[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 Maccabaeis, 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-scene, 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 morgenlaendischen 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 Cumaeum 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. Haer., 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 Halphai; [Greek: Klopas] 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., Sec. 5.]

[Footnote 4: Ant. Martyr, Itiner., Sec. 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 Khaifa 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 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 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 Caesarea.[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: e patrios phone] 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: Choba]; Epiph., Adv. Haer., 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 Therapeutae;[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 Therapeutae 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 Haeres 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: Pirke 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 resume 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 "Caesar" alone reached him. He saw building, in Galilee or its environs, Tiberias, Julias, Diocaesarea, Caesarea, 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 Avataer 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: Yacna, xiii. 24: Theopompus, in Plut., De Iside et Osiride, sec. 47; Minokhired, a passage published in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlaendischen 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 devas, 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: Pirke 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 Peraea, 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 praenestini, 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" (Kenaim), 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, Sec. 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 Caesar. 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., Sec. 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 Ginaea 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 Peraea, 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]