The Life of Jesus Part 19

[Footnote 1: _Acts_ xviii. 25, xix. 1-5. Cf. Epiph., _Adv. Haer._, x.x.x.

16.]

[Footnote 2: _Vita_, 2.]

[Footnote 3: Would this be the Bouna 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 pa.s.sover. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 minutiae, 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 a.n.a.logous 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 G.o.d," 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 pa.s.sage 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. lx.x.xiv. (Vulg. lx.x.xiii.) 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: Pa.s.sage 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 Hyrca.n.u.s 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 pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.n.a.logy 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed his days, whilst he remained at Jerusalem. The period of the feasts brought an extraordinary concourse of people into the city. a.s.sociated 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 inst.i.tutions 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. cx.x.xiii.

(Vulg. cx.x.xii.)]