proposals with haughtiness, treating them as insults.[1] Full of his
heavenly ideal, he never abandoned his disdainful poverty. As to the
other two conceptions of the kingdom of God, Jesus appears always to
have held them simultaneously. If he had been only an enthusiast, led
away by the apocalypses on which the popular imagination fed, he would
have remained an obscure sectary, inferior to those whose ideas he
followed. If he had been only a puritan, a sort of Channing or
"Savoyard vicar," he would undoubtedly have been unsuccessful. The two
parts of his system, or, rather, his two conceptions of the kingdom of
God, rest one on the other, and this mutual support has been the cause
of his incomparable success. The first Christians were dreamers,
living in a circle of ideas which we should term visionary; but, at
the same time, they were the heroes of that social war which has
resulted in the enfranchisement of the conscience, and in the
establishment of a religion from which the pure worship, proclaimed by
the founder, will eventually proceed.
[Footnote 1: Luke xii. 13, 14.]
The apocalyptic ideas of Jesus, in their most complete form, may thus
be summed up. The existing condition of humanity is approaching its
termination. This termination will be an immense revolution, "an
anguish" similar to the pains of child-birth; a _palingenesis_, or,
in the words of Jesus himself, a "new birth,"[1] preceded by dark
calamities and heralded by strange phenomena.[2] In the great day,
there will appear in the heavens the sign of the Son of man; it will
be a startling and luminous vision like that of Sinai, a great storm
rending the clouds, a fiery meteor flashing rapidly from east to west.
The Messiah will appear in the clouds, clothed in glory and majesty,
to the sound of trumpets and surrounded by angels. His disciples will
sit by his side upon thrones. The dead will then arise, and the
Messiah will proceed to judgment.[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xix. 28.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxiv. 3, and following; Mark xiii. 4, and
following; Luke xvii. 22, and following, xxi. 7, and following. It
must be remarked that the picture of the end of time attributed to
Jesus by the synoptics, contains many features which relate to the
siege of Jerusalem. Luke wrote some time after the siege (xxi. 9, 20,
24). The compilation of Matthew, on the contrary (xxvi. 15, 16, 22,
29), carries us back exactly to this precise period, or very shortly
afterward. There is no doubt, however, that Jesus predicted that great
terrors would precede his reappearance. These terrors were an integral
part of all the Jewish apocalypses. _Enoch_, xcix., c., cii., ciii.
(division of Dillman); _Carm. sibyll._, iii. 334, and following, 633,
and following, iv. 168, and following, v. 511, and following.
According to Daniel also, the reign of the saints will only come after
the desolation shall have reached its height. Chap. vii. 25, and
following, viii. 23, and following, ix. 26, 27, xii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvi. 27, xix. 28, xx. 21, xxiv. 30, and following,
xxv. 31, and following, xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62; Luke xxii. 30; 1
_Cor._ xv. 52; 1 Thess. iv. 15, and following.]
At this judgment men will be divided into two classes according to
their deeds.[1] The angels will be the executors of the sentences.[2]
The elect will enter into delightful mansions, which have been
prepared for them from the foundation of the world;[3] there they will
be seated, clothed with light, at a feast presided over by Abraham,[4]
the patriarchs and the prophets. They will be the smaller number.[5]
The rest will depart into _Gehenna_. Gehenna was the western valley of
Jerusalem. There the worship of fire had been practised at various
times, and the place had become a kind of sewer. Gehenna was,
therefore, in the mind of Jesus, a gloomy, filthy valley, full of
fire. Those excluded from the kingdom will there be burnt and eaten by
the never-dying worm, in company with Satan and his rebel angels.[6]
There, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.[7] The kingdom of
heaven will be as a closed room, lighted from within, in the midst of
a world of darkness and torments.[8]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 38, and following, xxv. 33.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 39, 41, 49.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxv. 34. Comp. John xiv. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 11, xiii. 43, xxvi. 29; Luke xiii. 28, xvi.
22, xxii. 30.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xiii. 23, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xxv. 41. The idea of the fall of the angels,
detailed in the Book of Enoch, was universally admitted in the circle
of Jesus. Epistle of Jude 6, and following; 2d Epistle attributed to
Saint Peter, ii. 4. 11; _Revelation_ xii. 9; Gospel of John viii. 44.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. v. 22, viii. 12, x. 28, xiii. 40, 42, 50, xviii. 8,
xxiv. 51, xxv. 30; Mark ix. 43, &c.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. viii. 12, xxii. 13, xxv. 30. Comp. Jos., _B.J._,
III. viii. 5.]
This new order of things will be eternal. Paradise and Gehenna will
have no end. An impassable abyss separates the one from the other.[1]
The Son of man, seated on the right hand of God, will preside over
this final condition of the world and of humanity.[2]
[Footnote 1: Luke xvi. 28.]
[Footnote 2: Mark iii. 29; Luke xxii. 69; _Acts_ vii. 55.]
That all this was taken literally by the disciples and by the master
himself at certain moments, appears clearly evident from the writings
of the time. If the first Christian generation had one profound and
constant belief, it was that the world was near its end,[1] and that
the great "revelation"[2] of Christ was about to take place. The
startling proclamation, "The time is at hand,"[3] which commences and
closes the Apocalypse; the incessantly reiterated appeal, "He that
hath ears to hear let him hear!"[4] were the cries of hope and
encouragement for the whole apostolic age. A Syrian expression, _Maran
atha_, "Our Lord cometh!"[5] became a sort of password, which the
believers used amongst themselves to strengthen their faith and their
hope. The Apocalypse, written in the year 68 of our era,[6] declares
that the end will come in three years and a half.[7] The "Ascension of
Isaiah"[8] adopts a calculation very similar to this.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ ii. 17, iii. 19, and following; 1 _Cor._ xv. 23,
24, 52; 1 Thess. iii. 13, iv. 14, and following, v. 23; 2 Thess. ii.
8; 1 Tim. vi. 14; 2 Tim. iv. 1; Tit. ii. 13; Epistle of James v. 3, 8;
Epistle of Jude 18; 2d Epistle of Peter, iii. entirely; _Revelations_
entirely, and in particular, i. 1, ii. 5, 16, iii. 11, xi. 14, xxii.
6, 7, 12, 20. Comp. 4th Book of Esdras, iv. 26.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 30; 1 _Cor._ i. 7, 8; 2 Thess. i. 7; 1 Peter
i. 7, 13; _Revelations_ i. 1.]
[Footnote 3: _Revelations_ i. 3, xxii. 10.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xi. 15, xiii. 9, 43; Mark iv. 9, 23, vii. 16; Luke
viii. 8, xiv. 35; _Revelations_ ii. 7, 11, 27, 29, iii. 6, 13, 22,
xiii. 9.]
[Footnote 5: 1 _Cor._ xvi. 22.]
[Footnote 6: _Revelations_ xvii. 9, and following. The sixth emperor,
whom the author represents as reigning, is Galba. The dead emperor,
who was to return, is Nero, whose name is given in figures (xiii.
18).]
[Footnote 7: _Revelations_ xi. 2, 3, xii. 14. Comp. Daniel vii. 25,
xii. 7.]
[Footnote 8: Chap. iv., v. 12 and 14. Comp. Cedrenus, p. 68 (Paris,
1647).]
Jesus never indulged in such precise details. When he was interrogated
as to the time of his advent, he always refused to reply; once even he
declared that the date of this great day was known only by the Father,
who had revealed it neither to the angels nor to the Son.[1] He said
that the time when the kingdom of God was most anxiously expected, was
just that in which it would not appear.[2] He constantly repeated that
it would be a surprise, as in the times of Noah and of Lot; that we
must be on our guard, always ready to depart; that each one must watch
and keep his lamp trimmed as for a wedding procession, which arrives
unforeseen;[3] that the Son of man would come like a thief, at an
hour when he would not be expected;[4] that he would appear as a flash
of lightning, running from one end of the heavens to the other.[5] But
his declarations on the nearness of the catastrophe leave no room for
any equivocations.[6] "This generation," said he, "shall not pass till
all these things be fulfilled. There be some standing here, which
shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his
kingdom."[7] He reproaches those who do not believe in him, for not
being able to read the signs of the future kingdom. "When it is
evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in
the morning, It will be foul weather to-day; for the sky is red and
lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can
ye not discern the signs of the times?"[8] By an illusion common to
all great reformers, Jesus imagined the end to be much nearer than it
really was; he did not take into account the slowness of the movements
of humanity; he thought to realize in one day that which, eighteen
centuries later, has still to be accomplished.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxiv. 36; Mark xiii. 32.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xvii. 20. Comp. Talmud of Babyl., _Sanhedrim_, 97
_a_.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiv. 36, and following; Mark xiii. 32, and
following; Luke xii. 35, and following, xvii. 20, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xii. 40; 2 Peter iii. 10.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xvii. 24.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 23, xxiv., xxv. entirely, and especially xxiv.
29, 34; Mark xiii. 30; Luke xiii. 35, xxi. 28, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xvi. 28, xxiii. 36, 39, xxiv. 34; Mark viii. 39;
Luke ix. 27, xxi. 32.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xvi. 2-4; Luke xii. 54-56.]
These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly
seventy years. It was believed that some of the disciples would see
the day of the final revelation before dying. John, in particular, was
considered as being of this number;[1] many believed that he would
never die. Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested toward the end
of the first century, by the advanced age which John seems to have
reached; this age having given rise to the belief that God wished to
prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realize
the words of Jesus. However this may be, at his death the faith of
many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of
Christ a more subdued meaning.[2]
[Footnote 1: John xxi. 22, 23.]
[Footnote 2: John xxi. 22, 23. Chapter xxi. of the fourth Gospel is an
addition, as is proved by the final clause of the primitive
compilation, which concludes at verse 31 of chapter xx. But the
addition is almost contemporaneous with the publication of the Gospel
itself.]
At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs,
such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the
doctrine, which is the complement, or rather the condition of them
all, namely, the resurrection of the dead. This doctrine, as we have
already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people
either did not know it, or did not believe it.[1] It was the faith of
the Pharisees, and of the fervent adherents of the Messianic
beliefs.[2] Jesus accepted it unreservedly, but always in the most
idealistic sense. Many imagined that in the resuscitated world they
would eat, drink, and marry. Jesus, indeed, admits into his kingdom a
new passover, a table, and a new wine;[3] but he expressly excludes
marriage from it. The Sadducees had on this subject an apparently
coarse argument, but one which was really in conformity with the old
theology. It will be remembered that according to the ancient sages,
man survived only in his children. The Mosaic code had consecrated
this patriarchal theory by a strange institution, the levirate law.
The Sadducees drew from thence subtle deductions against the
resurrection. Jesus escaped them by formally declaring that in the
life eternal there would no longer exist differences of sex, and that
men would be like the angels.[4] Sometimes he seems to promise
resurrection only to the righteous,[5] the punishment of the wicked
consisting in complete annihilation.[6] Oftener, however, Jesus
declares that the resurrection shall bring eternal confusion to the
wicked.[7]
[Footnote 1: Mark ix. 9; Luke xx. 27, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Dan. xii. 2, and following; 2 Macc. vii. entirely, xii.
45, 46, xiv. 46; _Acts_ xxiii. 6, 8; Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. i. 3;
_B.J._, II. viii. 14, III. viii. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 29; Luke xxii. 30.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 24, and following; Luke xx. 34-38; Ebionite
Gospel, entitled, "Of the Egyptians," in Clem. of Alex., _Strom._ ii.
9, 13; Clem. Rom., Epist. ii. 12.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xiv. 14, xx. 35, 36. This is also the opinion of St.
Paul: 1 _Cor._ xv. 23, and following; 1 Thess. iv. 12, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Comp. 4th book of Esdras, ix. 22.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxv. 32, and following.]
It will be seen that nothing in all these theories was absolutely new.
The Gospels and the writings of the apostles scarcely contain anything
as regards apocalyptic doctrines but what might be found already in
"Daniel,"[1] "Enoch,"[2] and the "Sibylline Oracles,"[3] of Jewish
origin. Jesus accepted the ideas, which were generally received among
his contemporaries. He made them his basis of action, or rather one of
his bases; for he had too profound an idea of his true work to
establish it solely upon such fragile principles--principles so liable
to be decisively refuted by facts.
[Footnote 1: See especially chaps. ii., vi.-viii., x.-xiii.]
[Footnote 2: Chaps. i., xiv., lii., lxii., xciii. 9, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Book iii. 573, and following; 652, and following; 766,
and following; 795, and following.]
It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a
literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist,
caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit
of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is
intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so.
After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be,
of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was
convicted of falsehood.[1] If the doctrine of Jesus had been simply
belief in an approaching end of the world, it would certainly now be
sleeping in oblivion. What is it, then, which has saved it? The great
breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines
suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the
same creed. The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his
disciples believed. But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed
as Jesus desired. It is because his thought was two-sided that it has
been fruitful. His chimera has not had the fate of so many others
which have crossed the human mind, because it concealed a germ of life
which having been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the
bosom of humanity, has thus brought forth eternal fruits.
[Footnote 1: These pangs of Christian conscience are rendered with
simplicity in the second epistle attributed to St. Peter, iii. 8, and
following.]
And let us not say that this is a benevolent interpretation, imagined
in order to clear the honor of our great master from the cruel
contradiction inflicted on his dreams by reality. No, no: this true
kingdom of God, this kingdom of the spirit, which makes each one king
and priest; this kingdom which, like the grain of mustard-seed, has
become a tree which overshadows the world, and amidst whose branches
the birds have their nests, was understood, wished for, and founded by
Jesus. By the side of the false, cold, and impossible idea of an
ostentatious advent, he conceived the real city of God, the true
"palingenesis," the Sermon on the Mount, the apotheosis of the weak,
the love of the people, regard for the poor, and the re-establishment
of all that is humble, true, and simple. This re-establishment he has
depicted as an incomparable artist, by features which will last
eternally. Each of us owes that which is best in himself to him. Let
us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in
great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors
of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself
shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered
him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle, to which he
might otherwise have been unequal?
We must, then, attach several meanings to the divine city conceived by
Jesus. If his only thought had been that the end of time was near, and
that we must prepare for it, he would not have surpassed John the
Baptist. To renounce a world ready to crumble, to detach one's self
little by little from the present life, and to aspire to the kingdom
about to come, would have formed the gist of his preaching. The
teaching of Jesus had always a much larger scope. He proposed to
himself to create a new state of humanity, and not merely to prepare
the end of that which was in existence. Elias or Jeremiah, reappearing
in order to prepare men for the supreme crisis, would not have
preached as he did. This is so true that this morality, attributed to
the latter days, is found to be the eternal morality, that which has
saved humanity. Jesus himself in many cases makes use of modes of
speech which do not accord with the apocalyptic theory. He often
declares that the kingdom of God has already commenced; that every
man bears it within himself; and can, if he be worthy, partake of it;
that each one silently creates this kingdom by the true conversion of
the heart.[1] The kingdom of God at such times is only the highest
form of good.[2] A better order of things than that which exists, the
reign of justice, which the faithful, according to their ability,
ought to help in establishing; or, again, the liberty of the soul,
something analogous to the Buddhist "deliverance," the fruit of the
soul's separation from matter and absorption in the divine essence.
These truths, which are purely abstract to us, were living realities
to Jesus. Everything in his mind was concrete and substantial. Jesus,
of all men, believed most thoroughly in the reality of the ideal.
[Footnote 1: Matt. vi. 10, 33; Mark xii. 34; Luke xi. 2, xii. 31,
xvii. 20, 21, and following.]
[Footnote 2: See especially Mark xii. 34.]
In accepting the Utopias of his time and his race, Jesus thus was able
to make high truths of them, thanks to the fruitful misconceptions of
their import. His kingdom of God was no doubt the approaching
apocalypse, which was about to be unfolded in the heavens. But it was
still, and probably above all the kingdom of the soul, founded on
liberty and on the filial sentiment which the virtuous man feels when
resting on the bosom of his Father. It was a pure religion, without
forms, without temple, and without priest; it was the moral judgment
of the world, delegated to the conscience of the just man, and to the
arm of the people. This is what was destined to live; this is what has
lived. When, at the end of a century of vain expectation, the
materialistic hope of a near end of the world was exhausted, the true
kingdom of God became apparent. Accommodating explanations threw a
veil over the material kingdom, which was then seen to be incapable of
realization. The Apocalypse of John, the chief canonical book of the
New Testament,[1] being too formally tied to the idea of an immediate
catastrophe, became of secondary importance, was held to be
unintelligible, tortured in a thousand ways and almost rejected. At
least, its accomplishment was adjourned to an indefinite future. Some
poor benighted ones who, in a fully enlightened age, still preserved
the hopes of the first disciples, became heretics (Ebionites,
Millenarians), lost in the shallows of Christianity. Mankind had
passed to another kingdom of God. The degree of truth contained in the
thought of Jesus had prevailed over the chimera which obscured it.
[Footnote 1: Justin, _Dial. cum Tryph._, 81.]
Let us not, however, despise this chimera, which has been the thick
rind of the sacred fruit on which we live. This fantastic kingdom of
heaven, this endless pursuit after a city of God, which has constantly
preoccupied Christianity during its long career, has been the
principle of that great instinct of futurity which has animated all
reformers, persistent believers in the Apocalypse, from Joachim of
Flora down to the Protestant sectary of our days. This impotent effort
to establish a perfect society has been the source of the
extraordinary tension which has always made the true Christian an
athlete struggling against the existing order of things. The idea of
the "kingdom of God," and the Apocalypse, which is the complete image
of it, are thus, in a sense, the highest and most poetic expressions
of human progress. But they have necessarily given rise to great
errors. The end of the world, suspended as a perpetual menace over
mankind, was, by the periodical panics which it caused during
centuries, a great hindrance to all secular development. Society
being no longer certain of its existence, contracted therefrom a
degree of trepidation, and those habits of servile humility, which
rendered the Middle Ages so inferior to ancient and modern times.[1] A
profound change had also taken place in the mode of regarding the
coming of Christ. When it was first announced to mankind that the end
of the world was about to come, like the infant which receives death
with a smile, it experienced the greatest access of joy that it has
ever felt. But in growing old, the world became attached to life. The
day of grace, so long expected by the simple souls of Galilee, became
to these iron ages a day of wrath: _Dies iræ, dies illa!_ But, even in
the midst of barbarism, the idea of the kingdom of God continued
fruitful. In spite of the feudal church, of sects, and of religious
orders, holy persons continued to protest, in the name of the Gospel,
against the iniquity of the world. Even in our days, troubled days, in
which Jesus has no more authentic followers than those who seem to
deny him, the dreams of an ideal organization of society, which have
so much analogy with the aspirations of the primitive Christian sects,
are only in one sense the blossoming of the same idea. They are one of
the branches of that immense tree in which germinates all thought of a
future, and of which the "kingdom of God" will be eternally the root
and stem. All the social revolutions of humanity will be grafted on
this phrase. But, tainted by a coarse materialism, and aspiring to the
impossible, that is to say, to found universal happiness upon
political and economical measures, the "socialist" attempts of our
time will remain unfruitful until they take as their rule the true
spirit of Jesus, I mean absolute idealism--the principle that, in
order to possess the world, we must renounce it.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, the prologue of Gregory of Tours to his
_Histoire Ecclesiastique des Francs_, and the numerous documents of
the first half of the Middle Ages, beginning by the formula, "On the
approach of the night of the world...."]
The phrase, "kingdom of God," expresses also, very happily, the want
which the soul experiences of a supplementary destiny, of a
compensation for the present life. Those who do not accept the
definition of man as a compound of two substances, and who regard the
Deistical dogma of the immortality of the soul as in contradiction
with physiology, love to fall back upon the hope of a final
reparation, which under an unknown form shall satisfy the wants of the
heart of man. Who knows if the highest term of progress after millions
of ages may not evoke the absolute conscience of the universe, and in
this conscience the awakening of all that has lived? A sleep of a
million of years is not longer than the sleep of an hour. St. Paul, on
this hypothesis, was right in saying, _In ictu oculi!_[1] It is
certain that moral and virtuous humanity will have its reward, that
one day the ideas of the poor but honest man will judge the world, and
that on that day the ideal figure of Jesus will be the confusion of
the frivolous who have not believed in virtue, and of the selfish who
have not been able to attain to it. The favorite phrase of Jesus
continues, therefore, full of an eternal beauty. A kind of exalted
divination seems to have maintained it in a vague sublimity, embracing
at the same time various orders of truths.
[Footnote 1: 1 _Cor._ xv. 52.]
CHAPTER XVIII.
INSTITUTIONS OF JESUS.
That Jesus was never entirely absorbed in his apocalyptic ideas is
proved, moreover, by the fact that at the very time he was most
preoccupied with them, he laid with rare forethought the foundation of
a church destined to endure. It is scarcely possible to doubt that he
himself chose from among his disciples those who were pre-eminently
called the "apostles," or the "twelve," since on the day after his
death we find them forming a distinct body, and filling up by election
the vacancies that had arisen in their midst.[1] They were the two
sons of Jonas; the two sons of Zebedee; James, son of Cleophas;
Philip; Nathaniel bar-Tolmai; Thomas; Levi, or Matthew, the son of
Alphæus; Simon Zelotes; Thaddeus or Lebbæus; and Judas of Kerioth.[2]
It is probable that the idea of the twelve tribes of Israel had had
some share in the choice of this number.[3]
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ i. 15, and following; 1 _Cor._ xv. 5; Gal. i. 10.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 2 and following; Mark iii. 16, and following;
Luke vi. 14, and following; _Acts_ i. 13; Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist.
Eccl._, iii. 39.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 30.]
The "twelve," at all events, formed a group of privileged disciples,
among whom Peter maintained a fraternal priority,[1] and to them Jesus
confided the propagation of his work. There was nothing, however,
which presented the appearance of a regularly organized sacerdotal
school. The lists of the "twelve," which have been preserved, contain
many uncertainties and contradictions; two or three of those who
figure in them have remained completely obscure. Two, at least, Peter
and Philip,[2] were married and had children.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ i. 15, ii. 14, v. 2, 3, 29, viii. 19, xv. 7; Gal.
i. 18.]
[Footnote 2: For Peter, see ante, p. 174; for Philip, see Papias,
Polycrates, and Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius, _Hist.
Eccl._, iii. 30, 31, 39, v. 24.]
Jesus evidently confided secrets to the twelve, which he forbade them
to communicate to the world.[1] It seems as if his plan at times was
to surround himself with a degree of mystery, to postpone the most
important testimony respecting himself till after his death, and to
reveal himself completely only to his disciples, confiding to them the
care of demonstrating him afterward to the world.[2] "What I tell you
in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that
preach ye upon the housetops." This spared him the necessity of too
precise declarations, and created a kind of medium between the public
and himself. It is clear that there were certain teachings confined to
the apostles, and that he explained many parables to them, the meaning
of which was ambiguous to the multitude.[3] An enigmatical form and a
degree of oddness in connecting ideas were customary in the teachings
of the doctors, as may be seen in the sentences of the _Pirké Aboth_.
Jesus explained to his intimate friends whatever was peculiar in his
apothegms or in his apologues, and showed them his meaning stripped of
the wealth of illustration which sometimes obscured it.[4] Many of
these explanations appear to have been carefully preserved.[5]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xvi. 20, xvii. 9; Mark viii. 30, ix. 8.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 26, 27; Mark iv. 21, and following; Luke viii.
17, xii. 2, and following; John xiv. 22.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xiii. 10, and following, 34 and following; Mark iv.
10, and following, 33, and following; Luke viii. 9, and following;
xii. 41.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xvi. 6, and following; Mark vii. 17-23.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xiii. 18, and following; Mark vii. 18, and
following.]
During the lifetime of Jesus, the apostles preached,[1] but without
ever departing far from him. Their preaching, moreover, was limited to
the announcement of the speedy coming of the kingdom of God.[2] They
went from town to town, receiving hospitality, or rather taking it
themselves, according to the custom of the country. The guest in the
East has much authority; he is superior to the master of the house,
who has the greatest confidence in him. This fireside preaching is
admirably adapted to the propagation of new doctrines. The hidden
treasure is communicated, and payment is thus made for what is
received; politeness and good feeling lend their aid; the household is
touched and converted. Remove Oriental hospitality, and it would be
impossible to explain the propagation of Christianity. Jesus, who
adhered greatly to good old customs, encouraged his disciples to make
no scruple of profiting by this ancient public right, probably already
abolished in the great towns where there were hostelries.[3] "The
laborer," said he, "is worthy of his hire!" Once installed in any
house, they were to remain there, eating and drinking what was offered
them, as long as their mission lasted.
[Footnote 1: Luke ix. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Luke x. 11.]
[Footnote 3: The Greek word [Greek: pandokeion], in all the languages
of the Semitic East, designates an hostelry.]
Jesus desired that, in imitation of his example, the messengers of the
glad tidings should render their preaching agreeable by kindly and
polished manners. He directed that, on entering into a house, they
should give the salaam or greeting. Some hesitated; the salaam being
then, as now, in the East, a sign of religious communion, which is not
risked with persons of a doubtful faith. "Fear nothing," said Jesus;
"if no one in the house is worthy of your salute, it will return unto
you."[1] Sometimes, in fact, the apostles of the kingdom of God were
badly received, and came to complain to Jesus, who generally sought to
soothe them. Some of them, persuaded of the omnipotence of their
master, were hurt at this forbearance. The sons of Zebedee wanted him
to call down fire from heaven upon the inhospitable towns.[2] Jesus
received these outbursts with a subtle irony, and stopped them by
saying: "The Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to
save them."
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 11, and following; Mark vi. 10, and following;
Luke x. 5, and following. Comp. 2 Epistle of John, 10, 11.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ix. 52, and following.]
He sought in every way to establish as a principle that his apostles
were as himself.[1] It was believed that he had communicated his
marvellous virtues to them. They cast out demons, prophesied, and
formed a school of renowned exorcists,[2] although certain cases were
beyond their power.[3] They also wrought cures, either by the
imposition of hands, or by the anointing with oil,[4] one of the
fundamental processes of Oriental medicine. Lastly, like the Psylli,
they could handle serpents and could drink deadly potions with
impunity.[5] The further we get from Jesus--the more offensive does
this theurgy become. But there is no doubt that it was generally
received by the primitive Church, and that it held an important place
in the estimation of the world around.[6] Charlatans, as generally
happens, took advantage of this movement of popular credulity. Even
in the lifetime of Jesus, many, without being his disciples, cast out
demons in his name. The true disciples were much displeased at this,
and sought to prevent them. Jesus, who saw that this was really an
homage paid to his renown, was not very severe toward them.[7] It must
be observed, moreover, that the exercise of these gifts had to some
degree become a trade. Carrying the logic of absurdity to the extreme,
certain men cast out demons by Beelzebub,[8] the prince of demons.
They imagined that this sovereign of the infernal regions must have
entire authority over his subordinates, and that in acting through him
they were certain to make the intruding spirit depart.[9] Some even
sought to buy from the disciples of Jesus the secret of the miraculous
powers which had been conferred upon them.[10] The germ of a church
from this time began to appear. This fertile idea of the power of men
in association (_ecclesia_) was doubtless derived from Jesus. Full of
the purely idealistic doctrine that it is the union of love which
brings souls together, he declared that whenever men assembled in his
name, he would be in their midst. He confided to the Church the right
to bind and to unbind (that is to say, to render certain things lawful
or unlawful), to remit sins, to reprimand, to warn with authority, and
to pray with the certainty of being heard favorably.[11] It is
possible that many of these words may have been attributed to the
master, in order to give a warrant to the collective authority which
was afterward sought to be substituted for that of Jesus. At all
events, it was only after his death that particular churches were
established, and even this first constitution was made purely and
simply on the model of the synagogue. Many personages who had loved
Jesus much, and had founded great hopes upon him, as Joseph of
Arimathea, Lazarus, Mary Magdalen, and Nicodemus, did not, it seems,
join these churches, but clung to the tender or respectful memory
which they had preserved of him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 40, 42, xxv. 35, and following; Mark ix. 40;
Luke x. 16; John xiii. 20.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vii. 22, x. 1; Mark iii. 15, vi. 13; Luke x. 17.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvii. 18, 19.]
[Footnote 4: Mark vi. 13, xvi. 18; Epist. Jas. v. 14.]
[Footnote 5: Mark xvi. 18; Luke x. 19.]
[Footnote 6: Mark xvi. 20.]
[Footnote 7: Mark ix. 37, 38; Luke ix. 49, 50.]
[Footnote 8: An ancient god of the Philistines, transformed by the
Jews into a demon.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. xii. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 10: _Acts_ viii. 18, and following.]
[Footnote 11: Matt. xviii. 17, and following; John xx. 23.]
Moreover, there is no trace, in the teaching of Jesus, of an applied
morality or of a canonical law, ever so slightly defined. Once only,
respecting marriage, he spoke decidedly, and forbade divorce.[1]
Neither was there any theology or creed. There were indefinite views
respecting the Father, the Son, and the Spirit,[2] from which,
afterward, were drawn the Trinity and the Incarnation, but they were
then only in a state of indeterminate imagery. The later books of the
Jewish canon recognized the Holy Spirit, a sort of divine hypostasis,
sometimes identified with Wisdom or the Word.[3] Jesus insisted upon
this point,[4] and announced to his disciples a baptism by fire and by
the spirit,[5] as much preferable to that of John, a baptism which
they believed they had received, after the death of Jesus, in the form
of a great wind and tongues of fire.[6] The Holy Spirit thus sent by
the Father was to teach them all truth, and testify to that which
Jesus himself had promulgated.[7] In order to designate this Spirit,
Jesus made use of the word _Peraklit_, which the Syro-Chaldaic had
borrowed from the Greek ([Greek: paraklêtos]), and which appears to
have had in his mind the meaning of "advocate,"[8] "counsellor,"[9]
and sometimes that of "interpreter of celestial truths," and of
"teacher charged to reveal to men the hitherto hidden mysteries."[10]
He regarded himself as a _Peraklit_ to his disciples,[11] and the
Spirit which was to come after his death would only take his place.
This was an application of the process which the Jewish and Christian
theologies would follow during centuries, and which was to produce a
whole series of divine assessors, the _Metathronos_, the _Synadelphe_
or _Sandalphon_, and all the personifications of the Cabbala. But in
Judaism, these creations were to remain free and individual
speculations, whilst in Christianity, commencing with the fourth
century, they were to form the very essence of orthodoxy and of the
universal doctrine.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xix. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxviii. 19. Comp. Matt. iii. 16, 17; John xv. 26.]
[Footnote 3: _Sap._ i. 7, vii. 7, ix. 17, xii. 1; _Eccles._ i. 9, xv.
5, xxiv. 27; xxxix. 8; _Judith_ xvi. 17.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. x. 20; Luke xii. 12, xxiv. 49; John xiv. 26, xv.
26.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. iii. 11; Mark i. 8; Luke iii. 16; John i. 26, iii.
5; _Acts_ i. 5, 8, x. 47.]
[Footnote 6: _Acts_ ii. 1-4, xi. 15, xix. 6. Cf. John vii. 39.]
[Footnote 7: John xv. 26, xvi. 13.]
[Footnote 8: To _Peraklit_ was opposed _Katigor_, ([Greek:
katêgoros]), the "accuser."]
[Footnote 9: John xiv. 16; 1st Epistle of John ii. 1.]
[Footnote 10: John xiv. 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7, and following. Comp.
Philo, _De Mundi opificio_, § 6.]
[Footnote 11: John xiv. 16. Comp. the epistle before cited, _l.c._]
It is unnecessary to remark how remote from the thought of Jesus was
the idea of a religious book, containing a code and articles of faith.
Not only did he not write, but it was contrary to the spirit of the
infant sect to produce sacred books. They believed themselves on the
eve of the great final catastrophe. The Messiah came to put the seal
upon the Law and the Prophets, not to promulgate new Scriptures. With
the exception of the Apocalypse, which was in one sense the only
revealed book of the infant Christianity, all the other writings of
the apostolic age were works evoked by existing circumstances, making
no pretensions to furnish a completely dogmatic whole. The Gospels
had at first an entirely personal character, and much less authority
than tradition.[1]
[Footnote 1: Papias, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 39.]
Had the sect, however, no sacrament, no rite, no sign of union? It had
one which all tradition ascribes to Jesus. One of the favorite ideas
of the master was that he was the new bread, bread very superior to
manna, and on which mankind was to live. This idea, the germ of the
Eucharist, was at times expressed by him in singularly concrete forms.
On one occasion especially, in the synagogue of Capernaum, he took a
decided step, which cost him several of his disciples. "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but
my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven."[1] And he added, "I
am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he
that believeth on me shall never thirst."[2] These words excited much
murmuring. "The Jews then murmured at him because he said, I am the
bread which came down from heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus
the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then
that he saith, I came down from heaven?" But Jesus insisting with
still more force, said, "I am that bread of life; your fathers did eat
manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which cometh
down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the
living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this
bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my
flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."[3] The offence
was now at its height: "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"
Jesus going still further, said: "Verily, verily, I say unto you,
except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye
have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath
eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is
meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and
drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father
has sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he
shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: not
as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this
bread shall live for ever." Several of his disciples were offended at
such obstinacy in paradox, and ceased to follow him. Jesus did not
retract; he only added: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh
profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit,
and they are life." The twelve remained faithful, notwithstanding this
strange preaching. It gave to Cephas, in particular, an opportunity of
showing his absolute devotion, and of proclaiming once more, "Thou art
that Christ, the Son of the living God."
[Footnote 1: John vi. 32, and following.]
[Footnote 2: We find an analogous form of expression provoking a
similar misunderstanding, in John iv. 10, and following.]
[Footnote 3: A11 these discourses bear too strongly the imprint of the
style peculiar to John, for them to be regarded as exact. The anecdote
related in chapter vi. of the fourth Gospel cannot, however, be
entirely stripped of historical reality.]
It is probable that from that time, in the common repasts of the sect,
there was established some custom which was derived from the discourse
so badly received by the men of Capernaum. But the apostolic
traditions on this subject are very diverse and probably intentionally
incomplete. The synoptical gospels suppose that a unique sacramental
act served as basis to the mysterious rite, and declare this to have
been "the last supper." John, who has preserved the incident at the
synagogue of Capernaum, does not speak of such an act, although he
describes the last supper at great length. Elsewhere we see Jesus
recognized in the breaking of bread,[1] as if this act had been to
those who associated with him the most characteristic of his person.
When he was dead, the form under which he appeared to the pious memory
of his disciples, was that of president of a mysterious banquet,
taking the bread, blessing it, breaking and presenting it to those
present.[2] It is probable that this was one of his habits, and that
at such times he was particularly loving and tender. One material
circumstance, the presence of fish upon the table (a striking
indication, which proves that the rite had its birth on the shore of
Lake Tiberias[3]), was itself almost sacramental, and became a
necessary part of the conceptions of the sacred feast.[4]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxiv. 30, 35.]
[Footnote 2: Luke _l.c._; John xxi. 13.]
[Footnote 3: Comp. Matt. vii. 10, xiv. 17, and following, xv. 34, and
following; Mark vi. 38, and following; Luke ix. 13, and following, xi.
11, xxiv. 42; John vi. 9, and following, xxi. 9, and following. The
district round Lake Tiberias is the only place in Palestine where fish
forms a considerable portion of the diet.]
[Footnote 4: John xxi. 13; Luke xxiv. 42, 43. Compare the oldest
representations of the Lord's Supper, related or corrected by M. de
Rossi, in his dissertation on the [Greek: ICHTHYS] (_Spicilegium
Solesmense_ de dom Pitra, v. iii., p. 568, and following). The meaning
of the anagram which the word [Greek: ICHTHYS] contains, was probably
combined with a more ancient tradition on the place of fish in the
Gospel repasts.]
Their repasts were among the sweetest moments of the infant community.
At these times they all assembled; the master spoke to each one, and
kept up a charming and lively conversation. Jesus loved these seasons,
and was pleased to see his spiritual family thus grouped around
him.[1] The participation of the same bread was considered as a kind
of communion, a reciprocal bond. The master used, in this respect,
extremely strong terms, which were afterward taken in a very literal
sense. Jesus was, at the same time, very idealistic in his
conceptions, and very materialistic in his expression of them. Wishing
to express the thought that the believer only lives by him, that
altogether (body, blood, and soul) he was the life of the truly
faithful, he said to his disciples, "I am your nourishment"--a phrase
which, turned in figurative style, became, "My flesh is your bread, my
blood your drink." Added to this, the modes of speech employed by
Jesus, always strongly subjective, carried him still further. At
table, pointing to the food, he said, "I am here"--holding the
bread--"this is my body;" and of the wine, "This is my blood"--all
modes of speech which were equivalent to, "I am your nourishment."
[Footnote 1: Luke xxii. 15.]
This mysterious rite obtained great importance in the lifetime of
Jesus. It was probably established some time before the last journey
to Jerusalem, and it was the result of a general doctrine much more
than a determinate act. After the death of Jesus, it became the great
symbol of Christian communion,[1] and it is to the most solemn moment
of the life of the Saviour that its establishment is referred. It was
wished to see, in the consecration of bread and wine, a farewell
memorial which Jesus, at the moment of quitting life, had left to his
disciples.[2] They recognized Jesus himself in this sacrament. The
wholly spiritual idea of the presence of souls, which was one of the
most familiar to the Master, which made him say, for instance, that he
was personally with his disciples[3] when they were assembled in his
name, rendered this easily admissible. Jesus, we have already said,
never had a very defined notion of that which constitutes
individuality. In the degree of exaltation to which he had attained,
the ideal surpassed everything to such an extent that the body counted
for nothing. We are one when we love one another, when we live in
dependence on each other; it was thus that he and his disciples were
one.[4] His disciples adopted the same language. Those who for years
had lived with him, had seen him constantly take the bread and the cup
"between his holy and venerable hands,"[5] and thus offer himself to
them. It was he whom they ate and drank; he became the true passover,
the former one having been abrogated by his blood. It is impossible to
translate into our essentially determined idiom, in which a rigorous
distinction between the material and the metaphorical must always be
observed, habits of style the essential character of which is to
attribute to metaphor, or rather to the idea it represents, a complete
reality.
[Footnote 1: _Acts_ ii. 42, 46.]
[Footnote 2: 1 _Cor._ xi. 20, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xviii. 20.]
[Footnote 4: John xii. entirely.]
[Footnote 5: Canon of the Greek Masses and the Latin Mass (very
ancient).]
CHAPTER XIX.
INCREASING PROGRESSION OF ENTHUSIASM AND OF EXALTATION.
It is clear that such a religious society, founded solely on the
expectation of the kingdom of God, must be in itself very incomplete.
The first Christian generation lived almost entirely upon expectations
and dreams. On the eve of seeing the world come to an end, they
regarded as useless everything which only served to prolong it.
Possession of property was interdicted.[1] Everything which attaches
man to earth, everything which draws him aside from heaven, was to be
avoided. Although several of the disciples were married, there was to
be no more marriage on becoming a member of the sect.[2] The celibate
was greatly preferred; even in marriage continence was recommended.[3]
At one time the master seems to approve of those who should mutilate
themselves in prospect of the kingdom of God.[4] In this he was
consistent with his principle--"If thy hand or thy foot offend thee,
cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter
into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to
be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it
out, and cast it from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life
with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into
hell-fire."[5] The cessation of generation was often considered as
the sign and condition of the kingdom of God.[6]
[Footnote 1: Luke xiv. 33; _Acts_ iv. 32, and following, v. 1-11.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xix. 10, and following; Luke xviii. 29, and
following.]
[Footnote 3: This is the constant doctrine of Paul. Comp. _Rev._ xiv.
4.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xix. 12.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xviii. 8, 9. Cf. Talmud of Babylon, _Niddah_, 13
_b_.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xxii. 30; Mark xii. 25; Luke xx. 35; Ebionite
Gospel, entitled "Of the Egyptians," in Clem. of Alex., _Strom._ iii.
9, 13, and Clem. Rom., Epist. ii. 12.]
Never, we perceive, would this primitive Church have formed a lasting
society but for the great variety of germs deposited by Jesus in his
teaching. It required more than a century for the true Christian
Church--that which has converted the world--to disengage itself from
this little sect of "latter-day saints," and to become a framework
applicable to the whole of human society. The same thing, indeed, took
place in Buddhism, which at first was founded only for monks. The same
thing would have happened in the order of St. Francis, if that order
had succeeded in its pretension of becoming the rule of the whole of
human society. Essentially Utopian in their origin, and succeeding by
their very exaggeration, the great systems of which we have just
spoken have only laid hold of the world by being profoundly modified,
and by abandoning their excesses. Jesus did not advance beyond this
first and entirely monachal period, in which it was believed that the
impossible could be attempted with impunity. He made no concession to
necessity. He boldly preached war against nature, and total severance
from ties of blood. "Verily I say unto you," said he, "there is no man
that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children,
for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in
this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting."[1]
[Footnote 1: Luke xviii. 20, 30.]
The teachings which Jesus is reputed to have given to his disciples
breathe the same exaltation.[1] He who was so tolerant to the world
outside, he who contented himself sometimes with half adhesions,[2]
exercised toward his own an extreme rigor. He would have no "all
buts." We should call it an "order," constituted by the most austere
rules. Faithful to his idea that the cares of life trouble man, and
draw him downward, Jesus required from his associates a complete
detachment from the earth, an absolute devotion to his work. They were
not to carry with them either money or provisions for the way, not
even a scrip, or change of raiment. They must practise absolute
poverty, live on alms and hospitality. "Freely ye have received,
freely give,"[3] said he, in his beautiful language. Arrested and
arraigned before the judges, they were not to prepare their defence;
the _Peraklit_, the heavenly advocate, would inspire them with what
they ought to say. The Father would send them his Spirit from on high,
which would become the principle of all their acts, the director of
their thoughts, and their guide through the world.[4] If driven from
any town, they were to shake the dust from their shoes, declaring
always the proximity of the kingdom of God, that none might plead
ignorance. "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel," added
he, "till the Son of man be come."
[Footnote 1: Matt. x., entirely, xxiv. 9; Mark vi. 8, and following,
ix. 40, xiii. 9-13; Luke x. 3, and following, x. 1, and following,
xii. 4, and following, xxi. 17; John xv. 18, and following, xvii. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Mark ix. 38, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 8. Comp. Midrash Ialkout, _Deut._, sect. 824.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. x. 20; John xiv. 16, and following, 26, xv. 26,
xvi. 7, 13.]
A strange ardor animates all these discourses, which may in part be
the creation of the enthusiasm of his disciples,[1] but which even in
that case came indirectly from Jesus, for it was he who had inspired
the enthusiasm. He predicted for his followers severe persecutions and
the hatred of mankind. He sent them forth as lambs in the midst of
wolves. They would be scourged in the synagogues, and dragged to
prison. Brother should deliver up brother to death, and the father his
son. When they were persecuted in one country they were to flee to
another. "The disciple," said he, "is not above his master, nor the
servant above his lord. Fear not them which kill the body, but are not
able to kill the soul. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and
one of them shall not fall to the ground without your Father. But the
very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not, therefore, ye
are of more value than many sparrows."[2] "Whosoever, therefore,"
continued he, "shall confess me before men, him will I confess also
before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me
before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in
heaven."[3]
[Footnote 1: The expressions in Matt. x. 38, xvi. 24; Mark viii. 34;
Luke xiv. 27, can only have been conceived after the death of Jesus.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 24-31; Luke xii. 4-7.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 32, 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26, xii. 8, 9.]
In these fits of severity he went so far as to abolish all natural
ties. His requirements had no longer any bounds. Despising the healthy
limits of man's nature, he demanded that he should exist only for him,
that he should love him alone. "If any man come to me," said he, "and
hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren,
and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."[1] "So
likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath,
he cannot be my disciple."[2] There was, at such times, something
strange and more than human in his words; they were like a fire
utterly consuming life, and reducing everything to a frightful
wilderness. The harsh and gloomy feeling of distaste for the world,
and of excessive self-abnegation which characterizes Christian
perfection, was originated, not by the refined and cheerful moralist
of earlier days, but by the sombre giant whom a kind of grand
presentiment was withdrawing, more and more, out of the pale of
humanity. We should almost say that, in these moments of conflict with
the most legitimate cravings of the heart, Jesus had forgotten the
pleasure of living, of loving, of seeing, and of feeling. Employing
still more unmeasured language, he even said, "If any man will come
after me, let him deny himself and follow me. He that loveth father or
mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or
daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life
shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake and the
gospel's, shall find it. What is a man profited if he shall gain the
whole world, and lose his own soul?"[3] Two anecdotes of the kind we
cannot accept as historical, but which, although they were
exaggerations, were intended to represent a characteristic feature,
clearly illustrate this defiance of nature. He said to one man,
"Follow me!"--But he said, "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my
father." Jesus answered, "Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou
and preach the kingdom of God." Another said to him, "Lord, I will
follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home
at my house." Jesus replied, "No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."[4] An
extraordinary confidence, and at times accents of singular sweetness,
reversing all our ideas of him, caused these exaggerations to be
easily received. "Come unto me," cried he, "all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and
learn of me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest
unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."[5]
[Footnote 1: Luke xiv. 26. We must here take into account the
exaggeration of Luke's style.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xiv. 33.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 37-39, xvi. 24, 25; Luke ix. 23-25, xiv. 26, 27,
xvii. 33; John xii. 25.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 21, 22; Luke ix. 59-62.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xi. 28-30.]
A great danger threatened the future of this exalted morality, thus
expressed in hyperbolical language and with a terrible energy. By
detaching man from earth the ties of life were severed. The Christian
would be praised for being a bad son, or a bad patriot, if it was for
Christ that he resisted his father and fought against his country. The
ancient city, the parent republic, the state, or the law common to
all, were thus placed in hostility with the kingdom of God. A fatal
germ of theocracy was introduced into the world.
From this point, another consequence may be perceived. This morality,
created for a temporary crisis, when introduced into a peaceful
country, and in the midst of a society assured of its own duration,
must seem impossible. The Gospel was thus destined to become a Utopia
for Christians, which few would care to realize. These terrible maxims
would, for the greater number, remain in profound oblivion, an
oblivion encouraged by the clergy itself; the Gospel man would prove a
dangerous man. The most selfish, proud, hard and worldly of all human
beings, a Louis XIV. for instance, would find priests to persuade him,
in spite of the Gospel, that he was a Christian. But, on the other
hand, there would always be found holy men who would take the sublime
paradoxes of Jesus literally. Perfection being placed beyond the
ordinary conditions of society, and a complete Gospel life being only
possible away from the world, the principle of asceticism and of
monasticism was established. Christian societies would have two moral
rules; the one moderately heroic for common men, the other exalted in
the extreme for the perfect man; and the perfect man would be the
monk, subjected to rules which professed to realize the gospel ideal.
It is certain that this ideal, if only on account of the celibacy and
poverty it imposed, could not become the common law. The monk would be
thus, in one sense, the only true Christian. Common sense revolts at
these excesses; and if we are guided by it, to demand the impossible,
is a mark of weakness and error. But common sense is a bad judge where
great matters are in question. To obtain little from humanity we must
ask much. The immense moral progress which we owe to the Gospel is the
result of its exaggerations. It is thus that it has been, like
stoicism, but with infinitely greater fulness, a living argument for
the divine powers in man, an exalted monument of the potency of the
will.
We may easily imagine that to Jesus, at this period of his life,
everything which was not the kingdom of God had absolutely
disappeared. He was, if we may say so, totally outside nature: family,
friendship, country, had no longer any meaning for him. No doubt from
this moment he had already sacrificed his life. Sometimes we are
tempted to believe that, seeing in his own death a means of founding
his kingdom, he deliberately determined to allow himself to be
killed.[1] At other times, although such a thought only afterward
became a doctrine, death presented itself to him as a sacrifice,
destined to appease his Father and to save mankind.[2] A singular
taste for persecution and torments[3] possessed him. His blood
appeared to him as the water of a second baptism with which he ought
to be baptized, and he seemed possessed by a strange haste to
anticipate this baptism, which alone could quench his thirst.[4]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xvi. 21-23, xvii. 12, 21, 22.]
[Footnote 2: Mark x. 45.]
[Footnote 3: Luke vi. 22, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xii. 50.]
The grandeur of his views upon the future was at times surprising. He
did not conceal from himself the terrible storm he was about to cause
in the world. "Think not," said he, with much boldness and beauty,
"that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but
a sword. There shall be five in one house divided, three against two,
and two against three. I am come to set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own
household."[1] "I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I,
if it be already kindled?"[2] "They shall put you out of the
synagogues," he continued; "yea, the time cometh, that whosoever
killeth you, will think that he doeth God service."[3] "If the world
hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. Remember the
word that I said unto you: The servant is not greater than his lord.
If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you."[4]
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 34-36; Luke xii. 51-53. Compare Micah vii. 5,
6.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xii. 49. See the Greek text.]
[Footnote 3: John xvi. 2.]
[Footnote 4: John xv. 18-20.]
Carried away by this fearful progression of enthusiasm, and governed
by the necessities of a preaching becoming daily more exalted, Jesus
was no longer free; he belonged to his mission, and, in one sense, to
mankind. Sometimes one would have said that his reason was disturbed.
He suffered great mental anguish and agitation.[1] The great vision of
the kingdom of God, glistening before his eyes, bewildered him. His
disciples at times thought him mad.[2] His enemies declared him to be
possessed.[3] His excessively impassioned temperament carried him
incessantly beyond the bounds of human nature. He laughed at all human
systems, and his work not being a work of the reason, that which he
most imperiously required was "faith."[4] This was the word most
frequently repeated in the little guest-chamber. It is the watchword
of all popular movements. It is clear that none of these movements
would take place if it were necessary that their author should gain
his disciples one by one by force of logic. Reflection leads only to
doubt. If the authors of the French Revolution, for instance, had had
to be previously convinced by lengthened meditations, they would all
have become old without accomplishing anything; Jesus, in like manner,
aimed less at convincing his hearers than at exciting their
enthusiasm. Urgent and imperative, he suffered no opposition: men must
be converted, nothing less would satisfy him. His natural gentleness
seemed to have abandoned him; he was sometimes harsh and
capricious.[5] His disciples at times did not understand him, and
experienced in his presence a feeling akin to fear.[6] Sometimes his
displeasure at the slightest opposition led him to commit
inexplicable and apparently absurd acts.[7]
[Footnote 1: John xii. 27.]
[Footnote 2: Mark iii. 21, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Mark iii. 22; John vii. 20, viii. 48, and following, x.
20, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 10, ix. 2, 22, 28, 29, xvii. 19; John vi. 29,
etc.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xvii. 16; Mark iii. 5, ix. 18; Luke viii. 45, ix.
41.]
[Footnote 6: It is in Mark especially that this feature is visible;
iv. 40, v. 15, ix. 31, x. 32.]
[Footnote 7: Mark xi. 12-14, 20, and following.]
It was not that his virtue deteriorated; but his struggle for the
ideal against the reality became insupportable. Contact with the world
pained and revolted him. Obstacles irritated him. His idea of the Son
of God became disturbed and exaggerated. The fatal law which condemns
an idea to decay as soon as it seeks to convert men applied to him.
Contact with men degraded him to their level. The tone he had adopted
could not be sustained more than a few months; it was time that death
came to liberate him from an endurance strained to the utmost, to
remove him from the impossibilities of an interminable path, and by
delivering him from a trial in danger of being too prolonged,
introduce him henceforth sinless into celestial peace.
CHAPTER XX.
OPPOSITION TO JESUS.
During the first period of his career, it does not appear that Jesus
met with any serious opposition. His preaching, thanks to the extreme
liberty which was enjoyed in Galilee, and to the number of teachers
who arose on all hands, made no noise beyond a restricted circle. But
when Jesus entered upon a path brilliant with wonders and public
successes, the storm began to gather. More than once he was obliged to
conceal himself and fly.[1] Antipas, however, did not interfere with
him, although Jesus expressed himself sometimes very severely
respecting him.[2] At Tiberias, his usual residence, the Tetrarch was
only one or two leagues distant from the district chosen by Jesus for
the centre of his activity; he heard speak of his miracles, which he
doubtless took to be clever tricks, and desired to see them.[3] The
incredulous were at that time very curious about this class of
illusions.[4] With his ordinary tact, Jesus refused to gratify him. He
took care not to prejudice his position by mingling with an
irreligious world, which wished to draw from him an idle amusement; he
aspired only to gain the people; he reserved for the simple, means
suitable to them alone.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 14-16; Mark iii. 7, ix. 29, 30.]
[Footnote 2: Mark viii. 15; Luke xiii. 32.]
[Footnote 3: Luke ix. 9, xxiii. 8.]
[Footnote 4: _Lucius_; attributed to Lucian, 4.]
On one occasion the report was spread that Jesus was no other than
John the Baptist risen from the dead. Antipas became anxious and
uneasy;[1] and employed artifice to rid his dominions of the new
prophet. Certain Pharisees, under the pretence of regard for Jesus,
came to tell him that Antipas was seeking to kill him. Jesus,
notwithstanding his great simplicity, saw the snare, and did not
depart.[2] His peaceful manners, and his remoteness from popular
agitation, ultimately reassured the Tetrarch and dissipated the
danger.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiv. 1, and following; Mark vi. 14, and following;
Luke ix. 7, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xiii. 31, and following.]
The new doctrine was by no means received with equal favor in all the
towns of Galilee. Not only did incredulous Nazareth continue to reject
him who was to become her glory; not only did his brothers persist in
not believing in him,[1] but the cities of the lake themselves, in
general well-disposed, were not all converted. Jesus often complained
of the incredulity and hardness of heart which he encountered, and
although it is natural that in such reproaches we make allowance for
the exaggeration of the preacher, although we are sensible of that
kind of _convicium seculi_ which Jesus affected in imitation of John
the Baptist,[2] it is clear that the country was far from yielding
itself entirely a second time to the kingdom of God. "Woe unto thee,
Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!" cried he; "for if the mighty
works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they
would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto
you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of
judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto
heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works which
have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained
until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable
for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee."[3] "The
queen of the south," added he, "shall rise up in the judgment of this
generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost
parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a
greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh shall rise in
judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they
repented at the preaching of Jonas; and behold, a greater than Jonas
is here."[4] His wandering life, at first so full of charm, now began
to weigh upon him. "The foxes," said he, "have holes, and the birds of
the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his
head."[5] Bitterness and reproach took more and more hold upon him. He
accused unbelievers of not yielding to evidence, and said that, even
at the moment in which the Son of man should appear in his celestial
glory, there would still be men who would not believe in him.[6]
[Footnote 1: John vii. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xii. 39, 45, xiii. 15, xvi. 4; Luke xi. 29.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xi. 21-24; Luke x. 12-15.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 41, 42; Luke xi. 31, 32.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. viii. 20; Luke ix. 58.]
[Footnote 6: Luke xviii. 8.]
Jesus, in fact, was not able to receive opposition with the coolness
of the philosopher, who, understanding the reason of the various
opinions which divide the world, finds it quite natural that all
should not agree with him. One of the principal defects of the Jewish
race is its harshness in controversy, and the abusive tone which it
almost always infuses into it. There never were in the world such
bitter quarrels as those of the Jews among themselves. It is the
faculty of nice discernment which makes the polished and moderate man.
Now, the lack of this faculty is one of the most constant features of
the Semitic mind. Subtle and refined works, the dialogues of Plato,
for example, are altogether unknown to these nations. Jesus, who was
exempt from almost all the defects of his race, and whose leading
quality was precisely an infinite delicacy, was led in spite of
himself to make use of the general style in polemics.[1] Like John the
Baptist,[2] he employed very harsh terms against his adversaries. Of
an exquisite gentleness with the simple, he was irritated at
incredulity, however little aggressive.[3] He was no longer the mild
teacher who delivered the "Sermon on the Mount," who had met with
neither resistance nor difficulty. The passion that underlay his
character led him to make use of the keenest invectives. This singular
mixture ought not to surprise us. M. de Lamennais, a man of our own
times, has strikingly presented the same contrast. In his beautiful
book, the "Words of a Believer," the most immoderate anger and the
sweetest relentings alternate, as in a mirage. This man, who was
extremely kind in the intercourse of life, became madly intractable
toward those who did not agree with him. Jesus, in like manner,
applied to himself, not without reason, the passage from Isaiah:[4]
"He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in
the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall
he not quench."[5] And yet many of the recommendations which he
addressed to his disciples contain the germs of a true fanaticism,[6]
germs which the Middle Ages were to develop in a cruel manner. Must we
reproach him for this? No revolution is effected without some
harshness. If Luther, or the actors in the French Revolution, had been
compelled to observe the rules of politeness, neither the Reformation
nor the Revolution would have taken place. Let us congratulate
ourselves in like manner that Jesus encountered no law which punished
the invectives he uttered against one class of citizens. Had such a
law existed, the Pharisees would have been inviolate. All the great
things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute
principles. A critical philosopher would have said to his disciples:
Respect the opinion of others; and believe that no one is so
completely right that his adversary is completely wrong. But the
action of Jesus has nothing in common with the disinterested
speculation of the philosopher. To know that we have touched the ideal
for a moment, and have been deterred by the wickedness of a few, is a
thought insupportable to an ardent soul. What must it have been for
the founder of a new world?
[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 34, xv. 14, xxiii. 33.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. iii. 7.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 30; Luke xxi. 23.]
[Footnote 4: Isa. xlii. 2, 3.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xii. 19-20.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. x. 14, 15, 21, and following, 34, and following;
Luke xix. 27.]
The invincible obstacle to the ideas of Jesus came especially from
orthodox Judaism, represented by the Pharisees. Jesus became more and
more alienated from the ancient Law. Now, the Pharisees were the true
Jews; the nerve and sinew of Judaism. Although this party had its
centre at Jerusalem, it had adherents either established in Galilee,
or who often came there.[1] They were, in general, men of a narrow
mind, caring much for externals; their devoutness was haughty, formal,
and self-satisfied.[2] Their manners were ridiculous, and excited the
smiles of even those who respected them. The epithets which the people
gave them, and which savor of caricature, prove this. There was the
"bandy-legged Pharisee" (_Nikfi_), who walked in the streets dragging
his feet and knocking them against the stones; the "bloody-browed
Pharisee" (_Kizai_), who went with his eyes shut in order not to see
the women, and dashed his head so much against the walls that it was
always bloody; the "pestle Pharisee" (_Medinkia_), who kept himself
bent double like the handle of a pestle; the "Pharisee of strong
shoulders" (_Shikmi_), who walked with his back bent as if he carried
on his shoulders the whole burden of the Law; the
"_What-is-there-to-do?-I-do-it Pharisee_," always on the search for a
precept to fulfil; and, lastly, the "dyed Pharisee," whose externals
of devotion were but a varnish of hypocrisy.[3] This strictness was,
in fact, often only apparent, and concealed in reality great moral
laxity.[4] The people, nevertheless, were duped by it. The people,
whose instinct is always right, even when it is most astray respecting
individuals, is very easily deceived by false devotees. That which it
loves in them is good and worthy of being loved; but it has not
sufficient penetration to distinguish the appearance from the reality.
[Footnote 1: Mark vii. 1; Luke v. 17, and following, vii. 36.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vi. 2, 5, 16, ix. 11, 14, xii. 2, xxiii. 5, 15, 23;
Luke v. 30, vi. 2, 7, xi. 39, and following, xviii. 12; John ix. 16;
_Pirké Aboth_, i. 16; Jos., _Ant._, XVII. ii. 4, XVIII. i. 3; _Vita_,
38; Talm. of Bab., _Sota_, 22 _b_.]
[Footnote 3: Talmud of Jerusalem, _Berakoth_, ix., sub fin.; _Sota_,
v. 7; Talmud of Babylon, _Sota_, 22 _b_. The two compilations of this
curious passage present considerable differences. We have, in general,
followed the Babylonian compilation, which seems most natural. Cf.
Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xvi. 1. The passages in Epiphanes, and several of
those of the Talmud, may, besides, relate to an epoch posterior to
Jesus, an epoch in which "Pharisee" had become synonymous with
"devotee."]
[Footnote 4: Matt. v. 20, xv. 4, xxiii. 3, 16, and following; John
viii. 7; Jos., _Ant._, XII. ix. 1; XIII. x. 5.]
It is easy to understand the antipathy which, in such an impassioned
state of society, must necessarily break out between Jesus and persons
of this character. Jesus recognized only the religion of the heart,
whilst that of the Pharisees consisted almost exclusively in
observances. Jesus sought the humble and outcasts of all kinds, and
the Pharisees saw in this an insult to their religion of
respectability. The Pharisee was an infallible and faultless man, a
pedant always right in his own conceit, taking the first place in the
synagogue, praying in the street, giving alms to the sound of a
trumpet, and caring greatly for salutations. Jesus maintained that
each one ought to await the kingdom of God with fear and trembling.
The bad religious tendency represented by Pharisaism did not reign
without opposition. Many men before or during the time of Jesus, such
as Jesus, son of Sirach (one of the true ancestors of Jesus of
Nazareth), Gamaliel, Antigonus of Soco, and especially the gentle and
noble Hillel, had taught much more elevated, and almost Gospel
doctrines. But these good seeds had been choked. The beautiful maxims
of Hillel, summing up the whole law as equity,[1] those of Jesus, son
of Sirach, making worship consist in doing good,[2] were forgotten or
anathematized.[3] Shammai, with his narrow and exclusive spirit, had
prevailed. An enormous mass of "traditions" had stifled the Law,[4]
under pretext of protecting and interpreting it. Doubtless these
conservative measures had their share of usefulness; it is well that
the Jewish people loved its Law even to excess, since it is this
frantic love which, in saving Mosaism under Antiochus Epiphanes and
under Herod, has preserved the leaven from which Christianity was to
emanate. But taken in themselves, all these old precautions were only
puerile. The synagogue, which was the depository of them, was no more
than a parent of error. Its reign was ended; and yet to require its
abdication was to require the impossible, that which an established
power has never done or been able to do.
[Footnote 1: Talm. of Bab., _Shabbath_, 31 _a_; _Joma_, 35 _b_.]
[Footnote 2: _Eccles._ xvii. 21, and following, xxxv. 1, and
following.]
[Footnote 3: Talm. of Jerus., _Sanhedrim_, xi. 1; Talm. of Bab.,
_Sanhedrim_, 100 _b_.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xv. 2.]
The conflicts of Jesus with official hypocrisy were continual. The
ordinary tactics of the reformers who appeared in the religious state
which we have just described, and which might be called "traditional
formalism," were to oppose the "text" of the sacred books to
"traditions." Religious zeal is always an innovator, even when it
pretends to be in the highest degree conservative. Just as the
neo-Catholics of our days become more and more remote from the Gospel,
so the Pharisees left the Bible at each step more and more. This is
why the Puritan reformer is generally essentially "Biblical," taking
the unchangeable text for his basis in criticising the current
theology, which has changed with each generation. Thus acted later the
Karaites and the Protestants. Jesus applied the axe to the root of the
tree much more energetically. We see him sometimes, it is true, invoke
the text against the false _Masores_ or traditions of the
Pharisees.[1] But in general he dwelt little on exegesis--it was the
conscience to which he appealed. With one stroke he cut through both
text and commentaries. He showed, indeed, to the Pharisees that they
seriously perverted Mosaism by their traditions, but he by no means
pretended himself to return to Mosaism. His mission was concerned with
the future, not with the past. Jesus was more than the reformer of an
obsolete religion; he was the creator of the eternal religion of
humanity.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xv. 2, and following; Mark vii. 2, and following.]
Disputes broke out especially respecting a number of external
practices introduced by tradition, which neither Jesus nor his
disciples observed.[1] The Pharisees reproached him sharply for this.
When he dined with them, he scandalized them much by not observing the
customary ablutions. "Give alms," said he, "of such things as ye have;
and behold, all things are clean unto you."[2] That which in the
highest degree hurt his refined feeling was the air of assurance which
the Pharisees carried into religious matters; their paltry worship,
which ended in a vain seeking after precedents and titles, to the
utter neglect of the improvement of their hearts. An admirable parable
rendered this thought with infinite charm and justice. "Two men," said
he, "went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee and the other
a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I
thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust,
adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give
tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off,
would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his
breast, saying, God, be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man
went down to his house justified rather than the other."[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xv. 2, and following; Mark vii. 4, 8; Luke v. sub
fin. and vi. init., xi. 38, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xi. 41.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xviii. 9-14; comp. _ibid._, xiv. 7-11.]
A hate, which death alone could satisfy, was the consequence of these
struggles. John the Baptist had already provoked enmities of the same
kind.[1] But the aristocrats of Jerusalem, who despised him, had
allowed simple men to take him for a prophet.[2] In the case of Jesus,
however, the war was to the death. A new spirit had appeared in the
world, causing all that preceded to pale before it. John the Baptist
was completely a Jew; Jesus was scarcely one at all. Jesus always
appealed to the delicacy of the moral sentiment. He was only a
disputant when he argued against the Pharisees, his opponents forcing
him, as generally happens, to adopt their tone.[3] His exquisite
irony, his arch and provoking remarks, always struck home. They were
everlasting stigmas, and have remained festering in the wound. This
Nessus-shirt of ridicule which the Jew, son of the Pharisees, has
dragged in tatters after him during eighteen centuries, was woven by
Jesus with a divine skill. Masterpieces of fine raillery, their
features are written in lines of fire upon the flesh of the hypocrite
and the false devotee. Incomparable traits, worthy of a son of God! A
god alone knows how to kill after this fashion. Socrates and Molière
only touched the skin. He carried fire and rage to the very marrow.
[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 7, and following, xvii. 12, 13.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiv. 5, xxi. 26; Mark xi. 32; Luke xx. 6.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 3-8, xxiii. 16, and following.]
But it was also just that this great master of irony should pay for
his triumph with his life. Even in Galilee, the Pharisees sought to
ruin him, and employed against him the manoeuvre which ultimately
succeeded at Jerusalem. They endeavored to interest in their quarrel
the partisans of the new political faction which was established.[1]
The facilities Jesus found for escape in Galilee, and the weakness of
the government of Antipas, baffled these attempts. He ran into danger
of his own free will. He saw clearly that his action, if he remained
confined to Galilee, was necessarily limited. Judea drew him as by a
charm; he wished to try a last effort to gain the rebellious city; and
seemed anxious to fulfill the proverb--that a prophet must not die
outside Jerusalem.[2]
[Footnote 1: Mark iii. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xiii. 33.]
CHAPTER XXI.
LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM.
Jesus had for a long time been sensible of the dangers that surrounded
him.[1] During a period of time which we may estimate at eighteen
months, he avoided going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.[2] At the feast
of Tabernacles of the year 32 (according to the hypothesis we have
adopted), his relations, always malevolent and incredulous,[3] pressed
him to go there. The evangelist John seems to insinuate that there was
some hidden project to ruin him in this invitation. "Depart hence, and
go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou
doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he
himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show
thyself to the world." Jesus, suspecting some treachery, at first
refused; but when the caravan of pilgrims had set out, he started on
the journey, unknown to every one, and almost alone.[4] It was the
last farewell which he bade to Galilee. The feast of Tabernacles fell
at the autumnal equinox. Six months still had to elapse before the
fatal denouement. But during this interval, Jesus saw no more his
beloved provinces of the north. The pleasant days had passed away; he
must now traverse, step by step, the painful path that will terminate
only in the anguish of death.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xvi. 20, 21; Mark viii. 30, 31.]
[Footnote 2: John vii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: John vii. 5.]
[Footnote 4: John vii. 10.]
His disciples, and the pious women who tended him, met him again in
Judea.[1] But how much everything was changed for him there! Jesus
was a stranger at Jerusalem. He felt that there was a wall of
resistance he could not penetrate. Surrounded by snares and
difficulties, he was unceasingly pursued by the ill-will of the
Pharisees.[2] Instead of that illimitable faculty of belief, happy
gift of youthful natures, which he found in Galilee--instead of those
good and gentle people, amongst whom objections (always the fruit of
some degree of ill-will and indocility) had no existence, he met there
at each step an obstinate incredulity, upon which the means of action
that had so well succeeded in the north had little effect. His
disciples were despised as being Galileans. Nicodemus, who, on one of
his former journeys, had had a conversation with him by night, almost
compromised himself with the Sanhedrim, by having wished to defend
him. "Art thou also of Galilee?" they said to him. "Search and look:
for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet."[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 55; Mark xv. 41; Luke xxiii. 49, 55.]
[Footnote 2: John vii. 20, 25, 30, 32.]
[Footnote 3: John vii. 50, and following.]
The city, as we have already said, displeased Jesus. Until then he had
always avoided great centres, preferring for his action the country
and the towns of small importance. Many of the precepts which he gave
to his apostles were absolutely inapplicable, except in a simple
society of humble men.[1] Having no idea of the world, and accustomed
to the kindly communism of Galilee, remarks continually escaped him,
whose simplicity would at Jerusalem appear very singular.[2] His
imagination and his love of Nature found themselves constrained within
these walls. True religion does not proceed from the tumult of towns,
but from the tranquil serenity of the fields.
[Footnote 1: Matt. x. 11-13; Mark vi. 10; Luke x. 5-8.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 3, xxvi. 18; Mark xi. 3, xiv. 13, 14; Luke
xix. 31, xxii. 10-12.]
The arrogance of the priests rendered the courts of the temple
disagreeable to him. One day some of his disciples, who knew Jerusalem
better than he, wished him to notice the beauty of the buildings of
the temple, the admirable choice of materials, and the richness of the
votive offerings that covered the walls. "Seest thou these buildings?"
said he; "there shall not be left one stone upon another."[1] He
refused to admire anything, except it was a poor widow who passed at
that moment, and threw a small coin into the box. "She has cast in
more than they all," said he; "for all these have of their abundance
cast in unto the offerings of God; but she of her penury hath cast in
all the living that she had."[2] This manner of criticising all he
observed at Jerusalem, of praising the poor who gave little, of
slighting the rich who gave much,[3] and of blaming the opulent
priesthood who did nothing for the good of the people, naturally
exasperated the sacerdotal caste. As the seat of a conservative
aristocracy, the temple, like the Mussulman _haram_ which succeeded
it, was the last place in the world where revolution could prosper.
Imagine an innovator going in our days to preach the overturning of
Islamism round the mosque of Omar! There, however, was the centre of
the Jewish life, the point where it was necessary to conquer or die.
On this Calvary, where certainly Jesus suffered more than at Golgotha,
his days passed away in disputation and bitterness, in the midst of
tedious controversies respecting canonical law and exegesis, for which
his great moral elevation, instead of giving him the advantage,
positively unfitted him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxiv. 1, 2; Mark xiii. 1, 2; Luke xix. 44, xxi. 5,
6. Cf. Mark xi. 11.]
[Footnote 2: Mark xii. 41, and following; Luke xxi. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Mark xii. 41.]
In the midst of this troubled life, the sensitive and kindly heart of
Jesus found a refuge, where he enjoyed moments of sweetness. After
having passed the day disputing in the temple, toward evening Jesus
descended into the valley of Kedron, and rested a while in the orchard
of a farming establishment (probably for the making of oil) named
Gethsemane,[1] which served as a pleasure garden to the inhabitants.
Thence he proceeded to pass the night upon the Mount of Olives, which
limits the horizon of the city on the east.[2] This side is the only
one, in the environs of Jerusalem, which offers an aspect in any
degree pleasing and verdant. The plantations of olives, figs, and
palms were numerous there, and gave their names to the villages,
farms, or enclosures of Bethphage, Gethsemane, and Bethany.[3] There
were upon the Mount of Olives two great cedars, the memory of which
was long preserved amongst the dispersed Jews; their branches served
as an asylum to clouds of doves, and under their shade were
established small bazaars.[4] All this precinct was in a manner the
abode of Jesus and his disciples; they knew it field by field and
house by house.
[Footnote 1: Mark xi. 19; Luke xxii. 39; John xviii. 1, 2. This
orchard could not be very far from the place where the piety of the
Catholics has surrounded some old olive-trees by a wall. The word
_Gethsemane_ seems to signify "oil-press."]
[Footnote 2: Luke xxi. 37, xxii. 39; John viii. 1, 2.]
[Footnote 3: Talm. of Bab., _Pesachim_, 53 _a_.]
[Footnote 4: Talm. of Jerus., _Taanith_, iv. 8.]
The village of Bethany, in particular,[1] situated at the summit of
the hill, upon the incline which commands the Dead Sea and the Jordan,
at a journey of an hour and a half from Jerusalem, was the place
especially beloved by Jesus.[2] He there made the acquaintance of a
family composed of three persons, two sisters and a brother, whose
friendship had a great charm for him.[3] Of the two sisters, the one,
named Martha, was an obliging, kind, and assiduous person;[4] the
other, named Mary, on the contrary, pleased Jesus by a sort of
languor,[5] and by her strongly developed speculative instincts.
Seated at the feet of Jesus, she often forgot, in listening to him,
the duties of real life. Her sister, upon whom fell all the duty at
such times, gently complained. "Martha, Martha," said Jesus to her,
"thou art troubled, and carest about many things; now, one thing only
is needful. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken
away."[6] Her brother, Eleazar, or Lazarus, was also much beloved by
Jesus.[7] Lastly, a certain Simon, the leper, who was the owner of the
house, formed, it appears, part of the family.[8] It was there, in the
enjoyment of a pious friendship, that Jesus forgot the vexations of
public life. In this tranquil home he consoled himself for the
bickerings with which the scribes and the Pharisees unceasingly
surrounded him. He often sat on the Mount of Olives, facing Mount
Moriah,[9] having beneath his view the splendid perspective of the
terraces of the temple, and its roofs covered with glittering plates
of metal. This view struck strangers with admiration; at the rising of
the sun, especially, the sacred mountain dazzled the eyes, and
appeared like a mass of snow and of gold.[10] But a profound feeling
of sadness poisoned for Jesus the spectacle that filled all other
Israelites with joy and pride. He cried out, in his moments of
bitterness, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,
and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have
gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not."[11]
[Footnote 1: Now _El-Azerié_ (from _El-Azir_, the Arabic name of
Lazarus); in the Christian texts of the Middle Ages, _Lazarium_.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 17, 18; Mark xi. 11, 12.]
[Footnote 3: John xi. 5.]
[Footnote 4: Luke x. 38-42; John xii. 2.]
[Footnote 5: John xi. 20.]
[Footnote 6: Luke x. 38, and following.]
[Footnote 7: John xi. 35, 36.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xxvi. 6; Mark xiv. 3; Luke vii. 40-43; John xii. 1,
and following.]
[Footnote 9: Mark xiii. 3.]
[Footnote 10: Josephus, _B.J._, V. v. 6.]
[Footnote 11: Matt. xxiii. 37; Luke xiii. 34.]
It was not that many good people here, as in Galilee, were not
touched; but such was the power of the dominant orthodoxy, that very
few dared to confess it. They feared to discredit themselves in the
eyes of the Hierosolymites by placing themselves in the school of a
Galilean. They would have risked being driven from the synagogue,
which, in a mean and bigoted society, was the greatest degradation.[1]
Excommunication, besides, carried with it the confiscation of all
possessions.[2] By ceasing to be a Jew, a man did not become a Roman;
but remained without protection, in the power of a theocratic
legislation of the most atrocious severity. One day, the inferior
officers of the temple, who had been present at one of the discourses
of Jesus, and had been enchanted with it, came to confide their doubts
to the priests: "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed
on him?" was the reply to them; "but this people who knoweth not the
Law are cursed."[3] Jesus remained thus at Jerusalem, a provincial
admired by provincials like himself, but rejected by all the
aristocracy of the nation. The chiefs of schools and of sects were too
numerous for any one to be stirred by seeing one more appear. His
voice made little noise in Jerusalem. The prejudices of race and of
sect, the direct enemies of the spirit of the Gospel, were too deeply
rooted there.
[Footnote 1: John vii. 13, xii. 42, 43, xix. 38.]
[Footnote 2: 1 Esdr. x. 8; Epistle to Hebrews x. 34; Talmud of Jerus.,
_Moëdkaton_, iii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: John vii. 45, and following.]
His teaching in this new world necessarily became much modified. His
beautiful discourses, the effect of which was always observable upon
youthful imaginations and consciences morally pure, here fell upon
stone. He who was so much at his ease on the shores of his charming
little lake, felt constrained and not at home in the company of
pedants. His perpetual self-assertion appeared somewhat fastidious.[1]
He was obliged to become controversialist, jurist, exegetist, and
theologian. His conversations, generally so full of charm, became a
rolling fire of disputes,[2] an interminable train of scholastic
battles. His harmonious genius was wasted in insipid argumentations
upon the Law and the prophets,[3] in which we should have preferred
not seeing him sometimes play the part of aggressor.[4] He lent
himself with a condescension we cannot but regret to the captious
criticisms to which the merciless cavillers subjected him.[5] In
general, he extricated himself from difficulties with much skill. His
reasonings, it is true, were often subtle (simplicity of mind and
subtlety touch each other; when simplicity reasons, it is often a
little sophistical); we find that sometimes he courted misconceptions,
and prolonged them intentionally;[6] his reasoning, judged according
to the rules of Aristotelian logic, was very weak. But when the
unequaled charm of his mind could be displayed, he was triumphant. One
day it was intended to embarrass him by presenting to him an
adulteress and asking him what was to be done to her. We know the
admirable answer of Jesus.[7] The fine raillery of a man of the
world, tempered by a divine goodness, could not be expressed in a more
exquisite manner. But the wit which is allied to moral grandeur is
that which fools forgive the least. In pronouncing this sentence of so
just and pure a taste: "He that is without sin among you, let him
first cast a stone at her," Jesus pierced hypocrisy to the heart, and
with the same stroke sealed his own death-warrant.
[Footnote 1: John viii. 13, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 23-37.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxii. 23, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 42, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxii. 36, and following, 46.]
[Footnote 6: See especially the discussions reported by John, chapter
viii., for example; it is true that the authenticity of such passages
is only relative.]
[Footnote 7: John viii. 3, and following. This passage did not at
first form part of the Gospel of St. John; it is wanting in the more
ancient manuscripts, and the text is rather unsettled. Nevertheless,
it is from the primitive Gospel traditions, as is proved by the
singular peculiarities of verses 6 and 8, which are not in the style
of Luke, and compilers at second hand, who admitted nothing that does
not explain itself. This history is found, as it seems, in the Gospel
according to the Hebrews. (Papias, quoted by Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._,
iii. 39.)]
It is probable, in fact, that but for the exasperation caused by so
many bitter shafts, Jesus might long have remained unnoticed, and have
been lost in the dreadful storm which was soon about to overwhelm the
whole Jewish nation. The high priesthood and the Sadducees had rather
disdained than hated him. The great sacerdotal families, the
_Boëthusim_, the family of Hanan, were only fanatical in their
conservatism. The Sadducees, like Jesus, rejected the "traditions" of
the Pharisees.[1] By a very strange singularity, it was these
unbelievers who, denying the resurrection, the oral Law, and the
existence of angels, were the true Jews. Or rather, as the old Law in
its simplicity no longer satisfied the religious wants of the time,
those who strictly adhered to it, and rejected modern inventions, were
regarded by the devotees as impious, just as an evangelical Protestant
of the present day is regarded as an unbeliever in Catholic countries.
At all events, from such a party no very strong reaction against Jesus
could proceed. The official priesthood, with its attention turned
toward political power, and intimately connected with it, did not
comprehend these enthusiastic movements. It was the middle-class
Pharisees, the innumerable _soferim_, or scribes, living on the
science of "traditions," who took the alarm, and whose prejudices and
interests were in reality threatened by the doctrine of the new
teacher.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XIII. x. 6, XVIII. i. 4.]
One of the most constant efforts of the Pharisees was to involve Jesus
in the discussion of political questions, and to compromise him as
connected with the party of Judas the Gaulonite. These tactics were
clever; for it required all the deep wisdom of Jesus to avoid
collision with the Roman authority, whilst proclaiming the kingdom of
God. They wanted to break through this ambiguity, and compel him to
explain himself. One day, a group of Pharisees, and of those
politicians named "Herodians" (probably some of the _Boëthusim_),
approached him, and, under pretense of pious zeal, said unto him,
"Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in
truth, neither carest thou for any man. Tell us, therefore, what
thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not?" They
hoped for an answer which would give them a pretext for delivering him
up to Pilate. The reply of Jesus was admirable. He made them show him
the image on the coin: "Render," said he, "unto Cæsar the things which
are Cæsar's; and unto God the things that are God's."[1] Profound
words, which have decided the future of Christianity! Words of a
perfected spiritualism, and of marvellous justness, which have
established the separation between the spiritual and the temporal, and
laid the basis of true liberalism and civilization!
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxii. 15, and following; Mark xii. 13, and
following; Luke xx. 20, and following. Comp. Talm. of Jerus.,
_Sanhedrim_, ii. 3.]
His gentle and penetrating genius inspired him when alone with his
disciples, with accents full of tenderness. "Verily, verily, I say
unto you, he that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but
climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he
that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The sheep
hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them
out. He goeth before them, and the sheep follow him; for they know his
voice. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to
destroy. But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own
the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and
fleeth. I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of
mine; and I lay down my life for the sheep."[1] The idea that the
crisis of humanity was close at hand frequently recurred to him.
"Now," said he, "learn a parable of the fig-tree: When his branch is
yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh.
Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already
to harvest."[2]
[Footnote 1: John x. 1-16.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxiv. 32; Mark xiii. 28; Luke xxi. 30; John iv.
35.]
His powerful eloquence always burst forth when contending with
hypocrisy. "The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. All,
therefore, whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but
do not ye after their works: for they say and do not. For they bind
heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's
shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their
fingers.
"But all their works they do to be seen of men; they make broad their
phylacteries,[1] enlarge the borders of their garments,[2] and love
the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.
Woe unto them!...
[Footnote 1: _Totafôth_ or _tefillin_, plates of metal or strips of
parchment, containing passages of the Law; which the devout Jews wore
attached to the forehead and left arm, in literal fulfilment of the
passages (_Ex._ xiii. 9; _Deut._ vi. 8, xi. 18.)]
[Footnote 2: _Zizith_, red borders or fringes which the Jews wore at
the corner of their cloaks to distinguish them from the pagans (_Num._
xv. 38, 39; _Deut._ xxii. 12.)]
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye have taken
away the key of knowledge, shut up the kingdom of heaven against
men![1] for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that
are entering to go in. Woe unto you, for ye devour widows' houses,
and, for a pretense, make long prayers: therefore ye shall receive the
greater damnation. Woe unto you, for ye compass sea and land to make
one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child
of hell than yourselves! Woe unto you, for ye are as graves which
appear not; and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.[2]
[Footnote 1: The Pharisees excluded men from the kingdom of God by
their fastidious casuistry, which rendered entrance into it too
difficult, and discouraged the unlearned.]
[Footnote 2: Contact with the tombs rendered any one impure. Great
care was, therefore, taken to mark their extent on the ground. Talm.
of Bab., _Baba Bathra_, 58 _a_; _Baba Metsia_, 45 _b_. Jesus here
reproached the Pharisees for having invented a number of small
precepts which might be violated unwittingly, and which only served to
multiply infringements of the law.]
"Ye fools, and blind! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin,
and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy,
and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other
undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
Woe unto you!
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean
the outside of the cup and of the platter;[1] but within they are
full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee,[2] cleanse first
that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may
be clean also.[3]
[Footnote 1: The purification of vessels was subjected, amongst the
Pharisees, to the most complicated laws (Mark vii. 4.)]
[Footnote 2: This epithet, often repeated (Matt. xxiii. 16, 17, 19,
24, 26), perhaps contains an allusion to the custom which certain
Pharisees had of walking with closed eyes in affectation of sanctity.]
[Footnote 3: Luke (xi. 37, and following) supposes, not without
reason, that this verse was uttered during a repast, in answer to the
vain scruples of the Pharisees.]
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye are like unto
whited sepulchres,[1] which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are
within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye
also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of
hypocrisy and iniquity.
[Footnote 1: The tombs being impure, it was customary to whiten them
with lime, to warn persons not to approach them. See p. 315, note 3,
and Mishnah, _Maasar hensi_, v. 1; Talm. of Jerus., _Shekalim_, i. 1;
_Maasar sheni_, v. 1; _Moëd katon_, i. 2; _Sota_, ix. 1; Talm. of
Bab., _Moëd katon_, 5 _a_. Perhaps there is an allusion to the "dyed
Pharisees" in this comparison which Jesus uses.]
"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the
tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,
and say, 'If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have
been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.' Wherefore, ye
be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which
killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.
'Therefore, also,' said the Wisdom of God,[1] 'I will send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes; and some of them ye shall kill
and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and
persecute them from city to city. That upon you may come all the
righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel
unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias,[2] whom ye slew between
the temple and the altar.' Verily, I say unto you, all these things
shall come upon this generation."[3]
[Footnote 1: We are ignorant from what book this quotation is taken.]
[Footnote 2: There is a slight confusion here, which is also found in
the Targum of Jonathan (_Lament._ ii. 20), between Zacharias, son of
Jehoiadas, and Zacharias, son of Barachias, the prophet. It is the
former that is spoken of (2 _Paral._ xxiv. 21.) The book of the
Paralipomenes, in which the assassination of Zacharias, son of
Jehoiadas, is related, closes the Hebrew canon. This murder is the
last in the list of murders of righteous men, drawn up according to
the order in which they are presented in the Bible. That of Abel is,
on the contrary, the first.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiii. 2-36; Mark xii. 38-40; Luke xi. 39-52, xx.
46, 47.]
His terrible doctrine of the substitution of the Gentiles--the idea
that the kingdom of God was about to be transferred to others, because
those for whom it was destined would not receive it,[1] is used as a
fearful menace against the aristocracy. The title "Son of God," which
he openly assumed in striking parables,[2] wherein his enemies
appeared as murderers of the heavenly messengers, was an open defiance
to the Judaism of the Law. The bold appeal he addressed to the poor
was still more seditious. He declared that he had "come that they
which see not might see, and that they which see might be made
blind."[3] One day, his dislike of the temple forced from him an
imprudent speech: "I will destroy this temple that is made with hands,
and within three days I will build another made without hands."[4] His
disciples found strained allegories in this sentence; but we do not
know what meaning Jesus attached to it. But as only a pretext was
wanted, this sentence was quickly laid hold of. It reappeared in the
preamble of his death-warrant, and rang in his ears amidst the last
agonies of Golgotha. These irritating discussions always ended in
tumult. The Pharisees threw stones at him;[5] in doing which they only
fulfilled an article of the Law, which commanded every prophet, even a
thaumaturgus, who should turn the people from the ancient worship, to
be stoned without a hearing.[6] At other times they called him mad,
possessed, Samaritan,[7] and even sought to kill him.[8] These words
were taken note of in order to invoke against him the laws of an
intolerant theocracy, which the Roman government had not yet
abrogated.[9]
[Footnote 1: Matt. viii. 11, 12, xx. 1, and following, xxi. 28, and
following, 33, and following, 43, xxii. 1, and following; Mark xii. 1,
and following; Luke xx. 9, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 37, and following; John x. 36, and following.]
[Footnote 3: John ix. 39.]
[Footnote 4: The most authentic form of this sentence appears to be in
Mark xiv. 58, xv. 29. Cf. John ii. 19; Matt. xxvi. 61, xxvii. 40.]
[Footnote 5: John viii. 39, x. 31, xi. 8.]
[Footnote 6: _Deuter._ xiii. 1, and following. Comp. Luke xx. 6; John
x. 33; 2 _Cor._ xi. 25.]
[Footnote 7: John x. 20.]
[Footnote 8: John v. 18, vii. 1, 20, 25, 30, viii. 37, 40.]
[Footnote 9: Luke xi. 53, 54.]
CHAPTER XXII.
MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS.
Jesus passed the autumn and a part of the winter at Jerusalem. This
season is there rather cold. The portico of Solomon, with its covered
aisles, was the place where he habitually walked.[1] This portico
consisted of two galleries, formed by three rows of columns, and
covered by a ceiling of carved wood.[2] It commanded the valley of
Kedron, which was doubtless less covered with débris than it is at the
present time. The depth of the ravine could not be measured, from the
height of the portico; and it seemed, in consequence of the angle of
the slopes, as if an abyss opened immediately beneath the wall.[3] The
other side of the valley even at that time was adorned with sumptuous
tombs. Some of the monuments, which may be seen at the present day,
were perhaps those cenotaphs in honor of ancient prophets[4] which
Jesus pointed out, when, seated under the portico, he denounced the
official classes, who covered their hypocrisy or their vanity by these
colossal piles.[5]
[Footnote 1: John x. 23.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _B.J._, V. v. 2. Comp. _Ant._, XV. xi. 5, XX. ix.
7.]
[Footnote 3: Jos., places cited.]
[Footnote 4: See ante, p. 316. I am led to suppose that the tombs
called those of Zachariah and of Absalom were monuments of this kind.
Cf. _Itin. a Burdig. Hierus._, p. 153 (edit. Schott.)]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxiii. 29; Luke xi. 47.]
At the end of the month of December, he celebrated at Jerusalem the
feast established by Judas Maccabeus in memory of the purification of
the temple after the sacrileges of Antiochus Epiphanes.[1] It was
also called the "Feast of Lights," because, during the eight days of
the feast, lamps were kept lighted in the houses.[2] Jesus undertook
soon after a journey into Perea and to the banks of the Jordan--that
is to say, into the very country he had visited some years previously,
when he followed the school of John,[3] and in which he had himself
administered baptism. He seems to have reaped consolation from this
journey, especially at Jericho. This city, as the terminus of several
important routes, or, it may be, on account of its gardens of spices
and its rich cultivation,[4] was a customs station of importance. The
chief receiver, Zaccheus, a rich man, desired to see Jesus.[5] As he
was of small stature, he climbed a sycamore tree near the road which
the procession had to pass. Jesus was touched with this simplicity in
a person of consideration, and at the risk of giving offense, he
determined to stay with Zaccheus. There was much dissatisfaction at
his honoring the house of a sinner by this visit. In parting, Jesus
declared his host to be a good son of Abraham; and, as if to add to
the vexation of the orthodox, Zaccheus became a Christian; he gave, it
is said, the half of his goods to the poor, and restored fourfold to
those whom he might have wronged. But this was not the only pleasure
which Jesus experienced there. On leaving the town, the beggar
Bartimeus[6] pleased him much by persisting in calling him "son of
David," although he was told to be silent. The cycle of Galilean
miracles appeared for a time to recommence in this country, which was
in many respects similar to the provinces of the north. The delightful
oasis of Jericho, at that time well watered, must have been one of the
most beautiful places in Syria. Josephus speaks of it with the same
admiration as of Galilee, and calls it, like the latter province, a
"divine country."[7]
[Footnote 1: John x. 22. Comp. 1 Macc. iv. 52, and following; 2 Macc.
x. 6, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XII. vii. 7.]
[Footnote 3: John x. 40. Cf. Matt. xix. 1; Mark x. 1. This journey is
known to the synoptics. But they seem to think that Jesus made it by
coming from Galilee to Jerusalem through Perea.]
[Footnote 4: _Eccles._ xxiv. 18; Strabo, XVI. ii. 41; Justin., xxxvi.
3; Jos., _Ant._, IV. vi. 1, XIV. iv. 1, XV. iv. 2.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xix. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xx. 29; Mark x. 46, and following; Luke xviii. 35.]
[Footnote 7: _B.J._, IV. viii. 3. Comp. _ibid._, I. vi. 6, I. xviii.
5, and _Antiq._, XV. iv. 2.]
After Jesus had completed this kind of pilgrimage to the scenes of his
earliest prophetic activity, he returned to his beloved abode in
Bethany, where a singular event occurred, which seems to have had a
powerful influence on the remaining days of his life.[1] Tired of the
cold reception which the kingdom of God found in the capital, the
friends of Jesus wished for a great miracle which should strike
powerfully the incredulity of the Hierosolymites. The resurrection of
a man known at Jerusalem appeared to them most likely to carry
conviction. We must bear in mind that the essential condition of true
criticism is to understand the diversity of times, and to rid
ourselves of the instinctive repugnances which are the fruit of a
purely rational education. We must also remember that in this dull and
impure city of Jerusalem, Jesus was no longer himself. Not by any
fault of his own, but by that of others, his conscience had lost
something of its original purity. Desperate, and driven to extremity,
he was no longer his own master. His mission overwhelmed him, and he
yielded to the torrent. As always happens in the lives of great and
inspired men, he suffered the miracles opinion demanded of him rather
than performed them. At this distance of time, and with only a single
text, bearing evident traces of artifices of composition, it is
impossible to decide whether in this instance the whole is fiction, or
whether a real fact which happened at Bethany has served as a basis to
the rumors which were spread about it. It must be acknowledged,
however, that the way John narrates the incident differs widely from
those descriptions of miracles, the offspring of the popular
imagination, which fill the synoptics. Let us add, that John is the
only evangelist who has a precise knowledge of the relations of Jesus
with the family of Bethany, and that it is impossible to believe that
a mere creation of the popular mind could exist in a collection of
remembrances so entirely personal. It is, then, probable that the
miracle in question was not one of those purely legendary ones for
which no one is responsible. In other words, we think that something
really happened at Bethany which was looked upon as a resurrection.
[Footnote 1: John xi. 1, and following.]
Fame already attributed to Jesus two or three works of this kind.[1]
The family of Bethany might be led, almost without suspecting it, into
taking part in the important act which was desired. Jesus was adored
by them. It seems that Lazarus was sick, and that in consequence of
receiving a message from the anxious sisters Jesus left Perea.[2] They
thought that the joy Lazarus would feel at his arrival might restore
him to life. Perhaps, also, the ardent desire of silencing those who
violently denied the divine mission of Jesus, carried his enthusiastic
friends beyond all bounds. It may be that Lazarus, still pallid with
disease, caused himself to be wrapped in bandages as if dead, and shut
up in the tomb of his family. These tombs were large vaults cut in
the rock, and were entered by a square opening, closed by an enormous
stone. Martha and Mary went to meet Jesus, and without allowing him to
enter Bethany, conducted him to the cave. The emotion which Jesus
experienced at the tomb of his friend, whom he believed to be dead,[3]
might be taken by those present for the agitation and trembling[4]
which accompanied miracles. Popular opinion required that the divine
virtue should manifest itself in man as an epileptic and convulsive
principle. Jesus (if we follow the above hypothesis) desired to see
once more him whom he had loved; and, the stone being removed, Lazarus
came forth in his bandages, his head covered with a winding-sheet.
This reappearance would naturally be regarded by every one as a
resurrection. Faith knows no other law than the interest of that which
it believes to be true. Regarding the object which it pursues as
absolutely holy, it makes no scruple of invoking bad arguments in
support of its thesis when good ones do not succeed. If such and such
a proof be not sound many others are! If such and such a wonder be not
real, many others have been! Being intimately persuaded that Jesus was
a thaumaturgus, Lazarus and his two sisters may have aided in the
execution of one of his miracles, just as many pious men who,
convinced of the truth of their religion, have sought to triumph over
the obstinacy of their opponents by means of whose weakness they were
well aware. The state of their conscience was that of the stigmatists,
of the convulsionists, of the possessed ones in convents, drawn, by
the influence of the world in which they live, and by their own
belief, into feigned acts. As to Jesus, he was no more able than St.
Bernard or St. Francis d'Assisi to moderate the avidity for the
marvellous, displayed by the multitude, and even by his own disciples.
Death, moreover, in a few days would restore him his divine liberty,
and release him from the fatal necessities of a position which each
day became more exacting, and more difficult to sustain.
[Footnote 1: Matt. ix. 18, and following; Mark v. 22, and following;
Luke vii. 11, and following, viii. 41, and following.]
[Footnote 2: John xi. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 3: John xi. 35, and following.]
[Footnote 4: John xi. 33, 38.]
Everything, in fact, seems to lead us to believe that the miracle of
Bethany contributed sensibly to hasten the death of Jesus.[1] The
persons who had been witnesses of it, were dispersed throughout the
city, and spoke much about it. The disciples related the fact, with
details as to its performance, prepared in expectation of controversy.
The other miracles of Jesus were transitory acts, spontaneously
accepted by faith, exaggerated by popular fame, and were not again
referred to after they had once taken place. This was a real event,
held to be publicly notorious, and one by which it was hoped to
silence the Pharisees.[2] The enemies of Jesus were much irritated at
all this fame. They endeavored, it is said, to kill Lazarus.[3] It is
certain, that from that time a Council of the chief priests[4] was
assembled, and that in this council the question was clearly put: "Can
Jesus and Judaism exist together?" To raise the question was to
resolve it; and without being a prophet, as thought by the evangelist,
the high priest could easily pronounce his cruel axiom: "It is
expedient that one man should die for the people."
[Footnote 1: John xi. 40, and following, xii. 2, 9, and following, 17,
and following.]
[Footnote 2: John xii. 9, 10, 17, 18.]
[Footnote 3: John xii. 10.]
[Footnote 4: John xi. 47, and following.]
"The high priest of that same year," to use an expression of the
fourth Gospel, which well expresses the state of abasement to which
the sovereign pontificate was reduced, was Joseph Kaïapha, appointed
by Valerius Gratus, and entirely devoted to the Romans. From the time
that Jerusalem had been under the government of procurators, the
office of high priest had been a temporary one; changes in it took
place nearly every year.[1] Kaïapha, however, held it longer than any
one else. He had assumed his office in the year 25, and he did not
lose it till the year 36. His character is unknown to us, and many
circumstances lead to the belief that his power was only nominal. In
fact, another personage is always seen in conjunction with, and even
superior to him, who, at the decisive moment we have now reached,
seems to have exercised a preponderating power.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XV. iii. 1, XVIII. ii. 2, v. 3, XX. ix. 1,
4.]
This personage was Hanan or Annas,[1] son of Seth, and father-in-law
of Kaïapha. He was formerly the high priest, and had in reality
preserved amidst the numerous changes of the pontificate all the
authority of the office. He had received the high priesthood from the
legate Quirinius, in the year 7 of our era. He lost his office in the
year 14, on the accession of Tiberius; but he remained much respected.
He was still called "high priest," although he was out of office,[2]
and he was consulted upon all important matters. During fifty years
the pontificate continued in his family almost uninterruptedly; five
of his sons successively sustained this dignity,[3] besides Kaïapha,
who was his son-in-law. His was called the "priestly family," as if
the priesthood had become hereditary in it.[4] The chief offices of
the temple were almost all filled by them.[5] Another family, that of
Boëthus, alternated, it is true, with that of Hanan's in the
pontificate.[6] But the _Boëthusim_, whose fortunes were of not very
honorable origin, were much less esteemed by the pious middle class.
Hanan was then in reality the chief of the priestly party. Kaïapha did
nothing without him; it was customary to associate their names, and
that of Hanan was always put first.[7] It will be understood, in fact,
that under this _régime_ of an annual pontificate, changed according
to the caprice of the procurators, an old high priest, who had
preserved the secret of the traditions, who had seen many younger than
himself succeed each other, and who had retained sufficient influence
to get the office delegated to persons who were subordinate to him in
family rank, must have been a very important personage. Like all the
aristocracy of the temple,[8] he was a Sadducee, "a sect," says
Josephus, "particularly severe in its judgments." All his sons also
were violent persecutors.[9] One of them, named like his father,
Hanan, caused James, the brother of the Lord, to be stoned, under
circumstances not unlike those which surrounded the death of Jesus.
The spirit of the family was haughty, bold, and cruel;[10] it had that
particular kind of proud and sullen wickedness which characterizes
Jewish politicians. Therefore, upon this Hanan and his family must
rest the responsibility of all the acts which followed. It was Hanan
(or the party he represented) who killed Jesus. Hanan was the
principal actor in the terrible drama, and far more than Kaïapha, far
more than Pilate, ought to bear the weight of the maledictions of
mankind.
[Footnote 1: The _Ananus_ of Josephus. It is thus that the Hebrew name
_Johanan_ became in Greek _Joannes_ or _Joannas_.]
[Footnote 2: John xviii. 15-23; _Acts_ iv. 6.]
[Footnote 3: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XV. iii. 1; _B.J._, IV. v. 6 and 7; _Acts_
iv. 6.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 3.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XV. ix. 3, XIX. vi. 2, viii. 1.]
[Footnote 7: Luke iii. 2.]
[Footnote 8: _Acts_ v. 17.]
[Footnote 9: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]
[Footnote 10: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]
It is in the mouth of Kaïapha that the evangelist places the decisive
words which led to the death of Jesus.[1] It was supposed that the
high priest possessed a certain gift of prophecy; his declaration thus
became an oracle full of profound meaning to the Christian community.
But such an expression, whoever he might be that pronounced it, was
the feeling of the whole sacerdotal party. This party was much opposed
to popular seditions. It sought to put down religious enthusiasts,
rightly foreseeing that by their excited preachings they would lead to
the total ruin of the nation. Although the excitement created by Jesus
was in nowise temporal, the priests saw, as an ultimate consequence of
this agitation, an aggravation of the Roman yoke and the overturning
of the temple, the source of their riches and honors.[2] Certainly the
causes which, thirty-seven years after, were to effect the ruin of
Jerusalem, did not arise from infant Christianity. They arose in
Jerusalem itself, and not in Galilee. We cannot, however, say that the
motive alleged in this circumstance by the priests was so improbable
that we must necessarily regard it as insincere. In a general, sense,
Jesus, if he had succeeded, would have really effected the ruin of the
Jewish nation. According to the principles universally admitted by all
ancient polity, Hanan and Kaïapha were right in saying: "Better the
death of one man than the ruin of a people!" In our opinion this
reasoning is detestable. But it has been that of conservative parties
from the commencement of all human society. The "party of order" (I
use this expression in its mean and narrow sense) has ever been the
same. Deeming the highest duty of government to be the prevention of
popular disturbances, it believes it performs an act of patriotism in
preventing, by judicial murder, the tumultuous effusion of blood.
Little thoughtful of the future, it does not dream that in declaring
war against all innovations, it incurs the risk of crushing ideas
destined one day to triumph. The death of Jesus was one of the
thousand illustrations of this policy. The movement he directed was
entirely spiritual, but it was still a movement; hence the men of
order, persuaded that it was essential for humanity not to be
disturbed, felt themselves bound to prevent the new spirit from
extending itself. Never was seen a more striking example of how much
such a course of procedure defeats its own object. Left free, Jesus
would have exhausted himself in a desperate struggle with the
impossible. The unintelligent hate of his enemies decided the success
of his work, and sealed his divinity.
[Footnote 1: John xi. 49, 50. Cf. _ibid._, xviii. 14.]
[Footnote 2: John xi. 48.]
The death of Jesus was thus resolved upon from the month of February
or the beginning of March.[1] But he still escaped for a short time.
He withdrew to an obscure town called Ephraim or Ephron, in the
direction of Bethel, a short day's journey from Jerusalem.[2] He spent
a few days there with his disciples, letting the storm pass over. But
the order to arrest him the moment he appeared at Jerusalem was given.
The feast of the Passover was drawing nigh, and it was thought that
Jesus, according to his custom, would come to celebrate it at
Jerusalem.[3]
[Footnote 1: John xi. 53.]
[Footnote 2: John xi. 54. Cf. 2 _Chron._ xiii. 19; Jos., _B.J._, IV.
ix. 9; Eusebius and St. Jerome, _De situ et nom. loc. hebr._, at the
words [Greek: Ephrôn] and [Greek: Ephraim].]
[Footnote 3: John xi. 55, 56. For the order of the events, in all this
part we follow the system of John. The synoptics appear to have little
information as to the period of the life of Jesus which precedes the
Passion.]
CHAPTER XXIII.
LAST WEEK OF JESUS.
Jesus did in fact set out with his disciples to see once more, and for
the last time, the unbelieving city. The hopes of his companions were
more and more exalted. All believed, in going up to Jerusalem, that
the kingdom of God was about to be realized there.[1] The impiety of
men being at its height, was regarded as a great sign that the
consummation was at hand. The persuasion in this respect was such,
that they already disputed for precedence in the kingdom.[2] This was,
it is said, the moment chosen by Salome to ask, on behalf of her sons,
the two seats on the right and left of the Son of man.[3] The Master,
on the other hand, was beset by grave thoughts. Sometimes he allowed a
gloomy resentment against his enemies to appear; he related the
parable of a nobleman, who went to take possession of a kingdom in a
far country; but no sooner had he gone than his fellow-citizens wished
to get rid of him. The king returned, and commanded those who had
conspired against him to be brought before him, and had them all put
to death.[4] At other times he summarily destroyed the illusions of
the disciples. As they marched along the stony roads to the north of
Jerusalem, Jesus pensively preceded the group of his companions. All
regarded him in silence, experiencing a feeling of fear, and not
daring to interrogate him. Already, on various occasions, he had
spoken to them of his future sufferings, and they had listened to him
reluctantly.[5] Jesus at last spoke to them, and no longer concealing
his presentiments, discoursed to them of his approaching end.[6] There
was great sadness in the whole company. The disciples were expecting
soon to see the sign appear in the clouds. The inaugural cry of the
kingdom of God: "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the
Lord,"[7] resounded already in joyous accents in their ears. The
fearful prospect he foreshadowed, troubled them. At each step of the
fatal road, the kingdom of God became nearer or more remote in the
mirage of their dreams. As to Jesus, he became confirmed in the idea
that he was about to die, but that his death would save the world.[8]
The misunderstanding between him and his disciples became greater each
moment.
[Footnote 1: Luke xix. 11.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xxii. 24, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xx. 20, and following; Mark x. 35, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xix. 12-27.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xvi. 21, and following; Mark viii. 31, and
following.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. xx. 17, and following; Mark x. 31, and following;
Luke xviii. 31, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxiii. 39; Luke xiii. 35.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. xx. 28.]
The custom was to come to Jerusalem several days before the Passover,
in order to prepare for it. Jesus arrived late, and at one time his
enemies thought they were frustrated in their hope of seizing him.[1]
The sixth day before the feast (Saturday, 8th of Nisan, equal to the
28th March[2]) he at last reached Bethany. He entered, according to
his custom, the house of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, or of Simon the
leper. They gave him a great reception. There was a dinner at Simon
the leper's,[3] where many persons were assembled, drawn thither by
the desire of seeing him, and also of seeing Lazarus, of whom for
some time so many things had been related. Lazarus was seated at the
table, and attracted much attention. Martha served, according to her
custom.[4] It seems that they sought, by an increased show of respect,
to overcome the coolness of the public, and to assert the high dignity
of their guest. Mary, in order to give to the event a more festive
appearance, entered during dinner, bearing a vase of perfume which she
poured upon the feet of Jesus. She afterward broke the vase, according
to an ancient custom by which the vessel that had been employed in the
entertainment of a stranger of distinction was broken.[5] Then, to
testify her worship in an extraordinary manner, she prostrated herself
at the feet of her Master and wiped them with her long hair.[6] All
the house was filled with the odor of the perfume, to the great
delight of every one except the avaricious Judas of Kerioth.
Considering the economical habits of the community, this was certainly
prodigality. The greedy treasurer calculated immediately how much the
perfume might have been sold for, and what it would have realized for
the poor. This not very affectionate feeling, which seemed to place
something above Jesus, dissatisfied him. He liked to be honored, for
honors served his aim and established his title of Son of David.
Therefore, when they spoke to him of the poor, he replied rather
sharply: "Ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not
always." And, exalting himself, he promised immortality to the woman
who in this critical moment gave him a token of love.[7]
[Footnote 1: John xi. 56.]
[Footnote 2: The Passover was celebrated on the 14th of Nisan. Now in
the year 33, the 1st of Nisan corresponded with Saturday, 21st of
March.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 6; Mark xiv. 3. Cf. Luke vii. 40, 43, 44.]
[Footnote 4: It is customary, in the East, for a person who is
attached to any one by a tie of affection or of domesticity, to attend
upon him when he goes to eat at the house of another.]
[Footnote 5: I have seen this custom still practised at Sour (Zoar.)]
[Footnote 6: We must remember that the feet of the guests were not, as
amongst us, concealed under the table, but extended on a level with
the body on the divan, or _triclinium_.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxvi. 6, and following; Mark xiv. 3, and following;
John xi. 2, xii. 2, and following. Compare Luke vii. 36, and
following.]
The next day (Sunday, 9th of Nisan), Jesus descended from Bethany to
Jerusalem.[1] When, at a bend of the road, upon the summit of the
Mount of Olives, he saw the city spread before him, it is said he wept
over it, and addressed to it a last appeal.[2] At the base of the
mountain, at some steps from the gate, on entering the neighboring
portion of the eastern wall of the city, which was called _Bethphage_,
no doubt on account of the fig-trees with which it was planted,[3] he
had experienced a momentary pleasure.[4] His arrival was noised
abroad. The Galileans who had come to the feast were highly elated,
and prepared a little triumph for him. An ass was brought to him,
followed, according to custom, by its colt. The Galileans spread their
finest garments upon the back of this humble animal as saddle-cloths,
and seated him thereon. Others, however, spread their garments upon
the road, and strewed it with green branches. The multitude which
preceded and followed him, carrying palms, cried: "Hosanna to the son
of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" Some
persons even gave him the title of king of Israel.[5] "Master, rebuke
thy disciples," said the Pharisees to him. "If these should hold
their peace, the stones would immediately cry out," replied Jesus, and
he entered into the city. The Hierosolymites, who scarcely knew him,
asked who he was. "It is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, in Galilee,"
was the reply. Jerusalem was a city of about 50,000 souls.[6] A
trifling event, such as the entrance of a stranger, however little
celebrated, or the arrival of a band of provincials, or a movement of
people to the avenues of the city, could not fail, under ordinary
circumstances, to be quickly noised about. But at the time of the
feast, the confusion was extreme.[7] Jerusalem at these times was
taken possession of by strangers. It was amongst the latter that the
excitement appears to have been most lively. Some proselytes, speaking
Greek, who had come to the feast, had their curiosity piqued, and
wished to see Jesus. They addressed themselves to his disciples;[8]
but we do not know the result of the interview. Jesus, according to
his custom, went to pass the night at his beloved village of
Bethany.[9] The three following days (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday)
he descended regularly to Jerusalem; and, after the setting of the
sun, he returned either to Bethany, or to the farms on the western
side of the Mount of Olives, where he had many friends.[10]
[Footnote 1: John xii. 12.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xix. 41, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Mishnah, _Menachoth_, xi. 2; Talm. of Bab., _Sanhedrim_,
14 _b_; _Pesachim_, 63 _b_, 91 _a_; _Sota_, 45 _a_; _Baba metsia_, 85
_a_. It follows from these passages that Bethphage was a kind of
_pomærium_, which extended to the foot of the eastern basement of the
temple, and which had itself its wall of inclosure. The passages Matt.
xxi. 1, Mark xi. 1, Luke xix. 29, do not plainly imply that Bethphage
was a village, as Eusebius and St. Jerome have supposed.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxi. 1, and following; Mark xi. 1, and following;
Luke xix. 29, and following; John xii. 12, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xix. 38; John xii. 13.]
[Footnote 6: The number of 120,000, given by Hecatæus (in Josephus,
_Contra Apion_, I. xxii.), appears exaggerated. Cicero speaks of
Jerusalem as of a paltry little town (_Ad Atticum_, II. ix.) The
ancient boundaries, whichever calculation we adopt, do not allow of a
population quadruple of that of the present time, which does not reach
15,000. See Robinson, _Bibl. Res._, i. 421, 422 (2d edition);
Fergusson, _Topogr. of Jerus._, p. 51; Forster, _Syria and Palestine_,
p. 82.]
[Footnote 7: Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3.]
[Footnote 8: John xii. 20, and following.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. xxi. 17; Mark xi. 11.]
[Footnote 10: Matt. xxi. 17, 18; Mark xi. 11, 12, 19; Luke xxi. 37,
38.]
A deep melancholy appears, during these last days, to have filled the
soul of Jesus, who was generally so joyous and serene. All the
narratives agree in relating that, before his arrest, he underwent a
short experience of doubt and trouble; a kind of anticipated agony.
According to some, he suddenly exclaimed, "Now is my soul troubled. O
Father, save me from this hour."[1] It was believed that a voice from
heaven was heard at this moment: others said that an angel came to
console him.[2] According to one widely spread version, the incident
took place in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus, it was said, went about
a stone's throw from his sleeping disciples, taking with him only
Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and fell on his face and prayed.
His soul was sad even unto death; a terrible anguish weighed upon him;
but resignation to the divine will sustained him.[3] This scene, owing
to the instinctive art which regulated the compilation of the
synoptics, and often led them in the arrangement of the narrative to
study adaptability and effect, has been given as occurring on the last
night of the life of Jesus, and at the precise moment of his arrest.
If this version were the true one, we should scarcely understand why
John, who had been the intimate witness of so touching an episode,
should not mention it in the very circumstantial narrative which he
has furnished of the evening of the Thursday.[4] All that we can
safely say is, that, during his last days, the enormous weight of the
mission he had accepted pressed cruelly upon Jesus. Human nature
asserted itself for a time. Perhaps he began to hesitate about his
work. Terror and doubt took possession of him, and threw him into a
state of exhaustion worse than death. He who has sacrificed his
repose, and the legitimate rewards of life, to a great idea, always
experiences a feeling of revulsion when the image of death presents
itself to him for the first time, and seeks to persuade him that all
has been in vain. Perhaps some of those touching reminiscences which
the strongest souls preserve, and which at times pierce like a sword,
came upon him at this moment. Did he remember the clear fountains of
Galilee where he was wont to refresh himself; the vine and the
fig-tree under which he had reposed, and the young maidens who,
perhaps, would have consented to love him? Did he curse the hard
destiny which had denied him the joys conceded to all others? Did he
regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his greatness, did he
mourn that he had not remained a simple artisan of Nazareth? We know
not. For all these internal troubles evidently were a sealed letter to
his disciples. They understood nothing of them, and supplied by simple
conjectures that which in the great soul of their Master was obscure
to them. It is certain, at least, that his divine nature soon regained
the supremacy. He might still have avoided death; but he would not.
Love for his work sustained him. He was willing to drink the cup to
the dregs. Henceforth we behold Jesus entirely himself; his character
unclouded. The subtleties of the polemic, the credulity of the
thaumaturgus and of the exorcist, are forgotten. There remains only
the incomparable hero of the Passion, the founder of the rights of
free conscience, and the complete model which all suffering souls will
contemplate in order to fortify and console themselves.
[Footnote 1: John xii. 27, and following. We can easily imagine that
the exalted tone of John, and his exclusive preoccupation with the
divine character of Jesus, may have effaced from the narrative the
circumstances of natural weakness related by the synoptics.]
[Footnote 2: Luke xxii. 43; John xii. 28, 29.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 36, and following; Mark xiv. 32, and
following; Luke xxii. 39, and following.]
[Footnote 4: This is the less to be understood, as John is affectedly
particular in noticing the circumstances which were personal to him,
or of which he had been the only witness (xiii. 23, and following,
xviii. 15, and following, xix. 26, and following, 35, xx. 2, and
following, xxi. 20, and following.)]
The triumph of Bethphage--that bold act of the provincials in
celebrating at the very gates of Jerusalem the advent of their
Messiah-King--completed the exasperation of the Pharisees and the
aristocracy of the temple. A new council was held on the Wednesday
(12th of Nisan) in the house of Joseph Kaïapha.[1] The immediate
arrest of Jesus was resolved upon. A great idea of order and of
conservative policy governed all their plans. The desire was to avoid
a scene. As the feast of the Passover, which commenced that year on
the Friday evening, was a time of bustle and excitement, it was
resolved to anticipate it. Jesus being popular,[2] they feared an
outbreak; the arrest was therefore fixed for the next day, Thursday.
It was resolved, also, not to seize him in the temple, where he came
every day,[3] but to observe his habits, in order to seize him in some
retired place. The agents of the priests sounded his disciples, hoping
to obtain useful information from their weakness or their simplicity.
They found what they sought in Judas of Kerioth. This wretch, actuated
by motives impossible to explain, betrayed his Master, gave all the
necessary information, and even undertook himself (although such an
excess of vileness is scarcely credible) to guide the troop which was
to effect his arrest. The remembrance of horror which the folly or the
wickedness of this man has left in the Christian tradition has
doubtless given rise to some exaggeration on this point. Judas, until
then, had been a disciple like the others; he had even the title of
apostle; and he had performed miracles and driven out demons. Legend,
which always uses strong and decisive language, describes the
occupants of the little supper-room as eleven saints and one
reprobate. Reality does not proceed by such absolute categories.
Avarice, which the synoptics give as the motive of the crime in
question, does not suffice to explain it. It would be very singular if
a man who kept the purse, and who knew what he would lose by the death
of his chief, were to abandon the profits of his occupation[4] in
exchange for a very small sum of money.[5] Had the self-love of Judas
been wounded by the rebuff which he had received at the dinner at
Bethany? Even that would not explain his conduct. John would have us
regard him as a thief, an unbeliever from the beginning,[6] for which,
however, there is no probability. We would rather ascribe it to some
feeling of jealousy or to some dissension amongst the disciples. The
peculiar hatred John manifests toward Judas[7] confirms this
hypothesis. Less pure in heart than the others, Judas had, from the
very nature of his office, become unconsciously narrow-minded. By a
caprice very common to men engaged in active duties, he had come to
regard the interests of the treasury as superior even to those of the
work for which it was intended. The treasurer had overcome the
apostle. The murmurings which escaped him at Bethany seem to indicate
that sometimes he thought the Master cost his spiritual family too
dear. No doubt this mean economy had caused many other collisions in
the little society.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvi. 1, 5; Mark xiv. 1, 2; Luke xxii. 1, 2.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxi. 46.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 55.]
[Footnote 4: John xii. 6.]
[Footnote 5: John does not even speak of a payment in money.]
[Footnote 6: John vi. 65, xii. 6.]
[Footnote 7: John vi. 65, 71, 72, xii. 6; xiii. 2, 27, and following.]
Without denying that Judas of Kerioth may have contributed to the
arrest of his Master, we still believe that the curses with which he
is loaded are somewhat unjust. There was, perhaps, in his deed more
awkwardness than perversity. The moral conscience of the man of the
people is quick and correct, but unstable and inconsistent. It is at
the mercy of the impulse of the moment. The secret societies of the
republican party were characterized by much earnestness and sincerity,
and yet their denouncers were very numerous. A trifling spite sufficed
to convert a partisan into a traitor. But if the foolish desire for a
few pieces of silver turned the head of poor Judas, he does not seem
to have lost the moral sentiment completely, since when he had seen
the consequences of his fault he repented,[1] and, it is said, killed
himself.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 3, and following.]
Each moment of this eventful period is solemn, and counts more than
whole ages in the history of humanity. We have arrived at the
Thursday, 13th of Nisan (2d April). The evening of the next day
commenced the festival of the Passover, begun by the feast in which
the Paschal lamb was eaten. The festival continued for seven days,
during which unleavened bread was eaten. The first and the last of
these seven days were peculiarly solemn. The disciples were already
occupied with preparations for the feast.[1] As to Jesus, we are led
to believe that he knew of the treachery of Judas, and that he
suspected the fate that awaited him. In the evening he took his last
repast with his disciples. It was not the ritual feast of the
passover, as was afterward supposed, owing to an error of a day in
reckoning,[2] but for the primitive church this supper of the
Thursday was the true passover, the seal of the new covenant. Each
disciple connected with it his most cherished remembrances, and
numerous touching traits of the Master which each one preserved were
associated with this repast, which became the corner-stone of
Christian piety, and the starting-point of the most fruitful
institutions.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvi. 1, and following; Mark xiv. 12; Luke xxii. 7;
John xiii. 29.]
[Footnote 2: This is the system of the synoptics (Matt. xxvi. 17, and
following; Mark xiv. 12, and following; Luke xxii. 7, and following,
15.) But John, whose narrative of this portion has a greater
authority, expressly states that Jesus died the same day on which the
Paschal lamb was eaten (xiii. 1, 2, 29, xviii. 28, xix. 14, 31.) The
Talmud also makes Jesus to die "on the eve of the Passover" (Talm. of
Bab., _Sanhedrim_, 43 _a_, 67 _a_.)]
Doubtless the tender love which filled the heart of Jesus for the
little church which surrounded him overflowed at this moment,[1] and
his strong and serene soul became buoyant, even under the weight of
the gloomy preoccupations that beset him. He had a word for each of
his friends; two among them especially, John and Peter, were the
objects of tender marks of attachment. John (at least according to his
own account) was reclining on the divan, by the side of Jesus, his
head resting upon the breast of the Master. Toward the end of the
repast, the secret which weighed upon the heart of Jesus almost
escaped him: he said, "Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall
betray me."[2] To these simple men this was a moment of anguish; they
looked at each other, and each questioned himself. Judas was present;
perhaps Jesus, who had for some time had reasons to suspect him,
sought by this expression to draw from his looks or from his
embarrassed manner the confession of his fault. But the unfaithful
disciple did not lose countenance; he even dared, it is said, to ask
with the others: "Master, is it I?"
[Footnote 1: John xiii. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 21, and following; Mark xiv. 18, and
following; Luke xx. 21, and following; John xiii. 21, and following,
xxi. 20.]
Meanwhile, the good and upright soul of Peter was in torture. He made
a sign to John to endeavor to ascertain of whom the Master spoke.
John, who could converse with Jesus without being heard, asked him the
meaning of this enigma. Jesus having only suspicions, did not wish to
pronounce any name; he only told John to observe to whom he was going
to offer a sop. At the same time he soaked the bread and offered it to
Judas. John and Peter alone had cognizance of the fact. Jesus
addressed to Judas words which contained a bitter reproach, but which
were not understood by those present; and he left the company. They
thought that Jesus was simply giving him orders for the morrow's
feast.[1]
[Footnote 1: John xiii. 21, and following, which shows the
improbabilities of the narrative of the synoptics.]
At the time, this repast struck no one; and apart from the
apprehensions which the Master confided to his disciples, who only
half understood them, nothing extraordinary took place. But after the
death of Jesus, they attached to this evening a singularly solemn
meaning, and the imagination of believers spread a coloring of sweet
mysticism over it. The last hours of a cherished friend are those we
best remember. By an inevitable illusion, we attribute to the
conversations we have then had with him a meaning which death alone
gives to them; we concentrate into a few hours the memories of many
years. The greater part of the disciples saw their Master no more
after the supper of which we have just spoken. It was the farewell
banquet. In this repast, as in many others, Jesus practised his
mysterious rite of the breaking of bread. As it was early believed
that the repast in question took place on the day of the Passover, and
was the Paschal feast, the idea naturally arose that the Eucharistic
institution was established at this supreme moment. Starting from the
hypothesis that Jesus knew beforehand the precise moment of his death,
the disciples were led to suppose that he reserved a number of
important acts for his last hours. As, moreover, one of the
fundamental ideas of the first Christians was that the death of Jesus
had been a sacrifice, replacing all those of the ancient Law, the
"Last Supper," which was supposed to have taken place, once for all,
on the eve of the Passion, became the supreme sacrifice--the act which
constituted the new alliance--the sign of the blood shed for the
salvation of all.[1] The bread and wine, placed in connection with
death itself, were thus the image of the new testament that Jesus had
sealed with his sufferings--the commemoration of the sacrifice of
Christ until his advent.[2]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxii. 20.]
[Footnote 2: 1 _Cor._ xi. 26.]
Very early this mystery was embodied in a small sacramental narrative,
which we possess under four forms,[1] very similar to one another.
John, preoccupied with the Eucharistic ideas,[2] and who relates the
Last Supper with so much prolixity, connecting with it so many
circumstances and discourses[3]--and who was the only one of the
evangelists whose testimony on this point has the value of an
eye-witness--does not mention this narrative. This is a proof that he
did not regard the Eucharist as a peculiarity of the Lord's Supper.
For him the special rite of the Last Supper was the washing of feet.
It is probable that in certain primitive Christian families this
latter rite obtained an importance which it has since lost.[4] No
doubt, Jesus, on some occasions, had practised it to give his
disciples an example of brotherly humility. It was connected with the
eve of his death, in consequence of the tendency to group around the
Last Supper all the great moral and ritual recommendations of Jesus.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvi. 26-28; Mark xiv. 22-24; Luke xxii. 19-21; 1
_Cor._ xi. 23-25.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. vi.]
[Footnote 3: Chaps. xiii.-xvii.]
[Footnote 4: John xiii. 14, 15. Cf. Matt. xx. 26, and following; Luke
xxii. 26, and following.]
A high sentiment of love, of concord, of charity, and of mutual
deference, animated, moreover, the remembrances which were cherished
of the last hours of Jesus.[1] It is always the unity of his Church,
constituted by him or by his Spirit, which is the soul of the symbols
and of the discourses which Christian tradition referred to this
sacred moment: "A new commandment I give unto you," said he, "that ye
love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love
one to another. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for
all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.
These things I command you, that ye love one another."[2] At this last
moment there were again evoked rivalries and struggles for
precedence.[3] Jesus remarked, that if he, the Master, had been in the
midst of his disciples as their servant, how much more ought they to
submit themselves to one another. According to some, in drinking the
wine, he said, "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine
until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's
kingdom."[4] According to others, he promised them soon a celestial
feast, where they would be seated on thrones at his side.[5]
[Footnote 1: John xiii. 1, and following. The discourses placed by
John after the narrative of the Last Supper cannot be taken as
historical. They are full of peculiarities and of expressions which
are not in the style of the discourses of Jesus; and which, on the
contrary, are very similar to the habitual language of John. Thus the
expression "little children" in the vocative (John xiii. 33) is very
frequent in the First Epistle of John. It does not appear to have been
familiar to Jesus.]
[Footnote 2: John xiii. 33-35, xv. 12-17.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xxii. 24-27. Cf. John xiii. 4, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 29; Mark xiv. 25; Luke xxii. 18.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xxii. 29, 30.]
It seems that, toward the end of the evening, the presentiments of
Jesus took hold of the disciples. All felt that a very serious danger
threatened the Master, and that they were approaching a crisis. At one
time Jesus thought of precautions, and spoke of swords. There were two
in the company. "It is enough," said he.[1] He did not, however,
follow out this idea; he saw clearly that timid provincials would not
stand before the armed force of the great powers of Jerusalem. Peter,
full of zeal, and feeling sure of himself, swore that he would go with
him to prison and to death. Jesus, with his usual acuteness, expressed
doubts about him. According to a tradition, which probably came from
Peter himself, Jesus declared that Peter would deny him before the
crowing of the cock. All, like Peter, swore that they would remain
faithful to him.[2]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxii. 36-38.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 31, and following; Mark xiv. 29, and
following; Luke xxii. 33, and following; John xiii. 36, and
following.]
CHAPTER XXIV.
ARREST AND TRIAL OF JESUS.
It was nightfall[1] when they left the room.[2] Jesus, according to
his custom, passed through the valley of Kedron; and, accompanied by
his disciples, went to the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the
Mount of Olives,[3] and sat down there. Overawing his friends by his
inherent greatness, he watched and prayed. They were sleeping near
him, when all at once an armed troop appeared bearing lighted torches.
It was the guards of the temple, armed with staves, a kind of police
under the control of the priests. They were supported by a detachment
of Roman soldiers with their swords. The order for the arrest emanated
from the high priest and the Sanhedrim.[4] Judas, knowing the habits
of Jesus, had indicated this place as the one where he might most
easily be surprised. Judas, according to the unanimous tradition of
the earliest times, accompanied the detachment himself;[5] and
according to some,[6] he carried his hateful conduct even to betraying
him by a kiss. However this may be, it is certain that there was some
show of resistance on the part of the disciples.[7] One of them
(Peter, according to eye-witnesses[8]) drew his sword, and wounded the
ear of one of the servants of the high priest, named Malchus. Jesus
restrained this opposition, and gave himself up to the soldiers. Weak
and incapable of effectual resistance, especially against authorities
who had so much prestige, the disciples took flight, and became
dispersed; Peter and John alone did not lose sight of their Master.
Another unknown young man followed him, covered with a light garment.
They sought to arrest him, but the young man fled, leaving his tunic
in the hands of the guards.[9]
[Footnote 1: John xiii. 30.]
[Footnote 2: The singing of a religious hymn, related by Matt. xxvi.
30, and Mark xiv. 26, proceeds from the opinion entertained by these
two evangelists that the last repast of Jesus was the Paschal feast.
Before and after the Paschal feast, psalms were sung. Talm. of Bab.,
_Pesachim_, cap. ix. hal. 3, and fol. 118 _a_, etc.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 36; Mark xiv. 32; Luke xxii. 39; John xviii.
1, 2.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 47; Mark xiv. 43; John xviii. 3, 12.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxvi. 47; Mark xiv. 43; Luke xxii. 47; John xviii.
3; _Acts_ i. 16.]
[Footnote 6: This is the tradition of the synoptics. In the narrative
of John, Jesus declares himself.]
[Footnote 7: The two traditions are agreed on this point.]
[Footnote 8: John xviii. 10.]
[Footnote 9: Mark xiv. 51, 52.]
The course which the priests had resolved to take against Jesus was
quite in conformity with the established law. The procedure against
the "corrupter" (_mésith_), who sought to injure the purity of
religion, is explained in the Talmud, with details, the naïve
impudence of which provokes a smile. A judicial ambush is there made
an essential part of the examination of criminals. When a man was
accused of being a "corrupter," two witnesses were suborned who were
concealed behind a partition. It was arranged to bring the accused
into a contiguous room, where he could be heard by these two without
his perceiving them. Two candles were lighted near him, in order that
it might be satisfactorily proved that the witnesses "saw him."[1] He
was then made to repeat his blasphemy, and urged to retract it. If he
persisted, the witnesses who had heard him conducted him to the
tribunal, and he was stoned to death. The Talmud adds, that this was
the manner in which they treated Jesus; that he was condemned on the
faith of two witnesses who had been suborned, and that the crime of
"corruption" is, moreover, the only one for which the witnesses are
thus prepared.[2]
[Footnote 1: In criminal matters, eye-witnesses alone were admitted.
Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, iv. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Talm. of Jerus., _Sanhedrim_, xiv. 16; Talm. of Bab.,
same treatise, 43 _a_, 67 _a_. Cf. _Shabbath_, 104 _b_.]
We learn from the disciples of Jesus themselves that the crime with
which their Master was charged was that of "corruption;"[1] and apart
from some minutiæ, the fruit of the rabbinical imagination, the
narrative of the Gospels corresponds exactly with the procedure
described by the Talmud. The plan of the enemies of Jesus was to
convict him, by the testimony of witnesses and by his own avowals, of
blasphemy, and of outrage against the Mosaic religion, to condemn him
to death according to law, and then to get the condemnation sanctioned
by Pilate. The priestly authority, as we have already seen, was in
reality entirely in the hands of Hanan. The order for the arrest
probably came from him. It was before this powerful personage that
Jesus was first brought.[2] Hanan questioned him as to his doctrine
and his disciples. Jesus, with proper pride, refused to enter into
long explanations. He referred Hanan to his teachings, which had been
public; he declared he had never held any secret doctrine; and desired
the ex-high priest to interrogate those who had listened to him. This
answer was perfectly natural; but the exaggerated respect with which
the old priest was surrounded made it appear audacious; and one of
those present replied to it, it is said, by a blow.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 63; John vii. 12, 47.]
[Footnote 2: John xviii. 13, and following. This circumstance, which
we only find in John, is the strongest proof of the historic value of
the fourth Gospel.]
Peter and John had followed their Master to the dwelling of Hanan.
John, who was known in the house, was admitted without difficulty; but
Peter was stopped at the entrance, and John was obliged to beg the
porter to let him pass. The night was cold. Peter stopped in the
antechamber, and approached a brasier, around which the servants were
warming themselves. He was soon recognized as a disciple of the
accused. The unfortunate man, betrayed by his Galilean accent, and
pestered by questions from the servants, one of whom, a kinsman of
Malchus, had seen him at Gethsemane, denied thrice that he had ever
had the least connection with Jesus. He thought that Jesus could not
hear him, and never imagined that this cowardice, which he sought to
hide by his dissimulation, was exceedingly dishonorable. But his
better nature soon revealed to him the fault he had committed. A
fortuitous circumstance, the crowing of the cock, recalled to him a
remark that Jesus had made. Touched to the heart, he went out and wept
bitterly.[1]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvi. 69, and following; Mark xiv. 66, and
following; Luke xxii. 54, and following; John xviii. 15, and
following, 25, and following.]
Hanan, although the true author of the judicial murder about to be
accomplished, had not power to pronounce the sentence upon Jesus; he
sent him to his son-in-law, Kaïapha, who bore the official title. This
man, the blind instrument of his father-in-law, would naturally ratify
everything that had been done. The Sanhedrim was assembled at his
house.[1] The inquiry commenced; and several witnesses, prepared
beforehand according to the inquisitorial process described in the
Talmud, appeared before the tribunal. The fatal sentence which Jesus
had really uttered: "I am able to destroy the temple of God and to
build it in three days," was cited by two witnesses. To blaspheme the
temple of God was, according to the Jewish law, to blaspheme God
himself.[2] Jesus remained silent, and refused to explain the
incriminated speech. If we may believe one version, the high priest
then adjured him to say if he were the Messiah; Jesus confessed it,
and proclaimed before the assembly the near approach of his heavenly
reign.[3] The courage of Jesus, who had resolved to die, renders this
narrative superfluous. It is probable that here, as when before Hanan,
he remained silent. This was in general his rule of conduct during his
last moments. The sentence was settled; and they only sought for
pretexts. Jesus felt this, and did not undertake a useless defense. In
the light of orthodox Judaism, he was truly a blasphemer, a destroyer
of the established worship. Now, these crimes were punished by the law
with death.[4] With one voice, the assembly declared him guilty of a
capital crime. The members of the council who secretly leaned to him,
were absent or did not vote.[5] The frivolity which characterizes old
established aristocracies, did not permit the judges to reflect long
upon the consequences of the sentence they had passed. Human life was
at that time very lightly sacrificed; doubtless the members of the
Sanhedrim did not dream that their sons would have to render account
to an angry posterity for the sentence pronounced with such careless
disdain.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xvi. 57; Mark xiv. 53; Luke xxii. 66.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxiii. 16, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xiv. 62; Luke xxii. 69. John knows
nothing of this scene.]
[Footnote 4: _Levit._ xxiv. 14, and following; _Deut._ xiii. 1, and
following.]
[Footnote 5: Luke xxiii. 50, 51.]
The Sanhedrim had not the right to execute a sentence of death.[1] But
in the confusion of powers which then reigned in Judea, Jesus was,
from that moment, none the less condemned. He remained the rest of
the night exposed to the ill-treatment of an infamous pack of
servants, who spared him no indignity.[2]
[Footnote 1: John xviii. 31; Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 67, 68; Mark xiv. 65; Luke xxii. 63-65.]
In the morning the chief priests and the elders again assembled.[1]
The point was, to get Pilate to ratify the condemnation pronounced by
the Sanhedrim, which, since the occupation of the Romans, was no
longer sufficient. The procurator was not invested, like the imperial
legate, with the disposal of life and death. But Jesus was not a Roman
citizen; it only required the authorization of the governor in order
that the sentence pronounced against him should take its course. As
always happens, when a political people subjects a nation in which the
civil and the religious laws are confounded, the Romans had been
brought to give to the Jewish law a sort of official support. The
Roman law did not apply to Jews. The latter remained under the
canonical law which we find recorded in the Talmud, just as the Arabs
in Algeria are still governed by the code of Islamism. Although
neutral in religion, the Romans thus very often sanctioned penalties
inflicted for religious faults. The situation was nearly that of the
sacred cities of India under the English dominion, or rather that
which would be the state of Damascus if Syria were conquered by a
European nation. Josephus asserts, though this may be doubted, that if
a Roman trespassed beyond the pillars which bore inscriptions
forbidding pagans to advance, the Romans themselves would have
delivered him to the Jews to be put to death.[2]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 1; Mark xv. 1; Luke xxii. 66, xxiii. 1; John
xviii 28.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XV. xi. 5; _B.J._, VI. ii. 4.]
The agents of the priests therefore bound Jesus and led him to the
judgment-hall, which was the former palace of Herod,[1] adjoining the
Tower of Antonia.[2] It was the morning of the day on which the
Paschal lamb was to be eaten (Friday the 14th of Nisan, our 3d of
April). The Jews would have been defiled by entering the
judgment-hall, and would not have been able to share in the sacred
feast. They therefore remained without.[3] Pilate being informed of
their presence, ascended the _bima_[4] or tribunal, situated in the
open air,[5] at the place named _Gabbatha_, or in Greek,
_Lithostrotos_, on account of the pavement which covered the ground.
[Footnote 1: Philo, _Legatio ad Caium_, § 38. Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv.
8.]
[Footnote 2: The exact place now occupied by the seraglio of the Pacha
of Jerusalem.]
[Footnote 3: John xviii. 28.]
[Footnote 4: The Greek word [Greek: Bêma] had passed into the
Syro-Chaldaic.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _B.J._, II. ix. 3, xiv. 8; Matt. xxvii. 27; John
xviii. 33.]
He had scarcely been informed of the accusation, before he displayed
his annoyance at being mixed up with this affair.[1] He then shut
himself up in the judgment-hall with Jesus. There a conversation took
place, the precise details of which are lost, no witness having been
able to repeat it to the disciples, but the tenor of which appears to
have been well divined by John. His narrative, in fact, perfectly
accords with what history teaches us of the mutual position of the two
interlocutors.
[Footnote 1: John xviii. 29.]
The procurator, Pontius, surnamed Pilate, doubtless on account of the
_pilum_ or javelin of honor with which he or one of his ancestors was
decorated,[1] had hitherto had no relation with the new sect.
Indifferent to the internal quarrels of the Jews, he only saw in all
these movements of sectaries, the results of intemperate imaginations
and disordered brains. In general, he did not like the Jews, but the
Jews detested him still more. They thought him hard, scornful, and
passionate, and accused him of improbable crimes.[2]
[Footnote 1: Virg., _Æn._, XII. 121; Martial, _Epigr._, I. xxxii., X.
xlviii.; Plutarch, _Life of Romulus_, 29. Compare the _hasta pura_, a
military decoration. Orelli and Henzen, _Inscr. Lat._, Nos. 3574,
6852, etc. _Pilatus_ is, on this hypothesis, a word of the same form
as _Torquatus_.]
[Footnote 2: Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, § 38.]
Jerusalem, the centre of a great national fermentation, was a very
seditious city, and an insupportable abode for a foreigner. The
enthusiasts pretended that it was a fixed design of the new procurator
to abolish the Jewish law.[1] Their narrow fanaticism, and their
religious hatreds, disgusted that broad sentiment of justice and civil
government which the humblest Roman carried everywhere with him. All
the acts of Pilate which are known to us, show him to have been a good
administrator.[2] In the earlier period of the exercise of his office,
he had difficulties with those subject to him which he had solved in a
very brutal manner; but it seems that essentially he was right. The
Jews must have appeared to him a people behind the age; he doubtless
judged them as a liberal prefect formerly judged the Bas-Bretons, who
rebelled for such trifling matters as a new road, or the establishment
of a school. In his best projects for the good of the country, notably
in those relating to public works, he had encountered an impassable
obstacle in the Law. The Law restricted life to such a degree that it
opposed all change, and all amelioration. The Roman structures, even
the most useful ones, were objects of great antipathy on the part of
zealous Jews.[3] Two votive escutcheons with inscriptions, which he
had set up at his residence near the sacred precincts, provoked a
still more violent storm.[4] Pilate at first cared little for these
susceptibilities; and he was soon involved in sanguinary suppressions
of revolt,[5] which afterward ended in his removal.[6] The experience
of so many conflicts had rendered him very prudent in his relations
with this intractable people, which avenged itself upon its governors
by compelling them to use toward it hateful severities. The procurator
saw himself, with extreme displeasure, led to play a cruel part in
this new affair, for the sake of a law he hated.[7] He knew that
religious fanaticism, when it has obtained the sanction of civil
governments to some act of violence, is afterward the first to throw
the responsibility upon the government, and almost accuses them of
being the author of it. Supreme injustice; for the true culprit is, in
such cases, the instigator!
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 1, init.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii.-iv.]
[Footnote 3: Talm. of Bab., _Shabbath_, 33 _b_.]
[Footnote 4: Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, § 38.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 1 and 2; Luke xiii. 1.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iv. 1, 2.]
[Footnote 7: John xviii. 35.]
Pilate, then, would have liked to save Jesus. Perhaps the dignified
and calm attitude of the accused made an impression upon him.
According to a tradition,[1] Jesus found a supporter in the wife of
the procurator himself. She may have seen the gentle Galilean from
some window of the palace, overlooking the courts of the temple.
Perhaps she had seen him again in her dreams; and the idea that the
blood of this beautiful young man was about to be spilt, weighed upon
her mind. Certain it is that Jesus found Pilate prepossessed in his
favor. The governor questioned him with kindness, and with the desire
to find an excuse for sending him away pardoned.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 19.]
The title of "King of the Jews," which Jesus had never taken upon
himself, but which his enemies represented as the sum and substance
of his acts and pretensions, was naturally that by which it was sought
to excite the suspicions of the Roman authority. They accused him on
this ground of sedition, and of treason against the government.
Nothing could be more unjust; for Jesus had always recognized the
Roman government as the established power. But conservative religious
bodies do not generally shrink from calumny. Notwithstanding his own
explanation, they drew certain conclusions from his teaching; they
transformed him into a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite; they pretended
that he forbade the payment of tribute to Cæsar.[1] Pilate asked him
if he was really the king of the Jews.[2] Jesus concealed nothing of
what he thought. But the great ambiguity of speech which had been the
source of his strength, and which, after his death, was to establish
his kingship, injured him on this occasion. An idealist that is to
say, not distinguishing the spirit from the substance, Jesus, whose
words, to use the image of the Apocalypse, were as a two-edged sword,
never completely satisfied the powers of earth. If we may believe
John, he avowed his royalty, but uttered at the same time this
profound sentence: "My kingdom is not of this world." He explained the
nature of his kingdom, declaring that it consisted entirely in the
possession and proclamation of truth. Pilate understood nothing of
this grand idealism.[3] Jesus doubtless impressed him as being an
inoffensive dreamer. The total absence of religious and philosophical
proselytism among the Romans of this epoch made them regard devotion
to truth as a chimera. Such discussions annoyed them, and appeared to
them devoid of meaning. Not perceiving the element of danger to the
empire that lay hidden in these new speculations, they had no reason
to employ violence against them. All their displeasure fell upon those
who asked them to inflict punishment for what appeared to them to be
vain subtleties. Twenty years after, Gallio still adopted the same
course toward the Jews.[4] Until the fall of Jerusalem, the rule which
the Romans adopted in administration, was to remain completely
indifferent to these sectarian quarrels.[5]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxiii. 2, 5.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 11; Mark xv. 2; Luke xxiii. 3; John xviii.
33.]
[Footnote 3: John xviii. 38.]
[Footnote 4: _Acts_ xviii. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 5: Tacitus (_Ann._, xv. 44) describes the death of Jesus as
a political execution by Pontius Pilate. But at the epoch in which
Tacitus wrote, the Roman policy toward the Christians was changed;
they were held guilty of secretly conspiring against the state. It was
natural that the Latin historian should believe that Pilate, in
putting Jesus to death, had been actuated by a desire for the public
safety. Josephus is much more exact (_Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.)]
An expedient suggested itself to the mind of the governor by which he
could reconcile his own feelings with the demands of the fanatical
people, whose pressure he had already so often felt. It was the custom
to deliver a prisoner to the people at the time of the Passover.
Pilate, knowing that Jesus had only been arrested in consequence of
the jealousy of the priests,[1] tried to obtain for him the benefit of
this custom. He appeared again upon the _bima_, and proposed to the
multitude to release the "King of the Jews." The proposition made in
these terms, though ironical, was characterized by a degree of
liberality. The priests saw the danger of it. They acted promptly,[2]
and in order to combat the proposition of Pilate, they suggested to
the crowd the name of a prisoner who enjoyed great popularity in
Jerusalem. By a singular coincidence, he also was called Jesus,[3]
and bore the surname of Bar-Abba, or Bar-Rabban.[4] He was a
well-known personage,[5] and had been arrested for taking part in an
uproar in which murder had been committed.[6] A general clamor was
raised, "Not this man; but Jesus Bar-Rabban;" and Pilate was obliged
to release Jesus Bar-Rabban.
[Footnote 1: Mark xv. 10.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 20; Mark xv. 11.]
[Footnote 3: The name of Jesus has disappeared in the greater part of
the manuscripts. This reading has, nevertheless, very great
authorities in its favor.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvii. 16.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. St. Jerome. In Matt. xxvii. 16.]
[Footnote 6: Mark xv. 7; Luke xxiii. 19. John (xviii. 40), who makes
him a robber, appears here too much further from the truth than Mark.]
His embarrassment increased. He feared that too much indulgence shown
to a prisoner, to whom was given the title of "King of the Jews,"
might compromise him. Fanaticism, moreover, compels all powers to make
terms with it. Pilate thought himself obliged to make some concession;
but still hesitating to shed blood, in order to satisfy men whom he
hated, wished to turn the thing into a jest. Affecting to laugh at the
pompous title they had given to Jesus, he caused him to be
scourged.[1] Scourging was the general preliminary of crucifixion.[2]
Perhaps Pilate wished it to be believed that this sentence had already
been pronounced, hoping that the preliminary would suffice. Then took
place (according to all the narratives) a revolting scene. The
soldiers put a scarlet robe on his back, a crown formed of branches of
thorns upon his head, and a reed in his hand. Thus attired, he was led
to the tribunal in front of the people. The soldiers defiled before
him, striking him in turn, and knelt to him, saying, "Hail! King of
the Jews."[3] Others, it is said, spit upon him, and struck his head
with the reed. It is difficult to understand how Roman dignity could
stoop to acts so shameful. It is true that Pilate, in the capacity of
procurator, had under his command scarcely any but auxiliary
troops.[4] Roman citizens, as the legionaries were, would not have
degraded themselves by such conduct.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 26; Mark xv. 15; John xix. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _B.J._, II. xiv. 9, V. xi. 1, VII. vi. 4;
Titus-Livy, XXXIII. 36; Quintus Curtius, VII. xi. 28.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 27, and following; Mark xv. 16, and
following; Luke xxiii. 11; John xix. 2, and following.]
[Footnote 4: See _Inscript. Rom. of Algeria_, No. 5, fragm. B.]
Did Pilate think by this display that he freed himself from
responsibility? Did he hope to turn aside the blow which threatened
Jesus by conceding something to the hatred of the Jews,[1] and by
substituting for the tragic denouement a grotesque termination, to
make it appear that the affair merited no other issue? If such were
his idea, it was unsuccessful. The tumult increased, and became an
open riot. The cry "Crucify him! crucify him!" resounded from all
sides. The priests becoming increasingly urgent, declared the law in
peril if the corrupter were not punished with death.[2] Pilate saw
clearly that to save Jesus he would have to put down a terrible
disturbance. He still tried, however, to gain time. He returned to the
judgment-hall, and ascertained from what country Jesus came, with the
hope of finding a pretext for declaring his inability to
adjudicate.[3] According to one tradition, he even sent Jesus to
Antipas, who, it is said, was then at Jerusalem.[4] Jesus took no part
in these well-meant efforts; he maintained, as he had done before
Kaïapha, a grave and dignified silence, which astonished Pilate. The
cries from without became more and more menacing. The people had
already begun to denounce the lack of zeal in the functionary who
protected an enemy of Cæsar. The greatest adversaries of the Roman
rule were suddenly transformed into loyal subjects of Tiberius, that
they might have the right of accusing the too tolerant procurator of
treason. "We have no king," said they, "but Cæsar. If thou let this
man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king
speaketh against Cæsar."[5] The feeble Pilate yielded; he foresaw the
report that his enemies would send to Rome, in which they would accuse
him of having protected a rival of Tiberius. Once before, in the
matter of the votive escutcheons,[6] the Jews had written to the
emperor, and had received satisfaction. He feared for his office. By a
compliance, which was to deliver his name to the scorn of history, he
yielded, throwing, it is said, upon the Jews all the responsibility of
what was about to happen. The latter, according to the Christians,
fully accepted it, by exclaiming, "His blood be on us and on our
children!"[7]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxiii. 16, 22.]
[Footnote 2: John xix. 7.]
[Footnote 3: John xix. 9. Cf. Luke xxiii. 6, and following.]
[Footnote 4: It is probable that this is a first attempt at a "Harmony
of the Gospels." Luke must have had before him a narrative in which
the death of Jesus was erroneously attributed to Herod. In order not
to sacrifice this version entirely he must have combined the two
traditions. What makes this more likely is, that he probably had a
vague knowledge that Jesus (as John teaches us) appeared before three
authorities. In many other cases, Luke seems to have a remote idea of
the facts which are peculiar to the narration of John. Moreover, the
third Gospel contains in its history of the Crucifixion a series of
additions which the author appears to have drawn from a more recent
document, and which had evidently been arranged with a special view to
edification.]
[Footnote 5: John xix. 12, 15. Cf. Luke xxiii. 2. In order to
appreciate the exactitude of the description of this scene in the
evangelists, see Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, § 38.]
[Footnote 6: See _ante_, p. 351.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. xxvii. 24, 25.]
Were these words really uttered? We may doubt it. But they are the
expression of a profound historical truth. Considering the attitude
which the Romans had taken in Judea, Pilate could scarcely have acted
otherwise. How many sentences of death dictated by religious
intolerance have been extorted from the civil power! The king of
Spain, who, in order to please a fanatical clergy, delivered hundreds
of his subjects to the stake, was more blameable than Pilate, for he
represented a more absolute power than that of the Romans at
Jerusalem. When the civil power becomes persecuting or meddlesome at
the solicitation of the priesthood, it proves its weakness. But let
the government that is without sin in this respect throw the first
stone at Pilate. The "secular arm," behind which clerical cruelty
shelters itself, is not the culprit. No one has a right to say that he
has a horror of blood when he causes it to be shed by his servants.
It was, then, neither Tiberius nor Pilate who condemned Jesus. It was
the old Jewish party; it was the Mosaic Law. According to our modern
ideas, there is no transmission of moral demerit from father to son;
no one is accountable to human or divine justice except for that which
he himself has done. Consequently, every Jew who suffers to-day for
the murder of Jesus has a right to complain, for he might have acted
as did Simon the Cyrenean; at any rate, he might not have been with
those who cried "Crucify him!" But nations, like individuals, have
their responsibilities, and if ever crime was the crime of a nation,
it was the death of Jesus. This death was "legal" in the sense that it
was primarily caused by a law which was the very soul of the nation.
The Mosaic law, in its modern, but still in its accepted form,
pronounced the penalty of death against all attempts to change the
established worship. Now, there is no doubt that Jesus attacked this
worship, and aspired to destroy it. The Jews expressed this to Pilate
with a truthful simplicity: "We have a law, and by our law he ought to
die; because he has made himself the Son of God."[1] The law was
detestable, but it was the law of ancient ferocity; and the hero who
offered himself in order to abrogate it, had first of all to endure
its penalty.
[Footnote 1: John xix. 7.]
Alas! it has required more than eighteen hundred years for the blood
that he shed to bear its fruits. Tortures and death have been
inflicted for ages in the name of Jesus, on thinkers as noble as
himself. Even at the present time, in countries which call themselves
Christian, penalties are pronounced for religious offences. Jesus is
not responsible for these errors. He could not foresee that people,
with mistaken imaginations, would one day imagine him as a frightful
Moloch, greedy of burnt flesh. Christianity has been intolerant, but
intolerance is not essentially a Christian fact. It is a Jewish fact
in the sense that it was Judaism which first introduced the theory of
the absolute in religion, and laid down the principle that every
innovator, even if he brings miracles to support his doctrine, ought
to be stoned without trial.[1] The pagan world has also had its
religious violences. But if it had had this law, how would it have
become Christian? The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first
code of religious terrorism. Judaism has given the example of an
immutable dogma armed with the sword. If, instead of pursuing the Jews
with a blind hatred, Christianity had abolished the régime which
killed its founder, how much more consistent would it have been!--how
much better would it have deserved of the human race!
[Footnote 1: _Deut._ xiii. 1, and following.]
CHAPTER XXV.
DEATH OF JESUS.
Although the real motive for the death of Jesus was entirely
religious, his enemies had succeeded, in the judgment-hall, in
representing him as guilty of treason against the state; they could
not have obtained from the sceptical Pilate a condemnation simply on
the ground of heterodoxy. Consistently with this idea, the priests
demanded, through the people, the crucifixion of Jesus. This
punishment was not Jewish in its origin; if the condemnation of Jesus
had been purely Mosaic, he would have been stoned.[1] Crucifixion was
a Roman punishment, reserved for slaves, and for cases in which it was
wished to add to death the aggravation of ignominy. In applying it to
Jesus, they treated him as they treated highway robbers, brigands,
bandits, or those enemies of inferior rank to whom the Romans did not
grant the honor of death by the sword.[2] It was the chimerical "King
of the Jews," not the heterodox dogmatist, who was punished. Following
out the same idea, the execution was left to the Romans. We know that
amongst the Romans, the soldiers, their profession being to kill,
performed the office of executioners. Jesus was therefore delivered to
a cohort of auxiliary troops, and all the most hateful features of
executions introduced by the cruel habits of the new conquerors, were
exhibited toward him. It was about noon.[3] They re-clothed him with
the garments which they had removed for the farce enacted at the
tribunal, and as the cohort had already in reserve two thieves who
were to be executed, the three prisoners were taken together, and the
procession set out for the place of execution.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1. The Talmud, which represents the
condemnation of Jesus as entirely religious, declares, in fact, that
he was stoned; or, at least, that after having been hanged, he was
stoned, as often happened (Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, vi. 4.) Talmud of
Jerusalem, _Sanhedrim_, xiv. 16. Talm. of Bab., same treatise, 43 _a_,
67 _a_.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVII. x. 10, XX. vi. 2; _B.J._, V. xi. 1;
Apuleius, _Metam._, iii. 9; Suetonius, _Galba_, 9; Lampridius, _Alex.
Sev._, 23.]
[Footnote 3: John xix. 14. According to Mark xv. 25, it could scarcely
have been eight o'clock in the morning, since that evangelist relates
that Jesus was crucified at nine o'clock.]
The scene of the execution was at a place called Golgotha, situated
outside Jerusalem, but near the walls of the city.[1] The name
_Golgotha_ signifies a _skull_; it corresponds with the French word
_Chaumont_, and probably designated a bare hill or rising ground,
having the form of a bald skull. The situation of this hill is not
precisely known. It was certainly on the north or northwest of the
city, in the high, irregular plain which extends between the walls and
the two valleys of Kedron and Hinnom,[2] a rather uninteresting
region, and made still worse by the objectionable circumstances
arising from the neighborhood of a great city. It is difficult to
identify Golgotha as the precise place which, since Constantine, has
been venerated by entire Christendom.[3] This place is too much in the
interior of the city, and we are led to believe that, in the time of
Jesus, it was comprised within the circuit of the walls.[4]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 33; Mark xv. 22; John xix. 20; _Heb._ xiii.
12.]
[Footnote 2: Golgotha, in fact, seems not entirely unconnected with
the hill of Gareb and the locality of Goath, mentioned in Jeremiah
xxxi. 39. Now, these two places appear to have been at the northwest
of the city. I should incline to fix the place where Jesus was
crucified near the extreme corner which the existing wall makes toward
the west, or perhaps upon the mounds which command the valley of
Hinnom, above _Birket-Mamilla_.]
[Footnote 3: The proofs by which it has been attempted to establish
that the Holy Sepulchre has been displaced since Constantine are not
very strong.]
[Footnote 4: M. de Vogüé has discovered, about 83 yards to the east of
the traditional site of Calvary, a fragment of a Jewish wall analogous
to that of Hebron, which, if it belongs to the inclosure of the time
of Jesus, would leave the above-mentioned site outside the city. The
existence of a sepulchral cave (that which is called "Tomb of Joseph
of Arimathea"), under the wall of the cupola of the Holy Sepulchre,
would also lead to the supposition that this place was outside the
walls. Two historical considerations, one of which is rather strong,
may, moreover, be invoked in favor of the tradition. The first is,
that it would be singular if those, who, under Constantine, sought to
determine the topography of the Gospels, had not hesitated in the
presence of the objection which results from _John_ xix. 20, and from
_Heb._ xiii. 12. Why, being free to choose, should they have wantonly
exposed themselves to so grave a difficulty? The second consideration
is, that they might have had to guide them, in the time of
Constantine, the remains of an edifice, the temple of Venus on
Golgotha, erected by Adrian. We are, then, at times led to believe
that the work of the devout topographers of the time of Constantine
was earnest and sincere, that they sought for indications, and that,
though they might not refrain from certain pious frauds, they were
guided by analogies. If they had merely followed a vain caprice, they
might have placed Golgotha in a more conspicuous situation, at the
summit of some of the neighboring hills about Jerusalem, in accordance
with the Christian imagination, which very early thought that the
death of Christ had taken place on a mountain. But the difficulty of
the inclosures is very serious. Let us add, that the erection of a
temple of Venus on Golgotha proves little. Eusebius (_Vita Const._,
iii. 26), Socrates (_H.E._, i. 17), Sozomen (_H.E._, ii. 1), St.
Jerome (_Epist._ xlix., ad Paulin.), say, indeed, that there was a
sanctuary of Venus on the site which they imagined to be that of the
holy tomb; but it is not certain that Adrian had erected it; or that
he had erected it in a place which was in his time called "Golgotha";
or that he had intended to erect it at the place where Jesus had
suffered death.]
He who was condemned to the cross, had himself to carry the instrument
of his execution.[1] But Jesus, physically weaker than his two
companions, could not carry his. The troop met a certain Simon of
Cyrene, who was returning from the country, and the soldiers, with the
off-hand procedure of foreign garrisons, forced him to carry the
fatal tree. Perhaps they made use of a recognized right of forcing
labor, the Romans not being allowed to carry the infamous wood. It
seems that Simon was afterward of the Christian community. His two
sons, Alexander and Rufus,[2] were well known in it. He related
perhaps more than one circumstance of which he had been witness. No
disciple was at this moment near to Jesus.[3]
[Footnote 1: Plutarch, _De Sera Num. Vind._, 19; Artemidorus,
_Onirocrit._, ii. 56.]
[Footnote 2: Mark xv. 21.]
[Footnote 3: The circumstance, Luke xxiii. 27-31, is one of those in
which we are sensible of the work of a pious and loving imagination.
The words which are there attributed to Jesus could only have been
written after the siege of Jerusalem.]
The place of execution was at last reached. According to Jewish
custom, the sufferers were offered a strong aromatic wine, an
intoxicating drink, which, through a sentiment of pity, was given to
the condemned in order to stupefy him.[1] It appears that the ladies
of Jerusalem often brought this kind of wine to the unfortunates who
were led to execution; when none was presented by them, it was
purchased from the public treasury.[2] Jesus, after having touched the
edge of the cup with his lips, refused to drink.[3] This mournful
consolation of ordinary sufferers did not accord with his exalted
nature. He preferred to quit life with perfect clearness of mind, and
to await in full consciousness the death he had willed and brought
upon himself. He was then divested of his garments,[4] and fastened to
the cross. The cross was composed of two beams, tied in the form of
the letter T.[5] It was not much elevated, so that the feet of the
condemned almost touched the earth. They commenced by fixing it,[6]
then they fastened the sufferer to it by driving nails into his hands;
the feet were often nailed, though sometimes only bound with cords.[7]
A piece of wood was fastened to the upright portion of the cross,
toward the middle, and passed between the legs of the condemned, who
rested upon it.[8] Without that, the hands would have been torn and
the body would have sunk down. At other times, a small horizontal rest
was fixed beneath the feet, and sustained them.[9]
[Footnote 1: Talm. of Bab., _Sanhedrim_, fol. 43 _a_. Comp. _Prov._
xxi. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Talm. of Bab., _Sanhedrim_, _l.c._]
[Footnote 3: Mark xv. 23; Matt. xxvii. 34, falsifies this detail, in
order to create a Messianic allusion from Ps. lxix. 20.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvii. 35; Mark xv. 24; John xix. 23. Cf.
Artemidorus, _Onirocr._, ii. 53.]
[Footnote 5: Lucian, _Jud. Voc._, 12. Compare the grotesque crucifix
traced at Rome on a wall of Mount Palatine. _Civilta Cattolica_, fasc.
clxi. p. 529, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _B.J._, VII. vi. 4; Cic., _In Verr._, v. 66;
Xenoph. Ephes., _Ephesiaca_, iv. 2.]
[Footnote 7: Luke xxiv. 39; John xx. 25-27; Plautus, _Mostellaria_,
II. i. 13; Lucan., _Phars._, vi. 543, and following, 547; Justin,
_Dial. cum Tryph._, 97; Tertullian, _Adv. Marcionem_, iii. 19.]
[Footnote 8: Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, ii. 24; Justin, _Dial. cum
Tryphone_, 91.]
[Footnote 9: See the _graffito_ quoted before.]
Jesus tasted these horrors in all their atrocity. A burning thirst,
one of the tortures of crucifixion,[1] devoured him, and he asked to
drink. There stood near, a cup of the ordinary drink of the Roman
soldiers, a mixture of vinegar and water, called _posca_. The soldiers
had to carry with them their _posca_ on all their expeditions,[2] of
which an execution was considered one. A soldier dipped a sponge in
this drink, put it at the end of a reed, and raised it to the lips of
Jesus, who sucked it.[3] The two robbers were crucified, one on each
side. The executioners, to whom were usually left the small effects
(_pannicularia_) of those executed,[4] drew lots for his garments,
and, seated at the foot of the cross, kept guard over him.[5]
According to one tradition, Jesus pronounced this sentence, which was
in his heart if not upon his lips: "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do."[6]
[Footnote 1: See the Arab text published by Kosegarten, _Chrest.
Arab._, p. 64.]
[Footnote 2: Spartianus, _Life of Adrian_, 10; Vulcatius Gallicanus,
_Life of Avidius Cassius_, 5.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 48; Mark xv. 36; Luke xxiii. 36; John xix.
28-30.]
[Footnote 4: Dig., XLVII. xx., _De bonis damnat._, 6. Adrian limited
this custom.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxvii. 36. Cf. Petronius, _Satyr._, cxi., cxii.]
[Footnote 6: Luke xxiii. 34. In general, the last words attributed to
Jesus, especially such as Luke records, are open to doubt. The desire
to edify or to show the accomplishment of prophecies is perceptible.
In these cases, moreover, every one hears in his own way. The last
words of celebrated prisoners, condemned to death, are always
collected in two or three entirely different shapes, by even the
nearest witnesses.]
According to the Roman custom, a writing was attached to the top of
the cross, bearing, in three languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the
words: "THE KING OF THE JEWS." There was something painful and
insulting to the nation in this inscription. The numerous passers-by
who read it were offended. The priests complained to Pilate that he
ought to have adopted an inscription which would have implied simply
that Jesus had called himself King of the Jews. But Pilate, already
tired of the whole affair, refused to make any change in what had been
written.[1]
[Footnote 1: John xix. 19-22.]
His disciples had fled. John, nevertheless, declares himself to have
been present, and to have remained standing at the foot of the cross
during the whole time.[1] It may be affirmed, with more certainty,
that the devoted women of Galilee, who had followed Jesus to Jerusalem
and continued to tend him, did not abandon him. Mary Cleophas, Mary
Magdalen, Joanna, wife of Khouza, Salome, and others, stayed at a
certain distance,[2] and did not lose sight of him.[3] If we must
believe John,[4] Mary, the mother of Jesus, was also at the foot of
the cross, and Jesus seeing his mother and his beloved disciple
together, said to the one, "Behold thy mother!" and to the other,
"Behold thy son!" But we do not understand how the synoptics, who name
the other women, should have omitted her whose presence was so
striking a feature. Perhaps even the extreme elevation of the
character of Jesus does not render such personal emotion probable, at
the moment when, solely preoccupied by his work, he no longer existed
except for humanity.[5]
[Footnote 1: John xix. 25, and following.]
[Footnote 2: The synoptics are agreed in placing the faithful group
"afar off" the cross. John says, "at the side of," governed by the
desire which he has of representing himself as having approached very
near to the cross of Jesus.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 55, 56; Mark xv. 40, 41; Luke xxiii. 49, 55;
xxiv. 10; John xix. 25. Cf. Luke xxiii. 27-31.]
[Footnote 4: John xix. 25, and following. Luke, who always adopts a
middle course between the first two synoptics and John, mentions also,
but at a distance, "all his acquaintance" (xxiii. 49). The expression,
[Greek: gnôstoi], may, it is true, mean "kindred." Luke, nevertheless
(ii. 44), distinguishes the [Greek: gnôstoi] from the [Greek:
sungeneis]. Let us add, that the best manuscripts bear [Greek: oi
gnôstoi autô], and not [Greek: oi gnôstoi autou]. In the _Acts_ (i.
14), Mary, mother of Jesus, is also placed in company with the
Galilean women; elsewhere (Gospel, chap. ii. 35), Luke predicts that a
sword of grief will pierce her soul. But this renders his omission of
her at the cross the less explicable.]
[Footnote 5: This is, in my opinion, one of those features in which
John betrays his personality and the desire he has of giving himself
importance. John, after the death of Jesus, appears in fact to have
received the mother of his Master into his house, and to have adopted
her (John xix. 27.) The great consideration which Mary enjoyed in the
early church, doubtless led John to pretend that Jesus, whose favorite
disciple he wished to be regarded, had, when dying, recommended to his
care all that was dearest to him. The presence of this precious trust
near John, insured him a kind of precedence over the other apostles,
and gave his doctrine a high authority.]
Apart from this small group of women, whose presence consoled him,
Jesus had before him only the spectacle of the baseness or stupidity
of humanity. The passers-by insulted him. He heard around him foolish
scoffs, and his greatest cries of pain turned into hateful jests: "He
trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he
said, I am the Son of God." "He saved others," they said again;
"himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel, let him now
come down from the cross, and we will believe him! Ah, thou that
destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save
thyself."[1] Some, vaguely acquainted with his apocalyptic ideas,
thought they heard him call Elias, and said, "Let us see whether Elias
will come to save him." It appears that the two crucified thieves at
his side also insulted him.[2] The sky was dark;[3] and the earth, as
in all the environs of Jerusalem, dry and gloomy. For a moment,
according to certain narratives, his heart failed him; a cloud hid
from him the face of his Father; he endured an agony of despair a
thousand times more acute than all his torture. He saw only the
ingratitude of men; he perhaps repented suffering for a vile race, and
exclaimed: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But his divine
instinct still prevailed. In the degree that the life of the body
became extinguished, his soul became clear, and returned by degrees to
its celestial origin. He regained the idea of his mission; he saw in
his death the salvation of the world; he lost sight of the hideous
spectacle spread at his feet, and, profoundly united to his Father, he
began upon the gibbet the divine life which he was to live in the
heart of humanity through infinite ages.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 40, and following; Mark xv. 29, and
following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 44; Mark xv. 32. Luke has here modified the
tradition, in accordance with his taste for the conversion of
sinners.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 45; Mark xv. 33; Luke xxiii. 44.]
The peculiar atrocity of crucifixion was that one might live three or
four days in this horrible state upon the instrument of torture.[1]
The hæmorrhage from the hands quickly stopped, and was not mortal. The
true cause of death was the unnatural position of the body, which
brought on a frightful disturbance of the circulation, terrible pains
of the head and heart, and, at length, rigidity of the limbs. Those
who had a strong constitution only died of hunger.[2] The idea which
suggested this cruel punishment was not directly to kill the condemned
by positive injuries, but to expose the slave nailed by the hand of
which he had not known how to make good use, and to let him rot on the
wood. The delicate organization of Jesus preserved him from this slow
agony. Everything leads to the belief that the instantaneous rupture
of a vessel in the heart brought him, at the end of three hours, to a
sudden death. Some moments before yielding up his soul, his voice was
still strong.[3] All at once, he uttered a terrible cry,[4] which some
heard as: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!" but which
others, more preoccupied with the accomplishment of prophecies,
rendered by the words, "It is finished!" His head fell upon his
breast, and he expired.
[Footnote 1: Petronius, _Sat._, cxi., and following; Origen, _In Matt.
Comment. series_, 140 Arab text published in Kosegarten, _op. cit._,
p. 63, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, viii. 8.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvii. 50; Mark xv. 37; Luke xxiii. 46; John xix.
30.]
Rest now in thy glory, noble initiator. Thy work is completed; thy
divinity is established. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy
efforts crumble through a flaw. Henceforth, beyond the reach of
frailty, thou shalt be present, from the height of thy divine peace,
in the infinite consequences of thy acts. At the price of a few hours
of suffering, which have not even touched thy great soul, thou hast
purchased the most complete immortality. For thousands of years the
world will extol thee. Banner of our contradictions, thou wilt be the
sign around which will be fought the fiercest battles. A thousand
times more living, a thousand times more loved since thy death than
during the days of thy pilgrimage here below, thou wilt become to such
a degree the corner-stone of humanity, that to tear thy name from this
world would be to shake it to its foundations. Between thee and God,
men will no longer distinguish. Complete conqueror of death, take
possession of thy kingdom, whither, by the royal road thou has traced,
ages of adorers will follow thee.
CHAPTER XXVI.
JESUS IN THE TOMB.
It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, according to our manner
of reckoning,[1] when Jesus expired. A Jewish law[2] forbade a corpse
suspended on the cross to be left beyond the evening of the day of the
execution. It is not probable that in the executions performed by the
Romans this rule was observed; but as the next day was the Sabbath,
and a Sabbath of peculiar solemnity, the Jews expressed to the Roman
authorities[3] their desire that this holy day should not be profaned
by such a spectacle.[4] Their request was granted; orders were given
to hasten the death of the three condemned ones, and to remove them
from the cross. The soldiers executed this order by applying to the
two thieves a second punishment much more speedy than that of the
cross, the _crurifragium_, or breaking of the legs,[5] the usual
punishment of slaves and of prisoners of war. As to Jesus, they found
him dead, and did not think it necessary to break his legs. But one of
them, to remove all doubt as to the real death of the third victim,
and to complete it, if any breath remained in him, pierced his side
with a spear. They thought they saw water and blood flow, which was
regarded as a sign of the cessation of life.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 37; Luke xxiii. 44. Comp. John
xix. 14.]
[Footnote 2: _Deut._ xxi. 22, 23; Josh. viii. 29, x. 26, and
following. Cf. Jos., _B.J._, IV. v. 2; Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, vi. 5.]
[Footnote 3: John says, "To Pilate"; but that cannot be, for Mark (xv.
44, 45) states that at night Pilate was still ignorant of the death of
Jesus.]
[Footnote 4: Compare Philo, _In Flaccum_, § 10.]
[Footnote 5: There is no other example of the _crurifragium_ applied
after crucifixion. But often, in order to shorten the tortures of the
sufferer, a finishing stroke was given him. See the passage from
Ibn-Hischâm, translated in the _Zeitschrift für die Kunde des
Morgenlandes_, i. p. 99, 100.]
John, who professes to have seen it,[1] insists strongly on this
circumstance. It is evident, in fact, that doubts arose as to the
reality of the death of Jesus. A few hours of suspension on the cross
appeared to persons accustomed to see crucifixions entirely
insufficient to lead to such a result. They cited many instances of
persons crucified, who, removed in time, had been brought to life
again by powerful remedies.[2] Origen afterward thought it needful to
invoke miracle in order to explain so sudden an end.[3] The same
astonishment is found in the narrative of Mark.[4] To speak truly, the
best guarantee that the historian possesses upon a point of this
nature is the suspicious hatred of the enemies of Jesus. It is
doubtful whether the Jews were at that time preoccupied with the fear
that Jesus might pass for resuscitated; but, in any case, they must
have made sure that he was really dead. Whatever, at certain periods,
may have been the neglect of the ancients in all that belonged to
legal proof and the strict conduct of affairs, we cannot but believe
that those interested here had taken some precautions in this
respect.[5]
[Footnote 1: John xix. 31-35.]
[Footnote 2: Herodotus, vii. 194; Jos., _Vita_, 75.]
[Footnote 3: _In Matt. Comment. series_, 140.]
[Footnote 4: Mark xv. 44, 45.]
[Footnote 5: The necessities of Christian controversy afterward led to
the exaggeration of these precautions, especially when the Jews had
systematically begun to maintain that the body of Jesus had been
stolen. Matt. xxvii. 62, and following, xxviii. 11-15.]
According to the Roman custom, the corpse of Jesus ought to have
remained suspended in order to become the prey of birds.[1] According
to the Jewish law, it would have been removed in the evening, and
deposited in the place of infamy set apart for the burial of those who
were executed.[2] If Jesus had had for disciples only his poor
Galileans, timid and without influence, the latter course would have
been adopted. But we have seen that, in spite of his small success at
Jerusalem, Jesus had gained the sympathy of some important persons who
expected the kingdom of God, and who, without confessing themselves
his disciples, were strongly attached to him. One of these persons,
Joseph, of the small town of Arimathea (_Ha-ramathaïm_[3]), went in
the evening to ask the body from the procurator.[4] Joseph was a rich
and honorable man, a member of the Sanhedrim. The Roman law, at this
period, commanded, moreover, that the body of the person executed
should be delivered to those who claimed it.[5] Pilate, who was
ignorant of the circumstance of the _crurifragium_, was astonished
that Jesus was so soon dead, and summoned the centurion who had
superintended the execution, in order to know how this was. Pilate,
after having received the assurances of the centurion, granted to
Joseph the object of his request. The body probably had already been
removed from the cross. They delivered it to Joseph, that he might do
with it as he pleased.
[Footnote 1: Horace, _Epistles_, I. xvi. 48; Juvenal, xiv. 77; Lucan.,
vii. 544; Plautus, _Miles glor._, II. iv. 19; Artemidorus, _Onir._,
ii. 53; Pliny, xxxvi. 24; Plutarch, _Life of Cleomenes_, 39;
Petronius, _Sat._, cxi.-cxii.]
[Footnote 2: Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, vi. 5.]
[Footnote 3: Probably identical with the ancient Rama of Samuel, in
the tribe of Ephraim.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvii. 57, and following; Mark xv. 42, and
following; Luke xxiii. 50, and following; John xix. 38, and
following.]
[Footnote 5: Dig. XLVIII. xxiv., _De cadaveribus puntorum_.]
Another secret friend, Nicodemus,[1] whom we have already seen
employing his influence more than once in favor of Jesus, came forward
at this moment. He arrived, bearing ample provision of the materials
necessary for embalming. Joseph and Nicodemus interred Jesus according
to the Jewish custom--that is to say, they wrapped him in a sheet with
myrrh and aloes. The Galilean women were present,[2] and no doubt
accompanied the scene with piercing cries and tears.
[Footnote 1: John xix. 39, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 61; Mark xv. 47; Luke xxiii. 55.]
It was late, and all this was done in great haste. The place had not
yet been chosen where the body would be finally deposited. The
carrying of the body, moreover, might have been delayed to a late
hour, and have involved a violation of the Sabbath--now the disciples
still conscientiously observed the prescriptions of the Jewish law. A
temporary interment was determined upon.[1] There was at hand, in the
garden, a tomb recently dug out in the rock, which had never been
used. It belonged, probably, to one of the believers.[2] The funeral
caves, when they were destined for a single body, were composed of a
small room, at the bottom of which the place for the body was marked
by a trough or couch let into the wall, and surmounted by an arch.[3]
As these caves were dug out of the sides of sloping rocks, they were
entered by the floor; the door was shut by a stone very difficult to
move. Jesus was deposited in the cave, and the stone was rolled to the
door, as it was intended to return in order to give him a more
complete burial. But the next day being a solemn Sabbath, the labor
was postponed till the day following.[4]
[Footnote 1: John xix. 41, 42.]
[Footnote 2: One tradition (Matt. xxvii. 60) designates Joseph of
Arimathea himself as owner of the cave.]
[Footnote 3: The cave which, at the period of Constantine, was
considered as the tomb of Christ, was of this shape, as may be
gathered from the description of Arculphus (in Mabillon, _Acta SS.
Ord. S. Bened._, sec. iii., pars ii., p. 504), and from the vague
traditions which still exist at Jerusalem among the Greek clergy on
the state of the rock now concealed by the little chapel of the Holy
Sepulchre. But the indications by which, under Constantine, it was
sought to identify this tomb with that of Christ, were feeble or
worthless (see especially Sozomen, _H.E._, ii. 1.) Even if we were to
admit the position of Golgotha as nearly exact, the Holy Sepulchre
would still have no very reliable character of authenticity. At all
events, the aspect of the places has been totally modified.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xxiii. 56.]
The women retired after having carefully noticed how the body was
laid. They employed the hours of the evening which remained to them in
making new preparations for the embalming. On the Saturday all
rested.[1]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxiii. 54-56.]
On the Sunday morning, the women, Mary Magdalen the first, came very
early to the tomb.[1] The stone was displaced from the opening, and
the body was no longer in the place where they had laid it. At the
same time, the strangest rumors were spread in the Christian
community. The cry, "He is risen!" quickly spread amongst the
disciples. Love caused it to find ready credence everywhere. What had
taken place? In treating of the history of the apostles we shall have
to examine this point and to make inquiry into the origin of the
legends relative to the resurrection. For the historian, the life of
Jesus finishes with his last sigh. But such was the impression he had
left in the heart of his disciples and of a few devoted women, that
during some weeks more it was as if he were living and consoling them.
Had his body been taken away,[2] or did enthusiasm, always credulous,
create afterward the group of narratives by which it was sought to
establish faith in the resurrection? In the absence of opposing
documents this can never be ascertained. Let us say, however, that
the strong imagination of Mary Magdalen[3] played an important part in
this circumstance.[4] Divine power of love! Sacred moments in which
the passion of one possessed gave to the world a resuscitated God!
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxviii. 1; Mark xvi. 1; Luke xxiv. 1; John xx. 1.]
[Footnote 2: See Matt. xxviii. 15; John xx. 2.]
[Footnote 3: She had been possessed by seven demons (Mark xvi. 9; Luke
viii. 2.)]
[Footnote 4: This is obvious, especially in the ninth and following
verses of chap. xvi. of Mark. These verses form a conclusion of the
second Gospel, different from the conclusion at xvi. 1-8, with which
many manuscripts terminate. In the fourth Gospel (xx. 1, 2, 11, and
following, 18), Mary Magdalen is also the only original witness of the
resurrection.]
CHAPTER XXVII.
FATE OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS.
According to the calculation we adopt, the death of Jesus happened in
the year 33 of our era.[1] It could not, at all events, be either
before the year 29, the preaching of John and Jesus having commenced
in the year 28,[2] or after the year 35, since in the year 36, and
probably before the passover, Pilate and Kaïapha both lost their
offices.[3] The death of Jesus appears, moreover, to have had no
connection whatever with these two removals.[4] In his retirement,
Pilate probably never dreamt for a moment of the forgotten episode,
which was to transmit his pitiful renown to the most distant
posterity. As to Kaïapha, he was succeeded by Jonathan, his
brother-in-law, son of the same Hanan who had played the principal
part in the trial of Jesus. The Sadducean family of Hanan retained the
pontificate a long time, and more powerful than ever, continued to
wage against the disciples and the family of Jesus, the implacable war
which they had commenced against the Founder. Christianity, which owed
to him the definitive act of its foundation, owed to him also its
first martyrs. Hanan passed for one of the happiest men of his
age.[5] He who was truly guilty of the death of Jesus ended his life
full of honors and respect, never having doubted for an instant that
he had rendered a great service to the nation. His sons continued to
reign around the temple, kept down with difficulty by the
procurators,[6] ofttimes dispensing with the consent of the latter in
order to gratify their haughty and violent instincts.
[Footnote 1: The year 33 corresponds well with one of the data of the
problem, namely, that the 14th of Nisan was a Friday. If we reject the
year 33, in order to find a year which fulfils the above condition, we
must at least go back to the year 29, or go forward to the year 36.]
[Footnote 2: Luke iii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iv. 2 and 3.]
[Footnote 4: The contrary assertion of Tertullian and Eusebius arises
from a worthless apocryphal writing (See Philo, _Cod. Apocr., N.T._,
p. 813, and following.) The suicide of Pilate (Eusebius, _H.E._, ii.
7; _Chron._ ad annl. Caii) appears also to be derived from legendary
records.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _l.c._]
Antipas and Herodias soon disappeared also from the political scene.
Herod Agrippa having been raised to the dignity of king by Caligula,
the jealous Herodias swore that she also would be queen. Pressed
incessantly by this ambitious woman, who treated him as a coward,
because he suffered a superior in his family, Antipas overcame his
natural indolence, and went to Rome to solicit the title which his
nephew had just obtained (the year 39 of our era). But the affair
turned out in the worst possible manner. Injured in the eyes of the
emperor by Herod Agrippa, Antipas was removed, and dragged out the
rest of his life in exile at Lyons and in Spain. Herodias followed him
in his misfortunes.[1] A hundred years, at least, were to elapse
before the name of their obscure subject, now become deified, should
appear in these remote countries to brand upon their tombs the murder
of John the Baptist.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. vii. 1, 2; _B.J._, II. ix. 6.]
As to the wretched Judas of Kerioth, terrible legends were current
about his death. It was maintained that he had bought a field in the
neighborhood of Jerusalem with the price of his perfidy. There was,
indeed, on the south of Mount Zion, a place named _Hakeldama_ (the
field of blood[1]). It was supposed that this was the property
acquired by the traitor.[2] According to one tradition,[3] he killed
himself. According to another, he had a fall in his field, in
consequence of which his bowels gushed out.[4] According to others, he
died of a kind of dropsy, accompanied by repulsive circumstances,
which were regarded as a punishment from heaven.[5] The desire of
showing in Judas the accomplishment of the menaces which the Psalmist
pronounces against the perfidious friend[6] may have given rise to
these legends. Perhaps, in the retirement of his field of Hakeldama,
Judas led a quiet and obscure life; while his former friends conquered
the world, and spread his infamy abroad. Perhaps, also, the terrible
hatred which was concentrated on his head, drove him to violent acts,
in which were seen the finger of heaven.
[Footnote 1: St. Jerome, _De situ et nom. loc. hebr._ at the word
_Acheldama_. Eusebius (_ibid._) says to the north. But the Itineraries
confirm the reading of St. Jerome. The tradition which styles the
necropolis situated at the foot of the valley of Hinnom _Haceldama_,
dates back, at least, to the time of Constantine.]
[Footnote 2: _Acts_ i. 18, 19. Matthew, or rather his interpolator,
has here given a less satisfactory turn to the tradition, in order to
connect with it the circumstance of a cemetery for strangers, which
was found near there.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 5.]
[Footnote 4: _Acts_, _l.c._; Papias, in Oecumenius, _Enarr. in Act.
Apost._, ii., and in Fr. Münter, _Fragm. Patrum Græc._ (Hafniæ, 1788),
fasc. i. p. 17, and following; Theophylactus, in Matt. xxvii. 5.]
[Footnote 5: Papias, in Münter, _l.c._; Theophylactus, _l.c._]
[Footnote 6: Psalms lxix. and cix.]
The time of the great Christian revenge was, moreover, far distant.
The new sect had no part whatever in the catastrophe which Judaism was
soon to undergo. The synagogue did not understand till much later to
what it exposed itself in practising laws of intolerance. The empire
was certainly still further from suspecting that its future destroyer
was born. During nearly three hundred years it pursued its path
without suspecting that at its side principles were growing destined
to subject the world to a complete transformation. At once theocratic
and democratic, the idea thrown by Jesus into the world was, together
with the invasion of the Germans, the most active cause of the
dissolution of the empire of the Cæsars. On the one hand, the right of
all men to participate in the kingdom of God was proclaimed. On the
other, religion was henceforth separated in principle from the state.
The rights of conscience, withdrawn from political law, resulted in
the constitution of a new power--the "spiritual power." This power has
more than once belied its origin. For ages the bishops have been
princes, and the Pope has been a king. The pretended empire of souls
has shown itself at various times as a frightful tyranny, employing
the rack and the stake in order to maintain itself. But the day will
come when the separation will bear its fruits, when the domain of
things spiritual will cease to be called a "power," that it may be
called a "liberty." Sprung from the conscience of a man of the people,
formed in the presence of the people, beloved and admired first by the
people, Christianity was impressed with an original character which
will never be effaced. It was the first triumph of revolution, the
victory of the popular idea, the advent of the simple in heart, the
inauguration of the beautiful as understood by the people. Jesus thus,
in the aristocratic societies of antiquity, opened the breach through
which all will pass.
The civil power, in fact, although innocent of the death of Jesus (it
only countersigned the sentence, and even in spite of itself), ought
to bear a great share of the responsibility. In presiding at the scene
of Calvary, the state gave itself a serious blow. A legend full of
all kinds of disrespect prevailed, and became universally known--a
legend in which the constituted authorities played a hateful part, in
which it was the accused that was right, and in which the judges and
the guards were leagued against the truth. Seditious in the highest
degree, the history of the Passion, spread by a thousand popular
images, displayed the Roman eagles as sanctioning the most iniquitous
of executions, soldiers executing it, and a prefect commanding it.
What a blow for all established powers! They have never entirely
recovered from it. How can they assume infallibility in respect to
poor men, when they have on their conscience the great mistake of
Gethsemane?[1]
[Footnote 1: This popular sentiment existed in Brittany in the time of
my childhood. The gendarme was there regarded, like the Jew elsewhere,
with a kind of pious aversion, for it was he who arrested Jesus!]
CHAPTER XXVIII.
ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF THE WORK OF JESUS.
Jesus, it will be seen, limited his action entirely to the Jews.
Although his sympathy for those despised by orthodoxy led him to admit
pagans into the kingdom of God--although he had resided more than once
in a pagan country, and once or twice we surprise him in kindly
relations with unbelievers[1]--it may be said that his life was passed
entirely in the very restricted world in which he was born. He was
never heard of in Greek or Roman countries; his name appears only in
profane authors of a hundred years later, and then in an indirect
manner, in connection with seditious movements provoked by his
doctrine, or persecutions of which his disciples were the object.[2]
Even on Judaism, Jesus made no very durable impression. Philo, who
died about the year 50, had not the slightest knowledge of him.
Josephus, born in the year 37, and writing in the last years of the
century, mentions his execution in a few lines,[3] as an event of
secondary importance, and in the enumeration of the sects of his time,
he omits the Christians altogether.[4] In the _Mishnah_, also, there
is no trace of the new school; the passages in the two Gemaras in
which the founder of Christianity is named, do not go further back
than the fourth or fifth century.[5] The essential work of Jesus was
to create around him a circle of disciples, whom he inspired with
boundless affection, and amongst whom he deposited the germ of his
doctrine. To have made himself beloved, "to the degree that after his
death they ceased not to love him," was the great work of Jesus, and
that which most struck his contemporaries.[6] His doctrine was so
little dogmatic, that he never thought of writing it or of causing it
to be written. Men did not become his disciples by believing this
thing or that thing, but in being attached to his person and in loving
him. A few sentences collected from memory, and especially the type of
character he set forth, and the impression it had left, were what
remained of him. Jesus was not a founder of dogmas, or a maker of
creeds; he infused into the world a new spirit. The least Christian
men were, on the one hand, the doctors of the Greek Church, who,
beginning from the fourth century, entangled Christianity in a path of
puerile metaphysical discussions, and, on the other, the scholastics
of the Latin Middle Ages, who wished to draw from the Gospel the
thousands of articles of a colossal system. To follow Jesus in
expectation of the kingdom of God, was all that at first was implied
by being Christian.
[Footnote 1: Matt. viii. 5, and following; Luke vii. 1, and following;
John xii. 20, and following. Comp. Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]
[Footnote 2: Tacitus, _Ann._, xv. 45; Suetonius, _Claudius_, 25.]
[Footnote 3: _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3. This passage has been altered by a
Christian hand.]
[Footnote 4: _Ant._, XVIII. i.; _B.J._, II. viii.; _Vita_, 2.]
[Footnote 5: Talm. of Jerusalem, _Sanhedrim_, xiv. 16; _Aboda zara_,
ii. 2; _Shabbath_, xiv. 4; Talm. of Babylon, _Sanhedrim_, 43 _a_, 67
_a_; _Shabbath_, 104 _b_, 116 _b_. Comp. _Chagigah_, 4 _b_; _Gittin_,
57 _a_, 90 _a_. The two Gemaras derive the greater part of their data
respecting Jesus from a burlesque and obscene legend, invented by the
adversaries of Christianity, and of no historical value.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]
It will thus be understood how, by an exceptional destiny, pure
Christianity still preserves, after eighteen centuries, the character
of a universal and eternal religion. It is, in fact, because the
religion of Jesus is in some respects the final religion. Produced by
a perfectly spontaneous movement of souls, freed at its birth from all
dogmatic restraint, having struggled three hundred years for liberty
of conscience, Christianity, in spite of its failures, still reaps the
results of its glorious origin. To renew itself, it has but to return
to the Gospel. The kingdom of God, as we conceive it, differs notably
from the supernatural apparition which the first Christians hoped to
see appear in the clouds. But the sentiment introduced by Jesus into
the world is indeed ours. His perfect idealism is the highest rule of
the unblemished and virtuous life. He has created the heaven of pure
souls, where is found what we ask for in vain on earth, the perfect
nobility of the children of God, absolute purity, the total removal of
the stains of the world; in fine, liberty, which society excludes as
an impossibility, and which exists in all its amplitude only in the
domain of thought. The great Master of those who take refuge in this
ideal kingdom of God is still Jesus. He was the first to proclaim the
royalty of the mind; the first to say, at least by his actions, "My
kingdom is not of this world." The foundation of true religion is
indeed his work: after him, all that remains is to develop it and
render it fruitful.
"Christianity" has thus become almost a synonym of "religion." All
that is done outside of this great and good Christian tradition is
barren. Jesus gave religion to humanity, as Socrates gave it
philosophy, and Aristotle science. There was philosophy before
Socrates and science before Aristotle. Since Socrates and since
Aristotle, philosophy and science have made immense progress; but all
has been built upon the foundation which they laid. In the same way,
before Jesus, religious thought had passed through many revolutions;
since Jesus, it has made great conquests: but no one has improved, and
no one will improve upon the essential principle Jesus has created; he
has fixed forever the idea of pure worship. The religion of Jesus in
this sense is not limited. The Church has had its epochs and its
phases; it has shut itself up in creeds which are, or will be but
temporary: but Jesus has founded the absolute religion, excluding
nothing, and determining nothing unless it be the spirit. His creeds
are not fixed dogmas, but images susceptible of indefinite
interpretations. We should seek in vain for a theological proposition
in the Gospel. All confessions of faith are travesties of the idea of
Jesus, just as the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, in proclaiming
Aristotle the sole master of a completed science, perverted the
thought of Aristotle. Aristotle, if he had been present in the debates
of the schools, would have repudiated this narrow doctrine; he would
have been of the party of progressive science against the routine
which shielded itself under his authority; he would have applauded his
opponents. In the same way, if Jesus were to return among us, he would
recognize as disciples, not those who pretend to enclose him entirely
in a few catechismal phrases, but those who labor to carry on his
work. The eternal glory, in all great things, is to have laid the
first stone. It may be that in the "Physics," and in the "Meteorology"
of modern times, we may not discover a word of the treatises of
Aristotle which bear these titles; but Aristotle remains no less the
founder of natural science. Whatever may be the transformations of
dogma, Jesus will ever be the creator of the pure spirit of religion;
the Sermon on the Mount will never be surpassed. Whatever revolution
takes place will not prevent us attaching ourselves in religion to
the grand intellectual and moral line at the head of which shines the
name of Jesus. In this sense we are Christians, even when we separate
ourselves on almost all points from the Christian tradition which has
preceded us.
And this great foundation was indeed the personal work of Jesus. In
order to make himself adored to this degree, he must have been
adorable. Love is not enkindled except by an object worthy of it, and
we should know nothing of Jesus, if it were not for the passion he
inspired in those about him, which compels us still to affirm that he
was great and pure. The faith, the enthusiasm, the constancy of the
first Christian generation is not explicable, except by supposing at
the origin of the whole movement, a man of surpassing greatness. At
the sight of the marvellous creations of the ages of faith, two
impressions equally fatal to good historical criticism arise in the
mind. On the one hand we are led to think these creations too
impersonal; we attribute to a collective action, that which has often
been the work of one powerful will, and of one superior mind. On the
other hand, we refuse to see men like ourselves in the authors of
those extraordinary movements which have decided the fate of humanity.
Let us have a larger idea of the powers which Nature conceals in her
bosom. Our civilizations, governed by minute restrictions, cannot give
us any idea of the power of man at periods in which the originality of
each one had a freer field wherein to develop itself. Let us imagine a
recluse dwelling in the mountains near our capitals, coming out from
time to time in order to present himself at the palaces of sovereigns,
compelling the sentinels to stand aside, and, with an imperious tone,
announcing to kings the approach of revolutions of which he had been
the promoter. The very idea provokes a smile. Such, however, was
Elias; but Elias the Tishbite, in our days, would not be able to pass
the gate of the Tuileries. The preaching of Jesus, and his free
activity in Galilee, do not deviate less completely from the social
conditions to which we are accustomed. Free from our polished
conventionalities, exempt from the uniform education which refines us,
but which so greatly dwarfs our individuality, these mighty souls
carried a surprising energy into action. They appear to us like the
giants of an heroic age, which could not have been real. Profound
error! Those men were our brothers; they were of our stature, felt and
thought as we do. But the breath of God was free in them; with us, it
is restrained by the iron bonds of a mean society, and condemned to an
irremediable mediocrity.
Let us place, then, the person of Jesus at the highest summit of human
greatness. Let us not be misled by exaggerated doubts in the presence
of a legend which keeps us always in a superhuman world. The life of
Francis d'Assisi is also but a tissue of miracles. Has any one,
however, doubted of the existence of Francis d'Assisi, and of the part
played by him? Let us say no more that the glory of the foundation of
Christianity belongs to the multitude of the first Christians, and not
to him whom legend has deified. The inequality of men is much more
marked in the East than with us. It is not rare to see arise there, in
the midst of a general atmosphere of wickedness, characters whose
greatness astonishes us. So far from Jesus having been created by his
disciples, he appeared in everything as superior to his disciples. The
latter, with the exception of St. Paul and St. John, were men without
either invention or genius. St. Paul himself bears no comparison with
Jesus, and as to St. John, I shall show hereafter, that the part he
played, though very elevated in one sense, was far from being in all
respects irreproachable. Hence the immense superiority of the Gospels
among the writings of the New Testament. Hence the painful fall we
experience in passing from the history of Jesus to that of the
apostles. The evangelists themselves, who have bequeathed us the image
of Jesus, are so much beneath him of whom they speak, that they
constantly disfigure him, from their inability to attain to his
height. Their writings are full of errors and misconceptions. We feel
in each line a discourse of divine beauty, transcribed by narrators
who do not understand it, and who substitute their own ideas for those
which they have only half understood. On the whole, the character of
Jesus, far from having been embellished by his biographers, has been
lowered by them. Criticism, in order to find what he was, needs to
discard a series of misconceptions, arising from the inferiority of
the disciples. These painted him as they understood him, and often in
thinking to raise him, they have in reality lowered him.
I know that our modern ideas have been offended more than once in this
legend, conceived by another race, under another sky, and in the midst
of other social wants. There are virtues which, in some respects, are
more conformable to our taste. The virtuous and gentle Marcus
Aurelius, the humble and gentle Spinoza, not having believed in
miracles, have been free from some errors that Jesus shared. Spinoza,
in his profound obscurity, had an advantage which Jesus did not seek.
By our extreme delicacy in the use of means of conviction, by our
absolute sincerity and our disinterested love of the pure idea, we
have founded--all we who have devoted our lives to science--a new
ideal of morality. But the judgment of general history ought not to be
restricted to considerations of personal merit. Marcus Aurelius and
his noble teachers have had no permanent influence on the world.
Marcus Aurelius left behind him delightful books, an execrable son,
and a decaying nation. Jesus remains an inexhaustible principle of
moral regeneration for humanity. Philosophy does not suffice for the
multitude. They must have sanctity. An Apollonius of Tyana, with his
miraculous legend, is necessarily more successful than a Socrates with
his cold reason. "Socrates," it was said, "leaves men on the earth,
Apollonius transports them to heaven; Socrates is but a sage,
Apollonius is a god."[1] Religion, so far, has not existed without a
share of asceticism, of piety, and of the marvellous. When it was
wished, after the Antonines, to make a religion of philosophy, it was
requisite to transform the philosophers into saints, to write the
"Edifying Life" of Pythagoras or Plotinus, to attribute to them a
legend, virtues of abstinence, contemplation, and supernatural powers,
without which neither credence nor authority were found in that age.
[Footnote 1: Philostratus, _Life of Apollonius_, i. 2, vii. 11, viii.
7; Unapius, _Lives of the Sophists_, pages 454, 500 (edition Didot).]
Preserve us, then, from mutilating history in order to satisfy our
petty susceptibilities! Which of us, pigmies as we are, could do what
the extravagant Francis d'Assisi, or the hysterical saint Theresa, has
done? Let medicine have names to express these grand errors of human
nature; let it maintain that genius is a disease of the brain; let it
see, in a certain delicacy of morality, the commencement of
consumption; let it class enthusiasm and love as nervous
accidents--it matters little. The terms healthy and diseased are
entirely relative. Who would not prefer to be diseased like Pascal,
rather than healthy like the common herd? The narrow ideas which are
spread in our times respecting madness, mislead our historical
judgments in the most serious manner, in questions of this kind. A
state in which a man says things of which he is not conscious, in
which thought is produced without the summons and control of the will,
exposes him to being confined as a lunatic. Formerly this was called
prophecy and inspiration. The most beautiful things in the world are
done in a state of fever; every great creation involves a breach of
equilibrium, a violent state of the being which draws it forth.
We acknowledge, indeed, that Christianity is too complex to have been
the work of a single man. In one sense, entire humanity has
co-operated therein. There is no one so shut in, as not to receive
some influence from without. The history of the human mind is full of
strange coincidences, which cause very remote portions of the human
species, without any communication with each other, to arrive at the
same time at almost identical ideas and imaginations. In the
thirteenth century, the Latins, the Greeks, the Syrians, the Jews, and
the Mussulmans, adopted scholasticism, and very nearly the same
scholasticism from York to Samarcand; in the fourteenth century every
one in Italy, Persia, and India, yielded to the taste for mystical
allegory; in the sixteenth, art was developed in a very similar manner
in Italy, at Mount Athos, and at the court of the Great Moguls,
without St. Thomas, Barhebræus, the Rabbis of Narbonne, or the
_Motécallémin_ of Bagdad, having known each other, without Dante and
Petrarch having seen any _sofi_, without any pupil of the schools of
Perouse or of Florence having been at Delhi. We should say there are
great moral influences running through the world like epidemics,
without distinction of frontier and of race. The interchange of ideas
in the human species does not take place only by books or by direct
instruction. Jesus was ignorant of the very name of Buddha, of
Zoroaster, and of Plato; he had read no Greek book, no Buddhist Sudra;
nevertheless, there was in him more than one element, which, without
his suspecting it, came from Buddhism, Parseeism, or from the Greek
wisdom. All this was done through secret channels and by that kind of
sympathy which exists among the various portions of humanity. The
great man, on the one hand, receives everything from his age; on the
other, he governs his age. To show that the religion founded by Jesus
was the natural consequence of that which had gone before, does not
diminish its excellence; but only proves that it had a reason for its
existence that it was legitimate, that is to say, conformable to the
instinct and wants of the heart in a given age.
Is it more just to say that Jesus owes all to Judaism, and that his
greatness is only that of the Jewish people? No one is more disposed
than myself to place high this unique people, whose particular gift
seems to have been to contain in its midst the extremes of good and
evil. No doubt, Jesus proceeded from Judaism; but he proceeded from it
as Socrates proceeded from the schools of the Sophists, as Luther
proceeded from the Middle Ages, as Lamennais from Catholicism, as
Rousseau from the eighteenth century. A man is of his age and his race
even when he reacts against his age and his race. Far from Jesus
having continued Judaism, he represents the rupture with the Jewish
spirit. The general direction of Christianity after him does not
permit the supposition that his idea in this respect could lead to any
misunderstanding. The general march of Christianity has been to remove
itself more and more from Judaism. It will become perfect in returning
to Jesus, but certainly not in returning to Judaism. The great
originality of the founder remains then undiminished; his glory admits
no legitimate sharer.
Doubtless, circumstances much aided the success of this marvellous
revolution; but circumstances only second that which is just and true.
Each branch of the development of humanity has its privileged epoch,
in which it attains perfection by a sort of spontaneous instinct, and
without effort. No labor of reflection would succeed in producing
afterward the masterpieces which Nature creates at those moments by
inspired geniuses. That which the golden age of Greece was for arts
and literature, the age of Jesus was for religion. Jewish society
exhibited the most extraordinary moral and intellectual state which
the human species has ever passed through. It was truly one of those
divine hours in which the sublime is produced by combinations of a
thousand hidden forces, in which great souls find a flood of
admiration and sympathy to sustain them. The world, delivered from the
very narrow tyranny of small municipal republics, enjoyed great
liberty. Roman despotism did not make itself felt in a disastrous
manner until much later, and it was, moreover, always less oppressive
in those distant provinces than in the centre of the empire. Our petty
preventive interferences (far more destructive than death to things of
the spirit) did not exist. Jesus, during three years, could lead a
life which, in our societies, would have brought him twenty times
before the magistrates. Our laws upon the illegal exercise of medicine
would alone have sufficed to cut short his career. The unbelieving
dynasty of the Herods, on the other hand, occupied itself little with
religious movements; under the Asmoneans, Jesus would probably have
been arrested at his first step. An innovator, in such a state of
society, only risked death, and death is a gain to those who labor for
the future. Imagine Jesus reduced to bear the burden of his divinity
until his sixtieth or seventieth year, losing his celestial fire,
wearing out little by little under the burden of an unparalleled
mission! Everything favors those who have a special destiny; they
become glorious by a sort of invincible impulse and command of fate.
This sublime person, who each day still presides over the destiny of
the world, we may call divine, not in the sense that Jesus has
absorbed all the divine, or has been adequate to it (to employ an
expression of the schoolmen), but in the sense that Jesus is the one
who has caused his fellow-men to make the greatest step toward the
divine. Mankind in its totality offers an assemblage of low beings,
selfish, and superior to the animal only in that its selfishness is
more reflective. From the midst of this uniform mediocrity, there are
pillars that rise toward the sky, and bear witness to a nobler
destiny. Jesus is the highest of these pillars which show to man
whence he comes, and whither he ought to tend. In him was condensed
all that is good and elevated in our nature. He was not sinless; he
has conquered the same passions that we combat; no angel of God
comforted him, except his good conscience; no Satan tempted him,
except that which each one bears in his heart. In the same way that
many of his great qualities are lost to us, through the fault of his
disciples, it is also probable that many of his faults have been
concealed. But never has any one so much as he made the interests of
humanity predominate in his life over the littlenesses of self-love.
Unreservedly devoted to his mission, he subordinated everything to it
to such a degree that, toward the end of his life, the universe no
longer existed for him. It was by this access of heroic will that he
conquered heaven. There never was a man, Cakya-Mouni perhaps excepted,
who has to this degree trampled under foot, family, the joys of this
world, and all temporal care. Jesus only lived for his Father and the
divine mission which he believed himself destined to fulfill.
As to us, eternal children, powerless as we are, we who labor without
reaping, and who will never see the fruit of that which we have sown,
let us bow before these demi-gods. They were able to do that which we
cannot do: to create, to affirm, to act. Will great originality be
born again, or will the world content itself henceforth by following
the ways opened by the bold creators of the ancient ages? We know not.
But whatever may be the unexpected phenomena of the future, Jesus will
not be surpassed. His worship will constantly renew its youth, the
tale of his life will cause ceaseless tears, his sufferings will
soften the best hearts; all the ages will proclaim that among the sons
of men, there is none born who is greater than Jesus.
[THE END.]
_Modern Library of the World's Best Books_
COMPLETE LIST OF TITLES IN
THE MODERN LIBRARY
For convenience in ordering use number at right of title
* * * * *
ADAMS, HENRY The Education of Henry Adams 76
AIKEN, CONRAD A Comprehensive Anthology of
American Poetry 101
AIKEN, CONRAD 20th-Century American Poetry 127
ANDERSON, SHERWOOD Winesburg, Ohio 104
AQUINAS, ST. THOMAS Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas 259
ARISTOTLE Introduction to Aristotle 248
ARISTOTLE Politics 228
BALZAC Droll Stories 193
BALZAC Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet 245
BEERBOHM, MAX Zuleika Dobson 116
BELLAMY, EDWARD Looking Backward 22
BENNETT, ARNOLD The Old Wives' Tale 184
BERGSON, HENRI Creative Evolution 231
BIERCE, AMBROSE In the Midst of Life 133
BOCCACCIO The Decameron 71
BRONTË, CHARLOTTE Jane Eyre 64
BRONTË, EMILY Wuthering Heights 106
BUCK, PEARL The Good Earth 15
BURK, JOHN N. The Life and Works of Beethoven 241
BURTON, RICHARD The Arabian Nights 201
BUTLER, SAMUEL Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited 136
BUTLER, SAMUEL The Way of All Flesh 13
BYRNE, DONN Messer Marco Polo 43
CALDWELL, ERSKINE God's Little Acre 51
CALDWELL, ERSKINE Tobacco Road 249
CANFIELD, DOROTHY The Deepening Stream 200
CARROLL, LEWIS Alice in Wonderland, etc. 79
CASANOVA, JACQUES Memoirs of Casanova 165
CELLINI, BENVENUTO Autobiography of Cellini 150
CERVANTES Don Quixote 174
CHAUCER The Canterbury Tales 161
COMMAGER, HENRY STEELE A Short History of the United States 235
CONFUCIUS The Wisdom of Confucius 7
CONRAD, JOSEPH Heart of Darkness
(In Great Modern Short Stories 168)
CONRAD, JOSEPH Lord Jim 186
CONRAD, JOSEPH Victory 186
CORNEILLE and RACINE Six Plays of Corneille and Racine 194
CORVO, FREDERICK BARON A History of the Borgias 192
CRANE, STEPHEN The Red Badge of Courage 130
CUMMINGS, E.E. The Enormous Room 214
DANA, RICHARD HENRY Two Years Before the Mast 236
DANTE The Divine Comedy 208
DAY, CLARENCE Life with Father 230
DEFOE, DANIEL Robinson Crusoe and A Journal of the
Plague Year 92
DEFOE, DANIEL Moll Flanders 122
DEWEY, JOHN Human Nature and Conduct 173
DICKENS, CHARLES A Tale of Two Cities 189
DICKENS, CHARLES David Copperfield 110
DICKENS, CHARLES Pickwick Papers 204
DICKINSON, EMILY Selected Poems of 25
DINESEN, ISAK Seven Gothic Tales 54
DOS PASSOS, JOHN Three Soldiers 205
DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODOR Crime and Punishment 199
DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODOR The Brothers Karamazov 151
DOSTOYEVSKY, FYODOR The Possessed 55
DOUGLAS, NORMAN South Wind 5
DOYLE, SIR ARTHUR CONAN The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock
Holmes 206
DREISER, THEODORE Sister Carrie 8
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE Camille 69
DUMAS, ALEXANDRE The Three Musketeers 143
DU MAURIER, DAPHNE Rebecca 227
DU MAURIER, GEORGE Peter Ibbetson 207
EDMAN, IRWIN The Philosophy of Plato 181
EDMAN, IRWIN The Philosophy of Santayana 224
ELLIS, HAVELOCK The Dance of Life 160
EMERSON, RALPH WALDO Essays and Other Writings 91
FAST, HOWARD The Unvanquished 239
FAULKNER, WILLIAM Sanctuary 61
FAULKNER, WILLIAM The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay
Dying 187
FIELDING, HENRY Joseph Andrews 117
FIELDING, HENRY Tom Jones 185
FLAUBERT, GUSTAVE Madame Bovary 28
FORESTER, C.S. The African Queen 102
FORSTER, E.M. A Passage to India 218
FRANCE, ANATOLE Penguin Island 210
FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN Autobiography, etc. 39
FROST, ROBERT The Poems of 242
GALSWORTHY, JOHN The Apple Tree
(In Great Modern Short Stories 168)
GAUTIER, THEOPHILE Mlle. De Maupin and
One of Cleopatra's Nights 53
GEORGE, HENRY Progress and Poverty 36
GODDEN, RUMER Black Narcissus 256
GOETHE Faust 177
GOETHE The Sorrows of Werther
(In Collected German Stories 108)
GOGOL, NIKOLAI Dead Souls 40
GRAVES, ROBERT I, Claudius 20
HAMMETT, DASHIELL The Maltese Falcon 45
HAMSUN, KNUT Growth of the Soil 12
HARDY, THOMAS Jude the Obscure 135
HARDY, THOMAS The Mayor of Casterbridge 17
HARDY, THOMAS The Return of the Native 121
HARDY, THOMAS Tess of the D'Urbervilles 72
HART AND KAUFMAN Six Plays by 233
HARTE, BRET The Best Stories of 250
HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL The Scarlet Letter 93
HELLMAN, LILLIAN Four Plays by 223
HEMINGWAY, ERNEST A Farewell to Arms 19
HEMINGWAY, ERNEST The Sun Also Rises 170
HEMON, LOUIS Maria Chapdelaine 10
HENRY, O. Best Short Stones of 4
HERODOTUS The Complete Works of 255
HERSEY, JOHN A Bell for Adano 16
HOMER The Iliad 166
HOMER The Odyssey 167
HORACE The Complete Works of 141
HUDSON, W.H. Green Mansions 89
HUDSON, W.H. The Purple Land 24
HUGHES, RICHARD A High Wind in Jamaica 112
HUGO, VICTOR The Hunchback of Notre Dame 35
HUXLEY, ALDOUS Antic Hay 209
HUXLEY, ALDOUS Point Counter Point 180
IBSEN, HENRIK A Doll's House, Ghosts, etc. 6
IRVING, WASHINGTON Selected Writings of Washington Irving
240
JACKSON, CHARLES The Lost Weekend 258
JAMES, HENRY The Portrait of a Lady 107
JAMES, HENRY The Turn of the Screw 169
JAMES, HENRY The Wings of the Dove 244
JAMES, WILLIAM The Philosophy of William James 114
JAMES, WILLIAM The Varieties of Religious Experience 70
JEFFERS, WILLIAM Roan Stallion; Tamar and Other
Poems 118
JEFFERSON, THOMAS The Life and Selected Writings of 234
JOYCE, JAMES Dubliners 124
JOYCE, JAMES A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man 145
KAUFMAN AND HART Six Plays by 233
KOESTLER, ARTHUR Darkness at Noon 74
KUPRIN, ALEXANDRE Yama 203
LAOTSE The Wisdom of 262
LARDNER, RING The Collected Short Stories of 211
LAWRENCE, D.H. The Rainbow 128
LAWRENCE, D.H. Sons and Lovers 109
LAWRENCE, D.H. Women in Love 68
LEWIS, SINCLAIR Arrowsmith 42
LEWIS, SINCLAIR Babbitt 162
LEWIS, SINCLAIR Dodsworth 252
LONGFELLOW, HENRY W. Poems 56
LOUYS, PIERRE Aphrodite 77
LUDWIG, EMIL Napoleon 95
MACHIAVELLI The Prince and The Discourses of
Machiavelli 65
MALRAUX, ANDRÉ Man's Fate 33
MANN, THOMAS Death in Venice
(In Collected German Stories 108)
MANSFIELD, KATHERINE The Garden Party 129
MARQUAND, JOHN P. The Late George Apley 182
MARX, KARL Capital and Other Writings 202
MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET Of Human Bondage 176
MAUGHAM, W. SOMERSET The Moon and Sixpence 27
MAUPASSANT, GUY DE Best Short Stories 98
MAUROIS, ANDRÉ Disraeli 46
McFEE, WILLIAM Casuals of the Sea 195
MELVILLE, HERMAN Moby Dick 119
MEREDITH, GEORGE Diana of the Crossways 14
MEREDITH, GEORGE The Ordeal of Richard Feverel 134
MEREDITH, GEORGE The Egoist 253
MEREJKOWSKI, DMITRI The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci 138
MILTON, JOHN The Complete Poetry and Selected
Prose of John Milton 132
MISCELLANEOUS An Anthology of American Negro
Literature 163
An Anthology of Light Verse 48
Best Amer. Humorous Short Stories 87
Best Russian Short Stories, including
Bunin's The Gentleman from San
Francisco 18
Eight Famous Elizabethan Plays 94
Famous Ghost Stories 73
Five Great Modern Irish Plays 30
Four Famous Greek Plays 158
Fourteen Great Detective Stories 144
Great German Short Novels and
Stories 108
Great Modern Short Stories 168
Great Tales of the American West 238
Outline of Abnormal Psychology 152
Outline of Psychoanalysis 66
The Consolation of Philosophy 226
The Federalist 139
The Making of Man: An Outline of
Anthropology 149
The Making of Society: An Outline of
Sociology 183
The Poetry of Freedom 175
The Sex Problem in Modern Society 198
The Short Bible 57
Three Famous French Romances 85
Sapho, by Alphonse Daudet
Manon Lescaut, by Antoine Prevost
Carmen, by Prosper Merimee
MOLIERE Plays 78
MORLEY, CHRISTOPHER Parnassus on Wheels 190
NASH, OGDEN The Selected Verse of Ogden Nash 191
NEVINS, ALLAN A Short History of the United States 235
NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH Thus Spake Zarathustra 9
NOSTRADAMUS Oracles of 81
ODETS, CLIFFORD Six Plays of 67
O'NEILL, EUGENE The Emperor Jones, Anna Christie and
The Hairy Ape 146
O'NEILL, EUGENE The Long Voyage Home and Seven
Plays of the Sea 111
PALGRAVE, FRANCIS The Golden Treasury 232
PARKER, DOROTHY The Collected Short Stories of 123
PARKER, DOROTHY The Collected Poetry of 237
PASCAL, BLAISE Pensées and The Provincial Letters 164
PATER, WALTER Marius the Epicurean 90
PATER, WALTER The Renaissance 86
PAUL, ELLIOT The Life and Death of a Spanish
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PEARSON, EDMUND Studies in Murder 113
PEPYS, SAMUEL Samuel Pepys' Diary 103
PERELMAN, S.J. The Best of 247
PETRONIUS ARBITER The Satyricon 156
PLATO The Philosophy of Plato 181
PLATO The Republic 153
POE, EDGAR ALLAN Best Tales 82
POLO, MARCO The Travels of Marco Polo 196
POPE, ALEXANDER Selected Works of 257
PORTER, KATHERINE ANNE Flowering Judas 88
PROUST, MARCEL Swann's Way 59
PROUST, MARCEL Within a Budding Grove 172
PROUST, MARCEL The Guermantes Way 213
PROUST, MARCEL Cities of the Plain 220
PROUST, MARCEL The Captive 120
PROUST, MARCEL The Sweet Cheat Gone 260
RAWLINGS, MARJORIE KINNAN The Yearling 246
READE, CHARLES The Cloister and the Hearth 62
REED, JOHN Ten Days that Shook the World 215
RENAN, ERNEST The Life of Jesus 140
ROSTAND, EDMOND Cyrano de Bergerac 154
ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES The Confessions of Jean Jacques
Rousseau 243
RUSSELL, BERTRAND Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell 137
SCHOPENHAUER The Philosophy of Schopenhauer 52
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM Tragedies, 1, 1A--complete, 2 vols.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM Comedies, 2, 2A--complete, 2 vols.
SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM Histories, 3 }
Histories, Poems, 3A } complete, 2 vols.
SHEEAN, VINCENT Personal History 32
SMOLLETT, TOBIAS Humphry Clinker 159
SNOW, EDGAR Red Star Over China 126
SPINOZA The Philosophy of Spinoza 60
STEINBECK, JOHN In Dubious Battle 115
STEINBECK, JOHN Of Mice and Men 29
STEINBECK, JOHN The Grapes of Wrath 148
STEINBECK, JOHN Tortilla Flat 216
STENDHAL The Red and the Black 157
STERNE, LAURENCE Tristram Shandy 147
STEWART, GEORGE R. Storm 254
STOKER, BRAM Dracula 31
STONE, IRVING Lust for Life 11
STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER Uncle Tom's Cabin 261
STRACHEY, LYTTON Eminent Victorians 212
SUETONIUS Lives of the Twelve Caesars 188
SWIFT, JONATHAN Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of a Tub, The
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SWINBURNE, CHARLES Poems 23
SYMONDS, JOHN A. The Life of Michelangelo 49
TACITUS The Complete Works of 222
TCHEKOV, ANTON Short Stories 50
TCHEKOV, ANTON Sea Gull, Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters,
etc. 171
THACKERAY, WILLIAM Henry Esmond 80
THACKERAY, WILLIAM Vanity Fair 131
THOMPSON, FRANCIS Complete Poems 38
THOREAU, HENRY DAVID Walden and Other Writings 155
THUCYDIDES The Complete Writings of 58
TOLSTOY, LEO Anna Karenina 37
TOMLINSON, H.M. The Sea and the Jungle 99
TROLLOPE, ANTHONY Barchester Towers and The Warden 41
TROLLOPE, ANTHONY The Eustace Diamonds 251
TURGENEV, IVAN Fathers and Sons 21
VAN LOON, HENDRIK W. Ancient Man 105
VEBLEN, THORSTEIN The Theory of the Leisure Class 63
VIRGIL'S WORKS Including The Aeneid, Eclogues, and
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VOLTAIRE Candide 47
WALPOLE, HUGH Fortitude 178
WALTON, IZAAK The Compleat Angler 26
WEBB, MARY Precious Bane 219
WELLS, H.G. Tono Bungay 197
WHARTON, EDITH The Age of Innocence 229
WHITMAN, WALT Leaves of Grass 97
WILDE, OSCAR Dorian Gray, De Profundis 125
WILDE, OSCAR Poems and Fairy Tales 84
WILDE, OSCAR The Plays of Oscar Wilde 83
WOOLF, VIRGINIA Mrs. Dalloway 96
WOOLF, VIRGINIA To the Lighthouse 217
WRIGHT, RICHARD Native Son 221
YEATS, W.B. Irish Fairy and Folk Tales 44
YOUNG, G.F. The Medici 179
ZOLA, EMILE Nana 142
ZWEIG, STEFAN Amok (In Collected German Stories 108)
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G34. NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH. The Philosophy of Nietzsche.
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G50. WHITMAN, WALT. Leaves of Grass.
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G53. SUE, EUGENE. The Wandering Jew.
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G63. SIXTEEN FAMOUS BRITISH PLAYS.
G64. MELVILLE, HERMAN. Moby Dick.
G65. THE COMPLETE WORKS OF RABELAIS.
G66. THREE FAMOUS MURDER NOVELS
_Before the Fact_, Francis Iles.
_Trent's Last Case_, E.C. Bentley.
_The House of the Arrow_, A.E.W. Mason.
G67. ANTHOLOGY OF FAMOUS ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
POETRY.
G68. THE SELECTED WORK OF TOM PAINE.
G69. ONE HUNDRED AND ONE YEARS' ENTERTAINMENT.
G70. THE COMPLETE POETRY OF JOHN DONNE AND
WILLIAM BLAKE.
G71. SIXTEEN FAMOUS EUROPEAN PLAYS.
G72. GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL.
G73. A SUBTREASURY OF AMERICAN HUMOR.
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