The Life of Jesus Part 4

[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 t.i.tle of Son of G.o.d, 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 embarra.s.sed 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 Lat._, No. 623, and the supplement of Henzen in this number; Borghesi, _Fastes Consulaires_ [yet unpublished], in the year 742).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 pa.s.sages, 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 pa.s.sages 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 circ.u.mstances 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. G.o.d has regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme will in the most insignificant circ.u.mstances.

[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 circ.u.mstances, 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. Haer._, x.x.x. 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 t.i.tle 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 Halpha; [Greek: Klopas] or [Greek: Kleopas] is a shortened form of [Greek: Kleopatros]. But there might have been an artificial subst.i.tution 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; _Const.i.t. 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 pa.s.sage _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 const.i.tuted, 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 Peraea, 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 Khafa to be distinguished. Such was the horizon of Jesus.

This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of G.o.d, 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 Caesarea-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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.sure 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.]