FROM
THE
BIRTH OF CHRIST TO THE ABOLITION OF PAGANISM IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
DEAN
OF ST. PAUL’S.
IN
THREE VOLUMES VOL. I.
CONTENTS OF
VOL. I.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction—State
and various forms of Pagan Religion and of Philosophy
CHAPTER II.
Life of Jesus
Christ- State of Judaea — The Belief in the Messiah
Appendix-. I. — Recent Lives of Christ
II.
— Origin of the Gospels
III.
— Influence of the more imaginative incidents of the early Evangelic History
on the Propagation and Maintenance of the Religion......................
CHAPTER III.
Commencement
of the Public Life of Jesus......................
CHAPTER IV.
Public Life
of Jesus from the First to the Second Passover
CHAPTER V.
Second
Year of the Public Life of Jesus
Third
Year of the Public Life of Jesus
CHAPTER HI.
The
Last Passover — The Crucifixion
CHAPTER I.
The
Resurrection, and first Promulgation of Christianity .
CHAPTER H.
Christianity
and Judaism
CHAPTER m.
Christianity
and Paganism
PREFACE.
This new edition of the History of Christianity has been revised
throughout. A few passages have been added, chiefly in the notes; a few
slightly enlarged. In general, I have not found much, after a period of above
twenty years, which I should wish to retract or to modify.
Some objection was raised, on the first publication of the work, against
the commencement of the History of Christianity with the Life of Christ. I
thought then, and still think, that life to be an integral and inseparable part
of the History. It appeared to me necessary to the completeness of the History
to trace it to its primal origin; to show that the Gospels, onr only
documentary authorities, offer a clear and distinct relation of that life, with
no greater variation than might reasonably be expected from four separate and
independent narratives, drawn up by different writers, at different times and
places, and by one at least from a different point of view; that this relation
accords in every respect with all that we know of the events, circumstances,
manners, usages, opinions, of the age and country; that its religions
signification, and, in part, supernatural character, in no way conflict, but
are, rather, in full and perfect harmony, with its simple truth and reality.
At all events, the reverence which had enshrined and set apart the life
of Jesus in a kind of unapproachable sanctity had been then (and has since
been) so ruthlessly invaded, as to force, as it were, others on that holy
ground. In truth, advantage has been taken of that very secluding reverence to
dismiss the whole Life of Christ from the domain of history; to make that
reverence the source and parent of the whole, either supposing the religion,
even Jesus himself, to be no more than the spontaneous growth of the opinions,
thoughts, passions, ideal aspirations of the time, — or a pure myth, the creation
of the excited imagination of the believers: humanity, as it were, self-superhumanized
and deified; not what St. Paul asserts, “ God in Christ, reconciling the world
unto himself.”
At the time of the publication of the History of Christianity, these views
had culminated in the famous work of Strauss, — a work, it must be
acknowledged, of vast learning and unparalleled ingenuity. To the theory of
Strauss, as far as I could understand it (for Strauss himself, as if appalled
by his own conclusions, varied much in the successive editions of his book as
to the result of his inquiries), I ventured to raise some objections, which
seemed to me and to some others of weight and importance. I leave them as they
stood.
Another work has now appeared, since the present edition was printed off,
more brilliant and popular, in a language of universal currency, and in a style
in which that language displays itself in all its captivating force, life, and
distinctness. Yet I cannot but think this very perfection of style in some
degree fatal to its pretensions. There are passages in which the vivid
transparency betrays at once the perplexity of
the writer and the inconceivable feebleness of his arguments. I cannot
apprehend more lasting effect from the light, quick, and bright-flashing
artillery of the Frenchman than from the more ponderous and steadily aimed
culverins of the German. In one respect I had expected'more from the wide and
copious erudition of M. Renan. But I find no illustration, no allusion from
the Jewish writers, which was not familiar to me from Lightfoot, Schoetgen,
Meuschen, and the great Talmudic scholars of the two last centuries. I suspect
that they have exhausted the subject. As little new can be found or could be
expected from the scenery and topography of Palestine, in like manner drained
to the utmost by so many travellers before M. Renan. Even as to the style, —
may an Englishman venture to contrast it (by no means in its favor), not only
with the dignity and solemnity of Pascal, but with the passionate earnestness
of Rousseau?—its “thin sentimentality” (this is not my own expression) reminds
me more of “ Paul et Yirginie ” than, I will not say of the “ Pens^es,” but
even of the “ Yicaire Savoyard.” I cannot think that eventually the book will add
to the high fame of M. Renan. To those who see in Christianity no more than a
social revolution, a natural step in human progress, the beautiful passages on
the transcendent humanity of Jesus (unhappily not unleavened) may give satisfaction
and delight: to those to whom Christianity is a religion, Jesus the author and
giver of eternal life, it will fall dead, or be a grief and an offence.
As to the apostolic and immediate post-apostolic times, I have not
neglected or closed my eyes against the labors of what are called the Tubingen
School. I trust that it is from no blind, stubborn, or presump
tuous prejudice that I read Baur and his disciples with wonder and
admiration at their industry, sagacity, ingenuity ; but without conviction. It
seems to me, that with them, instead of the theory being the result of diligent
and acute investigation, the theory is first made, and then the inferences or
arguments sought out, discerned, or imagined, and wrought up with infinite
skill to establish the foregone conclusion; at the same time, with a
contemptuous disregard or utter obtuseness to the difficulties of their own
system. Their criticism will rarely bear criticism.
On one special point, discussed by writers of another character, — the
second imprisonment of St. Paul,— I have added a note.
I have read a very able paper (in the “ Home and Foreign Review”),
impugning my views (which are acknowledged to be those of most learned men of
the day) on the connection of Christianity and what I have called Orientalism.
Possibly some of my statements may have been somewhat too broad ; but I have
the satisfaction of finding that very recently that most distinguished
Orientalist, M. Lassen, has given his sanction to the same views. The great
difficulty seems to be as regards Buddhism. But of the ascetic and monastic
institutions of Buddhism, so undeniably analogous to those of Christianity, the
antiquity as well as the existence is incontestable. Yet their principle of
estrangement from the world seems almost irreconcilable with the theory of
Buddhism which has been wrought out by the later Orientalists, and the sum of
which has been so well and so clearly expounded in the volume of M. Barth61emy
St. Hilaire.
Introduction
— State and various Forma of Pagan Religion, and 01 Philosophy.
The reign of Augustus Caesar is the most remarkable epoch in the history of
mankind. For the .®raof first time, a large part of the families, tribes, cKsar.
and nations, into which the human race had gradually separated, were united
under a vast, uniform, and apparently permanent, social system. The older Asiatic
empires had, in general, owed their rise to the ability and success of some
adventurous conqueror; and, when the master-hand was withdrawn, fell .asunder,
or were swept away to make room for some new kingdom or dynasty, which sprang
up with equal rapidity, and in its turn experienced the same fate. The Grecian
monarchy established by Alexander, as though it shared in the Asiatic principle
of vast and sudden growth and as rapid decay, broke up at his death into
several conflicting kingdoms; yet survived in its influence, and united, in
some degree, Western Asia, Egypt and Greece into one political system, in
m
which tlie Greek language and manners predominated. But the monarchy of
Rome was founded on principles as yet unknown; the kingdoms, which were won by
the most unjustifiable aggression, were, for the most part, governed with a
judicious union of firmness and conciliation, in which the conscious strength
of irresistible power was tempered with the wisest respect to national usages.
The Romans conquered like savages, but ruled like philosophic statesmen;1
till, from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from the shores of Britain and the
borders of the German forests to the sands of the African Desert, the whole
Western world was consolidated into one great commonwealth, united by the bonds
of law and government, by facilities of communication and commerce, and by the
general dissemination of the Greek and Latin languages.
For civilization followed in the train of Roman con- Roman civil- (Iucst:
the ferocity of her martial tempera- ization. ment seemed to have spent itself
in the civil wars: the lava flood of her ambition had cooled; and, wherever it
had spread, a rich and luxuriant vegetar tion broke forth. At least down to the
time of the Antonines, though occasionally disturbed by the contests which
arose on the change of dynasties, the rapid progress of improvement was by no
means retarded. Diverging from Rome as a centre, magnificent and commodious
roads connected the most remote countries ; the free navigation of the
Mediterranean united the most flourishing cities of the empire ; the military
1 On the capture of a city, promiscuous
massacre was the general order, which descended even to hrute animals, until a
certain signal. — Polyh. x. 15. As to the latter point, I mean, of course, the
general policy, not the local tyranny, which was often so capriciously, so
blindly, so insolently, exerciied by the individual provincial governor.
colonies had disseminated the language and manners of the South in the
most distant regions; the wealth and population of the African and Asiatic
provinces had steadily increased; while, amid the forests of Gaul, the
morasses.of Britain, the sierras of Spain, flourishing cities arose; and the
arts, the luxuries, the order and regularity, of cultivated life were introduced
into regions which, a short time before, had afforded a scanty and precarious
subsistence to tribes scarcely acquainted with agriculture. The frontiers of
civilization seemed gradually to advance, and to drive back the
still-receding.barbarism while, within the pale, national distinctions were
dying away; all tribes and races met amicably in the general relation of Roman
subjects or citizens; and mankind seemed settling down into one great federal
society.2
About this point of time, Christianity appeared. As Rome had united the
whole Western world Appearance
« , ., . t
■, , . of Ohris-
into one, as it might almost seem, lasting tianity. social system, so
Christianity was the first religion which aimed at an universal and permanent
moral conquest. The religions of the older world were content with their
dominion over the particular The older people which were their
several votaries. Kelieious- Family, tribal, national
deities were universally recognized ; and, as their gods accompanied the
migrations or the conquests of different nations, the worship of those gods was
extended over a wider surface, but rarely propagated among the subject races.
To drag in triumph the divinities of a vanquished people was
1 Qu£e
sparsa congregaret imperia, ritusque molliret, et tot populorum discordes
ferasque linguas sermonis comraercio contraheret ad colloquia, et humanitatem
homini daret — Plin. Nat. Hist. iii. 5.
2 “ Unum
esse reipublicse corpus, atque uni us animo regendum.” Suclf was the
argument of Asinius Gallus, Tac. Ann. i. 12.
the last and most insulting mark of subjugation.1 Yet though
the gods of the conquerors have thus manifested their superiority, and, in some
cases, the subject nation might be inclined to desert their inefficient
protectors, who had been found wanting in the hour of trial, still the godhead
even of the defeated divinities was not denied. Though their power could not
withstand the mightier tutelar deity of the invaders, yet their right to a seat
in the crowded synod of heaven, and their rank among the intermediate rulers of
the world, were not called in question.2 The conqueror might, indeed,
take delight in showing his contempt, and, as it were, trampling under foot the
rebuked and impotent deities of his subject; and thus religious persecution be
inflicted by the oppressor, and religious fanaticism excited among the
oppressed. Yet if the temple was desecrated, the altar thrown down, the
priesthood degraded or put to the sword, this was done in the fierceness of
hostility, or the insolence of pride;3 or from policy, lest the
religion should bccome the rallying-point of civil independ ence;4
rarely, if ever, for the purpose of extirpating
1 Tot de
diis, quot de gentibus triumphi.— Tertullian. Compare Isa. xlvi.
1, and Gesenius’s note; Jer. xlviii. 7, xlix. 3; Hos. x. 5, 6; Dan. xi. 8.
2 There is a curious passage in Lydus de
Ostentis, a book which probably contains some parts of the ancient ritual of
Rome. A certain aspect of a comet not merely foretold victory, but the
passing-over of the hostile gods tc the side of the Romans: /cat avra de rd
deia KaTaXetipovfjl roOg nofafuovg, acre itt mpmaav npooTcOijvm roif viKrjTalg.
— Lydus de Ostentis, lib. 12.
8 Such was
the conduct of Cambyses in Egypt. Xerxes had, before Me Grecian invasion, shown
the proud intolerance of his disposition, in destroying the deities of the
Babylonians, and slaying their priesthood (Herod, i. 183, and Arrian, vii. 19);
though, in this case, the rapacity which fatally induced'him to pillage and
desecrate the temples of Greece may have combined with hie natural arrogance. —
Herod, viii. 63.
* This was most likely the principle of the
horrible persecution of the Jews by Antiochus Epiphanes, though a kind of
heathen higotry seems to
a false, or supplanting it by a true, system of belief; perhaps in no
instance with the design of promulgating the tenets of a more pure and perfect
religion. A wiser policy commenced with Alexander. Policyof The
deities of the conquered nations were Alcxander > treated with
uniform reverence, the sacrilegious plunder of their temples punished with
exemplary severity.1
According to the Grecian system, their own gods were recognized in those
of Egypt and Asia. The foreign deities were called by Grecian names,2
and worshipped with the accustomed offerings; and thus all religious
differences between Macedonian and Syrian and Egyptian and Persian at once
vanished away. On the same principle, and with equal sagacity, Rome, in this as
in other respects, aspired to enslave the mind of those nations which had been
prostrated by her arms. The gods of the subject nations were treated with every
mark of respect: sometimes they were admitted within the walls of the
conqueror, as though to render their allegiance, and rank themselves in
peaceful subordination under the supreme divinity of the Roman Gradivus, or the
Jupiter of the Capitol;3 till, at length, they all met in
nave mingled
with his strange character. — 1 Macc. i. 41 et seqq.; 2 Macc.
vi.;
Diod. Sic. xxxiv. 1; Hist, of the Jews, vol. i. p. 461.
1 Arrian, lib. vi. p. 431, 439 (Edit. Amst.
1668); Polyb. v. 10.
2 Arrian, lib. iii. p. 158, vii. p. 464,
and 486. Some Persian traditions, perhaps, represent Alexander as a religious
persecutor; but these are of no authority against the direct statement of the
Greek historians. “Alexandre brfile en Enfer ponr avoir con damn £ au
feu les Roshis ” (the religious books of different nations), &c. From
Anquetil du Perron. Sir W. Ouseley, On some Anecdotes of Alexander.
(Transactions Royal Society of Literature, i. p. 5.) The Indian religious
usages, and the conduct of some of their faquirs, excited the wonder of the
Greeks.
8
Solere Komanos Deos omnes urbium superatarum partim privatim per familias
spargere, partim puhlic6 consecrare. — Arnob. iii. 38.
It was a
grave charge against Marcellus, that, by plundering the tern*
the amicable synod of the Pantheon, a representative assembly, as it
were, of the presiding deities of all nations, in Rome, the religious as well
as the civil capital of the world.1 The state, as Cicero shows in
his Book of Laws, retained the power of declaring what forms of religion were
permitted by the law (licitce) ;2 but this authority was rarely
exercised with rigor, excepting against such foreign superstitions as were
considered pernicious to the morals of the people, — in earlier times, the
Dionysiac;3 in later, the Isiac and Serapic rites.4
pies in
Sicily, be bad made the state an object of jealonsy (knlfdovov), because not
only men, but gods, •were led in triumph. The older citizens approved rather
the conduct of Fabius Maximus, who left to the Tarentines their offended gods.
— Plut. Vit. Marc.
1 According to Verrius Flaccus, cited by
Pliny (xxviii. 2), the Romans used to invoke the tutelary deity of every place
which they besieged, and bribed him to their side by promising greater honors.
Macrobius has a copy of the form of Evocation (iii. 9), — a very curious
chapter. The name of the tutelar deity of Rome was a secret. — Pliny, Nat. Hist. iii. 5. Bayle, Art Sorauus. Plut. Qusest-. Rom. Note on Hume’s
Hist. Nat Rel. Essays, p. 460.
Roma triomphantis quotiens ducis inclita currum
Plausibus
excepit, totiens altaria Diyam
Addidifc, efc spoliis sibimet nova numina fecit. — PRUDEITTIUB.
Compare
Augustin de Cons. Evang. i. 18.
For the
Grecian custom on this subject, see Thucyd. iv. 98. Philip, the King of
Macedon, defeated by Flaminius in his wars with the Grecian states, paid little
respect to the temples. His admiral, Dicaearchus, is said to have erected and
sacrificed on two altars to Impiety and Lawlessness, ’Aae(3eia and XlapavQfua.
This fact would be incredible on less grave authority than that of Polybius,
lih. xviii. 37. On the general respect to temples in war, comp. Grot, de Jur.
Bell, et Pac. iii. 12, § 6.
2 The question is well discussed by Jortin,
Discourses, p. 63, note. Dionysius Hal. distinguishes between religions
permitted, and publicly received, lih. n. vol. i. p. 275, edit. Reiske. Compare
other quotations from Livy in Hartung, Religion der Romer (i. 231 et seqq.),
showing the jealousy of foreign rites and ceremonies, especially in times of
danger and disaster.
8
Livy, xxix. 12 et seqq.
* During the Republic, the temples of Isis
and Serapis were twice ordered to be destroyed, Dion. xl. p. 142, xlii. p. 196,
also liv. p. 525. Val, Max. i. 3. Prop, ii 24 See La Bastie in Acad^m.
des Inscrip, xv. 40. On the Roman
Christianity proclaimed itself the religion, not of family or tribe or
nation, but of universal Universality man. It admitted within its pale, on
equal uamty.3" terms, all ranks and all races. It addressed
mankind as one brotherhood, sprung from one common progenitor, and raised to
immortality by one Redeemer. In this respect, Christianity might appear
singularly adapted to become the. religion of a great empire. At an earlier
period in the annals of the world, it would have encountered obstacles
apparently insurmountable, in passing from one province to another, in moulding
hostile and jealous nations into one religious community. A fiercer fire was
necessary to melt and fuse the discordant elements into one kindred mass,
before its gentler warmth could penetrate and permeate the whole with its
vivifying influence. Not only were the circumstances of the times favorable to
the extensive propagation of Christianity, from the facility of intercourse
between the most remote nations, the cessation of hostile movements, and the
uniform system of internal police; but the state of mankind seemed imperiously
to demand the introduction of a new religion, to satisfy those universal
propensities of human nature which connect man with a higher order of things.
Man, as history and experience teach, is essentially a religious being. There
are certain faculties and modes of thinking and feeling apparently inseparable
from his mental organization, which lead him irresistibly to seek some
communication with another and a higher world. But, at the present juncture,
the ancient religions were effete: they belonged to a totally different state
of civilization; though they retained the
law on this
subject, compare Jorfcin, Discourses, p. 58; Gibbon, voL i. p. 66, with Wenck’s
note.
strong hold of habit and interest on different classes ol society, yet
the general mind was advanced beyond them; they could not supply the religious
necessities of the age. Thus the world, peaceably united under one temporal
monarchy, might be compared to a vast body without a soul. The throne of the
human mind appeared vacant; among the rival competitors for its dominion, none
advanced more than claims local, or limited to a certain class. Nothing less
was required than a religion co-extensive at least with the empire of Rome, and
calculated for the advanced state of intellectual culture: and in Christianity
this new element of society was found; which, in fact, incorporating itself
with manners, usages, and laws, has been the bond which has held together,
notwithstanding the internal feuds and divisions, the great European
commonwealth; maintained a kind of federal relation between its parts; and
stamped its peculiar character on the whole of modern history.
Christianity announced the appearance of its Divine Dissociating Author
as the era of a new moral creation;
Principle °f ,
old Keatons, ana if we take our stand, as it were, on the isthmus which
separates the ancient from the modern world, and survey the state of mankind
before and after the introduction of this new power into human society, it is
impossible not to be struck with the total revolution in the whole aspect of
the world. If from this point of view we look upward, we see the dissociating
principle at work both in the civil and religious usages of mankind; the human
race breaking up into countless independent tribes and nations, which recede
more and more from each other as they gradually spread over the surface of the
earth ; and in some parts, as we adopt the theory of the primitive
barbarism,1 or that of the degeneracy of man from an earlier
state of culture, either remaining stationary at the lowest point of ignorance
and rudeness, or sinking to it; either resuming the primeval dignity of the
race, or rising gradually to a higher state of civilization. A certain
diversity of religion follows the diversity of race, of people, and of country.
In no respect is the common nature of human kind so strongly indicated as in
the universality of some kind of religion; in no respect is man so various, yet
so much the same. All the religions of antiquity, mul-
1
The notion that the primeval state of man was altogether barbarous and
uncivilized, so generally prevalent in the philosophy of the two last centuries
(for Dryden’s line —
“ Since wild in woods the noble savage ran,”
contains the
whole theory of Rousseau), has encountered a strong- re-action# It is
remarkable that Niebuhr in Germany, and Archbishop Whately in this country,
with no knowledge of each other’s views, should at the same time call in
question this almost established theory. Dt.
Whately’s argument, that there is no instance in history of a nation
self-raised from savage life, is very strong. I have been much struck by
finding a very vigorous and lucid statement to the same effect in an
unpublished lecture of the late Lord Stowell (Sir William Scott), delivered
when Professor of History at Oxford. The general bias, however, of later
opinion certainly favors the progressive development from a ruder state. Iilr.
Darwin’s theory would, of course, educe us from something lower than the lowest
harbarism. All the theories of the progressive education of the human race tend
to the same conclusion. So, too, the discoveries of human implements of the
simplest kind, in not very recent geological formations (as to human remains,
we have now the verdict ©f Sir C. Lyell, yet the question is again in
suspense); the remarkable researches of the Northern antiquarians into the
successive ages of flint, copper, and iron; the lacustrine cities so singularly
traced in many parts of the world, which indicate a state of extremely
imperfect civilization. Yet this rude condition of the primitive inhabitants of
Europe is hy no means decisive against a high state of advancement in the
primal stock in the East, including Egypt. The argument from language,
according to that consummate master of the science, M. Max Muller, on the
whole, as must be the case in all works which aspire to resolve language into
its primitive elements, tends strongly towards slow and progressive
development. Yet the more perfect structure, as it seems, of some of the
earliest languages, must have ita due weight in our general determination.
VOL.
I. 2
18 PRIMARY PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION.
tiform and countless as they appear, may be easily rcdueed to certain
classes; and, independent of the traditions which they may possess in common,
throughout the whole reigns something like a family resemblance. Whether all
may be rightly considered as depravations of the same primitive form of worship;
whether the human mind is necessarily confined to a certain circle of religious
notions; whether the striking phenomena of the visible world, presented to the
imagination of various people in a similar state of civilization, will excite
the same train of devotional thoughts and emotions, — the philosophical spirit,
and extensive range of inquiry, which in modern times have been carried into
the study of mythology, approximate in the most remarkable manner the
religions of the most remote countries.1 The same primary principles
everywhere appear, modified by the social state,
1 The best, in my opinion, and most
comprehensive work on the ancient religions, is the (yet unfinished)
translation of Creuzer’s Symbolik, by M. de Guigniaut, Religions de l’Antiquit<S,
Paris, 1825, 1835. It is far superior in nrrangement, and does not appear to me
so obstinately wedded to the symbolic theory as the original of Creuzer. The
Aglaophamus of Lobeck, as might be expected from that distinguished scholar, is
full of profound ani accurate erudition. Yet I cannot but think that the
Grecian polytheism will be hetter understood, when considered in connection
with tbe other religions of antiquity, than as an entirely independent system;
and surely the sarcastic tone in which M. Lobeck speaks of the Oriental studies
of his contemporaries is unworthy of a man of consummate learning. The work of
the late M. Constant, Sur la Religion, extensive in research, ingenious in
argument, and eloquent in style, is, in my perhaps partial judgment, vitiated
by an hostility to every kind of priesthood, better suited to the philosophy of
the last than of the present eentuiy. M. Constant has placed the evils of
sacerdotal influence in the strongest light, and disguised or dissemhled its
advantages. The ancient priestly castes, I eonceive, attained their power over
the rest of their race by their acknowledged superiority; they were the
henefactors, and thence the rulers, of their people: to retain their power,
as the people advaneed, they resorted to every means of keeping men in
ignorance and subjection, and so degenerated into the tyrants of the human
mind. At all events sacerdotal domination (and here M. Constant would have
agreed with me) is altogether alien to genuine Christianity.
the local circumstances, the civil customs, the imaginative or practical
character, of the people.
Each state of social culture has its characteristic theology,
self-adapted to the intellectual and moral condition of the people, and colored
in some degree by the habits of life. In the rudest and most savage races we
find a gross superstition, called by modern foreign writers Fetichism,1
in which e ° ’ the shapeless stone, the meanest reptile, any object
however worthless or insignificant, is consecrated by a vague and mysterious
reverence, as the representative of an unseen Being. The beneficence of this
deity is usually limited to supplying the wants of the day, or to influencing
the hourly occurrences of a life, in which violent and exhausting labor
alternates either with periods of sluggish and torpid indolence, as among some
of the North-American tribes ; or, as among the Africans, with wild bursts of
thoughtless merriment.2 This Fetichism apparently survived in more
polished nations, in the household gods, perhaps in the Tera- phim, and in the
sacred stones (the Bcetylia), which were thought either to have fallen from
heaven, or were sanctified by immemorial reverence.
In the Oriental pastoral tribes, Tsabaism,3 the simpler
worship of the heavenly bodies, in een-
eral prevailed; which, among the agricultural
1 The Fetich of the African is the Hanitou
of the American Indian. The word Fetich was first, I believe, brought into
general use in the curious volume of the President De Brosses, Du Culte des
Dieux Fetiches. The word was formed by the traders to Africa, from the
Portuguese, Fetisso, chose f£e, enchant^e, divine, ou rendant des oracles. — De
Brosses, p. 18.
2 Hume (History of Nat. Religion) argues
that a pure and philosophical theism could never be the creed of a barbarous
nation straggling with want.
8
The astral worship of the East is ably and clearly developed in an Excursus at
the end of Gesenius’s Isaiah. I use Tsabaism in its popular sens*-
races, grew up into a more complicated system, connecting the periodical
revolutions of the sun and moon Nature with the pursuits of husbandry. It was
worship. Nature-worship, simple in its primary elements, but branching out
into mythological fables, rich and diversified in proportion to the poetic
genius of the people. This Nature-worship in its simpler, probably its earlier
form, appears as a sort of dualism, in which the two great antagonist powers,
the creative and destructive, Light and Darkness, seem contending for the
sovereignty of the world, and, emblematical of moral good and evil, are
occupied in pouring the full horn of fertility and blessing, or the vial of
wrath and misery, upon the human race. Subordinate to, or as a modification of,
these two conflicting powers, most of the Eastern races concurred in deifying
the active and passive powers of generation. The sun and the earth, Osiris and
Isis, formed a second dualism. And it is remarkable how widely, almost universally
extended throughout the earlier world, appears the institution of a solemn
period of mourning about the autumnal, and of rejoicing about the vernal, equinox.1
The suspension or apparent extinction of the great2 vivifying power
of nature, Osiris or Iacchus;
The proper
signification and limitation of the word mnst be sought in the profoundly
learned work of Chwalsohn, die SSabier und der SSabaismus, St. Petersburg,
1856.
1 Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride: Qpvyeg rdv
&sbv alopevot xeifi&voe fiev tcaOevdeiv, tfepouf typyyopEvac, tote (lev KaTEwaafio^g tote 6' avryepoEig paicxevovreg avTy
refamoi. IIafXayovec dh tcaTadeiodai tcai Kadsipywodcu Xeifi&vog, fypog
h.vaXvEO$ai tyaoicovoi.
2 Bohlen (das Alte Indien, p. 139 et seq.)
gives a long list of these festivals of the sun. Lobeck (i. 690) would
altogether deny their symbolical character. It is difficult, however, to
account for the remarkable similarity between the usages of so many distinct
nations in the New World as well as the Old, — in Peru and Florida, in Gaul and
Britain, as in India and Syria, —
the destitution of Ceres, Isis, or the Earth, of her husband or her
beautiful daughter, torn in pieces or carried away into their realms by the
malignant powers of darkness; their re-appearance in all their bright and
fertilizing energy, — these, under different forms, were the great annual fast
and festival of the early heathen worship.1
But the poets were the priests of this Nature-wor- ship; and from their
creative imagination arose the popular mythology, which gave its ' separate
deity to every part of animate or inanimate being; and, departing still farther
from the primitive allegory, and the symbolic forms under which the phenomena
of the visible world were embodied, wandered into pure fiction ; till
Nature-worship was almost supplanted by religious fable: and hence, by a
natural transition, those who discerned God in every thing, multiplied every
separate part of creation into a distinct divinity. The mind fluctuated
between a kind of vague and unformed pantheism, the deification of the whole of
nature, or its animation by one pervading power or soul, and the deification of
every object which impressed the mind with awe or admiration.2
without some
such common origin, or a common sentiment springing from a certain kindred and
identity in human nature. See Picart’s large work, CMrdmonies et Coutumes
Religieuses, passim.
Compare
likewise Dr. Pritchard’s valuable work on Egyptian Mythology} on the
Deification of the Active and Passive Powers of Generation 5 the Marriage of
the Sun and the Earth, p. 40, and pp. 62-75, and Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p.
144, &c.
1 Nam rudis ante illos, nullo
discrimine, vita Tn speciem conversa, openim ratione carebat,
Et stupefacta novo pendebat lumine mnndi.
Turn
velut amissis masrens, turn lata renatis Sideribus, &e. —MajtiI/. i. 67.
2 Some able writers are of opinion that the
reverse of this was the case,— that the variety was the primary belief; the
simplification, the work of a later
While every nation, every tribe, every province, every town, every
village, every family, had its peculiar, local, or tutelar deity, there was a
kind of common neutral ground on which they all met, — a notion that the gods
in their collective capacity exercised a general controlling providence over
the affairs of men, interfered, especially on great occasions, and, though
this belief was still more vague and more inextricably involved in fable,
administered retribution in another state of being. And thus even the common
language of the most polytheistic nations approached to monotheism.1
Wherever, indeed, there has been a great priestly
and more
intellectual age. On this point, A. W. Schlegel observes, “ The more I
investigate the ancient history of the world, the more I am convinced that the
civilized nations set out from a purer worship of the Supreme Being; that the
magic power of Nature over the imagination of the successive human races,
first, at a later period, produced polytheism, and, finally, altogether
obscured the more spiritual religious notions in the popular belief; while the
wise alone preserved within the sanctuary the primeval secret Hence mythology
appears to me the last developed and most changeable part of the old religion.
The divergence of the various mythologies, therefore, proves nothing against
the descent of the religions from a common source. The mythologies might be
locally formed, according to the circumstances of climate or soil; it is
impossible to mistake this with regard to the Egyptian myths.” — Schlegel, p.
16. Preface to Pritchard’s Egyptian Mythology. My own views, considering the
question in a purely historical light, coincide with those of M. Schlegel; hut
the solution of this question mainly depends on the former one, — the primitive
rudeness or earlier civilization of man.
1 This is strikingly expressed by a
Christian writer: “Audio vulgus cum ad c cel urn manus tendunt, nihil aliud
quam Deum dicunt, et Deus magnus est, et Deus verus est, et si Deus dederit. Vulgi iste naturalis sermo est, an Christiani confitentis oratio ? ” —
Min. Fel. Octavius.
The same thought may be found in Cyprian, de Van. Idol., and Tertullian,
Apolog.
There is
nothing in this brief statement irreconcilable with the view of the common
development of language and mythology, or rather the growth of mythology out of
expanding language, — expanded with such wonderful ingenuity and surpassing
erudition by M. Max Miiller, Oxford Essays, 1856. That theory accounts for the
common origin and descent of the myths of the whole Arian race, the kindred and
similitude of which have heen generally
Chap. 1.
PRIESTLY
CASTE.
23
caste, less occupied with the daily toils of life, and advanced beyond
the mass of the people, the prie8tiy primitive
Nature-worship has been perpetu- Caste' ally brought back, as it
were, to its original elements; and, without disturbing the popular
mythological religion, furnished a creed to the higher and more thinking part
of the community, less wild and extravagant.1 In Persia, the Magian
order retained or acquired something like a pure theism, in which the Supreme
Deity was represented under the symbol of the primal, uncreated fire; and
there Nature-worship, under the form of the two conflicting principles,
preserved much more of its original simplicity than in most other countries. To
the influence of a distinct sacerdotal order may be traced,2 in
India, the singular union of the sublimest allegory, and a sort of lofty
poetical
admitted;
whilst the passing of these myths in their second stage through the minds of
poets explains their endless diversity, their departure from their original
meaning, and the perpetual loss of the key to their interpretation.
1 This is nowhere more openly professed
than in China. The early Jesuit missionaries assert that the higher class (the
literatorura secta) despised the idolatry of the vulgar. One of the charges
against the Christians was their teaching the worship of one God, which they
had full liherty to worship themselves, to the common peoph: “Non seque
placere, rndem plebeculam rerum novarum cupiditate, cceli Dominum venerari.”
—Trigault, Exped. in Sinas, pp. 438-575.
2 “ The learned Brahmins adore one God,
without form or quality, eternal, unchangeable, and occupying all space: but
they carefully confine these doctrines to their own schools, as dangerous ;
and teach in public a religion, in which, in supposed compliance with the
infirmities and passions of human nature, the deity is brought more to a level
with our prejudices and wants. The incomprehensible attributes ascribed to him
are invested with sensible and even human forms. The mind, lost in meditation,
and fatigued in the pursuit of something, which, being divested of all sensible
qualities, suffers the thoughts to wander without finding a resting-place, is
happy, they tell us, to have an object on which human feelings and human senses
may again find repose. To give a metaphysical deity to ignorant and sensual
men, absorbed in the cares of supporting animal existence, and entangled in the
impediments of matter, would be to condemn them to atheism. Such is the mod« in
which the Brahmins excuse the grosu idolatry of their religion.” — Wil
religious philosophy, with the most monstrous and incoherent
superstitions; and the appearance of the profound political religion of Egypt
in strange juxtaposition with the most debasing Fetichism, the worship of
reptiles and vegetables.1
From this Nature-worship arose the beautiful an- Anthropo-
tliropomorphism of the Greeks, of which the ^Greeks0 Homeric poetry,
from its extensive and lasting popularity, may in one sense be considered the
parent. The primitive traditions and the local superstitions of the different
races were moulded together in these songs, which, disseminated throughout
Greece, gave a kind of federal character to the religion of which they were, in
some sort, the sacred books. But the genius of the people had already assumed
its bias: few, yet still some, vestiges remain in Homer of the earlier
theogonic fables.2 Conscious, as it were, and prophetic of their
future pre-eminence in all that con-
Ham Erskine,
Bombay Transactions, i. 199. Compare Colebrooke, Asiat Rea.
vii. 279; and other quotatioDs in Bohlen, Das Alte
Indien, i. 153, which indeed might be multiplied without end. Mr. Mill (Hist,
of India), among the ablest and most uncompromising opponents of the high view
of Indian civilization, appears to me not to pay sufficient attention to this
point.
1 Heeren has conjectured, with his usual
ingenuity, or rather perhaps has adopted from De Brosses, the theory, that the
higher part of the Egyptian religion was that of a foreign and dominant
caste,—the worship of plants and brutes, the original, undisturbed Fetichism of
the primitive and barbarous African race. (Compare Yon Hammer, Geschichte der
Assassinen, p. 57.) On the whole, I prefer this theory to that of Cicero (Nat.
Deor. i. 36), that it was derived from mere usefulness; to the political reason
suggested by Plutarch (de Isid. et Osir.); to that of Porphyry (de Abst. iv.
9), whicb, however, is adopted, and, I think, made more probable, by Dr.
Pritchard in his Egyptian Mythology, from the transmigration of the soul into
beasts; of Marsham and Warburton, from hieroglyphics; of Lucian (de Astrol.)
and Dupuis, from the connection with astronomy; or, finally, that of Bohlen
(Das Alte Indien, i. 186), who traces its origin to the consecration of
particular animals to particular deities among their Indian ancestors,
2 Nothing can be more groundless or
unsuccessful than the attempt of later writers to frame an allegorical system
out of Homer: the history and design of this change are admirably traccd by
Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 158,
stitutes the physical and mental perfection of our race, this wonderful
people conformed their religion to themselves. The cumbrous and multiform idol,
in which wisdom or power or fertility was represented by innumerable toads or
arms or breasts, as in the Ephesian Diana, was refined into a being, only
distinguished from human nature by its preterhuman development of the noblest
physical qualities of man. The imagination here took another and a nobler
course: it threw an ideal grandeur and an unearthly loveliness over the human
form; and by degrees deities became men, and men deities, or, as the
distinction between the godlike (tfsoeweilo?) and the divine Q&siog')
became more indistinct, were united in the intermediate form of heroes and
demigods. The character of the people here, as elsewhere, operated on the
religion; the religion re-acted on the popular character. The religion of
Greece was the religion of the Arts, the Games, the Theatre; it was that of a
race, living always in public, by whom the corporeal perfection of man had been
carried to the highest point. In no other country would the legislator have
taken under his protection the physical conformation, in some cases the procreation,
in all the development of the bodily powers by gymnastic education; and it
required the most consummate skill in the sculptor to preserve the endangered
pre-eminence of the gods, in whose images were embodied the perfect models of
power and grace and beauty.1
1 Maximus Tyrius (Dissert, viii.) defends
the anthropomorphism of the Greeks, and distinguishes it from the symbolic
worship of barbarians. “ If the soul of man is the nearest and most like to
God, God would not have enclosed in an unworthy tabernacle that which bears the
closest resemblance to himself.” Hence be argues that God ought to be
represented nnder the noblest form,—that of man.
The religion of Rome was political and military.1 Religion of
Springing originally from a kindred stock to Rome. that of earlier Greece, the
rural gods of the first cultivators of Italy,2 it received many of
its rites from that remarkable people, the Etruscans ; and rapidly adapted
itself, or was forced by the legislator into an adaptation, to the character of
the people.3 Mars or Gradivus was the divine ancestor of the race.4
The religious calendar was the early history of the people ; a large part of
the festivals was not so much the celebration of the various deities, as the
commemoration of the great events in their annals.5 The priesthood
was united with the highest civil and military offices; and the great
occupation of Roman worship seems to have been to secure the stability of her
constitution, and still more, to give a religious character to her wars, and
infuse a religious confidence of success into her legionaries. The great office
of the
1 Dionysius Halicam. compares the grave and
serious character of the Roman, as contrasted with the Greek religion. The
Romans rejected many of the more obscene and monstrous fables of the Greeks.
But it is as part of the civil polity that he chiefly admires the Roman
religion, lib. ii. c. 7.
2 The Palilia and other rural rites. The
statues of the goddesses Seja and Segesta, of seed and of harvest, stood in the
great Circus in the time of Pliny, H. N. xviii. 2.
8
Beaufort’s R^publique Romaine, t. i. ch. 5. Compare the recent and valuable
work of Walter, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, p. 177.
* Et tamen ante omnes Martem
coluere priores,
Hoc dederat studiis bellioa turba suis.
After
reciting the national deities of other cities, the religious poet of Rome
proceeds;—
Mars Latio venerandus erat; quia prsesidet
armis,
Arma ferre genti remque decusque dabant. —
OviD, Fasti, Hi. 79.
The month of
Mars began the year. — Ibid.
6
Compare the proportion of Roman and of religious legend in the Fasti of Ovid.
See likewise Constant, i. 21, &c. Also the section in Hartung, Vom 8taat
als Kirche, i. p. 205 et seqq.
diviners, whether augurs or aruspices, was to choose the fortunate day of
battle; the Fetiales, religious officers, denounced war; the standards and
eagles possessed a kind of sanctity; the eagle was, in fact, a shrine.1
The altar had its place in the centre of the camp, as the ark of God in that of
the Israelites. The Triumph may be considered as the great religious ceremony
of the nation ; the god Terminus, who never receded, was, as it were, the
deified ambition of Rome. At length, Rome herself was impersonated, and assumed
her rank in heaven, as it were the representative of the all-conquering and
all-ruling republic.
There was a stronger moral element in the Roman religion than in that of
Greece.2 In Greece, Moral He_ the gods had been
represented, in their col- Komar/ lective capacity, as the avengers of great EoUgion-
crimes; a kind of general retributive justice was assigned to them; they
guarded the sanctity of oaths. But, in the better days of the Republic, Rome
had, as it were, deified her own virtues. Temples arose to Concord, to Faith,
to Constancy, to Modesty (Pudor), to Hope. The Penates, the household deities,
became the guardians of domestic happiness. Yenus Verti- cordia presided over
the purity of domestic morals,3 and Jupiter Stator over courage. But
the true national character of the Roman theology is most remarkably shown in
the various temples and various
1 rO y&p
aerdf i)vofiaa(dvog de vedg fUKpdg)
kql kv avr& aerbg Xffl)00V£ £vidpvTC£.*“-Dion. Cflss. xl. u. 18. Gibbon, i
16. Moyle’s Works, ii. 86. Compare Tac. Ann. i. 39.
2 The distinction between tlie Roman and
Greek religions is drawn with singular felicity in the two supplemental (in my
opinion the most valuable and original), but unfortunately unfinished, volumes
of M. Constant,—Du Polyth&sme Romain.
8
“The most virtuous woman in Rome was chosen to dedicate hei etatu®,” — Yal.
Max. viii. 15.
attributes assigned to the good Fortune of the city, who might appear the
Deity of Patriotism.1 Even Peace was at length received among the
gods of Rome. And, as long as the worship of the heart continued to sanctify
these impersonations of human virtues, their adoration tended to maintain the
lofty moral tone, but so soon as that was withdrawn, or languished into apathy,
the deities became cold abstractions, without even that reality which might
appear to attach itself to the other gods of the city. Their temples stood,
their rites were perhaps solemnized; but they had ceased to command, and no
longer received, the active veneration of the people. What, in fact, is the
general result of the Roman religious calendar, half a year of which is
described in the Fasti of Ovid? There are festivals founded on old Italian and
on picturesque Grecian legends; others commemorative of the great events of the
heroic days of the Republic; others instituted in base flattery of the ruling
dynasty; one ceremonial only, that of the Manes,2 which relates to
the doctrine of another life, and that preserved as it were from pride, and as
a memorial of older times. Nothing can show more strongly the nationality of
the Roman religion, and its almost complete transmutation from a moral into a
political power.8
Amidst all this labyrinth, we behold the sacred secret of the Divine
Unity preserved inviolate, though
1 Constant, i. 36.
2 II. 633. The Lemuria (Remuria) were
instituted to appease the shade of Remus. — V. 451, &c.
Ovid
applies on another occasion his general maxim:__
Pro magn£
teste yetustas Credltur: acceptam parce movere fidem. — Fasti, lv. 203.
8 See the
fine description of Majestas (Fasti, v. 25-62), who hecomes at flu end the
tutelar deity of the senate and matrons, and presides over the tri- nmphs of
Rome.
sometimes under the most adverse circumstances, and, as it were,
perpetually hovering on the verge cf of extinction, in one narrow
district of the theJows- world,—the province of Palestine. Nor is it
there the recondite treasure of a high and learned caste, or the hardly
worked-out conclusion of the thinking and philosophical few, but the plain and
distinct groundwork of the popular creed. Still, even there, as though in its
earlier period, the yet undeveloped mind of man was unfit for the reception, or
at least for the preservation, of this doctrine, in its perfect spiritual
purity; as though the Deity condescended to the capacities of the age, and it
were impossible for the divine nature to maintain its place in the mind of man
without some visible representative. A kind of symbolic worship still enshrines
the one great God of the Mosaic religion. There is a striking analogy between
the Shechinah,1 or luminous appearance which “ dwelt between the
cherubim,” and the pure, immaterial fire of the Theism which approaches
nearest to the Hebrew, — that of the early Persians. Yet eveii here likewise is
found the great indelible distinction between the religion of the ancient and
of the modern world; the characteristic which, besides the general practice of
propitiating the Deity, usually by animal sacrifices, universally prevails in
the pre-Christian ages. The physical predominates over the moral Gcd
UIlder character of the Deity. God is Power in the New™4 old
religion: He is Love under the new.2
1 Even if the notion of a visible Shechinah
was of a later period {note to Heber’s Bampton Lectures, p. 278), God was
universally believed to have a local and personal residence behind the veil, in
the unapproachable Holy of Holies; and the imagination would thus be even more
powerfully excited than by a visible symbol.
2 Hartting (Religion der Romer, i. 10) has
worked out this notion. Tbit
Nor does his pure and essential spirituality, in the more complete faith
of the Gospel, attach itself to, or exhibit itself under, any form. “ God,”
says the Divine Author of Christianity, “ is a Spirit; and they that worship
him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” In the early Jewish worship, it
was the physical power of the Deity which was chiefly and perpetually presented
to the mind of the worshipper: he was their temporal king, the dispenser of
earthly blessings, famine and plenty, drought and rain, discomfiture or
success in war. The miracles recorded in the Old Testament, particularly in the
earlier books, are amplifications, as it were, or new directions of the powers
of nature; as if the object were to show that the deities of other nations were
but subordinate and obedient instruments in the hand of the great self-existent
Being, — the Jehovah of Jewish worship.
Yet, when it is said that the physical rather than the moral character of
the Deity predominated, it must not be supposed that ttie latter was altogether
excluded. It is impossible entirely to dissociate the notion of moral
government from that belief, or that propensity to believe, in the existence of
a God, implanted in the human mind; and religion was too useful an ally not to
be called in to confirm the consciously imperfect authority of human law. But
it may be laid down as a principle, that the nearer the nation approaches to
barbarism, the childhood of the human race, the more earthly are the
conceptions of the Deity: the moral aspcct of the Divine nature seems gradually
to develop itself with the development of the human mind. It is at first, as in
Egypt and India,
book did not
come into my hands till after tbe publication of my first edition.
the prerogative of the higher class: the vulgar are left to their stocks
and their stones, their animals and their reptiles. In the republican states of
Greece, the intellectual aristocracy of the philosophers, guarded by no such
legally established distinction, rarely dared openly to assert their
superiority, but concealed their more extended views behind a prudential veil,
as a secret or esoteric doctrine, and by studious conformity to the national
rites and ceremonies.
Gradually, however, as the period approaches in which the religion of
civilization is to be in- Preparation troduced into the great drama of human
life, gion in tha
Heathen
as we descend nearer towards the point of World' separation
between the ancient and modern world, the human mind appears expanding.
Polytheism is evidently relaxing its hold upon all classes : the monarch
maintains his throne, not from the deep-rooted or rational or conscientious
loyalty of his subjects, but from tlie want of a competitor; because mankind
were habituated to a government which the statesman thought it might be
dangerous, and the philosopher, enjoying perfect toleration, and rather proud
of his distinctive superiority than anxious to propagate his opinions
throughout the world, did not think it worth while, at the hazard of popular odium,
to disturb.
Judaism gave manifest indications of a preparation for a more essentially
spiritual, more purely Amongth0 moral faith. The symbolic presence
of the Jews- Deity (according to their own tradition1)
ceased with the temple of Solomon; and the heathen world beheld with
astonishment a whole race whose deity was represented under no visible form or
likeness. The Prophets, in their spiritual as in their moral tone, rose
1
Hist, of the Jews, i. 423.
high above the Law. The conqueror Pompey, who enters the violated temple,
is filled with wonder at finding the sanctuary without image or emblem of the
presiding deity ;1 the poet describes them as worshipping nothing
but the clouds and the divinity that fills the Heaven;2 the
philosophic historian, whose profounder mind seems struggling with hostile
prejudices, defines, with his own inimitable compression of language, the
doctrine, to the sublimity of which he has closed his eyes. “ The worship of
the Jews is purely mental; they acknowledge but one God, — and that God supreme
and eternal, neither changeable nor per- ishable.”3 The doctrine of
another life (which derived no sanction from the Law, and was naturally
obscured by the more immediate and intelligible prospect of temporal rewards
and punishments) dawns in the prophetic writings; and from the apocryphal books
and from Josephus, as well as from the writings of the New Testament, clearly
appears to have become incorporated with the general sentiment. Retribution in
another life has already taken the place of the immediate or speedy avenging
or rewarding providence of the Deity in the land of Canaan.4
Judaism, however, only required to expand with the Expansion of expansion
of the human mind; its sacred Judaism. records had preserved in its original
simplicity the notion of the Divine Power; the pregnant definitions of the one
great self-existing Being, the magnificent poetical amplifications of his might
and providence, were of all ages: they were eternal poetry,
1
Hist, of the Jews, ii. 47.
3 u JKil praster cubes et coeli munen adorant.” —Jtrv. Sat. xiv. 9.
“Judrei mente sola, unumque numen inteiligunt. . . . Summum illud et £etemuin, neqne rautabile, neque mterilurum.”— Tac.
Hist. v. 5.
4 See chap. ii., iu which this question is
resumed.
because they were eternal truth. If the moral aspect of the Divine nature
was more obscurely intimated, and, in this respect, had assumed the character
of a local or national Deity, whose love was confined to the chosen people, and
displayed itself chiefly in the beneficence of a temporal sovereign: yet
nothing wab needed but to give a higher and more extensive sense to those types
and shadows of universal wisdom; an improvement which the tendency of the age
manifestly required, and which the Jews themselves, especially the Alexandrian
school, had already attempted, by allegorizing the whole annals of their
people, and extracting a profound moral meaning from all the circumstances of
their extraordinary history.1
But the progress of knowledge was fatal to the popular religion of Greece
and Rome. The Effect* of
Progress of
awe-struck imagination of the older race, Knowledge
upon Poly-
which had listened with trembling belief to the wildest fables, the deep
feeling of the sublime and the beautiful, which, uniting with national pride,
had assembled adoring multitudes before the Parthenon or the Jove of Phidias,
now gave place to cold and sober reason. Poetry had been religion: religion was
becoming mere poetry. Humanizing the Deity, and bringing it too near the
earth, naturally produced, in a lesa imaginative and more reflecting age, that
familiarity which destroys respect. When man became more acquainted with his
own nature, the less was he satis-
1 Philo wrote for the unbelievers among his
own people, and to conciliate the Greeks. (De Conf. Linguar. vol. i. p. 405.)
The same principle which among the heathens gave rise to the system of
Euhemerus, who resolved all mythology into history, and that of the other
philosophers, who attempted to reduce it to allegory, induced Philo, and no
douht his predecessor Aristobulus, thus to endeavor to accommodate the Mosaic
history to an incredulous age, and to blend Judaism and Platonism into one
harmonious system.
VOL. I. 3
fied with deities cast in his own mould. In some re- _ spects, the
advancement of civilization had Beneficial. ^ doubt softened and purified the
old religions from their savage and licentious tendencies. Human sacrifices
had ceased,1 or had retired to the remotest parts of Germany or to
the shores of the Baltic.2 Though some of the secret rites were said
to be defiled with unspeakable pollutions,3 yet this, if true, arose
from the depravation of manners, rather
1 Human sacrifices sometimes, but rarely,
occur in the earlier periods of Grecian history. According to Plutarch (Yit.
Arist. 9, and Vit. Themis- toclis), three sons of Sandanke, sister of the King
of Persia, were offered, in obedience to an oracle, to Bacchus Omestes. The
blood-stained altar of Diana of Tauris was placed by the tragedians in a
barbarous region. Prisoners were sometimes slain on the tombs of warriors in
much later times, as in the Homeric age, even on that of Philopoemen.— Plut.
Yit. Philop. c. 21. Compare Tscliimer, Fall des Heidenthums, p. 34.
Octavius is
said (Suet Vit. Octav.) to have sacrificed 300 Perugian captives on an altar
sacred to the deified Julius (Divo Julio). This maybe considered the sanguinary
spirit of the age of proscriptions, taking, for once, a more solemn and
religious fbrm. As to the libation of the blood of the gladiators (see
Tertullian, Apolog. c. 9? Scorpiac. 7. Cyprian, De Spectacu- lis. Compare
Porphyr. de Abstin. Lactant-1-21), I should agree with M. Constant in
ascribing this ceremony to the barbarity of the Roman amusements, rather than
to their religion. All public spectacles were, perhaps, to a certain degree
religious ceremonies; but the gladiators were the victims of the sanguinaiy
pleasures of the Roman people, not slain in honor of their goda.
— Constant, iv. 335. Tschimer,
p. 45.
2 Tac. Ann.
i. 61. Tac.
Germ. 10,40* Compare, on the gradual abolition of human sacrifices, Constant,
iv. 330. The exception, which rests on the authority of Pliny (xxviii. 2), and
of Plutarch (Vit. Marii, in init. Qumt Rom.), appears to me veiy doubtful. The
prohibitory law of Lentulus, a.u• dclvii., “ minime Romano Saero ” (lih. xxii.
57), and Livy’s striking expres sion concerning the sacrifice, a.u. 536, said
to be continued to a late period, as well as the edict of Tiberius, promulgated
in the remoter provinces, indicate the general sentiment of the time. “ Non satis festimari potest quantum Romanis debeatur, qui sustulere
monstra in quibus hominem occidere religi- osissimum erat, mandi vero
ealuherrimum.” — Plin. H. N. xxx. 1. See in Ovid (Fasti, iii. 341),
the reluctance of Numa to ofier human sacrifice. Hadrian issued an edict
prohibiting human sacrifices; this was directed, accord-
® The
dissolute rites against which the Fathers inveigh were of foreign and Oriental
origin, — Isiac, Bacchanalian, Milhriac — Loljtrk, i. 197. See On-
ing to
Creuzer (Symb. i. 863), against the later Mitliriac rites, -which had
re-introduced the horrible practice of consulting futurity in the entrails of
human victims. The savage Commodus (Lamprid. in Comm.) offered a human victim
to Mithra. The East, if the accounts are to be credited, continually re-acted
on the religion of Rome. Human sacrifices are said to have taken place under
Aurelian (Aug. Hist. Yit. Aurel.), and even under Maxentius.
I add, as the subjcct is of great interest
and importance, and as the erroneous view is held in a book so justly popular
as Gieseler’e Handbook of Church History, some further observations. “ M. de
Fontenelle is mistaken when he thinks the Romans prohibited the Carthaginians
by treaty from offering any more human sacrifices. The original treaties
hetween these powerful republics are still extant in Polybius and Livy. I need
only refer to them. Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, is, indeed, reported (though not
on the very best authority) to have imposed that humane condition after the
hattle of Himera (V. Diodor. Sic. xi. 21, et Wesseling ad loc.). M. de
Fontenelle is pleased to accuse the Romans of contradicting their own practice,
since they sacrificed a man every year to Jupiter Latiaris. But I shall not
believe upon the words only of Por- phyiy, Lactantius, and Prudentius, that
human sacrifices were ever a regular part of Roman worship.” — Gibbon,
Miscellaneous Works, v. 662,
Lord Stanhope
has printed a correspondence between Sir Robert Peel and Lord Macaulay on this
subject. Neither of these distinguished men bad profoundly in veetigated the
subject, nor were aware how much had been written upon it. Each wrote from his
general reading. But two such men could not but arrive at the same just
conclusion. Sir Robert uses the convincing arguments “Surely, if it had been
the annual usage in Rome to offer human sacrifices to Jupiter, Cicero could
never have uttered these words,1 Quidquam Gallis sanctum ac
religiosum videri potest? Qui etiam si quando
aliquo metu adducti, Deos placandos arbitrantur, humanis hostiis eorum aras
funestant ut ne religionem quidem colere possint, nisi earn ipsam acelere
violarint. Quis enim ignorat eos usque ad hunc diem retinere illam im- lnanem
ac barbaram consuetudinem hominum immolandorum ? *—Pro Fon-
teio, 10.” Lord Macaulay replies by^citing the description of the rites of
Jupitar Latiaris from Dionysius Hal., from which it appears that the offerings
>ere lambs, cheeses, and milk. “ Now can anybody believe that Dionysius,
stant, vol.
iv. c. 11. Compare the Confession of Hispala, in Livy. I cannot refrain frem transcribing an observation of M. Constant on
these rites, which strikes me as extremely profound and just: “La mauvaise
influence des fables licencieuses commence avec le m£pris et le ridicule vers£
sur ces fables,
II eu est de m6me des
c^r^monies. Des rites ind^cens pouvent 6tre pratiques par un peuple religieux
avec une grande puretd de coeur. Mais quaud l’incrldulitd atteint ces peuples,
ces rites sont pour lui la cause et la pr<5texte de la plus r^voltante
corruption.” — Du Polyth. Rom. ii. 102.
by the indignant satirist, not, as among some of the early Oriental
nations, the rite itself.
But, with the tyranny which could thus extort from reluctant human nature
the sacrifice of all Prej' 41 humanity and all decency,
the older religions had lost their more salutary, and, if the expression may be
ventured, their constitutional authority. They had been driven away, or
silently receded, from their post, in which, indeed, they had never been firmly
seated, as conservators of public morals. The circumstances of the times
tended no less to loosen the bonds of the ancient faith. Peace enervated the
deities, as well as the soldiers, of Rome: their occupation was gone ;1
the augurs read no longer the signs of conquest in the entrails of the victims;
and though, down to the days of Augustine,2 Roman pride clung to
who had been
at Rome, could have written thus, if a human sacrifice had been part of the
rites ? . . . But observe that Cicero himself had officiated as cousul at the
feast of Jupiter Latiaris. He described the solemnity incidentally iu his poem
on his own consulship. You will find the passage in the Hook de Divinatione. He
introduces Urania speaking to him: —
Tu quoque eum tumulos Albano in monte nmdes Lustr&sti, et loeto
muctasti lacte Latinas.
This mention
of milk equally agrees with Dionysius’s account But can you believe, that, on
this occasion, Cicero sacrificed a man, and then described as pteri’oimed ‘
laeto lacte ’ ? In short, do you believe that Cicero ever sacrificed e man 7 ”
Neithei Sir
Robert nor Lord Macaulay seems to have been aware of ths Senatus Consul turn of
Lentulus, “ ne homo immolaretur.” — (Pliny, xxx. 1). That law was no doubt
directed against the newly subjugated and barbarous nation^ Iberians, Gauls,
and implies its long disuse in Rome, and that it was abhorrent to Roman
feeling.
1 “ Our generals hegan to wage civil
wars against each other, as soon as they ncglected the auspices.” — Cic. Nat.
Deor. ii. 3. This is good evidence to the fact: the cause lay deeper. •
2 This was the main argument of his great
work, “ De Civitate Dei.” It is nowhere more strongly expressed than in the
oration of Symmachns to Theodosius. “ Ific cultus in leges meas orbetn redegit;
hajc sacra Anniba-
the worship of the older and glorious days of the Republic, and
denounced the ingratitude of forsaking gods, under whose tutelary sway Rome had
become the empress of the world, yet the ceremonies had now no stirring
interest; they were pageants in which the unbelieving aristocracy played their
parts with formal coldness, the contagion of which could not but spread to the
lower classes. The only novel or exciting rite of the Roman religion was that
which probably tended more than any other, when the immediate excitement was
over, to enfeeble the religious feeling, — the deification1 of the
living, or the apotheosis of the dead emperor, whom a few years, or perhaps a
few days, abandoned to the open execration or contempt of the whole people. At
the same time, that energy of mind which had consumed itself in foreign
conquest or civil faction, in carrying the arms of Rome to the Euphrates or
the Rhine, or in the mortal conflict for patrician or plebeian supremacy, now
that the field of military or civil distinction was closed, turned inward, and
preyed upon itself; or, compressed by the iron
lem a
mcenibus, a Capitolio Sennonas repulerunt.” This subject will frequently recur
in the course of our History.
1 The deification of Augustus found some
opponents. “Nihil Dearum honoribus relictum, cum se templis et
effigie numinum, per flamines et sacer- dotes coli vellet.” — Tac. Ann. i. 10. The
jmore sagacious Tiberius shrunk from such honors. In one instance, he allowed
himself to he joined in divine honors with his mother and the senate; but, in
general, he refused them.—Tac. Ann. iv. 15,37; v. 2. The very curious satire of
Seneca, the A.noKofo)VTG)oi£: though chiefly aimed at Claudius,
throws ridicule on the whole ceremony. Augustus, in his speech to the gods,
says, “ Denique dum tales deus facitis, nemo vos deos esse credet.” A later
writer complaius: “ Aliquanti pari libi- dine in ccelestium numerum referuntur,
segre exequiis digni.”—Aur. Victor, Csesar, in Gallieno. M. Ranke, in the first
chapter of whose admirahle work (Die Romischen Papste) I am not displeased
to find some coincidences of view, even of expression, with my own, seems to
think that much of the strength of the old religion lay in the worship of the
emperor. I am not disposed to think so ill of human nature.
hand of despotism, made itself a vent in philosophical or religious
speculations. The noble mind sought a retreat from the degradation of servitude
in the groves of the Academy, or attempted to find consolation for the loss of
personal dignity, by asserting, with the Stoic, the dignity of human nature.1
But Philosophy aspired in vain to fill that void
in the human mind which had been ere-
PWlosophy* . .
ated by the expulsion or secession 01 religion. The objects of
Philosophy were twofold: either,
1. To
refine the popular religion into a more rational crced; or, 2. To offer itself
as a substitute. With this first view, it endeavored to bring back the fables
to their original meaning,2 to detect the latent truth under the
allegoric shell: but, in many cases, the key was lost, or the fable had
wandered so far from its primary sense as to refuse all rational interpretation
; and, where the truth had been less encumbered with fiction, it came forth
cold and inanimate. The philosopher could strip off the splendid robes in
which the moral or religious doctrine had been disguised; but he could not
instil into it the breath of life. The imagination refused the unnatural
alliance of cold and cal
1 Cicero, no doubt, speaks the language of
many of the more elevated minds, when he states that he took refuge in
philosophy from the afflictions of life at that dark period of civil
contention. 11 Hortata etiam est, ut me ad hasc confcrrem,
animi aegritudo, magna et gravi commota injuria: cujus si majorem aliquam
levationem reperire potuissem, non ad hsec potissimum con- fugissem.” — De Nat.
Deor. i. 4.
2 Tlpayfiaruv brf avdpomivqg aadsveiag ov
KaOopofwvov oa<f>tit; evoxyfio- viarepog ipfiijvevg 5 fivOof. — Max.
Tyr., Dissert. X. The whole essay is intended to prove that poetry and
philosophy held the same doctrine ahout the gods. This process, it should be
ohserved, though it had already commenced, was not carried to its height until
philosophy and polytheism coalesced again, from the sense of their common
danger, and endeavored to array a system composed of the most rational and
attractive parts of both against the encroachments of Christianity.
culating reason; and the religious feeling, when it saw the old deities
reduced into ingenious allegories, sank into apathy, or vaguely yearned for
some new excitement, which it knew not from what quarter to expect.
The last hopes of the ancient religion lay in the Mysteries. Of them
alone the writers, about TheMy3_ the time of the appearance of
Christianity, tcriea- speak with uniform reverence, if not with awe.
They alone could bestow happiness in life, and hope in death.1 In
these remarkable rites,2 the primitive Nature-worship had survived
under a less refined and less humanized form; the original and more simple
symbolic forms (those of the first agricultural inhabitants of Greece3)
had been retained by ancient reverence : as its allegory was less intricate
and obscure,4 it accomodated itself better with the advancing spirit
of the age. It may indeed be questioned, whether the Mysteries did not owe much
of their influence to their secrecy, and to the impressive forms under which
they
1 “ Neque
solum cum lsetitia vivendi rationem aeeepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore
morieudi.” — Cic. de Leg. ii. 14. The theory of Warburton ou the
Mysteries is now universally exploded; but neither, with the utmost deference
to his erudition, can I enter altogether into the views of Lobeck. In my
judgment, his quotations do not bear him out, as to the publicity of the ceremonies;
nor can I conceive that there was none, or scarcely any, secret.
Yetabo qui Ccreris sacrum Vulgarit arcame, sub
iisdem
Sit trabibua, fragilemque inecum Solvat phaselum. — Hob. Carm. iil. 2.
2 The theories of Maier, Warburton,
Plessing, Boulanger, Dupuis, Mein- ers, Villoison, P. Knight, Heeren, St.
Croix, Creuzer, may be found briefly stated. — Lobeck, i. 6, 8.
8 “ Quibus explicatis, ad rationemque revocatis, rerum
magis natura cog- noscitur, quam deorum.” — Cic. de Nat Deor. i. 42.
* See Varro’s
View of the Eleusinian Mysteries, preserved by Augustine
— De Civ. Dei, vii. 15
shadowed forth their more recondite truths.1 These, if they
did not satisfy, yet kept the mind in a state of progressive and continued
excitement. They were, if it may be so said, a great religions drama, in which
the initiated were at once spectators and actors; where the fifth act was
designedly delayed to the utmost possible point; and of this still-suspended catastrophe
the dramatis 'personae, the only audience were kept in studied ignorance.2
The Mysteries had, perhaps, from an early period associated a moral3
purport with their sacred shows; and, with the progress of opinion, the moral
would more and more predominate over the primitive religious meaning.4
Yet the morality of the Mysteries was apparently that of the ancient
Nature-worship of the East. It taught the immortality of the soul as a part of
that vast system of nature, which, emanating from the Supreme Being, passed
through a long course of deterioration or refinement, and at length returned
and resolved itself into the primal source of all existence. But the Mysteries,
from their very nature, could only act upon the public mind in a limited
manner:5 directly they ceased
1 'kyvooia oefivorqc tnl Ttkeruv teal did. tovto
irtareveTai tH fivtJTTjpta, teal
a(3ara otcqKaia dia roOro bpvrrerai, Kaipol teal towol tcpvmeiv eldoreg
&(){yr}TQvpyiav h>0eov.—Synes. de Prov. Compare the splendid passage in Dio. Chrys. Orat. 12.
2 “Non semel
qua^dam sacra traduntur: Eleusis servat, quod ostendat revisentibus. Rerum
natura sacra sua non simul tradit. Initiates nos credi- mus: in vestibulo ejus
hffiremus.” — Sen. Nat. Qurest. vii. 31. “Ut opinio- nem suspendio cognitionis
redificent, atque ita tan tain majest&tem adhibere videautur, quantum
prastruxerunt cupiditatem.” — Tert adv. Valeut. c. 1.
* Pindar, Frag. 116.
Sophocles, Fragm. Luc. LVIH. Isoc. Pan. Vlt. Plato, Men.
4
Even Lobeck allows this of the Eleusinian Mysteries: “Sacerdotet
interdum aliquid de metempsychosi dixisse largiar.” i. 73.
6 The Jews
were forbidden to be initiated in the Mysteries. Ii the Greek text of the LXX.,
a text was interpolated or mistranslated (Deut. x riii
to be mysteries, they lost their power.1 Nor can it be
doubted, that, while the local and public Mysteries — particularly the greatest
of all, the Eleusinian — were pure and undefiled by licentiousness, and, if
they retained any of the obscene symbols, disguised or kept them in the
background; the private and movable Mysteries, which, under the conduct of
vagabond priests, were continually flowing in from the East, displayed those
symbols in unblushing nakedness, and gave occasion for the utmost license and
impurity.2
II. Philosophy,
as a substitute for religion, was still more manifestly deficient: for, in the
first
Philosophy.
place, it was unable, or condescended not, to reach the body of the
people, whom the progress of civilization was slowly bringing up towards the
common level; and, where it found or sought proselytes, it spoke without
authority, and distracted, with the multitude of its conflicting sects, the
patient but bewildered inquirer.3 Philosophy maintained the
aristocratic tone, which, while it declared that to a few elect spirits alone
it was possible to communicate the highest secrets of knowledge, — more
particularly the mystery
17), in which
Moses, hy an anachronism not uncommon in the Alexandrian school, was made
distinctly to condemn these peculiar rites of paganism.
1 Philo demands why, if they are so useful,
they are not public. “ Nature .nakes all her most beautiful and splendid works,
her heaven ahd all her stars, for the sight of all; her seas, fountains, and
rivers, the annual temperature of the air, and the winds, the innumerable
tribes and races of animals, and fruits of the earth, for the common use of
man: why, then, are the Mysteries confined to a few, and those not always the
most wise and most virtuous ? ” This is the general sense of a long passage,
vol. ii. p. 260. Ed. Mangey.
2 The republic severely prohibited these
practices, which were unknown in its earlier and better days. — Dionys. Hal.
ii. viii.
8
’Oppe rd n^6og t&v cvpd^fiaTO)v ; 71ij tic rpaixTjraL 5 ixolov avrCrt
Karele^ouev; tlvl iteuj&w t&v naoayye7iP.aTG)v. — Max. Tyr. xxxv. sub
fin
of the great Supreme Being, — proclaimed it vain and unwise to attempt to
elevate the many to such exalted speculations.1 “ The Father of the
worlds,” says Plato, in this tone, “ it is difficult to discover; and, when
discovered, it is impossible to make him known to all.” So, observes a German
historian of Christianity, think the Brahmins of India. Plato might aspire to
the creation of an imaginary republic, which, if it could possibly be realized,
might stand alone, an unapproachable model of the physical and moral perfection
of man; but the amelioration of the whole world, the simultaneous elevation of
all nations, orders, and classes to a higher degree of moral advancement,
would have been a vision from which even his imagination would have shrunk in
despair. This remained to be conceived and accomplished by one who appeared to
the mass of mankind in his own age as a peasant of Palestine.
It cannot be denied, that, to those whom it deigned varieties of to
address, philosophy was sufficiently accom-
Philosopliic -,1 , r.
Systems. modating ; and, whatever the bias of the individual mind, the
school was open, and the teacher at hand to lead the inquirer, either to the
luxurious gardens of Epicurus, or among the loftier spirits of the Porch. In
the two prevalent systems of philosophy, the Epicurean and the Stoic, appears
a striking assimilation to the national character of the two predominant races
which constituted the larger part of the
1 Neander has
likewise quoted several of the same authorities addneed in the following
passage. See the translation of Neander, which liad not been announced when the
above was written. It is curious that Strabo remarks, on another point, the
similarity of the Indian opinions to Platonism, and treats them all as fivdoL i
TlQ.p(nr?i,EKOV(jt 6e kqi fxvOovQ^ cjottep K(U nUtVv, repi te
wpSapaia; ^WXVC, Kal tuv
k<z0’ gTdov Kplaeuv xal aVut rotavra.— L. xv. p. 713.
Roman world. The Epicurean, with its subtle metaphysics, its abstract
notion of the Deity, its Epicure.m_ imaginative
materialism, its milder and more ta0c“rrcde'k
pleasurable morals, and perhaps its propen- oharacter; sity to
degenerate into indolence and sensuality, was kindred and congenial to that of
Greece, and the Grecian part of the Roman society. The Stoic, St0icism
with its more practical character, its mental Roman' strength and
self-confidence, its fatalism, its universally diffused and all-governing
Deity, the soul of the universe (of which the political power of the all-ruling
republic might appear an image), bore the same analogy to that of Rome. While
the more profound thinkers, who could not disguise from themselves the
insufficiency of the grounds on which the philosophical systems rested, either
settled into a calm and contented scepticism, or, with the Academics, formed an
eclectic creed from what appeared the better parts of the rest.
Such on all the great questions of religion — the Divine nature,
providence, the origin and future being of the soul1 — was the
floating and uncertain state of the human mind. In the department of morals,
Philosophy nobly performed her part; but perhaps her success in this respect
more clearly displayed her inefficiency. The height to which moral science was
carried in the works of Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Antoninus, while
it made the breach still wider between the popular religion and the advanced
state of the human mind, more vividly displayed the want of a faith which would
associate itself with
1
Augustine, speaking of the great work of Varro, concludes thus: “In faac tota
serie pulcherrume et subtilissim® «iisputationis, vitam aitemam frustra quaeri
et sperari, facillime apparet.”— Civ. Dei, vi. 3.
the purest and loftiest morality, and remarry, as it were, those thoughts
and feelings which connect man with a future state of being to the practical
duties of life.1
For, while these speculations occupied the loftier philosophy and
more thinking minds, what remained for Popular the vulgar of the higher
and of the lower Rehgion. orders ? Philosophy had shaken the old edifice to
its base ; and, even if it could have confined its more profound and secret
doctrines within the circle of its own elect, if its contempt for the old
fables of the popular creed had been more jealously guarded, it is impossible
but that the irreligion of the upper order must work downwards upon the lower.
When religion has, if not avowedly, yet manifestly, sunk into an engine of
state policy, its most imposing and solemn rites will lose all their
commanding life and energy. Actors will perform ill who do not feel their
parts. “It is marvellous,” says'the Epicurean in Cicero, “ that one soothsayer
(Tiaruspex) can look another in the face without laughing.” And when the
Epicurean himself stood before the altar, in the remarkable language of
Plutarch, “ he hypocritically enacted prayer and adoration from fear of the
many; he uttered words directly opposite to his philosophy. While he
sacrifices, the ministering priest seems to him no more than a cook, and he
departs uttering the
1 Gibbon and many other -writers (Law,
Theory of Kcligion, 127, 130; Sumner, Evidences, p. 76) have adduced the
well-known passages from Sallust and Cicero, which indicate the general state
of feeling on the great question of tho immortality of the soul. There is a
striking passage in a writer whose works have lately come to light through the
industry of Angelo Mai. The author is endeavoring to find consolation for the
loss of a favorite grimd- on: “ Si maxim^ esse animas iminortales comrtet, erit
hoc pliilosophis dis-
serendi argumcntum, non parentibus desiderandi remedium.” Front de
Nep. Amiss.
line of Menander, ‘ I have sacrificed to gods in whom I have no concern.’
”1
Unless, indeed, the literature as well as the philosophy of the age
immediately preceding Chris- . tianity had been confined to the intellectual
aristocracy, the reasoning spirit which rejected with disdain the old
imaginative fables could not but descend at least as low as the rudiments of
liberal education. When the gravest writers, like Polybius and Strabo, find it
necessary to apologize to their more learned and thinking readers for the
introduction of those mythic legends which formed the creed of their ancestors,
and to plead the necessity of avoiding offence, because such tales are still
sacred among the vulgar, this deference shows rather the increasing indifference,
than the strength, of popular opinion. “ Historians,” says the former writer, “
must be pardoned, if, for the sake of maintaining piety among the many, they
occasionally introduce miraculous or fabulous tales; but they must not be
permitted 011 these points to run into extravagance.” “ Religion,” he declares,
in another passage, “ would perhaps be unnecessary in a commonwealth of wise
men. But since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires,
irrational passions, and violence, it is right to restrain it by the fear of
the invisible world, and such tragic terrors. Whence our ancestors appear to
have introduced notions concerning the gods, and opinions about the infernal
regions, not rashly or without consideration. Those rather act rashly and
inconsiderately who would expel them.” 2 “ It is impossible,”
observes the inquir
1 Quoted also by Neander from Plutarch. (Non poss. suav. viv. sec Epic.) I have
adopted Reiske’s reading of the latter clause.
2 Polyb. vi. 56.
ing geographer, “ to govern a mob of women, or the whole mixed multitude,
by philosophic reasoning, and to exhort them to piety, holiness, and faith : we
must also employ superstition with its fables and prodigies. For the thunder,
the Eegis, the trident, the torches, the serpents, the thyrsi, of the gods are
fables, as is all the ancient theology; but the legislature introduced these
things as bugbears to those who are children in understanding.” 1
In short, even when the Roman writers professed the utmost respect for the
religious institutions of their country, there was a kind of silent protest
against their sincerity. It was an evident, frequently an avowed, condescension
to the prejudices of the vulgar. Livy admires the wisdom of Numa, who introduced
the fear of the gods as a “most efficacious means of controlling an ignorant
and barbarous populace.”2 Even the serious Dionysius judges of
religion according to its usefulness, not according to its truth; as the wise
scheme of the legislator, rather than as the revelation of the Deity.3
Pausanias, while he is making a kind of religious survey of Greece, expressing
a grave veneration for all the temples and rites of antiquity, frequently
relating the miraculous intervention of the several deities,4 is
jealous and careful lest he should be considered a believer in the fables which
he relates.5 The natural consequence of this double doctrine was
not unforeseen. “ What! ” says the Academic in Cicero, “ when men maintain all
belief in the immortal gods to have been invented by wise men for the good of
the state, that religion might lead to their
1 Strabo, lib. i. p. 19. 2 H. R. i. 19.
8
Ant. Rom. ii. 8, 9. 4 Bceotiea, 25;
Laconiea, 4.
6 'Tovtov rbv 2x>yov, Kcil dffa koiKQTa
tlpTjrai, ovk ■vpaifiu,
jpaipo Si ov&v i/aaov. — Corinth, xvii. In another place, he repeat!
that he gives the popular legend as he finds it. — Aread. viii.
duty those who would not be led by reason, do they not sweep away the
very foundations of all religion ? ”1
The mental childhood of the human race was passing away; at least, it
had become wearied of its old toys.2 The education itself, by which,
according to these generally judicious writers, tho youthful mind was to be
impregnated with reverential feelings for the objects of national worship, must
have been coldly conducted by teachers conscious that they were practising a
pious fraud upon their disciples, and perpetually embarrassed by the necessity
of maintaining the gravity befitting such solemn subjects, and of suppressing
the involuntary smile which might betray the secret of their own impiety. One
class of fables seems to have been universally exploded even in the earliest
youth, — those which related to another life. The picture of the unrivalled
satirist may be overcharged ; but it corresponds strictly with the public language
of the orator, and the private sentence of the philosopher: —
The silent
realm of disembodied ghosts,
The frogs
that croak along the Stygian coasts,
The thousand
souls in one crazed vessel steered,
Not boys
believe, save boys without a beard.3
1 De Nat Deor. i. 42. Compare the chapter
of the De Civitate Dei (vi. 10), in which Augustine, after citing some
remarkable passages from Seneca, concludes: “ Sed ille quem philosophise quasi
liberum fecerat, quia illustria populi Romani senator erat, colebat quod
repudiabat, agebat quod arguebat, quod culpabat, adorabat.”
2 Gibbon has
a striking sentence in his juvenile Essai sur la Literature (Misc. Works, iv.
61): “Les Romains ^taient £clair£s: cependant ces m§n*es Romains ne furent pas
choqu^s de voir rdunir dans la personne de C^sar un dieu, un pretre, et un
athde.” He
adds atheist, as disbelieving, with the Epicureans, the providence of God.
8 Esse aliquid manes et subterranea regna,
Et contum, et Stygio ranas in gurgite nigras;
Atque nna transire yadum tot millia cymba
Nec pueri credunt nisi qui nondum sere
lavantur. — Fro Sat. ii. 149.
•*Nisi forte ineptiis ac fabulis ducimur, ut existimemus apud inferos
in>
Even the religious Pausanias speaks of the immortality of the soul as a
foreign doctrine introduced by the Chaldeans and the Magi, and embraced by some
of the Greeks, particularly by Plato.1 Pliny, whose Natural History
opens with a declaration that the universe is the sole Deity, devotes a
separate chapter to a contemptuous exposure of the idle notion of the immortality
of the soul, as a vision of human pride, and equally absurd, whether under the
form of existence in another sphere or under that of transmigration.2
We return, then, again to the question, What reReception of mained for
minds thus enlightened beyond the Keiigiona. poetic faith of their ancestors,
yet not ripe for philosophy ? How was the craving for religious excitement to
be appeased, which turned with dissatisfaction or disgust from its accustomed
nutriment ? Here is the secret of the remarkable union between the highest
reason and the most abject superstition which characterizes the age of
imperial Rome. Every foreign religion found proselytes in the capital of the
world: not only the pure and rational theism of the Jews, which had made a
progress, the extent of which it is among the most difficult questions in
history to estimate ; but the Oriental rites of Phrygia, and the Isiac and
Serapic worship of Egypt, which, in defiance of the edict of the magistrate 3
and the scorn of the philosopher, maintained their ground in the capital, and
were so widely propagated among the provinces that their vestiges may be traced
in the remote districts of
piorum
supplicia perferre .... quae si falsa sunt, id quod omnes intelli* gtmt.” —
Cic. pro Cluent. c. 61. “Nemo tam puer est ut Cerberum timeat, et tenebras et
larvarum babitum nudis ossibus coheerentem. Mors nos aut consumit aut emittit.”
— Sen. Ep. 24.
1 Messeniaca, c. xxxii. a
8 Seft ante,
p. 14.
Gaul1 and Britain;2 and, at a later period, the
reviving Mithriac Mysteries, which, in the same manner, made their way into the
western provinces of the empire.3 In the capital itself, every thing
that was new or secret or imposing found a welcome reception among a people
that listened with indifference to philosophers who reasoned, and poets who
embodied philosophy in the most attractive diction; for in Eome, poetry had
forsworn the alliance of the old imaginative faith. The irreligious system of
Buhemerus4 had found a translator in Ennius: that of Epicurus was
commended by the unrivalled powers of Lucretius. Virgil himself, who, as he
collected from all quar- Poetry ceasea
, , . p • ,
to be Reu
ters the beauties of ancient poetry, so he gious.
inlaid in his splendid tessellation the noblest images of the poetic
faith of Greece: yet, though at one moment he transfuses mythology into his
stately verse with all the fire of an ardent votary, at the next he appears as
a pantheist, and describes the Deity but
1 As late as the time of Julian, the son of
a German king had changed his barbarous name of Agenario for that of Serapion,
having heen instructed in certain mysteries in Gaul. — Amm. Marcell. xvi. c.
12.
2 I have been informed, that, in some
recent excavations at York, vestiges of Isiac worship have been discovered. The
passage in Pliny (xxx. 1) refers probably to Druidical magic. “Britannia
hodieque earn attonite celebrat tantis cseremoniis ut dedisse Persis videri
posset.”
8
Religions de 1’Antiquity, i. 363; and note 9, p. 743.
4 See quotation from Ennius, Cic. de
Divinat. ii. 50. Euhemems, either of
Messina
in Sicily or of Messene in Peloponnesus (he lived in the time of Cas-
sander,
King of Macedon), was of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy, and was
employed
on a voyage to the Red Sea by Cassander. But he was still more
celebrated
for his theologic innovation: he pretended to have discovered during this
voyage, on an island in the Eastern Ocean called Panchaia, a register of the
births and deaths of the gods inscribed on a golden column in the temple of the
Triphylian Jupiter. Hence he inferred that all the popular deities were mere
mortals, deified on account of their fame, or their benefactions to the hnman
race.—Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 42- Plut. de Isid. et Osir. p. 421. Brucfcer,
i. 604.
VOL.
I. 4
as the animating soul of the universe.1 An occasional fit of
superstition crosses over the careless and Epicurean apathy of Horace.2
Astrology and witchcraft3 led captive minds which boasted themselves
emancipated from the idle terrors of the avenging gods. In the Pharsalia of
Lucan, which manifestly soars far above the vulgar theology, where the lofty
Stoicism elevates the brave man who disdains, above the gods (vho flatter, the
rising fortunes of Cassar; yet, in the description of the witch Erictho evoking
the dead (the only purely imaginative passage in the whole rhetorical poem),
there is a kind of tremendous truth and earnestness, which show, that, if the
poet himself believed not “ the magic wonders which he drew,” at least he well
knew the terrors that would strike the age in which he wrote.
The old established traders in human credulity had almost lost their
occupation; but their place
Superstitions. .
.
was supplied by new empirics, who swarmed from all quarters. The oracles
were silent, while astrology seized the administration of the secrets of
futurity. Pompey and Crassus and Cassar all consulted the Chaldseans,4
whose flattering predictions
1
iEn. vi. 724. According to his Life by Donatus, Virgil was an Epicurean.
2 Insanientis dum sapientdaa
Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum Vela dare, atque iterare curs us Cogor relictos.
And this
because be heard thunder at noonday.
8
See the Canidia of Horace. According to Gibbon’s just criticism, a u
vulgar witch,” the Erictho of Lucan,is “tedious, disgusting,but sometimes
sublime.”—Note, ch. xxv. vol. iv. p. 239. It is the difference between the weird
sisters in Macbeth and Middleton’s “ Witch,” excepting of course the prolixity
of Lucan.
* Chaldeis sed major erit fiducia, quicquid
Dixerit astrologus, credent de fonte relatum Hammonis; quoniam Delphia oracula
cessant,
Et genus humanum damnat caligo futuri. ~ JUY. Ti. 563.
Chap. L
SUPERSTITIONS.
61
that they should die in old age, in their homes, in glory, so belied by
their miserable fates, still brought not the unblushing science into disrepute.
The repeated edicts -which expelled the astrologers and “ mathematicians ”
from Rome were no less an homage to their power over the public mind than
their recall, the tacit permission to return, or the return in dcfiance of the
insulted edict. Banished by Agrippa,1 by Augustus,2 by
Tiberius,3 by Claudius,4 they are described, in the
inimitable language of Tacitus, as a race who, treacherous to those in power,
fallacious to those who hope for power, are ever proscribed, yet will ever
remain.6 They were at length taken under the avowed patronage of
Yespasian and his successors.® All these circumstances were manifest
indications of the decay and of the approaching dissolution of the old
religion. The elegiac poet had read, not without sagacity, the signs of the
times.
None sought
the aid of foreign gods, while towed Before their native shrines the trembling
crowd.7
And thus, in this struggle between the old household deities of the
established faith and the half-domiciliated gods of the stranger, undermined
by philosophy, supplanted by still darker superstition, Polytheism
1 Dion. xlix. c. 43. 2
Dion. lvi. c. 25.
6 Tac. Ann. ii. 32. 4
Tac. Ann. xii. 52.
6 “Genus hominum, potentibus infidum, sperantibus
fallax, quod in civitate nostra et vetabitur semper et retinebitur.” — Tac. Hist.
i. 22.
6
Tac. Hist. ii. 78. Suet, in Yesp. Dio. lxviii. Snet. iu Dom. xiv., xv.
7
Nulli cura fuit externos qnaerere Divos,
Cum tremeret patrio pendula turba foro. — Prop.
iv. 1-17-
Propertius
may be considered, in one sense, the most religious poet of this period: his
verses teem with mythological allusion, but it is poetical ornament rather
than the natural language of piety; it has much of the artificial school of the
Alexandrian Callimachus, his avowed model, nothing of tba limplicity of faith
which breathed in Pindar and Sophocles.
seemed, as it were, to await its death-blow, and to be ready to surrender
its ancient honors to the conqueror whom Divine Providence should endow with
sufficient authority over the human mind to seize upon the abdicated supremacy.
Such is the state in which the ancient world leaves Revolution the mind
of man. On a sudden, a new era cffhriS?anfty. commences; a rapid yet
gradual revolution takes place in the opinions, sentiments, and principles of
mankind; the void is filled; the connection between religion and morals
re-established with an intimacy of union yet unknown. The unity of the Deity becomes,
not the high and mysterious creed of a privileged sacerdotal or intellectual
oligarchy, but the common property of all whose minds are fitted to receive it:
all religious distinctions are annihilated; the jurisdictions of all local
deities abolished; and, imperceptibly, the empire of Rome becomes one great
Christian commonwealth, which even sends out, as it were, its peaceful colonies
into regions beyond the limits of the imperial power. The characteristic distinction
of the general revolution is this: that the physical agency of the Deity seems
to recede from the view, while the spiritual character is more distinctly
unfolded ; or, rather, the notion of the Divine Power is merged in the more
prevailing sentiment of Ms moral Goodness. The remarkable passage in the Jewish
history, in which God is described as revealing himself to Elijah, “neither in
the strong wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small
voice,” may be considered, we will not say prophetic, but singularly
significant of the sensations to he excited in the human mind by the successiva
revelations of the Deity.
The doctrine of the immortality of the soul partook in the same change
with the notion of the Immortality Deity; it became at once popular,
simple, ot thc SouI' and spiritual. It was disseminated
throughout all orders of society: it admitted no aristocratic elysium of heroes
and demigods, like that of the early Greeks ;1 it separated itself
from that earlier and widely prevalent form, which it assumed in the
theogonies of the Nature-worship, where the soul, emanating from the Source of
Being, after one or many transmigrations was re-absorbed into the Divine Essence.
It announced the resurrection of all mankind to judgment, and the re-union of
the spirit to a body, which, preserving the principle of identity,
nevertheless should be of a purer and more imperishable nature. Such are the
great primary principles, which became incorporated with the mind of man; and,
operating on all human institutions, on the common sentiments of the whole
race, form the great distinctive difference between the ancient and the
modern, the European and the Asiatic world. During the dark ages, there was a
strong re-action of barbarism: in its outward form, Christianity might appear
to recede towards the polytheism of older times; and, as has been shown, not
in a philosophic, but in a narrow polemic spirit of hostility to the Church of
Rome, many of the rites and usages of heathenism were admitted into the
1 It i3 curious to see, in another
mythology, the same martial aristocratic spirit which, in the earlier
religions, excluded the a^hnjva Kaprjva, the inglorious vulgar, from the seats
of bliss, where Achilles and Diomed pursued their warlike amusements. It was
not proper to appear poor before Odin; and it is veiy doubtful whether a poor
man was thought worthy of any place in his dwellings, unless be came from the
field of battle in the bloody train of some great chieftain. Slaves, at least,
were distinctly excluded, and, after death, turned away from the doors of
Valhalla. — Geijer, Hist- of Sweden Germ. Transl. i. 103.
Christian system ; yet the indelible difference between the two periods
remained. A higher sense and meaning was infused into these forms: God was
considered in his moral rather than his physical attributes, as the Lord of the
future as much or eveu more than of the present world. The saints and angels,
who have been compared to the intermediate deities of the older superstitions,
had nevertheless, besides their tutelar power against immediate accidents and
temporal calamities, an important influence over the state of the soul in the
world to come: they assumed the higher office of ministering the hopes of the
future, in a still greater degree than the blessings of the present life.
To the more complete development of this fact we shall descend in the
course of our History, which will Desim of endeavor to trace all the modifications
of this History. Christianity, by which it accommodated itself to the spirit of
successive ages ; and by this apparently almost skilful, but in fact necessary,
condescension to the predominant state of moral culture, of which itself formed
a constituent element, maintained its uninterrupted dominion. It is the
author’s object, the difficulty of which he himself fully appreciates, to
portray the genius of the Christianity of each successive age, in connection
with that of the age itself; entirely to discard all polemic views; to mark the
origin and progress of all the subordinate diversities of belief, their origin
in the circumstances of the place or time in which they appeared, their
progress from their adaptar tion to the prevailing state of opinion or
sentiment, rather than directly to confute error or to establish truth; in
short, to exhibit the reciprocal influence of civilization on Christianity, of
Christianity on civilization. To the accomplishment of such a scheme he is
well aware, that besides the usual high qualifications of a faithful
historian is requisite, in an especial manner, the union of true philosophy
with perfect charity, if, indeed, they are not one and the same. This calm,
impartial, and dispassionate tone he will constantly endeavor — he dares
scarcely hope, with such 'warnings on every side of involuntary prejudice and
unconscious prepossession—uniformly to maintain. In the honesty of his purpose
he will seek his excuse for all imperfection or deficiency in the execution of
his scheme. Nor is he aware that he enters on ground pre-occupied by any
writers of established authority, at least in our own country, where the
History of Christianity has usually assumed the form of a History of the
Church, more or less controversial, and confined itself to annals of the
internal feuds and divisions in the Christian community, and the variations in
doctrine and discipline, rather than to its political and social influence.
Our attention, on the other hand, will be chiefly directed to its effects on
the social and even political condition of man, as it extended itself
throughout the Roman world, and at length entered into the administration of
government and of law; the gradual manner in which it absorbed and incorporated
into the religious commonwealth the successive masses of population, which,
after having overthrown the temporal polity of Rome, were subdued to the
religion of the conquered people; the separation of the human race into the
distinct castes of the clergy and laity, — the former at first an aristocracy,
afterwards a despotic monarchy; as Europe sank back into barbarism, the
imaginative state of the human mind, the formation of a new poetic faith, a
mythology, and a complete system of symbolical worship; the
interworking of Christianity with barbarism, till they Christianity
slowly grew into a kind of semi-barbarous Form in Dif- heroic period, — that of
Christian chivalry;
ferent
Periods r D .
of civilization, the gradual expansion 01 the system, with the expansion
of the human mind; and the slow, perhaps not yet complete, certainly not
general, development of a rational and intellectual religion. Throughout his
work the author will equally, or, as his disposition inclines, even more
diligently, labor to show the good, as well as the evil, of each phasis of
Christianity; since it is his opinion, that, at every period, much more is to
be attributed to the circumstances of the age, to the collective operation of
certain principles which grew out of the events of the time, than to the
intentional or accidental influence of any individual or class of men.
Christianity, in short, may exist in a certain form in a nation of savages as
well as in a nation of philosophers ;1 yet its specific character
will almost entirely depend upon the character of the people who are its
votaries.2 It must be considered, therefore, in constant connection
with that character. It will darken with the darkness, and brighten with the
light, of each succeeding century : in an ungenial time, it will recede so far
from its genuine and essential nature as scarcely to retain
1 Euseb. i. p. 20.
2 Compare a very curious passage
which expresses the same opinion in the commencement of the Ecc. Hist, of
Eusebius: Ovk fjv ttq oioc
te ttjv tov Xplotov nai>oo<j)ovy Kal
novapeTov <5idaanaTuav b TvaXai tqv
dvdpuiruv
& of. Read the whole. By the accounts
of Bruce, Salt, and, recently, of Pearce, the Christianity of Abyssinia may be
adduced as an instance of the state to which it
may be degraded among a people at a very low state of barbarism. All later
accounts of Abyssinian Christianity fully confirm this. The conversions among
the South-Sea Islanders, it will of course be remembered, were effected, and
aro still superintended, by strangers in a very differ* ent stage of
civilization. .
any sign of
its Divine original; it will advance with the advancement of human nature, and
keep up the moral to the utmost height of the intellectual culture of man.
While,
however, Christianity necessarily submitted to all these modifications, I
strongly protest Christianity
7 • • i? i notself-de-
against the
opinion, that the origin of the sloped, religion can be attributed, according
to a theory adopted by many foreign writers, to the gradual and spontaneous
development of the human mind.1 Christ is as much beyond his own age
as his own age is beyond the darkest barbarism. The time, though fitted to
receive, could not, by any combination of prevalent opinions or by any
conceivable course of moral improvement, have produced Christianity. The conception
of the human character of Jesus, and the simple principles of the new religion,
as they were in direct opposition to the predominant opinions and temper of his
own countrymen, so they stand completely alone in the history of our race;
and, as imaginary no less than as real, altogether transcend the powers of
man’s moral conception. Supposing the Gospels purely fictitious, or that, like
the Cyropsedia of Xenophon, they embody on a groundwork of fact the highest
moral and religious notions to which man had attained, and show the utmost
ideal perfection of the Divine and human nature, they can be accounted for,
according to my judgment, on none of the ordinary principles of human nature.2
When we behold Christ standing in the midst of the wreck of old religious
1 This theory is sketched by no means with
an unfair though unfriendly hand by Chateaubriand, Etudes sur l’Histoire; a
book of which, I am constrained to add, the meagre performance contrasts
strangely with the loftiness of its pretensions.
2 “ Dirons
nous que 1’histoire de 1’Evangile est invents k plaisir ? Ce
n’est
institutions,
and building, or rather at one word commanding to arise, the simple and
harmonious structure of the new faith, which seems equally adapted for all
ages, — a temple to which nations in the highest degree of civilization may
bring their offerings of pure hearts, virtuous dispositions, universal charity,
— our natural emotion is the recognition of the Divine goodness in the
promulgation of this beneficent code of religion; and adoration of that Being
in whom that Divine goodness is thus embodied and made comprehensible to the
faculties of man. In the language of the apostle, “ God is in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself.”1
pas ainsi qu’on invents: et les fkits de Socrate, dont personne ne
doute, sont bien moins attests que ceux de Jdsus Christ. An fbnd c’est reculer
la difficult^ sans la d^truire; il seroit plus inconcevable que plusieurs
homines d’accord eussent fobriqu(5 ce livre, qu’il ne l’est qu’un seul en a
fourai le sujet Et l’Evangile a des caractferes de v£rit£ si frappans, si
parfaitement inimitables, que l’inventeur en seroit plus dtonnant que le
h^ros.” — Rousseau Emile, liv. iv.
1 a
Cor. v. 1ft.
Life of Jesus
Christ—State of Judaea—The Belief in the Messiah
The history of Christianity without the life of its
Divine Author appears imperfect and incom- Life of Chri3t plete,
particularly considering the close connection of that life, not only with the
more Chriatianity- mysterious doctrines, but with the practical, and
even political influence of the religion; for even its apparently most
unimportant incidents have, in many cases, affected most deeply the opinions
and feelings of the Christian world. The isolation of the history of Christ in
a kind of sacred seclusion has no doubt a beneficial effect on the piety of the
Christian, which delights in contemplating the Saviour undisturbed and uncontaminated
by less holy associations; but it has likewise its disadvantages, in disconnecting
his life from the general history of mankind, of which it forms an integral and
essential part. Had the life of Christ been more generally considered as
intimately and inseparably connected with the progress and development of
human affairs, with the events and opinions of his time, works would not have
been required to prove his existence, scarcely perhaps the authenticity of his
history. The real historical evidence of Christianity is the absolute
necessity of his life, to fill up the void in the annals of mankind, to account
for the effects of his religion in the subsequent history of man.
Yet
to write the life of Christ, though at first sight it may appear the most easy,
is perhaps the its Difficulty. mQst task
which an historian can
undertake.
Many Lives have been composed with a devotional, none, at least to my
knowledge, in this country,1 with an historic design: none in which
the author has endeavored to throw himself completely back into the age when
Jesus of Nazareth began to travel as the teacher of a new religion through the
villages of Galilee: none which has attempted to keep up a perpetual reference
to the circumstances of the times, the habits and national character of the
people, and the state of public feeling; and thus, identifying itself with the
past, to show the origin and progress of the new faith, as it slowly developed
itself, and won its way through the adverse elements which it encountered in
Judaea and the adjacent provinces. To depart from the evangelic simplicity in
the relation of the facts would not merely offend the reverential feelings of
the reader, but tend likewise to destroy the remarkable harmony between the
facts and doctrines which characterizes the narrative of the Gospels, and on
which their authenticity, as genuine historical documents, might, to an
intelligent mind, be safely rested. The three first Gospels, unless written at
a very early period, could scarcely have escaped the controversial or at least
argumentative tone, which enters into the later Christian writings, and with
which the relation of St. John is imbued.2 The plan, then, which the
author will pursue, will be to presume, to a certain degree, on the reader’s
acquaintance with the subject on which he enters: he will not think it
necessary to
1 See Appendix I., on the recent Lives of
Christ.
2 See Appendix II., on the Origin of the
GosDels.
relate at
length all the discourses, or even all the acts, of Christ, but rather to
interweave the historic illustration with the main events, disposed, as far as
possible, in the order of time, and to trace the effect which each separate
incident, and the whole course of the life of Jesus, may be supposed to have
produced upon the popular mind. In short, it will partake, in some degree, of
the nature of an historical comment on facts which it will rather endeavor to
elucidate than to draw out to their full length.
The days of
the elder Herod were drawing to a close. His prosperous and magnificent reign
was state of ending in darkness and misery, such as the 2^ the deepest tragedy
has rarely ventured to im- Great' agine. His last years had revealed
the horrible, the humiliating secret, that the son, at whose instigation he had
put to death the two noble and popular princes, his children by Mariamne the
Asmonean, had, almost all his life, been overreaching him in that dark policy
of which he esteemed himself the master; and now, as a final return for his
unsuspecting confidence, had conspired to cut short the brief remainder of his
days. Almost the last, and the most popular, exercise of Herod’s royal
authority was to order the execution of the perfidious Antipater. Fearful
times! intrigues ana
. „ , „ , Death of
when the
condemnation of a son by a father, Antipater, and that father an odious and
sanguinary tyrant, could coincide with the universal sentiment of the people!
The attachment of the nation to the reigning family might have been secured, if
the sons of Mariamne, the heiress of the Asmonean line, had survived to claim
the succession. The foreign and Idumean origin of the father might have been
forgotten in the national and splendid descent of the mother. There was, it
■would
seem, a powerful Herodian party, attached to the fortunes of the ruling house;
but the body of the nation now looked with ill-concealed aversion to the
perpetuation of the Idumean tyranny in the persons
„ * of the
sons of Herod. Yet, to those who
Sons
of ...
Her°d.
contemplated only the political signs of the times, nothing remained but the
degrading alternative, either to submit to the line of Herod, or to sink into a
Roman province. Such was to be the end of their long ages of national glory,
such the hopeless terminar tion of the national independence. But notwithstanding
the progress of Grecian opinions and manners, with which the politic Herod had
endeavored to counterbalance the turbulent and unruly spirit of the religious
party, the great mass of the people, obstinately wedded to the law and to the
institutions of their fathers, watched with undisguised jealousy the dena
tionalizing proceedings of their king. This stern and inextinguishable
enthusiasm had recently broken out into active resistance, in the conspiracy to
tear down the golden eagle, which Herod had suspended over the gate of the
Temple.1 The signal for this daring act had been a rumor of the
king’s death; and the terrific vengeance, which, under a temporary show of
moderation, Herod had wreaked on the offenders, the degradation of the
high-priest, and the execution of the popular teachers, who were accused of
having instigated the insurrection, could not but widen the breach between the
dying sovereign and the people. The greater part of the nation looked to the
death of Herod with a vague hope of liberation and independence, which struck
in with the more peculiar cause of excitement predominant in the general mind.
1
Hist, of the Jews, vol. ii. p. 87.
For the
principle of this universal ferment lay deeper than in the impatience of a
tyrannical government, which burdened the people with intol- General
erable exactions, or the apprehension of of^cetation
national degradation if Judaea should be re- Messiah- duced to the dominion
of a Roman proconsul. It was the confidence in the immediate coming of the
Messiah, which was working with vague and mysterious agitar tion in the hearts
of all orders.1 The very danger to which Jewish independence was
reduced, was associated with this exalted sentiment; the nearer the ruin, the
nearer the restoration of their Theocracy. For there is no doubt, that among
other predictions, according to the general belief, which pointed to the
present period, a very ancient interpretation of the prophecy, which declared
that the sceptre, the royal dominion, should not depart from the race of Israel
until the coming of the Shiloh, one of the titles uniformly attributed to the
Messiah, connected the termination of the existing polity with the manifestation
of
1 Whoever is curious in such inquiries will
find a fearful catalogue of calamities which were to precede, according to the
Rabbinical authorities, the coming of the Messiah, either in Lightfoot’s
Harmony {vol. v. p. 180; 8vo edit.); or in Schoetgen, Horse Hebraic^, vol. ii.
p. 509; or Eisenmenger, Das entdecktes Jndenthum, ii. p. 711. The notion may
have been grounded on the last chapter of the Prophecy of Daniel. Compare
Bertholdt, c. 13. The Rabbins deliver, “ In the first year of that week (of years)
that the Son of David is to come shall that be fulfilled ‘ I will rain upon one
city, but I will not rain upon another.’” — Amos iv. 7. “ The second year, the
arrows of famine shall be sent forth. The third, the famine shall be grievous,
and men and women and children, holy men and men of good works, shall die; and
there shall be a forgetfulness of the Law among those that learn it. The fourth
year, fulness and not fulness. The fifth year, great fulness: they shall eat
and drink, and rejoice; and the Law shall return to its scholars. The sixth
year, voices.” (The gloss is, “A fame shall be spread that the Son of David
comes,” or “They shall sound with the trumpet.”) “The seventh year, wars; and,
in the going out of that year, the Son of David shall come.” *— Ughtfoot, xi.
421.
the
Deliverer.1 This expectation of a wonderful revolution, to be
wrought2 by the sudden appearance oi some great mysterious person,
had been so widely disseminated as to excite the astonishment, perhaps the jealousy,
of the Romans, whose historians, Suetonius and Tacitus, as is well known, bear
witness to the fact. “ Among many,” writes the latter, “ there was a
persuasion, that in the ancient books of the priesthood it was written, that,
at this precise time, the Bast should become mighty, and that the sovereigns of
the world should issue from. Judaea.”8 “In the East, an ancient and
consistent opinion prevailed, that it was fated there should issue at this
time, from Judaea, those who should obtain universal dominion.”4
Yet no
question is more difficult than to ascertain Nature of the the origin, the
extent, the character, of this
belief
in the . , _
Messiah.
belief, as it prevailed at the time ox our bar viour’s coming,— how far it had
spread among the surrounding nations, or how far, on the other hand, the
original Jewish creed, formed from the authentic prophetical writings, had
become impregnated with Oriental or Alexandrian notions. It is most probable,
that there was no consistent, uniform, or authorized opinion on the subject.
All was vague and indefinite; and in this vagueness and indefiniteness lay much
of The proph- its power over the general mind.5 Whatever purer or
loftier notions concerning the great Deliverer and Restorer might be imparted
to wise and
1 Casaubon,
Exercit. anti-Baron, ii.
2 2 Esdras
vi. 25. 8 Tac. Hist. v. 13. 4 Suet. Ves. p. 4.
e
The Jewish opinions concerning the Messiah have been examined with
great
diligence and accuracy by Professor Bertholdt, in his Christologia Judse-
orum. Bertholdt
is what may be called a moderate Rationalist. To his work,
and to
Liglitfoot, Schoetgen, Meuschen, and Eisenmenger, I am indebted for
most of my
Rabbinical quotations.
holy men, in
whatever sense we understand that “Abraham rejoiced to see the day” of the
Messiah, the intimations on this subject in the earlier books of the Old
Testament, though distinctly to be traced along its whole course, are few,
brief, and occurring at long intervals. But from the time, and during the whole
period, of the Prophets, this mysterious Being becomes gradually more
prominent. The future dominion of some great king, to descend from the line of
David, to triumph over all his enemies, and to establish an universal kingdom
of peace and happiness, of which the descriptions of the golden age in the
Greek poets are but a faint and unimaginative transcript: the promise of the
Messiah, in short, comes more distinctly forward. As early as the first
chapters of Isaiah, he appears to assume a title and sacred designation, which at
least approaches near to that of the Divinity;1 and in the later
prophets, not merely does this leading characteristic maintain its place, but
under the splendid poetical imagery, drawn from existing circumstances, there
seems to lie hid a more profound meaning, which points to some great and
general moral revolution to be achieved by this mysterious Being.
But
their sacred books, the Law and the Prophets, were not the clear and unmingled
source of . the Jewish opinions on this all-absorbing sub- '
ject. Over
this, as over the whole system of the Law, tradition had thrown a veil; and it
is this traditionary notion of the Messiah which it is necessary here to
1 Such is the opinion of Rosenmiiller (on
Isa. ix. 5: compare likewise on Ps. xlv. 7). On a point much contested by
modern scholars, Gesenius, in his note on the same passages, espouses the
opposite opinion. Neither of these authors, it may be added, discusses the
question on theological, but purely on historical and critical grounds.
W)Ti,
I, 5
develop: but
from whence tradition had derived its apparently extraneous and independent
notions, becomes a much more deep and embarrassing question.1 It is
manifest from the Evangelic history,2 that although there was no
settled or established creed upon the subject, yet there was a certain
conventional language: particular texts of the sacred writings were universally
recognized, as bearing reference to the Messiah; and there were some few
characteristic credentials of his title and office, which would have commanded
universal assent.
There are two
quarters from which the Jews, as they Foreign con- ceased to be an insulated
people, confined in
flections
of t .
the jews. the
narrow tract of Palestine, and by their captivity and migrations became more
mingled with other races, might insensibly contract new religious notions, —
the East and the West, Babylonia and Alexandria. The latter would be the
chief, though not, perhaps, the only, channel through which the influence
1 Bertholdt, p. 8.
2 The brief intimations in the Gospels are
almost the only absolutely certain authorities for the nature of this helief,
at that particular period, except, perbaps, the more genuine part of the
Apocrypha. Josephus, though he acknowledges the existence and the influence of this
remarkable feature in the national character, is either inclined to treat it as
a. popular delusion, or to ■warp it to his own purposes, — its fulfilment
in the person of Vespasian. For his own school, Philo is a valuable witness;
but, among the Alexandrian Jews, the belief in a personal Messiah was much more
faint and indistinct than in Palestine. The Rabbinical books, even the oldest
Targumin, or comments on the Sacred Writings, are somewhat suspicious, from
the uncertainty of their date; still, in this as m other points of coincidence,
where their expressions are similar to those of the Christian records, there
seems so manifest an improbability that these should have been adopted after
the two religions had assumed an hostile position towards each other, that they
may be fairly considered as vestiges of an earlier system of opinions, retained
from ancient reverence, and indelible even hy implacable animosity. It is far
more likely that Christianity should speak the current language of the time than
that the Synagogue should interpolate their own traditionary records with terms
or notions borrowed from the Church.
of Grecian
opinions would penetrate into Palestine;1 and of tlie Alexandrian
notions of the Messiah we shall hereafter adduce two competent representatives,
—the author of the Book of Wisdom, and Philo. But the East, no doubt, made a
more early, profound, and lasting impression on the popular mind of the Jews.
Unfortunately, in no part does history present us with so melancholy a blank as
in that of the great _ Babylonian settlement of the people of Israel.
Yet its
importance in the religious, and even in the civil, affairs of the nation
cannot but have been very considerable. It was only a small part of the nation
which returned with the successive remigration's under Ezra and Nehemiah to
their native land; and, though probably many of the poorer classes had remained
be hind at the period of the Captivity, and many more returned singly or in
small bodies, yet, on the other hand, it is probable, that the tide of
emigration, which, at a later time, was perpetually flowing from the valleys of
Palestine into Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and even more remote regions, would
often take the course of the Euphrates, and swell the numbers of the Mesopotamian
colony.2 In the great contest between Alexander and the Persian
monarchy, excepting from some rather suspicious stories in Josephus, we hear
less than we might expect of this race of Jews.3 But as we ap
1 Even as early as the reign of Antiochns
the Great, certain Jews had attempted to introduce Grecian manners, and had
built a Grecian school or gymnasium at Jerusalem. — 1 Macc. i. 11,16; 2 Macc.
ii. 4,11,12.
2 I have examined this question much more
at length, with the aid of some recent Jewish writers, in the new edition of
the History of the Jews.
8 There may be truth in the observation of St. Croix:
“Les Grecs et les Remains avoient tant de haine et de m£pris pour le peuple
Juif, qu’ils affee- toient n’en pas parler dans leurs Merits.” — Historiens
d’Alex. p. 555. This, however, would apply only to the later
writers, which are all we now possess ; but, if in the cotemporary historians
there had been much mor 3, it would
proach the
era of Christianity, and somewhat later, they emerge rather more into notice.
While the Jews were spreading in the West, and no doubt successfully
disseminating their Monotheism in many quarters, in Babylonia their proselytes
were kings; and the later Jewish Temple beheld an Eastern queen (by a singular
coincidence, of the same name with the celebrated mother of Constantine, the
patroness of Christia,n Jerusalem) lavishing her wealth on the structure on
Mount Moriah, and in the most munificent charity to the poorer inhabitants of
the city. The name of Helena, Queen of the Adiabeni, was -long dear to the
memory of the Jews; and her tomb was one of the most remarkable monuments near
the walls of the city. Philo not only asserts that Babylon and other Eastern
satrapies were full of his countrymen,1 but intimates that the
apprehension of their taking up arms in behalf of their outraged religion, and
marching upon Palestine, weighed upon the mind of Petronius, when commanded, at
all hazards, to place the statue of Caligula in the temple.2 It
appears from some hints of Josephus, that, during the last war, the revolted
party entertained great hopes of succor
probably, at
least if to the credit of his countrymen, have been gleaned by Josephus.
1 See on the numbers of the Jews in the
Asiatic provinces, particularly Armenia, at a later period (the conquest of
Armenia by Sapor, a.d. 367), St. Martin’s additions to Le Beau’s Hist, du Bas
Empire. The death of this valuahle writer, it is to he feared, will deprive the
learned world of his promised work on the History of the Birth and Death of
Jesus Christ, which was to contain circumstantial accounts of the Jews beyond
the Euphrates.
Of the
different races of Jews mentioned in the Acts as present in Jerusalem, four
are from this quarter, — Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia.
2 Leg. ad Caiuxn, vol. ii. p. 678, edit. Mangey.
from that
quarter;1 and there is good ground for supposing that the final
insurrection in the time of Hadrian was connected with a rising in Mesopotamia.2
At the same period, the influence of this race of Jews on the religious
character of the people is no less manifest. Here was a chief scene of the
preaching of the great apostle;8 and we cannot but think, that its
importance in early Christian history, which has usually been traced almost
exclusively in the West, has been much underrated. Hence came the. mystic
Cabala 4 of the Jews, the chief parent of those Gnostic opinions,
out of which grew the heresies of the early Church: here the Jews, under the
Prince of the Captivity, held their most famous schools, where learning was
embodied in the Babylonian Talmud; and here the most influential heresiarch,
Manes, attempted to fuse into one system the elements of
1 Dion (or Xiphilin) asserts that they
received considerable succors from the East. — L. Ixvi. c. 4.
2 Hist, of Jews, ii. 422, &c.
8
Nothing but the stubborn obstinacy of controversy could have thrown a donbt on
the plain date in the First Epistle of St. Peter (v. 13). Philo in two places
(ii. pp. 678, 587), Josephus in one (Ant- xviii. 9, 8), expressly name Babylon
as the habitation of the great Eastern settlement. It is not certain whether
the city was then entirely destroyed (Gesenius on Isa. xiii. 22); but, in fact,
the name was extended to the province or satrapy. But it was equally the object
of the two great conflicting parties in Christianity to identify Rome with
Babylon. This fact established, the Roman Catholic had an unanswerable argument
to prove the contested point of St. Peter’s residence in the Western
metropolis: Babylon therefore was decided to mean pagan Rome. The Protestant at
once concurred; for, if Rome was Babylon, it was the mystic spiritual Babylon
of the Apocalypse. The whole third chapter ©f the Second Epistle of St. Peter
(assuming its authenticity, and my view rather favors that authenticity)
appears to me full of Oriental allusions; and the example of Balaam seems
peculiarly appropriate, if written in that region.
Lncan’s w
Cumque superba foret Babylon spolianda ” may, indeed, be mere poetic license,
or may allude to Selencia.
4
Cabala is used here in its most extensive sense. See Chiarini, p. 97. In this
sense it is used by Maimonides. See Hist, of Jews.
Magianism,
Cabalism, and Christianity. Having thus rapidly traced the fortunes of this
great Jewish colony, we must re-asceud to the time of its first establishment.
Prom a very
early period, the Jews seem to have possessed a Cabala, a traditionary comment
or interpretation of the sacred writings. Whether it existed before the
Captivity, it is impossible to ascertain: it is certain that many of their
books, even those written by distinguished prophets, Nathan and Gad and Iddo,
were lost at that disastrous time. But whether they carried any accredited
tradition to Babylonia, it seems evident, from the Oriental cast which it
assumed, that they either brought it from thence on their return to their
native land, or received it subsequently during their intercourse with their
Eastern brethren.1 Down to the Captivity, the Jews of Palestine had
been in contact only with the religions of the neighboring nations, which,
however differently modified, appear to have been essentially the same, — a
sort of Nature-worship, in which the host of Heaven, especially the sun aud
moon, under different Syrian namesf Baal and Moloch, Astarte and
Mylitta, Religions. and probably as symbols or representatives of
the active and passive powers of Nature, no doubt with some distinction of
their attributes, were the predominant objects. These religions had loug degenerated
into cruel or licentious superstitions; and the Jews, in falling off to the idolatry
of their neighbors, or introducing foreign rites into their own religious
system, not merely offended against the great primal distinction of their
faith, the Unity of the Godhead, but sunk from the pure, humane, and
comparatively
1 Mosheim, De Rebus Christ, ii. 18.
civilized
institutes of their lawgiver, to the loose and sanguinary usages of barbarism.
In the East, 0( however, they encountered a religion of a far Persia-
nobler and more regular structure:1 a religion which offered no
temptation to idolatrous practices; for the Magian rejected, with the devout
abhorrence of the followers of Moses, the exhibition of the Deity in the human
form; though it possessed a rich store of mythological and symbolical figures,
singularly analogous to those which may be considered the poetic machinery of
the later Hebrew prophets.2 The religion of Persia seems to have
held an intermediate rank between the Pantheism of India, where the whole
universe emanated from the Deity, and was finally to be re-absorbed into the
Deity, and the purer Theism of the Jews, which asserted the one omnific
Jehovah, and seemed to place a wide and impassable interval between the nature
of the Creator and that of the created being. In the Persian system, the
Creation owed its existence to the conflicting powers of evil and good. These
were subordinate to, or proceeding from, the Great Primal Cause (Zeruane
Akerene), Time without bounds,3 which, in
1 “In Asia Persamm religionem cseteris esse
nobiliorem.”—Mosheim, Inst. p. 58, and Grot, de Ter. ii. 10.
2 This, it may he observed, has no
connection whatever with the original
ity
or authority of these predictions. It should be borne in mind, that, in these
visions,
it is the moral or religious meaning alone which can he the object of
faith,
not the figures through which that meaning is conveyed. There is no
reason
why the images of Daniel and Ezekiel should not be derived from, or
assimilate
to, the prevalent forms around them, as well as those of the rustic Amos be
chiefly drawn from pastoral or rural life. See, e.g., Chiarini’s curious
theory about the chariot of Ezekiel. Preface to Talmud, pp. 90 and 101, Compare
Hist, of the Jews and the quotations in the notes.
8
So translated hy Du Perron and Kleuker. There is a learned dissertation of
Foucher on this subject. — Acad, des Ins. vol. xxix. According to Bohlen, it is
analogous to the Sanscrit Sarvam akaranam, the Uncreated Whole; according to
Fred. Schlegel, Sarvam akharyam, the Unum Indivisi
fact appears,
as Gibbon observes, rather as a metaphysical abstraction than as an active and
presiding deity. The Creation was at once the work and the dominion of the two
antagonist creators, who had balanced against each other in perpetual conflict
a race of spiritual and material beings, light and darkness, good and evil.
This Magianism, subsequent to the Jewish Captivity,1 and during the
residence of the captives in Mesopotamia, either spread, with the conquests of
the Persians, from the regions farther to the east,— Aderbi- jan and Bactria,
or was first promulgated by Zoroaster, who is differently represented as the
author or as the reformer of the faith. From the remarkable allusions or points
of coincidence between some of the Magian tenets and the Sacred Writings,2
Hyde and Prideaux labored to prove that Zoroaster3 had been a pupil
of Daniel, and derived those notions, which seem more nearly allied to the
purer Jewish faith, from his intercourse with the Hebrew prophet, who held a
high station under the victorious Medo-Persian monarchy.4
bile- I
cannot quite understand Dr. Haag on this suhject. He considers (p. 21) that
this notion owes its rise to Anquetil du Perron’s ignorance of the Zend
grammar; yet (p. 264) he acknowledges that the doctrine of Zarvam akara- nam
was commonly believed in Persia during the times of the Sassanids, and is
accepted by all modern doctors as an incontrovertible fact (p. 264). Compare
the Greek and Armenian accounts (pp. 9,10). Dr. Haag seems to think this a
heresy; that Zoroaster’s one original creed was Monotheism (Ahura Masdao). —
The One God, p. 256. But I think that he hardly proves his point.
1 The appearance of the Magian order,
hefore the conquest of Babylon by the Medo-Persian Kings, i9 an extremely
difficult question. Nebuchadnezzar’s army was attended (Jer. xxix. 3) hy
Nergal-sharezer, the Rabmag, ^ ^ (Archimagus). Compare Bertholdt, Daniel,
Excurs. iii.
2 Isa. xlvii. 7,
s The name of
Zoroaster (Zerotoash) has heen deduced from words signifying “the star of
gold,” or “the star of splendor,” and mav have been a title ©r appellative.
4 The
hypothesis which places Zoroaster under the reign of Darius Hy*-
But, in fact,
there is such an originality and completeness in the Zoroastrian system, and in
its completeness leading principles, especially that of the an- system,
tagonistic powers of good and evil, it departs so widely from the ancient and
simple Theism of the Jews, as clearly to indicate an independent and peculiar
sourcc, at least in its more perfect development; if it is not, as we are
inclined to believe, of much more ancient date, and native to a region much
farther to the east than the Persian court, where Zoroaster, according to one
tradition, might have had intercourse, in his youth, with the prophet Daniel.
If, as
appears to be the general opinion of the Con tinental writers who have most
profoundly TheZen(la_ investigated the subject, we have authentic Testa-
remains, or at least records, which, if of later date, contain the true principles
of Magianism in the Liturgies and Institutes of the Zendavesta;1 it
is by no
taspes,
identified with the Gushtasp of Persian mythological history, is maintained by
Hyde, Prideaux, Anquetil dn Perron, Kleuker, Herder, Goerres, Malcolm, Yon
Hammer, and apparently by De Guigniaut. The silence of Herodotus appears to me
among the strongest objections to this view.
Foncher,
Tychsen, Heeren, and recently Holty, identify Gushtasp with Cyaxares I., and
place the religious revolution under the previous Median dynasty.
A theory
which throws Zoroaster much higher up into antiquity is developed with great
ability by Rhode, in his Heilige Sage. The earlier date of the Persian prophet
has likewise been maintained by Moyle, Gibbon, and Vol- ney.
These views
may in some degree be reconciled by the supposition that it was a reformation,
not a primary development, of the religion which took place under the
Medo-Persian or the Persian monarchy. The elements of the faith and the caste
of the Magi were, I should conceive, earlier. The inculcation of agricultural
habits on a people emerging from the pastoral life, so well developed by
Heeren, seems to indicate a more ancient date. Consult
also Gesenius cn Isa. lxv. 5; Constant sur la Religion, ii. 187.
1
It may be necessary, in this country, briefly to state the question as to the
authenticity or value of these documents. They were brought from the East by
that singular adventurer, Anquetil du Perron. Sir \V. Jones, in a.
letter, not
the most successful of the writings of that excellent aud accomplished man,
heing a somewhat stiff and labored imitation of the easy irony of Voltaire,
threw a shade of suspicion over the character of Du Perron, which, in England,
has never heen dispelled, and, except among Oriental scholars, has attached to
all his publications. Abroad, however, the antiquity of the Zendavesta, at
least its value as a trustworthy record of the Zoroastrian tenets, has been
generally acknowledged. If altogether spurious, those works must be considered
as forgeries by Du Perron. But, I., they are too incomplete and imperfect for
forgeries: if it had been worth Du Perron’s while to fabricate the Institutes of
Zoroaster, we should, no doubt, have had something more elaborate than several
books of prayers and treatises of different ages, from which it required his
own industry and that of his German translator, Kleu- ker, to form a complete
system. II. Du Perron must have forged the language in which the hooks are
written, as well as the hooks themselves. But the Zend is universally admitted
by the great Orientalists and historians of language to he a genuine and very
curious branch of the Eastern dialects (See Bopp, Vergleichende Grammatik.) It
should be added, that the publication of the Zendavesta in the original has
been commenced by M. Bournouf in Paris, and by M. Olshausen in Germany.
III. These documents may be considered as more
modem compilations, of little greater authority than the Sadder, which Hyde
translated from the modern Persian. That they are of the age of Zoroaster, it
may be difficult to prove; but their internal evidence, and their coincidence
with the other notices of the Persian religion, scattered among the writings of
the Greeks and Romans (see Du Perron’s and Kleuker’s illustrations, especially
the Per- sica of the latter), afford sufficient ground for supposing that they
contain the genuine and unadulterated elements of the Zoroastrian faith, and,
if not of primitive, are of very high antiquity. The traces of Mohammedanism,
which Bruckcr (vol. vi. p. 68) supposed that he had detected, and which are
apparent in the Sadder, are rather notions borrowed by Mohammed from the Jews;
but whence obtained by the Jews is the question. Mr. Erskine, the highest
authority on such subjects, considers the existing Zendavesta to have been
compiled in the age of Ardeshir Babhegan, the great restorer of the Magian
faith. (Bombay Transactions.) In Professor Neuman’s translation of Vartan,
there is a curious sentence, which seems to intimate that the books of the
Mqgian faith either did not exist at that time, or were inaccessible to the
generality.
IV. A thought has sometimes crossed my own mind
(it has been anticipated by Du Perron), whether they can be the sacred hooks
of a sect formed from an union of Gnostic or Manichosan Christianity with the
ancient Persian religion. But there is no vestige of purely Christian
tradition; and those points in which Parseeism seems to coincide with
Christianity are integral and inseparable parts of their great system. And
against all such opinions
must be
weighed the learned paper of Professor Rask, who gives strong reasons for the
antiquity both of the language and of the books. The lauguage he considers the
vernacular tongue of ancient Media. (Trans, of Asiatic Society, iii. 524.)
Still, while I appeal to the Zendavesta as authority, I shall only adduce the
more general leading principles of the faith, of which the antiquity appears
certain; and rarely any tenet for which we have not corroborative authority in
the Greek and Latin writers. The testimonies ot the latter have been collected
both by Du Perron and Kleuker.
I have not
thought fit to cancel this note. But, since the publication ot this work, the
study of the Zend language and of the Zendavesta has made great progress, first
by Bournouf’s invaluable Commentary on the Ya<?na (then unknown to me),
Paris, 1833; then by editions of the Zendavesta, more or less complete,
lithographed in Paris hy Bournouf, 1829-1843; by Broekhaus, in Leipsic, in
Roman characters; by Spiegel, in Zend, 1851; hy Westergaard, Copenhagen, 1852-4.
Finally, Dr. Martin Haag, in four Essays, published last year in Bomhay, has
summed up the whole with consummate erudition and great perspicuity. All that
is of importance may now be read in English. The result is tbe full
recognition of the Zend as a genuine language; the sister, possihly the elder
sister, of the Sanscrit (this had been already admitted by all the great
masters of philological science, —Bopp, Rask, Westergaard, Bournouf, Max
Muller. My friend, H. H. Wilson, doubted; but I believe his donbts grew weaker,
if they had not quite died away). Dr. Haag has wrought out the grammar, the
structure, to a certain extent the literature, of the language. As to the
religion of the Zendavesta, I cannot here enter into Dr. Haag’s theory of the
great schism which severed the primal Arian religion, which was Monotheistic,
into Zoroastrianism and Brahmin- ism, in which the Devas, the gods of the
Brahminical Polytheism, became the devils of Zoroastrianism; the Asuras (the
Ahuras), the god or gods of Zoroastrianism, the evil spirits of Brahminism.
Bactria was the birth and dwelling place of Zoroastrianism; and India, the
upper part of the Punjaub, of Brahminism. But the analysis of all the remaining
sacred books of the Parsees is the most important and satisfactory part of Dr.
Haag’s work. I confess, indeed, that Dr. Haag’s fine distinction between the
religious and philosophical notions of Zoroaster is much too modern, too
German, for me. But, on the relative ages and importance of the various fragments
and books, which together form the Zendavesta, he is convincing and
satisfactory. The primeval Yathas, fragments of songs or hymns (answering to
the Yedas), he holds to be the sole original verse of Zaratuahtra Spitama
(Spitama is the name, Zaratushtra the title) and of her immediate successors.
Then follow the Gathas and the Yendidads: the rest are much later. For my
purpose, however, those tenets which were held in common by the Zoroastrians
and the Jews of tbe Captivity are alone of importance. I find but little to
retract or modify in the text.
1 Mosheim hae traced with brevity, but with
his usual good sense and can
It is
undoubtedly remarkable, that, among the Magian tenets, we find so many of those
doctrines about which the great schism in the Jewish popular creed, that of the
traditionists and anti-traditionists, contended for several centuries. It has
already been observed, that, in the later prophetic writings, many allusions,
and much of what may be called the poetic language and machinery, are strikingly
similar to the main principles of the Magian faith. Nor can it be necessary to
suggest how completely such expressions as the “children of light” and the
“children of darkness ” had become identified with the common language of the
Jews at the time of our Saviour; and, when our Lord proclaimed himself “ the
Light of the World,” no doubt He employed a term familiar-to the ears of the
people, though, as usual, they might not clearly comprehend in what sense it
was applicable to the Messiah, or to the purely moral character of the new
religion.
It is
generally admitted that the Jewish notions Th eis ak°ut
the angels,1 one great subject of dispute in their synagogues, and
what may be called their Dasinonology, received a strong foreign tinge during their
residence in Babylonia. The earliest books of the Old Testament fully recognize
the ministration of angels ; but in Babylonia2 this simpler creed
dor, this
analogy between the traditional notions of the Jews and those of the Magians. —
De Reh. ante Const. M. ii. 7*
1 “La
doctrine de l’existence des anges, fondle sur la r£v£lation, a £t$ beaueoup
modifi^e par les opinions des peuples qui habitaient sur les rivagos du fleuve
Cobar, dans la Babylonie, et dans les autres pays de I’Orient oil les deux royaumes
d’Israel et de Juda furent disperses. Sous ce point de vue on peut regarder les
Rfehestani, ou les sectateurs de Zoroastre, comme ceux qui ont appris
beaueoup des choses aux d^'positaires de la tradition, et dont les maximes se
retrouvent aujourd’hui dans les deux Talmuds.” — Chiarini, Le Talmud de
Babylone, tom. i. p. 101.
2 Even the traditionists among the Jews
allowed that the names of tha
grew tip into
a regular hierarchy, in which the degrees of rank and subordination were
arranged with almost heraldic precision. The seven great archangels of Jewish
tradition correspond with the Amschaspands of the Zendavesta;1 and,
in strict mutual analogy, both systems arrayed against each other a separate
host of spiritual beings, with distinct powers and functions. Each nation, each
individual, had, in one case his Ferver, in the other his guardian angel;2
and was exposed to the malice of tho hostile Dev or Daemon. In apparent
allusion to or coincidence with this system, the visions of Daniel represent
Michael, the tutelar angel or intelligence of the Jewish people, in opposition
to the four angels of the great monarchies; and even our Saviour seems to condescend
to the popular language, when He represents the parental care of the Almighty
over children, under the significant and beautiful image, “ that in heaven
their angels do
angels came
from Babylon: they are, nevertheless, pure Hebrew or Chaldean Mich-a-el (who is
as God), Gahri-el (the Man of God). — Gesen. Lex. in verb. Belierman, iiber die
Essaer, p. 30. The trausition from the primitive to the Babylonian belief may
be traced in the apocryphal hook of Tobit, no doubt of Eastern origin. On the notions
of Daemons, see Jortin, Eccl. Hist. i. 161.
1 Jonathan, the Chaldean parapbrast, on
Gen. ii. 7. u The Lord said to the seven angels that stand
before him.” — Drusius on Luke i. 19. Seven, however, seems to have heen the
number of perfection among the Jews from the earliest period.— Old Testament,
passim.
Six seems the
sacred number with the Persians. The Amschaspands are usually reckoned six; but
Oromasd is sometimes included to make up seven. See the Yesht of the Seven
Amschaspands, in the Zendavesta of Du Perron or Kleuker. Compare also Foucher’s
Disquisition, translated In Kleuker, Anhang. i. p. 294. See also Haag’s
Celestial Council, p. 260.
2 In the LXX, the doctrine of guardian
angels is interpolated into the translation of Deut. xxxii. 8. Plato adopted
the notion, either mediately or immediately, from the East. — Polit. et in
Critia (in init.). Compare Max. Tyrius, xv. 17. Hostanes, the Magian, held the
same opinions. — Cypr. de Yan. Idol., Min. Fel. Compare on the guardian angels
of Zoroastrianism. Haag, pp. 190 et seqq.
always behold
the face of my Father which- is in Heaven.”1
The great
impersonated Principle of Evil appears to
. . , have
assumed much of the character of the
Principle of
eTil- antagonist power of darkness. The name
itself of Satan,2
which, in the older poetical book of Job, is assigned to a spirit of different
attributes, one of the celestial ministers who assemble before the throne of
the Almighty, and is used in the earlier books of the Old Testament in its
simple sense of an adversary, became appropriated to the prince of the
malignant spirits, — the head and representative of the spiritual world, which
ruled over physical as well as moral evil.
Eveu the
notion of the one Supreme Deity had The supremo undergone some modification
consonant to moved from certain prevailing opinions of the time. vrtt£0them£n
Wherever any approximation had been made tenai world. to ^ su|jiime
truth of the one great First Cause, either awful religions reverence or
philosophic abstraction had removed the primal Deity entirely beyond the
sphere of human sense, and supposed that
1 Watt, xviii. 10.
2 Schleusner, Lex. voc. Satan. Dr. Russell,
in a Dissertation prefixed to his Connection of Sacred and Profane History, has
traced the gradual development of this tenet. It is rather singular, that, in
the work of Theodores of Mopsuestia on Magianism (quoted Pliotii Bibliotheca,
num. 81), Ze- ruan is said to have produced rdv ’0p/daSav . . . ml rdv
1a.Ta.vuv. On the other side of this question may be consulted Rosenmiiller on
Job, ch. i., and Michaelis, Epimetron in Lowtli, De Sacra Poesi. Grimm
(Deutsche Mytholo- gie, p. 550) expresses himself nearly as in the text. Haag,
however, asserts that a separate evil spirit, of equal powers with Ahura
Masdoa, and always opposed to him, is entirely strange to Zaratushtra’s
theology, though the existence of such an opinion among the ancient
Zoroastrians can be gathered from some later books, such as the Veudidad. There
can, I think be no douht that it was the dominant doctrine in the times of
which I write. Dr. Haag’s primeval Zoroastrianism seems to me to be somewhat
conjectural.
the
intercourse of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even the
original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate agency, either in
Oriental language, of an Emanation, or, in Platonic, of the Wisdom, Reason, or
Intelligence of the one Supreme. This being was more or less distinctly
impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more
material or more abstract, uotions
Mediator.
of the age or
people.1 This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores
of the Yellow Sea,2 to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle
of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy;3 it was the basis of
Zoroastrianism;4 it was pure Platonism;6 it was the
Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted
from Philo, on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should
become cognizable to the sense of man; and even in Palestine, no doubt, John
the Baptist and our Lord himself spoke uo new doctrine, but rather the common
sentiment of the more enlightened, when they declared that “ no man had seen
God at any time.” 6 In conformity with this principle, the Jews, in
the interpreta-
1 It is curious to trace the development of
this idea in the older and in the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. In the
book of Proverbs, the Wisdom is little more than the great attribute of the
Deity, an intellectual personification: in Ecclesiasticus, it is a distinct
and separate being, and “stands up beautiful ” before the throne of God (xxv.
1).
2 M. Abel
Remusat says of the three Chinese religions/' Parmi leurs dog- mes
fondamentaux, enseign^s six si^cles avant notre 6re par Lao-tseu, un de leurs
maitres, est celui de Pexistence, de la raison primordiah, qui a cr£e le mende,
le Logos des Platoniciens.”—Rech Asiat. 2 s£r. i. 38.
8
In the Indian system, Brahm, in the neuter, is the great Primal Spirit. See
Baron W. Yon Humboldt, iiber den Bhagavat Gita. Compare Bopp, Conjngations
System, 290, 301.
4
See above.
6
Ilav rd datfioviov /usTa^i) 2<ra Oeov kqZ ■&vt]tov — Qedg
avdp&iry 76 fdywrai, aXha dia rovrov naoa Soriv i) bfuTua." —Plato, in
Symp.
• John i. 18. Compare John i. 4, 18; vi. 46.
tion of the
older Scriptures, instead of direct and sensible communication from the one
great Deity, had interposed either one or more intermediate beings, as the
channels of communication. According to one accredited tradition, alluded to by
St. Stephen, the Law was delivered “ by the disposition of angels: ”1
according to another, this office wls delegated to a single angel, sometimes
called the Angel of the Law,2 at others the Metatron. But the more
ordinary representative, as it were, of God to the sense and mind of man, was
the Memra, or the Divine Word;
and it is
remarkable that the same ap-
^ \yord#
pellation is
found in the Indian,3 the Per-
1 Compare LXX. Tran si. of Dent, xxxiii. 2,
where the angels are interpolated. 'JH/Uwv ra KaTJucra t&v doyfiarov Kat tu daiurara ruv kv rolg vdfiOLS 61
ayyeTuov irapa rov Gerw (mdevTuv. — Joseph. Ant. xv. 5, 3. Compare Chiarini,
i. 307. And on the traces of the Judseo-AIexandrian philosophy in the LXX.
Dahne, Judisch-Alexandrinische Religions Philosoplue, part ii. pp. 49-56. *
2 Compare Gal. iii. 19. “ Dens Mosen legem
docnit: cum autem descende- ret, tanto timore perculsus est, ut omnium
oblivisceretur. Deus autem statim Jesifiam, Angelum legis, vocavit, qui ipsi
legem tradidit hene ordinatam et cnstoditam, omnesque angeli arnici ejus facti
sunt.”— Jalkut Ruhen, quoted hy Wetstein and Schoetgen, in loco. See also
Eisenmenger, 1-56. Two angels seem to be introduced in this latter tradition, —
the angelus Metatron, and Jesifia, angelus Legis.
Philo (de
Pnem.) rationalizes further, an-d considers the commandments communicated, as
it were, hy the air made articulate, ii. 405.
8
It appears in the Indian system; Yach signifying speech. She is the active
power of Brahma, proceeding from him: she speaks a hymn in the Ve- das, in
praise of herself as the supreme and universal soul. {Oolebrooke, in Asiatic Researches, viii. p. 402.) “ La premiere parole,
que prof^ra le Cr^a- tenr, ce ftit Oum: Oum parut avant toutes chosee, et il
s’appelle le premier-n«S du Cr^ateur. Oum ou Prana, pareil au pur £ther
renfermant en soi toutes les qualitys, tons les ^l^mens, est le nom, le corps
de Brahm, et par consequent infini comme lui, cr^ateur et maltre de toutes
choses. Brahm meditant sur le Yerbe divin y trouva l’ean primitive.” —
Oupnek-Hat., quoted in De Guigniaut, p. 644.
Origen, or
rather the author of the Philosophoumena inserted in liis works, was aware of
this fact. ’AvtqI (Brachmanes) rdv tiedv <j>ieivat Myovoiv vvx bnoiov tic
6pd, ovff olov fpitog nal rvp' 6Xka konv avrolg 6 0edf /tovoc,
sian,1
the Platonic, and the Alexandrian systems. By the Targumists, the earliest
Jewish commentators on the Scriptures, this term had been already applied to
the Messiah;2 nor is it necessary to observe the manner in which it
has been sanctified by its introduction into the Christian scheme.3
From this remarkable uniformity of conception and coincidence of language has
sometimes been assumed a common tradition, generally disseminated throughout
the race of man. I should be content with receiving it as the general
acquiescence of the human mind in the necessity of some mediation between the
pure spiritual nature of the Deity and the intellectual and moral being of man,
of which the sublimest and simplest, and therefore the most natural,
development was the revelation of God in Christ, — in the inadequate language
of our version of the original, “ the brightness of (God’s) glory, and the
express image of his person.” i
No question
has been more strenuously debated than the knowledge of a future state, enter-
„ , x
° 7 Future State.
tained by the
earlier Jews. At all events, it
ovx
6 bapdpoz, u/Ua 6 rfig yvuosug, 6V oh Kpvnra rrjg yvuoEug (ivGTYjpia bpaTai
a6<j)otg. — De Brachman.
According to
a note, partly by M. le Normant, partly by M. Champollion, 3n Chateaubriand
(Etudes snr 1’Histoire), Thoth is, in the hieroglyphical language of Egypt,
the World.
1 In the Persian system, the use of the
term Hanover is by no means consistent; strictly speaking, it occupies only a
third place. Ormnzd, the Good Principle, created the external universe by his
Word (Honover); in another sense, the great primal spirit is the Word; in
another, the Principle of Good.
2 It is by the latter, as may be seen in
the works of Lightfoot, Schoetgen, and other Talmndic writers, and in Bertholdt
(Christologia Jndaica), that it is applied to the Messiah, not by Philo, who,
as will appear, scarcely, if ever, notices a personal Messiah,
8
Dr. Burton (in his Bampton Lectures) acknowledges, of course, the antiquity of
the term, and suggests the most sensible mode of reconciling this fact with its
adoption into Christianity.
4
’Attavyaafxa 1% do&jf nal Tqg
inoaraaeug avrov. — Ileb. i. 3
VOL.
l. 6
is quite
dear, that, before the time of Christ, not merely the immortality of the soul,
but, what is very different, a final resurrection,1 had become
completely interwoven with the popular belief. Passages in the later prophets,
Daniel and Ezekiel, particularly a very remarkable one in the latter, may be
adduced as the first distinct authorities on which this belief might be
grounded. It appears, however, in its more perfect development, soon after the
return from the Captivity. As early as the revolt of the Maccabees, it was so
deeply rooted in the public mind, that we find a solemn ceremony performed for
the dead.2 From henceforth it became the leading article of the
great schism between the traditionists and the anti-traditionists, the
Pharisees and the Sadducees; and in the Gospels we cannot but discover at a
glance its almost universal prevalence. Even the Roman historian was struck by its
influence on the indomitable character of the people.3 In the
Zoroastrian religion, a resurrection holds a place 110 less prominent than in
the later Jewish belief.4 On the day of the final triumph of the
Great Principle of Light, the children of light are to be raised from the dead,
to partake in the physical splen
1 It is singular how often this material
point of difference has heen lost sight of in the discussions on this subject,
2 2 Macc.
xii. 44.
8 “ Animas que prselio et suppliciis peremptorum *e
tern as putant,”— Tac. Hist. v. 5.
4 Hyde, de Vet. Pers. Relig, 537 and 293, Beausohre,
Hist, du Maniclie- isme, i. 204. ’Ava(3ujaeadcu fcard rovg Mdyovf roi)f
avdpunovc ttal Zoeodai adavdrovf. — Theopomp. apud Diog. Laert.
Kleuker’s Zendavesta and An- hang. part ii. p. 110, Boundehesch, xix. xxxi.,
&c. Compare Gesenius on Isaiah xxvi. 19. On the Zoroastrian Resurrection
and Palingenesis, see Haag, p. 2G6, The idea of a future life and immortality
of the soul is expressed very distinctly already in the Gathas, and pervades
the whole later Zeud literature. The belief in a life to come is one of the
chief dogmas of the Zendavesta, p. 265.
dor, and to
assume the moral perfection, of the subjects of the triumphant Principle of
Good. In the same manner, the Jews associated together the coming of the
Messiah with the final resurrection. From many passages quoted by Lightfoot, I
select the following: “ The righteous, whom the Lord shall raise from the dead
in the days of the Messiah, when they are restored to life, shall not again
return to their dust, neither in the days of the Messiah, nor in the following
age ; but their flesh shall remain upon them.”1 Out of all these
different sources, from whence they
derived
a knowledge of a future state, the Jewish no
* . . . tion
of the
passages of
their prophets in their own Messiah, sacred writings (among which that in the
book of Daniel, from its eoineidenee with the Zoroastrian tenet, might easily
be misapplied), and the Oriental element, the popular belief of the Palestinian
Jews had moulded up a splendid though confused vision of the appearance of the
Messiah, the simultaneous regeneration of all things, the resurrection of the
dead, and the reign of the Messiah upon earth. All these events were to take
place at once, or to follow close upon each other. In many passages, the
language of the apostles clearly intimates that they were as little prepared to
expect a purely religious renovation at the coming of the Messiah as the rest
of their countrymen ; and, throughout the apostolic age, this notion still
maintained its ground, and kept up the general apprehension, that the final
consummation was immediately at hand.2 It is, no doubt, impossible
to assign their particular preponderance to these several elements, which
combined to form the popular belief; yet, even if many of their notions
entirely originated 1 Lightfoot, v. 255; x. 495; xi. 353. 2
Compare 2 Esdras vi. 24, 25.
in the
Zoroastrian system, it would be curious to observe how, by the very calamities
of the Jews, Di- ■«me Providence adapted them for the more important part
which they were to fill in the history of mankind, and to trace the progressive
manner in which the Almighty prepared the development of the more perfect and
universal system of Christianity.
For, with
whatever Oriental coloring Jewish tradi- Me«siah ticm might invest the image of
the great De- nationai. liverer, in Palestine it still remained rigidly
national and exclusive. If the Jew concurred with the worshipper of Ormuzd in
expecting a final restoration of all things through the agency of a Divine Intelligence,1
that Being, according to the promise to their fathers, was to be intimately
connected with their race; he was to descend from the line of David; he was to
occupy Sion, the holy city, as the centre of his government; he was to make his
appearance in the temple on Mount Moriah; he was to re-assemble all the
scattered descendants of the tribes, to discomfit and expel their barbarous and
foreign rulers. The great distinction between the two races of mankind fell in
completely with their hereditary prejudices: the children of Abraham were, as
their birthright, the children of light; and even the doctrine of the res
urrection was singularly harmonized with that exclu-
1 The Persians long preserved the notion of
a restoration of the law ot Zoroaster by a kind of Messiah. “ Suivant les traditions des Parses, rap- portdes dans la
Zerdouscbt-nameh et dans le Djamaspi-nazem, Pashoutan, l’uu des personnages
destines & faire reflenrir la religion de Zoroastre, et 1’empire des Persea
dans les demiers temps, demeure en attendant ce moment dans le KanguiSdez, pays
qui parolt r^pondre en partie k Khorassan. II en sortira & 1’ordre, qui Ini
sera apport(S par un ized (i.e., spiritus celestis) nomme S(S- rosch, et
reviendra dans [’Iran. Par Vefficace des paroles 3acT(Ses de VAvesta, il mettra
en fuite lea barbares, qui d^soloient ce pays, y r&ablira la religion dans
toute sa puret(5, et y fera renaltre I’abondance, le bonheur, et la paix.” —
Silvestre de Sacy, sur div. Ant. de la Perse, p. 95.
sive
nationality. At least the first resurrection1 was to be their
separate portion:2 it was to summon them, if not all, at least the
more righteous, from Paradise, from the abode of departed spirits; and, under their
triumphant king, they were to enjoy a thousand years of glory and bliss upon
the recreated and renovated earth.3
We pass from
the rich poetic impersonations, the fantastic but expressive symbolic forms of
the Juaa!o-Grc- East, to the colder and clearer light of Gre- <Ban
sj,stem- cian philosophy, with which the Western Jews, especially in
Alexandria, had endeavored to associate their own religious truths. The poetic
age of Greece had long passed away before the two nations came into con-
1--------------- 2 EsdTas xi. 10-31. All
Israelites (says the Mischna, Tract. Sanh. c. xi. 12) shall partake in the life
to come, except those who deny the resurrection of the dead (the Sadducees ?),
and that the law came from heaven, and the Epicureans. R. Akiba added, he who
reads foreign hooks; Aba Schaul, he who pronounces the ineffable name
(Jehovah). Three kings and four private individuals have no share in the life
to come, — the kings, Jeroboam, Ahab, Manasseh; the four private men, Balaam,
Doeg, Achitophel, ?
2 “ It is good,” says the martyred youth in
the book of Maccabees, “ being put to death by men, to be raised up again by
him: as for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to — 2 Macc ix. 14; xii. 44:
also 2 Esdras ii. 23. Compare the speech of Josephus, Hist, of the Jews, vol.
ii. p. 267. Quotations might be multiplied from, the Rabbinical writers.
8
Tanchuma, fol. 255. “Quot sunt dies Messiae? R. Elieser, filius R. Jose,
Galilaeus, dixit Meseise tempora sunt mille anui, secundum dictum Jer. xxiii.
4. Dies enim Dei mille est annorum.” — Bertholdt, p. 38.
“The holy,
blessed God will renew the world for a thousand years.” — Quoted by Lightfoot,
iii. 87. If I presume to treat the millennium as a fable “ of Jewish dotage,” I
may remind my readers that this expression is taken from what once stood as an
Article (the forty-first) of our Church. See Collier for the Articles in Edward
the Sixth’s reign. “ Atque de hujus in his terris regno, mille annos duraturo
ejusdemque deliciis et voluptatihus, de bellis ejus cum terrihili quodam
adversario quem Antichristum dicebant, de victoriis denique earumque fructibus
mirabilia narrabant somnia, quorum deinde pars ad Christianos transferebatur.”
— Mosheim, ii. 8.
This was the
kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, of Christ, or, emphatically, “the
kingdom.” See Kuinoel,vol. i. p. 61. Schoetgcn, Ilor. Heb. p. 1147.
tact; and the
same rationalizing tendency of the times led the Greek to reduce his religion,
the Jew the history of his nation, to a lofty moral allegory.1
Enough of poetry remained in the philosophic system adopted in the great Jewish
Alexandrian school—that of Plato — to leave ample scope for the imagination ;
and, indeed, there was a kind of softened Orientalism, probably derived by
Plato from his master Pythagoras, by Pythar goras from the East, which readily
assimilated with the mystic interpretations of the Egypto-Jewish theology. The
Alexandrian notions of the days of the Messiah are faintly shadowed out in the
book “ of the Wisdom of Solomon,”2 in terms which occasionally
remind us of some which occur in the New Testament. The righteous Jews, on
account of their acknowledged moral and religious superiority, were to “judge
the nations,” and have “ dominion over all people.” But the more perfect development
of these views is to be found in the works of Philo. This writer, who, however
inclined to soar into the cloudy realms of mysticism, often rests in the middle
region of the moral sublime, and abounds in passages which would scarcely do
discredit to his Athenian master, had arrayed a splendid vision of the
perfectibility of human nature, in which his own nation was to take the most
distinguished part. From them knowledge and virtue were to emanate through the
universal race of man. The whole world, con vinced at length of the moral
superiority of the Mosaic institutes, interpreted, it is true, upon the
allegorical system, and so harmonized with the sublimest Platonism of the
Greeks, was to submit in voluntary homage, and render allegiance to the great
religious teachers
1 Compare Bertlioldt, ch. vi. 2
'Wisdom iii. 8; v. 16; viii. 14.
and examples
of mankind.1 The Jews themselves, thus suddenly regenerated to more
than the primitive purity and loftiness of their Law (in which the Divine
Reason, the Logos, was as it were embodied), were to gather together from all
quarters, and under the guidance of a more than human being, unseen to all
eyes but those of the favored nation2 (such was the only vestige of
the Messiah), to re-assemble in Keignof
. , m Messiah ac-
their native
land. There the great era of cording to
. Alexandrian
virtue and
peace and abundance, produc- Jew8- tiveness of the soil,
prolificness in the people, in short, of all the blessings promised in the book
of Deuteronomy, was to commence and endure for ever. This people was to be
invincible, since true valor is inseparable from true virtue. By a singular
inference, not out of character with allegoric interpreters, who, while they
refine the plainest facts and precepts to a more subtle and mystic meaning, are
apt to take that which is evidently figurative in a literal sense, the very
wild beasts, in awe and wonder at this pure and passionless race, who shall
have ceased to rage against each other with bestial ferocity, were to tame
their savage hostility to mankind.3 Thus the prophecy of Isaiah, to
which Philo seems to allude, though he does not adduce the words, was to be
accomplished to the letter; and that paradisaical state of amity between brute
and man, so beautifully described by Milton, perhaps from this source, was
finally to be renewed. And as the Jewish philosopher, contrary to most of his
own countrymen and to some of the Grecian sects, denied the future dissolution
of the world by fire, and asserted its eter
1
E.g., Vita Mosis, ii.; Opera, ii. p. 141. 2 De Execr. if. 435, 436.
8 De Prsem. ii. p. 422.
nity,1
he probably contemplated the everlasting duration of this peaceful and holy
state.
Such — for no
doubt the Alexandrian opinions had Belief dif- penetrated into Palestine,
particularly among cordin^'to the Hellenist Jews — such were the vast, in- the
believer, coherent, and dazzling images with which the future teemed to the
hopes of the Jewish people.2 They admitted either a part or the
whole of the common belief, as accorded with their tone of mind and feeling.
Each region, each rank, each sect; the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Palestinian,
the Samaritan ; the Pharisee, the Lawyer, the Zealot, — arrayed the Messiah in
those attributes which suited his own temperament. Of that which was more
methodically taught in the synagogue or the adjacent school, the populace
caught up whatever-made the deeper impression. The enthusiasm took an active
or contemplative, an ambitious or a religious, an earthly or a heavenly tone,
according to the education, habits, or station ol the believer; and to
different men the Messiah was man or angel, or more than angel; he was king,3
conqueror, or moral reformer ; a more victorious Joshua, a
1 De Mundi Incorruptihilitate, passim.
2 The following passages from the
apocryphal books may be consulted:
I do not think it necessary to refer to all
the citations which might be made from the Prophets. “ The faithful prophet” is
mentioned, 1 Macc. xiv. 41: the discomfiture of the enemies of Israel, Judith
xvi. IT: universal peace, Ecclesiast. 1. 23, 24: the re-assemhling of the
tribes, Tobit xiii. 13-18; Baruch ii. 34, 35: the conversion of many nations,
Tobit xiii. 11; xiv. 6, 7. See particularly the second apociyphal hook of
Esdras, which, although manifestly Judajo-Christian,is of value as illustrating
the opinions of the times: “Thou madest the world for our sakes; as for the
other people, which also come of Adam, thou hast said that they are nothing,
but be like unto spittle; and hast likened the abundance of them unto a drop
that falleth from a vessel. ... If the world now he made for our sakes, why do
we not possess an
inheritance
with the world? how long shall this erdure?” 2
Esdras vi
66-59. " '
8
The Gospels, passim; 2 Esdras xii. 32
more
magnificent Herod, a wider-ruling Cassar, a wiser Moses,1 a holier
Abraham;2 an Angel, the Angel of the Covenant, the Metatron, the
Mediator between God and man ;3 Michael, the great tutelar archangel
of the nation, who appears by some to have been identified with the mysterious
Being who led them forth from Egypt; he was the Word of God;4 an
Emanation from the Deity, himself partaking of the divine nature. While this
was the religious belief, some there were, no doubt, of the Sadducaic party, or
the half- Grascized adherents of the Herodian family, who treated the whole as
a popular delusion ; or, as Josephus with Yespasian, would not scruple to
employ it as a politic means for the advancement of their own fortunes. While
the robber chieftain looked out from his hill- tower to see the blood-red
banner of him whom he litesally expected to come “ from Edom with dyed garments
from Bozrah,” and “ treading the wine-press in his wrath,” the Essene in his
solitary hermitage, or monastic fraternity of husbandmen, looked to the
1 “ Thou wilt proclaim liberty to thy
people, the house of Israel, hy the hand of Messias, as thou didst hy the hand
of Moses and Aaron, on the day of the Passover.”—Chald. Par, on Lament, ii. 22,
quoted hy Lightfoot, v. 161.
Among others
to the same purport, the following, of a later date, is curious: “ Moses came
out of the wilderness, and King Messias out of the midst of Rome; the one spake
in the head of a cloud, and the other spake in the head of a clond, and the
Word of the Lord speaking between these, and they walking together.” — Targ.
Jer. on Exod. xii.
2 “ Behold, glorious shall be my servant
King Messiah, exalted, lofty, and very high: more exalted than Abraham, for it
is written of him, I have lifted up my hand to the Lord (Gen. xiv. 22); and
more exalted than Moses, for it is written of him, He saith of me, Take him
unto thy bosom, for he is greater than the fathers.” —Jalkut Shamuni: see
Bertholdt, 101.
Some of the
titles of the Messiah, recognized hy general helief and usage, will he noticed
as 'they occur in the course of the History.
8
Sohar, quoted hy Bertholdt, pp. 121,133,
4
Many of the quotations about the Memra, or Divine Word, may be found in Dr. Pye
Smith’s work on the Messiah.
reign of the
Messiah, when the more peaceful images of the same prophet would be
accomplished, and the Prince of Peace establish his quiet and uninterrupted
reign.
Tn the body
of the people, the circumstances of the popular times powerfully tended both to
develop more beuer. fully, and to stamp more deeply into their
hearts, the expectation of a temporal deliverer, a conqueror, a king. As
misgovernment irritated, as exaction pressed, as national pride was wounded by
foreign domination, so enthusiasm took a fiercer and more martial turn: as the
desire of national independence became the predominant sentiment, the Messiah was
more immediately expected to accomplish that which lay nearest to their hearts.
The higher views of his character, and the more unworldly hopes of a spiritual
and moral revolution, receded farther and farther from the view; and, as the
time approached in which the Messiah was to be born, the people in general were
in a less favorable state of mind to listen to the doctrines of peace,
humility, and love, or to recognize that Messiah in a being so entirely
divested of temporal power or splendor. In the ruling party, on the other hand,
as will hereafter appear, the dread of this inflammable state of the public
mind, and the dangerous position of affairs, would confirm that jealousy of
innovation inseparable from established governments. Every tendency to commotion
would be repressed with a strong hand, or at least the rulers would be
constantly on the watch, by their forward zeal in condemning all disturbers of
the public peace, to exculpate themselves with their foreign masters from any
participation iu the tumult. Holding, no doubt, with devout, perhaps with
conscientious earnestness, the promised
coming of the
Messiah as an abstract truth, and as ail article of their religious creed,
their own interests, their rank and authority, were so connected with the
existing order of things, political prudence would ap pear so fully to justify
more than ordinary caution, that, while they would have fiercely resented any
imputation 011 their want of faith in the divine promises, it would have been
difficult, even, by the most public and imposing “ signs,” to have satisfied
their cool incredulity.
With all
these elements of political and religious excitement stirring through the whole
fabric state of
• i “ . political
con-
of society,
it would be difficult to conceive a fusion, nation in a more extraordinary
state of suspense and agitation than the Jews about the period of the birth of
Christ. Their temporal and religious fortunes seemed drawing to an immediate
issue. Their king lay slowly perishing of a lingering and loathsome disease ;
and his temper, which had so often broken out into paroxysms little short of
insanity, now seemed to be goaded by bodily and mental anguish to the fury of a
wild beast. Every day might be anticipated the spectacle of the execution of
his eldest son, now on his way from Rome, and known to have been detected in
his unnatural trear sons. It seemed that even yet the royal authority and the
stern fanaticism of the religious party, which had, for many years, lowered
upon each other with hostile front, might grapple in a deadly struggle. The
more prudent of the religious leaders could scarcely restrain the indignant
enthusiasm of their followers, which broke out at once on the accession of
Arche- laus; while, on the other hand, the almost incredible testamentary
cruelty, by which Herod commanded the heads of the principal Jewish families to
be assembled
in the
Hippodrome, at the signal of his death, to be cut down in a promiscuous
massacre, may reasonably be ascribed to remorseless policy, as well as to
frantic vengeance. He might suppose, that, by removing all opponents of weight
and influence, he could secure the peaceable succession of his descendants, if
the Emperor, according to his promise, should ratify the will by which he had
divided his dominions among his surviving sons.1
In the midst
of this civil confusion, that great event Birth of took place which was to
produce so total a cimst. revolution in the state of all mankind. However
striking the few incidents which are related of the birth of Christ, when
contemplated distinct and separate from the stirring transactions of the
times, and through the atmosphere, as it were, of devotional feelings, which
at once seem to magnify and harmonize them; yet, for this very reason, we are
perhaps scarcely capable of judging the effect which such events actually
produced, and the relative magnitude in which they appeared to the contemporary
generation. For if we endeavor to cast ourselves back into the period to which
these incidents belong, and place ourselves, as it were, hi the midst of the
awful political crisis which seemed about to decide at once the independence
or servitude of the nation, and might more or less affect the private and
personal welfare of each family and individual, it will by no means move our
wonder, that the commotion excited by the appearance of the Magians in
Jerusalem, and the announcement of the birth of the Christ, should not have
made a more deep impression on the public mind, and should have passed away, it
should seem, so speedily from the
1
Compare Hist, of the Jews, vol. ii. p. 88.
popular
remembrance. In fact, even if generally credited, the intelligence that the
Messiah had appeared in the form of a new-born infant would rather perhaps
have disappointed than gratified the high wrought expectation, which looked for
an instant, an immediate deliverance, and would be too impatient to await the
slow development of his manhood. Whether the more considerate expected the
Deliverer suddenly to reveal himself in his maturity of strength and power, may
be uncertain: but the last thing that the more ardent and fiery looked for,
particularly those who supposed that the Messiah would partake of the divine or
superhuman nature, was his appearance as a child; the last throne to which they
would be summoned to render their homage would be the cradle of a helpless
infant.1
Nor is it
less important, throughout the early history of Christianity, to seize the
spirit of the Belief in pre-
i*i , ternatural
in
times.
invents which appear to us so ex- terpositions.
traordinary
that we can scarcely conceive that they should either fail in exciting a
powerful sensation, or ever be obliterated from the popular remembrance, in
their own day might pass off as of little more than ordinary occurrence.
During the whole life of Christ, and the early propagation of the religion, it
must be borne in mind, that they took place in an age, and among a people,
which superstition had made so familiar with what were supposed to be
preternatural events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily
superseded by some new demand on the ever- ready belief. The Jews of that
period not only believed that the Supreme Being had the power of controlling the
course of nature, but that the same
1 “ Whp.n Christ cometh, no man knoweth
whence he is.” — John vii. 27,
influence was
possessed by multitudes of subordinate spirits, both good and evil. Where the
pious Christian in the present day would behold the direct agency of the
Almighty, the Jews would invariably have interposed an angel as the author or
ministerial agent in the wonderful transaction. Where the Christian moralist
would condemn the fierce passion, the ungovernable lust, or the inhuman temper,
the Jew discerned the workings of diabolical possession. Scarcely a malady was
endured, or crime committed, but it was traced to the operation of one of these
myriad dsemons, who watched every opportunity of exercising their malice in the
sufferings and the sins of men.
Yet the first
incident in Christian history, the an- conception nunciation of the conception
and birth of Jobn the f John the Baptist,1 as its
wonderful circum- ^0*6). stances took place in a priestly family, and 011 so
public a scene as the Temple, might be expected to excite the public attention
in no ordinary degree. The four Levitical families who returned from the
Captivity had been distributed into twenty-four courses, one of which came into
actual office in the Temple every week: they had assumed the old names, as if
descended in direct lineage from the original heads of families; and thus the
regular ministrations of the priesthood were re-organized on the ancient
footing, coeval with the foundation of the Temple. In the course of Abia, the
eighth in order,2 was an aged priest, named Zachariah. The
officiating course were
1 Luke i. 6-22.
2 As each came into office twice in the
year, and there is nothing to indicate whether this was the first or second
period, it appears to me quite impossible to calculate the time of the year in
which this event took place. Of this ordering of the courses, observes
Lightfoot, both Talmuda speak largely, iii. 21.
accustomed to
cast lots for the separate functions. Some of these were considered of higher
dignity than others, which were either of a more menial character, or at least
were not held in equal estimation. Nearly the most important was the watching
and supplying with incense the great brazen altar, which stood within the
building of the Temple ‘in the first or Holy Place. Into this, at the sound of
a small bell, which gave notice to the worshippers at a distance, the
ministering priest entered alone. And in the sacred chamber, into which the
light of day never penetrated, but where the dim fires of the altar, and the
chandeliers, which were never extinguished, gave a solemn and uncertain light,
still more bedimmed by the clouds of smoke arising from the newly fed altar of
incense, no doubt, in the pious mind, the sense of the more immediate presence
of the Deity, only separated by the veil, which divided the Holy Place from the
Holy of Holies, would constantly have awakened the most profound emotions.
While the priest was employed within the gates, the multitude of worshippers in
the adjacent court awaited his return; for it would seem, that the offering of
incense was considered emblematic of the prayers of the whole nation; and
though it took place twice every day, at morning and evening, the entrance and
return of the priest from the mysterious precincts were watched by the devout
with something of awful anxiety.
This day, to
the general astonishment, Zachariah, to whom the function had fallen, lingered
far beyond the customary time. For it is said of the high- priest’s annual
entrance into the Holy of Holies, that he usually stayed within as short a time
as possible, lest the anxious people should fear, that on account
of some
omission in the offering, or guilt in the minister, or perhaps in the nation,
of which he was the federal religious head, he might have been stricken with
death. It may be supposed, therefore, that, even in the subordinate ceremonies,
there was a certain ordinary time, after which the devouter people would begin
to tremble, lest their representative, who in their behalf was making the
national offering, might have met with some sinister or fatal sign of the
divine disfavor. When at length Zachariah appeared, he could not speak; and it
was evident that in some mysterious manner he had been struck dumb, and to the
anxious inquiries he could only make known by signs that something awful and
unusual had taken place within the sanctuary. At what period he made his full
relation of the wonderful fact which had occurred does not appear; but it was a
relation of absorbing interest both to the aged man himself, who, although his
wife was far advanced in years, was to be blessed with offspring; and to the
whole people, as indicating the fulfilment of one of the preliminary signs
which were universally accredited as precursive of the Messiah.
In the vision
of Zachariah, he had beheld an angel standing on the right side of the altar,
who anuounced that his prayer was heard,1 and that his barren house
vision of was be blessed; that his aged wife should zachariah. j.jear
a sorl) anfl that son be consecrated from his birth to the service of
God, and observe the strictest austerity; that he was to revive the decaying
spirit of religion, unite the disorganized nation, and,
1 Grotins and many other writers are of
opinion that by this is meant, not the prayer of Zachariah for offspring, but
the general national prayer, offered by liim in his ministerial function, for
the appearance of the Messiah.
above all,
should appear as the expected harbinger, who was to precede and prepare the way
for the approaching Redeemer. The angel proclaimed himself to be the messenger
of God (Gabriel), and, both as a punishment for his incredulity and a sign of
the certainty of the promise, Zachariah was struck dumb, but with an assurance
that the affliction should remain only till the accomplishment of the divine
prediction in the birth of his son.1 If, as has been said, the
vision of Zachariah was in any manner communicated to the assembled people
(though the silence of the evangelist makes strongly against any such supposition),
or even to his kindred the officiating priesthood, it would no doubt have
caused a great sensation, falling in, as it would, with the prevailing tone of
the public mind. For it was the general belief that some messenger would, in
the language of Isaiah, “ prepare the way of the Lord; ” and the last words
which had, as it were, sealed the book of prophecy, intimated, as many
supposed, the personal re-appearance of Elijah, the greatest, and, in popular
opinion, a sort of representative of the whole prophetic community. The
ascetic life to which the infant prophet was to be dedicated, according to the
Nazaritish vow of abstinence from all wine or strong drink, was likewise a
characteristic of the prophetic order, which, although many, more particularly
among the Essenes, asserted their inspired knowledge of futurity, was generally
considered to have ceased in the person of Malachi, the last whose oracles were
enrolled in the sacred canon.2
1 According to Josephus (Ant. xiii. 18),
HyTcanus, the high-priest, heard a voice from heaven, while he was offering on
the altar of incense.
2 The mythic interpreters (see Strauss, p.
138) assert that this “short VOL. 1. 7
It does not
appear tliat dumbness was a legal dis- itetum of qualification for the sacerdotal
function; for toHebron. Zachariah remained among his brethren, the priests,
till their week of ministration ended. He then returned to his usual residence
in the southern part of Judaea, most probably in the ancient and well-known
city of Hebron,1 which was originally a Levitical city; and,
although the sacerdotal order had not resumed the exclusive possession of their
cities at the return from the Captivity, it might lead the priestly families to
settle more generally in those towns ; and Hebron, though of no great size, was
considered remarkably populous in proportion to its extent. The divine promise
began to be accomplished; and during the five first months of her pregnancy,
Elizabeth, the wife of Zachariah, concealed herself, either avoiding the
curious inquiries of her neighbors in these jealous and perilous times, or in
devotional retirement, rendering thanks to the Almighty for the unexpected
blessing.2
It was on a
far less public scene that the birth of Annuncia- Christ, of whom the child of
Zachariah was tion- to be the harbinger, was announced to the Virgin
Mother. The families which traced their descent from the house of David had
fallen into poverty and neglect. When, after the return from the Babylonian
poem,” as
they call it, was invented out of the passages in the Old Testament relating
to the births of Isaac, Samson, and Samuel, by a Judaizing Christian, while
there were still genuine followers of John the Baptist, in order to conciliate
them to Christianity. This is admitting very high antiquity for the passage;
aud, unless it coincided with their own traditions, was it likely to have any
influence upon that sect ?
1
Yet, as there seems no reason why the city of Hebron should not be named, many
of the most learned writers, Valesius, Reland, Haremberg Kuinoel, have supposed
that Jutta (the name of a small city) is the right reading, which, being little
known, was altered into a city (of) Judah.
a
Luke i. 28-26.
Captivity,
the sovereignty had been assumed, first by the high-priests 'of Levitical
descent, subsequently by the Asmonean family, who were likewise of the priestly
line, and finally by the house of Herod, of Idumean origin, but engrafted into
the Maccabean line by the marriage of Herod with Mariamne, it was th( most
obvious policy to leave in the obscurity intG which they had sunk that race
which, if it should produce any pretendant of the least distinction, he might
advance an hereditary claim, as dear to the people as it would be dangerous to
the reigning dynasty. The whole descendants of the royal race seem to have sunk
so low, that even the popular belief, which looked to the line of David as that
from which the Messiah was to spring,1 did not invest them with
sufficient importance to awaken the jealousy or suspicion of the rulers.
Joseph, a man descended from this royal race, had migrated, for some unknown
reason, to a distance from the part of the land inhabited by the tribe of
Benjamin, to which, however, they were still considered to belong. He bad
settled in Nazareth, an obscure town in Lower Galilee, which, independent of
the general disrepute in which the whole of the Galilean provinces were held by
the inhabitants of the more holy district of Judaea, seems
1 This opinion revived so strongly in the
time of Domitian, as, aecordiug to the Christian historian, to awaken the
apprehension of the Roman Emperor, who commanded diligent search to he made
for all who claimed descent from the line of David It does not appear how many
were discovered, as Eusebius relates the story merely for the purpose of
showing that the descendants of our Lord’s brethren were brought before the
Emperor, and dismissed as simple laborers, too humble to be regarded with
suspicion. Many families of this lineage may have perished in the exterminating
war of Titus, between the birth of Christ and this inquiry of Domitian. In
later times, the Prince of the Captivity, with what right it would be
impossible to decide, traced his descent from the line of the ancient kings.
Conf. Casaubon, Exercit. Anti-Baron, ii. p. 17.
to have been
marked by a kind of peculiar proverbial contempt. Joseph had been betrothed to
a virgin of his own race, named Mary; but, according to Jewish usage, some time
was to elapse between the betroth- ment and the espousals. In this interval
took place the annunciation of the divine conception to the Virgin.1
In no part is the singular simplicity of the Gospel narrative more striking
than in the relation of this incident; and I should be inclined, for this
reason alone, to reject the notion that these chapters were of a later date.2
So early does that remarkable characteristic of the evangelic writings develop
itself; the manner in which they relate, in the same calm and equable tone, the
most extraordinary and most trivial events; the apparent absence either of
wonder in the writer, or the desire of producing a strong effect on the mind of
the reader.3 To illustrate this, no passage can be more striking
than the account of her vision: “And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail,
thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among
women. And, when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her
mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her,
Pear not,
1 Luke i. 26, 38.
2 I cannot discover any great force in the
critical arguments adduced to disjoin these preliminaiy chapters from the rest
of the narrative. There is a very remarkable evidence of their authenticity in
the curious apocryphal book, the Ascensio Isaije, published from the iEthiopic
by Archhishop Lawrence. Compare Gesenius, Jesaias, Einleitung, p. 50. This
writing marks its own date, the end of the reign of Nero, with unusual
certainty, and contains distinct allusions to these facts, as forming integral
parts of the life of Christ. The events were no doubt treasured in the memory
of Mary, and might hy her be communicated to the apostles.
8 I
may he in error, but this appears to me the marked and perceptible internal
difference between the genuine and apocryphal Gospels. The latter are mythic,
not merely in the matter, but also in their style.
Mary; for
thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb,
and bring forth a Son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and
shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him
the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for
ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel,
How shall this be, seeing I know not a man ? And the angel answered and said
unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of
thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elizaheth, she
hath also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with
her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary
said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word. And
the angel departed from her.”
The
Incarnation of the Deity, or the union of some part of the Divine Essence with
a material T
1 Incarnation
or human
body, is by no means an uncom- of the mon religious notion, more
particularly in the East. Yet, in the doctrine as subsequently developed by
Christianity, there seems the same important difference which characterizes
the whole system of the ancient and modern religions. It is in the former a
mythological impersonation of the Power, in Christ it is the Goodness, of the
Deity, which, associating itself with a human form, assumes the character of a
representative of the human race; in whose person is exhibited a pure model of
moral perfection, and whose triumph over evil is by the slow and gradual
progress of enlightening the mind, and softening and purifying
the heart.
The moral purpose of the descent of tho Deity is by no means excluded in the
religions in which a similar notion has prevailed, as neither is that of divine
power, though confining itself -to acts of pure beneficence, from the Christian
scheme. This seems more particularly the case, if we may state any thing with
certainty concerning those half- mythological, half-real personages, the Buddh,
Gautama, or Somana Codom of the remoter East.1 In these systems
likewise the overbearing excess of hu man wickedness demands the interference,
and the restoration of a better order of things is the object, which vindicates
the presence of the embodied Deity; yet there is invariably a greater or less
connection with the Oriental cosmogonical systems; it is the triumph of mind
over matter, the termination of the long strife between the two adverse
principles. The Christian scheme, however it may occasionally admit the current
language of the time, as where Christ is called the “ Light of the World,” yet
in its scope and purport stands clear and independent of all these physical
notions: it is original, inasmuch as it is purely, essentially, and exclusively
a moral revelation; its sole design to work a m iral change, to establish a
new relation between man and the Almighty
1
The characteristic of the Buddhist religion, which in one respect may • he
considered (I deprecate misconstruction) the Christianity of the remoter East,
seems an union of political with religious reformation; its end to substitute
purer morality for the wild and multifarious' idolatry into which Brahminism
had degenerated, and to break down the distinction of castes. But Buddhism
appears to he essentially monastic; and how different the superstitious regard
for life in the Buddhist from the enlightened humanity of Christianity! See
Mahony, in Asiat. Research vii. p. 40.
M. Klaproth
has somewhere said, that, “next to the Christian, no religion has contributed
more to ennoble the human racc than the Buddha religion.” Compare likewise the
very judicious observations of Wm. Humboldt, iiber die Kawi Sprache, p. 95.
Creator, and
to bring to light the great secret of the immortality of man.
Hence the
only deviation from the course of nature was the birth of this Being from a
pure Bjrthfroma virgin.1 Much has been written on this
sub- Tirgin' ject; but it is more consistent with our object to
point out the influence of this doctrine upon the human mind, as hence its
harmony with the general design of Christianity becomes more manifest.
We estimate
very inadequately the influence or the
1
According to a tradition known in the West at an early period, and quoted by
Jerome (Adv. Jovin. c. 26), Buddh was bom of a virgin. So were the Fohi of
China and the Shaka of Thibet, no doubt the same, whether a mythic or a real
personage. The Jesuits in China were appalled at finding m the mythology of
that country, the counterpart of the “ Virgo Deipara.” (Barrow’s Travels in
China, i.) There is something extremely curious in the appearance of the same
religious notions in remote and apparently quite disconnected countries, where
it is impossible to trace the secret manner of their transmission. Certain
incidents, for example, in the history of the Indian Crishna, are so similar to
those of the life of Christ, that De Guig- niaut is almost inclined to believe
that they are derived from some very early Christian tradition. In the present
instance, however, the peculiar sanctity attributed to virginity in all
countries, where the ascetic principle is held in high honor as approximating
the pure and passionless human being to the Divinity, might suggest such an
origin for a Deity in human form. But the hirth of Buddh seems purely mythic:
he was bom from Maia, the virgin goddess of the imaginative world,—-as it were
the Phantasia of the Greeks, who was said by some to have given birth to Homer.
The Shaka of Thibet was horn from the nymph Lhamoghinpral.—Georgi. Alph. Tibet.
Compare Rosenmiiller, das Alte und Neue Morgenland, v. iv.; on Buddh and his
birth, Bohlen, i. 312.
I am inclined to think, that the Jews,
though partially Orientalized in their opinions, were the people among whom
such a notion was least likely to originate of itself. Marriage by the mass of
the people was considered in a holy light; and there are traces that the hopes
of becoming the mother of the Messiah was one of the hlessings which, in their
opinion, belonged to marriage; and after all, before we admit the originality
of these notions in some of the systems to which they helong, we must ascertain
(the most intricate problem in the history of Eastern religions opinions) their
relative antiquity, as compared with the Nestorian Christianity, so widely
prevalent in the East, and the effects of this form of Christianity on the more
remote Oriental creeds, Jerome’s testimony is the most remarkable.
value of any
religion, if we merely consider its dogmas, its precepts, or its opinions. The
impression it makes, the emotions it awakens, the sentiments which it inspires,
are perhaps its most vital and effective energies. From these, men continually
act; and the character of a particular age is more distinctly marked by the
predominance of these silent but universal motives, than by the professed
creed or prevalent philosophy, or, in general, by the opinions of the times.
Thus, none of the primary facts in the history of a widely extended religion
can be without effect ou the character of its believers. The images perpetually
presented to the mind, work, as it were, into its most intimate being, become
incorporated with the feelings, and thus powerfully contribute to form the
moral nature of the whole race. Nothing could be more appropriate than that the
martial Romans should derive their origin from the nursling of the wolf, or
from the god of war; and whether those fables sprung from the national
temperament, or contributed to form it, however these fierce images were
enshrined in the national traditions, they were at once the emblem and example
of that bold and relentless spirit which gradually developed itself, until it
had made the Romans the masters of the world. The circumstances of the birth
of Christ were as strictly in unison with the design of the religion. This
incident seemed to incorporate with the general feeling the deep sense of
holiness and gentleness, which was to characterize the followers of Jesus
Christ. It was the consecration of sexual purity and maternal tenderness. No
doubt by falling in, to a certain degree, with the ascetic spirit of Oriental
enthusiasm, the former incidentally tended to confirm the sanctity of
celibacy,
which for so many ages reigned paramount in the Church; and, in the days in
which the Virgin Mother was associated with her divine Son in the general
adoration, the propensity to this worship was strengthened by its coincidcnce
with the better feelings of our nature, especially among the female sex. Still
the substitution of these images for such as formed the symbols of the older
religions, was a great advance towards that holier and more humane tone of
thought and feeling, with which it was the professed design of the new religion
to imbue the mind of man.1
In the
marvellous incidents which follow, the visit oi the Virgin Mother to her cousin2
Elizabeth,3 vigitt0 when the joy occasioned by the
miraculous EUzabetb- conception seemed to communicate itself to the
child of which the latter was pregnant, and called forth her ardent expressions
of homage; and in the Magnificat, or song of thanksgiving, into which, like
Hannah in
1 The poetry of this sentiment is
beautifully expressed by Wordsworth: —
Mother!
-whose virgin bosom was tmcrost With the least shade or thought to sin allied;
Woman, above
all women glorified,
O’er-tainted
Nature’s solitary boast:
Purer than
foam on central ocean tost,
Brighter than
Eastern skies at daybreak strewn With forced roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven’s bine coast, —
Thy image
falls to earth. Yet sure, I ween,
Not
unforgiven the suppliant here might bend As to a visible power, in whom did
blend All that was mixed and reconciled in thee Of mother’s love and maiden
purity,
Of high with
low, celestial with terrene.
2 Elizabeth must have been further removed
than a first consin 5 for as it is clear that Mary, as well as her husband, was
of the line of David, and Elizabeth of the priestly line, the connection must
have been formed in a preceding generation.
8
Luke i. 39, 66.
the older
Scriptures, the Virgin broke forth, — it is curious to observe how completely
and exclusively consistent every expression appears with the state of belief at
that period: all is purely Jewish, and accordant with the prevalent
expectation of the national Messiah;1 there is no word which seems
to imply any acquaintance with the unworldly and purely moral nature of the
redemption, which was subsequently developed. It may perhaps appear too closely
to press the terms of that which was the common, almost the proverbial, language
of the devotional feelings; yet the expressions which intimate the degradation
of the mighty from their seat, the disregard of the wealthy, the elevation of
the lowly and the meek, and respect to the low estate of the poor, sound not
unlike an allusion to the rejection of the proud and splendid royal race which
had so long ruled the nation, and the assumption of the throne of David by one
born in a more humble state.2
After the
return of Mary to Nazareth, the birth of Birth of John J°bn the Baptist excited
the attention of the the Baptist. whole 0f Southern
Judaea to the fulfilment of the rest of the prediction.3 When the
child is about to be named, the dumb father interferes: he writes on a tablet
the name by which he desires him to be called, and instantaneously recovers his
speech. It is not unworthy of remark, that, in this hymn of thanksgiving, the
part which was to be assigned to John in the pro-
1 Agreeing, so far as the fact, with
Strauss, I should draw a directly opposite inference, — the high improbability
that this remarkable keeping, tliis pure Judaism, without the intervention of
Christian notions, should have been maintained, if this passage had been
invented or composed after the complete formation of the Christian scheme.
2 Neander, in his recently published work,
has made similar observations on the Jewish notions in the Song of Simeon. —
Leben Jesn, p. 28.
8
Luke i. 57, 8G.
mulgation of
the new faith, and his subordination to the unborn Messiah, are distinctly
announced. Already, while one is but a new-born infant, the other scarcely
conceived in the womb of his mother, they have assumed their separate stations:
the child of Elizabeth is announced as the prophet of the Highest, who shall go
“ before the face of the Lord, to prepare his ways.” Yet even here the Jewish
notion predominates : the first object of the Messiah’s coming is that the
children of Israel “ should be saved from their enemies and from the hand of
all that hate them; that they, being delivered from the hand of their enemies
might serve him without fear.”1
As the period
approaches at which the child of Mary is to be born, an apparently fortuitous
circum- journejr to stance summons both Joseph and the Virgin Bethlehcm-
Mother from their residence in the unpopular town o* Nazareth, in the province
of Galilee, to Bethlehem, a small village to the south of Jerusalem.2
Joseph on the discovery of the pregnancy of his betrothed, being a man of
gentle3 character, had been willing to spare her the rigorous
punishment enacted by the law in such cases, and determined on a private
dissolution of the marriage.4 A vision, however, warned him of the
real
1 Even the expression the “ remission of
sins,” which to a Christian ear may bear a different sense, to the Jew would
convey a much narrower meaning. All calamity, being a mark of the divine
displeasure, was an evidence of sin; every mark of divine favor, therefore, an
evidence of divine forgiveness. The expression is frequently used in its
Jewish sense in the book of Maccabees, — 1 Macc. iii. 8; 2 Mace. viii. 5, 27,
and 29; vii. 98. Le Clere has made a similar observation (note in foe.), but is
opposed by Whitby, who, however, does not appear to have been very profoundly
acquainted with Jewish phraseology.
2 Matt. i. 18, 25. 8 Grotius, in loc., from Chrysostom.
4 A bill of divorce was necessary, even
when the parties were only betrothed, and where the marriage had not actually
been solemnized. It is probable, that the Mosaic Law, which in such cases
adjudged a female to
state of the
case, and he no longer hesitated, though abstaining from all connection, to
take her to his home; and accordingly, being of the same descent, she
accompanied him to Bethlehem. This town, as the birthplace of David, had always
been consecrated in the memory of the Jews with peculiar reverence; and no
prediction in the Old Testament appears more distinct than that which assigns
for the nativity of the great Prince, who was to perpetuate the line of David,
the same town which had given birth to his royal ancestor.1
The decree of
the Emperor Augustus,2 in obedience Decree of which the whole
population of Palestine Augustus. was be enrolled and
registered, has been, and still remains, an endless subject of controversy.3
death (Dent.
xx. 23-25), was not at this time executed in its original rigor. It appears
from Aharbanel (Buxtorf, de Divort.) that in certain cases a betrothed maiden
might be divorced without stating the cause in the bill of divorce. This is the
meaning of the woh3 Ad#pa, secretly. Grotius, in loc.
1 Micah-v. 2. 2 Luke ii. 1, 7.
8
The great difficulty arises from the introduction of the name of Cyrenius as
tbe governor, under whose direction the enrolment, or, as it is no doubt
mistranslated in our version, tbe taxation, took place. But it is well known
that Cyrenius did not become governor of Syria till several years later. The
most usual way of accounting for this difficulty, adopted by Lardner and Paley,
is the natural one of supposing that Cyrenius conducted the transaction, while
holding a subordinate situation in the province, of which he afterwards became
governor, and superintended a more regular taxation. But Mr. Greswell has
recently adduced strong reasons fbr questioning whether Cyrenius could have
been at this time in Palestine; and I agree with him, that such a census must
have been made by the native authorities under lie rod. The alternative remains
either to suppose some error in the Gospel of St. Luke, as it now stands, or to
adopt another version. That followed by Mr. Greswell, notwithstanding his
apparent authorities, sounds to me quite irreconcilable with the genius of the
Greek language. There cannot perhaps be found a more brief and satisfactory
summary of the different opinions on this subject than in the common hook,
Elsley’s Annotations on the Gospels. Tholuck, in his answer to Strauss, has
examined the question at great length, pp. 162-198. Neander fairly admits the
possibility of a mistake in a point of this kind, on the part of the
Evangelists. — Leben JesU|
One point
seems clear, that the enrolment must have been of the nature of a
population-census; for any property possessed by Joseph or Mary must have been
at Nazareth; and the enrolment, which seems to have included both husband and
wife, was made at the place where the genealogical registers of the tribes were
kept. About this period, Josephus gives an account of an oath of allegiance and
of fidelity to Caesar and to the interests of the reigning sovereign, which was
to be taken by the whole Jewish nation. The affair of this oath is strangely
mingled up with predictions of a change of dynasty, and with the expected
appearance of a great king, under whose all-powerful reign the most
extraordinary events were to take place. Six thousand of the Pharisees, the
violent religious party, resolutely refused to take the oath. They were fined,
and their fine discharged by the low-born wife of Pheroras, the brother of
Herod, into whose line certain impostors or enthusiasts, pretending to the gift
of prophecy, had declared that the succession was to pass.1 An
eunuch, Bagoas, to whom they had promised peculiar and miraculous advantages
during the reign of the great predicted king,2 was implicated
p. 19. With
him, I am at a loss to conceive how Dr- Strauss can imagine a myth in such a
plain prosaic sentence. The Essay of Zumpt of Berlin (Commentatio de Syrifi
Romanomm province a Caesare Augusto ad T. Ves- pasianum) has thrown unexpected
light on this question. Zumpt shows very strong grounds for helieving that
Cyrenius (Quirinus) was twice Procurator of Syria, once precisely at this
time.
1 Though inclined to agree with Lardner in
supposing that the census or population-retum mentioned hy St. Luke was
connected with the oath of fidelity to Augustus and to Herod, I cannot enter
into his notion, that the whole circumstantial and highly credible statement of
Josephus is hut a maliciously disguised account of the incidents which took
place at the hirth of Christ.—Larduer’s Works, vol. i. (4to edit.) p. 152.
2 Independent of the nature of this
promise, on which I am intentionally silent, the text of Josephus (Ant. xvii.
2,6) is unintelligible as it stands; nor
in tliis
conspiracy, and suffered death, with many of the obstinate Pharisees and of
Herod’s kindred. It is highly probable that the administration of the oath of allegiance
in Josephus, and the census in St. Luke, belong to the same transaction: for,
if the oath was to be taken by all the subjects of Herod, a general enrolment
would be necessary throughout his dominions; and it was likely, according to
Jewish usage, that this enrolment would be conducted according to the established
divisions of the tribes.1 If, however, the expectation of the
Messiah had penetrated even into the palace of Herod; if it had been made use
of in the intrigues and dissensions among the separate branches of his family;
if the strong religious faction had not scrupled to assume the character of
divinely inspired prophets, and to proclaim an immediate change of dynasty, —
the whole conduct of Herod, as described by the evangelists, harmonizes in a
most singular man ner with the circumstances of the times. Though the birth of
Jesus might appear to Herod but as an insignificant episode in the more
dangerous tragic plot which was unfolding itself in his own family, yet his
jealous apprehension at the very name of a new-born native king would seize at
once on the most trifling cause of suspicion ; and the judicial massacre of
many of the most influential of the Pharisees, and of his own kindred in
Jerusalem, which took place on the discovery of this plot, was a fitting
prelude for the
is the
emendation proposed by Ward, a friend of Lardner’s, though ingenious,
altogether satisfactory. — Lardner, ib.
1
The chronological difficulties in this case do not appear to me of great
importance, as the whole affair of the oath may have occupied some time, and
the enrolment may have taken place somewhat later in the provinces than in the
capital.
slaughter of
all the children under a certain age in Bethlehem.
But whether
the enrolment, which summoned Joseph and Mary to the town where the registers
of Birth of their descent were kept, was connected with Christ-
this oath of fidelity to the emperor and the king, or whether it was only a
populatron-return, made by the command of the emperor, in all the provinces
where the Roman sovereignty or influence extended,1 it singularly
contributed to the completion of the prophecy to which we have alluded, which
designated the city of David as the birthplace of the Messiah. Those who
claimed descent from the families whose original possessions were in the
neighborhood of Bethlehem, crowded the whole of the small town ; and in the sta
ble of the inn or caravansary was born THE CHILD, whose moral doctrines, if
adopted throughout the world, would destroy more than half the misery by
destroying all the vice and mutual hostility of men; and who has been for
centuries the object of adoration, as the Divine Mediator between God and man,
throughout the most civilizcd and enlightened nations of the earth. Of this
immediate epoch, only one incident is recorded ; but, in all the early history
of Christianity, nothing is more beautiful, nor in more perfect unison with
the future character of the religion, than the first revelation of its benign
principles, by voices
1 This view i9 maintained by Tholuck, and
seems to receive some support from the high authority of Savigny, writing on
another subject: it is supported by passages of late writers, Isidore and
Cassiodorus. w Augusti siqui- dem temporibua orbis Romanus agris
divisus censuque descriptus est, ut possessio sua nulli haberetur incerta, quam
pro tributorum susceperat quantitate solvenda.” Of itself, the authority of
Cassiodorus, thongh a sensible writer, would have no great weight; but he may
have read many works unknown to us on this period of history, of which we
possess singularly imperfect information.
from heaven
to the lowly shepherds.1 The proclamation of “ Glory to God, peace
on earth, and good will towards men,” is not made by day, but in the quiet
stillness of the night;2 not in the stately temple of the ancient
worship, but among the peaceful pastures ; not to the religious senate of the
Jewish people, or to the priesthood arrayed in all the splendor of public
ministration, but to peasants employed on their lowly occupation.3
In eight
days, according to the law, the child was initiated into the race of Abraham,
by the rite of circumcision ; and when the forty days of purification,
likewise appointed by the statute, are over, the Virgin Mother hastens to make
the customary presentation of the first-born male in the Temple. Her offering
is that of the poorer Jewish females, who, while the more wealthy made an
oblation of a lamb, were content
1 Luke ii. 8, 20.
2 Neander has well observed, that the
modesty of this quiet scene is not in accordance with what might be expected
from the fertility and boldness of mythic invention.
8
The year in which Christ was bom is still contested. There is even *nore
uncertainty concerning the time of the year, which learned men are still
laboring to determine. Where there is and can be no certainty, it Is the wisest
course to acknowledge our ignorance, and not to claim the authority of historic
truth for that which is purely conjectural. The two ablest modem English
writers who have investigated the chronology of the life of Christ, Dr. Burton
and Mr. Greswell, have come to opposite conclusions; one contending for the
spring, the other for the autumn. Even if the argument of either had any solid
ground to rest on, it would be difficult (would it he worth while?) to
extirpate the traditionary belief, so beautifully embodied in Milton’s Hymn: —
It was the
winter wild
When the
heaven-born child, &c.
Were the
point of the least importance, we should, no doubt, have known more about it. “ Quid tandem refert annum et diem exorti luminis, ignorare quum
apparuissc illud, et csecis hominum mentibus illuxisse constet, neque sit, quod
obsistat nobis, ne splendore ac calore ejus utamur.” — Mosheim, dc Reb. Christ,
p. 62. There is a good essay iu the Opuscula of Jahlouski, iii. 317, on the
origin of the festivity of Christmas Day.
with the
least costly, a pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons.1 Only
two persons are recorded as having any knowledge of the future destiny of the
child, — Anna, a woman endowed with a prophetical character, and the aged
Simeon. That Simeon2 was not the celebrated master of the schools of
Jewish learning, the son of Hillel, and the father of Gamaliel, is fairly
inferred from the silence of St. Luke, who, though chiefly writing for the
Greek converts, would scarcely have omitted to state distinctly the testimony
of so distinguished a man to the Messiahship of Jesus. There are other
insurmountable historical objections.3 Though occurrences among the
more devout worshippers in the Temple were perhaps less likely to reach the
ear of Herod than those in any other part of the city, yet it was impossible
that the solemn act of recognizing the Messiah in the infant son of Mary, on so
public a scene, by a man whose language and conduct were watched by the whole
people, could escape observation. Such -an acknowledgment, by so high an
authority, would immediately have been
1 Luke ii. 21, 39.
2 This was the notion of Lightfoot, who,
though often invaluable as interpreting the New Testament from Jewish usages,
is sometimes misled by his Rabbinism into fanciful analogies and illustrations.
— Hist. Jews, ii. 403, note.
5 Our first and not least embarrassing
difficulty in harmonizing the facts recorded in the several Gospels is the
relative priority of the presentation in the Temple and the visit of the
Magians to Bethlehem. On one side, there appears no reason for the return of
the parents and the child, after the presentation, to Bethlehem, where they
appear to have had no friends, and where the object of their visit was most
probably effected: on the other hand, it is still more improbable, that, after
the visit of the Magians, they should rush, as it were, into the very jaws of
danger, by visiting Jerusalem, after the jealousy of Herod was awakened. Yet,
in hoth cases, it should he remembered that Bethlehem was but six miles, or
two hours’ journey, from Jerusalem. — Reland, Palestina, p. 424. See, on one
side, Schleiermacher’s Essay on St Luke, p. 47, though I entirely dissent on
the point from the explana* tion of this author; on the other, Hug’s
Introduction.
VOL.
i. 8
noised
abroad; no prudence could have suppressed the instantaneous excitement. Besides
this, if alive at this time, Simeon ben Hillel would have presided in the court
of inquiry, summoned by Herod, after the appearance of the Magi. The most
remarkable point in the benediction of Simeon is the prediction
His
benedic- 1
e°“-
that the child, who it would have been supposed would have caused unmingled
pride and joy, should also be the cause of the deepest sorrow to his mother,
and of the most fearful calamities, as well as of glory, to the nation.1
The
intercommunion of opinions between the Jewish and Zoroastrian religions throws
great light on the visit of the Magi, or Wise Men, to Jerusalem.
The
Magi. , . . .
The
impregnation of the Jewish notions about the Messiah with the Magian doctrines
of the final triumph of Ormusd, makes it by no means improbable, that, on the other
side, the national doctrines of the Jews may have worked their way into the
popular belief of the East, or at least into the opinions of those among the
Magian hierarchy who had come more immediately into contact with the Babylonian
Jews.2 From them they may have adopted the expectation of the Great
Principle of Light in a human form, and descending, according to ancient
prophecy, from the race of Israel; and thus have been prepared to set forth at
the first appearance of the luminous body, by which they were led to Judaea.3
The universal usage
1 Matt, ii, 1-12.
2 The communication with Babylonia at this
period was constant and regular; so mucli so, that Herod fortified and
garrisoned a strong castle, placed under a Babylonian commander, to protect the
caravans from this quarter from the untamable robbers of the Trachonitis, the
district east of the Jordan and of the Sea of Tiberias.
8 What this luminous celestial appearance
was, has been debated with
of the East,
never to approach the presence of a superior, particularly a sovereign, without
some precious gift, is naturally exemplified in their costly but portable
offerings of gold, myrrh, and frankincense.1
The
appearance of these strangers in Jerusalem at this critical period,
particularly if considered Magiin in connection with the conspiracy
in the Jeru8alem- family of Herod and among the religious faction,
as it excited an extraordinary sensation through the whole city, would
re-awaken all the watchfulness of the monarch. The assemblage of the religious
authorities, in order that they might judicially declare the place from which
the Messiah was expected, might be intended not merely to direct the ministers
of the royal vengeance to the quarter from whence danger was to be apprehended,
but to force the acknowledged interpreters of the sacred writings to an
authoritative declaration as to the circumstances of the Messiah’s birth; so,
if any event should occur, contrary to their
unwearied
activity. I would refer more particularly to the work of Ideler, Handbuch der
Chronologie, ii. 399. There will be found, very clearly stated, the opinion of
Kepler (adopted by Bishop Munter), which explains it as a conjunction between
Jupiter and Saturn.
For my own
part, I cannot understand why the words of St. Matthew, relating to such a
subject, are to be so rigidly interpreted; the same latitude of expression
maybe allowed on astronomical subjects as necessarily must be in the Old
Testament. The vagueness and uncertainty, possibly the scientific inaccuracy,
seem to me the inevitable consequences of the manner in which such
circumstances must have been preserved, as handed down and subsequently reduced
to writing by simple persons, awe-struck under such ex traordinary events.
1 It is the general opinion that the Magi
came from Arabia. Pliny and Ptolemy (Grotius, tn loc.) name Arabian Magi; and
the gifts were considered the produce of that country. But, in fact, gold,
myrrh, and frankincense are too common in the East, and too generally used as
presents to a superior, to indicate, with any certainty, the place from whence
they came. If, indeed, by Arabia be meant, not the peninsula, but the whole
district reaching to the Euphrates, this notion may be true; but it is more
probable that they came from beyond the Euphrates
version of
the prophccies, either to commit them on the side of the ruling powers, or
altogether to invalidate the expectation that was dangerously brooding in the
popular mind. The subtlety of Herod’s character is as strikingly exhibited in
his pretended resolution to join the Magians in their worship of the new-born
king, as his relentless decision, when tlie Magians did not return to
Jerusalem, in commanding the general massacre of all the infants under the age
of two years in Bethlehem and its district.1
Egypt, where,
by divine command, the parents of night into Jesus took refuge, was
but a few days’ Egypt. journey, on a line perpetually frequented by regular
caravans; and in that country those who fled from Palestine could scarcely fail
to meet with hospitable reception, among some of that second nation of Jews
who inhabited Alexandria and its neighborhood.3
1 The murder of the Innocents is a curious
instance of the re-action of legendary extravagance on the plain truth of the
evangelic history. The Greek church canonized the 14,000 Innocents; and another
notion, founded on a misinterpretation of Revelations (xiv. 3), swelled the
number to 144,000. The former, at least, was the common helief of the Church,
though even in our Liturgy the latter has in some degree been sanctioned, hy
retaining the chapter of Revelations as the epistle for the day. Even later,
Jeremy Taylor, in his Life of Christ, admits the 14,000 without scruple, or,
rather, without thought. The error did not escape the notice of the acute
adversaries of Christianity, who, impeaching this extravagant tale, attempted
to bring the evangelic narrative into discredit. Yossius, I believe, was the
first divine who pointed out the monstrous absurdity of supposing such a number
of infant children in so small a village. — Matt, ii, 13-18.
2 Some of the Rabbinical stories accuse
Jesus of having brought “his enchantments ” out of Egypt. (Lightfoot, xi. 45.)
There is no satisfactory evidence as to the antiquity of these notions, or,
ahsurd as they are, they might be some testimony to the authenticity of this
part of the Christian history. See also Eisenmenger, i. p. 150.
The Jewish
fiction of the birth of Jesus is at least as old as the time of Celstis (Origen
contra Cels. 1), hut bears the impress of hostile malice, in assigning as his
parent a Roman soldier. This is the fahle which was perpetuated from that time
by Jewish animosity, till it assumed its most obnoxious form in the Toldoth
Jesu. How much more natural and credible than
On their
return from Egypt, after the death of Herod (which took place in the ensuing
year, though Return t0 the parents of Jesus did not leave Egypt till
Gldiiee- the accession of Archelaus), Joseph, justly apprehensive
that the son might inherit the jealousy and relentless disposition of the
father, of which he had already given fearful indications, retired to his
former residence in .Galilee, under the less suspicious dominion of Herod
Antipas.1 There the general prejudice against Galilee might be their
best security; and the universal belief that it was in Judsea that the great
king was to assume his sovereignty, would render their situation less perilous
; for it was the throne of the monarch of Judah, the dominion of the ruler in
Jerusalem, rather than the government of the Galilean tetrarch, which would
have been considered in danger from the appearance of the Messiah.
the minute
detail winch so obviously betrays later and hostile Invention, the vague
inquiry of bis own compatriots, “ Is not this the carpenter’s son ?” — Matt
xiii. 65.
The answer of
Origen to this Jewish invention is sensihle and judicious. The Christians, if
snch a story had been true, would bave invented something more directly
opposed to the real truth; they would not have agreed so far with the relation,
but rather carefully suppressed every allusion to the extraordinary birth of
Jesus. ’Edwavro yap al?uoc ipevdoTCOLeladaL dia rb c(j>o6pa Tcapado^ov rr/v
ioropiav, nal fir) uanepel anovclog ovytcanaQeadca bn obic dffd avvqQuv
dvOpunocg ya/ujv 6 ’I^croi^ kyev^Qij.— Contra Cels. i.32.
1
Matt. xi. 19, 23. Luke xi. 40.
APPENDIX TO
CHAPTER H.
RECENT LIVES
OF CHBIST.
At the time when this part
of the present work was written, the ultra-rationalist work of Professor
Paulus, the Leben Jesu (Hei- delherg, 1828), was the most recent publication.
Since that time have appeared the Life of Jesus, Das Leben Jesu, by Dr. D. F. Strauss
(2d edition, Tubingen, 1837), and the counter publication of Neander, Das
Leben Jesu (Berlin, 1837); to say nothing of a great number of controversial
pamphlets and reviews, arising out of the work of Dr. Strauss.
This work (consisting of two thick and closely printed volumes of nearly
800 pages each) is a grave and elaborate exposition of an extraordinary
hypothesis, which Dr. Strauss offers, in order to reconcile Christianity with
the advancing intelligence of mankind, which is weary and dissatisfied with
all previous philosophical and rationalist theories. Dr. Strauss solemnly
declares, that the essence of Christianity is entirely independent of his
critical remarks. “The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his
resurrection and ascension, remain eternal truths, however their reality, as
historical facts, may be called in question.”1 He refers to a
dissertation at the close of his work, “to show that the doctrinal contents of
the Life of Jesus are uninjured; and that the calmness and cold-bloodedness
with which his criticism proceeds in its dangerous operations can only be
explained by his conviction, that it is not in the least prejudicial to
Christian faith.” That dissertation, which opens (t. ii. p. 691) with a singularly
eloquent description of the total destruction which this remorseless criticism
has made in the ordinary grounds of Chris-
i “ Christi iibematiirliche Geburt, seine Wunder, seine Auferstehung und
Himmclfahrt bleiben ewige Wahrheiten, so sehr ilire Wirklichkeit als liisto-
rische Facta angezweifelt werden mag.” — Vorrede, xii.
tian faith and practice, I Lave read with much attention. Bat what
resting-place it proposes to substitute for Christian faith I have been unable
to discover, and must acknowledge my unwillingness to abandon the firm ground
of historical evidence, to place myself on any sublime but unsubstantial cloud
which may be offered hy a mystic and unintelligible philosophy. Especially as I
find Dr. Strauss himself coolly contemplating, at the close of his work, the
desolating effects of his own arguments, looking about in vain for the
unsubstantial tenets which he has extirpated by his uncompromising logic, and
plainly admitting, that, if he has shattered to pieces the edifice of
Christianity, it is not his fault.
But Christianity will survive the criticism of Dr. Strauss.
I would, however, calmly consider the first principles of this work,
which appear to me, in many respects, singularly narrow and unphilosophical; by
no means formed on an extensive and complete view of the whole case, and
resting on grounds which, in my judgment, would he subversive of all history.
The hypothesis of Dr. Strauss is, that the whole history of our Lord, as
related in the Gospels, is mythic; that is to say, a kind of imaginative amplification
of certain vague and slender traditions, the germ of which it is now
impossible to trace. These myths are partly what he calls historical, partly
philosophic, formed with the design of developing an ideal character of Jesus,
and of harmonizing that character with the Jewish notions of the Messiah. In
order to prove this, the whole intermediate part of the work is a most
elaborate, and it would be uncandid not to say a singularly skilful,
examination of the difficulties and discrepancies in the Gospels; and a
perpetual endeavor to show in what manner and with what design each separate
myth assumed its present form.
Arguing on the ground of Dr. Strauss, I would urge the following
ohjections, which appear to me fatal to his whole system: —
First, The hypothesis of Strauss is unphilosophical, because it assumes
dogmatically the principal point in dispute. His first canon of criticism is
(t. i. p. 103), that wherever there is any thing supernatural,—angelic
appearance, miracle, or interposition of the Deity,—there we may presume a
myth. Thus he concludes, both against the supernaturalists, as they are called
in Germany, and the general mass of Christian believers of all sects in this
country, that any recorded interference with the ordinary and
experienced order of causation must he unhistorical and untrue; and even
against the rationalists, that these wonders did not even apparently take
place, having been supposed to be miraculous, from the superstition or
ignorance of physical causes among the spectators: they cannot he even the
honest, though mistaken, reports of eye-witnesses.
But, second^, The belief, in some of those
supernatural events, e.g. the resurrection, is indispensahle to the existence
of the religion. To suppose that this belief grew up after the religion was
formed, to assume these primary facts as after-thoughts, seems to me an
absolute impossibility. But if they, or any one of them, were integral parts of
the religion from its earliest origin, though they may possibly have heen subsequently
emhel- lished or unfaithfully recorded in the Gospels, their supernatural
character is no evidence that they are so. .
Thirdly, Besides this inevitable inference, that the religion could not
have subsequently invented that which was the foundation of the religion,
—that these things must have been the belief of the first Christian
communities,—there is distinct evidence in the Acts of the Apostles (though Dr.
Strauss, it seems, would involve that book in the fate of the Gospels), in the
apostolical Epistles, and in every written document and tradition, that they
were so. The general harmony of these three distinct classes of records, as to
the main preternatural facts in the Gospels, proves incontestahly that they
were not the slow growth of a subsequent period, emhodied in narratives
composed in the second century.
For, fourthly, Dr. Strauss has hy no means examined the evidence for the
early existence of the Gospels with the rigid diligence which characterizes
the rest of his work. I think he does not fairly state that the early notices
of the Gospels, in the works of the primitive Fathers, show, not only their
existence, hut their general reception among the Christian communities, which
imply both a much earlier composition and some strong grounds for their
authenticity. As to the time when the Gospels were composed, his argument
seems to me self-destructive. The later he supposes them to have heen written,
the more impossible (considering that the Christians were then so widely
disseminated in Europe and Asia) is their accordance with each other in the
same design or the same motives for fiction: if he takes an earlier date, he
has no room for his long process of mythic devel
opment. In one place, he appears to admit that the three first Gospels,
at least, must have been completed between the death of our Lord and the
destruction of Jerusalem, less than forty years. (I mj'self consider their
silence, or rather the obscure and confused prophetic allusions to that event,
as absolutely decisive on this point with regard to all the four.) But is it
conceivable, that, in this narrow period, this mythic spirit should have been
so prolific, and the primitive simplicity of the Christian history have been so
embellished, and then universally received by the first generation of believers
?
The place, as well as the period, of their composition, is encumbered
with difficulties, according to this system. Where were they written ? If all,
or rather the three first, in Palestine, whence their general acccptance
without direct and acknowledged authority P If in different parts of the
world, their general acceptance is equally improbable; their similarity of
design and object, altogether unaccountable.
Were they written with this mythic latitude by Judaizing or Ilellenizing
Christians ? If by Judaizing, I should expect to find far more of Judaism, of
Jewish tradition, usage, and language, as appears to have been the case in the
Ebionitish Gospel; if by Hellenizing, the attempt to frame the myths in
accordance with Jewish traditions is inconceivable.1 They Judaize
too little for the Petrine Christians (that is, those who considered the Gospel
in some sort a re-enactment of the Mosaic Law), too much for the followers of
St. Paul, who rejected the Law.
The other canons of Dr. Strauss seem to me subversive of all history.
Every thing extraordinary or improbable, the prophetic anticipations of
youthful ambition, complete revolution in individual character (he appears to
allude to the change in the character of the Apostles after the resurrection,
usually, and in my Opinion justly, considered as one of the strongest arguments
of the truth of the narrative), though he admits that this canon
1
Dr. Strauss, for instance, asserts all the passages relating to the miraculous
birth of Christ (the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke), and those
which relate His baptism in St. John, to have proceeded from two distinct
classes of Christians, differing materially, or rather directly opposed to each
other, in their notions of the Messiah,—a Judaizing and an anti-docetic sect.
See vol. i. pp. 446-448. We must find time, not merely for the growth and
development of both notions, but for their hlending into one system, and the
general adoption of that system by the Christian communities.
is to be applied with caution, are presumptive of a mythic character.
If discrepancies in the circumstances between narratives of the same
events, or differences of arrangement in point of time, particularly among
rude and inartificial writers, are to be admitted as proofs of this kind of
fiction, all history is mythic; even the accounts of every transaction in the
daily papers, which are never found to agree precisely in the minute details,
are likewise mythic.
To these, which appear to me conclusive arguments against the hypothesis
of Dr. Strauss, I would add some observations, which to my mind are general
’maxims, which must be applied to all such discussions.
No religion is in its origin mythic. Mythologists embellish, adapt,
modify, idealize, clothe in allegory or symbol, received and acknowledged
truths. This is a later process, and addressed to the imagination, already
excited, and prepared to receive established doctrines or opinions in this new
form. But, in Christianity (according to Dr. Strauss’s hypothesis), what was
the first impulse, the germ, of all this high-wrought and successful
idealization ? Nothing more than the existence of a man named Jesus, who
obtained a few followers, and was put to death as a malefactor, without any
pretensions on his part to a superior character, either as a divine or a
divinely commissioned being, or as the expected Messiah of the Jews. Whatever,
extorted by the necessity of the case, is added to this primary conception of
the character of Jesus, in order sufficiently to awaken the human mind to a new
religion connected with his name,—belief of his miraculous powers, of his
resurrection, of his Messiahship, even of his more than human virtue and
wisdom, —tends to verify the delineation of his character in his Gospels, as
the original object of admiration and belief to his followers, and to
anticipate and preclude, as it were, its being a subsequent mythic invention.
Can the period in which Jesus appeared be justly considered a mythic age
? If by mythic age (and I do not think Dr. Strauss very rigid and philosophical
in the use of the term) be meant an age in which there was a general and even
superstitious belief in wonders and prodigies, mingled up with much cool
incredulity, this cannot be denied. The prodigies which are related by grave
historians, as taking place at the death of Cajsar; those which Josephus, who
is disposed to rationalize many of the miracles
of the early history of his people, describes during the capture of
Jerusalem, — are enough, out of the countless instances which could be adduced,
to determine the question. But, if the term mythic be more properly applied to
that idealization, that investing religious doctrines in allegory or symbol;
above all, that elevating into a deity a man only distinguished for moral excellence
(the deification of the Roman emperors was a political act), — this appears to
me to be repugnant to the genius of the time and of the country. Among the
Jewish traditions in the Talmud, there is much fable, much parable, much
apologue; as far as I can discern, nothing, strictly speaking, mythic. Philo’s
is a kind of poetico-philosophic rationalism. The later legends, of Simon
Magus, Alexander in Lucian, and Apollonius in Tyana, are subsequent inventions,
after the imaginative impulse given by Christianity, possibly imitative of the
Gospels.
I would be understood, however, as laying least stress upon this
argument, as this tendency to imaginative excitement and creation does not
depend so much on the age as on the state of civilization, which perhaps, in
the East, has never become completely exempt from this tendency.
But I cannot admit the spurious Gospels, which seem to me the manifest
offspring of Gnostic and heretical sects, and to have been composed at periods
which historical criticism might designate from internal evidence, though
clearly mythical, to involve the genuine Gospels in the same proscription. To a
discriminating and unprejudiced mind, I would rest the distinction between
mythical and non-mythical on the comparison between the apocryphal and
canonical Gospels.1
Neander, in my opinion, has exercised a very sound judgment in declining
direct controversy with Dr. Strauss ; for controversy, even conducted in the
calm and Christian spirit of Neander, rarely works conviction, except in those
who are already convinced. He has chosen the better course of giving a fair
and candid view of the opposite side of the question, and of exhibiting the
accordance of the ordinary view of the origin and authority of the Gospels with
sound reason and advanced philosophy. He has dissembled no difficulties, and
appealed to no passions. It affords me much satisfaction to find, that,
although my plan did
1 The nearest approach to the mythic would
perhaps be the kind of divine character asiramed by Simon Magus among the
Samaritans, and alluded to in the Acts.
not require or admit of such minute investigation, I have anticipated
many of the conclusions of Neander. In many respects, the point of view from
which I have looked at the subject ip altogether different; and, as I have
preferred to leave my own work in its original form, though some of the
difficulties and discrepancies on which Dr. Strauss dwells may, I trust, be reasonably
accounted for in the following chapters of my work, this will be only
incidentally: the full counter-statement, prepared with constant reference to
Dr. Strauss’s book, must be sought in the work of Meander.
It accords even less with the design of my work, which is rather to trace
the influence and effect of Christian opinions than rigidly to investigate
their origin or to establish their truth, to notice the various particular
animadversions on Dr. Strauss which might suggest themselves; yet I have added
some few observations on certain points, when they have crossed the course of
my narrative.
The best answer to Strauss is to show that a clear, consistent, and
probable narrative can be formed out of that of the four Gospels, without more
violence, I will venture to say, than any historian ever found necessary to
harmonize four contemporary chronicles of the same events ; and maintaining a
general accordance with the history, customs, habits, and opinions of the
times, altogether irreconcilable with the poetic character of mythic history.
The inexhaustible fertility of German speculation has now displayed
itself in another original and elaborate work,—Die Evangelische Geschichte,
Kritisch und Philosophisch bearbeitet, Yon Ch. Hermann Weisse. 2 Bande.
Leipsic, 1838. Dr. Weisse repudiates the theory of Strauss. If he does not
bring us to the cold and dreary conclusion of Strauss, or land us on the Nova
Zembla of that writer, he leaves us enveloped in a vague and indistinct mist,
in which we discern nothing clear, distinct, or satisfactory.
The critical system of Weisse rests on two leading points: the assumption
of the Gospel of St. Mark as the primitive Gospel,— a theory which has been
advanced before, but which no writer has wrought out with so much elaborate
diligence as Weisse; and a hostility which leads to the virtual rejection of
the Gospel of St. John, as almost entirely spurious. With regard to St. Mark’s
Gospel, he receives the tradition of Papias, that it
was written from the dictation, or at least from information obtained
from St. Peter. St. Matthew’s was formed from .the incorporation of the Gospel
of the Hebrews with the Xoyia, a collection of speeches attributed to our Lord.
As to St. John’s, he submits it to the test of his own arbitrary, and it
appears to me, however they may be called critical, veiy narrow and
unphilosophical, laws of probability.
The theory by which Weisse would reconcile and harmonize what he retains
of the evangelic history with what he considers the highest philosophy, I must
confess my inability to comprehend; and must plead, as my excuse, that he
admits it to be unintelligible to those who are not acquainted with some of his
former philosophical works, which I have not at my command. What I do
comprehend it would be impossible to explain, as the philosophical language of
Germany would, if retained, be entirely without meaning to most readers, and
is untranslatable into a foreign tongue.
Weisse retains a much larger and more solid substratum of historic fact
than Strauss; and, though he may be called a mythic interpreter, his mythic
system seems to me entirely different from that of Strauss. With the latter,
the historic facts are, in general, pure fictions, wrought out of preconceived
Jewish notions: with Weisse, they are symbolic rather than mythic. In some
cases, they arise from the mistake of symbolic action for real fact; as, for
instance, the notion of the feeding the multitudes in the desert arose out of
the mystic language of the Saviour, relating to spiritual nourishment by the
bread of life. In other parts, he adopts the language of Vico, which has found
so much favor in Germany, but which, I confess, when gravely applied to
history, and followed out to an extent I conceive scarcely anticipated by its
author, appears to me to be one of the most monstrous improbabilities which has
ever passed current under the garb of philosophy. Individual historical
characters are merely symbols of the age in which they live,—ideal
personifications, as it were, of the imagination, without any actual or
personal existence. Thus the elder Herod (Weisse is speaking of the massacre of
the Innocents) is the symbol, the representation, of worldly power. And so the
tyrant of the Jews is sublimated into an allegory.
Weisse, however, in his own sense, distinctly asserts the divinity of the
religion and of our Lord himself.
I mention this book foi several reasons:—First, because.
although it is written in a tone of bold, and, with us, it would seem
presumptuous, speculation, and ends, in my opinion, in a kind of unsatisfactory
mysticism, it contains much profound and extremely beautiful thought.
Secondly, because, in its system of interpretation, it seems to me to
bear a remarkable resemblance to that of Philo and the better part of the
Alexandrian school: it is to the New Testament what they were to the Old.
Lastly, to show that the German mind itself has been startled by the
conclusions to which the stern and remorseless logic of Strauss has pushed on
the historical criticism of rationalism; and that, even where there is no
tendency to return to the old system of religious interpretation, there is, not
merely strong discontent with the new, but a manifest yearning for a loftier
and more consistent harmony between the religion of the Gospels and true
philosophy than has yet been effected by any of the remarkable writers who have
attempted this reconciliation.
(It is hardly worth the space to notice such writers as Feuerbach and
Bruno Bauer, who reproach Strauss with his timid orthodoxy. As far as I can
judge, they have been repudiated with contemptuous silence even in Germany. The
work of Strauss has been translated into French and into English. In England, I
suspect, its number of readers has been extremely limited; but it is impossible
to trace its indirect effect. —1863.)
APPENDIX H.
ORIGIN OP THE
GOSPELS.
The question concerning the origin of the three first Gospels, both
before and subsequent to the publication of Bishop Marsh’s Michaelis, has
assumed every possible form; and it may be safely asserted, that no one
victorious theory has gained any thing like a general assent among the learned.
Every conceivable hypothesis has fouud its advocates; the priority of each of
the evangelists has been maintained with erudition and ingenuity; each has been
considered the primary authority, which has been copied by the others. The
hypothesis of one or more common sources, "from which all three derived
their materials (the view supported with
so much learning and ability by the Bishop of Peterborough), has in its
turn shared the common fate.
This inexhaustible question, though less actively agitated still
continues to occupy the attention of biblical critics in Germany. I cannot help
suspecting that the best solution of this intricate problem lies near the
surface.1 The incidents of the Saviour’s life and death, the
contents of the Gospels, necessarily formed a considerable part of the oral
teaching, or, if not of the oral teaching, of oral communication, among the
first propagators of Christianity.2 These incidents would be
repeated and dwelt upon with different degrees of frequency, and perhaps
distinctness, according to their relative importance. While, on the other
hand, from the number of teachers scattered at least through Palestine, and
probably in many other parts of the Roman empire, many varieties of expression,
much of that unintentional difference of coloring which every narrative
receives by frequent repetition, would unavoidably arise; on the other, there
would be a kind of sanctity attributed to the precise expressions of the
apostles, if recollected, which would insure on many points a similarity, a
perfect identity, of language. We
1 It would be difficult to point out a
clearer and more satisfactory exposition of any controversy, than that of this
great question in biblical criticism, by Mr. Thirlwall, now Bishop Thirlwall,
in his Preface to Schleiermacher’s Essay on St. Luke.
2 I have considered the objections urged by
Hug, and more recently with great force by Weisse (p. 20 et seq.), to this
theory, the more important of which resolve themselves into the undoubted fact,
that it was a creed, and not a history, which, in all the accounts we have in
the Acts of the Apostles and elsewhere, formed the subject of oral teaching.
This is, doubtless, true; out, resting as the creed did upon the history,
containing, no doubt, in its primitive form a very few simple articles, would
it not necessarily awaken curiosity as to the historic facts ? and would not
that curiosity demand, as it were, to be satisfied ? The more belief warmed
into piety, the more insatiably would it require, and the more would the
teacher be disposed, to gratify this awakened interest and eagerness for
information on every point that related to the Redeemer. The formal public
teaching, no douht, confined itself to the enforcement of the creed, and to
combating Jewish or heathen objections, and confuting Judaism or idolatry. But
in private intercourse, when the minds of both instructor and hearer were
exclusively full of these subjects, would not tbe development of the history,
in more or less detail, be a necessary and iunavoidable consequence ? I
subscribe to the maxim that Christianity is essentially a historical religion.
Its creed, all but the transcendental articles, is history.
cannot suppose but that these incidents and events in the life of Christ,
these parables and doctrines delivered by himself, thus orally communicated in
the course of public teaching and in private, received with such zealous
avidity, treasured as of such inestimable importance, would be perpetually
written down, if not as yet in continuous narratives, in numerous and accumulating
fragments, by the Christian community, or by some one or more distinguished
members of it. They would record, as far as possible, the ipsissima, verba of
the primitive teacher, especially if an apostle or a personal follower of
Jesus. But these records would still be liable to some inaccuracy, from misapprehension
or infirmity of memory; and to some discrepancy, from the inevitable variations
of language in oral instruction or communication frequently repeated, and that
often by different teachers. Each community or church, each intelligent
Christian, would thus possess a more or less imperfect Gospel, which he would
preserve with jealous care, and increase with zealous activity, till it should
be superseded by some more regular and complete narrative, the authenticity and
authority of which he might be disposed to admit. The evangelists who, like St.
Luke, might determine to write “in order,” either to an individual like
Theophilus, to some single church, or to the whole body of Christians, “ those
things which were most surely believed among them,’’ would naturally have
access to, would consult, and avail themselves of many of those private or more
public collections. All the three, or any two, might find many coincidences of
expression (if, indeed, some expressions had not already become conventional
and established, or even consecrated, forms of language, with regard to
certain incidents), which they would transfer into their own narrative ; on
the other hand, incidents would be more or less fully developed, or be entirely
omitted in some, while retained in others.
Of all points on which discrepancies would be likely to arise, there
would be none so variable as the chronological order and consecutive series of
events. The primitive teacher or communicator of the history of the life and
death of Jesus would often follow a doctrinal rather than a historical
connection ; and this would, in many instances, be perpetuated by those who
should endeavor to preserve in writing that precious information communicated
to them by the preacher. Hence the discrepancies and variations in order and
arrangement, more especially as, it
may be said without irreverence, these rude and simple historians,
looking more to religious impression than to historic precision, may have
undervalued the importance of rigid chronological narrative. Thus, instead of
one or two primary, either received or unauthoritative, sources of the Gospels,
I should conceive that there would be many, almost as many as there were Christian
communities, all in themselves imperfect, but contributing more or less to the
more regular and complete narratives extant in our Gospels. The general
necessity, particularly as tlie apostles and first followers were gradually
withdrawn from the scene, would demand a more full and accurate narrative; and
these confessedly imperfect collections would fall into disuse, directly that
the waut was supplied by regular Gospels, composed by persons either considered
as divinely commissioned, or at least as authoritative and trustworthy writers.
The almost universal acceptance of these Gospels is the guarantee- for their
general conformity with these oral, traditional, and written records of the
different communities, from which if they had greatly differed, they would
probably have been rejected; while the same conformity sufficiently accounts
for the greater or less fulness, the variation in the selection of incidents,
the silcnce on some points, or the introduction of others, in one Gospel alone.
Whether or not either of the evangelists saw the work of the other, they made
constant use of the same or similar sources of information, not merely from
their own personal knowledge, but likewise from the general oral teaching and
oral communications of the apostles and first preachers of Christianity, thus
irregularly and incompletely, but honestly aud faithfully, registered by the
hearers. Under this view, for my own part, I seem rationally to avoid all
embarrassment with the difficulties of the subject. I am not surprised at exact
coincidences of thought or language, though followed by, or accompanied with,
equally remarkable deviations and discrepancies. I perceive why one is brief
and the other full; why one omits, while another details, minute circumstances.
I can account for much apparent and some real discrepancy. I think that I
discern, to my own satisfaction, sufficient cause for diversity in the
collocation of different incidents : in short, admitting these simple
principles, there flows a natural harmony from the whole, which blends and
re-unites all the apparent discords which appear to disturb the minds of
others.
VOL.
I. 9
There is one point which strikes me forcibly in all these minute and
elaborate arguments, raised from every word and letter of the Gospels, which
prevails throughout the whole of the modern German criticism. It is, that,
following out their rigid juridical examination, the most extreme rationalists
are (unknowingly) influenced by the theory of the strict inspiration of the
evangelists. Weisse himself has drawn very ably a distinction between
juridical and historical truth ; that is, the sort of legal truth whick we
should require in a court of justice, and that which we may expect from
ordinary history. But, in his own investigations, he appears to me constantly
to lose sight of this important distinction ; no cross-examination in an
English court of law was ever so severe as that to which every word and shade
of expression in the evangelists is submitted. Now, this may be just in those
who admit a rigid verhal inspiration; but those who reject it, and consider the
evangelists merely as ordinary historians, have no right to require more than
ordinary historic accuracy. The evangelists were either —
I. Divinely
inspired in their language and expressions as well as in the facts and
doctrines which they relate. On this theory, the inquirer may reasonably
endeavor to harmonize discrepancies ; but, if he fails, he must submit in
devout reverence, and suppose that there is some secret way of reconciling such
contradictions, which he wants acuteness or knowledge to comprehend.
II. We may
adopt a lower view of inspiration, whether of suggestion or superintendence, or
even that which seems to have been generally received in the early ages, the
inflexible love of truth, which, being inseparable from the spirit of
Christianity, would of itself be a sufficient guarantee for fidelity and
honesty. Under any of these notions of inspiration (the definition of which
word is, in fact, the real difficulty), there would he much latitude for
variety of expression, of detail, of chronological arrangement. Each narrative
(as the form and the language would be uninspired) would bear marks of the
individual character, the local circumstances, the education, the character of
the writer.
IH. We may consider the evangelists as ordinary historians, credible
merely in proportion to their means of ohtaining accurate knowledge, their
freedom from prejudice, and the abstract credibility of their statements. If,
however, so considered (as i3 invariably the case in the German school of
criticism), they
should undoubtedly have all the privileges of ordinary historians, and
indeed of historians of a singularly rude and inartificial class. They would be
liable to all the mistakes into which such writers might fall; nor would
trifling inaccuracies impeach the truth of their general narrative. Take, for
instance, the introduction of Cyrenius, in relation to the census in the
beginning of St. Luke’s Gospel. In common historical inquiry, it would be concluded
that the author had made a mistake1 as to the name, his general
truth would remain unshaken, nor would any one think of building up a
hypothesis on so trivial and natural an inaccuracy. But there is scarcely a
work of this school without some such hypothesis. I confess that I am
constantly astonished at the elaborate conclusions which are drawn from
trifling discrepancies or inaccuracies in those writers, from whom is exacted
a precision of language, a minute and unerring knowledge of facts incident to,
but by no means forming constituent parts of, their narrative, which is
altogether inconsistent with the want of respect in other cases shown to their authority.
The evangelists must have been either entirely inspired, or inspired as to the
material parts of their history, or altogether uninspired. In the latter, and,
indeed, in the more moderate, view of the second case, they would have a right
to the ordinary latitude of honest narrators; they would, we may safely say, be
read, as other historians of their inartificial and popular character always
are; and so read, it would be impossible, I conceive, not to be surprised, and
convinced of their authenticity, by their general accordance with all
the circumstances of their age, country, and personal character.
1 “
Non nos debere arbitrari mentiri quemquam, si pluribus rem quam audierunt vel
viderunt reminiscentibus, non eodem modo atque eisdem verbis, eadem tamen res
ftierit indicata: aut sive mutetur ordo verborum, sive alia pro aliis, quse
tamen idem valeant, verba proferantur, sive aliquid vel quod recordanti non
occurrit, vel quod ex aliis quse dicuntur possit intelligi minus dicatur, sive
aliorum quse magis dicere statuit narrandorum gratia, ut con- gruus temporis
modus sufficiat, aliquid sibi non totum explicandum, sed ex parte tangendum
quisque suscipiat; sive ad illuminandam declarandamque sententiam, nihil quidem
renun, verhomm tamen aliquid addat, cui auctoritas narrandi eoncessa est, sive
rem bene tenens, non assequatwr quamvis id conetur, memoriter etiam verba guce
aufliirit ad integrum enwntiare.”— Augustin. De Consens. Evangelist, ii. 28.
Compare the whole passage, which coincides witli the general view of the
Fathers as to this question, in c. 50. St. Augustine seems to admit an
inspiration of guidance or superintendence. In one passage, he seems to go
farther, but to plungs (with respect be it spoken) into inextricable nonsense,
iii. 30: see also 48.
INFLUENCE OF
THE MORE IMAGINATIVE INCIDENTS OF THE EARLY EVANGELIC HISTORY ON THE
PROPAGATION AND MAINTENANCE OF THE RELIGION.
A curious fact occurs to those who trace the progress of religious
opinion, not merely in the popular theology, but in the works of those, chiefly
foreign writers, who indulge in bolder speculations on these subjects. Many of
these are men of the pro- foundest learning, and, it would be the worst
insolence of uncharitableness to doubt, with the most sincere and ardent
aspirations after truth. The fact is this: Certain parts of the evangelic
history, the angelic appearances, the revelations of the Deity addressed to the
senses of man (the Angelo-phaniai and Theo- phaniai, as they have been
called),—with some though not with all this class of writers, every thing
miraculous, appears totally inconsistent with historic truth. These incidents,
being irreconcilable with our actual experience, and rendered suspicious by a
multitude of later fictions, which are rejected in the mass by most Protestant
Christians, cannot accord with the more subtle and fastidious intelligence of
the present times. Some writers go so far as to assert that it is impossible
that an inquiring and reasoning age should receive these supernatural facts as
historical verities. But, if we look back, we find that precisely these same
parts of the sacred narrative were dearest to the believers of a more
imaginative age; and they are still dwelt upon by the general mass of
Christians with that kiud of ardent faith which refuses to break its old
alliance with the imagination. It was by this very supernatural agency, if I
may so speak, that the doctrines, the sentiments, the moral and religious
influence, of Christianity were implanted in the mind, on the first
promulgation of the Gospel; and the reverential feeling thus excited, most
powerfully contributed to maintain the efficacy of the religion for at least
seventeen centuries. That which is now to many incredible, not merely commanded
the belief, but made the purely moral and spiritual part of Christianity, to
which few of these writers now refuse their assent, credible.
An argument which appears to me of considerable weight arises out of
these considerations. Admit, as even the rationalist and
mythic interpreters seem to do, though in vague and metaphysical terms,
the divine interposition, or at least the pre-arrangement and effective though
remote agency of the Deity, in the introduction of Christianity into the
world. These passages in general are not the vital and essential truths of
Christianity, but the vehicle by which these truths were communicated; a kind
of language by which opinions were conveyed, and sentiments infused, and the
general belief in Christianity implanted, confirmed, and strengthened. As we
cannot but suppose that the state of the world as well during as subsequent to
the introduction of Christianity, the comparative rebarbarization of the human
race, the long centuries in which mankind was governed by imagination rather
than by severe reason, were within the design, or at least the foreknowledge,
of all-seeing Providence ; so, from the fact that this mode of communication
with mankind was for so long a period so effective, we may not unreasonably
infer its original adoption by Divine wisdom. This language of poetic incident,
and, if I may so speak, of imagery, interwoven as it was with the popular
belief, infused into the hymns, the services, the ceremonial, of the Church,
embodied in material representation by painting or sculpture, was the
vernacular tongue of Christianity, universally intelligible, and responded to
by the human heart, throughout these many centuries. Revelation thus spoke the
language, not merely of its own, but of succeeding times; because its design
was the perpetuation, as well as the first propagation, of the Christian
religion.
Whether, then, these were actual appearances or impressions produced on
the mind of those who witnessed them, is of slight importance. In either case,
they are real historical facts; they partake of poetry in their form, and, in a
certain sense, in their groundwork, but they are imaginative, not fictitious;
true, as relating that which appeared to the minds of the relators exactly as
it did appear.1 Poetry — meaning by poetry such an imaginative
form, and not merely the form, but the subject-matter, of the narrative, as,
for instance, in the first chapters of St. Matthew
1
This, of course, does not apply to facts which must have been either historical
events or direct fictions, such as the resurrection of Jesus. The reappearance
of an actual and well-known hodilv form cannot be refined into one of those any
and unsubstantial appearances which may be represented to, or may exist solely
through, the imaginative faculty. I would strictly maintain this important
-distinction.
and St. Luke — was the appropriate and perhaps necessary intelligible
dialect; the vehicle for the more important truths of the Gospel to later
generations. The incidents, therefore, were so ordered, that they should thus
live in the thoughts of men; the revelation itself was so adjusted and arranged
in order that it might insure its continued existence throughout this period.1
Could, it may be inquired, a purely rational or metaphysical creed have
survived for any length of time during such stages of human civilization ?
I am aware that this may be considered as carrying out what is called
accommodation to an unprecedented extent; and that the whole system of what is
called accommodation is looked upon with great jealousy. It is supposed to
compromise, as it were, the truth of the Deity, or at least of the revelation:
a deception, it is said, or at least an illusion, is practised upon the belief
of man.
I cannot assent to this view.
From the necessity of the case, there must be some departure from the
pure and essential spirituality of the Deity, in order to communicate with the
human race ; s'ome kind of condescension from the infinite and inconceivable
state of Godhead, to become cognizable, or to enter into any kind of relation
with material and dimly mental man. All this is, in fact, accommodation ; and
the adaptation of any appropriate means of addressing, for his benefit, man in
any peculiar state of intelligence, is but the wise contrivance, the
indispensable condition, which renders that communication either possible, or
at least effective to its manifest end. Religion is one great system of
accommodation to the wants, to the moral and spiritual advancement, of mankind;
and I cannot but think that as it has so efficaciously adapted itself to
1 By all those who consider the knowledge
of these circumstances to have reached the evangelists (by whatever notion of
inspiration they may be guaranteed) through the ordinary sources of
information, from the reminiscences of Mary herself, or from those of other
contemporaries, it would he expected that these remote incidents would he
related with the greatest indistinctness, without mutual connection or
chronological arrangement, and different incidents be preserved by different
evangelists. This is precisely the case: the very marvellousness of the few
circumstances thus preserved accounts in some degree for their preservation,
and at the same time for the kind of dimness and poetic character with which
they are clothed. They are too slight and wanting in particularity to give the
idea of invention: they seem like a few scattered fragments preserved from oral
tradition.
one state of the human mind, so it will to that mind during all its
progress; and it is of all things the most remarkable in Christianity, that it
has, as it were, its proper mode of addressing with effect every age and every
conceivable state of man. Even if (though I conceive it impossible) the
imagination should entirely wither from the human soul, and a severer faith
enter into an exclusive alliance with pure reason, Christianity would still
have its moral perfection, its rational promise of immortality, its approximation
to the one pure, spiritual, incomprehensible Deity, to satisfy that reason, and
to infuse those sentiments of dependence, of gratitude, of love to God,
without which human society must fall to ruin, and the human mind, in
humiliating desperation, suspend all its hoble activity, and care not to put
forth its sublime and eternal energies.
Commencement
of the Public Life of Jesus.
Nearly thirty
years had passed away since the birth in period to the Bethlehem, during which
period there is but ofSpubiio°u one incident recorded,
which could direct the character. public attention to the Son of Mary.1 All religious Jews made their
periodical visits to the capital at the three great festivals, especially at
the Passover. The more pious women, though exempt by the law from regular
attendance, usually accompanied their husbands or kindred. It is probable,
that, at the age of twelve, the children, who were then said to have assumed
the rank of “ Sons of the Law,” and were considered responsible for their
obedience to the civil and religious institutes of the nation, were first permitted
to appear with their parents in the metropolis, to be present, and, as it were,
to be initiated in the religious ceremonies.2 Accordingly, at this age, Jesus
1 There is no likelihood that the extant
apocryphal Gospel of the Infancy contains any traditional truth. This work, in
my opinion, was evidently composed with a controversial design, to refute the
sects which asserted that Jesus was no more than an ordinary child, and that
the divine nature descended upon Him at his baptism. Hence his childhood is
represented as fertile in miracles as his manhood, — miracles which are
certainly pnerile enough for that age. But it is a curious proof of the
vitality of popular legends, that many of these stories are still current, even
in England, in our Christmas carols, and in this form are disseminated among
onr cottages.
2 “ A child was free from presenting
himself in the Temple at the three feasts until (according to the school of
Hitlel) he was able, his father taking him by the hand, to go up with him into
the mount of the Temple.” — Light- foot, x. 71. See also Wetstein, in he.
■went
up with his parents at the festival to Jerusalem;1 but on their
return, after the customary resi- t0 dence of seven days, they had
advanced a Jerusalem- full day’s journey without discovering
that the youth was not to be found in the whole caravan, or long train of
pilgrims, which probably comprised all the religious inhabitants of the
populous northern provinces. In the utmost anxiety, they returned to Jerusalem,
and, after three days,2
found Him in one of the chambers, within the precincts of the Temple, set apart
for public instruction. In these schools the wisest and most respected of the
Rabbis, or teachers, were accustomed to hold their sittings, which were open to
all who were desirous of knowledge. Jesus was seated, as the scholars usually
were; and at his familiarity with the Law, and the depth and subtilty of his
questions, the learned men were in the utmost astonishment: the phrase may,
perhaps, bear the stronger sense, — they were “ in an ecstasy of admiration.”
This incident is strictly in accordance with Jewish usage. The more promising
youths were encouraged to the early development and display of their
acquaintance with the Sacred Writings, and the institutes of the country.
Josephus, the historian, relates, that in his early youth he was an object of
wonder for his precocious knowledge, with the Wise Men, who took delight in
examining and developing his proficiency in the subtler questions of the Law.
Whether the impression of the transcendent promise of Jesus was as deep and
lasting as it was vivid, we have no information; for without reluctance, with
no more than a brief and mysterious
1
Luke ii. 41, 52.
3 According to Grotius, they had advanced
one day’s journey towards Galilee, returned the second, and found him the
third: in loc.
intimation
that public instruction was the business imposed upon Him by his Father, He
returned with hi3 parents to his remote and undistinguished home. The Law, in
this, as in all such cases, harmonizing with the eternal instincts of nature,
had placed the relatior of child and parent on the simplest and soundest principles.
The authority of the parent was unlimited, while his power of inflicting
punishment on the person, or injuring the fortunes of the child by disinheritance,
was controlled; and while the child, on the one hand, was bound to obedience by
the strongest sanctions, on the other the duty of maintaining and instructing
his offspring was as rigidly enforced upon the father. The youth then returned
to the usual subjection to his parents; and, for nearly eighteen years longer,
we have 110 knowledge that Jesus was distinguished among the inhabitants of
Nazareth, except by his exemplary piety, and by his engaging demeanor and
conduct, which acquired Him the general good-will. The Law* as some suppose,
prescribed the period of thirty years for the assumption of the most important
functions; and it was not till He had arrived at this age that Jesus again
emerged from his obscurity;1
nor does it appear improbable that John had previously commenced his public
career at the same period in his life.
During these
thirty years most important revolutions political rev- had taken place in the
public administration
olutions . , 1
during the of
affairs in Judaea, and a deep and sullen
preceding ' r
period.
change had been slowly working in the popular mind. The stirring events which
had rapidly
1 Or entering on his thirtieth year.
According to the Jewish mode of computation, the year, the week, or the day
which had commenced was included in the calculation. — Lightfoot.
succeeded
each other, were such as, no doubt, might entirely obliterate any transient
impressions made by the marvellous circumstances which attended the birth of Jesus,
if, indeed, they had obtained greater publicity than we are inclined to
suppose. As the period approached in which the new Teacher was to publish his
mild and benignant faith, the nation, wounded in their pride, galled by
oppression, infuriated by the promulgation of fierce and turbulent doetrines
more congenial to their temper, became less and less fit to receive any but a
warlike and conquering Messiah. The reign of Archelaus, or rather the inter- Eeign
of regnum while he awaited the ratification of Arohelaus his
kingly powers from Rome, had commenced with a bloody tumult, in whieh the royal
soldiery had attempted to repress the insurrectionary spirit of the populace.
The Passover had been interrupted,— an unprecedented and ill-omened event! —
and the nation, assembled from all quarters, had been constrained to disperse
without the completion of the sacred ceremony.1 After the tyrannical reign of Archelaus as etlmarch, for
more than nine years, he had been banished into Gaul, and Judaea was reduced
to Reduction to
, a Roman
a Roman
province, under a governor (proeu- province, rator) of the equestrian order,
who was subordinate to the President of Syria. But the first Roman governors,
having taken up their residence in Herod’s magnificent city on the coast,
Cassarea, the municipal government of Jerusalem had apparently fallen into the
hands of the native authorities. The
n
-t t i (* n Sanhedrin.
Sanhedrm oi
seventy-one, composed ot the
chief priests
and men learned in the Law, from a court
of judicature,
to whieh their functions were chiefly
confined,
while the executive was administered by the kings, bad become a kind of senate.
Pontius Pilate, the first of the Roman governors, who, if he did not afflict
the capital with the spectacle of a resident foreign ruler, seems to have
visited it more frequently, was the first who introduced into the city the “
idolatrous ” standards of Rome, and had attempted to suspend certain bucklers,
bearing an image of the emperor, in the palace of Herod.1 In his time, the Sanhedrin
seems to have been recognized as a sort of representative council of the
nation. But the proud and unruly people could not disguise from itself the
humiliating consciousness that it was reduced to a
Thepubu-
state of foreign servitude. Throughout the country, the publicans, the farmers
or collectors of the tribute to Rome, a burden not less vexatious in its
amount2 and mode of
collection than offensive to their feelings, were openly exercising their
office. The chief priest was perpetually displaced at the order of the Roman
prefect, by what might be jealous or systematic policy, but which had all the
appearance of capricious and insulting violence.3 They looked abroad, but without hope. The country had,
iMurrec- without any advantage, suffered all the evils of insurrectionary
anarchy. At the period between the death of Herod and the accession of his
sons, adventurers of all classes had taken up arms, and some of the lowest,
shepherds and slaves, whether hoping to strike in with the popular feeling,
and, if successful at first, to throw the whole nation on their side,
1 Hist- of the Jews, ii. 120.
2 About this period Syria and Jnda?a
petitioned for a remission of tribute, which was described as intolerably
oppressive. — Tac., Ann. ii. 42.
8 There were
twenty-eight, says Josephus, from the time of Herod to the burning of tbe
Temple by Titus. ■— Ant. xx. 8.
had not
scrupled to assume the title and ensigns of royalty. These commotions had been
suppressed; but the external appearance of peace was a fallacious evidence of
the real state of public feeling. The religious sects which had long divided
the nation, those of the Pharisees and Sadducees, no longer restrained by the
strong hand of power, renewed their conflicts: sometimes one party, sometimes
the other, obtained the high-priesthood, and predominated in the Sanhe- drin;
while from the former had sprung up a new faction, in whose tenets the stern
sense of national degradation, which rankled in the hearts of so many, found
vent and expression.
The sect of
Judas the Gaulonite, or, as he was called, the Galilean, may be considered the
lineal in- Judas the heritors of that mingled spirit 01 national GaUlean'
independence and of religious enthusiasm which had in early days won the glorious
triumph of freedom from the Syro-Grecian kings, and had maintained a' stern
though secret resistance to the later Asmoneans, and to the Idumean dynasty.
Just before the death of Herod, it had induced the six thousand Pharisees to
refuse the oath of allegiance to the king and to his imperial protector, and
had probably been the secret incitement in the other acts of resistance to the
royal authority. Judas the Galilean openly proclaimed the unlawfulness, the
impiety, of God’s people submitting to a foreign yoke, and thus acknowledging
the subordination of the Jewish theocracy to the empire of Rome. The payment
of tribute which began to be enforced on the deposition of Archelaus, according
to his tenets, was not merely a base renunciation of their liberties, but a sin
against their God. To the doctrines of this bold and eloquent man, which had
been propagated
with
dangerous rapidity and success, frequent allusions are found in the Gospels.
Though the Galileans slain by Pilate may not have been of this sect, yet
probably the Roman authorities would look with more than usual jealousy on any
appearance of tumult arising in the province which was the reputed birthplace
of Judas ; and the constant attempts to implicate Jesus with this party appear
in their insidious questions about the lawfulness of paying tribute to Caesar.
The subsequent excesses of the Zealots, who were the doctrinal descendants of
Judas, and among whom his own sons assumed a dangerous and fatal pre-eminence,
may show that the jealousy of the rulers was not groundless ; and indicate, as
will hereafter appear, under what unfavorable impressions with the existing authorities,
on account of his commg from Galilee, Jesus was about to enter on his public
career.
Towards the
close of this period of thirty years, John the though we have no evidence to
fix a precise Baptisti date, while Jesus was growing up in the ordinary
course of nature, in the obscurity of the Galilean town of Nazareth, which lay
to the north of Jerusalem, at much the same distance to the south, John had arrived
at maturity, and suddenly appeared as a public teacher, at first in the desert
country hi the neighborhood of Hebron; but speedily removed, no doubt for the
facility of administering the characteristic rite, from which he was called the
Baptist, at all seasons, and with the utmost publicity and effect.1 In the southern desert of
Judasa, the streams are few and scanty, probably in the summer entirely dried
up. The nearest large body of water was the Dead Sea. Besides that the western
banks of this great lake are
mostly ragged
and precipitous, natural feeling, and still more the religious awe of the
people, -would have shrunk from performing sacred ablutions in those fetid,
unwholesome, and accursed waters.1
But the banks of the great national stream, the scene of so many miracles,
offered many situations, in every rcspeut admirably calculated for this
purpose. The Baptist’s usual station was near the place, Bethabara, the ford of
the Jordan, which tradition pointed out as that where the waters divided before
the ark, that the chosen people might enter into the promised land. Here,
though the adjacent region towards Jerusalem is wild and desert, the immediate
shores of the river offer spots of great picturesque beauty.2 The Jordan has a kind of
double channel. In its summer course, the shelving banks, to the top of which
the waters reach at its period of flood, are covered with acacias and other
trees of great luxuriance; and, amid the rich vegetation and grateful shade afforded
by these scenes, the Italian painters, with no less truth than effect, have
delighted to represent the Baptist surrounded by listening multitudes, or
performing the solemn rite of initiation. The teacher himself partook of the
ascetic character of the more solitary of the Essenes, all of whom retired from
the tumult and license of the city; some dwelt alone in remote hermitages, and
not rarely pretended to a prophetic character. His raiment was of the coarsest
texture, of camel’s hair; his girdle (an ornament often of the greatest'
richness in Oriental costume, of the finest linen or cotton, and embroidered
1
The Aulon, or Yalley of the Jordan, is mostly desert. Atarifivec rrjv Tewqrap
fieoijv, I'kutcl TtoXkrjv avafisrpovfievos kpijfuav eig tt)v 'AoipaJiTiTiv
sfriot. Hfiv7}v—Joseph., B. J. iii. 10, 7.
3 Compare on the scene of John’s Teaching
and Baptism the eloquent passage in Stanley, p. 304, &e., 1st edition.
with silver
or gold) was of untanned leather; his food, the locusts1 and wild honey, of which there
is a copious supply both in the open and the wooded regions, in which he had
taken up his abode.
No question
has been more strenuously debated than
. the origin
of the rite of baptism. The prac- Baptism. j--cc 0f external
washing of the body, as emblematic of the inward purification of the soul, is
almost universal. The sacred Ganges cleanses all moral pollution from the
Indian; among the Greeks and Romans, even the murderer might, it was supposed,
wash the blood “ clean from his hands ;”2 and in many of their religious rites, lustrations or
ablutions, either in the running stream or in the sea, purified the candidate
for divine favor, and made him fit to approach the shrines of the gods. The
perpetual similitude and connection between the uncleanness of the body and of
the soul, which ran through the Mosaic Law and had become interwoven with the
common language and sentiment, the formal enactment of washing in many cases,
which either required the cleansing of some unhealthy taint, or more than usual
purity, must have familiarized the mind with the mysterious effects attributed
to such a rite; and, of all the Jewish sects, that of the Essenes, to which no
doubt popular opinion associated the Baptist, were most frequent and scrupulous
in their ceremonial ablutions. It is strongly asserted on the one hand, and
denied with equal confidence on the other, that baptism was in general
1 That locusts are no uncommon food is so
‘well known from all travellers in the East, that it is unnecessary to quote
any single authority. There is a kind of bean, called in that country the locus
t-bean, which some have endeavored to make out to have been the food of John.
'* Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia criiuina caedis Tolli flummei poaae
pntatis aqua. — Ovid.
use among the
Jews as a distinct and f6rmal rite; and that it was by this ceremony that the
Gentile proselytes, who were not yet thought worthy of circumcision, or
perhaps refused to submit to it, were imperfectly initiated into the family of
Israel.1 Though there
does not seem very conclusive evidence in the earlier Babbinical writings to
the antiquity, yet there are perpetual allusions to the existence, of this
rite, at least at a later period; and the argument, that, after irreconcilable
hostility had been declared between the two religions, the Jews would be little
likely to borrow their distinctive ceremony from the Christians, applies with
more than ordinary force. Nor, if we may fairly judge from the very rapid and
concise narrative of the evangelists, does the public administration of baptism
by John appear to have excited astonishment as a new and unprecedented rite.
For from
every quarter all ranks and sects crowded to the teaching and to partake in the
mystic Multitudes
, . who
attend
ablutions performed
by the Baptist. The P^hing. stream of the Jordan reflected the wondering multitudes,
of every class and character, which thronged around him with that deep interest
and high-wrought, curiosity, which could not fail to be excited, especially at
such a crisis, by one who assumed the tone and authority of a divine
commission, and seemed, even if he were not hereafter to break forth in a
higher character, to renew in his person the long silent and interrupted race
of the ancient prophets. Of all those prophets, Elijah was held in the most
profound rev erence by the descendants of Israel.2 He was the
1 Lightfoot, Harmony of Evang. iii. 38; iv.
407, &c. Danzius, in Meus- cheo, Talmudica, &c. Schoetgen and Wetstein,
in loc.
2 Some of the strange notions about Elias
may be found in Lightfoot, Harm, of Evang. iv. 399. Compare Ecclesiaet. xlviii.
10,11. “Elias, wlio
VOL.
I. 10
representative
of their great race of moral instructors and interpreters of the Divine Will,
whose writings (though of Elijah nothing remained) had been admitted to almost
equal authority with the Law itself, were read in the public synagogues, and
with the other sacred books formed the canon of their Scripture. A mysterious
intimation had closed this hallowed volume of the prophetic writings,
announcing, as from the lips of Malachi, on which the fire of prophecy expired,
a second coming of Elijah, which it would seem popular belief had construed
into the personal re-appearance of him who had ascended into heaven in a car of
fire. And where, and at what time, and in what form, was he so likely to appear
as in the desert, by the shore of the Jordan, at so fearful a crisis in the
national destinies, and in the wild garb, and with the mortified demeanor, so
frequent among the ancient seers? The language of the Baptist took the bold,
severe, and uncompromising tone of those delegates of the Most High. On both
the great religious factions he denounced the same maledictions, from both
demanded the same complete and immediate reformation. On the people he
inculcated mutual charity; on the publi-
is written of
for reproofs in these times, to appease the anger of him that is ready for
wrath (or before wrath, irpodvfiov, or npd Qvuov), to turn the heart of the
father to the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob. Blessed are they that
see thee, and are adorned with love; for we, too, shall live the life.” In the
English translation, the traditionary allusion is obscured. “ In that day when
the Lord shall deliver Israel, three days before the coming of the Messiah,
Elias shall come, and shall stand on the mountains of Israel mourning and
wailing concerning them, and saying, How long will ye stay in the dry and
wasted land? And his voice shall he heard from one end of the world to the
other; and after that he shall say unto them, Peace cometh to the world, as it
is written (Isa. lii. 7), How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!”
— Jalkut Schamuni, fol. 63, c. 6. Quoted in
Bertholdt. See other quotations. Schoetgen, Hor. Heb. ii. 533, 534. Justin.
Dial, cum Tryph.
cans, whom he
did not exclude from his followers, justice; on the soldiery,1 humanity, and abstinence from
all unnecessary violence and pillage. These general denunciations against the
vices of the age, and the indiscriminate enforcement of a higher moral and
religious standard, though they might gall the consciences of individuals, or
wound the pride of the different sects, yet, as clashing with 110 national
prejudice, would excite no hostility, which could be openly avowed; while the
fearless and impartial language of condemnation was certain to secure the
wonder, the respect, the veneration, of the populace.
But that
which no doubt drew the whole population in such crowds to the desert shores of
the Expectation
b a of the
Jordan was
the mysterious yet distinct asser- MesBiah. tion, that the “kingdom of heaven
was at hand”2 — that
kingdom of which the belief was as universal as of the personal coming of the
Messiah, and as variously colored by the disposition and temperament of every
class and individual as the character of the sovereign who was thus to assume
dominion. All anticipated the establishment of an earthly sovereignty, but its
approach thrilled the popular bosom with mingled
1 Michaelis has very ingeniously observed
that these men are described, not merely as soldiers (oTpaTioTai), but as on
actual service (oTpaTevofievot); and has conjectured that they were part of the
forces of Herod Antipas, who was at this time at war, or preparing for war,
with Aretas, King of Arabia. Their line of march would lead them to the ford of
the Jordan.
2 This phrase is discussed by Kuinoel, vol.
i. p. 33. According to its Jewish meaning, it was equivalent to the kingdom of
the Messiah (the kingdom of God, or of heaven, — Schoetgen, Hor. Hebr. p.
1147), which was to commence and endure for ever, when the Law was to be fully
restored, and the immutable theocracy of God’s chosen people re-established
for eternity. In its higher Christian signification, it assumed the sense of
the moral dominion to be exercised by Christ over his subjects in this life;
that dominion which is to be continued over his faithful in the state of
immortal existence beyond the grave.
emotions. The
very prophecy which announced the previous appearance of Elijah, spoke of the “
great and dreadful day of the Lord;” and as has been said, according to the
current belief, fearful calamities were to precede the glorious days of the
Messiah: nor was it till after a dark period of trial, that the children of
Abraham, as the prerogative of their birth, the sons of God,1 the inheritors of his kingdom,
were to emerge from their obscurity; their theocracy to be re-established in
its new and more enduring form; the dead, at least those who were to share in
the first resurrection, their own ancestors, were to rise; the solemn judgment
was to be held; the hostile nations were to be thrust down to hell; and those
only of the Gentiles who should become proselytes to Judaism were to be
admitted to this earthly paradisiacal state.2
1 Compare Justin Martyr (Dial. 433), ed.
Thirlhy. Grotius on Matt, x. 28; xiv. 2; James ii. 14. Whitby
on Acts i. 23. Jortin’s Discourses, p. 26.
2 See Wetstein, in he. The following
passage closely resembles the language of John: “Whose fan is in his hand, and
he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the gamer; but he
will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”—Matt. iii. 12. The Jer. Talmud
adduces Isa. xvi. 12. “ The morning cometh, and also the night; it shall be
morning to Israel, but night to the nations of the world.” (Taanith, fol.
64,1.) “The threshing is comet the straw they cast into the fire, the cbaff
unto the wind, but preserve the wheat in the floor; and every one that sses^it,
takes it and kisses it. So the nations of the world say, The world was made for
our sakes: but Israel sa}r to them, Is it not written, But the
people shall be as the burning of the lime-kiln, but Israel in the time to come
(i.e., the time of the Messiah) shall be left only; as it is said, The Lord
shall be with him alone, and there shall be no strange God.”—Mid. Tell, on Ps.
ii. Lightfoot, iii. 47.
Some of these
and similar expressions may belong to the period of the obstinate, we may
surely add the patriotic, struggle of the Jews against the t3Tranny
of Rome, after what Tacitus terms their “ hatred of the human race ” had been
embittered by years of contempt and persecution; and while, in Gibbon’s
language, “ their dreams of prophecy and conquest” were kept alive by the bold
resistance to Titus, and the successes of Baico- chab under Hadrian. But there
can be little doubt, that pride had already
The language
of the Baptist at once fell in with and opposed the popular feeling; at one
instant it raised, at the next it crossed, their hopes, the'Baptist. He
announced the necessity of a complete moral change, while he repudiated the
claims of those who rested their sole tide to the favors of God on their
descent from the chosen’ race; for “ God even of the stones could raise up
children to Abraham.” But, on the other hand, he proclaimed the immediate, the
instant, coming of the Messiah: aud on the nature of the kingdom, though he
might deviate from the ordinary language in expressly intimating that the
final separation would be made, not on national, but moral grounds; that the
bad and good, even of the race of Israel, were to be doomed according to their
wickedness or virtue, — yet there was nothing which interfered with the
prevailing belief in the personal, temporal reign of the Son of David.
The course of
our History will show how slowly Christianity attained the purely moral and
spiritual notion of the change to be wrought by the coming of Christ, and how
perpetually this inveterate Judaism has revived in the Christian Church, where,
in days
drawn these
distinctions between themselves and the rest of mankind, which were deepened by
the sense of persecution, and cherished as the only consolation of degradation
and despair.
“Le Judaisme est un syst&me de misanthropie, qui en veut h tous les
peuples de la terre sans aucune exception. . . . H n’^tend 1’amour du procbain
qu’aux seuls Juifs, tandis que le Mosaisme Intend k tous les hoinmes, sans
aucune distinction {vide note). XI commande en outre qu’on envisage tous les
autres peuples de la terre comme dignes de haine et de m^pris, pour la seule
raison qu’ils n’ont pas £t£, ou qu’ils ne sont pas Juifs.”
— Chiarini, Preface to Translation of Talmud,
p. 55.
Passages of
the Talmud will certainly bear out this harsh conclusion; but I think better of
human nature than to suppose that this sentiment was not constantly
counteracted by the humane feelings to which affliction would subdue hearts of
better mould, or which would be infused by the gentkr spirit of the genuine
religion of Moses.
of
excitement, the old Jewish tenet of the personal reign of the Messiah has
filled the mind of the enthusiast. Nor were the Jews likely to be more embarrassed
than mankind in general by the demand of high moral qualifications; for, while
one part would look on their own state with perfect complacency and
satisfaction, another would expect to obtain from Heaven, without much effort
or exertion on their own part, tliat which Heaven required. God, who intended
to make them happy, would first make them virtuous.
Such was the
general excitement at the appearance, Deputation ^ie teaching, and
the baptizing of John. So hood con™"1" great
was the influence which he had ob- pretenfions tained throughout the country,
that, as we of John. shall speedily see, a formal deputation from the national
authorities was commissioned to inquire into his pretensions, and to ascertain
whether he limited himself to those of a prophet, or laid claim to the higher
title of “ the Christ.” And the deep hold which he had taken upon the popular
feeling is strongly indicated by the fact, that the rulers did not dare, on the
occasion of a question proposed to them at a much later period by Jesus, openly
to deny the prophetic mission of John, which was not merely generally
acknowledged, but even zealously asserted, by the people.
How long the
preaching of John had lasted before the descent of the Son of Mary to the
shores of the Jordan, rests on somewhat uncertain evidence.1 We can decide with as little
confidence on some other more interesting questions. There is no precise information,
whether any or what degree of intercourse had been kept up between the family
of Zachariah
1 M»tt. iii. 13-17; Mark i. 9, 11; Luke iii.
21, 23; John i. 16,18.
and that of
Joseph, who resided at a considerable distance from each other, and were not
likely to meet, unless at the periodical feasts; nor how far John might be
previously acquainted with the person of Jesus.1 But it is undoubtedly a remarkable fact in the history of
Christianity, that from the very first appearance of Jesus on the shores of the
Jordan, unquestionably before He had displayed his powers or openly asserted
his title to the higher place, John should invariably retain his humbler
relative position. Such was his uniform language from the Avowedin.
commencement of his career; such it con- f^^ot tinued to the end.
Yet at this period the Jesas- power and influence of John over
the public mind were at their height; Jesus, humanly speaking, was but an
unknown and undistinguished youth, whose qualifications to maintain the higher
character were as yet untried. John, however, cedes at once the first place: in
the strongest language,2
he declares himself immeasurably inferior to Him, who stood among the crowd,
unmarked and unregarded; what-
1 The discrepancies between the different
evangelists as to the language of John, on several occasions, with regard to
Jesus, appear to me characteristic of the dim and awe-struck state of the
general mind, which would extend to the remembrance and the faithful record of
such incidents. It is assumed, I think without warrant, that John himself must
have had a distinct or definite notion of the Messiahship of Jesus: he may
have applied some of the prophetic or popular sayings supposed to have
reference to the Messiah, without any precise notion of their meaning; and his
conception of the Messiah’s character, and of Jesus himself, may have varied
during different passages of his own life. If the whole bad been more distinct
and systematic, it would be more liable, according to my judgment, to
suspicion. The account of John in Josephus is jnst as his character would be
likely to appear to a writer of the disposition and in the situation of the
Jewish historian.
2 The remarkahle expression, “ Whose shoe’s
latchet I am not worthy to unloose,” is illustrated by a passage in the Talmud.
(Tract. Kidduschm, xxii. 2.) “ Every office a servant will do for his master, a
scholar should perform for his teacher, excepting loosing bis sandal thong.”
ever his own
claims, whatever the effects of his initiatory rite, Jesus weCs at once to assume a higher
function, to administer a more powerful and influential baptism.1 This has always appeared to me
one of the most striking incidental arguments for the truth of the evangelic
narrative, and consequently of the Christian faith. The recognition appears to
have been instant and immediate. Hitherto, the Baptist had insisted on the purification
of all who had assembled around him; and, with the commanding dignity of a
Heaven-commissioned teacher, had rebuked, without distinction, the sins of all
classes and all sects. In Jesus alone, by his refusal to baptize Him, he
acknowledges the immaculate purity, while his deference assumes the tone of
homage, almost of adoration.2
Jesus,
however, perhaps to do honor to a i;ite Baptism of which was hereafter to be
that of initiation jesm. into the new religion, insists on submitting to the
usual ablution. As he went up out of the water which wound below in its deep
channel, and was ascending the shelving shore, a light shone around with the
rapid and undulating motion of a dove, typifying the descent of the Holy
Spirit on the Son of Man; and a voice was heard from heaven, which recognized
Him as the Son of God, well pleasing to
1 Strauss (5. 396) argues that this
concession of the higher place by the ascetic John (and asceticism, he justly
observes, is the most stern and unyielding principle in the human character)
is so contrary to the principles of human nature, and to all historical
precedent, that the whole must be fictitious; a singular canon, that every
thing extraordinary and unprecedented in history must be untrue. I suspect the
common phrase, “Truth is strange, — stranger than fiction,” to be founded on
deeper knowledge of human nature, and of the events of the world.
2 The more distinct declarations of
inferiority contained in several passages are supposed by most harmonists of
the Gospels to have been nJade after the baptism of Jesus.
the Almighty
Father of the Universe. This light could scarcely have been seen, or the voice
heard, by more than the Baptist and the Son of Mary himself,1 as no immediate sensation appears to have been excited among the
multitudes, such as must have followed this public and miraculous proclamation
of his sacred character; and at a subsequent period, Jesus seems to have
appeared among the followers of John, unrecognized, or at least unhonored,
until He was pointed out by the Baptist, and announced as having been
proclaimed from heaven at his baptism. The calmness and comparatively
unimposing peacefulness of this scene, which may be desoribed as the inauguration
of this “ greater than Moses,” in his office as founder of a new religion, is
strikingly contrasted with the terrific tempests and convulsions of nature at
the delivery of the Law on Sinai, and harmonizes with the general tone and
character of the new faith. The image of the dove, the universal symbol of innocence
and peace,2 even if
purely illustrative, is beautifully in keeping with the gentler character of
the whole transaction.
' The
Temptation of Jesus is the next event in the
1 Tbis appears from John 1. 32. Neander
(Leben Jesu, p. 69) represents it as a symbolic vision.
It may be
well to observe that this explanation of voices from heaven, as a mental
perception, not as real articulate sounds, but as inward impressions, is by no
means modem, or what passes under the unpopular name of rationalism. There is a
very full and remarkable passage in Origen cont, Celsum, i, 48, on this point.
He is speaking of the offence which may be given to the simple, who, from their
great simplicity, are ready on every occasion to shake the world, and cleave
the compact firmament of heaven. Karv TrpooKonry rb toiovtov rolg &7rXovor6poic, oI did iroXktyv
&iv7J)T7)Ta K/vovai rdv k6g(jov,
o^Covref rd rijTujiovrov cufia qv&fievov top
tco.vto$ obpavov. See likewise in Suicer’s Thesaur., voc. 4>Crniy
the passages from St. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa.
2 Ennius apud Cic. de Div. i.
48; Tibull. i. 8, 9.
history of
his life;1 and here,
at the opening, as it were,
Temptation career> appears shadowed out
the
of Jesus. sorf; 0f complex character under which Christianity
represents its Divine Author, as a kind of federal representative of mankind.
On the interpretation of no incident in the Gospels do those who insist on the
literal acceptation of the evangelists’ language, and those who consider that,
even in the New Testament, much allowance is to he made for the essentially
allegoric character of Oriental narrative, depart so far asunder.2
While the former receive the whole as a real scene, the latter suppose that the
truth lies deeper, and that some, not less real, though less preternatural
transaction, is related, either from aome secret motive, or, according to the
genius of Eastern narrative, in this figurative style. As pretending to
discover historical facts of much importance in the life of Christ, the latter
exposition, demands our examination. The Temptation, according to one view, is
a parabolic description of an actual event;3 according to another, of a kind of inward mental trial,
which continued during the public career of Jesus. In the first theory, the
tempter was nothing less than the high priest, or one of the Sanhedrin,
delegated by their authority to discover the real pre-
1 Matt. iv. 3, 31; Mark iv. 12, 13; Luke
iv. 1-13.
2 Some of the older writers, as Theodore of
Mopsuestia, explained it as »l
vision: to this notion Le Clerc inclines. Schleiermacher treats it as a
parable, p. 58. Those who are most scrupulous in departing from the literal
sense, cannot but be embarrassed with this kind of personal conflict with a
Being whom the Devil must have known, according to their own view, to have heen
divine. This is one of those points which will be differently- understood,
according to the turn and cast of mind of different individuals.
I would
therefore deprecate the making either interpretation an article of faith, or
deciding with dogmatic certainty on so perplexing a passage.
8
This theory, differently modified, is embraced by Herman Von der Hardt, by the
elder Rosenmiiller (Schol. in Ion.), and by Kuinoel.
tensions of
Jesus. Having received intelligence of the testimony borne to Jesus by John,
this person was directed to follow Him into the wilderness, where he first
demanded, as the price of his acknowledgment by the public authorities, some
display of miraculous power, such as should enable Him, like Moses, to support
the life of man by a preternatural supply of food in the wilderness. He then
held out to Him the splendid prospects of aggrandizement if He should boldly
place himself, as a divinely commissioned leader, at the head of the nation;
and even led Him in person to the pinnacle of the Temple, and commanded Him to
cast himself down, as the condition, if He should be miraculously preserved, of
his formal recognition by the Sanhedrin. To this view, ingenious as it is, some
obvious objections occur, — the precise date apparently assigned to the
transaction by the evangelists, and the improbability that, at so early a
period, he would be thought of so much importance by the ruling powers; the
difficulty of supposing that, even if there might be prudential motives to
induce St. Matthew, writing in Judsea, to disguise, under this allegoric veil,
so remarkable an event in the history of Christ, St. Luke, influenced by no
such motives, would adopt the same course. Though, indeed, it may be replied,
that, if the transaction had once assumed, it would be likely to retain, its
parabolic dress; still, it must seem extraordinary that no clearer notice of so
wonderful a circumstance should transpire in any of the Christian records. Nor
does it appear easily reconcilable with the cautious distance at which the
authorities appear to have watched the conduct of Jesus, thus, as it were, at
once to have committed themselves, and almost placed themselves;
within his power.
The second
theory is embarrassed with fewer of these difficulties, though it is liable to
the same objection, as to the precise date apparently assigned to the incident.
According to this view, at one particular period of his life, or at several
times, the earthly and temporal thoughts, thus parabolically described as a
personal contest with the Principle of Evil, passed through the mind of Jesns,
and arrayed before Him the image constantly present to the minds of his countrymen,
that of the author of a new temporal theocracy. For so completely were the
suggestions in unison with the popular expectation, that ambition, if it had
taken a human or a worldly turn, might have urged precisely such displays of
supernatural power as are represented in the temptations of Jesus. On no two
points, probably, would the Jews have so entirely coincided as in expecting the
Messiah to assume his title and dignity before the view of the whole people,
and in the most public and imposing manner; such, for instance, as, springing
from the highest point of the Temple, to have appeared floating in the air, or
preternaturally poised upon the unyielding element; any miraculous act, in
short, of a totally opposite character to those more private, more humane, and,
if we may so speak, more unassuming signs, to which He himself appealed as the
evidences of his mission. To be the lord of all the kingdoms, at least of
Palestine, if not of the whole world, was, ac cording to the same popular
belief, the admitted right of the Messiah. If, then, as the history implies,
the Saviour was tried by the intrusion of worldly thoughts, whether, according
to the common literal interpretation, actually urged by the Principle of Evil,
in his proper person, or, according to this more modified in
terpretation
of the passage, suggested to his mind, such was the natural turn which they
might have taken.
JBut, however
interpreted, the moral purport of the scene remains the same, — the intimation
that the strongest and most lively impressions were made upon the mind of
Jesus, to withdraw Him from the purely religious end of his being upon earth,
to transform Him from the author of a moral revolution to bo slowly wrought by
the introduction of new principles of virtue, and new rules for individual and
social happiness, to the vulgar station of one of the great monarchs or
conquerors of mankind; to degrade Him from a being who was to offer to man the
gift of eternal life, and elevate his nature to a previous fitness for that
exalted destiny, to one whose influence over his own generation might have been
more instantaneously manifest, but which could have been as little permanently
beneficial as that of any other of those remarkable names, which, especially in
the Bast, have blazed for a time and expired.
Prom the
desert, not improbably supposed to be that of Quarantania, lying between
Jericho and Jerusalem, where tradition, in Palestine unfortunately of no great
authority, still points out the scenc of this great spiritual conflict, and
where a mountain,1 commanding an almost boundless prospect of
the valleys and hills of Judsea, is shown as that from whence Jesus looked down
unmoved on the kingdoms of the earth, the Son of Man returned to the scene of
John’s baptism.
In the mean time,
the success of the new prophet, the Baptist, had excited the attention, if not
the jeal-
1 The best description of this mountain is
in tbe Travels of the A-bbd Mariti. Compare Stanley, p. 302.
ousy, of the
ruling authorities of the Jews. The Deputation solemn deputation appeared to
inquire into K!E his pretensions. The Pharisees probably at this time
predominated in the great council, and the delegates, as of this sect, framed
their questions in accordance with the popular traditions, as well as with the
prophetic writings:1
they inquire whether he is the Christ or Elias or the prophet.2
John at oncc disclaims his title to the appellation of the Christ; nor is he
Elijah, personally returned, according to the vulgar expectation;3 nor Jeremiah, to whom
tradition assigned the name of “ the prophet,” who was to rise from the dead at
the coming of the Messiah, in order, it was supposed, to restore the
tabernacle, the ark, and the altar of incense, which he was said to have
concealed in a cave on the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar, and
which were to be brought again to light at the Messiah’s coming.4
The next day,
John renewed his declaration that he was the harbinger6 described in the prophet
Isaiah, who, according to the custom in the progresses of Oriental monarchs,
was to go before, and, cutting through mountains and bridging valleys, to make
a wide and level way for the advance of the Great King. So John was to remove
some of the moral impediments for the reception of Christ. At the same time,
as Jesus mingled undistinguished among the crowd, without directly designating
Him, the Baptist declared the actual presence of the mightier Teacher who was
1 The Sanhedrin alone could judge a tribe,
the high priest, or a prophet {Sanhedrin Paroch. i.). Hence “a prophet could
not perish out of Jerusalem.” —Luke xiii. 33. Lightfoot, Harm. Ev.
2 John i- 19-28. 8 Wetstein. Nov. Test m loc.
*
2 Mace., ii. 4-8; xv. 14. 5 John i. 29-34.
about to
appear. The next day, in the more private circle of his believers, John did not
scruple Jcsus dC8ig. to point out more distinctly the person of the
johnalFthe Messiah.1
The occasion of his remarkable Mes8iah' speech (it has been
suggested with much probability) was the passing of large flocks of sheep and
lambs, which, from the rich pastoral districts beyond the river, crossed the
Jordan at the ford, and were driven on to the metropolis, to furnish either the
usual daily sacrifices or those for the approaching Passover. The Baptist, as
they were passing, glanced from them to Jesus, declared Him to be that superior
Being, of whom he was but the humble harbinger, and described Him as “the Lamb
of God,2 which taketh
away the sins of the world.” Unblemished and
1 John i. 35, 36.
2 Supposing (as is the general opinion)
that this term refers to the expiatory sacrifice of Christ, according to the
analogy between the death of Jesus and the sacrificial victims, subsequently
developed by the apostles (and certainly the narrower sense maintained by
Grotius and the modern learned writers (see Rosenmiiller and Kuinoel in he.) is
by no means satisfactory), to the hearers of John at this time such an
allusion must have heen as unintelligible as the intimations of Jesus about his
future sufferings to hia disciples. Indeed, if understood by John himself in
its full sense, it is difficult to reconcile it with the more imperfect views
of the Messiah evinced hy his doubt during his imprisonment. To the Jews in
general it can have conveyed no distinct meaning. That the Messiah was to be
blameless, was strictly accordant with their notions, and “ his taking away
sins” bore an intelligible Jewish sense; but taking them away by his own
sacrifice was a purely Christian tenet, and but obscurely and prophetically
alluded to before the death of Christ. How far the Jews had any notiou of 3
suffering Messiah (afterwards their great stumbling-block) is a most obscure
question. The Chaldaic paraphrast certainly refers, but in very vague and
contradictory language (Isa. lii. 13 et seq.\ to the Messiah. See, on one side,
Schoetgen, Hor. Heb. ii. 181, and Danzius, de Avrp^ in Meuschen; on the other,
Rosenmuller and Gesenius on Isaiah. The notion of the double Messiah, the
suffering Messiah, the son of Joseph, and the triumphant, the son of David (as
in Pearson on the Creed, vol. ii.), is of most uncertain date and origin; but
nothing, in my opinion, can be more incredible than that it should have been
derived, as Bertholdt would imagine, from the Samaritan belief. — Bertholdt, u.
29.
innocent as
the meek animals that passed, like them He was to go up as a sacrifice to
Jerusalem, and in some mysterious manner to “ take away ” the sins of mankind.
Another title, by which he designated Jesus yet more distinctly as the Messiah,
was that of the “ Son of God,” one of the appellations of the Deliverer most
universally admitted, though, no doubt, it might bear a different sense to
different hearers.
Among the
more immediate disciples of John, this declaration of their master could not
but excite the strongest emotions ; nor can any thing be more characteristic
of the feelings of that class among the Jews than the anxious rapidity with
which the wonderful intelligence is propagated, and the distant and awestruck
reverence with which the disciples slowly
Krst dis-
present themselves to their new Master. The
ciples of
jesus. first
of these were, Andrew, the brother of Simon (Peter), and probably the author of
the nar rative, St. John.1
Simon, to whom his brother communicates the extraordinary tidings, immediately
follows; and on him Jesus bestows a new name, expressive of the firmness of
his character. All these belonged to the same village, Bethsaida, on the shore
of the Lake of Gennesaret. On the departure of Jesus, when He is returning to
Galilee, He summons another, named Philip. Philip, like Andrew, hastens away to
impart the tidings to Nathanael, not improbably conjectured to be the apostle
Bartholomew (the son of Tolmai or Ptolemy), a man of blameless character, whose
ouly doubt is, whether the Messiah could come from a town of such proverbial
disrepute as Nazareth.2
But the doubts of Nathanael are removed by
the
preternatural knowledge displayed by Jesus of an incident which He could not
have witnessed ; and this fifth disciple, in like manner, does homage to the
Messiah, under his titles “ the Son of God, the King of Israel.” Yet this proof
of more than human knowledge Jesus declares to be as nothing in comparison
with the more striking signs of the divine protection and favor, which He
asserts, under the popular and significant image of the perpetual intervention
of angels, that his chosen followers are hereafter to witness.
Jesus had now
commenced his career: disciples had attached themselves to this new Master, Je8usoom.
and his claim to a divine mission must necessarily be accompanied by the signs
and Teacher- wonders which were to ratify the appearance of the
Messiah. Yet even his miraculous powers had nothing of the imposing, the
appalling, or public character, looked for, no doubt, by those who expected
that the appeal would be made to their senses and their passions, to their
terror and their hope, not to the more tranquil emotions of gratitude and love.
But of this more hereafter.
The first
miracle of Jesus was the changing the water into wine, at the marriage feast at
First miracle Cana in Galilee.1
This event, however, was num. e not merely remarkable as being the
first occasion for the display of supernatural power, but as developing in
some degree the primary principles of the new religious revelation. The
attendance of Jesus at a marriage festival, his contributing to the festive
hilarity, more particularly his sanctioning the use of wine on such occasions,
at once separated and set Him
1 John ii. 1-11.
VOL.
I. 11
apart from
that sect with which He was most likely to be confounded. John, no doubt,
passed with the vulgar for a stricter Esseue, many of whom, it has been before
said, observed the severest morality, and, in one great point, differed most
widely from all their brethren. They disregarded the ceremonies of the Law,
even the solemn national festivals, and depreciated sacrifices. Shut up, in
short, in their own monastic establishments, they had substituted observances
of their own for those of the Mosaic institutes. In all these points, John, who
nowhere appears to have visited Jerusalem, at least after his assumption of the
prophetic office (for his presence there would doubtless have excited much
commotion), followed the Essenian practice. Like them, he was severe, secluded,
monastic, or rather eremitical, in his habits and language. But among the most
marked peculiarities of the Essenian fraternity was their aversion to
marriage. Though some of the less rigid of their communities submitted to this
inevitable evil, yet those who were of higher pretensions, and doubtless of
higher estimation, maintained inviolable celibacy, and had fully imbibed that
Oriental principle of asceticism, which proscribed all indulgence of the gross
and material body as interfering with the purity of the immaculate spirit. The
perfect religious being was he who had receded to the utmost from all human
passion ; who had withdrawn his senses from all intercourse with the material
world, or rather had estranged his mind from all objects of sense, and had become
absorbed in the silent and ecstatic contemplation of the Deity.1
This mysticism was the vital principle
1 It may be worth ohserving (for the
connection of Jesus with the Essenea has been rather a favorite theory) that
hie illustrations so perpetually drawn
of the
Bssenian observances in Judaea, and of those of the Therapeutae, or
Contemplatists, in Egypt, the lineal ancestors of the Christian monks aud
hermits. By giving public countenance to a marriage ceremony, still more by
sanctioning the use of wine on such occasions (for wine was likewise proscribed
by Esse- nian usage), Jesus thus, at the outset of his career, as he afterwards
placed himself in direct opposition to the other prevailing sects, so he had
already receded from the practice of these recluse mystics, who formed the
third, and though not in numbers, yet in character and influence, by no means
unimportant religious party.
After this
event in Cana,1 Jesus, with his mother,
his brethren,
and some of his disciples, took up their
abode, not in
their native town of Nazareth, but in
the
village of Capernaum,2 which was situ. . m t B Capernaum,
ated not far
from the rising city of Tiberias, on the shore of the beautiful lake, the Sea
of Gen nesaret. It was called the Village of Comfort, or the Lovely Village,
from a spring of delicious water, and became afterwards the chief residence of
Jesus, and the great scene of his wonderful works.3
from the
marriage rite, and from tbe vineyard, would be in direct opposition to Essenian
phraseology. All these passages were peculiarly embarrassing to the Gnostic
ascetics. “ Noluit Marcion sub imagine Domini a nuptiis re-
deuntis Christum cogitari 1 detestatorem nuptiarum.’ ”
Marcion rejected from his Gospel, Luke xiv. 7-11. See the Gospel of Marcion by
Habn in Thilo, Cod. Apoc. Nov. Testam. pp. 444, 449.
1 Maundrell places Cana north-west of
Nazareth; it was about a day’s journey from Capernaum. Josephus (de Vita Sua)
marched all night from Cana, aud arrived at Tiberias in the morning.
2 John ii. 12.
8
Among the remarkable and distinctive peculiarities of the Gospel of St. John,
is tbe much greater length at which he relates the events which occurred during
the earlier visits of Jesus to Jerusalem, about which the other evangelists are
either entirely silent or extremely hrief. I cannot help suspecting a very
natural reason for this fact, that John was tb j
constant
The
Passover approached,1 the great festival2 which assembled
not only from all parts of Palestine, but First pass- eveii from remoter regions,
the more devout over,A.D.27. jewg^ W]1Q period of the year con
stantly made
their pilgrimage to the Holy City: regular caravans came from Babylonia and
Egypt; and, as we shall explain hereafter, considerable numbers from Syria,
Asia Minor, and the other provinces of the Roman empire. There can be no doubt
that at least vague rumors of the extraordinary transactions which had already
excited public attention towards Jesus of Nazareth, must have preceded his
arrival at Jerusalem. The declaration of the Baptist, although neither himself
nor many of his immediate disciples might attend the feast, could not but have
transpired. Though the single miracle wrought at Cana might not have been
distinctly reported at Jerusalem; though the few disciples who may have
followed Him from Galilee, having there disseminated the intelligence of his
conduct and actions, might have been lost in the multitude and confusion of the
crowded city; though, on the other hand, the impressions thus made, would be
still further counterbalanced by the general prejudice against Galilee, more
especially against a Galilean from Nazareth, — still the Son of Mary, eveu
jesus at at his first appearance in Jerusalem, seems Jerusalem. jiave
j3CC11 looked on with a kind of rev-
companion of
his Master dining these journeys* and that the other apostles were much less
constant in their attendance upon Him during these more distant excursions,
especially at the earlier period. The Gospel of St. John (some few passages
omitted) might be descrihed as the acts of Jesus in Jerusalem and its
neighborhood.
1 John ii. 13.
2 Many writers suppose that about half a
year passed between the hap- tism of Jesus and this Passover. This is possible;
but it appears to me that there is no evidence whatever as to the length of the
period.
erential awe.
His actions were watched: and though both the ruling powers, and as jet,
apparently, the leading Pharisees, kept aloof; though He is neither molested by
the jealousy of the latter, nor excites the alarm of the former, — yet the mass
of the people already observed his words and his demeanor with anxious
interest. The conduct of Jesus tended to keep up this mysterious uncertainty,
so likely to work on the imagination of a people thus ripe for religious excitement.
He is said to have performed “ many miracles,” but these, no doubt, were still
of a private, secret, and unimposing character; and on all other points He
maintains the utmost reserve, and avoids with the most jealous precaution any
action or language which might directly commit Him with the rulers or the
people.
One act alone
was public, commanding, and authoritative. The outer court of the Temple had TheTemple
become, particularly at the period of the a,mart' greatest
solemnity, a scene of profane disorder and confusion. As the Jews assembled
from all quarters of the country, almost of the world, they were under the
necessity of purchasing the victims for their offerings on the spot; and the
rich man who could afford a sheep or an ox, or the poor man who was content
with the humbler oblation of a pair of doves, found the dealer at hand to
supply his wants. The traders in sheep, cattle, and pigeons had therefore been
permitted to establish themselves within the precincts of the Temple in the
court of the Gentiles;1 and a line of shops (tabernm) ran along the
outer wall of the inner court. Every Jew made an annual payment of a
half-shekel to the Temple; and as the treasury,
according to
ancient usage, only received the coin of Palestine,1 those who came
from distant provinces were obliged to change their foreign money, the relative
value of which was probably liable to considerable fluctuation. It is evident
from the strong language of Jesus, that not only a fair and honest, but even a
questionable and extortionate, traffic was conducted within the holy precincts.
Nor is it impossible, that, even in the Temple courts, trade might be carried
on less connected with the religious character of the place. Throughout the
Bast, the periodical assemblages of the different tribes of the same descent
at some central temple is intimately connected with commercial views.2
The neighborhood of the Holy Place is the great fair or exchange of the tribe
or nation. Even to the present day, Mecca, at the time of the great concourse
of worshippers at the tomb of the Prophet, is a mart for the most active
traffic among the merchant pilgrims, who form the caravans from all quarters of
the Mahometan world.3
We may
conceive how the deep and awful stillness, which ought to have prevailed within
the inner courts, dedicated to the adoration of the people; how the quiet
prayer of the solitary worshipper, and the breath-
1 According to Hug, “ the ancient imposts
which were introduced before the Roman dominion were valued according to the
Greek coinage; e.g., the taxes of the Temple, Matt. xvii. 24. Joseph., B. J.
vii. 6, 6. The offerings were paid in these, Mark xii. 42; Luke xxi. 2. A
payment which proceeded from the Temple treasury was made according to the
ancient national payment by weight, Matt. xxvi. 15. [This is very doubtful.]
But in common business, trade, wages, sale, &c., the assis and denarius and
Roman coin were usual, Matt. x. 29; Luke xii, 6; Matt. xx. 2; Mark xiv. 5; John
xii. 5, vi. 7. The more modern state taxes are likewise paid in the coin of the
nation which exercises at the time the greatest authority, Matt, xxii. 19; Mark
xii. 15; Luke xx. 24.” —Vol. i. p. 14. After all, however eome of these words
may be translations.
2 Heercn, Ideen,/Musim. , 8 Burckhardt,
Travels in Arabia.
less silence
of the multitude, while the priests were performing the more important
ceremonies, either offering the national sacrifice, or entering the Holy
Place,—must have been interrupted by the close neighborhood of this disorderly
market. How dissonant must have been the noises of the bleating sheep, the
lowing cattle, the clamors and disputes, and all the tumult and confusion thus
crowded into a space of no great extent! No doubt the feelings of the more
devout must long before have been shocked by this desecration of the holy
precincts; and when B!ipulSjon of Jesus commanded the
expulsion of all these the8e traders- traders out of the court of
the Temple, from the almost unresisting submission with which they abandoned
their lucrative posts at the command of one invested with no public authority,
and who could have appeared to them no more than a simple Galilean peasant, it
is clear that this assertion of the sanctity of the Temple must have been a
popular act with the majority of the worshippers.1 Though Jesus is
said personally to have exerted himself, assisting with a light scourge
probably in driving out the cattle, it is not likely that, if He had stood
alone, either the calm and commanding dignity of his manner, or even his
appeal to the authority of the Sacred Writings, which forbade the profanation
of the Temple as a place of merchandise, would have overpowered the sullen
obstinacy of men engaged in a gainful traffic, sanctioned by ancient
1 I
think these considerations make it less improbable that this event should have
taken place on two separate occasions, and under similar circumstances. The
account of St. John places the incident at this period of our Lord’s life; the
other evangelists, during his last visit to Jerusalem. For my own part, I
follow St. John without hesitation: even if it were an error in chronological
arrangement in one or other of the evangelists, my faith in the historical
reality of the event would not be in the least shaken.^
usage. The
same profound veneration for the Temple, which took such implacable offence at
the subsequent language of Jesus, would look with unallayed admiration on the
zeal for “the Father’s House.” That House would hot brook the intrusion of
worldly pursuits or profane noises within its hallowed gates.
Of itself,
then, this act of Jesus might not amount to the assumption of authority over
the Temple of God: it was, perhaps, no more than a courageous Expectations
zealot for the Law might have done;1 but,
raked
by i • -» • i i o *
tws event,
combined with the former mysterious rumors about his character and his
miraculous powers, it invested Him at once with the awful character of one in
whose person might appear the long-desired, the long-expected Messiah. The
multitude eagerly throng around Him, and demand some supernatural sign of Ins
divine mission. The establishment of the Law had been accompauied, according to
the universal belief, with the most terrific demonstrations of Almighty power,
— the rocking of the earth, the blazing of the mountain. Would the restoration
of the theocracy in more ample power, and more enduring majesty, be unattended
with the same appalling wonders ? The splendid images in the highly figurative
writings of the Prophets, the traditions, among the mass of the people equally
authoritative, had prepared them to expect the coming of the Messiah to be
announced by the obedient elements. It would have been difficult, by the most
signal convulsions of nature, to have come up to their high-wrought
expectations. Private acts of benevolence to individuals, preternatural cures
of
1
Legally only the magistrate (i.e., the Sanhedrin), or a prophet, could rectify
abuses in the Temple of God. A prophet must show his commission
by some
miracle or prediction. — Grotius and Whitby.
diseases, or
the restoration of disordered faculties, fell far beneath the notions of men,
blind, in most cases, to the moral beauty of such actions. They required
public, if we may so speak, national, miracles, and those of the most
stupendous nature. To their demand, Jesus calmly answered by an obscure and
somewhat oracular allusion to the remote event of his own resurrection, the one
great “ sign ” of Christianity, to which it is remarkable that the Saviour
constantly refers, when required to ratify his mission by some public miracle.1
The gesture, by which He probably confined his meaning to the temple of his
body, which, though destroyed, was to be raised up again in three days, was
seen, indeed, by his disciples, yet even by them but imperfectly understood; by
the people in general his language seemed plainly to imply the possible
destruction of the Temple. An appalling thought, and feebly counterbalanced by
the assertion of his power to rebuild it in three days!
This
misapprehended speech struck on the most sensitive chord in the high-strung
religious tempera^ ment of the Jewish people. Their national pride, their
national existence, were identified with the inviolability of the Temple.
Their passionate Reverence of
.
. . . ... the Jews for
and zealous
fanaticism on this point can theTempie. scarcely be understood unless after the
profound study of their history. In older times, the sad and loathsome death
of Antiochus Epiphanes, in more recent, the fate of Crassus, perishing amid the
thirsty sands of the desert, and of Pompey, with his headless trunk exposed to
the outrages of the basest of mankind on the strand of Egypt, had been
construed into manifest visitations of the Almighty, in revenge for the plunder
and
profanation of his Temple. Their later history is full of the same spirit; and
even in the horrible scenes of the fatal siege by Titus, this indelible passion
survived all feelings of nature or of humanity. The fall of the Temple was like
the bursting of the heart of the nation.
Prom the period
at which Herod the Great had begun to restore the dilapidated work of
Zorobabel, forty-six years had elapsed ; and still the magnificence of the
king, or the wealth and devotion of the principal among the people, had found
some new work on which to expend those incalculable riches, which, from these
sources, the tribute of the whole nation, and the donar tions of the pious,
continued to pour into the Temple treasury. And this was the building of which
Jesus, as He was understood, could calmly contemplate the Their expeo- fall,
and daringly promise the immediate
tattoos disappointed
restoration. To their indignant murmurs,
Jesus, it may
seem, made no reply. The explanation would, perhaps, have necessarily led to a
more distinct prediction of his own death and resurrection than it was yet
expedient to make, especially on so public a scene. But how deeply this
mistaken speech sunk into the popular mind, may be estimated from its being
adduced as the most serious charge against Jesus at his trial; and the
bitterest scorn, with which He was followed to his crucifixion, exhausted
itself in a fierce and sarcastic allusion to this supposed assertion of power.
Still,
although with the exasperated multitude the growing veneration for Jesus might
be checked by this misapprehended speech, a more profound impression had been
made among some of the more thinking part of the community. Already one, if not
more mem
bers, of the
Sanhedrin, began to look upon Him with interest, perhaps with a secret
inclination to espouse Ins doctrines. That one, named Nicodemus,
i
i • j , A* i* i i /> i i Nicodemus.
determined to
satisiy himseli, by a personal interview, as to the character and pretensions
of the new Teacher.1 Nicodemus had hitherto been connected with the
Pharisaic party, and he dreaded the jealousy of that powerful sect, who, though
not yet in declared hostility against Jesus, watched, no doubt, his motions
with secret aversion; for they could not but perceive that He made no advances
towards them, and treated with open disregard their, minute and austere
observance of the literal and traditionary law, their principles of separation
from the “ unclean ” part of the community, and their distinctive dress and
deportment. The popular and accessible demeanor of Jesus showed at once that He
had nothing in com mon with the spirit of this predominant religious faction.
Nicodemus, therefore, chooses the dead of the night to obtain his secret
interview with Jesus; he salutes Him with a title, that of Rabbi, assumed by
none but those who were at once qualified and authorized to teach in public ;
and he recognizes at once his divine mission, as avouched by his wonderful
works. But, with astonishment almost overpowering, the Jewish ruler hears the
explanation of the first principles of the new religion. When the heathen
proselyte was admitted into Judaism, he was considered to be endowed with new
life: he was separated from all his former connections; he was born again to
higher hopes, to more extended knowledge, to a more splendid destiny.2
But now, even the Jew of the most
1
John iii. 1, 21.
3 A Gentile proselyted, and a slave set
free, is as a child new-born; he must
unimpeachable
descent from Abraham, the Jew of the highest estimation so as to have been
chosen into the court of Sanhedrin, and one who had maintained the strictest
obedience to the Law, required, in order to become a member of the new
community, a change no less complete. He was to pass through the ceremony
emblematic of moral and spiritual purification. To him, as to the most unclean
of strangers, baptism was to be the mark of his initiation into the new faith;
and a secret internal transmutation was to take place by divine agency in his
heart, which was to communicate a new principle of religious life. Without
this, he could not attain to that which he had hitherto supposed either the
certain privilege of bis Israelitish descent, or at least of his conscientious
adherence to the Law. Eternal life, Jesus declared, was to depend solely on the
reception of the Son of God, who, He not obscurely intimated, had descended
from heaven, was present in his person, and was not universally received, only
from the want of moral fitness to appreciate his character. This light was too
pure to be admitted into the thick darkness which was brooding over the public
mind, and rendered it impenetrable by the soft and quiet rays of the new
doctrine. Jesus, in short, almost without disguise or reservation, announced
himself to the wondering ruler as the Messiah, while, at the same time, He
enigmatically foretold his rejection by the people. The age was not ripe for
the exhibition of the Divine Goodness in his person ; it still yearned for a
revelation of the terrible, destructive, revengeful Power of the Almighty, — a
know no more
of his kindred. — Maimonides. Lightfoot, Harm. Ev. This notion of a second
moral birth is hy no means uncommon in the East The Sanscrit tame of a Brahmin
is dzoija, the twice born.—Bopp. Gloss Sanscr.
national
Deity which should embody, as it were, the prevailing sentiments of the nation.
Nor came He to fulfil that impious expectation of Jewish pride, — the
condemnation of the world, of all Gentile races, to the worst calamities,
-while on Israel alone his blessings were to be showered with exclusive bounty.1
He came as a common benefactor, as au universal Saviour, to the whole human
race. Nicodemus, it may seem, left the presence of Jesus, if not a decided
convert, yet impressed with still deeper reverence. Though never an avowed
disciple, yet, with other members of the Sanhedrin, he was only restrained by
his dread of the predominant party: more than once we find him seizing
opportunities of showing his respect and attachment for the Teacher whose cause
he had not courage openly to espouse; and, perhaps, his secret influence, with
that of others similarly disposed, may, for a time, have mitigated or
obstructed the more violent designs of the hostile Pharisees.
Thus ended
the first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem since his assumption of a public
character. His influence had, in one class probably, made considerable though
secret progress; with others, a dark feeling of hostility had been more deeply
rooted; while this very difference of sentiment was likely to increase the
general suspense and interest as to the future development of his character.
As yet, it appears, unless in that most private interview with Nicodemus, He
had not openly avowed his claim to the title of the
1 “
Quae sequuntur inde a versiculo decimo septimo proprie ad Judases spectant, et
hand dubie dicta sunt a Domino contra opinionem illam impiam et in genus
humanum iniquam, cum existimarent Messiam non nisi Judaicum populum
liberaturum, reliquas vero gentes omnes suppliciis atrocissimis afifcetnrum,
penitusque perditurum esse ” — Titman., Mel. in Joan. p. 128.
Messiah: an
expression of St. John,1 “ He did not trust himself to them,” seems
to imply the extreme caution and reserve which He maintained towards all ihe
converts which He made daring his present visit to Jerusalem.
1 John ii. 24, ovk kmcrrevEv tavrov: He did
not trust himself to them. He did not commit himself.
Public Life
of Jesus from the First to the Second Passover.
On the dispersion of the strangers from
the metropolis at the close of the Passover, Jesus, with his Departure more
immediate followers, passed a short eaiem. time in Judaea, where such
multitudes crowded to the baptism administered by his disciples, that the adherents
of John began to find the concourse to their master somewhat diminished. The
Baptist had removed his station to the other side of the Jordan, and fixed
himself by a stream, which afforded a plentiful supply of water, near the town
of Salim, in Peraea. The partisans of John, not, it might seem, without
jealousy, began to dispute concerning the relative importance of the baptism of
their master, and that of Him whom they were disposed to consider his rival.
But these unworthy feelings were strongly repressed by John. In terms still
more emphatic, he re-asserted his own secondary station. He was but the
paranymph, the humble attendant on the bridegroom; Christ, the bridegroom
himself: his doctrine was that of earth; that of Christ was from heaven: in
short, he openly announces Jesus as the Son of the Almighty Father, and as the
author of everlasting life.1 •
The career of
John was drawing to a close. His new station in Peraea was within the domin-
John the
... Baptist and
ions of Herod
Antipas. On the division of Herod, the Jewish kingdom at the death of Herod the
Great,
Galilee and
Peraea had formed the tetrarchate of Anti- pas. This Herod was engaged in a
dangerous war with Aretas, King of Arabia Petraea, whose daughter he had
married. But having formed an incestuous connection with the wife of his
brother, Herod Philip, his Arabian queen indignantly fled to her father, who
took up arms to revenge her wrongs against her guilty husband.1 How
far Herod could depend in this contest on the loyalty of his subjects, was
extremely doubtful. It is possible he might entertain hopes that the
repudiation of a foreign alliance, ever hateful to the Jews, and the union with
a branch of the Asmonean line (for Herodias was the granddaughter of Herod the
Great and of Mariamne), might counterbalance in the popular estimation the
injustice and criminality of his marriage with his brother’s wife.2
The influence of John (according to Josephus) was almost unlimited. The
subjects, and even the soldiery, of the tetrarch had crowded with devout submission
around the Prophet. On his decision might depend the wavering loyalty of the
whole province. But John denounced with open indignation the royal incest, and
declared the marriage with a brother’s wife to be a flagrant violation of the Law.
Herod, before long, ordered him to be seized and imprisoned in the strong
fortress of Machserus, on the remote border of his Transjordanic territory.
Jesus, in the
mean time, apprehensive of the awakening jealousy of the Pharisees, whom his
increasing
1 Luke iii. 19; Matt. xiv. 3, 5; Mark vi.
17, 20.
2 This natural view of the subject appears
to me to harmonize the accounts in the Gospels with that of Josephus. Josephus
traces the persecution of the Baptist to Iierod’s dread of popular tumult and
insurrection, without mentioning the real cause of that dread, which we find
in the evangelic narrative.
success
inflamed to more avowed animosity, left the borders of Judsea, and proceeded on
his return to Galilee.1 The nearer road lay through the province of
Samaria.2 The mutual hatred between Jesus passes
n . . through,
the Jews and
Samaritans, ever smce the sama™. secession of Sanballat, had kept the two
HostuHyof races not merely distinct, but opposed to Samaritans, each other with
the most fanatical hostility. This animosity, instead of being allayed by time,
had but grown the more inveterate, and had recently been embittered by acts,
according to Josephus, of wanton and unprovoked outrage on the part of the
Samaritans. During the administration of Coponius, certain of this hateful
race, early in the morning on one of the days of the Passover, had stolen into
the Temple at Jerusalem, and defiled the porticos and courts by strewing them
with dead men’s bones, — an abomination the most offensive to the Jewish
principles of cleanliness and sanctity.3 Still later, they had frequently
taken advantage of the position in which their district lay, directly between
Judaea and Galilee, to interrupt the concourse of the religious Galileans to
the capital.4 Jealous that such multitudes should pass their sacred
mountain, Gerizim, to worship in the Temple at Jerusalem, they often waylaid
the incautious pilgrim, and thus the nearest road to Jerusalem had become
extremely insecure. Our History will show how calmly Jesus ever pursued his
course through these conflicting elements of society, gently endeavored to
allay the implacable schism, and set the example of that mild and tolerant
spirit, so beautifully embodied in his precepts. He passed on in quiet
1 Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 14; Luke iv. 14. 2 John iv. 1, 32.
8
Hist, of the Jews, ii. 118. 4
Ibid. 123.
VOL.
I. 12
security
through the dangerous district; and it is remarkable that here, safe from the
suspicious vigilance of the Pharisaic party, among these proscribed aliens
from the hopes of Israel, He, more distinctly and publicly than He had hitherto
done, avowed his title as the Messiah, and developed that leading characteristic
of his religion, the abolition of all local and national deities, and the
promulgation of one comprehensive faith, hi which the great Eternal Spirit was
to be worshipped by all mankind in “ spirit and in truth.”
There was a
well1 near the gates of Sichem, a name which by the Jews had been
long perverted into the opprobrious term Sichar? This spot, according to
immemorial tradition, the Patriarch Jacob had purchased ; and here were laid
the bones of Joseph, his elder son, carried from Egypt, to whose descendant,
Ephraim, this district had been assigned. Sichem lay in a valley between the
two famous mountains Ebal and Gerizim, on which the Law was read, and ratified
by the acclamations of the assembled tribes; and on the latter height stood the
rival temple of the Samaritans, which had so long afflicted the more zealous
Jews by its daring opposition to the one chosen sanctuary on Mount Moriah. The
well bore the name of the Patriarch; and while his disciples entered the town
to purchase provisions,3 a traffic from which
1 Tradition still points to this well,
about a mile distant from the walls of Sichar, which Maundrell supposes to have
extended farther. A church was huilt over it by the Empress Helena, but it is
now entirely destroyed. w It is dug in a firm rock, and contains
about three yards in diameter, and thirty- five in depth, five of which we
found full of water.” — Maundrell, p. 62.
2 From a Hebrew word, meaning a “ lie ” or
an 41 idol.” The name had, no doubt, grown into common use, as it
could not be meant by the evangelists in an offensive sense.
8 According
to the traditions, they might buy of them, use their labor, oi
probably few,
except the disciples of Christ, would not have abstained,1 except in
extreme necessity, Jesus reposed by its margin. It was the sultry hour of noon,
about twelve o’clock,2 when a woman, as is the general usage in the
East, where the females commonly resort to the wells or tanks to obtain water
for all domestic uses, approached the well. Jesus, whom she knew not to be her
countryman, either from his dress, or perhaps his dialect or pronunciation, in
which the inhabitants of the Ephraimitish district of Samaria differed both
from the Jews and Galileans, to her astonishment asked her for water to quench
his thirst. For in general the lip of a Jew, especially a Pharisaic Jew, would
have shrunk in disgust from the purest element in a vessel defiled by the hand
of a Samaritan. Drawing, as usual, his similitudes from the present
circumstances, Jesus excites the wonder of the woman by speaking of living
waters at his command, — waters which were to nourish the soul for everlasting
life; He increases her awe by allusions which show more than mortal knowledge
of her own private history (she was living in concubinage, having been married
to five husbands), and at length clearly announces that the local worship, both
on Gerizim and at Jerusalem, was to give place to a more sublime and
comprehensive faith. The astonished woman con-
say Amen to
their benedictions (Beracoth, i. 8), lodge in their towns, but not receive any
gift or kindness from them. — Buxtorf, Lex Talm. 1370. Light- foot in be.
1 Probably the more rigid would bare
refrained, even from this permitted intercourse, unless in eases of absolute
necessity.
2 This is the usual opinion. Dr. Townson,
in his ingenious argument to prove that the hours of John are not Roman or
Jewish, but Asiatic, adduces this passage as in his favor, the evening being
the usual time at which the women resort to the wells. On the other hand, it is
observed that noon was the usual time of dinner among the. Jews, and the
disciples probably entered the town for provisions for that meal.
fesses her
belief, that, on the coming of the Messiah, truths equally wonderful may be
announced. Jesus, for the first time, distinctly and unequivocally declares
himself to be the Messiah.1 On the return of the disciples from the
town, their Jewish prejudices are immediately betrayed at beholding their
Master thus familiarly conversing with a woman of the hateful race: on the
other hand, the intelligence of the woman runs rapidly through the town, and
the Samaritans crowd forth in eager interest to behold and listen to the
extraordinary teacher.
The nature
and origin of the Samaritan belief in Samaritan the Messiah is even a more
obscure question Messiah. than that of the Jews.2 That belief was
evidently more clear and defined than the vague expectation which prevailed
throughout the East; still it was probably, like that of the Jews, by no means
distinct or definite. It is generally supposed that the Samaritans, admitting
only the Law, must have rested their hope solely on some ambiguous or latent
predic-
1 Le Clerc observes that Jesus spoke with
more freedom to the woman of Samaria, as He had no fear of sedition, or violent
attempts to make Him a king, — On John iv. 26.
2 Bertholdt, ch. vii., which contains
extracts from the celebrated Samaritan letters, and references to the modern
writers who have translated them, and discussed their purport. “ Qua vero
fuerit spei Messianae ratio neqne ex hoc loco, neque ex nllo alio antiqniore
monumento accuratius intelligi potest, et ex recentiorum demum Samaritanorum
epistolis innotuit. Atque his testibus prophetam quemdam illustrem ventnrum
esse sperant, cni ob- servaturi sint popnli ac credituri in ilium, et in legem
et in montem Garizim, qui fidem Mosalcam evecturus sit, tabemacnlum
restitnturus in monte Garizim, populum suum beaturns, postea moriturus et
sepeliendua apud Josephnm (i.e., in trihu Ephraim). Quo tempore venturus sit, id nemini praeter Denm cognitum esse.” Gesenius,
in his note to the curious Samaritan poems which he has published (p. 75),
proceeds to say that his name is to be Hasch-hab, or Hat-hab, which he
translates conversor (converter), as converting the people to a higher state of
religion. The Messiah ben Joseph of the Rabbins, Gesenius observes, is of a
much later date. Quotations concerning the latter may be found in Eisenmenger,
ii. 720.
tion in the
books of Moses, who had foretold the coming of another and a mightier prophet
than himself. Bnt though the Samaritans may not have admitted the authority
of the prophets as equal to that of the Law, though they had not installed them
in the regular and canonized code of their sacred books, it does not follow
that they were unacquainted with them, or that they did not listen with devout
belief to the more general promises, which by no means limited the benefits of
the Messiah’s coming to the local sanctuary of Jerusalem, or to the line of the
Jewish kings. There appear some faint traces of a belief in the descent of the
Messiah from the line of Joseph, of which, as belonging to the tribe of
Ephraim, the Samaritans seem to have considered themselves the representatives.1
Nor is it improbable, from the subsequent rapid progress of the doctrines of
Simon Magus, which were deeply impregnated with Orientalism,2 that
the Samaritan notion of the Messiah had already a strong Magian or Babylonian
tendency. On the other hand, if their expectations rested on less definite
grounds, the Samaritans were unenslaved by many of those fatal prejudices of
the Jews, which so completely secularized their notions of the Messiah, and
were free from that rigid and exclusive pride which so jealously appropriated
the divine promises.
1 We still want a complete and critical
edition of the Samaritan chronicle (the Liber Josuas), which may throw light on
the character and tenets of this remarkable branch of the Jewish nation. Though
in its present form a comparatively modem compilation, it appears to me, from
the fragments hitherto edited, to contain manifest vestiges of very ancient
tradition. See an abstract at the end of Hottinger’s Dissertationes anti
Morinianse. This defect has now heen supplied by a complete critical edition,
by Joynbull. I do not find, however, the value of the work to the historian
much increased by the publication of the whole. (1863.)
If the
Samaritans could not pretend to an equal share in the splendid anticipations of
the ancient prophets, they were safer from their misinterpretation. They had no
visions of universal dominion; they looked not to Samaria or Sichem to become
the metropolis of some mighty empire. They had some legend of the return of
Moses to discover the sacred vessels concealed near Mount Gerizim,1
but they did not expect to see the banner raised, and the conqueror go forth to
beat the nations to the earth and prostrate mankind before their re-established
theocracy. They might even be more inclined to recognize the Messiah in the
person of a purely religious reformer, on account of the overbearing confidence
with which the rival people announced their hour of triumph, when the Great
King should erect Ms throne on Sion, and punish all the enemies of the chosen
race, among whom the “ foolish people,” as they were called, “ who dwelt at
Sichem,”2 would not be the last to incur the terrible vengeance. A
Messiah who would disappoint the insulting hopes of the Jews would, for that
very reason, be more acceptable to the Samaritans.
The Samaritan
commonwealth was governed, under the Roman supremacy, by a council or
sanhedrin. But this body had not assumed the pretensions of a Samaritan
divinely inspired hierarchy; nor had they a sanhednn. jeaious
an(j domineering sect, like that of the Pharisees, in possession of the
public instruction, and watching every new teacher who did not wear the
1 Hist. of the Jews, ii. 123.
2 “ There he two manner of nations which my
heart abhorreth, and the third is no nation. They that sit upon the mountain of
Samaria, and they that dwell among the Philistines, and that fooli&h people
that dwell at Sichem.”
— Ecclesiast. I. 25, 26.
garb, or
speak the Shibboleth, of their faction, as guilty of an invasion of their
peculiar province. But, from whatever cause, the reception of Jesua among the
Samaritans was strongly contrasted with that among the Jews. They listened with
reverence, and entreated Him to take up his permanent abode within their
province; and many among them distinctly acknowledged Him as the Messiah and
Saviour of the world.
Still a
residence, longer than was necessary in the infected air, as the Jews would
suppose it, of Samaria, would have strengthened the growing hostility of the
ruling powers, and of the prevailing sect among the Jews. After two days,
therefore, Jesus proceeded oil his journey, re-entered Galilee, and publicly
assumed, in that province, his office as the teacher of a new religion.
The/report of a second, a more second mir-
r ’ aoleinCa-
public, and
more extraordinary miracle than p™m. that before performed in the town of Cana,
tended to establish the fame of his actions in Jerusalem, which had been
disseminated by those Galileans who had returned more quickly from the
Passover, and had excited a general interest to behold the person of whom such
wonderful rumors were spread abroad.1 The nature of the miracle, the
healing a youth who lay sick at Capernaum, about twenty-five miles distant from
Cana, where He then was; the station of the father, at whose entreaty He
restored the son to health (he was probably on the household establishment of
Herod), — could not fail to raise the expectation to a higher pitch, and to
prepare the inhabitants of Galilee to listen with eager deference to the new
doctrines.2
l Matt. iv.
13, 17; Mark i. 14,16; Luke iv. 14,16; John iv. 48* 45.
3 John iv. 46-64.
One place
alone received tlie Son of Mary with cold Nazareth aild inhospitable
unconcern, and rejected MMptonot3 bis claims with indignant
violence, — his nar je8U3. tive town of Nazareth. The history of
this transaction is singularly true to human nature.1 Where Jesus
was unknown, the awe-struck imagination of the people, excited by the fame of
his wonderful works, beheld Him already arrayed in the sanctity of a
prophetical, if not of a divine, mission. Nothing intruded on their thoughts to
disturb their reverence for the commanding gentleness of his demeanor, the
authoritative persuasiveness of his language, the holiness of his conduct, the
celebrity of his miracles: He appeared before them in the pure and unmingled
dignity of his public character. But the inhabitants of Nazareth had to
struggle with old impressions, and to exalt their former familiarity into a
feeling of deference or veneration. In Nazareth, He had been seen from his
childhood; and though gentle, blameless, popular, nothing had occurred, up to
the period of his manhood, to place Him so much above the ordinary level of
mankind. His father’s humble star tion and employment had, if we may so speak,
still farther undignified the person of Jesus to the mind of his
fellow-townsmen. In Nazareth, Jesus was still “the carpenter’s son.” We think,
likewise, that we discover in the language of the Nazarenes something of local
jealousy against the more favored town of Capernaum. If Jesus intended to
assume a public and distinguished character, why had not his dwelling- place
the fame of his splendid works ? Why was Capernaum honored, as the residence of
the new
l Luke iv. 16-30. There appears to be an
allusion (John iv. 44) to this incident, which may have taken place before the
second miracle.
prophet,
rather than the city in which He had dwell from his youth ?
It was in the
synagogue of Nazareth, where Jesus had hitherto been a humble and devout lis- Je8USinthe
tener, that He stood up in the character of a Teacher. According to the usage,
the chazan or minister of the synagogue,1 whose office it was to
deliver the volume of the Law or the Prophets appointed to be read to the
person to whom that function had fallen, or who might have received permission
from the rulers of the synagogue to address the congregation, gave it into the
hands of Jesus. Jesus opened on the passage in the beginning of the 16th
chapter of Isaiah,2 by universal consent applied to the coming of
the Messiah, and under its beautiful images describing with the most perfect
truth the character of the new religion. It spoke of good tidings to the poor,
of consolation in every sorrow, of deliverance from every affliction: “ He hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the
broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight
to the blind; to set at liberty *hem that are bound.” It went on, as it were,
to Announce the instant fulfilment of the prediction, in the commencement of
the “ acceptable year of the
1 It is said that on the sabbath the Law was
read in succession by seven persons, — a priest, a Levite, and five Israelites,
— and never on any other day by less than three. The Prophets were read hy any
one; in general by one of tbe former readers, whom the minister might summon to
the office-
2 It is of some importance to the
chronology of the Life of Christ to ascertain whether this perioche or portion
was that appointed in the ordinary course of reading, or one selected b}T
Jesus. But we cannot decide this with any certainty; nor is it clear that the
distribution of the lessons,according to the ritual of that period, was the
same with the present liturgy of the Jews. According to that, the 16th chapter
of Isaiah would have been read about the end of August. Macknight and some
other harmonists lay much stress on tins point.
Lord; ” but
before it came to the next clause, which harmonized ill with the benign
character of the new faith, and spoke of “ the day of vengeance,” He broke off,
and closed the book. He proceeded, probably at some length, to declare the
immediate approach of these times of wisdom and peace.
The whole
assembly was in a state of pleasing astonishment at the ease of his delivery,
and the sweet copiousness of his language: they could scarcely believe that it
was the youth whom they had so often seen, the son of a humble father, in their
streets, and who had enjoyed no advantages of learned education. Some of them,
probably either by their countenance or tone or gesture, expressed their
incredulity, or even their contempt, for Joseph’s son; for Jesus at once
declared his intention of performing no miracle to satisfy the doubts of his
unbelieving countrymen: “ No prophet is received with honor in his own
country.” This avowed preference of other places before the dwelling of his youth;
this refusal to grant to Nazareth any share in the fame of his extraordinary
works, embittered perhaps by the suspicion that the general prejudice against
their town might be strengthened, at least not discountenanced, as it might
have been, by the residence of so distinguished a citizen within their walls;
the reproof so
violence of
obviously concealed in the words and con-
the
Naza- m
renea. duct
of Jesus, mingled no doubt with other fanatical motives, — wrought the whole
assembly to such a pitch of frenzy, that they expelled Jesus from the
synagogue. Nazareth lies in a valley, from which a hill immediately rises: they
hurried Him up the slope, and were preparing to cast Him down from the abrupt
cliff on the other side, when they found
that the intended
victim of their wrath had disappeared.1
Jesus
retired to Capernaum, which from this time became, as it were, his
headquarters.2 This capemaum place was admirably situated for his
purpose, of
both from the
facility of communication, as Je3u8' well by land as by the lake,
with many considerable and flourishing towns, and of escape into a more secure
region, in case of any threatened persecution. It' lay towards the northern
extremity of the Lake or Sea of Gennesaret.3 On the land side, it
was a centre from which the circuit of both Upper and Lower Galilee might
begin. The countless barks of the fishermen employed upon the lake, many of
whom became his earliest adherents, could transport Him with the utmost ease to
any of the cities on the western bank; while, if danger approached from Herod
or the ruling powers of Galilee, He had but to cross to the opposite shore, the
territory, at least at the commencement of his career, of Philip, the most just
and popular of the sons of Herod, and which, on his death, reverted to the
Roman government. Nor was it an unfavorable circumstance, that He had most
likely secured the powerful protection of the officer attached to the court of
Herod, whose son He had healed, and who probably resided at Capernaum.
The first act
of the Saviour’s public career was the permanent attachment to his person, and Apostles
the investing in the delegated authority of chosen-
1 But see Stanley, p. 159, The abrupt cliff
is above the town.
2 Luke iv. 31, 32. f
8
This is the usual position of Capernaum; but it rests on very uncertain
grounds, and some circumstances would induce me to adopt Lightfoot’s opinion,
that it was much nearer to the southern end of the lake. Compare Robinson, iii
284; Stanley, 376.
teachers of
the new religion, four out of the twelve who afterwards became the apostles.
Andrew and Peter were, as before stated, originally of Bethsaida, at the
north-eastern extremity of the lake; but the residence of Peter appears to have
been at Capernaum. James and John were brothers, the sons of Zebedee.1
All these men had united themselves to Jesus, immediately after his baptism;
the latter, if not all the four, had probably attended upon Him during the
festival in Jerusalem, but had returned to their usual avocations. Jesus saw
them on the shore of the lake: two of them were actually employed in fishing;
the others at a little distance were mending their nets. At the well-known
voice of their Master, confirmed by the sign of the miraculous draught of
fishes,2 which impressed Peter with so much awe, that he thought
himself unworthy of standing in the presence of so wonderful a Being, they left
their ships, and followed Him into the town; and though they appear to have
resumed their humble occupations, on which, no doubt, their livelihood
depended, it would seem that from this time they might be considered as the
regular attendants of Jesus.
The reception
of Jesus in the synagogue of Caper- jesus in the naum was very different from
that which He
synagogue
of # *
oapemaum.
encountered in Nazareth. He was heard on the regular day of teaching, the
sabbath, not only undisturbed, but with increasing reverence and awe.3
And, indeed, if the inhabitants of Nazareth were offended, and the Galileans in
general astonished, at the appearance of the humble Jesus in the character
1 Matt. iv. 22; Mark i. 17-20; Luke v.
1-11.
2 This supposes, ag is most probable, that
Luke v. 1-11 refers to the sama transaction.
8
Luke iv. 31-38; Mark i. 21, 22.
of a public
teacher, the tone and language which He assumed was not likely to allay their
wonder. The remarkable expression, “ He speaks as one having authority, and not
as the scribes,” seems to imply more than the extraordinary power and
persuasiveness of his language.
The ordinary
instructors of the people, whether under the name of scribes, lawyers, or
Rabbis, His mode of rested their whole claim to the public atteu- laRreutfrom
. . ~ that of the
tion on the
established Sacred Writings. They Kabbins. were the conservators, and perhaps
personally ordained interpreters, of the Law, with its equally sacred traditionary
comment; but they pretended to no authority, not originally derived from these
sources. They did not stand forward as legislators, but as accredited
expositors of the Law; not as men directly inspired from on high, but as men
who, by profound study and intercourse with the older wise men, were best
enabled to decide on the dark or latent or ambiguous sense of the inspired
writings, or who had received, in regular descent, the more ancient Cabala,
the accredited tradition. Although, therefore, they had completely enslaved the
public miud, which reverenced the sayings of the masters or Rabbis equally
with the original text of Moses and the Prophets; though it is quite clear
that the spiritual Rabbinical dominion, which at a later period established so
arbitrary a despotism over the understanding of the people, was already deeply
rooted, — still the basis of their supremacy rested on the popular reverence
for the Sacred Writings. “ It is written ” was the sanction of all the
Rabbinical decrees, however those decrees might misinterpret the real meaning
of the Law, or “ add burdens to the neck of the people ” by no means intended
by the wise and humane lawgiver.
Jesus came
forth as a public teacher in a new and opposite character. His authority rested
on no previous revelation, excepting as far as his divine commission had been
foreshown in the Law and the Prophets. He prefaced his addresses with the
unusual formulary, “ I say unto you.” Perpetually displaying the most intimate
familiarity with the Sacred Writings, instantly silencing or baffling his
adversaries by adducing, with the utmost readiness and address, texts of the
Law and the Prophets according to the accredited interpretation, yet his
ordinary language evidently assumed a higher tone. He was the direct, immediate
representative of the wisdom of the Almighty Father; He appeared as equal, as
superior, to Moses; as the author of a new revelation, which, although it was
not to destroy the Law, was in a certain sense to supersede it, by the introduction
of a new and original faith. Hence the implacable hostility manifested against
Jesus, not merely by the fierce, the fanatical, the violent, or the licentious,
by all who might take offence at the purity and gentleness of his precepts, but
by the better and more educated among the people, the scribes, the lawyers, the
Pharisees. Jesus at once assumed a superiority not merely over these teachers
of the Law, this acknowledged religious aristocracy, whose repute tion, whose
interests, and whose pride were deeply pledged to the maintenance of the
existing system; but He set himself above those inspired teachers, of whom the
Rabbis were but the interpreters. Christ uttered commandments which had neither
been registered on the tablets of stone, nor defined in the more minute
enactments in the book of Leviticus. He superseded at once by his simple word
all that they had painfully learned, and regularly taught as the
eternal,
irrepealable word of God, perfect, complete, enduring no addition. Hence their
perpetual Causee of th9 endeavors to commit Jesus with the multitude,
as disparaging or infringing the ordi- teachers- nanccs of Moses, —
endeavors which were perpetually , baffled on his part, by his cautious
compliance with the more important observances, and, notwithstanding the
general bearing of his teaching towards the development of a higher and
independent doctrine,1 his uniform respect for the letter as well as
the spirit of the Mosaic institutes. But, as the strength of the Rabbinical
hierarchy lay in the passionate jealousy of the people about the Law, they
never abandoned the hope of convicting Jesus on this ground, notwithstanding
his extraordinary works, as a false pretender to the character of the Messiah.
At all events, they saw clearly that it was a struggle for the life and death
of their authority. Jesus acknowledged as the Christ, the whole fabric of their
power and influence fell at once. The traditions, the Law itself, the skill of
the scribe, the subtilty of the lawyer, the profound study of the Rabbi, or the
teacher in the synagogue and in the school, became obsolete ; and the pride of
superior wisdom, the long-enjoyed deference, the blind obedience with which the
people had listened to their decrees, were gone by for ever. The whole
hierarchy were to cede at once their rank and estimation to an humble and
uninstructed peasant from Galilee, a region scorned by the better educated for
its rudeness and ignorance,2
1 Compare the whole of the Sermon on the
Mount, especially Matt. v. 20-45,
— the parables of the leaven and the grain of
mustard-seed, — the frequent intimations of the comprehensiveness of the “
kingdom of God,” as contrasted with the Jewish theocracy.
2 See, in the Compendium of the Talmud, by
Pinner of Berlin, intended as a kind of preface to an edition and translation
of the whole Talmudical
and from
Nazareth, the most despised town in the despised province. Against such deep
and rooted motives for animosity, which combined and knit together every
feeling of pride, passion, habit, and interest; the simple and engaging
demeanor of the Teacher; the beauty of the precepts; their general harmony
with the spirit, however they might expand the letter, of the Law; the
charities they breathed, the holiness they inculcated, the aptitude and
imaginative felicity of the parables under which they were couched, the hopes
they excited, the fears they allayed, the blessings and consolations they
promised, — all which makes the discourses of Jesus so confessedly superior to
all human morality,—made little impression on this class, who in some respects,
as the most intellectual, might be considered as in the highest state of
advancement, and therefore most likely to understand the real spirit of the
new religion. The authority of Jesus could not co-exist with that of the
scribes and Pharisees ; and this was the great principle of the fierce
opposition and jealous hostility with which He was in general encountered by
the best-instructed teachers of the people.
In Capernaum,
however, no resistance seems to have been made to his success: the synagogue
was open to Him on every sabbath; and wonderful cures — that of a demoniac in
the synagogue itself, that of Simon’s wife’s mother, and of many others within
the same town — established and strengthened his growing influence.1
books, the
cunous passage (p. 60) from the Eruhin, in which the Jews and Galileans are
contrasted. The Galileans did not preserve the pure speech therefore did not
preserve pure doctrine; the Galileans had no teacher, therefore no doctrine;
the Galileans did not open the book, therefore they had no doctrine.
1 Mark i.
23-28; Luke iv. 33-37; Matt. viii. 14, 15; Mark i. 29-31; Luke
iv. 28-39.
From
Capernaum He set forth to make a regular progress through the whole populous
province Progress of Galilee, which was crowded, if we are to aSS? receive the
account of Josephus, with flourishing towna and cities, beyond almost any other
region of the world.1 According to the statement of tliis author,
the number of towns, and the population of Galilee, in a popu]olisncss
district of between fifty and sixty miles in ofQaUlee- length, and
between sixty and seventy in breadth, was no less than two hundred and four
cities and villages, the least of which contained fifteen thousand souls.2
Beckoning nothing for smaller communities, and supposing each town and village
to include the adjacent district, so as to allow of no scattered inhabitants in
the country, the population of the province would amount to the incredible
number of three million and sixty thousand. Of these, probably, much the larger
proportion were of Jewish descent, and spoke a harsher dialect of the Aramaic
than that which prevailed in Judaga, though in many of the chief cities there
was a considerable number of Syrian Greeks and of other foreign races.8
Each of these towns had one or more synagogues, in which the people met for the
ordinary purposes of worship, while the more religious attended regularly at
the festivals in Jerusalem. The province of Galilee with Persea formed the
tetrarchate of Herod Antipas, who, till his incestuous marriage, had treated
the Baptist with respect, if not with defer-
1 Matt. iv. 23-25; Mark i. 32-39; Luke iv.
40-44.
2 Josephi Vita, ch. xlv. B. J. L. in. c.
iii. 2.
8
According to Strabo, Galilee was full of Egyptians, Arabians, and Phoenicians,
lib. xvi. Josephus states of Tiberias in particular, that it was inhabited by
many strangers; Scythopolis was almost a Greek city. In Caesarea, and many of
the other towns, the most cjreadful conflicts took place, at the commencement
of the war, between the two races. —Hist, of the Jews, ii. 173-181.
VOL. 13
ence, and
does not appear at first to have interfered Herod An- with the proceedings of
Jesus. Though apas' at one time decidedly hostile, he appears
neither to have been very active in his opposition, nor to have entertained any
deep or violent animosity against the person of Jesus even at the time of his
final trial. No doubt Jerusalem and its adjacent province were the centre and
stronghold of Jewish religious and political enthusiasm; the pulse beat
stronger about the heart than at the extremities. Nor, whatever personal
apprehensions Herod might have entertained of an aspirant to the name of the
Messiah whom he might suspect of temporal ambition, was he likely to be
actuated by the same jealousy as the Jewish Sanhedrin, of a teacher who
confined himself to religious instruction.1 Herod’s power rested on
force, not on opinion; on the strength of his guards and the protection of
Rome, not on the respect which belonged to the half-religious, half-political
pre-eminence of the rulers in Jerusalem. That which made Jesus the more odious
to the native government in Judaea, his disappointment of their hopes of a
temporal Messiah, and his announcement of a revolution purely moral and
religious, would allay the fears and secure the indifference of Herod. To him, Christianity,
however imperfectly understood, would appear less dangerous than fanatical
Judaism. The Pharisees were in considerable numbers, and possessed much
influence over the minds of the Galileans;2 but it was in Judaea
that this overwhelming faction completely predomi-
1
The supposition of Grotius, adopted by Mr. Greswell, that Herod 'was absent at
Rome during the interval between the imprisonment and the death of John, and
therefore during the first progress of Jesus, appears highly probable.
3 Luke v 17.
nated, and
swayed the public opinion with irresistible power. Hence the unobstructed
success of Jesus in this remoter region of the Holy Land, and the seeming
wisdom of selecting that part of the country where, for a time at least, He
might hope to pursue unmolested his career of blessing. During this first prog-
Je8US pasBes ress, He appears to have passed from town to th“ught,id
town uninterrupted, if not cordially welcomed. 0aUlee- Either
astonishment or prudent caution, which dreaded to offend his numerous
followers, or the better feeling which had not yet given place to the fiercer
passions, or a vague hope that Jesus might yet assume all that they thought
wanting to the character of the Messiah, not only attracted around Him the
population of the towns through which He passed; but, as He approached the
borders, the inhabitants of Decapolis (the district beyond the Jordan), of
Judasa, and even of Jerusalem and the remoter parts of Peraea, thronged to
profit, both by his teaching and by the wonderful cures which were wrought on
all who were afflicted by the prevalent diseases of the country.1
How singular
the contrast (familiarity with its circumstances, or deep and early reverence,
prevents us from appreciating it justly) between the peaceful progress of the
Son of Man, — on the one hand healing maladies, relieving afflictions,
restoring their senses to the dumb or blind, on the other gently instilling
into the minds of the people those pure and humane and gentle principles of
moral goodness, to which the wisdom of ages has been able to add nothing,—and
every other event to which it can be compared, in the history of human kind!
Compare the men who have at different periods wrought great and beneficial
revolutions in the
civil or the
moral state of their kind ; or those mythic comparison personages, either
deified men or humanized ofothcrtbor3 deities, which appear as the
parents, or at revolutions. gome mar]je(j epoch in the
history, of different
nations,
embodying the highest notions of human nature or divine perfection to which the
age or the people have attained, — compare all these, in the most dispassionate
spirit, with the impersonation of the divine goodness in Jesus Christ. It seems
a conception, notwithstanding the progress in moral truth which had been made
among the more intellectual of the Jews, and the nobler reasoners among the
Greeks, so completely beyond the age, so opposite to the prevalent expectations
of the times, as to add no little strength to the belief of the Christian in the
divine origin of his faith. Was the sublime notion of the Universal Father, the
God of Love, and the exhibition of as much of the divine nature as is
intelligible to the limited faculties of man, his goodness and beneficent
power, in the “ Son of Man,” first developed in the natural progress of the
human mind among the peasants of Galilee ?1 Or, as the Christian
asserts with more faith, and surely not less reason, did the great Spirit,
which created and animates the countless worlds, condescend to show this image
and reflection of his own inconceivable nature, for the benefit of one race of
created beings, to restore them to, and prepare them for, a higher and eternal
state of existence ?
The
synagogues, it has been said, appear to have been open to Jesus during the
whole of his progress through Galilee; but it was not within the narrow walls
of these buildings that He confined his instructions. It was in the open air,
in the field, or in the
1 Compare the observations at the end of
the first chapter.
vineyard, on
the slope of the hill, or by the side of the lake, where the deck of one of his
followers’ Teachea in vessels formed a kind of platform or tribune,
^^din that He delighted to address the wonder- the °i)en
airing multitudes. His language teems with allusions to external nature,
which, it has often been observed, seem to have been drawn from objects
immediately around Him. It would be superfluous to attempt to rival, aud unjust
to an author of remarkable good sense and felicity of expression to alter, the
language in which this peculiarity of Christ’s teaching has already been
described: “ In the spring our Saviour went into the fields, and sat down on a
moun- Mannerofhifl tain, and made that discourse which is re-
Q„otat7<m corded in St. Matthew, and which is full of fromJortin-
observations arising from the things which offered themselves to his sight.
For, when He exhorted his disciples to trust in God, He bade them behold the
fowls of the air, which were then flying about them, and were fed by Divine
Providence, though they did 4 not sow nor reap, nor gather into
barns.’ He bade them take notice of the lilies of the field, which were then
blown, and were so beautifully clothed by the same Power, and yet4
toiled not’ like the husbandmen who were then at work. Being in a place where
they had a wide prospect of a cultivated land, He bade them observe how God
caused the sun to shine, and the rain to descend, upon the fields and gardens,
even of the wicked and ungrateful. And He continued to convey his doctrine to
them under rural images: speaking of good trees and corrupt trees ; of wolves
in sheep’s clothing ; of grapes not growing upon thorns, nor figs on thistles;
of the folly of casting precious things to dogs and swine; of good measure
pressed down, and
shaken
together and running over. Speaking at the same time to the people, many of
whom were fishermen and lived much upon fish, He says, What man of you will
give his son a serpent, if he ask a fish? Therefore, when He said in the same
discourse to his disciples. Ye are the light of the world; a city that is set
on a hill, and cannot be hid, — it is probable that He pointed to a city within
their view, situated upon the brow of a hill. And when He called them the salt
of the earth, He alluded, perhaps, to the husbandmen, who were manuring the
ground: and when He compared every person who observed his precepts to a man
who built a house upon a rock, which stood firm ; and every one who slighted
his word to a man who built a house upon the sand, which was thrown down by the
winds and floods, — when He used this comparison, ’tis not improbable that He
had before his eyes houses standing upon high ground, and houses standing in
the valley in a ruinous condition, which had been destroyed by inundations.”1
It was on his
return to Capernaum, either at the close sermon on °f the present or of a later
progress through the Mount. Galilee, that, among the multitudes who had
gathered around Him from all quarters, He ascended an eminence, and delivered,
in a long continuous address, the memorable Sermon on the Mount.2 It
is not my
1 Jortin’s Discourses. The above is quoted,
and the idea is followed out at greater length and with equal beauty, in Bishop
Law’s Reflections on the Life of Christ, at the end of his Theory of Religion.
2 Scarcely any passage is more perplexing to
the harmonist of the Gospels than the Sermon on the Mount, which appears to be
inserted at two different places by St. Matthew and St. Luke. That the same
striking truths should be delivered more than once in nearly the same language,
or even that the same commanding situation should'be more than once selected,
from which to address the people, appears not altogether improbable; but the
difficulty 'ies ill the accompanying incidents, which are almost the same, and
could scarrefy
design to
enter at length on the trite, though in my opinion by no means exhausted,
subject of Principles of Christian morality. I content myself with morality,
indicating some of those characteristic points which belong, as it were, to the
historical development of the new religion, and cannot be distinctly
comprehended unless in relation to the circumstances of the 1. Not, in times:
I. The morality of Jesus was not in theage. unison with the temper or the
feelings of his age.
II. It was universal morality, adapted for the
whole human race, and for every period of civilization. III. It was morality
grounded on broad and simple principles, which had hitherto never been laid
down as the basis of human action.
I. The great
principle of the Mosaic theocracy was the strict apportionment of temporal
happiness or calamity, at least to the nation, if not to the individual,
according to his obedience or his rebellion against the divine laws. The
natural consequence of this doctrine seemed to be, that prosperity was the
invariable sign of the divine approval; adversity, of disfavor. And this, in
the time of our Lord, appears to have been carried to such an extreme, that
every malady, every infirmity, was an evidence of sin in the individual, or a
punishment inherited from his guilty forefathers. The only question which
arose about the man born blind was, whether his affliction was the consequence
of his own or his parents’ criminality: he bore in his calamity the hateful
evidence that he was accursed of God. This principle was perpetually struggling
with the
have happened
twice. No writer who insists on the chronological order of the evangelists has,
in my judgment, removed the difficulty. On the whole, though I have inserted my
view of Christian morality, as derived from this memorable discourse, in this
place, I am inclined to consider the chronology of St. Luke more accurate. —
Matt, v., vi., vii.; Luke vi. 20, to the end.
belief in a
future state, and an equitable adjustment of the apparent inequalities in the
present life, to which the Jewish mind had gradually expanded ; and with the
natural humanity, inculcated by the spirit of the Mosaic Law, towards their own
brethren. But, if the miseries of this life were an evidence of the divine
anger, the blessings were likewise of his favor.1 Hence the
prosperous, the wealthy, those exempt from human suffering and calamity, were
accustomed to draw even a more false and dangerous line of demarcation than in
ordinary cases between themselves and their humble and afflicted brethren. The
natural haughtiness which belonged to such superiority, acquired, as it were,
a divine sanction; nor was any vice in the Jewish character more strongly
reproved by Jesus, or more hostile to his reception as the Messiah. For when
the kingdom of heaven should come; when the theocracy should be restored in
more than its former splendor,—who so secure, in popular estimation, of its
inestimable blessings as those who were already marked and designated by the divine
favor ? Among the higher orders, the expectation of a more than ordinary share
in the promised blessings might practically be checked from imprudently
betraying itself, by the natural timidity of those who have much to lose, and
by their reluctance to hazard any political convulsion. Yet nothing could be
more inexplicable, or more contrary to the universal sentiment, than that Jesus
should disregard the concurrence of, and make no particular advances towards,
those who formed the
1 Compare Mosheim, ii. 12. He considers
this feeling almost exclusively prevalent among the Sadducees; hut, from many
passages of our Lord’s discourses with the Pharisees, it would seem to have
been almost universal. “ Pauperes et miseros existimare debehant Deum
criminibus et peceatis ofieiulisse, justamque ejus ultionem se»*.»ve.”
spiritual as
well as the temporal aristocracy of the nation; those whose possession of the
highest station seemed, in a great degree, to prove their designation for such
eminence by the Almighty. “ Have any of the rulers believed in Him ? ” 1
was the contemptuous, and, as they conceived, conclusive, argument against his
claims, adduced by the Pharisees. Jesus not only did not condescend to favor,
He ran directly counter to, this prevailing notion. He announced that the
kingdom of heaven was peculiarly prepared for the humble and the afflicted; his
disciples were chosen from the lowest order; and it was not obscurely
intimated, that his ranks would be chiefly filled by those who were
undistinguished by worldly prosperity. Yet, on the other hand, there was nothing
in his language to conciliate the passions of the populace, no address to the
envious and discontented spirit of the needy to inflame them against their
superiors. Popular as He was, in the highest sense of the term, nothing could
be farther removed than the Prophet of Nazareth from the demagogue. The
“kingdom of heaven” was opened only to those who possessed and cultivated the
virtues of their lowly station, — meekness, humility, resignation,
peacefulness, patience; and it was only because these virtues were most
prevalent in the humbler classes, that the new faith was addressed to them. The
more fierce and violent of the populace rushed into the ranks of the zealot,
and enrolled themselves among the partisans of Judas the Galilean. They
thronged around the robber chieftain, and secretly propagated that fiery spirit
of insurrection which led, at length, to the fatal war. The meek and peaceful
doctrines of Jesus found their way only into
meek and
peaceful hearts; the benevolent character of his miracles touched not those
minds which had only imbibed the sterner, not the liumaner, spirit of the
Mosaic Law. Thus it was lowliness of character, rather than of station, which
qualified the proselyte for the new faith, — the absence, in short, of all
those fierce passions which looked only to a conquering, wide-ruling Messiah;
and it was in elevating theso virtues to the highest rank, which, to the many
of all orders, was treason against the hopes of Israel and the promises of
God, that Jesus departed most widely from the general sentiment of his age and
nation. He went still further: He annihilated the main principle of the
theocracy, — the administration of temporal rewards and punishments in
proportion to obedience or rebellion a notion which, though, as we have said,
by no means justified by common experience, and weakened by the growing belief
in another life, nevertheless still held its ground in the general opinion.
Sorrow, as in one sense the distinguishing mark and portion of the new
religion, became sacred; and the curse of God was, as it were, removed from the
afflictions of mankind. His own disciples, He himself, were to undergo a
fearful probation of suffering, which could only be secure of its reward in
another life. The language of Jesus confirmed the truth of the anti- Sadducaic
belief of the greater part of the nation, and assumed the certainty of another
state of existence, concerning which, as yet, it spoke the current language,
but which it was hereafter to expand into a more simple and universal creed,
and mingle, if it may be so said, the sense of immortality with all the
feelings and opinions of mankind.
alone that
the universal precepts of Christian morality- expanded beyond the narrow and
exclusive ita nniTer. notions of the age and people. Jesus did Ballty‘
not throw down the barrier which secluded the Jews from the rest of mankind,
but He shook it to its base. Christian morality was not that of a sect, a race,
or a nation, but of universal man: though necessarily delivered at times in Jewish
language, couched under Jewish figures, and illustrated by local allusions, in
its spirit it was diametrically opposite to Jewish. However it might make some
provisions suited only to the peculiar state of the first disciples, yet in its
essence it may be said to be comprehensive as the human race, immutable as the
nature of man. It had no political, no local, no temporary precepts; it was,
therefore, neither liable to be abrogated by any change in the condition of
man, nor to fall into disuse, as belonging to a past and obsolete state of
civilization. It may dwell within its proper kingdom, the heart of man, in
every change of political relation, — in the monarchy, the oligarchy, the
republic. It may domesticate itself in any climate, amid the burning sands of
Africa, or the frozen regions of the north; for it has no local centre, no
temple, no Caaba, no essential ceremonies impracticable under any conceivable
state of human existence. In fact, it is, strictly speaking, no Law; it is 110
system of positive enactments; it is the establishment of certain principles,
the enforcement of certain dispositions, the cultivation of a certain temper of
mind, which the conscience is to apply to the ever- varying exigencies of time
and place. This appears to me to be the distinctive peculiarity of Christian
morals, a characteristic in itself most remarkable, and singularly so when we
find this free and comprehen
sive system
emanating from that of which the mainspring was its exclusiveness.
III. The basis of this universality in Christian
its original morals was the broad and original principles principles. up011 jt rested. If we were to glean
from the
later Jewish writings, from the beautiful aphorisms of other Oriental nations,
which we cannot fairly trace to Christian sources, and from the Platonic and
Stoic philosophy, their more striking precepts, we might find, perhaps, a
counterpart to almost all the moral sayings of Jesus. But the same truth is of
different importance as an unconnected aphorism, and as the groundwork of a
complete system. No doubt the benevolence of the Creator had awakened grateful
feelings, and kindled the most exquisite poetry of expression, in the hearts
and from the lips of many before the coming of Christ; no doubt general humanity
had been impressed upon mankind in the most vivid and earnest language. But the
gospel first placed these two great principles as the main pillars of the new
moral structure: God the universal Father, mankind one brotherhood; God made
known through the mediation of his Son, the image, and humanized type and
exemplar of his goodness; mankind of one kindred, and therefore of equal rank
in the sight of the Creator, and to be united in one spiritual commonwealth.
Such were the great principles of Christian morals, shadowed forth at first,
rather than distinctly announced, in condescension to the prejudices of the
Jews, who, if they had been found worthy of appreciating the essential spirit
of the new religion, if they had received Jesus as the promised Saviour, might
have been, collectively and nationally, the religious parents and teachers of
mankind.
Such was the
singular position of Jesus with regard to his countrymen: the attempt to
conciliate them to the new religion was to be fairly conduct of made; but the
religion, however it might ^rd'to%is condescend to speak their language, could countrymen'
not forfeit or compromise, even for such an end, its primary and essential
principles. Jesus therefore pursues his course, at one time paying the utmost deference
to, at another unavoidably offending, the deep- rooted prejudices of the
people. The inveterate and loathsome nature of the leprosy in Syria, the deep
abhorrence with which the wretched victim of this disease was cast forth from
all social fellowship, is well known to all who are even slightly acquainted
with the Jewish Law and usages. One of these nealillg the miserable
beings appealed, and not in vain, to leper' the mercy of Jesus.1
He was instantaneously cured; but Jesus, whether to authenticate the cure, and
to secure the re-admission of the outcast into the rights and privileges of
society from which he was legally excluded,2 or more probably lest
He should be accused of interfering with the rights or diminishing the dues of
the priesthood, enjoined him to preserve the strictest secrecy concerning the
cause of his cure; to submit to the regular examination of his case by the
appointed authorities, and on no account to omit the customary offering. The
second incident second was remarkable for its publicity, as having nuracle-
1 Matt. viii.
2-4; Mark i. 40-45; Luke v. 12-16.
1 have retained what may he called the moral
connection of this cure with the Sermon on the Mount; if the latter is
inserted, as in St. Luke, after the more solemn inauguration of the Twelve,
this incident will retain, perhaps, its present place, but lose this moral
connection. See Luke v. 12-15.
2 I am inclined to adopt the explanation of
Grotius, that w the testimony ” was to he obtained from the priest,
hefore he knew that he had been healed by Jesus, lest, in his jealousy, he
should declare the cure imperfect.
taken place
in a crowded liouse, in the midst of many of the scribes, who were, at this
period at least, not friendly to Jesus.1 The door of the house being
inaccessible on account of the crowd, the sick man was borne in his couch
along the flat terrace roofs of the adjacent buildings (for, in the East, the
roofs are rarely pointed or shelving), and let down through an aperture, which
was easily made, and of sufficient dimensions to admit the bed into the upper
chamber,2 where Jesus was seated in the midst of his hearers. Jesus
complied at once with their request to cure the afflicted man, but made use of
a new and remarkable expression,
— “ Thy sins are forgiven thee.” This phrase,
while it coincided with the general notion that such diseases were the
penalties of sin, nevertheless, as assuming to the Lord an unprecedented
power, that which seems to belong to the Deity alone, struck his hearers, more
especially the better-instructed, the scribes, with astonishment. Their wonder,
however, at the instantaneous cure, for the present overpowered their indignation
; yet, no doubt, the whole transaction tended to increase the jealousy with
which Jesus began to be beheld.
The third
incident3 jarred on a still more sensitive The pub- chord in the
popular feeling. On no point were all orders among the Jews so unanimous as in
their contempt and detestation of the publicans. Strictly speaking, the
persons named in the Evangelists were not publicans. These were men of
property, not below the equestrian order, who farmed the public revenues. Those
in question were the
1 Matt. ix. 2-8; Mark ii. 1-12; Luke v.
18-26.
2 Or they may merely have enlarged the door
of communication with the terrace roof.
8 Matt. ix. 9;
Mark ii. 13, 14; Luke v. 27, 28.
agents of
these contractors, men often freed slaves, or of low birth and station, and
throughout the Roman world proverbial for their extortions, and in Judaea still
more hateful, as among the manifest signs of subjugation to a foreign
dominion. The Jew who exercised the function of a publican was, as it were, a
traitor to the national independence. One of these, Matthew, otherwise called
Levi, was summoned from his post as collector, perhaps at the port of Caper
naum, to become one of the most intimate followers of Jesus; and the general
astonishment was still farther increased by Jesus enterhig familiarly into the
house, and even partaking of food with men thus proscribed by the universal
feeling, and though not legally \inclean, yet, no doubt, held in even greater
abhorrence by the general sentiment of the people.
Thus ended
the first year of the public life of Jesus. The fame of his wonderful works;
the au- ciose of first tliority with which He delivered his doctrines; public
life, among the meeker and more peaceful spirits, the beauty of the doctrines
themselves; above all, the mystery which hung over his character and
pretensions, — had strongly excited the interest of the whole nation. Prom all
quarters, from Galilee, Peraea, Judaea, and even the remoter Idumea, multitudes
approached Him with eager curiosity. On the other hand, his total secession
from, or rather his avowed condemnation of, the great prevailing party, the
Pharisees, while his doctrines seemed equally opposed to the less numerous yet
rival Sad- ducaic faction ; his popular demeanor, which had little in common
with the ascetic mysticism of the Bssenes ; his independence of the ruling
authorities ; above all, notwithstanding his general deference for the Law, his
manifest assumption of a power above the Law, had
no doubt, if
not actively arrayed against Him, yet awakened to a secret and brooding
animosity, the interests and the passions of the more powerful and influential
throughout the country.
CHAPTEK V.
Second Tear
of the Public Life of Jeans.
The second year of the public life of Christ opened, as the first, with
his attendance at the Passover.1 a.d. 28.
He appeared
again amidst the assembled pop- Passover. - alation of the whole race of
Israel, in the Jorusalem. place where, by common consent, the real Messiah was
to assume his office, and to claim the allegiance of the favored and chosen
people of God.2 It is Change in clear that a considerable change had
taken sentiment, place in the popular sentiment on the whole, at least with the
ruling party, unfavorable to Jesus of Nazareth. The inquisitive wonder, not
unmingled with respect, which on the former occasion seemed to have watched his
words and actions, had turned to an unquiet and jealous vigilance, and a
manifest anxiety on the part of his opponents to catch some opportunity of
weakening his influence over the people. The misapprehended speech concerning
the demolition and restoration of the Temple probably rankled in the
recollection of many; and rumors, no doubt, and those most likely inaccurate
and misrepresented, must
i My language
on this point is to be taken with some latitude, as a certain time elapsed
between the baptism of Jesus and the first Passover.
1 adopt the opinion, that the feast, in the
fifth chapter of St. John {ver. 1), was a Passover This view is not without
objection; namely, the long interval of nearly a whole year, which would be
overleaped at once by the narrative of St. John. But if this Gospel was
intended to be generally supplementary to the rest, or, as it seems, intended
especially to relate the transactions in Jerusalem omitted by the other
evangelists, this total silence on the intermediate events in Galilee would
not be altogether unaccountable.
2 John v. 1-15.
VOL.
I. 14
have reached
Jerusalem, of the mysterious language in which He had spoken of his relation to
Jehovali, the Supreme Being. The mere fact that Galilee had been chosen, rather
than Jerusalem or Jiidasa, for his assumption of whatever distinguised
character He was about to support, would work with no doubtful or disguised
animosity among the proud and jealous inhabitants of the metropolis. Nor was
his conduct, however still cautious, without further inevitable collision with
some of the most inveterate prejudices of his Countrymen. The first year, the
only public demonstration of his superiority had been the expulsion of the
buyers and sellers from the Temple, and his ambiguous and misinterpreted speech
about that sacred edifice. His conversation with Nicodemus had probably not
transpired, or at least not gained general publicity; for the same motives
which would lead the cautious Pharisee to conceal his visit under the veil of
night, would induce him to keep within his own bosom the important and
startling truths, which perhaps he himself did not yet clearly comprehend, but
which, at all events, were so opposite to the principles of his sect, and so
humiliating to the pride of the ruling and learned oligarchy.
During his
second visit, however, at the same solemn period of national assemblage, Jesus
gave a new cause of astonishment to his followers, of offence to his
adversaries, by au act wliich could not but excite the highest wonder and the
strongest animadversion. Breach of This was no less than an assumption of au-
the
sabbath. . . -w. *
Jewish tllority to dispense with
the observance of the
reverence sabbath. Of all their institutes, which, after
sabbuth. having infringed or neglected for centuries
of
cold and faithless service, the Jews, on
the return
from the
Captivity, embraced with passionate and fanatical attachment, none had become
so completely identified with the popular feeling, or had been guarded by such
minute and multifarious provisions, as the sabbath. In the early days of the
Maccabean revolt against Antiochus, the insurgents, having been surprised on a
sabbath, submitted to be tamely butchered, rather than violate the sanctity of
the day even by defensive warfare. And though the manifest impossibility of
recovering or maintaining their liberties against the inroads of hostile
nations had led to a relaxation of the Law as far as self-defence, yet, during
the siege of Jerusalem by Pompey, the wondering Romans discovered, that
although ou the seventh day the garrison would repel an assault, yet they would
do nothing to prevent or molest the enemy in carrying 011 his operations in the
trenches. Tradition, “ the hedge of the Law,” as it was called, had fenced this
institution with more than usual care: it had noted with jealous rigor almost
every act of bodily exertion within the capacity of man, arranged them under
thirty-nine heads, which were each considered to comprehend a multitude of
subordinate cases, and against each and every one of these had solemnly affixed
the seal of divine condemnation. A sabbath-day’s journey was a distance
limited to 2,000 cubits, or rather less than a mile; and the carrying any
burden was especially denounced, as among the most flagrant violations of the Law.
This sabbatic observance was the stronghold of Pharisaic rigor; and, enslaved
as the whole nation was in voluntary bondage to these minute regulations, in no
point were they less inclined to struggle with the yoke, or wore it with
greater willingness and pride.
There
was a pool,1 situated most likely to the north of the Temple, near
the Sheep-gate, the same theTsicf °f probably through which the
animals intended pool of for sacrifice were usually brought into the ethesda. p]ac0 was called Beth-esda (the
House of
Mercy), and the pool was supposed to possess remarkable properties for healing
diseases. At certain periods, there was a strong commotion in the waters, which
probably bubbled up from some chemical cause conncctcd with their medicinal
effects. Popular belief, or rather, perhaps, popular language, attributed this
agitation of the surface to the descent of an angel;2 for of course
the regular descent of a celestial being, visible to the whole city, cannot for
an instant be supposed. Around the pool were usually assembled a number of
diseased persons, blind or paralytic, who awaited the right moment for plunging
into the water, under the shelter of five porticos, which had been built,
either by private charity or at the public cost, for the general convenience.
Among these lay one who had been notoriously afflicted for thirty-eight years
by some disorder which deprived him of the use of his limbs.3 It was
in vain that he had watched an opportunity of relief; for as the sick person
who first plunged into the water, when it became agitated, seems to have
exhausted its virtues, this helpless and friendless sufferer was constantly
thrust aside, or supplanted
1 John v. 1-15.
2_ The verse relating to the angel is
rejected as spurious by many critics, and is wanting in some manuscripts.
Perhaps it was silently rejected from a reluetance to depart from the literal
interpretation; and, at the same time, the inevitable conviction, that, if
taken literally, the fact must have been notorious, and visible to all who
visited Jerusalem Grotius, Lightfoot Doddridge,
in he.
8 We are not,
of course, to suppose, as is assumed by some of the mythic interpreters, that
the man had been all this time waiting for a cure at this place
by some more
active rival for the salutary effects of the spring. Jesus saw and had
compassion on the afflicted man, commanded him to rise, and, that he might show
the perfect restoration of his strength, to take up the pallet on which he had
lain, and to bear it away. The carrying any burden, as has been said, was
specifically named as one of the most heinous of fences against the Law; and
the strange sight of a man thus openly violating the statute in so public a
place could not but excite the utmost attention. The man was summoned, it would
seem, before the appointed authorities, and questioned about his offence
against public decency and the established Law. His defence was plain and
simple : he acted according to the command of the wonderful person who had restored
his limbs with a word, but who that person was he had no knowledge; for,
immediately after the miraculous cure, Jesus, in conformity with his usual
practice of avoiding whatever might lead to popular tumult, had quietly
withdrawn from the wondering crowd. Subsequently, however, meeting Jesus in the
Temple, he recognized his benefactor, and it became generally known that Jesus
was the author both of the cure and of the violation of the sabbath. Jesus, in
his turn, was called to account for his conduct.
The
transaction bears the appearance, if not of a
formal
arraignment before the high court of judicial investigation
the
Sanhedrin, at least of a solemn and reg- of the case, ular judicial inquiry.
Yet, as no verdict seems to have been given notwithstanding the importance evidently
attached to the affair, it may be supposed either that the full authority of
the Sanhedrin was wanting, or that they dared not, on such insufficient
evidence, condemn with severity one about whom the popular
mind was at least divided. The defence of Jesus, tT though
apparently not given at foil length
^ by the evangelist, was of a nature to startle and perplex the tribunal:
it was full of mysterious intimations, and couched in language about which it
is difficult to decide how far it was familiar to the ears of the more learned.
It appeared at once to strike at the literal interpretation of the Mosaic
commandment, and at the same time to draw a parallel between the actions of
Jesus and those of God.1 On the sabbath, the beneficent works of the Almighty Father are continued
as on any other day: there is no period of rest to Him whose active power is
continually employed in upholding, animating, maintaining in its uniform aud
uninterrupted course the universe which He has created. The free course of
God's blessing knows no pause, no suspension.8 It is clear that the healing waters of Bethesda
occasionally showed their salutary virtues on the sabbath, and might thus be an
acknowledged instance of the unremitting benevolence of the Almighty. In the
same manner, the benevolence of Jesus disdained to be confined by any
distinction of days'; it was to flow forth as constant aud unimpeded as the
divine bounty. The indignant court heard with astonishment this aggravation of
the offence. Not only had Jesus assumed the power of dispensing with the Law,
but, with what appeared to them pro* fane and impious boldness, He had
instituted a comparison between himself and the great Ineflablo Deity.
1 Jv'hn v.
16-47.
a
If tha sublime maxim which was admitted in the school of Alexandria had likewiw
firand its way inty the Synagogues of Jud*-*, the speech of Jesus, “ My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work,” in its first clausa appealed to principles
acknowledged by his autlitcry. « God," says Philo," nave * . eases
from action; but as it is tha property of fire to hnm, of snow to chill, so to
act (or to work) is tha inalienable ftmction of tha Deity.” Da Allcg. lib. ii.
With one
consent, they determine to press with greater vehemence the capital charge.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He had not only broken
the sabbath, but said that God was his father, making himself equal with God.
The second
defence of Jesus was at ouce more full and explicit, aud more alarming to the
awe- scconade-
i 11 T t rence
of
struck
assembly. It amounted to an open Jesus, assumption of the title and offices of
the Messiah,- the Messiah in the person of the commanding and fearless, yet
still, as they supposed, humble Galilean, who stood before their tribunal. It
commenced by expanding and confirming that parallel which had already sunk so
deep into their resentful minds. The Son was upon earth, as it were, a
representative of the power and mercy of the invisible Father, — of that great
Being who had never been comprehensible to the senses of man. For what things
soever He (the Father) doeth, those also doeih the Son likewise. The Savioui
proceeded to declare his divine mission and his claim to divine honor, his
investment with power, not only over diseases, but over death itself. From
thence Ho passed to the acknowledged offices of the Messiah, the resurrection,
the fiual judgment, the apportionmenl of everlasting life. All these recognized
functions of the Messiah were'assigned by the Father to the Son, and that Son
appeared in his person. In confirmation of these as yet unheard-of pretensions,
Jesus declared that his right to honor and reverence rested not on his own
assertion alone. He appealed to the testimony which had been publicly borne to
his character by John the Baptist. The prophetic authority of John had been, if
not universally, at least generally, recognized: it had so completely sunk into
the popular belief, that,
as appears in
a subsequent incident, the multitude would have resented any suspicion thrown
even by their acknowledged superiors on one thus established in their respect
and veneration, and perhaps further endeared by the persecution which He was
now suffering under the unpopular tetrarch of Galilee. He appealed to a more
decisive testimony, the public miracles which He had wrought, concerning which
the rulers seem scarcely yet to have determined on their course, whether to
doubt, to deny, or to ascribe them to demoniacal agency. Finally, He appealed
to the last unanswerable authority, the Sacred Writings, which the> held in
such devout reverence; and distinctly asserted that his coming had been
prefigured by their great lawgiver, from the spirit at least, if not from the
express letter, of whose sacred laws they were departing, in rejecting his
claims to the title and honors of the Messiah. Mad ye believed Moses, ye would
have, believed me ; for he wrote of me.
There is an
air of conscious superiority in the whole of this address, which occasionally
rises to the vehemence of reproof, to solemn expostulation, to authoritative
admonition, of which it is difficult to estimate the impression upon a court
accustomed to issue their judgments to a trembling and humiliated auditory. But
of their subsequent proceedings we have no infor- Eifflcult mation,
— whether the Sanhedrin hesitated or the sankfeared to proceed; whether they
were divided in their opinions, or could not reckon upon the support of the
people ; whether they doubted their own competency to take so strong a measure
without the concurrence or sanction of the Roman governor; at all events, no
attempt was made to secure the person of Jesus. He appears, with his usual
caution, to
have retired
towards the safer province of Galilee, where the Jewish senate possessed 110
authority, and where Herod, much less under the Pharisaic influence, would not
think it necessary to support the injured dignity of the Sanhedrin in
Jerusalem; nor, whatever his political apprehensions, would he entertain the
same sensitive terrors of a reformer who confined his views to the religious
improvement of mankind.
But from this
time commences the declared hostility of the Pharisaic party against Jesus.
Every
.
. . n . 1-,. Hostility
of
opportunity
is seized of detecting Him in the puaiisaio some further violation of the
religious stat- tutes. We now perpetually find the Pharisees watching his
footsteps, and especially on the
. They follow
sabbath;
laying hold 01 every pretext to m- flame the popular mind against his neglect
or open defiance of their observances. Nor was their jealous vigilance
disappointed. Jesus calmly pursued on the sabbath, as on every other day, his
course of benevolence. A second and a third time, immediately after his public
arraignment, that which they considered the inexpiable offence was renewed,
aud justified in terms which were still more repugnant to their inveterate
prejudices.
The Passover
was scarcely ended, and with his disciples He was probably travelling
homewards, when the first of these incidents occurred. On the first Ne» Tioia-
tion of the
sabbath after
the second day of unleavened sahbath. bread, the disciples, passing through a
field of corn, and being hungry, plucked some of the ears of corn, and, rubbing
them in their hands, ate the grain.1 This, according to Jewish
usage, was no violation of the laws of property, as, after the wave-offering
had been
made in the
Temple, the harvest was considered to be ripe : and the humane regulation of
the lawgiver permitted the stranger, who was passing through a remote
district, thus to satisfy his immediate wants. But it was the sabbath, and the
act directly offended against another of the multifarious provisions of Pharisaic
tradition. The vindication of his followers by their Master took still higher
ground. He not merely adduced the example of David, who in extreme want had not
scrupled, in open violation of the Law, to take the shewbread, which was
prohibited to all but the priestly order (He thus placed his humble disciples
on a level with the great king, whose memory was cherished with the most devout
reverence and pride); but He distinctly asserted his own power of dispensing
with that which was considered the eternal, the irreversible commandment: He
declared himself Lord of the sabbath.
Rumors of
this dangerous innovation accompanied the Saviour into Galilee. Whether some of
the more zealous Pharisees had followed Him during his jour ncy, or had
accidentally returned at the same time from the Passover, or whether, by means
of that intimate and rapid correspondence likely to be maintained among the
members of an ambitious and spreading sect, they had already communicated their
apprehensions of danger and their animosity against Jesus, they already seem
to have arrayed against Him in all parts the vigilance and enmity of their
brethren. It was in the public synagogue in some town which He entered on his
retnrn to Galilee, in the face of the whole assembly, that a man with a
withered hand recovered the strength of his limb at the command of Jesus on
the sabbath-day.1 And the multitude, iu-
1 Matt. xii. 9-14: Mark iii. 1-6; Luke vi.
6-11.
stead of
being inflamed by the zeal of the Pharisees, appear at least to have been
unmoved by their angry remonstrances. They heard without disapprobation, if
they did not openly testify their admiration, both of the power and goodness of
Jesus ; and listened to the simple argument with which He silenced his adversaries,
by appealing to their own practice in extricating their own property, or
delivering their own cattle from jeopardy, on the sacred day.1
The discomfited
Pharisees endeavored to enlist in their party the followers, perhaps the
magistracy of Herod, and to organize a formidable opposition to the growing
influence of Jesus. So successful was their hostility, that Jesus seems to have
aSws b^ond thought it prudent to withdraw for a short Qhaem^of
time from the collision. He passed towards the lake, over which He could at any
time cross into the district which was beyond the authority both of Herod and
of the Jewish Sanhedrin.2 A bark attended upon Him, which would
transport Him to any quarter He might desire, and on board of which He seems to
have avoided the multitudes which constantly thronged around, or, seated on the
deck, addressed, with greater convenience, the crowding hearers who lined the
shores. Yet concealment, or per-
He retires
haps less
frequent publicity, seems now to f™™ puMc have been his object ;3
for, when some of those insane persons, the demoniacs, as they were called,
openly address Him by the title of Son of God, Jesus enjoins their silence,4
as though He were yet unwilling openly to assume this title, which was fully
equivalent to that of the Messiah, and which, no doubt, was al-
ready
ascribed to Him by the bolder and less prudent of his followers. The same
injunctions of secrecy were addressed to others who at this time were relieved
or cured by the beneficent power; so that one evangelist considers that the
cautious and unresisting demeanor of Jesus, thus avoiding all unnecessary
offence or irritation, exemplified that characteristic of the Messiah, so
beautifully described by Isaiah :1 “He shall neither strive nor ery,
neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed shall He
not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench, till He send forth judgment
unto victory.”
This
persecution, however, continues but a short Re-appeare time; and Jesus appears
again openly in Car
at
Caper- t • •
i i i t \ n
naum. pernaum
and its neighborhood. Arter a night passed in solitary retirement, He takes the
decided step of organizing his followers ; select-
Organization
. _ . . .
ofhjsfoi- mg
and solemnly inaugurating a certain number of his more immediate disciples, who
were to receive an authoritative commission to disseminate his doctrines.2
Hitherto He had stood, as it were, alone: though doubtless some of his
followers had attended upon Him with greater zeal and assiduity than others,
yet He could scarcely be considered as the head of a regular and disciplined
community. The twelve apostles, whether or not selected with that view, could
not but call to mind the number of the tribes of Israel. Of the earlier lives
of these humble men. little can be gathered beyond the usual avocations of some
among them; and even tradition, for once, preserves a modest and almost total
silence. They were of the lower, though perhaps not quite the lowest, class of
Galilean peasants. What previous education they had
received we
can scarcely conjecture; though almost all the Jews appear to have received
some kind of instruction in the history, the religion, and the traditions of
the nation. First among the twelve appears Simon, to whom Jesus, in allusion to
the The twelve firmness of character which he was hereafter apoatle8'
to exhibit, gave a name, or rather, perhaps, interpreted a name hy which he was
already known, — Cephas,1 the Rock; and declared that his new
religious community was to rest on a foundation as solid as that name seemed to
signify. Andrew, his brother, is usually associated with Peter. James and John2
received the remarkable name of Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder, of which it is
not easy to trace the exact force; for those who bore it do not appear
remarkable among their brethren, either for energy or vehemence. The peculiar
gentleness of the latter, both in character and iu the style of his writings,
would lead us to doubt the correctness of the interpretation generally assigned
to the appellation. The two former were natives of one town, — Bethsaida; the
latter, either of Bethsaida or Capernatim; and all obtained their livelihood as
fishermen on the Lake of Gennesaret, the waters of which were extraordinarily
prolific in fish of many kinds. Matthew or Levi, as it has been said, was a
publican. Philip was likewise of Bethsaida. Bartholomew, the
1 The equivocal meaning of the word was, no
doubt, evident in the original Aramaic dialect, spoken in Galilee. The French
alone of modern languages exactly retains it. “Vous §tes Pierre, et sur cette
pierre.” The narrative of St. John aserihes the giving this appellative to an
earlier period. See supra.) p. 160.
2 John must have been extremely young, when
chosen as an apostle. There is so constant a tradition of his heing alive at a
late period in the first century, that the fact can scarcely be doubted. Jerome
may perhaps have overstrained the tradition, “ ut autem sciamus Johannen turn
fuisse puerum, cum a Jesu electus est, manifestissimd docent ecclesiastic®
historian, quod usque ad Trajani vixerit imperium.” — Hieronym. in Jovin. i. 1-
son of Tolmai
or Ptolemy, is generally considered to have been the same with Nathanael, and
was distinguished, before his knowledge of Jesus, by the blamelessness of his
character, and, from the respect in which he was held, may be supposed to have
been of higher reputation, as of a better-instructed class. Thomas or Didymus
(for the Syriac and Greek words have the same signification, a twin) is
remarkable in the subsequent history for his coolness and reflecting temper of
mind. Lebbeus or Thaddeus, or Judas the brother of James, are doubtless
different names of the same person. Judas in Syriac is Thaddai. Whether
Lebbaios is derived from the town of Lebba, on the sea-coast of Galilee, or
from a word denoting the heart, and therefore almost synonymous with Thaddai,
which is interpreted the breast, is extremely doubtful. James was the son of
Cleophas or Alpheus : concerning him and his relationship to Jesus there has
been much dispute. His father, Cleophas, was married to another Mary, sister of
Mary the mother of Jesus, to whom he would therefore be cousin-ger man. But
whether he is the same with the James who in other places is named the brother
of the Lord (the term of brother by Jewish usage, according to one opinion,
comprehending these closer ties of kindred), and whether either of these two,
or which, was the James who presided over the Christian community in
Jerusalem, and whose cruel death is described by Josephus, must remain among
those questions on which we can scarcely expect further information, and
cannot, therefore, decide with certainty. Simon the Canaanite was so called,
not, as has been supposed, from the town of Cana, still less from his
Canaanitlsh descent, but from a Hebrew word mean
ing a zealot,
to which fanatical and dangerous body this apostle had probably belonged before
he joined the more peaceful disciples of Jesus. The last was Judas Iscariot,
perhaps so named from a small village named Iscara, or, more probably, Carioth,
situated in the tribe of Judah.
It was after
the regular inauguration of the twelve in their apostolic office, that,
according to St. Luke, the Sermon on the Mount was delivered, or some second
outline of Christian morals repeated in nearly similar terms. Immediately
after, as Jesus Healing returned to Capernaum, a cure was wrought, 0rk)n>8
both from its circumstances and its probable Eer™nfc-
influence 011 the situation of Jesus, highly worthy of remark.1 It
was in favor of a centurion, a military officer of Galilean descent, probably
in the service of Herod, and a proselyte to Judaism; for he could scarcely have
built a synagogue for Jewish worship, unless a convert to the religion.2
This man was held in such high estimation that the Jewish elders of the city,
likewise, it might seem, not unfavorably disposed towards Jesus, interceded in
his behalf. The man himself appears to have held the new Teacher iu such
profound reverence, that in his humility he did not think his house worthy of
so illustrious a guest, and expressed his confidence that a word from Him would
be as effective, even uttered at a distance, as the orders that he was
accustomed to issue to his soldiery. Jesus not only complied with his request
by restoring his servant to health, but took the opportunity of declaring that
many Gentiles, from the most remote
1 St. Matthew, as well as St. Luke, places
this cure as immediately following the Sermon on the Mount
2 Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 1-10.
quarters,
would be admitted within the pale of the new religion, to the exclusion of many
who had no title but their descent from Abraham. Still there was nothing, so
far as in the earlier part of this declaration, directly contrary to the
established opinions; for at least the more liberal Jews were not unwilling to
entertain the splendid ambition of becoming the religious instructors of the
world, provided the world did homage to the excellence and divine institution
of the Law; and at all times the G-entiles, by becoming Jews, either as
proselytes of the gate, if not proselytes by circumcision, might share in
most, if not in all, the privileges of the chosen people. This incident was
likewise of importance as still further strengthening the interest of Jesus
with the ruling authorities and with another powerful officer in the town of
Capernaum. A more extraordinary transaction followed. As yet, Jesus had
claimed authority over the most distressing and obstinate maladies: He now
appeared i.ivested with power over death itself. As He entered noising the the
town of Nain, between twenty and thirty widow’s son. mjjes
from Capernaum, He met a funeral
procession,
accompanied with circumstances of extreme distress. It was a youth, the only
son of a widow, who was borne out to burial: so great was the calamity that it
had excited the general interest of the inhabitants. Jesus raises the youth
from his bier, and restores him to the destitute mother.1
The fame of
this unprecedented miracle was propagated with the utmost rapidity through the
country; and still vague, yet deepening, rumors that a prophet had appeared,
that the great event whieh held the whole nation in suspense was on the instant
of fulfil-
ment, spread
throughout the whole province. It even reached the remote fortress of
Machaerus, in which John was still closely guarded, though it seems the free
access of his followers was not prohib- Message of
.
. i • t * the
ited.1
John commissioned two of bis disci- Baptist pies to inquire into the truth of
these wonderful reports, and to demand of Jesus himself whether He was the
expected Messiah. But what was the design of John in this message to Jesus ?
The question is not without difficulty. Was it for the satisfaction of his own
doubts, or those of his followers?2 Was it that, in apprehension of
his approaching death, he would consign his disciples to the care of a still
greater in structor? Was it that he might attach them before his death to
Jesus, and familiarize them with conduct, in some respects, so opposite to his
own Essenian, if not Pharisaic, habits ? He might foresee the advantage that
would be taken by the more ascetic to alienate his followers from Jesus, as a
teacher who fell far below the austerity of their own; and who, accessible to
all, held in no respect those minute observances which the usage of the
stricter Jews, and the example of their master, had arrayed in indispensable
sanctity. Or was it that John himself, having languished for nearly a year in
his remote prison, began to be impatient for the commencement of that splendid
epoch,3 of which the whole nation, even the apostles of Jesus, both
before and after the resurrection, had by no means abandoned their glorious,
worldly, and Jewish notions ? Was John, like the rest of the people, not yet
exalted above those hopes which were inseparable from the
1 Matt, xi 2-30; Luke vii. 17-35. 2
Whitby, Doddridge, in he.
8
Hammond inclines to this view, as does Jortin, Discourses on the Truth of the
Christian Keligion.
VOL.
I. 15
national mind
? If he is the King, why does he hesitate to assume his kingdom ? If the
Deliverer, why so tardy to commence the deliverance ? “ If Thou art indeed the
Messiah (such may appear to have been the purport of the Baptist’s message),
proclaim thyself at once; assume thy state ; array thyself in majesty ;
discomfit the enemies of holiness aud of God! My prison-doors will at once
burst open ; my trembling persecutors will cease from their oppressions. Herod
himself will yield up his usurped authority ; and even the power of Rome will
cease to afflict the redeemed ueople of the Almighty! ” What, on the other
hand, is the answer of Jesus ? It harmonizes in a remarka- ■ ile manner
with this latter view. It declares at once, and to the disappointment of these
temporal hopes, the purely moral and religious nature of the dominion to be
established by the Messiah. He was found displaying manifest signs of more
than human power; and to these peaceful signs He appeals as the conclusive
evidence of the commencement of the Messiah’s kingdom, — the relief of
diseases, the assuagement of sorrows, the restoration of their lost or decayed
senses to the deaf or blind, the equal admission of the lowest orders to the
same religious privileges with those more especially favored by God. The
remarkable words are added, “ Blessed is he that shall not be offended in me,”
— he that shall not consider irreconcilable with the splendid promises of the
Messiah’s kingdom, my lowly condition, my calm and unassuming course of mercy
and love to mankind, my total disregard of worldly honors, my refusal to place
myself at the head of the people as a temporal ruler. Violent men, more
especially during the disturbed and excited period since the appearance of John
the Baptist, would urge
on a kingdom
of violence. How truly the character of the times is thus described, is
apparent from the single fact, that, shortly afterwards, the people would have
seized Jesus himself, and forced Him to assume the royal title, if He had not
withdrawn himself from his dangerous adherents. This last expression, however,
occurs in the subsequent discourse of Jesus, after his disciples had departed,
when in those striking images He spoke of the former concourse of the people to
the Baptist, and justified it by the assertion of his prophetic character. It
was no idle object which led them into the wilderness, to see, as it were, “ a
reed shaken by the wind, ” nor to behold any rich or luxurious object: for
such they would have gone to the courts of their sovereigns. Still He declares
the meanest of his own disciples to have attained some moral superiority, some
knowledge, probably, of the real nature of the new religion, and of the
character and designs of the Messiah, which had never been possessed by John.
With his usual rapidity of transition, Jesus passes at once to his moral
instruction, and vividly shows, that whether severe or gentle, whether more
ascetic or more popular, the teachers of a holier faith had been equally
unacceptable. The general multitude of the Jews had rejected both the austerer
Baptist and himself, though of so much more benign and engaging demeanor. The
whole discourse ends with the significant words, “ My yoke is easy, and my
burden is light.”
Nothing,
indeed, could offer a more striking contrast to the secluded and eremitical
life of John, contrast
, between
than the easy
and accessible manner with Jesus and
* John the
which Jesus
mingled among all classes, even Baptist, his bitterest opponents, the
Pharisees. He accepts
the
invitation of one of these, and enters into his house to partake of
refreshment.1 Here a woman of dissolute life found her way into the
chamber where the feast was held; she sat at his feet, anointing Him, according
to Eastern usage, with a costly unguent, which was contained in a box of
alabaster; she wept bitterly, and with her long locks wiped away the falling
tears. The Pharisees, who shrunk not only from the contact, but even from the
approach, of all whom they considered physically or morally unclean, could only
attribute the conduct of Jesus to his ignorance of her real character. The
reply of Jesus intimates that his religion was intended to reform and purify
the worst, and that some of his most sincere and ardent believers might proceed
from those very outcasts of society from whom Pharisaic rigor shrunk with
abhorrence.
After this,
Jesus appears to have made another circuit through the towns and villages of
Galilee. On his return to Capernaum instigated perhaps by his adversaries, some
of his relatives appear to have believed, or pretended to believe, that He was
out of his senses; and, therefore, attempted to secure his person.2
This scheme failing, the Pharisaic party, who had been deputed, it would seem,
from Jerusalem to watch his conduct, endeavor to avail themselves of that great
principle of Jewish superstition, the belief in the power of evil spirits, to
invalidate his growing , authority.3 On the occasion of the cure of
Demoniacs. * < , _
one of those
lunatics, usually called demoniacs,4 who was both dumb and blind,
they accused
1 Luke vii. 36-50; Luke xi. 14-26.
2 Mark iii. 21. 3 Matt. xii. 22-45; Mark iii. 19-30.
^ 4
I have no scruple in avowing my opinion on the subject of tlie demo
niacs to be
that of Joseph Mede, Lardner, Dr. Mead, Paley, and all the learned
Him of
unlawful dealings with the spirits of evil. It was hy a magic influence
obtained by a secret contract with Beelzebub, the chief of the powers of
darkness, or by secretly invoking his all-powerful name, that He reduced the
subordinate demons to obedience. The answer of Jesus struck them with confusion.
Evil spirits, according to their own creed, took delight in the miseries and
crimes of men; his acts were those of the purest benevolence: how gross the
inconsistency to suppose that malignant spirits would thus lend themselves to
the cause of human happiness and virtue! Another more personal argument still
farther confounded his adversaries. The Pharisees were professed exorcists:1
if, then, exorcism, or the ejection
modern
writers. It was a kind of insanity, not unlikely to be prevalent among a people
peculiarly subject to leprosy aud other cutaneous diseases; and nothing was
more probable than that lunacy should take the turn and speak the language of
the prevailing superstition of the times. As the belief in witchcraft made
people f&ncy themselves witches, so the belief in possession made men of
distempered minds fancy themselves possessed. The present ease, indeed, seems
to have been one rather of infirmity than lunacy: the afflicted person was
blind and dumb; but such cases were equally ascribed to malignant spirits.
There is one very strong reason, which I do not remember to have seen urged
with sufficient force, but which may have contributed to induce our Lord to
adopt the current language on this point. The disbelief in these spiritual
influences was one of the characteristic tenets of the unpopular sect of the
Sadducees. A departure from the common language, or the endeavor to correct
this inveterate error, would have raised an immediate outcry against Him from
his watchful and malignant adversaries, as an unbelieving Sadducee. Josephus
mentions a certain herb which had the power of expelling demons; a fact which
intimates that it was a bodily disease. Kui- noel, in Matt. iv. 24, refers to
the latter fact; shows that in Greek authors, especially Hippocrates, madness
and demoniacal possessions are the same; and quotes the various passages in the
New Testament, where the same language is evidently held; as, among many
others, John x. 20; Matt. xvii. 15; Mark v. 15. 1 have again the satisfaction of
finding myself to have arrived at the same conclusion with Neander.
1
The rebuking subordinate demons, by the invocation of a more powerful name, is
a very ancient and common form of superstition The later anti- Christian
writers among the Jews attribute the power of Jesus over evil spirits to his
having obtained the secret, and dared to utter the ineffable name.
of these evil
spirits, necessarily implied unlawful dealings with the world of darkness,
they were as open to the charge as He whom they accused. They had, therefore,
the alternative of renouncing their own pretensions, or of admitting that
those of Jesus were to be judged on other principles. It was, then, blasphemy
against the Spirit of God to ascribe acts which bore the manifest impress of
the divine goodness in their essentially beneficent character, to any other
source but the Father of Mercies; it was an offence which argued such total
obtuseness of moral perception, such utter incapacity of feeling or
comprehending the beauty either of the conduct or the doctrines of Jesus, as to
leave no hope that they would ever be reclaimed from their rancorous hostility
to his religion, or be qualified for admission into the pale and to the
benefits of the new faith.
The
discomfited Pharisees now demand a more pub- phariseea lie and undeniable sign
of his Messiahship,1 sign. which alone could justify the lofty tone
assumed by Jesus. A second time, Jesus obscurely alludes to the one great
future sign of the new faith,
— his resurrection; and, refusing further to
gratify their curiosity, He reverts, in language of more than usual energy, to
the incapacity of the age and nation to discern the real and intrinsic
superiority of hia religion.
“ the
Sem-ham-phorash.” To this name wonderful powers over the whole invisible world
are attributed by the Jewish Alexandrian writers, Artapanus and Ezekiel the
tragedian: and it is not impossible that the more superstitious Pharisees may
have hoped to reduce Jesus to the dilemma either of confessing that He invoked
the name of the prince of the demons, or secretly uttered
that
which it was still more criminal to make use of for such a purpose, the
mysterious
and unspeakable Tetragrammaton. See Eiseumenger, i. 154. According to Josephus,
the art of exorcism descended from King Solomon.
— Antiq. viii. 2.
1 Matt. xii. 38-45.
The followers
of Jesus had now been organized into a regular sect or party. Another incident
distinctly showed that He no longer stood alone: even the social duties, which
up to this time He had, no doubt, discharged with the utmost affection, were to
give place to the sublimer objects of his mission. While He sat encircled by
the multitude of
• -i*i ■ t i i i i
• Conduct of
his
disciDles, tidings were brought that his Jesus to m8
A 5 0 # relatiyes.
mother
and his brethren desired to approach Him.1 But Jesus refused to
break off his occupation; He declared himself connected by a closer tie even
than that of blood with the great spiritual family of which He was to be the
parent, and with which He was to stand in the most intimate relation. He was
the chief of a fraternity not connectcd by common descent or consanguinity,
but by a purely moral and religious bond; not by any national or local union,
but bound together by the one strong but indivisible link of their common
faith. On the increase, the future prospects, the final destiny, of this
community, his discourses now dwell, with frequent if obscure allusions.2
His language more constantly assumes the form of parable. Nor was this ' merely in compliance with the genius of
an Eastern people, in order to convey his instruction in a form more
attractive, and therefore both more immediately and more permanently
impressive; or, by awakening the imagination, to stamp his doctrines more
deeply on the memory, and to incorporate them with the feelings. These short
and lively apologues were admirably adapted to suggest the first rudiments of
truths which it was not expedient openly to announce,
1 Matt. xii. 46-49; Mark iii, 31-35.
2 Matt, xiii.; Mark iv. 1-34; Luke via.
1-18.
Though some
of the parables have a purely moral purport, the greater part delivered at this
period bear
more or less
covert relation to the character and growth of the new religion j a subject
which, avowed without disguise, would have revolted the popular mind, and
clashcd too directly with the inveterate nationality. Yet these splendid though
obscure anticipations singularly contrast with occasional allusions to his own
personal destitution: “ The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have
nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.”1 For,
with the growth and organization of his followers, He seems fully aware that
his dangers increase; He now frequently changes his place, passes from one side
of the lake to the other, and even endeavors to throw a temporary conccalment
over some of his most extraordinary miracles. During an expedition across the
lake, He is in danger from one of those sudden and violent tempests which often
disturb inland seas, Kabukes particularly in mountainous districts. He the
storm, rebukes the storm, and it ceases. On the other side of the lake, in the
district of Gadara, occurs the remarkable scene of the demoniacs among
Destruction ^lic tombs and the herd of swine; the only of the swine. ac^
^ ^jle wh0ie life of Jesus in the least
repugnant to the uniform gentleness of his disposition, which would shrink from
the unnecessary destruction even of the meanest and most loathsome animals.2
1 Matt. viii. 18-27; Mark iv. 35-41; Luke
viii. 22-25.
2 The moral difficulty of this transaction
has always appeared to mo greater than that of reconciling it with the more
rational view of demonia- cism. Both are much diminished, if not entirely
removed, hy the theory of Kuinoel, who attributes to the lunatics the whole of
the conversation with Jesus, and supposes that their driving the herd of swine
down the precipice was the last paroxysm in which their insanity exhausted
itself. — Matt. viii. 2&-S4; Mark v. 1-20; Luke viii. 26-39.
On his return
from this expedition to Capernaum took place the healing of the woman with the
issue of blood, aud the raising of Jairus’s daughter.1 Concerning
the latter, as likewise concerning the relief of two blind men,2 He
gives the strongest injunctions of secrecy, which, nevertheless, the active
zeal of his partisans seems by 110 means to have regarded.
But a more
decisive step was now taken than the organization of the uew religious
community. The apostles The twelve apostles were sent out to dissem-
8ent out- inate the doctrines of Jesus throughout the whole of
Galilee.3 They were invested with the power of healing diseases ;
with cautious deference to Jewish feeling, they were forbidden to proceed
beyond the borders of the Holy Land, either among the Gentiles or the heretical
Samaritans; they were to depend on the hospitality of those whom they might
address for their subsistence; and He distinctly anticipates the enmity which
they would perpetually encounter, and the dissension which would be caused,
even in the bosom of families, by the appearance of men thus acting on a
commission unprecedented and unrecognized by the religious authorities of the
nation, yet whose doctrines were of such intrinsic beauty, and so full of
exciting promise.
It was most
likely this open proclamation, as it were, of the rise of a new and organized Conductof
community, and the greater publicity which Herod- this simultaneous
appearance of two of its delegates in the different towns of Galilee could not
but give to the growing influence of Jesus, that first attracted the notice of
the government. Up to this perird,
Jesus, as a
remarkable man, must have been well known by general report: by this measure,
lie stood in a very different character, as the chief of a numerous
fraternity. There were other reasons, at this critical period, to excite the
apprehensions and jealousy of Herod. During the short interval between the
visit of John’s disciples to Jesus and the present time, the tctrareh had at
length, at the instigation
Death of of
his wife, perpetrated the murder of the
Baptist.
Baptist. Whether his reluctance to shed unnecessary blood or his prudence had
as yet shrunk from this crime, the condemnation of her marriage could not but
rankle in the heart of the wife. The desire of revenge would be strengthened by
a feeling of insecurity, and an apprehension of the prucaiious- ncss of an
union, declared, on such revered authority, null and void. As long as this
stern and respected censor lived, her influence over her husband, the bond of
marriage itself, might, in an hour of passion or remorse, be dissolved. The
common crime would cement still closer, perhaps for ever, their common
interests. The artifices of Herodias, who did not scruple to make use of the
beauty and grace of her daughter to compass her end, had extorted from the
reluctant king, in the hour of festive carelessness,— the celebration of
Herod’s birthday,— the royal promise, which, whether for good or for evil, was
equally irrevocable.1 The head of John the Baptist was the reward
for the. dancing of the daughter of Herodias.2
1 Matt. xiv. 1-12; Hark vi. 14-29; Luke ix.
7-9.
2 Josephus places the scene of this event in
Macliarua. Macknight would remove the prison of John to Tiberias. But the
cireuinslanees of the war may have caused the court to be held in this strong
frontier town; and the least may have heen intended chiefly for the army, the “
Chiliarchs ” of St. Hark.
Whether the mind of Herod, like that of his father,1
■was disordered by his crime, and the disgrace and discomfiture of his
arms contributed to his moody terrors; or whether some popular rumor of the
re-appearance of Johu, and that Jesus was the murdered prophet restored to
life, had obtained currency,—indications of hostility from the government seem
to have put Jesus upon his guard.3 For no sooner had He been rejoined by the apostles than He withdrew into
the desert country about Bethsaida, with the prudence which He now thought fit
to assume, avoidii :g any sudden collision with the desperation or the
capricious violence of the tetrarch.
But He now filled too important a place in the public mind to remain
concealed so near his a*-.™ with-
_ . draws
from
customary residence, and the scene of his extraordinary actions. The
multitude thronged forth to trace his footsteps, so that five thousand persons
had pre-occupied the place of his retreat; and so completely were they
possessed by profound religious enthusiasm, as entirely to have forgotten the
difficulty of obtaining provisions in that desolate region. The manner in which
their wants were preter- Th»nrois- naturally supplied, and the whole assemblage
tt* desert, fed by five loaves and two small fishes, wound up at once the
rising enthusiasm to the highest pitch. It could not but call to the mind of
the multitude the memorable event in their annals, the feeding the whole nation
in the desert by the multiplication of the manna.8 Jesus, then, would no longer confine
l iceodins
to Josephus the Jena ascribed the discomfiture of Herod’l ira; by Aretas, King
of Arabia, to the math of Heaven, for the mnnler of John.
* Matt
xir. IS, 14; Mark yi. 30-34; Lake is. 10,11; John vi. 1,2.
* Matt.
2xr. la-33; Sl-xrt vi. 35-45; Luke is. 14-17; John vi. 3-14
himself to
those private and more unimposing acts of beneficence, of which the actual advantage
was limited to a single object, and the ocular evidence of the fact to but few
witnesses. Here was a sign performed in the presence of many thousands, who
had actually participated in the miraculous foo.d. This, then, they supposed,
could not but be the long-desired commencement of his. more public, more
national, career. Behold a second Moses! behold a Leader of the people, under
whom they could never be afflicted with want! behold, at length, the Prophet,
under whose government the people were to enjoy, among the other blessings of
the Messiah’s reigu, unexampled, uninterrupted plenty!1
Their
acclamations clearly betrayed their intentions,
Enthusiasm tliey
wonld brook no longer delay; they of the people. woui<j
force Him to assume the royal title; they would proclaim Him,
whether consenting or not, the King of Israel.2 Jesus withdrew from
the midst of the dangerous tumult, aud till the next day they sought Him in
vain. On their return to Capernaum, they found that He had crossed the lake,
and entered the city the evening before. Their suspense, no
1 “ He made manna to descend for them, in
which were all manner of tastes; and every Israelite fonnd in it what his
palate was chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the
young men tasted bread; the old men, honey; and the children, oil. So it shall
be in the world to come (the days of the Messias): he shall give Israel peace,
and they shall sit down and eat in the garden of Eden; all nations shall behold
their condition; as it is said, ‘Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be
hungry,’ Isa. Ixv.” — Rambam in Sanhed. cap 10.
“ Many affirm
that the hope of Israel is, that Messiah shall come and raise the dead; and
they shall be gathered together in the garden of Eden, and shall eat and drink,
and satiate themselves all the days of the world . . .; and that there are
houses built all of precious stones, beds of silk, and rivers flowing with wine
pnd spicy oil.” — Shemoth Rabba, sect. 25; Lightfoot, •n loc., vol. xii. 292
2 John vi. 15.
doubt, bad
not been allayed by bis mysterious disappearance on the other side of the
lake. The circumstances under which He had passed over,1 if
communicated by the apostles to the wondering multitude (and, unless
positively prohibited by their Master, they could not have kept silence on so
wonderful an occurrence), would inflame still farther the intense popular
agitation. While the apostles were passing the lake in their boat, Jesus had
appeared by their side, walking upon the waters.
When,
therefore, Jesus entered the synagogue of Capernaum, no doubt the crisis was immediately
expected; at length He will avow synagogue of himself; the declaration of his
dignity must now be made; and where with such propriety as in the place of the
public worship, in the midst of the devout and adoring people?2 The
calm, the purely religious, language of Jesus was a death-blow to these
high-strung hopes. The object of his mission, He declared in explicit terms,
was not to confer temporal benefits; they were not to follow Him with the hope
that they would obtain without labor the fruits of the earth', or be secured
against thirst and hunger: these were mere casual and incidental blessings.3
The real design of the new religion was the elevation of the moral and
spiritual condition of man, described under the strong but not unusual figure of
nourishment administered to the soul. During the whole of his address, or
rather his conversation with the different parties, the popular opinion was in
a state of fluctuation ; or, as is probable, there were two distinct parties,—
that of the populace, at first more favorable
1 Matt. Jtiv.
24-33; Mark vi. 47-53; John vi. 16-21.
2 John vi. 22-71. » Ibid. 26-29.
to Jesus; and
that of the Jewish leaders, who were altogether hostile. The former appear more
humbly to have inquired what was demanded by the new Teacher in order to please
God: of them Jesus required faith in the Messiah. The latter first demanded a
new sign,1 but broke out into murmurs of disapprobation when “ the
carpenter’s son ” began, in his mysterious language, to speak of his descent, his
commission, from his Father, his re-ascension to his former intimate communion
with the Deity; still more when He seemed to confine the hope of everlast ing
life to those only who were fitted to receive it, to those whose souls would
receive the inward nutriment of his doctrines. No word in the whole address
fell in with their excited, their passionate hopes: however dark, however
ambiguous, his allusions, they could not warp or misinterpret them into the
confirmation of their splendid views. Not only did they appear to
discountenance the immediate, they gave no warrant to the remote,
accomplishment of their visions of the Messiah’s earthly power and glory.2
At all events, the disappointment was universal; his own adherents, bafHed and
sinking at once from their exalted hopes, cast off their unambitious, their
inexplicable Leader; and so complete appears to have been the desertion, that
Jesus demanded of the twelve, whether they, too, would abandon his cause, and
leave Him to his fate. In the name of the apostles, Peter replied that they
had still full confidence
1 John vi. 30.
2 There is some difficulty in placing the
conversation with the Pharisees (Matt. xv. 1-20; Mark ™. 1-23), whether before
or after the retreat of Jesus to the more remote district. The incident, though
characteristic, is not of great importance, and seems rather to have been a
private inquiry of certain members of the sect, than the public appeal of
persons deputed for that purpose.
in his
doctrines, as teaching the way to eternal life; they still believed Him to be
the promised Messiah, the Soil of God. Jesus received this protestation of
fidelity with apparent approbation, but intimated that the time would come when
one even of the tried and chosen twelve would prove a traitor.1
Thus the
public life of Jesus closed its second year, On one side endangered by the zeal
of the violent, on the other enfeebled by the desertion of so many of his
followers, Jesus, so long as He spoke the current language about the Messiah,
might be instantly taken at his word, and against his will be set at the head
of a daring insurrection; immediately that He de-
1
The wavering and uncertainty of the apostles, and, still more, of the people,
concerning the Messiahship of Jesus, is urged by Strauss as an argument for
the later invention and inconsistency of the Gospels. It has always appeared to
me one of those marks of true nature and of inartificial composition which
would lead to a conclusion directly opposite. The first intimation of the
deference and homage shown to Him by John, at his baptism, grows at once into a
welcome rumor that the Christ has appeared. Andrew imparts the joyful tidings
to his brother: “We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the
Christ;” so Philip, ver. 46. But though Jesus, in one part of the Sermon on the
Mount, speaks of himself as the future judge, in general his distinct
assumption of that character is exclusively to individuals in private, — to the
Samaritan woman (John iv. 26-42), and in more ambiguous language, perhaps, in
his private examination before the authorities in Jerusalem, John v. 46.. Still
the manner in which He assumed the title, and apserted his claims, was so
totally opposite to Jewish expectation, He appeared to delay so long the open
declaration of his Messiahship, that the populace constantly fluctuated in
their opinion; now ready by force to make Him a king (John vi. 15), immediately
after this altogether deserting Him, so that even the apostles’ faith is
severely tried. (Compare with John vi. 69; Luke ix. 20; Matt. xvi. 16; Mark
viii. 29; where it appears that rumors had become prevalent, that, though not
the Messiah, He was either a prophet or a forerunner of the Messiah.) The real
test of the fidelity of the apostles was their adherence, under all the
fluctuation of popular opinion,to this conviction, which at last, however, was
shaken by that which most completely clashed with their preconceived notions of
the Messiah,— his ignominious death and undisturbed burial.
As a
corrective to Strauss on this point, I would rccommend the work of one who will
not be suspected of loose and inaccurate reasoning, — Locke on the
Reasonableness of Christianity.
parted from
it, and rose to the sublimer tone of a purely religious teacher, He excited the
most violent animosity, even among many of his most ardent adherents. Thus his
influence at one moment was apparently most extensive, at the next was confined
to but a small circle. Still, however, it held the general mind in unallayed
suspense; and the ardent admiration, the attachment of the few, who were
enabled to appreciate his character, and the animosity of the many, who
trembled at his progress, bore testimony to the commanding authority and the
sur prising works of Jesus of Nazareth.
Third Year of
the Public Life of Jesus.
The third Passover had now arrived since Jesus ot Nazareth had appeared
as a public teacher;
. Passover.
but, as it
would seem, “his appointed hour was not yet come ; and, instead of descending
with the general concourse of the whole nation to the capital, He remains in
Galilee, or, rather, retires to the remotest extremity of the country, and,
though He approaches nearer to the northern shore of the lake, never ventures
down into the populous region in which He more usually fixed his residence. The
avowed hostility of the Jews, and their determination to put Him to death; the
apparently growing jealousy of Herod, and the desertion of his cause, on one
hand, by a great number of his Galilean followers, who had taken offence at his
speech in the synagogue of Capernaum, with the rash and intemperate zeal of
others, who were prepared to force Him to assume the royal title, would render
his presence at Jerusalem, if not absolutely necessary for his designs, both
dangerous and inexpedient.1 But his absence from this Passover is
still more remarkable, if, as appears highly proba-
1
The commencement of the 7th chapter of St. John’s Gospel appears to m§ to
contain a manifest reference to his ahsence from this Passover. “After these
things, Jesus walked in Galilee; for He would not walk in Jewry, because the
Jews sought to kill Him,” ver. 1. The next verse, as it were intimating that
the Passover was gone hy, says, “ The Feast of Tabernacles was at hand.”
VOL.
I. 16
ble, it was
at this feast that the event occurred which is alluded to in St. Luke1
as of general notoriety, and, at a later period, was the subject of a
conversation between Jesus and his disciples, — the slaughter of cer tain
Galileans in the Temple of Jerusalem by the „ , Roman governor.2 The
reasons for assign-
Massacre
of ° 0
at “harass-8
ing this fact to the period of the third Pass- OTer- over appear to
have considerable weight. Though at all times of the year the Temple was open,
(not merely for the regular morning and evening offerings, but likewise for
the private sacrifices of more devout worshippers, such an event as this
massacre was not likely to have occurred, even if Pilate was present at
Jerusalem at other times, unless the metropolis had been crowded with
strangers, at least in numbers sufficient to excite some apprehension of dangerous
tumult. For Pontius Pilate, though prodigal of blood if the occasion seemed to
demand the vigorous exercise of power, does not appear to have been wantonly
sanguinary. It is therefore most probable, that the massacre took place during
some public festival ; and, if so, it must have been either at the Passover
or Pentecost, as Jesus was present at both the later feasts of the present
year, — those of Tabernacles and of the Dedication: nor does the slightest
intimation occur of any disturbance of that nature at either.3
1
John vii. 1. 2 Luke xiii. 1.
8
The point of time at which the notice of this transaction is introduced in the
narrative of St. Luke, may appear irreconcilable with the opinion that it took
place so far back as the previous Passover. This circumstance, however, admits
of an easy explanation* The period at which this fact is introduced by St.
Luke was just before the last fatal visit to Jerusalem. Jesus had now expressed
his fixed determination to attend the approaching Passover; He was actually on
his way to the metropolis. It was precisely the time at which some who might
take an interest in his personal safety, might think it well to warn Him of his
danger. These persons may have been entirely
Who these
Galileans were — whether they had been guilty of turbulent and seditious
conduct or were the innocent victims of the governor’s jealousy — there is no
evidence. It has been suggested, not without plausibility, that they were of
the sect of Judas the Galilean ; and, however they may not have been formally
enrolled as belonging to this sect, they may have been, in some degree,
infected with the same opinions; more especially, as, properly belonging to the
jurisdiction of Herod, these Galileans would scarcely have been treated with
such unrelenting severity, unless implicated, or suspected to be implicated, in
some designs obnoxious to the Roman sway. If, however, our conjecture be
right, had He appeared at this festival, Jesus might have fallen
undistinguished in a general massacre of his countrymen, by the direct
interference of the Roman governor, and without the guilt of his rejection and
death being attributable to the rulers or the nation of the Jews. Speaking
according to mere human probability, the Saviour of mankind might have been
swept away by a stern act of Roman despotism.
Yet, be that
as it may, during this period of the life of Jesus, it is most difficult to
trace his course; his rapid changes have the semblance of con- Concealmrait
cealment. At one time, He appears at the of J"™8'
ignorant of
his intermediate visits to Jerusalem, which had heen sudden, brief, and
private. He had appeared unexpectedly; He had withdrawn without notice. They
may have supposed, that, having heen absent at the period of the massacre in
the remote parts of the country, He might be altogether unacquainted with the
circumstances, or, at least, little impressed with their importance; or even,
if not entirely ignorant, they might think it right to remind Him of the
dangerous commotion which had taken place at the preceding festival, and to
intimate the possibility, that under a governor so reckless of human life as
Pilate had shown himself, and hy recent circumstances not predisposed towards
the Galilean name, He was exposing himself to most serious peril
extreme
border of Palestine, the district immediately adjacent to that of Tyre and
Sidon ; He then seems to have descended again towards Bethsaida, and the desert
country to the north of the Sea of Tiberias; He is then again on the immediate
frontiers of Palestine, near the town of Caesarea Philippi, close to the fountains
of the Jordan.
The incidents
which occur at almost all these places coincide with his singular situation at
this period of his life, and perpetually bear almost a direct reference to the
state of public feeling at this particular time. The Syro- His conduct towards
the Greek or Syro-Phce-
Phoenician
, , . .
woman. nieian
woman may nlustrate this.1
Those who watched the motions of Jesus with the greatest vigilance, either from
attachment or animosity, must have beheld Him with astonishment, at this
period, when every road was crowded with travellers towards Jerusalem,
deliberately proceeding in an opposite direction ; thus, at the time of the
most solemn festival, moving, as it were, directly contrary to the stream which
flowed in one current towards the capital. There appears at one time to have
prevailed, among some, an obscure apprehension, which, though only expressed
during one of his later visits to Jerusalem,2 might have begun
to creep into their minds at an earlier period; that, after all, the Saviour
might ton his back on his ungrateful and inhospitable country, or at least not
fetter himself with the exclusive nationality inseparable from their
conceptions of the true Messiah. And here, at this present instant, after having
excited their hopes to the utmost by the miracle which placed Him, as it were,
on a level with their lawgiver, and having afterwards afflicted them with
bitter
disappointment
by his speech in the synagogue, — here, at the season of the Passover, He was
proceeding towards, if not beyond, the borders of the Holy Land ; placing
himself, as it were, in direct communication with the uncircumcised, and
imparting those blessings to strangers and aliens which were the undoubted, inalienable
property of the privileged race.
At this
juncture, when He was upon the borders of the territory of Tyre and Sidon, a
woman of heathen extraction,1
having heard the fame of his miracles, determined to have recourse to Him to
heal her daughter, who was suffering under diabolic possession. Whether
adopting the common title, which she had heard that Jesus had assumed, or from
any obscure notion of the Messiah, which could not but have penetrated into the
districts immediately bordering on Palestine, she saluted Him by his title of
Son of David, and implored his mercy. In this instance alono, Jesus, who on all
other occasions is described as prompt and forward to hear the cry of the
afflicted, turns, at first, a deaf and regardless ear to her supplication: the
mercy is, as it were, slowly and reluctantly wrung from Him. The secret of this
apparent but unusual indifference to suffering, no doubt lies in the
circumstances of the case. Nothing would have been so repugnant to Jewish
prejudice, especially at this juncture, as his admitting at once this
recognition of his title, or his receiving and rewarding the homage of any
stranger from the blood of Israel, particularly one descended
1 She is called in one place a Canaanite;
in another, a Syro-Phoenician and a Greek. She was probably of Phoenician
descent; and the Jews considered the whole of the Phoenician race as descended
from the remnant of the Canaanites who were not extirpated. She was a Greek, as
distinguished from a Jew; for the Jews divided mankind into Jews and Greeks, as
the Greeks did into Greeks and Barbarians.
from the
accursed racc of Canaan. The conduct of the apostles shows their harsh and
Jewish spirit. They are indignant at her pertinacious importunity; they almost
insist on her peremptory dismissal. That a stranger, a Canaanite, should share
in the mercies of their Master, does not seem to have entered into their
thoughts: the brand of ancient condemnation was upon her ; the hereditary
hatefulness of the seed of Canaan marked her as a fit object for malediction, as
the appropriate prey of the evil spirits, as without hope of blessing from the
God of Israel. Jesus himself at first seems to countenance this exclusive
tone. He declares that He is sent only to the race of Israel; that dogs (the
common and opprobrious term by which all religious aliens were described) could
have no hope of sharing in the blessings jealously reserved for the children of
Abraham. The humility of the woman’s reply, “ Truth, Lord ; yet the dogs eat of
the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table,” might almost disarm the
antipathy of the most zealous Jew. That the Gentiles might receive a kind of
secondary and inferior benefit from tlicir Messiah, was by no means in
opposition to the vulgar belief; it left the Jews in full possession of their
exclusive religious dignity, while it was rather flattering to their pride than
debasing to their prejudices, that, with such limitation, the power of their
Redeemer should be displayed among Gentile foreigners. By his condescension,
therefore, to their prejudices, Jesus was enabled to display his own
benevolence, without awakening, or confirming if already awakened, the quick
suspicion of his followers.
After this
more remote excursion, Jesus appears again for a short time, nearer his
accustomed residence;
but still
hovering, as it were, on the borders, and lingering rather in the wild
mountainous region Jesas stm to the north and east of the lake than
de- “n^“nt_ scending to the more cultivated and populous
districts to the west.1
But here his fame follows Him; and eveu in these desert regions, multitudes,
many of them bearing their sick and afflicted relatives, perpetually assemble
around Him.2 His
conduct displays, as it were, a continual struggle between his benevolence and
his caution. He seems as if He could not refrain from the indulgence of his
goodness, while at the same time He is aware lb at every new cure may re-awaken
the daugerous enthusiasm from which He had so recently withdrawn himself. In
the hill country of Decapolis. a deaf and dumb man is restored to speech: he is
strictly enjoined, though apparently without effect, to preserve the utmost
secrecy. A second time the starving multitude in the desert appeal to his compassion.
They are again miraculously fed; but Jesus, as though remembering the immediate
consequences of the former event, dismisses them at once, and, crossing in a
boat to Dalmanutha or ilagdala, places, as it were, the lake between himself
and their indiscreet zeal or irrepressible gratitude.3 At Magdala He again encounters
some of the Pharisaic party, who were, perhaps, returned from the Passover.
They reiterate their perpetual demand of some sign which may satisfy their
impatient incredulity; and a third time Jesus repels them with an allusion to
the great “ sigu ” of his resurrection.4
As the
Pentecost draws near, He again retires to the
1 This may be assigned to the period
between the Passover and the Pentecost.
2 Matt- xv. 29-31; Mark vii. 31-37. 8
Matt. xv. 33-39; Mark viii. 1-9
* Matt. xvi. 1-12; Mark viii. 11-22-
utmost
borders of the land. He crosses back to Bethsaida, where a blind man is
restored to sight, with the same strict injunctions of concealment.-1 He then passes to the
neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi, at the extreme verge of the land, a modern town,
recently built on the site of the older, now named Paneas, situated almost
close to the fountains of the Jordan.2
Alone with
his immediate disciples in this secluded region, He begins to unfold more
distinctly both his real character and his future fate to their wondering
Perplexity ears. It is difficult to conceive the state of
of the
apostles.
fluctuation and embarrassment in which the simple minds of the apostles of
Jesus must have been continually kept by what must have appeared the
inexplicable, if not contradictory, conduct and language of their Master. At
one moment, He seemed entirely to lift the veil from his own character: the
next, it fell again, and left them in more than their former state of suspense.
Now, all is clear, distinct, comprehensible ; then again, dim, doubtful,
mysterious. Here, their hopes are elevated to the highest, and al1 their preconceived notions of the greatness of tlio Messiah seem
ripening into reality : there, the strange foreboding of his humiliating fate,
which He communicates with more than usual distinctness, thrills them with
apprehension. Their own destiny is opened to their prospect, crossed with the
same strangely mingling lights and shadows. At one time, they are promised
miraculous endowments, and seem justified in all their ambitious hopes of
eminence and distinction in the approaching kingdom: at the next, they are
warned that they must expect to share in the humiliations and afflictions of
their Teacher.
Near Caesarea
Philippi, Jesus questions his disciples as to the common view of his character.
By Jesus near
Caesarea
some, it
seems, He was supposed to be John the Baptist, restored from the dead; by
others, Elias, who was to re-appear on earth, previous to the final revelation
of the Messiah; by others, Jeremiah, who, according to a tradition to which we
have before alluded, was to come to life: and when the ardent zeal of Peter
recognizes Him under the most sacred title, which was universally considered as
appropriated to the Messiah,—“ the Christ, the Son of the Living God,”
— his homage is no longer declined ; and the
apostle himself is commended in language so strong, that the pre-eminence of
Peter over the rest of the twelve has been mainly supported by the words of
Jesus employed on this occasion. The transport of the apostles at this open
and distinct avowal of his character, although at present confined to the
secret circle of his more immediate adherents, no doubt before long to be
publicly proclaimed and asserted with irresistible power, is almost
instantaneously checked. The bright, expanding prospects change in a moment to
the gloomy reverse, when Jesus proceeds to foretell to a greater number of his
followers1 his
approaching lamentable fate, the hostility of all the rulers of the nation, his
death, and that which was probably the least intelligible part of the whole
prediction, — his resurrection.2 The highly excited Peter cannot endure the
sudden and unexpected reverse; he betrays his reluctance to believe that the
Messiah, whom he had now, he supposed, full authority to array in the highest
temporal splendor which his imagination could suggest, cfuld
1 Mark viii.
34.
2 Matt. xvi. 21-28; Mark viii. 31,
ix. 1; Luke iv. 18-27.
possibly
apprehend so degrading a doom. Jesus not only represses the ardor of the
apostle, but enters at some length into the earthly dangers to which his disciples
would be exposed, and the unworldly nature of Christian reward. They listened;
but how far they comprehended these sublime truths must be conjectured from
their subsequent conduct.
It was to
minds thus pre-occupied — on the one hand full of unrepressed hopes of the
instantaneous revelar tion of the Messiah in all his temporal greatness, on the
other embarrassed with the apparently irreconcilable predictions of the
humiliation of their Master — The Trans- that the extraordinary scene of the
Transfig- figuration. uratj011 was presented.1 Whatever explanation we adopt of this emblematic vision,
its purport and its effect upon the minds of the three disciples who beheld it,
remain the same.2 Its
significant sights and sounds manifestly announced the equality, the superiority,
of Jesus to the founder, and to him who may almost be called the restorer, of
the theocracy, — to Moses the lawgiver, and Elias the representative ol the
prophets. These holy personages had, as it were, seemed to pay homage to Jesus
; they had vanished, and He alone had remained. The appearance of Moses and
Elias at the time of the Messiah, was strictly in accordance with the general
tradition ;3 and
1 Tradition has assigned this scene to
Mount Tahor, probably for no hetter reason than because Tabor is the best-known
and most conspicuous height in the whole of Galilee. The order of the narrative
points most distinctly to the neighborhood of Ctesarca Philippi, and the Mons
Paneus is a ninch more prohable situation. Dr. Robinson has adduced a
conclusive argument against Mount Tabor. The summit of that eminence was then,
and for some time after, occupied by a considerable fortified town. — iii. 221.
2 Matt. xvii. 1-21; Mark ix. 2-29; Luke ix.
28-42.
8
“Dixit sanctus benedictus Mosi, sicut vitam tuam dedisti pro Israele in hoc
seculo, sic tempore futuro, tempore Messise, quundo mitlam ad eos Eliam
when, in his
astonishment, Peter proposes to make there three of those huts or cabins of
boughs which the Jews were accustomed to run up as temporary dwellings at the
time of the Feast of the Tabernacles, he seems to have supposed that the
spirits of the lawgiver and the prophet were to make their permanent residence
witli the Messiah, and that this mountain was to be, as it. were, another
sacred place, a second Sinai, from which the new kingdom was to commence its
dominion, and issue its mandates.
The other
circumstances of the transaction, — the height on which they stood, their own
half-waking state, the sounds from heaven (whether articulate voices or
thunder, which appeared to give the divine assent to their own preconceived
notions of the Messiah), the wonderful change in the appearance of Jesus, the
glittering cloud which seemed to absorb the two spirits, and leave Jesus alone
upon the mountain,
— all the incidents of this majestic and
mysterious scene, whether presented as dreams before their sleeping or as
visions before their waking senses, tended to elevate still higher their
already exalted notions of their Master. Again, however, they appear to have
been doomed to hear a confirmation of that which, if their reluctant minds had
not refused to entertain the humiliating thought, would have depressed them to
utter despondency. After healing the demoniac whom they had in vain attempted
to exorcise, the assurance of his approaching death is again renewed, and in
the clearest language, by their Master.1
Prom the
distant and the solitary scenes where these transactions had taken place, Jesus
now returns to the
prophetam yos
duo venietis simul.” — Debar. Rab. 293. Compare Lightfoot, Schoetgen, and
Eisenmenger, in loco.
1 Matt. xvii. 22, 28; Mark ix. 30-32; Luke
ix. 44, 46.
populous
district about Capernaum. On bis entrance
Tribute into
tbe city, the customary payment of
money‘
half a shekel for the maintenance of the Temple, a capitation-tax which was
levied on every Jew, in every quarter of the wofld, is demanded of Jesus.1 How, then, will He act, who
but now declared .himself to his disciples as the Messiah, the Son of God ?
Will He claim his privilege of exemption as the Messiah ? Will the Son of God
contribute to the maintenance of the Temple of the Father ? Or will the long-expected
public declaration at length take place ? Will the claim of immunity virtually
confirm his claim to the privileges of his descent ? He again reverts to his
former cautious habit of never unnecessarily offending the prejudices of the
people: He complies with the demand, and the money is miraculously supplied.
But on the
minds of the apostles the recent scenes contention are still working with
unallayed excitement, apostles. The dark, the melancholy language of their
Master appears to pass away, and leave no impression upon their minds, while
every circumstance which animates or exalts is treasured with the utmost care;
and in a short time, on their road to Capernaum, they are fiercely disputing
among themselves their relative rank in the instantaneously expected kingdom of
the Messiah.2 The
beauty of the significant action by
1 Matt. xvii. 24-28.
2 It is ohservable that the ambitious
disputes of the disciples concerning primacy or preference usually follow the
mention of Christ’s death and resurrection.— Luke ix. 44-46; Matt. xx. 18-20;
Luke xxii. 22-24. They had so strong a prepossession that the resurrection of
Christ (which they, no doubt, understood in a purely Jewish sense: compare Mark
ix. 10) should introduce the earthly kingdom of the Messiah, that no
declaration of our Lord could remove it from their minds: they always
“understood not what was epoken.”—Lightfoot, in loco.
which Jesus
repressed the rising emotions of their
pride is
heightened by considering it in relar
tion to the immediate
circumstances.1 Even
mends a child
iji» •• />i- t •
'
now. at this
crisis of their exaltation, Hetionofthe
, n i • . apostles.
takes a
child, places it in the midst of them, and declares that only those in such a
state of innocence and docility are qualified to become members of the new
community. Over such humble and blameless beings, over children, and over men
of childlike dispositions, the vigilant providence of God would watch with
unsleeping care ; and those who injured them would be exposed to his strong
displeasure.2 The
narrow jealousy of the apostles, which would have prohibited a stranger from
making use of the name of Jesus for the purpose of exorcism, was rebuked in the
game spirit: all who would embrace the cause of Christ were to be encouraged
rather than discountenanced. Some of the most striking sentences, and one
parable which illustrates in the most vivid manner the extent of Christian
forgiveness and mutual forbearance, close, as it were, this period of the
Saviour’s life, by instilling into the minds of his followers, as the time of
the final collision with his adversaries approaches, the milder and more
benignant tenets of the evangelic religion.
The Passover
had come, and Jesus had remained in the obscure borders of the land: the Pente-
Feast of
cost had
passed away, and the expected pub- Tabernacles, lie assumption of the title and
functions of the Messiah had not yet been made. The autumnal Feast of Tabernacles
3 is at hand. His
incredulous brethren again
1
Matt, xviii. 1-6; Mark ix. 83-87. 2 Matt, xviii. 6-10; Mark ix. 37.
8
On the fifteenth day of the seventh month. — Lev. xxiii. 39-43. Ab»,ut the end
of our September, or the beginning of October.
assemble
around Him, and even the impatient disciples can no longer endure the
suspense: they urge Him, with almost imperious importunity, to cast ofi at
length his prudential, his mysterious reserve; at least, to vindicate the faith
of his followers, and to justify the zeal of his partisans, by displaying those
works, which He seemed so studiously to conceal among the obscure towns of
Galilee, in the crowded metropolis of the nation at some great period of
national assemblage.1
In order to prevent any indiscreet proclama^ tion of his approach, or any
procession of his followers through the country, and probably lest the rulers
should have time to organize their hostile measures, Jesus disguises under
ambiguous language his intention of going up to Jerusalem ; He permits his
brethren, who suppose that He is still in Galilee, to set forward without Him.
Still, however, his movements are the subject of anxious inquiry among the
assembling multitudes in the capital; and many secret and half-stifled murmurs
among the Galileans, some exalting his virtues, others representing Him as a
dangerous disturber of the public peace, keep up the general curiosity about
his character and designs.2
On a sud- jesusinthe den, in the midst of the festival, He appears
Temple
at , ? jrr
Jerusalem, ni
the Temple, and takes his station as a public teacher. The rulers seem to have
been entirely off their guard; and the multitude are perplexed by the bold and
as yet uninterrupted publicity with which a man whom the Sanhedrin were well
known to have denounced as guilty of a capital offence, entered the court of
the Temple, and calmly pursued his office of instructing the people. The fact
that He had taken on himself that office was of itself unprecedented and
1
John vii. 2 to viii. 59. 2 j0hn
™. 11-13.
surprising to
many. As lias been observed before, He belonged to no school, He had been bred
at the feet of none of the recognized and celebrated teachers; yet He assumed
superiority to all, and arraigned the whole of the wise men of vain glory
rather tban of sincere piety. His own doctrine was from a higher source, and
possessed more undeniable authority. He even boldly anticipated the charge
which He knew would be renewed against Him,—his violation of the sabbath by his
works of mercy. He accused his adversaries of conspiring against his life; a
charge which seems to have excited indignation as well as astonishment.1 The suspense and agitation of the assemblage are described with a few
rapid, but singularly expressive, touches. It was part of the vague popular
belief, that the Messiah would appear in some strange, sudden, and surprising
manner. The circumstances of his coming were thus left to the imagination of
each to fill up, according to his own notions of that which was striking and
magnificent. But the extraordinary incidents which attended the birth of Jesus
were forgotten, or. had never been generally known; his origin and extraction
were supposed to be ascertained; He appeared but as the legitimate descendant
of a humble Galilean family ; his acknowledged brethren were ordinary and
undistinguished men. “ We know this man whence He is; but, when Christ cometh,
no man know- etb whence He is.” His mysterious allusions to his higher descent
were heard with mingled feelings of indignation and awe. On the multitude his
wonderful works had made a favorable impression, which was no< a little
increased by the inactivity and hesita- Perplexity tion of the rulers. The
Sanhedrin, in which sanh«wn
the Pharisaic
party still predominated, were evidently unprepared, and had concerted no
measures either to counteract his progress in the public mind, or to secure
his person. Then- authority in such a case was probably, in the absence of the
Roman prefect or without the concurrence of the commander of the Roman guard in
the Antonia, by no means clearly ascertained. With every desire, therefore,
for his apprehension, they at first respected his person; and their
non-hiterference was mistaken for connivance at, if not as a sanction for his
proceedings. They determine at length on stronger measures; their officers are
sent out to arrest the offender, but seem to have been overawed by the
tranquil dignity and commanding lan guage of Jesus, and were perhaps, in some
degree, controlled by the manifest favor of the people.1
On the great
day of the feast, the agitation of the assembly, as well as the perplexity of
the Sanhedrin, is at its height. Jesus still appears publicly; He makes a
striking allusion to the ceremonial of the day. Water was drawn from the
hallowed fountain of I'iloah, and borne into the Temple with the sound of the
trumpet and with great rejoicing. “ Who,” say the Rabbins, “ hath not seen the
rejoicing on the drawing of this water, hath seen no rejoicing at all.” They
sang in the procession, “ With joy shall they draw water from the wells of
salvation.”2 In the
midst of this tumult, Jesus, according to his custom, calmly diverts the
attention to the great moral end of his own teaching, and in allusion to the
rite, declares that from himself are to flow the real living waters of
salvation. The ceremony almost appears to have been arrested in its progress j
and open dis-
1
John vii. 32. 2 John vii. 32-39;
Lightfoot, in loco.
cussions of
liis claims to be considered as the Messiah divide the wondering multitude. The
Sanhedrin find that they cannot depend on their own officers, whom they accuse
of surrendering themselves to the popular deception, in favor of one condemned
by the rulers of the nation. Even within their council, Nicodemus, the secret
proselyte of Jesus, ventures to interfere in his behalf; and though, with the
utmost caution, he appeals to the law, and asserts the injustice of condemning
Jesus without a hearing (he seems to have desired that Jesus might be admitted
publicly to plead his own cause before the Sanhedrin), he is accused by the
more violent of leaning to the Galilean party
— the party which bore its own condemnation in
the simple fact of adhering to a Galilean prophet. The council dispersed
without coming to any decision.
On the next
day (for the former transactions had taken place in the earlier part of the
week), woman
.. taken in
the
last, the most crowded and solemn day adultery of the festival, a more
insidious attempt is made, whether from a premeditated or fortuitous circumstance,
to undermine the growing popularity of Jesus; an attempt to make Him assume a
judicial authority in the case of a woman taken in the act of adultery. Such an
act would probably have been resisted by the whole Sanhedrin as an invasion of
their province; and, as it appeared that He must acquit or condemn the
criminal, in either case He would give an advantage to his adversaries. If He
inclined to severity, they might be able, notwithstanding the general benevolence
of his character, to contrast their own leniency in the administration of the
law (this was the characteristic of the Pharisaic party, which distinguished
them from the Sadducees, and of this the VOL. I. 17
Rabbinical
writings furnish many curious illustrations) with the rigor of the new
teacher, and thus to conciliate the naturally compassionate feelings of the
people, which would have beeu shocked by the unusual spectacle of a woman
suffering death, or even condemned to capital punishment, for such an offence.
If, 011 the other hand, He acquitted her, He abrogated the express letter of the
Mosaic statute; and the multitude might be inflamed by this new evidence of
that which the ruling party had constantly endeavored tp instil into their
minds, — the hostility of Jesus to the Law of their forefathers, and his secret
design of abolishing the long-reverenced and Heaven-enacted code.1 Nothing can equal, if the
expression may be ventured, the address of Jesus, in extricating himself from
this difficulty; his turning the current of popular odium, or even contempt,
upon his assailants; the manner in which, by summoning them to execute the law,
He extorts a tacit confession of their own loose morals, — “He that is without
sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her ” (this being the office of
the chief accuser),— and finally shows mercy to the accuscd, without iu the
least invalidating the decision of the Law against the crime, yet not without
the most gentle and effective moral admonition.
After
this discomfiture of his opponents, Jesus fiftiM iwca aPPears
to have been permitted to pursue his p'» course
of teaching undisturbed, until new
circumstances
occurred to inflame the resentment of his enemies. He had taken his station in
a part of the Temple court called the Treasury. His language be-
1 Grotius has
a different view: “Ut euni accusarent aut apud Romauos imminuta) luajestatis,
aut apud populum immiuuta; libertatis.” That they might accuse Him to the
Romans of encroaching on their authority, or to the people of surrendering
their rights and independence.
came more
mysterious, yet at the same time more authoritative, — more full of those
allusions to his character as the Messiah, to his divine descent, and at length
to his pre-existence. The former of these were in some degree familiar to the
popular conception; the latter, though it entered into the higher notion of the
Messiah, which was prevalent among those who entertained the loftiest views of
his character, nevertheless, from the maimer in which it was expressed, jarred
with the harshest discord upon the popular ear. They listened with patience to
Jesus while He proclaimed himself the light of the world; though they
questioned his right to assume the title of “ Son of the Heavenly Father ”
without further witness than He had already produced, they yet permitted Him to
proceed in his discourse ; they did not interrupt Him when He still further
alluded, in dark and ambiguous terms, to his own fate; when He declared that
God was with Him, and that his doctrines were pleasing to the Almighty Father,
a still more favorable impression was made, and many openly espoused his
belief: but when He touched on their rights and privileges as descendants of
Abraham, the subject on which, above all, they were most jealous and sensitive,
the collision became inevitable. He spoke of their freedom, the moral freedom
from the slavery of their own passions, to which they were to be exalted by the
revelation of the truth; but freedom was a word which to them only bore another
sense. They broke in at once with indignant denial, that the race of Abraham,
although the Roman troops were guarding their Temple, had ever forfeited their
national independence.1
He spoke as if the legitimacy of their descent from Abraham de-
pended not on
their hereditary genealogy, but on the moral evidence of their similarity in
virtue to their great forefather. The good, the pious, the gentle Abraham was
not the father of those who were meditating the murder of an innocent man. If
their fierce and sanguinary disposition disqualified them from being the
children of Abraham, how mueh more from being, as they boasted, the adopted
children of God! The spirit of evil, in whose darkest and most bloody temper
they were ready to act, was rather the parent of men with dispositions so
diabolie.1 At this
their wrath bursts forth in more unrestrained vehemenee; the worst and most
bitter appellations by whieh a Jew eould express his hatred are heaped on
Jesus; He is called a Samaritan, and declared to be under demoniac possession.
But when Jesus proceeds to assert his title to the Messiahship, by proclaiming
that Abraham had received some intimation of the future great religious
revolution to be effected by Him; when He who was “ not fifty years old ” (that
is, not arrived at that period when the Jews, who assumed the public offices at
thirty, were released from them on aceount of their age) declared that He had
existed before Abraham; when He thus placed himself not merely on an equality
with, but asserted his immeasurable superiority to, the great father of their
race; when He uttered the awful and significant words which identified Him, as
it were, with Jehovah, the great self-existent Deity, “ Before Abraham was, I
am,” — they immediately rushed forward to crush without trial, without further
hearing, Him whom they considered the self-eonvicted blasphemer. As there was
always some work of building or repair going on within the Temple, whieh was
not
considered to
be finished till many years after, these instruments for the fulfilment of the
legal punishment were immediately at hand; and Jesus only escaped from being
stoned on the spot by passing (we know not how), during the wild and frantic
tumult, through the midst of his assailants, and withdrawing from the court of
the Temple.
But even in
this exigency He pauses at no great distance to perform an act of mercy.1 There Healing the was a man,
notoriously blind from his birth, bUlld man- who seems to have taken
his accustomed station in some way leading to the Temple. Some of the disciples
of Jesus had accompanied Him, and perhaps, as it were, covered his retreat from
his furious assailants; and by this time, probably, being safe from pursuit,
they stopped near the place where the blind man stood.
1 I hesitate at the arrangement of no
passage in tbe whole narrative more than this history of the blind man. Many
harmonists have placed it during the visit of Jesus to Jerusalem, at the Feast
of Dedication. The connection in tbe original, however, seems more natural, as
a continuation of the preceding incident; yet, at first sight, it seems
extremely improbahle that Jesus should have time, during his hurried escape, to
work this miracle, and still more that He should again encounter his enraged
adversaries without dangerous or fatal consequences. We may, however, suppose
that this incident took place without the Temple, prohably in the street
leading down from the Temple to the Valley of Kidron, and to Bethany, where
Jesus spent the night. The attempt to stone Him was an outhurst of popular
tumult: it is clear that He had been guilty of no offence, legally capital, or
it would have been urged against Him at his last trial, since witnesses could
not have been wanting to his words; and it seems quite as clear, that, however
they might have been glad to have availed themselves of any such ebullition of
popular violence, as a court, the Sanhedrin, divided and in awe of the Roman
power, was constrained to proceed with regularity, and according to the strict
letter of the law. Macknight would place the cure immediately after the escape
from the Temple; the recognition of the man, and the subsequent proceedings-
during the visit at the Dedication. But, in fact, the popular feeling seems to
have been in a perpetual state of fluctuation. At one instant, violent
indignation was inflamed hy the language of Jesus; at the next, some one of the
Saviour’s extraordinary works seems to have caused as strong a sensation, at
least with a considerable party, in his favor.
The whole
history of the cure of this blind man is remarkable, as singularly illustrative
of Jewish feeling and opinion, and on account both of the critical juncture at
which it took place, and the strict judicial investigation which it seems to
have undergone before the hostile Sanhedrin. The common popular belief ascribed
every malady or affliction to some sin, of which it was the direct and
providential punishment; a notion, as we have before hinted, of all others, the
most likely to harden the bigoted heart to indifference, or even contempt and
abhorrence of the Heaven-visited, and therefore Heaven-branded, sufferer. This
notion, which, however, was so overpowered by the strong spirit of nationalism
as to obtain for the Jews in foreign countries the admiration of the heathen
for their mutual compassion towards each other, while they had no kindly
feeling for strangers, no doubt, from the language of Jesus on many occasions,
exercised a most pernicious influence on the general character in their native
land, where the lessons of Christian kindliness and humanity appear to have
been as deeply needed as they were unacceptable. But how was this notion of the
penal nature of all suffering to be reconciled with the fact of a man being
born subject to one of the most grievous afflictions of our nature,— the want
of sight? They were thus thrown back upon those other singular notions which
prevailed among the Jews of that period, — either his fathers or himself must
have sinned. Was it, then, a malady inherited from the guilt of his parents ?
or was the soul, having sinned in a pre-existent state, now expiating its
former offences in the present form of being ? This notion, embraced by Plato
in the West, was more likely to have been derived by the Jews from the
East,1 where it may he regularly
traccd from India through the different Oriental religions. Jesus at once
corrected this invotcrato error, and, having anointed tlio eyes of the blind
man with clay, sent him to wash in the celebrated pool of Siloam, at no great
distance from the Street of the Temple. The return of the blind man, restored
to sight, excited so much astonishment, that the bystanders began to dispute
whether he was really the saiue who had been so long familiarly known. The man
set their doubts at rest by declaring himself to be the same. The Sanhedrin,
now so actively watching the actions of Jesus, and, indeed, inflamed to the
utmost resentment, had no course, but, if possible, to invalidate the effect of
such a miracle on the public mind ; they hoped either to detect some collusion
between the parties, or to throw suspicion 011 the whole transaction: at all
events, the case was so public, that they could not avoid bringing it under the
cognizance of their tribunal. The man was summoned ; and, as it happened to
have been the sabbath,2 the stronger Pharisaic party were in hopes
of getting rid of the question altogether by the immediate decision, that a
man guilty of a violation of the Law could not act under the sanction of God.
But a considerable party in the Sanhedrin were still either too prudent, too
just, or too much impressed by the evidence of the case, to concur in so
summary a sentence. This decision of the council appears to have led to a
1 It may bo traced in tlio Egvpto-Jewish
book of the Wisdom of Solomon, viii. 19, 20. The Fharisees1 notion
of the transmigration of sonls may be found m Josephus, Ant. xviii. 1.
2 It is a curious coincidence, that
anointing a blind man’s eyes on tbe sabbath is expressly forbidden in the
Jewish traditional law. — Kuinoel, in loc. According to Grotius, opening tbe eyes
of the blind was an acknowledged sign of the Messiah. — Midrash in Ps. cxlvi.
8j Isa. xiii. 7. It was a miracle nover known to be wrought by Mosea or by any
other prophet.
more close
investigation of the whole transaction. The first object appears to have been,
by questioning the man himself, to implicate him as an adherent of Jesus, and
so to throw discredit upon Ins testimony. The man, either from caution or
ignorance of the character assumed by Jesus, merely replied that he believed
Him to he a prophet. Baffled on this point, the next step of the Pharisaic
party is to inquire into the reality of the malady and the cure. The parents of
the blind man are examined: their deposition simply affirms the fact of their
son having been born
conduct of
blind, and having received his sight; for it
the
Saulie- ’ ° '3 .
a™- was now
notorious that the Sanhedrin had threatened all the partisans of Jesus with the
terrible sentence of excommunication : and the timid parents, trembling before
this awful tribunal, refer the judges to their son for all further information
on this perilous question.
The farther
proceedings of the Sanhedrin are still more remarkable: unable to refute the
fact of the miraculous cure, they endeavor, nevertheless, to withhold from
Jesus all claim upon the gratitude of him whom He had relieved, and all
participation in the power with which the instantaneous cure was wrought. The
man is exhorted to give praise for the blessing to God alone, and to abandon
the cause of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they authoritatively denounce as a
sinner. He rejohis, with straightforward simplicity, that he merely deposes to
the fact of his own blindness, and to his having received his sight: on such
high questions as the character of Jesus, he presumes not at first to dispute
with the great legal tribunal, with the chosen wisdom of the nation. Wearied,
however, at length with then- pertinacious examination, the man
seems to
discover the vantage ground on which he stands; the altercation becomes more
spirited on his part, more full of passionate violence on theirs. He declares
that he has already again and again repeated the circumstances of the
transaction, and that it is in vain for them to question him further, unless
they are determined, if the truth of the miracle should be established, to
acknowledge the divine mission of Jesus. This seems to have been the object at
which the more violent party in the Sanhedrin aimed; so far to throw him off
his guard, as to make him avow himself the partisan of Jesus, and by this
means to shake his whole testimony. On the instant, they begin to revile him,
to appeal to the popular clamor, to declare him a secret adherent of Jesus,
while they were the steadfast disciples of Moses. God was acknowledged to have
spoken by Moses, and to compare Jesus with Him was inexpiable impiety, — Jesus,
of whose origin they professed themselves ignorant. The man rejoins in still
bolder terms, — “ Why, herein is a marvellous thing, that ye know not from
whence He is, but yet He hath opened mine eyes.” He continues in the same
strain openly to assert his conviction that no man, unless commissioned by God,
could work such wonders. Their whole history, abounding as it did with
extraordinary events, displayed nothing more wonderful than that which had so
recently taken place in his person. This daring and disrespectful language
excites the utmost indignation in the whole assembly. They revert to the
popular opinion, that the blindness with which the man was born, was a proof of
his having been accursed of God. “ Thou wast altogether born in sin ; and dost
thou teach us ? ” God marked thy very birth, thy very cradle, with the
indelible sigu
of his
displeasure; and therefore the testimony of on* branded by the wrath of HeaTen
can be of no value. Forgetful that even on their own principle, if, by being
born blind, the man was manifestly an object of the divine anger, his gaining'
his sight was an evidence equally unanswerable of the divine favor. But, while
they traced the hand of God in the curse, they refused to trace it in the
blessing: to dose the eyes wap a proof of divine power, but to open them none
whatever. The fearless conduct, however, of the man appears to have united the
dh ided council; the formal and terrible sentence of excommunication was pronounced,
probably for the first time, against any adherent of Jesus. The evangelist
concludes the narrative, as if to show that the man was not as yet a declared
disciple of Christ, with a second interview between the blind man and Jesus, in
whieh Jesus openly accepted the title of the Messiah, the Son of God, and
received the homage of the now avowed adherent. Nor did Jesus discontinue,his
teaching on account of this declared interposition of the Sanhediin; his manifest
superiority throughout this transaction rather appears to have caused a new
schism in the council, which secured Him from any violent measures on their
part, until the termination of the festival.
Another
collision takes place with some of the Pharisaic party, with whom He now seems
scarcely to keep any measure: He openly denounces them as misleading the
people, and declares himself the “ one true Shepherd.” Whither Jesus retreated
after this conflict with the ruling powers, we have no distinct information,—most
probably, however, into Galilee;1 nor
l From this period, the difficulty of
arranging » consistent chronological narrative out of the t-qiaiate zelaUws of
the evangelists increases to the
is it
possible with certainty to assign those events which filled up the period between
the autumnal Feast of Tabcrnacles and that of the Dedication of the Temple,
which took place in the winter.
Now, however,
Jesus appears more distinctly to have avowed his determination not to remain in
his more concealed and private character in Galilee ; but when the occasion
should demand, when, at the approaching Passover, the whole nation should be
assembled in the metropolis, He would confront them, and at length bring his
acceptance or rejection to a crisis.1 He now, at times
at least, assumes greater state ; messengers are sent before Him to proclaim
his arrival in the different towns and villages; and, as the Feast of
Dedication draws near, He approaches the Near borders of
Samaria, and sends forward some Somaria- of his followers into a
neighboring village, to announce his approach.2 Whether the Samaritans may have entertained some hopes,
from the rumor of his former proceedings in their country, that, persecuted by
the Jews, and avowedly opposed to the leading parties in Jerusalem, the Lord might
espouse their party in the national quarrel, and were therefore instigated by
disappointment as well as jealousy ; or whether it was merely an accidental
outburst of the old irreconcila-
greatest
degree. Mr. Greswell, to establish his system, is actually obliged to make
Jesus, when the Samaritans refused to receive Him because tkhis face
was as though He would go to Jerusalem,” to be travelling absolutely in the
opposite direction. He likewise, in my opinion on quite unsatisfactory grounds,
endeavors to prove that the “ village of Martha and Mary was not Bethany.” Any
arrangement which places (Luke x. 38-42) t^ie scene in the house of Mary and
Martha after the raising of Lazarus, appears highly improbable.
1 By taking the expression of St. Luke, “
He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,” in this more general sense,
many difficulties, if not avoided are considerably diminished
2 Luke ix. 61-66. ♦
ble feud,—
the inhospitable village refused to receive Him.1 The disciples were now elate with the expectation of the
approaching crisis ; on their minds, all the dispiriting predictions of the
fate of their Master passed away without the least impression ; they were indignant
that their triumphant procession should be arrested ; and with these more
immediate and peculiar motives mingled, no doubt, the implacable spirit of
national hostility. They thought that the hour of vengeance was now come ;
that even their gentle Master would resent, on these deadliest foes of the race
of Israel, this deliberate insult on his dignity; that, as He had in some
respects resembled the ancient prophets, He would now not hesitate to assume
that fiercer and more terrific majesty, with which, according to their ancient
histories, these holy men had at times been avenged; they entreated their
Master to call down fire from heaven to consume the village. Jesus simply
replied by a sentence, which at once established the incalculable difference
between his own religion and that which it was to succeed. This sentence, most
truly sublime and most characteristic of the evangelic religion, ever since the
establishment of Christianity has been struggling to maintain its authority
against the still-reviving Judaism, which, inseparable it would seem from
uncivilized and unchristian man, has constantly endeavored to array the Deity
rather in his attributes of destructive power than of preserving
1 The attendance of the Jews at the Feast of
the Dedication, a solemnity of more recent institution, was not unlikely to be
still more obnoxious to the possessors of the rival temple than the other great
national feasts. This consideration, in the want of more decisive grounds, may
be some argument for placing this event at the present period. I find that
Doddridge had before suggested this allusion. The inhabitants of Ginea
(Josephus, Ant. xx. ch. 6) fell on certain Galileans proceeding to Jerusalem
for one of the feastti and clew many of them.
mercy: “ The
Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” So speaking,
He left the inhospitable Samaritans unharmed, and calmly passed to another
village.
It appears to
me probable that He here left the direct road to the metropolis through
Samaria, and turned aside to the district about Scythopolis and the valley of
the Jordan, and most likely crossed into Perasa.1 Prom hence, if not before, He sent out his messengers with
greater regularity;2
and, it might seem, to keep up some resemblance with the established
institutions of the nation, He chose the number of seventy, a number already
sanctified in the notions of the people, as that of the great Sanhedrin of the
nation, who deduced their own origin and authority from the Council of Seventy,
established by Moses in the wilderness. The seventy, after a short absence,
returned, and made a favorable report of the influence which they had obtained
over the people.3 The
language of Jesus, both in his charge to his disciples and in his observations
011 the report of their success, appears to indicate the still-approacliing
crisis; it would seem, that even the towns in which He had wrought his
mightiest works, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, at least the general mass
of the people and the influential rulers, now had declared against Him. They
are condemned in terms of unusual severity for their blindness; yet among the
meek and humble He had a still-increasing hold; and the days were now at hand
which the disciples were permitted to behold, and for which the wise and good
for
1 After the dsit to Jerusalem at the Feast
of the Dedication, He went again (John x. 40) into the country beyond Jordan;
He must, therefore,liaye been there before the feast.
2 Luke x. 1-16. 0 Ibid. 17-20.
many ages had
been, looking forward with still-baffled hopes.1
It was during
the absence of the seventy, or immediately after their return, that Jesus,
who, DeScauon. perhaps, had visited in the interval many again in towns and
villages both of Galilee and Persia, eruaa em. wjjjch cen(;rai
position near the Jordan
commanded,
descended to the winter Festival of the Dedication.2 Once it is clear that He drew near to Jerusalem, at least
as near as the village of Bethany; and, though not insensible to the
difficulties of this view, I cannot but think that this village, about two
miles’ distance from Jerusalem, and the house of the relations of Lazarus, was
the place where He was concealed during both his two later unexpected and
secret visits to the metropolis, and where He in general passed the nights during
the week of the last Pass- over.3
His appearancc at this festival seems to have been, like the former, sudden and
unlooked-for. The multitude probably at this time was not so great, both
1 Luke x. 24. The parable of the
Good Samaritan may gain in impressiveness, if considered in connection with
the recent transactions in Samaria, and as perhaps delivered during the journey
to Jerusalem, near the place where the scene is laid, — the wild and dangerous
country between Jerichc aud Jerusalem. -
2 This feast was instituted by Judas
Maccabeus, 1 Maec. iv., v. It was kepi on the 25th of the month Cislcu,
answering to our 15th of December. Tht houses were illuminated at night during
the whole period of the feast, which lasted eight days. — John x. 22-39.
8
In connecting Luke'x. 38-42 with John x. 22-39, there is the obvious difficulty
of the former evangelist mentioning the comparatively nniraportani circumstance
which he relates, and being entirely silent ahout the latter But this objection
is common to all harmonies of the Gospels. The silence of the three former
evangelists concerning the events in Jerusalem is equally remarkable under
every system, whether, according to Bishop Marsh and th< generality of the
great German scholars, we suppose the evangelists to liav< compiled from a
common document, or adhere to any of the older theories that each wrote either
entirely independently or as supplementary to the pre ceding evangelists.
on account of
the season, and because the festival was kept in other places besides
Jerusalem,1 though of
course with the greatest splendor and concourse in the Temple itself. Jesus was
seen walking in one of the porticos or arcades which surrounded the outer court
of the Temple, that to the east, which from its greater splendor, being formed
of a triple instead of a double row of columns, was called by the name of
Solomon’s. The leading Jews, whether unprepared for more violent measures or
with some insidious design, now address Him, seemingly neither in a hostile nor
unfriendly tone. It almost appears, that, having before attempted force, they
are now inclined to try the milder course of persuasion: their language sounds
like the expostulation of impatience. Why, they inquire, does He thus continue
to keep up this strange excitement ? Why thus persist in endangering the public
peace ? Why does He not avow himself at once ? Why does He not distinctly
assert himself to be the Christ, and by some signal, some public, some
indisputable evidence of his being the Messiah, at once set at rest the
doubts, and compose the agitation, of the troubled nation? The answer of Jesus
is an appeal to the wonderful works which He had already wrought; but this
evidence the Jews, in their present state and disposition of mind, were
morally incapable of appreciating. He had already avowed himself, but in
language unintelligible to their ears; a few had heard Him, a few would receive
the reward of their obedience, and those few were, in the simple phrase, the
sheep who heard his voice. But, as He proceeded, his language assumed a higher,
a more mysterious tone. He spoke of his unity with the great Father of the
worlds. “ I
and my Father
are one.” 1 However
understood, his words sounded to the Jewish ears so like direct blasphemy as
again to justify on the spot, the summary punishment of the Law. Without
further trial, they prepared to stone Him where He stood. Jesus arrested their
fury on the instant by a calm appeal to the manifest moral goodness, as well
as the physical power, of the Deity displayed in his works. The Jews, in plain
terms, accused Him of blasphemously asciibing to himself the title of God. He
replied by reference to their sacred books, in which they could not deny that
the divine name was sometimes ascribed to beings of an inferior rank : how much
less, therefore, ought they to be indignant at that sacred name being assumed
by Him, in whom the great attributes of divinity, both the power and the
goodness, had thus manifestly appeared! His wonderful works showed the
intercommunion of nature, in this respect, between himself and the Almighty.
This explanation, far beyond their moral perceptions, only excited a new burst
of fury, which Jesus eluded, and, retiring again from the capital, returned to
the district beyond the Jordan.
The three
months which elapsed between the Feast period be- °f Dedication and the
Passover2 were no
rSof16 doubt occupied
in excursions, if not in regu-
and'the
lar
progresses, through the different districts Passover. 0f ^ie
Holy Land, on both sides of the river, which his central position, near one of
the most celebrated fords, was extremely well suited to command. Wherever He
went, multitudes assembled around Him; and, at one time, the government of
Herod was seized with alarm, and Jesus received information that
1 John x. 30.
2 Luke xi.f xii., xiii. to verse
30; also to xviii. 84; Matt, xix., xx. to rerse 28; Mark x. 1-31.
his life was
in danger, and that He might apprehend the same fate which had befallen John
the Baptist if He remained in Galilee or Persea, both which districts were
within the dominions of Herod. It is remarkable, that this intelligence came
from some of the Pharisaic party,1
whether suborned by Herod, thus peacefully, and without incurring any further
unpopularity, to rid his dominions of one who might become either the designing
or the innocent cause of tumult and confu sion (the reflection of Jesus on the
crafty character of Herod2
may confirm the notion that the Pharisees were acting under his insidious
direction), or whether the Pharisaic party were of themselves desirous to force
Jesus, before the Passover arrived, into the province of Judaea, where the
Roman government might either, of itself, be disposed to act with decision, or
might grant permission to the Sanhedrin to interpose its authority with the
utmost rigor. But it was no doubt in this quarter that He received intelligence
of a very different nature, that led to one of his preternatural works, which
of itself was the most extraordinary, and evidently made the deepest impression
upon the public mind.3
The raising of Lazarus may be considered the proximate cause of the general
conspiracy for his death, by throwing the popular feeling more decidedly on his
side, and thereby deepening the fierce
1 Luke xiii. 31-35.
2 Wetstein has struck out the character of
Herod with great strength and
truth: “Hie, ut plerique ejua temporis principes et presides, mores ad
exem-
plum Tiberii imperatoris, qui nullam ex virtutibus suis magia quam dis-
simulationem diligebat, composuit; tunc autem erat annosa vulpes, cum
jam
triginta annos principatum gessisset, et divcrsissimas personas egisset,
per
sonam servi apud Tiberium, domini apud Galileam, amici Sejano, Artabano,
fratribus suis Archelao, Philippo, Herodi alteri, quorum studia erant diver-
sissima, et inter se et a studiis Herodis ipsius.”— In be.
8 John xi.
1-46.
VOL.
I. 18
animosity of
the rulers, who now saw that they had no alternative but to crush Hun at once,
or to admit his triumph.
We have
supposed that it was at the house of „ •. , Lazarus, or of his relatives, in
the village
Raising
of ‘ .
Lazarus-
of Bethany, that Jesus had passed the nights during liis recent visits to
Jerusalem. At some distance from the metropolis. He receives information of
the dangerous illness of that faithful adherent, whom He seems to have honored
with peculiar attachment. He at first assures his followers hi ambiguous language
of the favorable termination of the disorder; and after two days' delay,
notwithstanding the remonstrances of his disciples, who feared that He was precipitately
rushing, as it were, into the toils of his enemies, and who resolve to
accompany Him, though in acknowledged apprehension that his death was inevitable,
Jesus first informs his disciples of the actual death of Lazarus, yet,
nevertheless, persists in his determination of visiting Bethany. On his arrival
at Bethany, the dead man, who, according to Jewish usage, had, no doubt, been
immediately buried, had been four days in the sepulchre. The house was full of
Jews, who had come to console, according to their custom, the afflicted
relatives; and the characters assigned in other parts of the history to the two
sisters are strikingly exemplified in their conduct 011 this mournful
occasion. The more active Martha hastens to meet Jesus, laments his absence at
the time of her brother s death, and, ou his declaration of the resurrection
of her brother, reverts only to the general resurrection of mankind, a truth
embodied in a certain sense in the Jewish creed. So far, Christ answers in
language which intimates his own close connection
with that
resurrection of mankind. The gentler Mary falls at the feet of Jesus, and, with
many tears, expresses the same confidence in his power, had He been present,
of averting her brother’s death. So deep, however, is their reverence, that
neither of them ventures the slightest word of expostulation at his delay; nor
does either appear to have entertained the least hope of further relief. The
tears of Jesus himself (for Jesus wept) appear to confirm the notion that the
case is utterly desperate; and some of the Jews, in a less kindly spirit, begin
to murmur at his apparent neglect of a friend, to whom, nevertheless, He
appears so tenderly attached. It might seem that it was in the presence of some
of these persons, by no means well disposed to his cause, that Jesus proceeded
to the sepulchre, summoned the dead body to arise, and was obeyed.
The
intelligence of this inconceivable event spread with the utmost rapidity to
Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin was instantly summoned, and a solemn debate commenced
finally to decide on their future proceedings towards Jesus. It had now become
evident, that his progress in the popular belief must be at once arrested, or
the power of the Sanhedrin, the influence of the Pharisaic party, was lost for
ever. With this may have mingled, in minds entirely ignorant of the real nature
of the new religion, an honest and conscientious, though blind, dread of some
tumult or insurrection taking place, which would give the Romans an excuse for
wresting away the lingering semblance of national independence, to which they
adhered with such passionate attachment. The high-priesthood was now filled by
Caiaplias, the son-in-law of Annas or Ananus; for the Roman governors, as has been
said.
since the
expulsion of Archelaus, either in the capricious or venal wantonness of power
or from jealousy of liis authority, had perpetually deposed and re-appointed
this ehief civil aud religious magistrate of the nation. Caiaphas threw the weight
of his official influence into the scale of the more decided and violent
party; and endeavored, as it were, to give an appearance of patriotism to the
meditated crime, hy declaring the expediency of sacrificing one life, even
though innocent, for the welfare of the whole nation.1 His language
was afterwards treasured in the memory of the Christian*, as inadvertently
prophetic of the more extensive benefits derived to mankind by the death of
their Master. The death of Jesus was deliberately decreed; but Jesus for the
present avoided the gathering storm, withdrew from the neighborhood of the
metropolis, and retired to Ephraim, on the border of Judaea, near the wild and
mountainous region which divided Judaja from Samaria.3
l John xi.
47-63.
* Joboxi.64.
CHAPTER VII.
Th« Last
Fasjwtvsr—The Crucifixion.
Thb Passover
rapidly approached; the roads from all quarters were already crowded with the
assembling worshippers. It is difficult for Piv"SOTO'
those who are ignorant of the extraordinary power whidi local religious
reverence holds over Southern and Asiatic nations, to imagine the state of
Judaea and of Jerusalem at the time of this great periodical festival.1
The rolling-onward of countless and gathering masses of population to some of
the temples in India; the caravans from all quarters of the Eastern world,
which assemble at Mecca during the Holy Season; the multitudes which formerly
flowed to Loretto or Rome at the great ceremonies, when the Roman Catholic
religion held its unenfeebled sway over tine mind of Europe,—do not surpass,
perhaps scarcely equal, the sudden, simultaneous confluence, not of the
population of a single city, hut of the whole Jewish nation, towards the
capital of Jud&a at the time of the Passover. Dispersed as they were
throughout the world, it was not only the great mass of the inhabitants of
Palestine, hut many foreign Jews who thronged from every quarter.—from
Babylonia, from Arabia, from i^rypt, from Asia Minor and Greece, from Italy,
pro-
iati)
jnpfar lour nfiUu* «£ jcv An yjf, ot & iSuAamjr. If mi irceuf, »»* w,»cn»
xm p&nqitijiof. jtar*' irarrtr r»jr»r ac xi t^iHe —Fsik DeUonuvh. fil.
bably even
from Gaul and Spain. Some notion of the density and vastness of the multitude
may be formed from the calculation of Josephus, who, having ascertained the
number of pasehal lambs sacrificed on one of these solemn occasions, which
amounted to 25b,500,1 and assigning the ordinary number to a
company who could partake of the same victim, estimated the total number of the
pilgrims and residents in Jerusalem at 2,700,000. Through all this concourse of
the whole Jewish race, animated more or less profoundly, according to their
peculiar temperament, with the same national and religious feelings, rumors
about the appearance, the conduct, the pretensions, the language, of Jesus,
could not but have spread abroad, and be communicated with unchecked rapidity.
The utmost anxiety prevails throughout the whole crowded city and its
neighborhood, to ascertain whether this new prophet — this more, perhaps, than
prophet — will, as it were, confront at this solemn period the assembled
nation; or, as on the last occasion, remain concealed in the remote parts of
the country. The Sanhedrin are on their guard, and strict injunctions are
issued that they may receive the earliest intelligence of his approach, in
order that they may arrest Him before He has attempted to make any impression
on the multitude.2
Already Jesus
had either crossed the Jordan or descended from the hill country to the north.
He had passed through Jerieho, where He had been recog-
1 Or, according to Mr. Greswell’s reading,
266,600. I must confess that my general scepticism as to the numbers in the
Jewish history extends to this calculation.
The number
and the space, embracing within that space all the adjacent villages, compared
together, seem to me altogether irreconcilable with reason and probability.
Still, I doubt not the fact of an uncalculated and incalcula-
blc
concourse.
2 John xi. 55, 57.
nized by two
blind men as the Son of David, the title of the Messiah probably the most
prevalent among the common people; and, instead of disclaiming the homage, He
had rewarded the avowal by the restoration of their sight to the suppliants.1
On his way
from Jericho to Jerusalem, but much nearer to the metropolis, He was hospitably
4 , . Zaccheus.
received in
the house of a wealthy publican named Zaccheus, who had been so impressed with
the report of his extraordinary character, that, being of small stature, he had
climbed a tree by the road-side to see Him pass by; and had evinced the
sincerity of his belief in the just and generous principles of the new faith,
both by giving up at once half of his property to the poor, and offering the
amplest restitution to those whom he might have oppressed in the exercise of
his function as a publican.2
The noblest homage to the power of the new faith! It is probable, that Jesus
passed the night, perhaps the whole of the sabbath, in the house of Zaccheus,
and set forth, on the first day of the week, through the villages of Beth-
phage and Bethany, to Jerusalem.
Let us,
however, before we trace his progress, pause to ascertain, if possible, the
actual state of feeling at this precise period, among the different ranks and
orders of the Jews.
Jesus of
Nazareth had now, for three years, assumed the character of a public teacher;
his wonderful works were generally acknowledged; all, no doubt, considered Him
as an extraordinary being: but whether He was the Messiah, still, as it were,
hung in the balance. His language, plain enough to those who could comprehend
the real superiority, the real divinity, of 1 Matt. xx. 30; Mark x. 46; Luke
xviii. 35. 2 Luke xix. 1-10.
his
character, was necessarily dark and ambiguous to those who were insensible to
the moral and spiritual beauty of his words and actions. Pew, perhaps, beyond
liis more immediate followers, looked upon Him with implicit faith ; many with
doubt, even with hope; perhaps still greater numbers, comprising the more
turbulent of the lower class, and almost all the higher and more influential,
with incredulity, if not with undisguised animosity. For though thus for three
years He had kept the public mind in suspense as to his being the promised
Redeemer; of those circumstances to which the popular passions had looked
forward as the only certain signs of the Messiah’s coming, those which among
the mass of the community were considered inseparable from the commencement of
the kingdom of heaven,—the terrific, the awful, the national,— not one had
come to pass. The deliverance of the nation from the Roman yoke seemed as
remote as ever; the governor had made but a short time, perhaps a year, before,
a terrible assertion of his supremacy, by defiling the Temple itself with the
blood of the rebellious or unoffending Galileans. The Sanhedrin, imperious
during his absence, quailed and submitted whenever the'tribunal of Pilate was
erected in the metropolis. The publicans, those unwelcome remembrancers of the
subjugation of the country, were still abroad in every town and village,
levying the hateful tribute; and instead of joining in the popular clamor
against these agents of a foreign rule, or even reprobating their extortions,
Jesus had treated them with his accustomed equable gentleness; .He had entered
familiarly into their houses; one of his constant followers, one of his chosen
twelve, was of this proscribed and odious profession.
Thus, then,
the fierce and violent, the avowed or the secret, partisans of the Galilean
Judas, ah sects
ini *i ji ♦ n -i 1 hostile to
and all who,
without having enrolled them- Jesus, selves in his sect, inclined to the same
opinions, if not already inflamed against Jesus, were at least ready to take
fire, on the instant that his success might appear to endanger their schemes
and visions of independence ; and, their fanaticism once inflamed, no considerations
of humanity or justice would arrest its course or assuage its violence. To
every sect Jesus had been equally uncompromising. To the Pharisees ThePhan- He
had always proclaimed the most undis- sees' guised opposition ; and
if his language rises from its gentle and persuasive, though authoritative,
tone, it is ever ir> inveighing against the hypocrisy, the avarice, the
secret vices of this class, whose dominion over the public mind it was
necessary to shake with a strong hand ; all communion with whose peculiar
opinions it was incumbent on the Teacher of purer virtue to disclaim in the
most unmeasured terms.1
But this hostility to the Pharisaic party was likely to operate unfavorably to
the cause of Jesus, not only with the party itself, but with the great mass of
the lower orders. If there be in man a natural love of independence both in
thought and action, there is among the vulgar, especially in a nation so
superstitions as the Jews, a reverence, even a passionate attachment, to
religious tyranny. The bondage in which the minute observances of the
traditionists, more like those of the Brahminical Indians than the free and
more generous institutes of their lawgiver, had fettered the whole life of the
Jew, was nevertheless a source of satisfaction and pride; and the offer of
deliverance from
this
inveterate slavery would be received by most with uu thankful ness or
suspicion. Nor can any teacher of religion, however he may appeal to the better
feelings and to the reason, without endangering his influence over the common
people, permit himself to be outdone in that austerity which they ever consider
the sole test ihe law- of fervor and sincerity. Even those less en yer8‘
slaved to the traditionary observances, the lawyers (perhaps the religious
ancestors of the Karaites1), who adhered more closely, and confined
their precepts, to the sacred books, must have trembled and recoiled at the
manner in which Jesus assumed an au- The saddu- thority above that of Moses or
the Prophets.
With the
Sadducees, Jesus had come less frequently into collision: it is probable that
this sect prevailed chiefly among the aristocracy of the larger cities and of
the metropolis, while Jesus in general mingled with the lower orders; and the
Sadducees were less regular attendants in the synagogues and schools, where He
was wont to deliver his instructions. They, in all likelihood, were less
possessed than the rest of the nation with the expectation of the Messiah; at
all events, they rejected as innovations not merely the Babylonian notions
about the angels and the resurrection, which prevaded in the rest of the
community, but altogether disclaimed these doctrines, and professed themselves
adherents of the original simple Mosaic theocracy. Hence, though on one or two
occasions they appear to have joined in the general confederacy to arrest his
progress, the Sadducees, for the most part, would look on with contemptuous
indifference;
^1
The Karaites among the later Jews were the Protestants of Judaism (see Hist, of
Jews); it is probable that a party of this nature existed mu~h earlier, though
by no means numerous or influential.
and although
the declaration of eternal life mingled with the whole system of the teaching of
Jesus, yet it" was not till his resurrection had become the leading
article of the new faith — till Christianity was thus, as it were, committed in
irreconcilable hostility with the main principle of their creed — that their
opposition took a more active turn, and, from the accidental increase of their
weight in the Sanliedrin, came into perpetual and terrible collision with the
Apostles. The only point of union which the Sadducaic party would possess with
the Pharisees would be the most extreme jealousy of the abrogation of the Law,
the exclusive feeling of its superior sanctity, wisdom, and irrepealable
authority: 011 this point, the spirit of nationality would draw together these
two conflicting parties, who would vie with each other in the patriotic, the
religious vigilance with which they would seize on any expression of Jesus
which might imply the abrogation of the divinely inspired institutes of Moses,
or even any material innovation on their strict letter. But besides the general
suspicion that Jesus was assuming an authority above, in some cases contrary
to, the Law, there were other trifling circumstances which threw doubts on that
genuine and uncontaminated Judaism which the nation in general would have imperiously
demanded from their Messiah. There seems to have been some apprehension, as we
have before .stated, of his abandoning his ungrateful countrymen, and taking
refuge among a foreign race; and his conduct towards the Samaritans was
directly contrary to the strongest Jewish prejudices. On more than one
occasion, even if his remarkable conduct and language during his first journey
through Samaria had not transpired, He had avowedly discountenanced that
implacable
national hatred which no one can ever attempt to allay without diverting it, as
it were, on his own head. He had adduced the example of a Samaritan as the
only one of the ten lepers1
who showed cither gratitude to his benefactor, or piety to God; and in the
exquisite apologue of the Good Samaritan, He had placed the Priest and the
Levite in a most unfavorable light, as contrasted with the descendant of that
hated race.
Yet there
could be no doubt that He had already jesus the avowed himself to be the
Messiah: his harbinger, the Baptist, had proclaimed the rapid, the
instantaneous approach of the kingdom of Christ. Of that kingdom Jesus himself
had spoken as commencing, as having already commenced; but where were the
outward, the visible, the undeniable signs of sovereignty ? He had permitted
himself, both in private and in public, to be saluted as the Son of David, an
expression which was equivalent to a claim to the hereditary throne of David;
but still to the common eye He appeared the same lowly and unroyal being as
when He first set forth as a teacher through the villages of Galilee. As to
the nature of this kingdom, even to his closest followers, his language was
most perplexing and contradictory. An unworldly kingdom, a moral dominion, a
purely religious community, held together only by the bond of common faith, wag
so unlike the former intimate union of civil and reli gious polity, so
diametrically opposite to the firs, principles of their thcocracy, as to be
utterly unin telligible. The real nature and design of the uca religion seemed altogether beyond
their comprehen sion ; and it is most remarkable to trace it, as it slowlj
dawned on the
minds of the apostles themselves, and gradually, after the death of Jesus,
extended its horizon till it comprehended all mankind within its expanding
view. To be in the highest sense the religions ancestors of mankind: to be tlie
authors, or at least the agents, in the greatest moral revolution which has
taken place in the world; to obtain an influence over the human mind, as much
more extensive than that which had been violently obtained by the arms of Eome,
as it was more conducive to the happiness of the human race: to be the
teachers and disseminators of doctrines, opinions, sentiments, which, slowly
incorporating themselves, as it were, with the intimate essence of man's moral being,
were to work a gradual but total change. — a change which, as to the temporal
as well as the eternal destiny of our race, to those who look forward to the
simultaneous progress of human civilization and the genuine religion of Jesus.
is yet far from complete, — all this was too high, too remote, too mysterious,
for the narrow vision of the Jewish people. They, as a nation, were better
prepared, indeed, by already possessing the rudiments of the new faith, for
becoming the willing agents in this divine work. On the other hand, they were,
in some respects, disqualified by that very distinction, which, by keeping them
in rigid seclusion from the rest of mankind, had rendered them, as it were, the
faithful depositaries *>f the great principle of religion, the Unity of
God. The peculiar privilege with which they had been intrusted for the benefit
of mankind had become, as it were, their exclusive property ; nor were they
willing, indiscriminately, to communicate to others this their own distinctive
prerogative.
Those, for
such doubtless there were, who pierced
though dimly
through the veil, — the more reasoning, the more advanced, the more
philosophical, were little likely to espouse the cause of Jesus with vigor and
resolution. Persons of this character are usually too calm, dispassionate, and
speculative to be the active and zealous instruments in a great religious
revolution. It is probable that most of this class were either far gone in
Oriental mysticism, or, in some instances, in the colder philosophy of the
Greeks. For these Jesus was as much too plain and popular, as He was too gentle
and peaceable for the turbulent. He was scarcely more congenial to the severe
and ascetic
practices of
the Essene, than to the fiercer fol-
The
Essenes. t. n
lowers of the
Galilean Judas. JLhough the Esseue might admire the exquisite purity of his
moral teaching and the uncompromising firmness with which He repressed the
vices of all ranks and parties ; however he might be prepared fbr the
abrogation of the ceremonial law, and the substitution of the religion of the
heart for that of the prevalent outward forms, on his side he was too closely
bound by his own monastic rules : his whole existence was recluse and contemplative.
His religion was altogether unfitted for aggression; so that, however
apparently it might coincide with Christianity in some material points, in
fact its vital system was repugnant to that of the new faith. Though, after
strict investigation, the Essene would admit the numerous candidates who aspired
to unite themselves with his ccenobitic society, in which no one according to
Pliny’s expression, was born but which was always full, he would never seek
proselytes, or use any active means for disseminating his principles; and it is
worthy of remark, that almost the only quarter of Palestine which Jesus does
not appear to
have visited,
is the district near the Dead Sea, where the agricultural settlements of the
Essenes were chiefly situated.
While the
mass of the community were hostile to Jesus, from his deficiency in the more
imposing, the warlike, the destructive signs of the Messiah’s power and glory;
from his opposition to the genius and principles of the prevailing sects; from
his want of nationality, both as regarded the civil independence and the
exclusive religious superiority of the race of Abraham ; and from their own
general incapacity for comprehending the moral sublimity of his teaching, —
additional, and not less influential, motives conspired to inflame the
animosity of the rulers. In-
« , t n • *
* Th® rulers.
dependent of
the dread of innovation, inseparable from established governments, they could
not but discern the utter incompatibility of their own rule with that of an
unworldly Messiah. They must abdicate at once, if not their civil office as
magistrates, unquestionably their sovereignty over the public mind ; retract
much which they had been teaching on the authority of their fathers, the wise
men ; and submit,- with the lowest and most ignorant, to be the humble scholars
of the new Teacher.
With all this
mingled, no doubt, a real apprehension of offending the Roman power. The rulers
could not but discern on how precarious a foundation rested not only the feeble
shadow of national independence, but even the national existence. A single
mandate from the emperor, not unlikely to be precipitately advised and
relentlessly carried into execution, on the least appearance of tumult, by a
governor of so decided a character as Pontius Pilate, might annihilate at once
all that remained of their civil, and even of
their
religious, constitution. If we look forward, we find, that, during the whole of
the period which precedes the last Jewish war, the ruling authorities of the
nation pursued the same cautious policy. Ihey were driven into the insurrection,
not by their own deliberate determination, but by the uncontrollable fanaticism
of the populace. To every overture of peace they lent a willing ear; and their
hopes of an honorable capitulation, by which the city might be spared the
horrors of a storm, and the Temple be secured from desecration, did not expire
till their party was thinned by the remorseless sword of the Idumean and the
Assassin, and the Temple had bccome the stronghold of one of the contending
factions. Religious fears might seem to countenance this trembling
apprehension of the Roman power ; for there is strong ground, both in Josephus
and the Talmudie writings, for believing that the current interpretation of the
prophecies of Daniel designated the Romans as the predestined destroyers of
the theocracy.1 And,
however the more enthusiastic might look upon this only as one of the
inevitable calamities which were to precede the appcarance and filial triumph
of the Messiah, the less fervid faith of the older and more commanding party
was far more profoundly impressed with the dread of the impending ruin than
elated with the remoter hope of final restoration. The advice of Caia-
1
It is probable, that, in the allusion of Jeaus to the “ abomination of deso-
lulion,’’ the phrase was already applied by the popular apprehensions to some
impending destruction by the Romans.
Tdv
afirov rponov Aawhjfog nal nepl tC,yv "Pufiatuv qytfioviac aveypaijje, mi
I bTL vie abrCrv ipriftudyaETai. — Ant. x. 2,7; and in the
IJ.-II. Jud. iv. «, 3, the npo<pi]TLUi Kara tt/£ nuTptdo<;}
referred to this interpretation of the verses of the prophet. Compare Baby].
Talm. (Jemara, Musseek Nasir, e. 5, Masseck Snnhedrin, c. 13, Jerusalem Talmud,
Mawtcrk Kdaim. c. 9. Ber- tholdt on Daniel, p. 585. Sec likewiie Jortin's Eecl.
Hint. i. O'J.
phas,
therefore, to sacrifice even an innocent man for the safety of the state, would
appear to them both sound and reasonable policy.
We must
imagine this suspense, this agitation of tho crowded city, or we shall be
unable fully to Demeanor enter into the beauty of the calm and unos-
of'losus tcutatious dignity with which Jesus pursues his
course through the midst of this terrific tumult. He preserves the same
equable composure in the triumphant procession into the Temple and in the Hall
of Pilate. Every thing indicates his tranquil conviction of his inevitable
death: He foretells it with all its afflicting circumstances to his disciples,
incredulous almost to the last to this alone of their Master’s declarations. At
every step He feels himself more inextricably within the toils; yet He moves
onward, with the selfcommand of a willing sacrifice, constantly dwelling with
a profound though chastened melancholy on his approaching fate, and intimating
that his death was necessary, in order to secure indescribable benefits for his
faithful followers and for mankind. Yet there is no needless exasperation of
his enemies; He observes the utmost prudence, though He seems so fully aware
that his prudence can be of uo avail; He never passes the night within the city
; and it is only by the treachery of one of his followers that the Sanhedrin
at length make themselves masters of his person.
The Son of
Man had now arrived at Bethany, and we must endeavor to trace his future
proceedings in a consecutive course.1 But, if it has been difficult to dispose the events of the
life of Jesus in the Difficulty of
1 _ chronological
order of
time, this difficulty increases as we M-nmgcmont. approach its termination.
However embarrassing this
fact to those
who require something more than historical credibility in the evangelical
narratives, to those who are content with a lower and more rational view of
their authority it throws not the least suspicion on their truth. It might
almost seem, at the present period, that the evangelists, confounded as it
were, and stunned with the deep sense of the importance of the crisis, however
they might remember the faets, had in some degree perplexed and eonfused their
regular order.
At Bethany,
the Lord took up his abode in the house jesua at °f Simon, who had been a
leper, and, it is Bethany. noj. improbably
conjectured, had been healed by the wonderful power of Jesus.1 Simon was, in all likelihood,
closely connected, though the degree of relationship is not intimated, with the
family of Lazarus ; for Lazarus was present at the feast, and it was conducted
by Martha, his sister. The fervent devotion of their sister Mary had been already
indicated on two occasions; and this passionate zeal, now heightened by
gratitude for the recent restoration of her brother to life, evinced itself in
her breaking an alabaster box of very eostly perfume, and anointing the
Saviour’s head,2
according, as we have seen on a former occasion, to a usage not uncommon in
Oriental banquets. It is possible that vague thoughts of the royal eharaeter
which she expected that Jesus was about to assume might mingle with those purer
feelings which led her to pay this prodigal homage to his person. The mercenary
character of Judas now begins to be developed. Judas had been appointed a kind
of treasurer, and in
1 Matt, xxvi.
1-13; Mark xiv. 3-9; John xii. 1-11. (I follow St. John’s
nurative in
placing this incident at the present period.)
3 See Ps. xxv. 6. Horat., Carm. ii. 11,16.
Martial, iii. 12, 4.
trusted with
the care of the eommon purse, from which the seanty ueeessities of the humble
and temperate society had been defrayed, and the rest reserved for distribution
among the poor. Some others of the disciples had been seized with astonishment
at this unusual and seemingly unnecessary waste of so valuable a commodity;
but Judas broke out into open remon strance, and, concealing his own avarice
under the veil of charity for the poor, protested against the wanton
prodigality. Jesus eontented himself with praising the pious and affeetionate
devotion of the woman, and, reverting to his usual tone of ealm melaneholy,
declared that unknowingly she had performed a more pious office, — the
anointing his body for his burial.
The
intelligence of the arrival of Jesus at Bethany spread rapidly to the eity,
from whieh it was Jesus enters
• -i t nr i • n Jerusalem
not quite two
miles distant. Multitudes iu triumph, thronged forth to behold Him: nor was
Jesus the only objeet of interest; for the fame of the resurreetion of Lazarus
was widely disseminated, and the strangers in Jerusalem were scarcely less
anxious to behold a man who had undergone a fate so unprecedented.
Lazarus, thus
an objeet of intense interest to the people,1 beeame one of no less jealousy to the ruling authorities,
the enemies of Jesus. His death was likewise deereed, and the magistracy only
awaited a favorable opportunity for the execution of their edicts. But the
Sanhedrin is at first obliged to remain in overawed and trembling inactivity.
The popular sentiment is so decidedly in favor of Jesus of Nazareth, that they
dare not venture to oppose his open, his public, his triumphant procession
into the city, or his en-
1
John xii. 9-11: “But the chief priests consulted that they might put Lazarus
also to death; because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away, and
believed on Jesns.”
trance amid
the applauses of the wondering multitude into the Temple itself. On the morning
of the second
Monday, day
of the week,1 Jesus
is seen, in the face
March.’ of
day, approaching one of the gates of the city which looked towards Mount
Olivet.2 In avowed
conformity to a celebrated prophecy of Zechariah, He appears riding on the
yet-unbroken colt of an ass ; the procession of his followers, as He descends
the side of the Mount of Olives, escort Him with royal honors, and with
acclamations expressive of the title of the Messiah, towards the city: many of
them had been witnesses of the resurrection of Lazarus, and no doubt
proclaimed, as they advanced, this extraordinary instance of power. They are
met3 by another band
advancing from the city, who receive Him with the same homage, strew branches
of palm and even their garments in lois way; and the Sanhedrin could not but
hear within the courts of the Temple the appalling proclamation, “ Hosanna!
Blessed is the King of Israel, that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Some of
the Pharisees, who had mingled with the multitude, remonstrate with Jesus, and
command Him to silence what to their ears sounded like the profane, the impious,
adulation of his partisans. Uninterrupted, and only answering that, if these
were silent, the stones on which He trod would bear witness, Jesus still
advances; the acclamations become yet louder; He is hailed as the Son of David,
the rightful heir of David’s kingdom; and the desponding Pharisees, alarmed at
the com plete mastery over the public mind which He appears to possess,
withdraw for the present their fruitless opposition. On the declivity of the
hill, He pauses to
1 John xii.
12.
3 Matt. xxi. 1-10; Mark xi. 1-10; Luke xix.
29-40; John xii. 12-19.
8
John xii. 18.
behold the
city at his feet; and something of that emotion which afterwards is expressed
with much greater fulness betrays itself in a few brief and emphatic
sentences, expressive of the future miserable destiny of the devoted Jerusalem.1
The whole
crowded city is excited by this increasing tumult. Anxious inquiries about the
cause, and the intelligence that it is the entrance of Jesus of Nazareth into
the city, still heighten the universal suspense.2 And even in the Temple itself, where Acciama-
. tions in the
perhaps the
religion of the place, or the ex- Temple, pectation of some public declaration,
or perhaps of some immediate sign of his power, had caused a temporary silence
among his older followers, the children prolong the acclamations.8 Then, too, as the sick, the
infirm, the afflicted with different maladies, are brought to Him to be healed,
and are restored at once to health or to the use of their faculties, at every
instance of the power and goodness of Jesus the same uncontrolled acclamations
from the younger part of the multitude are renewed with increasing fervor.
Those of the
Sanhedrin who are present, though they do not attempt at this immediate
juncture to stem the torrent, venture to remonstrate against the disrespect to
the sanctity of the Temple, and demand of Jesus to silence what to their
feelings sounded like profane violation of . the sacred edifice. Jesus replies,
as usual, with an apt quotation from the sacred writings, which declared that
even the voices of children and infants might be raised, without reproof, in
praise and thanksgiving to God.
Among the
multitudes of Jews who assembled at the Passover, there were usually many
proselytes who
were
called Greeks1 (a
term in Jewish language of as wide signification as that of Barbarians The
Greeks. lho Greeks, and
including all who
were not of
Jewish descent). Some of this class, carricd away by the general enthusiasm
towards Jesus, expressed an anxious desire to be admitted to his presence. It
is not improbable that these proselytes might be permitted to advance no
farther than the division in the outer Court of the Gentiles, where certain
palisades were erected, with inscriptions in various languages, prohibiting the
entrance of all foreigners ; or, even if they were allowed to pass this
barrier, they may have been excluded from the Court of Israel, into which Jesus
may have passed. By the intervention of two of the apostles, their desire is
made known to Jesus; who, perhaps as He passes back through the outward Court,
permits them to approach. No doubt, as these proselytes shared in the general
excitement towards the person of Jesus, so they shared in the general
expectation of the immediate, the instantaneous commencement of the splendor,
the happiness, of the Messiah’s kingdom. To their surprise, either in answer to
or anticipating their declaration to this effect, instead of enlarging on the
glory of that great event, the somewhat ambiguous language of Jesus dwells, at
first, on his approaching fate, on the severe trial which awaits the devotion
of his followers ; yet on the necessity of this humiliation, this dissolution,
to his final glory, and to the triumph of his beneficent religion. It rises at
length into a devotional address to the Father, to bring immediately tc
accomplishment all his promises, for the glorification of the Messiah. As He was
yet speaking, a rolling sound
1
John xii. 20, 43.
was heard in
the heavens, which the unbelieving part of the multitude heard only as au
accidental burst of thunder: to others, however, it seemed an audible, a
distinct, or, according to those who adhere to the strict letter, the
articulate voice1 of
an angel, proclaiming the divine sanction to the presage of his future glory.
Jesus continues his discourse in a tone of profounder mystery, yet evidently
declaring the immediate discomfiture of the “ Prince of this world,” the
adversary of the Jewish people and of the human race, his own departure from
the world, and the important consequences which were to ensue from that
departure. After his death, his religion was to be more attractive than during
his life. “ I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men uuto me.”
Among the characteristics of the Messiah which were deeply rooted iu the
general belief was the eternity of his reign : once revealed, He was revealed
for ever; once established in their glorious, their paradisiacal state, the
people of God, the subjects of the kingdom, were to be liable to no change, 110
vicissitude. The allusions of Jesus to his departure, clashing with this notion
of his perpetual presence, heightened their embarrassment; and, leaving them
in this state of mysterious suspense, He withdrew unpcrceived from the
multitude, and retired again with his own chosen disciples to the village of'
Bethany.
The second
morning, Jesus returned to Jerusalem. A fig-tree stood by the wayside, of that
kind cursing the
. . . . .
barren fig-
well known in
Palestine, which during a mild tree, winter preserve their leaves, and with the
early spring
1 Kuinoel, in loc. Some revert to
the Jewish superstition of the Bath- Kol, or audible voice from heaven; but the
more rational of the Jews interpret this Bath-Kol as an impression upon the
mind, rather than on the outward senses. ,
put forth and
ripen their fruit.1
Jesus approached the tree to pluck the fruit; but, finding that it bore none, condemned
it to perpetual barrenness.
This
transaction is remarkable, as almost the only instance in which Jesus adopted
that symbolic mode of teaching by action, rather than by language, so peculiar
to the Bast, and so frequently exemplified in the earlier books, especially of
the Prophets. For it is difficult to conceive any reason, either for the
incident itself, or for its admission into the evangelie narrative at a period
so important, unless it was believed to convey some profounder meaning. The close
moral analogy, the accordance with the common phraseology between the barren
tree, disqualified by its hardened and sapless state from bearing its natural
produce, and the Jewish nation, equally incapable of bearing the fruits of
Christian goodness, formed a most expressive, and, as it were, living apologue.
On this day,
Jesus renews the remarkable scene second day which had taken plaee at the first
Passover, in Jerusalem. eUStomary traffic, the tumult and confusion,
which his authority had restrained for a short time, had been renewed in the
courts of the Temple; and Jesus again expelled the traders from the holy
precincts, and, to seeure the silence and the sanctity of the whole enclosure,
prohibited the carrying any vessel through the Temple courts.2 Through the whole of this day,
the Sanhedrin, as it were, rested on their arms: they found, with still
increasing apprehen-
1 There are three kinds of figs in
Palestine: 1. The early fig, which bios- soms in March, and ripens its fruit in
June; 2. The Kerman, which shows its fruit in June, and ripens in August; and,
3. The kind in question. See Kuinoel, in he. Pliuy, H. N. xvi. 27. Theoplir.
3,6. Shaw’s Travels. Matt xxi. 18, 19; Mark xi. 12, 14.
2 Matt. xxi. 12, 13; Luke xix. 45, 46; Mark
xi. 15, 17.
sion, that
every hour the multitude crowded with more and more anxious interest around the
Prophet of Nazareth ; his authority over the Temple courts seems to have been
admitted without resistance ; and probably the assertion of the violated
dignity of the Temple was a point on which the devotional feelings would have
been so strongly in favor of the Reformer, that it would have been highly
dangerous and unwise for the magistrates to risk even the appearance of opposition
or of dissatisfaction.
The third
morning arrived. As Jesus passed to the Temple, the fig-tree, the symbol of the
Jew- The thira ish nation, stood utterly withered and dried da7'
up. But, as it were, to prevent the obvious inference from the immediate
fulfilment of his malediction,— almost the only destructive act during his
whole public career, and that on a tree by the wayside, the common property,
— Jesus mingles, with liis promise of power to his apostles to perform acts as
extraordinary, the strictest injunctions to the milder spirit inculcated by his
precept and his example. Their prayers were to be for the pardon, not for the
providential destruction, of their enemies.
The Sanhedrin
had now determined on the necessity of making au effort to discredit Jesus with
Deputation
the more and
more admiring multitude. A *»iew. deputation arrives to demand by what
authority He had taken up his station, and was daily teaching in the Temple,
had expelled the traders, and, in short, had usurped a complete superiority
over the accredited and established instructors of the people.1 The self-command and
promptitude of Jesus caught them, as it were, in their own toils, and reduced
them to the ut
most
embarrassment. The claim of the Baptist to the prophetic character had been generally
admitted, and even passionatelv asserted: his death had, no doubt, still
further endeared him to all who detested the He- rodian rule, or who admired
the uncompromising boldness with which he had condemned iniquity even upon the
throne. The popular feeling would have resented an impeachment on his prophetic
dignity. When, therefore. Jesus demanded their judgmeut as to the baptism of
John, they had but the alternative of acknowledging its divine sanction, and
so tacitly c<jn- demning themselves for not having submitted to his
authority, and even for not admitting his testimony in favor of Jesus: or of
exposing themselves. by denying it. to popular insult and fury. The
self-degrading confession of their ignorance placed Jesus immediately on the
vantage-ground, and at once annulled their right to question or to decide upon
the authority of his mission. — that right which was considered to he vested in
the Sanhedrin. They were condemned to listen to language still more
humiliating. In two striking parables, that of the Lord of the Vineyard, and of
the Marriage Feast.1
Jesus not obscurely intimated the rejection of those laborers who had been
first summoned to the work of God, of those guests who had been first invited
to the nuptial banquet, and the substitution of meaner and most unexpected
guests or subjects in their place.
The fourth
day2 arrived ; and
once more Jesus ap
1 Man. xsd. 2j to xxii- 14; Mart xii. 1-K:
Lute xx. 9-1 f.
- There is
considerable difficulty in ascertaining the evens of the Wednesday. It docs
not appear altogether probable that Jesus should have remained at Bethany in
perfect inactivity or seclusion during the whole of this important day: either,
therefore, as some suppose, the triumphant entry into Jerusalem toot place on the
Mumlav, not on the Sunday, ai-coidin^ to the
peared in the
Temple with a still-i'ncreasing concourse of followers. No unfavorable
impression had The fourth yet been made on the popular mind by his day'
adversaries: his career is yet unchecked; his authority, unshaken.
His enemies
are now fully aware of their own desperate position. The apprehension of the
progress of Jesus unites the most discordant parties into one formidable
conspiracy: the Pharisaic, the Sadducaic, and the Herodian factions agree to
make common cause against the common enemy; the two national sects, the
Traditionists and the Anti-traditionists, no longer hesitate to accept the aid
of the foreign or TheHoro- Herodian faction.1 Some suppose the Hero- dians'
diaus to have been the officers and attendants on the court of Herod, then
present at Jerusalem; but the appellation more probably includes all those
who, estranged from the more inveterate Judaism of the nation, and having, in
some degree, adopted Grecian habits and opinions, considered the peace of the
country best secured by the government of the descendants of Herod, with the
sanction and under the protection of Rome.2 They were the foreign faction, and as such, in general, in
direct opposition to the Pharisaic or national party. But the success of Jesus,
however at present it threatened more immediately the ruling
common
tradition of the Church; or, as here stated, the collision with his various
adversaries spread over the succeeding day.
1 Matt. xxii. 15-22; Mark xii. 13-17; Luke
xxi. 19-26.
2 Of all notions on the much-contested
point of the Herodians, the most improbable is that which identifies them with
the followers of the Galilean Judas. The whole policy of the Herodian family
was in diametrical hostility to those opinions. They maintained their power by
foreign influence, and, with the elder Herod, had systematically attempted to
soften the implacable hostility of the nation by the introduction of Grecian
manners. Their object accordingly was to convict Jesus of the Galilean
opinions, which they themselves held in the utmost detestation.
authorities
in Jerusalem, could not but endanger the Galilean government of Herod. The
object, therefore, was to implicate Jesus with the faction, or at least to
tempt Him into acknowledging opinions similar to those of the Galilean
demagogue, — a scheme tlie more likely to work on the jealousy of the Roman government,
if it was at the last Passover that the apprehension of tumult among the
Galilean strangers had justified, or appeared to justify, the massacre perpetrated
by Pilate. The plot was laid with great subtlety ; for either way Jesus, it
appeared, must commit himself. The great test of the Galilean opinion was the
lawfulness of tribute to a foreign power; which Judas had boldly declared to
be, not merely a base compromise of the national independence, but an impious
infringement on the first principles of their theocracy. But the independence,
if not the universal dominion, of the Jews was inseparably bound up with the
popular belief in the Messiah. Jesus, then, would either, on the question of
the lawfulness of tribute to Caesar, confirm the bolder doctrines of the
Galilean, and so convict himself, before the Romans, as one of that dangerous
faction ; or He would admit its legality, and so annul at once all his claims
to the character of the Messiah. Not in the least thrown off his guard by the
artful courtesy, or rather the adulation, of their address, Jesus appeals to
the current coin of the country, which, bearing the impress of the Roman Emperor,
was iii itself a recognition of Roman supremacy.1
The Herodian
or political party thus discomfited, the
1 The latter part of the sentence, “ Render
therefore unto Csesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that
are God’s,” refers, in all probability, to the payment of the Temple tribute,
which was only received in the coin of the country. Hence, as before observed,
the money-changers in the Temple. — Matt. xxii. 23-33; Mark xii, 18-27; Lake
xx. 27-38.
Sadducees
advanced to the encounter. Nothing can appear more captious or frivolous than
their The gad_ question with regard to the future posses- ducees-
sion of a wife in another state of being, who had been successively married to
seven brothers, according to the Levirate law. But, perhaps, considered in
reference to the opinions of the time, it will seem less extraordinary. The
Sadducees, no doubt, had heard that the resurrection, and the life to come, had
formed an essential tenet in the teaching of Jesus. They concluded that his
notions on these subjects were those generally prevalent among the people. But,
if the later Rabbinical notions of the happiness of the renewed state of
existence were current, or even known in their general outline, nothing tsould
be more gross or unspiritual :1
if less voluptuous, they were certainly not less strange and unreasonable, than
those which perhaps were derived from the same source, — the Paradise of
Mohammed. The Sadducees were accustomed to contend with these disputants, whose
paradisiacal state, to be established by the Messiah, after the resurrection,
was but the completion of those temporal promises in the book of Deuteronomy, a
perpetuity of plenty, fertility, and earthly enjoyment.2 The answer of Jesus, while it
declares the certainty of another state of existence, carefully purifies it
from all these corporeal and earthly images ; and assimilates man, in another
state of existence, to a higher order of beings. And in his concluding
inference from the passage in
1 It is decided, in the Sohar on Genesis,
fol. 24, col. 96, “ That woman, who has married two husbands in this world, is
restored to the first in the world to come.” — Schoetgen, in be.
2 Josephus, in his address to his
countrymen, mingles up into one splendid picture the Metempsychosis and the
Elysium of the Greeks. In Schoetgen, in loc.7 may be found
extracts from the Talmud, of a purer character, and more resembling the
language of our Lord.
Exodus, hi
which God is described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the allusion
may perhaps be still kept up. The temporal and corporeal resurrection,
according to the common Pharisaic belief, was to take place only after the
coming of the Messiah; yet tlieir reverence for the fathers of the race, their
holy ancestors, would scarcely allow even the Sadducee to suppose their total
extinction. The actual, the pure beatitude of the Patriarchs was probably an admitted
point, — if not formerly decided by their teachers, implicitly received, and
fervently embraced by the religious feelings of the whole people. But if,
according to the Sadducaic principle, the soul did not exist independent of
the body, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had shared the common fate, the favor
of God had ceased with their earthly dissolution ; nor in the time of Moses
could He be justly described as the God of those who in death had sunk into
utter annihilation.
Although now
engaged in a common cause, the hostility of the Pharisaic party to the
Sadducees could not but derive gratification from their public discomfiture.
One scribe of their sect is so struck by the superiority of Jesus, that, though
still with something of an insidious design, he demands in what manner he
should rank the commandments, which in popular belief were probably of equal
dignity and importance.1 But, when Jesus comprises the whole of
religion under the simple precepts of the love of God and the love of man, the
scribe is so struck with the sublimity of the language, that he does not
hesitate openly to espouse his doctrines.
Paralyzed by
this desertion, and warned by the
discomfiture
of the two parties which had preceded them in dispute with Jesus, the Pharisees
ThePhari- appear to have stood wavering and uneer- sees'
tain how to speak or act. Jesus seizes the opportunity of still further
weakening their authority with the assembled multitude; and, in his turn,
addresses an embarrassing question as to the descent of the Messiah.1 The Messiah, according to the
universal belief, would be the heir and representative of David: Jesus, by a
reference to the Second'Psalm, which was generally considered prophetic of the
Redeemer, forces them to confess that, even according to their own authority,
the kingdom of the Messiah was to be of far higher diguity, far wider extent,
and administered by a more exalted sovereign than David; for even David
himself, by their own admission, had called Him his Lord.
The Pharisees
withdrew in mortified silence, and for that time abandoned all hope of
betraying Him into any incautious or unpopular denial by their captious
questions. But they withdrew unmoved by the wisdom, unattracted by the beauty,
unsubdued by the authority, of Jesus.
After some
delay, during which took place the beautiful incident of his approving the
charity of the poor widow,2
who cast her mite into the treasury of the Temple, He addressed the wondering
multitude (“ for the common people heard Him gladly ” 8) in a grave
and solemn denunciation against the tyranny, the hypocrisy, the bigoted
attachment to the most minute observances, and at the same time the total
blindness
1 Matt. xxii. 41-40; Mark xii. 35-37; Luke
xx. 39-44.
2 Mark xii. 41-44; Luke xxi. 1-4.
* “And the common peopie heard Him
gladly.”—Mark xii. 37.
to the spirit
of religion, which actuated that great predominant party. Ho declared them
possessed by the same proud and inhuman spirit which had perpetually bedewed
the city with the blood of the prophets.1 Jerusalem had thus for ever rejected the mercy of God.
This
appalling condemnation was, as it were, the final declaration of war against
the prevailing religion: it declared that the new doctrines could not
harmonize with minds so inveterately wedded to their own narrow bigotry. But
even yet the people were not altogether estranged from Jesus; and in that class
in which the Pharisaic interest had hitherto despotically ruled, it appeared as
it were trembling for its existence.
And now every
thing indicated the approaching, the in’the&te immediate crisis.
Although the populace of jesua. were so decidedly, up to the present instant,
in his favor, — though many of the ruling party were only withholden by the
dread of that awful sentence of excommunication, winch inflicted civil, almost
religious death,2
from avowing themselves his disciples, — yet Jesus never entered the Temple
again. The next time He appeared before the people was as a prisoner, as a
condemned malefactor. As He left the Temple, a casual expression of admiration
from some of his followers, at the magnificence and solidity of the building
and the immense size of the stones of which it was formed, called forth a
prediction of its impending ruin; which was expanded, to four of liis apostles,
into a more detailed and circumstantial description of its appalling fate, as
He sat during the evening, upon the Mount of Olives.3
1 Jfatt.
xxiii.; Mark xii. S8-40; Luka xx. 45-47.
a
See Hist, of the Jews, vol. ii. p. 466.
s Matt xxir.,
m.; Mark xiii.; Lake xxi. 6-38.
It is
impossible to conceive a spectacle of greater natural or moral sublimity than
the Saviour -tobus on
the
t» .
Ar Mount of
seated 011
the slope of the Mount of Olives, ouves. and thus looking down, almost for the
last time, 011 the Temple and city of Jerusalem, crowded as it then was with
near three millions of worshippers. It Evening view was evening; and the whole
irregular outline £nd the3*'™1 of the city, rising from the
deep glens which Iemple- encircled it on all sides, might be
distinctly traced. The sun, the significant emblem of the great Fountain of
moral light, to which Jesus and his faith had been perpetually compared, may be
imagined sinking behind the western hills, while its last rays might linger on
the broad and massy fortifications on Mount Sion, on the stately palace of
Herod, on the square tower, the Antonia, at the corner of the Temple, and on
the roof of the Temple, fretted all over with golden spikes, which glittered
like fire; while, below, the colonnades and lofty gates would cast their broad
shadows over the courts, and afford that striking contrast between vast masses
of gloom and gleams of the richest light, which only an evening scene, like the
present, can display. Nor, indeed (even without the sacred and solemn
associations connected with the Holy City), would it be easy to conceive any
natural situation in the world of more impressive grandeur, or likely to be
seen with greater advantage under the influence of such accessaries, than that
of Jerusalem, seated, as it was, upon hills of irregular height, intersected by
bold ravines, and with still loftier mountains in the distance ; itself
formed, in its most conspicuous parts, of gorgeous ranges of Eastern
architecture, in all its lightness, luxuriance, and variety. The effect may
have been heightened by the rising of the slow vol- voi,. i. 20
umes of smoke
from the evening sacrifices, while even at the distance of the slope of Mount
Olivet the silence may have been faintly broken by the hymns of the
worshippers.
Yet the fall
of that splendid edifice was inevitable: Necessity for the total demolition of
all those magnificent tionofthe and time-hallowed structures might not be
Jerusalem, averted. It was necessary to the complete development of the designs
of Almighty Providence for the welfare of mankind in the promulgation of
Christianity. Independent of all other reasons, tlie destruction certainly of
the Temple, and, if not of the city, at least of the city as the centre and
metropolis of a people, the only true and exclusive worshippers of the one
Almighty Creator, seemed essential to the progress of the new faith. The
universal and comprehensive religion to be promulgated by Christ and his
apostles was grounded on the abrogation of all local claims to peculiar
sanctity, of all distinctions of one nation above another as possessing any
especial privilege in the knowledge or faxor of the Deity. The time was come
when “ neither in Jerusalem nor on the mountain of Gerizim” was the great
Universal Spirit to be worshipped with circumscribed or local homage. As long,
however, as the Temple on Mount Moriah remained, hallowed by the reverence of
ages,
— sanctified, according to the general belief,
for perpetuity, by the especial command of God as his peculiar
dwelling-place; so long, among the Jews at least, and even among other nations,
the true principle of Christian worship might be counteracted by tho notion of
the inalienable sanctity of this one place. Judaism would scarcely be entirely
annulled, so long as the Temple rose in its original majesty and veneration.
Yet,
notwithstanding this absolute necessity for its destruction; notwithstanding
that it thus Jesuscon. stood, as it were, in the way of the progress
tTh sadness of human advancement and salvation,—the ^LfofU”
Son of Man does not contemplate its ruin Jenisalem- without emotion.
And, in all the superhuman beauty of the character of Jesus, nothing is more
affecting and impressive than the profound melancholy with which He foretells
the future desolation of the city, which, before two days were passed, was to
reek with his own blood. Nor should we do justice to this most remarkable
incident in his life, if we should consider it merely as a sudden emotion of
compassion, as the natural sensation of sadness at the decay or dissolution of
that which has long worn the aspect of human grandeur. It seems rather a wise
and far-sighted consideration, not merely of the approaching guilt and future
penal doom of the city, but of the remoter moral causes, which, by forming the
national character, influenced the national destiny: the long train of events,
the wonderful combination of circumstances, which had gradually wrought the
Jewish people to that sterner frame of mind, too soon to display itself with
such barbarous, such fatal ferocity. Jesus might seem, not merely to know what
was in man, but how it entered into man’s heart and mind. His was divine
charity, enlightened by infinite wisdom.
In fact,
there was an intimate moral connection between the murder of Jesus and the
doom of the Jewish city. It was the same national temperament, the same
characteristic disposition of the people, which now morally disqualified them “
from knowing,” in the language of Christ, “ the things which belonged unto
their peace,” which forty years afterwards committed
them in their
deadly and ruinous struggle with the The ruin of masters of the world.
Christianity alone consequence could have subdued or mitigated that stub-
character. born fanaticism which drove them at length to their desperate
collision with the arms of Rome. As Christians, the Jewish people might have
subsided iuto peaceful subjects of the universal empire. They might have lived,
as the Christians did, with the high and inalienable consolations of faith and
hope under the heaviest oppressions; and calmly awaited the time when their
holier and more beneficent ambition might be gratified by the submission of the
lords of the world to the religious dominion founded by Christ and his
apostles. They would have slowly won that victory by the patient heroism of
martyrdom and the steady perseverance iu the dissemination of their faith,
which it was madness to hope that they could ever obtain by force of arms. As
Jews, they were almost sure, sooner or later, to provoke the implacable vengeance
of their foreign sovereigns. The same vision of worldly dominion, the same obstinate
expectation of a temporal Deliverer, which made them unable to comprehend the
nature of the redemption to be wrought by the presence, and the kingdom to be
established by the power, of Christ, continued to the end to mingle with their
wild and frantic resistance.
In the
rejection and murder of Jesus, the rulers, as Immediate their interests and
authority were more imme- rojection of diately endangered, were more deeply
impli-
Jesus
by the . , \ . , r
jews. cated
than the people; but, unless the mass of the people had been blinded by these
false notions of the Messiah, they would not have demanded, or at least, with
the general voice, assented to the sacrifice of Jesus. The progress of Jesus at
the present period
in the public
estimation, his transient popularity, arose from the enforced admiration of his
commanding demeanor, the notoriety of his wonderful works, perhaps, for such
language is always acceptable to the common ear, from his bold animadversions
on the existing authorities ; but it was no doubt supported in the mass of the
populace by a hope that even yet He would conform to the popular views of the
Messiah’s character. Their present brief access of faith would not have stood
long against the continued disappointment of that hope; and it was no doubt by
working on the rc-action of this powerful feeling, that the Sanhedrin were able
so suddenly, and, it almost appears, so entirely, to change the prevailing
sentiment. Whatever the proverbial versatility of the popular mind, there must
have been some chord strung to the most sensitive pitch, the slightest touch
of which would vibrate through the whole frame of society, and madden at least
a commanding majority to their blind concurrence in this revolting iniquity.
Thus in the Jewish nation, but more especially in the prime movers, the rulers
and the heads of the Pharisaic party, the murder of Jesus was an act of
unmitigated cruelty ; but, as we have said, it arose out of the generally
fierce and bigoted spirit which morally incapacitated the whole people from
discerning the evidence of his mission from Heaven, in his acts of divine
goodness as well as of divine power. It was an act of religious fanaticism:
they thought, in the language of Jesus liimself, that they were “ doing God
service ” when they slew the Master, as much as afterwards when they persecuted
his followers.
When,
however, the last, and, as far as the existence of the nation, the most fatal
display of this
fanaticism
took place, it was accidentally allied with nobler motives, with generous
impatience of oppression, and the patriotic desire of national independence.
However desperate and frantic the struggle against such irresistible power, the
unprecedented tyranny of the later Roman procurators, Felix, Albinus, and
Florus, might almost have justified the prudence of manly and resolute
insurrection. Yet in its spirit and origin it was the same; and it is well
known, that even to the last, during the most sanguinary and licentious tumults
in the Temple as well as the city, they never entirely lost sight of a
deliverance from Heaven: God, they yet thought, would interpose in behalf of
his chosen people. In short, the same moral state of the people (for the
rulers, for obvious reasons, were less forward in the resistance to the Romans),
the same temperament and disposition, now led them to reject Jesus and demand
the release of Barabbas, which, forty years later, provoked the unrelenting
vengeance of Titus, and deluged their streets with the blood of their own
citizens. Even after the death of Jesus, this spirit might have been allayed,
but only by a complete abandonment of all the motives which led to his
crucifixion, — by the general reception of Christianity in all its meekness,
humility, and purity, — by the tardy substitution of the hope of a moral, for
that of temporal dominion. This, unhappily, was not the case: but it belongs to
Jewish history to relate how the circumstances of the times, instead of
assuaging or subduing, exasperated the people into madness ; instead of predisposing
to Christianity, confirmed the inveterate Judaism, and led at length to the
accomplishment of their anticipated doom.
Altogether,
then, it is evident, that it was this brood
ing hope of
sovereignty, at least of political independence, monlded up with religious
enthusiasm, and lurking, as it were, in the very heart’s core of the people,
which rendered it impossible that the pure, the gentle, the humane, the
unworldly and comprehensive doctrines of Jesus should be generally received, or
his character appreciated, by a nation in that temper of mind; and the nation
who could thus incur the guilt of his death was prepared to precipitate itself
to such a fate as at length it suffered.
Hence
political sagacity might, perhaps, have anticipated the crisis, which could
only be averted by that which was morally impossible, — the simultaneous conversion
of the whole people to Christianity. Yet the distinctness, the minuteness, the
circumstan- Distilictnesa tial accuracy, with which the prophetic
outline J^us proph- of the siege and fall of Jerusalem is drawn, Mofjem- bear,
perhaps, greater evidence of more than salem' human foreknowledge
than any other in the sacred volume; and, in fact, this profound and
far-sighted wisdom, this anticipation of the remote political consequences of
the reception or rejection of his doctrines, supposing Jesus but an ordinary
human being, would be scarcely less extraordinary than prophecy itself.
Still though
determined, at all hazards, to suppress
the growing;
party of Jesus, the Sanhedrin Embarrass° i i . ment of th* were
greatly embarrassed as to their course sanhedrm.
of
proceeding. Jesus invariably passed the night without the walls, and only
appeared during the daytime, though with the utmost publicity, in the Temple.
His seizure in the Temple especially during the festival, would almost
inevitably lead to tumult; and (since it was yet doubtful on which side the
populace would an-ay themselves) tumult, as inevitably to the prompt
interference
of the Roman authority. The procurator, on the slightest indication of
disturbance, without inquiring into the guilt or innocence of either party,
might coerce both with equal severity ; or, even without further examination,
let loose the guard, always mounted in the gallery which connected the fortress
of Antonia with the north-western corner of the Temple, to mow down both the
conflicting parties in indiscriminate havoc. He might thus mingle the blood of
all present, as he had done that of the Galileans, with the sacrificial
offerings. To discover, then, where Jesus might be arrested without commotion
or resistance from his followers, so reasonably to be apprehended, the
treachery of one of his more immediate disciples was absolutely necessary; yet
this was an event, considering the commanding influence possessed by Jesus
over his followers, rather to be desired than expected.
On
a sudden, however, appeared within their court Treachery oue °f the
chosen twelve, with a voluntary “■nd offer of assisting them in the apprehension of
his Master.1 Much ingenuity has been
displayed by some recent writers in attempting to palliate, or rather to
account for, this extraordinary conduct of Judas; but the language in which
Jesus spoke of the crime appears to confirm the common opinion of its enormity.
It has been suggested, either that Judas might oxpcct Jesus to put forth his
power, even after his apprehension, to elude or to escape from his enemies;
and thus his avarice might calculate 011 securing the reward without being an
accomplice in absolute murder,
motives of
thus at once
betraying his Master and defrauding his employers. According to others, still
higher motives may have mingled with his love
1 Matt. xxvi.
14-16; Mark xiv. 10, 11; Luke xxii. 2-6.
of gain: he
may have supposed, that, by thus involving Jesus in difficulties otherwise
inextricable, he would leave Him only the alternative of declaring himself
openly and authoritatively to be the Messiah, and so force Him to the tardy
accomplishment of the ambitious visions of his partisans. It is possible, that
the traitor may not have contemplated, or may not have permitted himself
clearly to contemplate, the ultimate consequences of his crime: he may have
indulged the vague hope, that, if Jesus were really the Messiah, He bore, if we
may venture the expression, “ a charmed life,” and was safe in his inherent
immortality (a notion in all likelihood inseparable from that of the Deliverer)
from the malice of his enemies. If He were not, the crime of his betrayal would
not be of very great importance. There were other motives which would concur
with the avarice of Judas: the rebuke which he had received when he
expostulated about the waste of the ointment, if it had not excited any feeling
of exasperation against his Master, at least showed that his character was
fully understood by the Saviour. He must have felt himself out of his element
among the more honest and sincere disciples; nor can he have been actuated by
any real or profound veneration for the exquisite perfection of a character so
opposite to his own. And, thus insincere and doubting, he may have shrunk from
the approaching crisis; and, as he would seize any means of extricating himself
from that cause which had now become so full of danger, his covetousness would
direct him to those means which would at once secure his own personal safety,
and obtain the price, the thirty pieces of silver,1 set by public proclamation on the head of Jesus.
1 The thirty pieces of silver (shekels) are
estimated at £Z. 10«. 8d. of on
Nor is the
desperate access of remorse, which led to the public restitution of the reward
and to the suicide of the traitor, irreconcilable with the unmitigated
heinousness of the treachery. Men coolly meditate a crime, of which the actual
perpetration overwhelms them with horror. The general detestation, of which, no
doubt, Judas could not but be conscious, not merely among his former
companions, the followers of Jesus, but even among the multitude; the
supercilious coldness of the Sanhedrin, who, having employed him as their
instrument, treat his recantation with the most contemptuous indifference, —
might overstrain the firmest, and work upon the basest mind: and even the
unexampled sufferings and tranquil endurance of Jesus, however the betrayer may
have calmly surveyed them when distant, and softened and subdued by his
imagination, when present to his mind in their fearful reality, forced by the
busy tongue of rumor upon his ears, perhaps not concealed from his sight, might
drive him to desperation, little short of insanity.1
It was on the
last evening2 but one
before the death Tho Pm8. of Jesus that the fatal compact was made:
the next day, the last of his life, Jesus depresent money. It was the sum
named in the Law (Exod. xxi. 32) as the Talue of the life of a slave; and it
has been supposed that the Sanhedrin were desirous of showing their contempt
for Jesus by the mean price that they offered for his head.
Perhaps, when
we are embarrassed at the smallness of the sum covenanted for and received by
Judas, we are imperceptibly influenced by our own sense of the incalculable
importance of those consequences which arose out of the treachery of Judas. The
service which he performed for this sum was, after all, no more than giving
information as to the time and place in which Jesus might be seized among a few
disciples 'without fear of popular tumult, conducting their officers to the
spot where Ho might be found, and designating hia person when they arrived at
that spot.
1 Matt. xxvi. 17-29; Mark xiv. 12-25; Luke
vii. 38; John xiii. to end of
xvii.
2 “After two days was the Passover,” in
Jewish phraseology, implies o* the second dav after.
termines on
returning to the city to celebrate the Feast of the Passover : his disciples
are sent to occupy a room prepared for the purpose.1 His conduct and language before and during the whole
repast clearly indicate his preparation for inevitable death.2 His washing the feet of the
disciples, his prediction of his betrayal, his intimation to Judas that He is
fully aware of his design, his quiet dismissal of the traitor from the
assembly, his institution of the second characteristic ordinance of the new
religion, his allusions in that rite to the breaking of his body and the ThB
Last pouriug-forth of his blood, his prediction of Supper' the
denial of Peter, his final address to his followers, and his prayer before He
left the chamber, are all deeply impregnated with the solemn melancholy, yet
calm and unalterable composure, with which He looks forward to all the terrible
details of his approaching, his almost immediate, sufferings. To his followers
He makes, as it were, the valedictory promise, that his religion would not
expire at his death; that his place would be filled by a mysterious Comforter,
who
1 All houses, according to Josephus, were
freely open to strangers during the Passover: no payment was received for
lodging. The Talraudic writings confirm this: “ The master of the family
received the skins of sacrifices. It is a custom that a man leave his earthen
jug, and also the skin of his sacrifice, to his host.” — The Gloss. The
inhabitants did not let out their houses at a price to them that came up to the
feasts, hut granted them to them gratis.
— Lightfoot, vol. x. p. 44.
2 Of all difficulties, that concerning
which we arrive at the least satisfactory conclusion is the apparent
anticipation of the Passover hy Christ* The fact is clear that Jesus celebrated
the Passover on the Thursday, the leading Jews on the Friday: the historical
evidence of this in the Gospels is unanswerable, independent of all theological
reasoning. The reason of this difference is and must, I conceive, remain
undecided. Whether it was an act of supreme authority assumed by Jesus; whether
there was any schism about the right day; whether that schism was hetween the
Pharisaic and Anti-Phaxisaic part 7, or hetween the Jews and Galileans, — all
is purely con* jectural.
was to teach,
to guide, to console, — the promise of the Holy Ghost, which was to be the
great Principle, and to the end the Life of Christianity.
This calm
assurance of approaching death in Jesus is the more striking when contrasted
with the inveterately Jewish notions of the Messiah’s kingdom, which even yet
possess the minds of the apostles. They are now fiercely contesting1 for their superiority in that
earthly dominion, which even yet they suppose on the eve of its commencement.
Nor does Jesus at this time altogether correct these erroneous notions, but in
some degree falls into the prevailing language, to assure them of the
distinguished reward which awaited his more faithful disciples. After
inculcating the utmost humility by an allusion to the lowly fraternal service
which He had just before performed in washing their feet, He describes the
happiness and glory which they are at length to attain, by the strong, and no
doubt familiar, imagery, of their being seated on twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel.
The festival
was closed, according to the usage, with the second part of the Hallel,2 the Psalms, from the 113th to
the 118th inclusive, of which the former were customarily sung at the
commencement, the latter at the end, of the paschal supper. Jesus with his
disciples again departed from the room in the city,8 where the feast
had been held, probably down the Street of the Temple, till they came to the
valley: they crossed the brook of Kidron, and began to ascend the slope of the
Mount of Olives. Within the city, no open space was left for gardens;4
but the whole
1 Luke xxii. 24-30.
9
Buxtorf, Lex Talmudica, p. 613. Lightfoot, in he.
8 Matt, xx
vi. 30-56; Mark xiv. 32-52; Luke xxii. 39-53; John xviii. 1.
* Lightfoot’s derivations of some of the
places on Mount Olivet are curioud»
neighborhood
of Jerusalem was laid out in enclosures for the convenience and enjoyment of
the inhabitants. The historian of the war relates, not without feelings of
poignant sorrow, the havoc made among these peaceful retreats by the
devastating approaches of the Roman army.1 Jesus turned aside into one of these enclosures,2 which it would seem from the
Jesus in the
garden of
subsequent
history, was a place of custom- oethsomane. ary retreat, well known to his
immediate followers. The early hours of the night were passed by Him in retired
and devotional meditation, while the weary disciples are overpowered by
involuntary slumber. Thrice Jesus returns to them, and each time He finds them
sleeping. But to Him it was no hour of quiet or repose. In the solitary garden
of Gethsemane, Jesus, who in public, though confronting danger and suffering
neither with stoical indifference, nor with the effort of a strong mind working
itself up to the highest moral courage, but with a settled dignity, a calm and
natural superiority, now,-as it were, endured the last struggle of human
nature. The whole scene of his approaching trial, Ins inevitable death, is
present to his mind; and, for an instant, He prays to the Almighty Father to
release Him from the task, which, although of such importance to the welfare of
mankind, is to be accomplished by such fearful means. The next instant,
however, the momentary weakness is subdued; and, though the agony is so severe
that the sweat falls like large drops of blood to the ground, He resigns
himself at once to the will of God. Nothing can heighten the terrors of the
coming scene so much,
— Beth-hana, the place of dates; Beth-phage,
the place of green figs; Gethsemane, the place of oil presses.
1 Hist, of the Jews, ii. 324.
2 Matt. xxvi. 36-46; Mark xiy. 32-42; Lake
xxii. 41-46; John xviii. L
as its
effect, in anticipation, on the mind of Jesus himself.
The devotions
of Jesus and the slumbers of his fol- Betrayai of lowers, as midnight
approached, were rudely jesus. interrupted. Jesus had rejoined his now-
awakened disciples for the last time; He had commanded them to rise, and be
prepared for the terrible event. Still, 110 doubt, incredulous of the sad
predictions of their Master; still supposing that his unbounded power would
secure Him from any attempt of his enemies, — they beheld the garden filled
with armed men, and gleaming with lamps and torches. Judas advances, and makes
the signal which had been agreed on; saluting his Master with the customary
mark of respect, — a kiss on the cheek, for which he receives the calm but
severe rebuke of Jesus for thus treacherously abusing this mark of familiarity
and attachment: “ Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss ? ”1 The tranquil dignity of Jesus
overawed the soldiers who first approached; they were most likely ignorant of
the service on which they were employed ; and, when Jesus announces himself as
the object of their search, they shrink back in astonishment, and fall to the
earth. Jesus, however, covenanting only for the safe dismissal of his
followers, readily surrenders himself to the guard. The fiery indignation of
Peter, who had drawn his sword, and endeavored, at least by his example, to
incite the few adherenls of Jesus to resistance, is repressed by the command of
his Master: his peaceful religion disclaims all alliance with the acts or the
weapons of the violent. The man2
whose ear had been struck off was instanta-
1 Matt. xxvi.
47-60; Mark xiv. 43-60; Luke xxii. 47-63; John xviu. 8-11.
o It is a curious observation of Sender,
that St. John alone gives the name
neously healed;
and Jesus, with no more than a brief and calm remonstrance against this igno-
Jeauaied
u _ prisoner to
minious
treatment, against this arrestation, wisdty. not in the face of day, in the
public Temple, but at night, by men with arms in their hands, as though He had
been a robber, allows himself to be led hack, without resistance, into the
city. His panic-stricken followers disperse on all sides; and Jesus is left,
forsaken and alone, amid his mortal enemies.
The caprice,
the jealousy, or the prudence of the Roman government, as has been before
observed, had in no point so frequently violated the feelings of the subject
nation, as in the deposition of the high Th6high. priest, and the
appointment of a successor pnest' to the office, in whom they might
hope to place more implicit confidence. The stubbormiess of the people,
revolted by this wanton insult, persisted in honoring with the title those whom
they could not maintain in the post of authority; all who had borne the office
retained, in common language, the appellation of “ high-priest,” if, indeed,
the appellation was not still more loosely applied. Probably the most
influential man in Jerusalem at this time was Annas, or Ananus, four of whose
sons in turn either had been, or were subsequently, elevated to that high
dignity now filled by his son-in-law, Caiaphas.
The house of
Annas was the first place1
to which Jesus was led, either that the guard might HolIseof receive
further instructions, or perhaps as the Axmaa' plaee of the greatest
security; while the Sanhedrin was hastily summoned to meet at that untimely
hour, towards midnight or soon after, in the house of
of the servant of the high-priest, Malchus; and John, it appears, was
known to sonic of the household of the chief magistrate.
* John xviii. 12-14.
Caiaphas.
Before the houses of the more wealthy in the East, or rather within the outer
porch, there is usually a large square open court, in which public business is
transacted, particularly by those who fill official stations. Into such a
court, before the palace of Caiaphas, Jesus was led by the soldiers; and Peter,
following unnoticed amid the throng, lingered before the porch, until John, who
happened to be familiarly known to some of the high-priest’s servants, obtained
permission for his entrance.1
The
first process seems to have been a private exam- First inter- ination,2 perhaps while the rest of the
Sanhe- rogatory. were
assembling, before the high-priest.
He demanded
of Jesus the nature of his doctrines, and the character of his disciples. Jesus
appealed to the publicity of his teaching, and referred him to his hearers for
an account of the tenets which He had advanced. He had no secret doctrines,
either of tumult or sedition; He had ever spoken “ in public, in the synagogue,
or in the Temple.”
And now the
fearful scene of personal insult and violence began. An officer of the
high-priest, enraged at the calm composure with which Jesus answered the
interrogatory, struck Him on the mouth (beating on the mouth, sometimes with
the hand, more often with a thong of leather or a slipper, is still a common
act of violence in the East).3
He bore the insult with the same equable placidity: “ If I have spoken evil,
bear witness of the evil: but, if well, why smitest thou me ? ”
The more
formal arraignment began;4
and, how-
1
John xviii. 15-19. 2 Matt. xxvi. 57; Mark xiv. 55-64; Luke xxii. 54.
# John xviii. 20-24.
4
Matt. xxvi. 59-66; Mark xiv. 55-64; Lnke xxii. 66-71; John xviii. 19-24.
ever hurried
and tumultuous the meeting, the San- hedrin, either desirous that their
proceedings second mo™
. , . public
inter-
should be
conducted with regularity, or, rogatory, more likely, strictly fettered by the
established rules of their court, perhaps by no means unanimous in their
sentiments, were, after all, in the utmost embarrassment how to obtain a legal
capital conviction. Witnesses were summoned; but the immutable principles of
the Law, and the invariable practice of the tribunal, required, in every case
of life and death, the agreement of two witnesses on some specific charge. Many
were at hand, suborned by the enemies of Jesus, and hesitating at no falsehood;
but their testimony was so confused, or bore so little on any capital charge,
that the court was still further perplexed. At length, two witnesses deposed to
the misapprehended speech of Jesus, at his first visit to Jerusalem, relating
to the destruction of the Temple. But even these depositions were so
contradictory, that it was scarcely possible to venture on a conviction upon
such loose and incoherent statements. Jesus, in the mean time, preserved a
tranquil and total silence. He neither interrupted nor questioned the
witnesses; He did not condescend to place himself upon his defence. Nothing,
therefore, remained1
but to question the prisoner, and, if possible, to betray Him into criminating
himself. The high-priest, rising to give greater energy to his address, and
adjuring Him in the most solemn manner, in the name of God, to answer the
truth,
1 Some have supposed that there were two
examinations in different places before the Sanhedrin, — one more private in
the house of Caiaphas; another more public, in the Gazith, the chamher in the
Temple where the Sanhedrin usually sat. But the account of St. John, the most
particular of the whole, says expressly (xviii. 28), that He was carried
directly from the house of Caiaphas to the Praatorium of Pilate.
VOL.
I. 21
demands
whether He is indeed the Messiah, the Christ, the son of the Living God. Jesus
at once answers in the affirmative, and adds a distinct allusion to the
prediction of Daniel,1
then universally admitted to refer to the reign of the Messiah. His words may
jesus ac- be tllus paraphrased: “ Ye shall know me foi EZ27&
that mighty King described by the prophet, Messiah. ye shaii
know me when my great, eternal, and imperishable kingdom shall be
established on tha ruins of your theocracy.”
The secret
joy of the high-priest, though perhaps conduct of his devout horror was not
altogether insin- priest. cere, was disguised by the tone and gesture of
religious indignation which he assumed. He rent his clothes; an act considered
indecorous, almost indecent, in the high-priest, unless justified by an outrage
against the established religion so flagrant and offensive as this declaration
of Jesus.2 He pronounced
that speech (strangely indeed did its lofty tone contrast with the appearance
of the prisoner) to be direct and treasonable blasphemy. The whole court,
either sharing in the indignation, or hurried away by the vehement gesture and
commanding influence of the high-priest, hastily passed the fatal sentence, and
declared Jesus guilty of the capital crime.
The insolent
soldiery (as the Saviour was withdrawn jesus in- from the court) had now full
license, and
suited
by . ;
the soldiery,
perhaps more than the license, of their su
1 The allusion to this prophecy (Dan. vii.
IS, 14) is manifest.
2 They who judge a blasphemer, first hid
the witness to speak out plainly what he hath heard; and, when he speaks it,
the judges, standing on their feet, rend their garments, and do not sew them up
again. — Sanhed. i. 7, 10, and Bahyl. Gemar. In loc.
The
high-priest was forbidden to rend his garments in the case of pri-
periors to
indulge the brutality of their own dispositions. They began to spit 011 his
face, — in the East the most degrading insult; they blindfolded Him, and struck
Him with the palms of their hands, and, in their miserable merriment, commanded
Him to display his prophetic knowledge by detecting the hand that was raised
against Him.1
The dismay,
the despair, which had seized upon his adherents, is most strongly exemplified
by the denial of Peter. The zealous disciple, after he had obtained admittance
into the hall, stood warming himself, in the cool of the dawning morning,
probably by a kind of brazier.2
He was first accosted by a female servant, who charged him with being an
accomplice of the prisoner: Peter denied the charge with vehe- Denial of
mence, and retired to the portico or porch in Pctor' front of the
palace. A second time, another female renewed the accusation: with still more
angry protestations, Peter disclaimed all connection with his Master; and
once, but unregarded, the cock crew. An hour afterwards, probably about this
time, after the formal condemnation, the charge was renewed by a relation of
the man whose ear he had cut off. His harsh Galilean pronunciation had betrayed
him as coming from that province; but Peter now resolutely confirmed his denial
with an oath. It was the usual time of the second cock-crowing, and again it was
distinctly heard. Jesus, who was probably at that time in the outer hall or
porch in the midst of the insulting soldiery, turned his face towards Peter,
who, overwhelmed with shame
vate mourning
for the dead. — Lev. x. 6; xxi. 10. In the time of public calamity, he did.— 1
Mace. xi. 71; Joseph., B. J. ii. 26, 27.
1 Matt. xxvi. 67, 68; Mark xiv. 65; Luke
xxii. 63-65.
2 Matt. xxvi. 58, 69, 76; Mark xiv. 54, 66,
72; Lnke xxii. 54-62; John
xviii. 16,16,
and distress,
hastily retreated from the sight of his deserted Master, and wept the bitter
tears of self-reproach and humiliation.
But,
although the Sanhedrin had thus passed their sentence, there remained a serious
obstacle before it Question of could be carried into execution. On the con-
the&ntadrin tested point, whether the Jews, under the SpMpm- Roman
government, possessed the power of ‘Bhment. an(j
death,1 it is not
easy to state the
question with
brevity and distinctness. Notwithstanding the apparently clear and distinct
recognition of the Sanhedrin, that they had not authority to put any man to
death;2
notwithstanding the remarkable concurrence of Rabbinical tradition with this
declaration, which asserts that the nation had been deprived of the power of
life and death forty years before the destruction of the city,3—many
of the most learned writers, some indeed of the ablest of the Fathers,4 from arguments arising out of
the practice of Roman provincial jurisprudence, and from later facts in the
evangelic history and that of the Jews, have supposed, that even if, as is
doubtful, they were deprived of this power in civil, they retained it in
religious, cases. Some have
1
Tbe question is discussed in all the commentators. See Lardner, Credib. i. 2 j
Basnage, B. v. c. 2; Biscoe on the Acts, c. 6; note to Law’s Theory, 147 j but,
above all, Krebs, Observat. in Nov. Test. 64-155; Rosenmuller and Kui- noel, in
he.
a
John xviii. 31.
8 “Traditio est quadraginta annos ante excidium templi,
ablatum foisse jus vitfe et mortis.” — Hieros. Sanhed. fol.
18,1. Ib. fol. 242: “ Quadraginta anms ante vastatum templum, ablata sunt
judicia capitalia ab Israele.” There is, however, some doubt about the reading
and translation of this passage. Wagenseil reads four for forty. Selden (De
Svn.) insists thjt the judgments were not taken away, but interrupted and
disused.
4 Among the ancients, Chrysostom and
Augustine; among the modeirs, Lightfoot, Lardner, Krebs, Rosenmuller, Kuinoel.
The best disquisition on that side of the question appears to me that of Krebs;
on the other, that of Basnage.
added, that,
even in the latter, the ratification of the sentence hy the Roman governor, or
the permission to carry it into execution, was necessary. According to this
view, the object of the Sanhedrin was to bring the case before Pilate as a
civil charge; since the assumption of a royal title and authority implied a
design to cast off the Roman yoke. Or, if they retained the right of capital
punishment in religious cases, it was contrary to usage, in the proceedings of
the Sanhedrin, as sacred as law itself, to order an execution on the day of
preparation for the Passover.1
As, then, they dared not violate that usage; and as delay was in every way
dangerous, either from the fickleness of the people, who, having been
momentarily wrought up to a pitch of deadly animosity against Jesus, might
again, by some act of power or goodness on his part, be carried away back to
his side, or, in case of tumult, from the unsolicited intervention of the
Romans,— their plainest course was to obtain, if possible, the immediate
support and assistance of the government.
In my own
opinion, formed upon the study of the cotemporary Jewish history, the power of
the Sanhedrin, at this period of political ^Sfnto’aie change and confusion, on
this, as well as on s°Ternment- other points, was altogether
undefined. Under the Asmonean princes, the sovereign, uniting the civil and
religious supremacy, the high-priesthood with the royal power, exercised, with
the Sanhedrin as his council, the highest political and civil jurisdiction.
Herod, whose authority depended on the protection of Rome, and was maintained
by his wealth, and in part
1
Cyril and Augustine, with whom Kuinoel is inclined to agree, interpret the
words of St. John, “ It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” by
subjoining “ on the day of the Passover.’*
by
foreign mercenaries, although he might ®
the
Sanhedrin, as the supreme tribunal, the judicial power, and in ordinary
religions cases might admit their unlimited jurisdiction, yet no doubt watched
and controlled their proceedings with the jealousy of an Asiatic despot, and
practically, if not formally, subjected all their decrees to his revision: at
least, he would not have permitted any encroachment on his own supreme
authority. In fact, according to the general tradition of the Jews, he at one
time put the whole Sanhedrin to death; and since, as his life advanced, his
tyranny became more watchful and suspicious, he was more likely to diminish
than increase the powers of the national tribunal. In the short interval of
little more than thirty years which had elapsed since the death of Herod,
nearly ten had been occupied by the reign of Archelaus. On his deposal, the
Sanhedrin had probably extended or resumed its original functions; but still
the supreme civil authority rested in the Roman procurator. All the commotions
excited by the turbulent adventurers who infested the country, or by Judas the
Galilean and his adherents, would fall under the cognizance of the civil
governor, and were repressed by his direct interference. Nor can capital
religious offences have been of frequent occurrence, since it is evident that
the rigor of the Mosaic Law had been greatly relaxed, partly by the feebleness
of the judicial power, partly by the tendency of the age, which ran in a
counter direction to those acts of idolatry against which the Mosaic statutes
were chiefly framed, and left few crimes obnoxious to the extreme penalty. Nor
until the existence of their polity and religion was threatened, first by the
progress of Christ, and afterwards of his religion, would they
have cared to
be armed with an authority, which it was rarely, if ever, necessary or
expedient to put forth in its full force.1
This, then,
may have been, strictly speaking, a new case; the first which had occurred
since the Thatof reduction of Judaea to a Roman province. andunpreL
The Sanhedrin, from whom all jurisdiction dented casein political
cases was withdrawn, and who had no recent precedent for the infliction of
capital punishment on any religious charge, might think it more prudent
(particularly during this hurried and tumultuous proceeding, which commenced
at midnight, and must be despatched with the least possible delay) at once to
disclaim an authority which, however the Roman governor seemed to attribute it
to them, he Motives of might at last prevent their carrying into ^3eci™mingn
execution. All the other motives then oper- their powcr' ating on
their minds would concur in favor of this course of proceeding, — their
mistrust of the people, who might attempt a rescue from their feeble and
nnrespected officers, and could only, if they should fall off to the other
side, be controlled by the dread of the Roman military; and the reluctance to
profane so sacred a day by a public execution, of which the odium
1
It may be worth observing, that not merely were the Pharisaic and Sadducaie
parties at issue on the great question of the expediency of the severe
administration of the law, which implied frequency of capital punishment, —
the latter party being notoriously sanguinary in the execution of public
justice, — but, even in the Pharisaic party, one school, that of Hillel, was
accused (Jost, Geschichte der Israeliter), by the rival school of Sham- mai, of
dangerous lenity in the administration of the law, and of culpable
unwillingness to inflict the punishment of death.
The authority
of them (says Lightfoot, from the Rabbins) was not taken away by the Romans,
but rather relinquished by themselves. The slothfulness of the council
destroyed its own authority. Hear it justly upbraided in this matter: The
council which puts one to death in seven years is called “ destructive.” R.
Lazar ben Azariah said, “ which puts one to death in seventy years.” —
Lightfoot, in he.
would thus be
cast on their foreign rulers. It was clearly their policy, at any cost, to
secure the intervention of Pilate, as well to insure the destruction of their
victim, as to shift the responsibility from their own head upon that of the
Romans. They might, not unreasonably, suppose that Pilate, whose relentless
disposition had been shown in a recent instance, would not hesitate at once,
and on their authority, on the first intimation of a dangerous and growing party,
to act without further examination or inquiry; and, without scruple, add one
victim more to the robbers or turbulent insurgents, who, it appears, were kept
in prison, in order to be executed as a terrible example at that period of
national concourse.
It would seem
that while Jesus was sent in chains Jesus before to the Prsetorium of Pilate,
whether in the Piute. Antonia, the fortress adjacent to the Temple, or in part
of Herod’s palace, which was connected with the mountain of the Temple by a
bridge over the Tyropseon, the council adjourned to their usual place of
assemblage, — the chamber called Gazith, within the Temple. A deputation only
accompanied the prisoner to explain and support the charge; and here Remorse
ana probably it was, in the Gazith, that, in his
death
of liiji
judas. agony
of remorse, Judas brought back the reward that he had received;1 and when the assembly, to his
confession of his crime in betraying the innocent blood, replied with cold and
contumelious unconcern, he cast down the money on the pavement, and rushed away
to close his miserable life. Nor must the characteristic incident be omitted.
The Sanhedrin, who had not hesitated to reward the basest treachery, probably
out of the Temple funds, scruple to receive
back, and to
replace in the sacred treasury, the price of blood. The sum, therefore, is set
apart for the purchase of a field for the burial of strangers, long known by
the name of Aceldama, the Field of Blood.1 Sueh is ever the
absurdity, as well as the heinousness, of crimes committed in the name of
religion.
The first
emotion of Pilate at this strange accusation from the great tribunal of the
nation, however rumors of the name and influence of Jesus km* had, no doubt, reached his ears,
must have been the utmost astonishment. To the Roman mind, the Jewish character
was ever an inexplicable problem. But if so when they were seen scattered about
and mingled with the countless diversities of races of discordant habits,
usages, and religions, which thronged to the metropolis of the world, or were
dispersed through the principal cities of the empire; in their own country,
where there was, as it were, a concentration of all their extraordinary
national propensities, they must have appeared, and did appear, in still
stronger opposition to the rest of mankind. To the loose manner in which
religious belief hung on the greater part of the subjects of the Roman empire,
their recluse and uncompromising attachment to the faith of their ancestors
offered the most singular contrast. Everywhere else, the temples were open, the
rites free to the stranger by race or country, who rarely scrupled to do homage
to the tutelar deity of the place. The Jewish Temple alone received indeed, but
with a kind of jealous condescension, the offerings even of the empe-
1 The sum appears extremely small for the
purchase of a field, even should we adopt the very probable suggestion of
Kuinoel, in foe., that it was a field in which the fuller’s earth had been
worked out, and which was, therefore, entirely barren and unproductive. — Matt,
xxvii. 2-14; Mark xiv. 1-6; Luka xxiii. 1-6; John xviii. 28-38.
ror.
Throughout the rest of the world, religious enthusiasm might not be uncommon ;
here and there, and in individual cases, particularly in the East, the priests
of some of the mystic religions at times excited a considerable body of
followers, and drove them blindfold to the wildest acts of superstitious
frenzy: but the sudden access of religious fervor was, in general, as transient
as violent; the flame burned with rapid and irresistible fury, and went out of
itself. The Jews stood alone (according to the language and opinion of the
Roman world) as a nation of religious fanatics; and this fanaticism was a deep,
a settled, a conscientious feeling, and formed, an essential and inseparable
part, the groundwork of their rigid and unsocial character.
Yet, even to
one familiarized by a residence of several years with the Jewish nation, on the
present occasion the conduct of the Sanhedrin must have appeared utterly
unaccountable. This senate, or municipal body, had left to the Roman governor
to discover the danger, and suppress the turbulence, of the robbers and
insurgents against whom Pilate had taken such decisive measures. Now, however,
they appear sud- at the con- denly seized with an access of loyalty for thy
duct
of the J
sanhedrin;
Koman authority and a tremblmg apprehension of the least invasion of the Roman
title to supremacy. And against whom were they actuated by this unwonted
caution, and burning with this unprecedented zeal ? Against a man who, as far
as Pilate could discover, was a harmless, peaceful, and benevolent enthusiast,
who had persuaded many of the lower orders to believe in certain unintelligible
doctrines, which seemed to have no relation to the government of the country,
and were, as yet, no way
connected
with insurrectionary movements. In fact, Pilate could not but clearly see that
they were jealous of the influence obtained by Jesus over the populace; but
whether Jesus or the Sanhedrin governed the religious feelings and practices of
the people, was a matter of perfect indifference to the Roman supremacy.
The vehemence
with which they pressed the charge, and the charge itself, were equally
inexplicable. When Pilate referred back, as it were, the judg- at the
nature ment to themselves, and offered to leave of the charge‘
Jesus to be punished by the existing law; while they shrank from that
responsibility, and disclaimed, at least over such a case and at such a season,
the power of life and death, —they did not in the least relax the vehement
earnestness of their prosecution. Jesus was accused of assuming the title of
King of the Jews, and an intention of throwing off the Roman yoke. But, however
little Pilate may have heard or understood his doctrines, the conduct and
demeanor of Christ were so utterly at variance with such a charge; the only
intelligible article in the accusation, his imputed prohibition of the payment
of tribute, so unsupported by proof, — as to bear no weight. This redoubted
king had been seized by the emissaries of the Sanhedrin, perhaps Roman soldiers
placed. under their orders; had been conveyed without resistance through the
city; his few adherents, mostly unarmed peasants, had fled at the instant of
his capture; not the slightest tumultuary movement had taken place during his
examination before the high-priest, and the popular feeling seemed rather at
present incensed against Him than inclined to take his part.
To the mind
of Pilate, indeed, accustomed to thtf
disconnection
of religion and morality, the more strik- The depute ing contradiction in the
conduct of the Jewish to enter the rulers may not have appeared altogether so
hall
of Pilate . . , ,
from fear of extraordinary.
At the moment when they
legal
defile- .... , i .
ment. wore
violating the great eternal and immutable principles of all religion, and
infringing on one of the positive commandments of their Law, by persecuting to
death an innocent man, they were withholden by religious scruple from entering
the dwelling of Pilate ; they were endangering the success of their cause,
lest this intercourse with the unclean stranger should exclude them from the
worship of their God, — a worship for which they contracted no disqualifying
defilement by this deed of blood. The deputation stood without the hall of
Pilate;1 and not even
their animosity against Jesus could induce them to depart from that
superstitious usage, so as to lend the weight of their personal appearance to
the solemn accusation, or, at all events, to deprive the hated object of their
persecution of any advantage which He might receive from undergoing his
examination without being confronted with his accusers. Pilate seems to have
paid so much respect to their usages, that he went out to receive their charge,
and to inquire the nature of the crime for which Jesus was denounced.
The simple
question put to Jesus, on his first interrogatory before Pilate, was, whether
He claimed the title of King of the Jews ?2 The answer of Jesus may be considered as an appeal to the
justice and right feeling of the governor : “ Say eat thou this thing
Examination °f thy self, or did other s tell it thee of me ? ” before Mam. —“As
Roman prefect, have you any cause for suspecting me of ambitious or
insurrectionary (le-
signs ? Do
you entertain the least apprehension of my seditious demeanor ? Or are you not
rather adopting the suggestions of my enemies, and lending yourself to their
unwarranted animosity ? ” Pilate disclaims all communion with the passions or
the prejudices of the Jewish rulers: “ Am, I a Jew ? ” But Jesus had been
brought before him, denounced as a dangerous disturber of the public peace ;
and the Roman governoi was officially bound to take cognizance of such a
charge. In the rest of the defence of Christ, the only part intelligible to
Pilate would be the unanswerable appeal to the peaceful conduct of his
followers. When Jesus asserted that He was a king, yet evidently implied a
moral or religious sense in his use of the term, Pilate might attribute a vague
meaning to his language, from the Stoic axiom, “ I am a king when I rule
myself:”1 and thus
give a sense to that which otherwise would have sounded in his ears like unintelligible
mysticism. His perplexity, however, must have been greatly increased, when
Jesus, in this perilous hour, when his life trembled as it were on the
balance, declared that the object of his birth and of his life was the
establishment of “the truth.” — “To this end was I born, and for this cause
came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that
is of the truth heareth my voice.” That the peace of a nation or the life of an
individual should be endangered on account of the truth or falsehood of any
system of speculative opinions, was so diametrically opposite to the general
opinion and feeling of the Roman' world, that Pilate, either in contemptuous
1
Ad summmn sapiens uno minor esfc Jove, dives Liber, honoratus, pulcher. Rex
denique regum.
Hoe., Epist.
ii. 1.106. C^mp. Sat. i. 85125.
At pneri lu
den tee, rex eris, inqnit,
Si recte
facies.— Epist i 1. 59.
mockery or
with the merciful design of showing the utter harmlessness and insignificance
of such points, inquired what He meant by truth, — what truth had to do with
the present question, with a question of life and death, with a capital charge
brought by the national council before the supreme tribunal. Apparently
despairing, on one side, of bringing Him, whom he seems to have considered a
blameless enthusiast, to his senses; on the other, unwilling to attach so much
importance to what appeared to him in so different a light, — he wished at
once to put an end to the puate en- whole affair. He abruptly left Jesus, and
deavors
to . . ,
savejesus.
went out again to the Jewish deputation at the gate (now perhaps increased by a
greater number of the Sanhedrin), and declared his conviction of the innocence
of Jesus.
At this
unexpected turn, the Sanhedrin burst into a ciamors of furious clamor; reiterated
their vague, per- the accusers. ]iapS contradictory, and,
to the ears of Pilate, unintelligible or insignificant charges; and seemed determined
to press the conviction with implacable animosity. Pilate turned to Jesus, who
had been led out, to demand his answer to these charges. Jesus stood collected,
but silent; and the astonishment of Pilate was still further heightened. The
only accusation which seemed to bear any meaning imputed to Jesus the raising
tumultuous meetings of the people throughout the country, from Judaea to
Galilee.1 This incidental
mention of Galilee, made perhaps with au invidious design of awakening in the
mind of the governor the remembrance of the turbulent character of that people,
suggested to Pilate a course by which be might rid himself of the embarrassment
and re
sponsibility
of this strange transaction. It has been conjectured, not without probability,
that the massacre of Herod’s subjects was the cause of the enmity that existed
between the tetrarch and the Roman governor. Pilate had now an opportunity at
once to avoid an occurrence of the same nature, in which he had no desire to be
implicated, and to make overtures of reconciliation to the native sovereign.
He was indifferent about the fate of Jesus, provided he could shake off all
actual concern in his death ; or he might suppose, that Herod, uninfected with
the inexplicable enmity of the chief priests, might be inclined to protect his
innocent subject.1
The fame of
Jesus had already excited the curiosity of Herod; but his curiosity was rather
that Je8u3 sent which
sought amusement or excitement from t0 Heroi' the powers of an extraordinary wonder-worker, than
that which looked for information or improvement from a wise moral or a
divinely commissioned religious teacher. The circumstances of the interview,
which probably took place in the presence of the tetrarch and his courtiers,
and into which none of the disciples of Jesus could find their way, are not
related. The investigation was long; but Jesus maintained his usual unruffled
silence, and, at the close of the examination, He was sent back to Pilate. By
the Jesus sent murder of John, Herod had incurred deep >nsuit. and lasting
unpopularity; he might be unwilling to increase his character for cruelty by
the same conduct towards Jesus, against whom, as he had not the same private
reasons for requiring his support, he had not the same bitterness of personal
animosity; nor was his sovereignty, as has before been observed, endan
gered ii. the
same manner as that of the chief priests, by the progress of Jesus. Herod,
therefore, might treat with derision what appeared to him a harmless assumption
of. royalty, and determine to effect, by contempt and contumely, that
degradation of Jesus in the estimation of the people which his more cruel
measures in the case of John had failed to accomplish. With his connivance,
therefore, if not under his instructions, his soldiers (perhaps some of them,
as those of his father had been, foreigners, Gaulish or Thracian barbarians) were
permitted or encouraged in every kind of cruel and wanton insult. They clothed
the Saviour, in mockery of his royal title, in a purple robe, and so escorted
Him back to Pilate; who, if he occupied part of the Herodian, not the Antonia,
was close at hand, only in a different quarter of the same extensive palace.
The refusal
of Herod to take cognizance of the charge renewed the embarrassment of Pilate;
but a way yet seemed open to extricate himself from his difficulty. There was
a custom, that in honor of the great festival, the Passover, a prisoner should
be set at liberty at the request of the people.1 The multitude had already become clamorous for their
annual privilege. Among the half-robbers, half-insurgents,
who had so
long infested the province of
Barabbaa. 1
Judaea and
the whole of Palestine, there was a celebrated bandit, named Barabbas, who,
probably in some insurrectionary tumult, had been guilty of murder. Of the
extent of his crime we are ignorant; but Pilate, by selecting the worst case,
that which the people could not but consider the most atrocious and
offensive to
the Roman Government, might desire to force them, as it were, to demand the
release of Jesus. Barabbas had been undeniably guilty of those overt acts of
insubordination which they endeavored to infer as necessary consequences of the
teaching of Jesus.
Pilate came
forth, therefore, to the outside of his Prsetorium; and, having declared that
neither himself nor Herod could discover any real guilt in the prisoner who had
been brought before them, he appealed to them to choose between the condemned
insurgent and murderer, and the blameless Prophet of Nazareth. The
higli-priests had now wrought the people to madness, and had most likely
crowded the courts round Pilate’s quarters with their most zealous and devoted
partisans. The voice of the governor was drowned with an instantaneous burst of
acclamation, demanding the release of Barabbas. Pilate made yet another
ineffectual attempt to save the life of the innocent man. He thought by some
punishment, short of death, if not to awaken the compassion, to satisfy the animosity,
of the people.1 The
person of Jesus was given up to the lictors ; and scourging with rods, the
common Roman punishment for minor offences, was inflicted with merciless
severity. The soldiers platted a crown of thorns, or, as is thought, of some
Jesus
• tit • • i 'ii crowned
pricklv
plant, as it is scarcely conceivable with thorns,
r -i-i'Pl l an(* 8k°WI1
that life
could have endured if the temples the people, had been deeply pierced by a
circle of thorns.2 In
this pitiable state, Jesus was again led forth, bleeding from the scourge, his
brow throbbing with the pointed
1 Luke xxiii. 16; John xix. 1-6.
2 “ It would seem,” says Grotius, “ that
the mockery was more intended than the pain.” Some suppose the plant, the naba
or nablca of the Arabians,
— with many small and sharp spikes,—which
would be painful, b7t not endanger life. — Hasselquist’s Travels.
crown ; and
dressed in the purple robe of mockery, to make the last vain appeal to the
compassion, the humanity, of the people. The wild and furious cries of “
Crucify Him! crucify Him! ” broke out on all sides. In vain Pilate commanded
them to be the executioners of their own sentence, and re-asserted his
conviction of the innocence of Jesus. In vain he accompanied his assertion by
the significant action of washing his hands in the public view, as if to show
that he would contract no guilt or defilement from the blood of a The people
blameless man.1 He
was answered by the
demand
his . . 1 c
crucifixion,
awiul imprecation, “ His. blood be upon us, and upon our children ! ” The
deputies of the Sanhedrin pressed more earnestly the capital charge of blasphemy,—
“ He had made himself the Son of God.”2 This inexplicable accusation
still more shook the resolution of Pilate, who, perhaps at this instant, was
further agitated by a message from his wife. Claudia Procula (the law which
prohibited the wives of the provincial rulers from accompanying their husbands
intercession to the seat of their governments now bavins:
of Pilate’s
wife. fallen
into disuse) had been permitted to reside with her husband Pilate in
Palestine.3 The stern
justice of the Romans had guarded by this law against the baneful effects of
female influence. In this instance, had Pilate listened to the humaner
counsels of his wife, from what a load of guilt would he have delivered his
own conscience and his province! Aware of the proceedings, which had occupied
Pilate during the whole night, — perhaps in some way better ac-
1
Matt, xxvii. 24, 25. 2 John x;x.
7.
8 Matt,
xxvii. 19-23. This law had fallen into neglect in the time of Augustus; during
the reign of Tiberius, it was openly infringed, and th€ motion of Cajcina in
the senate, to put it more strictly in force, produced no effect. — Tac., Ann,
iii. 83
quainted with
the character of Jesus, — she had gone to rest; but her sleep, her morning
slumbers, when visions were supposed to be more than ordinarily true, were
disturbed by dreams of the innocence of Jesus, and the injustice and inhumanity
to which her husband might lend his authority.
The prisoner
was withdrawn into the guard-room, and Pilate endeavored to obtain some
explanation of the meaning of this new charge from Jesus himself. He made no
answer; and Pilate appealed to his fears, reminding Him that his life and death
depended on the power of the prefect. Jesus replied, that his life was only in the
power of Divine Providence, by whose permission alone Pilate enjoyed a
temporary authority.1 But touched, it may seem, by the exertions
of Pilate to save Him, with all his accustomed gentle- Last inter-
1 rogatory of
ness He
declares Pilate guiltless of his blood, Jesus, in comparison with his betrayers
and persecutors among his own countrymen. This speech still further moved
Pilate in favor of Jesus. But the justice and the compassion of the Roman gave
way at once before the fear of weakening his own interest, or endangering his
own personal safety, with his imperial master. He made one effort more to work
on the implacable people: he was answered with the same furious exclamations,
and with menaces of more alarming import. They accused him of indifference to
the stability of the imperial power; “ Thou art not Cesar’s friend; ”2 they threatened to report his
conduct, in thus allowing the title of royalty to be assumed with impunity, to
the reigning Cassar. That Cassar was the dark and jealous Tiberius. Up to this
period, the Jewish nation, when they had complained of the tyr-
anny of their
native sovereigns, had ever obtained a favorable hearing at Rome. Even against
Herod the Great, their charges had been received; they had been admitted to a
public audience ; and, though their claim to national independence at the death
of that sovereign had not been allowed, Archelaus had received his government
with limited powers, and, on the complaint of the people, had been removed from
his throne. In short, the influence of that attachment to the Caesarean family,1 which had obtained for the
nation distinguished privileges from both Julius and Augustus, had not yet been
effaced by that character of turbulence and insubordination which led to their
final ruin.
In what
manner such a charge of not being “ Caesar’s friend” might be misrepresented or
aggravated, it was impossible to conjecture: but the very strangeness of the
accusation was likely to work on the gloomy and suspicious mind of Tiberius;
and the frail tenure by which Pilate held his favor at Rome is shown by his
ignominious recall and banishment some years after, on the complaint of the
Jewish people ; though not, it is true, for an act of indiscreet mercy, but one
of unnecessary cruelty. The latent and suspended decision of his character
re-appeared in all its customary recklessness. The life of one man, however
blameless, was not for an instant to be considered, when his own advancement,
his personal safety, were in peril: his sterner nature resumed the ascendant;
he mounted the tribunal, which was erected on a tessellated pavement near the
Prtetorium,2 and
passed the solemn, the
1 Compare Hist, of the Jews, ii. 48.
2 I should not notice the strange mistake
of the learned German, Hug, on this subject, if it had not been adopted by a
clever -writer in a popular journal. Hug has supposed the TuOorrrpoTov (perhaps
the tessellated) stone pavement on which Pilate’s tribunal was erected to be
the same which was the scene
irrevocable
sentence. It might almost seem, that, in bitter mockery, Pilate for the last
time demanded, “Shall I crucify your king?” —“We have CondMma. no
king but Caesar ” was the answer of the tl0n0f Jesus- chief priests.
Pilate yielded up the contest; the murderer was commanded to be set at
liberty, the Just man surrendered to crucifixion.
The
remorseless soldiery were at hand, and instigated, no doubt, by the influence,
by the Insulte of bribes, of the Sanhedrin, carried the sentence
p^iace ana into effect with the most savage and wanton soldiery'
insults. They dressed Him up in all the mock semblance of royalty (He had
already the purple robe and the crown) ; a reed was now placed in his hand for
a sceptre ; they paid Him their insulting homage; struck Him with the palms of
their hands ; spat upon Him; and then, stripping Him of his splendid attire,
dressed Him again in his own simple raiment, and led Him out to death.1
The place of
execution was without the gates. This tras the case in most towns; and in
Jerusalem, which, according to tradition, always maintained a kind of
resemblance to the camp in the wilderness,2 as criminal punishments were forbidden to defile the
sacred precincts, a field beyond the walls was set apart and desecrated for
this unhallowed purpose.3
of
a remarkable incident mentioned by Josephus. During the siege of the Temple, a
.centurion, Julianus, charged on horsehack, and forced his way into the inner
court of the Temple; his horse stepped up on the pavement [Xido- OTpUTCtv), and
he fell. It is scarcely credible, that any writer acquainted with Jewish
antiquities, or the structure of the Temple, could suppose that the Koman
governor would raise his tribunal within the inviolable precincts of the inner
court. -
1 Matt, xxvii. 27-30; Mark xv. 15-20.
2 Num. xv. 35; 1 Kings xxi. 13; Heb. xiii.
12. “Extra urbem, patibu- lum.” — Plautus. See Grotius.
8
It is curious to trace on what uncertain grounds rest many of our estab-
Hitherto I
have been tempted into some detail, both by the desire of ascertaining the
state of the pnblic mind and the motives of the different actors in this
unparalleled transaction, and by the necessity of harmonizing the various
circumstances related in the four separate narratives. As we approach the
appalling close, I tremble lest the colder process of explanation should
deaden the solemn and harrowing impression of the scene, or weaken the contrast
between the wild and tumultuous uproar of the triumphant enemies and
executioners of the Son of Man, with the deep and unutterable misery of the few
faithful adherents who still followed his footsteps; and, far above all, his
own serene, his more than human, composure,— the dignity of suffering, which
casts so far into the shade every example of human heroism. Yet circum- in the
most trifling incidents there is so
stances
of the i-ii
crucifixion,
much life and reality, so remarkable an adherence to the usages of the time
and to the state of public feeling, that I cannot but point out the most
striking of these particulars. Eor, in fact, there is no single circumstance,
however minute, which does not add to the truth of the whole description, so as
to stamp it (I have honestly endeavored to consider it with the calmest
impartiality) with an impression of credibility, of certainty, equal to, if not
surpassing, every event in the history of man. The inability of Jesus
(exhausted by a sleepless night, by the length
lished
notions relating to incidents in the early history of our religion. No one
scruples to speak in the popular language of “ The Hill of Calvary; ” yet there
appears no evidence, whieh is not purely legendary, for the assertion that
Calvary was on a hill. The notion arose from the fanciful interpretation of the
word Golgotha (the Place of a Skull), whieh was thought to imply some resemblance
in its form to a human skull; but it is far more probably derived from having
been strewn with the remains of condemned malefactors.
of the trial,
by insults and bodily pain, by the scourging and the blows) to bear his own
cross (the constant practice of condemned criminals) ;1 the seizuro of a Cyrenian,
from a province more numerously colonized by Jews than any other, except Egypt
and Babylonia, as he was entering the city, and perhaps was known to be an
adherent of Jesus, to bear the cross;2 the customary deadening potion of wine and myrrh,3 which was given to malefactors
previous to their execution, but which Jesus, aware of its stupefying or
intoxicating effect, and determined to preserve his firmness and self-command,
but slightly touched with his lips; the title, “the King4 of the Jews,” in three
languages,5 so strictly in accordance with the public
usage of the time; the division and casting lots for his garments by the
soldiers who executed Him (those who suffered the ignominious punishment of the
cross being exposed entirely naked, or with nothing more than was necessary
for decency),6 — all these particulars, as well as the
instrument of execution, the cross, are in strict unison with the well-known
practice of Roman criminal jurisprudence. The execution of the two malefactors,
one on each side of Jesus, is equally consonant with their ordinary
administration of justice, particu-
1 Hence the common term furdfer. “ Patibulum ferat per urbem, deinde affigatur cruci.” — Plauti Frag.
2 Mark xv.
21; Luke xxiii. 26.
8 Matt, xxvii. 34; Mark xv.
24. The Rabbins say, wine with frankincense. This potion was given hy the Jews
out of compassion to criminals.
4 Luke xxiii. 38; John xix. 19, 20.
5 The inscriptions on the palisades which
divided the part of the Temple court which might he entered by the Gentiles
from that which was open only to the Jews, were written, with the Roman
sanction, in three languages,
— Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.
6 Matt, xxvii. 35; Mark xv. 24; Luke xxiii.
34; John xix. 23, 24. The Jewish modes of execution were by stoning,
strangulation, and decapita- tim.
larly in this
ill-fated province. Probably before, unquestionably at a later period,
Jerusalem was doomed to behold the long line of crosses on which her sons were
left by the relentless Roman authorities to struggle with slow and agonizing
death.
In other
circumstances, the Jewish national character is equally conspicuous. This
appears even in the The two conduct of the malefactors. The fanatical
malefactors. jucjaism 0f on6) not
improbably a follower,
or infected
with the doctrines of the Gaulonite, even in his last agony, has strength
enough to insult the pretender to the name of a Messiah who yet has not the
power to release himself and his fellow-sufferers from death. The other, of
milder disposition, yet in death, inclines to believe in Jesus, and, when He
returns to assume his kingdom, would hope to share iu its blessings. To him,
Jesus, speaking in the current and therefore intelligible language, promises
an immediate reward: he is to pass at once from life to happiness, — from the
cross to paradise.1
Besides this, how striking the triumph of his enemies, as the Lord seemed to
surrender himself without resistance to the growing pangs of death; the
assembling, not spectators only of the rude and ferocious populace, but cuaon.
of many of the most distinguished rank, the members of the Sanhedrin, to behold
and to iusult the last moments of their ouce redoubted, but now despised,
adversary!
Aud still
every indication of approaching death seemed more and more to justify their
rejection! — still no sign of the mighty, the all-powerful Messiah ! Their
taunting allusions to his royal title ; to his misapprehended speech, which
rankled iu their hearts,
1 Luke xxiii. 39-43.
about the
demolition and rebuilding of the Temple;1 to his power of
healing others, and restoring life, — a power in his own case so
manifestly suspended or lost; the offer to acknowledge Him as the Messiah, if
He would come down from the cross in the face of day: the still more malignant
reproach, that He, who had boasted of the peculiar favor of God, was now so
visibly deserted and abandoned, —■ the Son of Man, as He called himself,
is left to perish despised and disregarded by God, — all this as strikingly
accords with and illustrates the state of Jewish feeling, as do the former
circumstances the Roman usages.
And, amid the
whole wild and tumultuous scene, there are some quiet gleams of pure
Christianity, which contrast with and relieve the general darkness and horror:
not merely the superhuman patience with which insult and pain and ignominy are
borne; not merely the serene self-command, which shows that the senses are not
benumbed or deadened by the intensity of suffering; but the slight incidental
touches of gentleness and humanity.2
I cannot but indicate the answer to the afflicted women, who stood by the way
weeping, as Jesus passed on to Calvary, and whom He commanded not “to weep for
Him,” but for the deeper sorrows to which themselves
Conduct cf
or their
children were devoted; the notice of Jesus' the group of his own
kindred and followers who stood by the cross ; his bequest of the support of
his Virgin Mother to the beloved disciple;3 above all, that most affecting exemplification of his own
tenets, the prayer for the pardon of his enemies, the palliation of their crime
from their ignorance of its real enormity,—
1 Matt, xxvii. 39-43; Mark xv. 81, 32; Luke
xxiii. 35.
2 Luke xxiii. 27-31. 8 John xix. 25- 27.
“ Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.”1 Yet so little are the evangelists studious of effect, that
this incident of unrivalled moral sublimity, even in the whole life of Christ,
is but briefly, we might almost say carelessly, noticed by St. Luke alone.
“ From the
sixth hour ” (noonday), writes the evan-
pretemat-
gelist St. Matthew, “ there was darkness over
ural
ness. all the
land unto the ninth hour.”2
“ The whole earth” (the term in the other evangelists) is no doubt used
according to Jewish phraseology, in which Palestine, the sacred land, was
emphatically the earth. This supernatural gloom appears to resemble that terrific
darkness which precedes an earthquake.
For these
three hours, Jesus had borne the excruciating anguish : his human nature
begins to fail, and He complains of the burning thirst, the most painful but
usual aggravation of such a death. A compassionate bystander filled a sponge
with vinegar, fixed it on a long reed, and was about to lift it to his lips,
when the dying Jesus uttered his last words, — those of the twenty-second
Psalm, in which, in the bitterness of his heart, David had complained of the
manifest desertion of his God, who had yielded him up to his enemies (the
phrase had perhaps been in common use in extreme distress), “ Eli, Eli, lama sabaclithani
? — My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ?3 The
1 Luke xxiii. 34.
2 Matt, xxvii. 45-53; Mark xv. 33-385 Luke
xxiii. 44, 45; John xix. 28-30.
Gibbon has
said, and truly, as regards all well-informed and sober interpreters of the
sacred writings, that “ the celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely
abandoned.” It still maintains its ground, however, with writers of a certain
class, notwithstanding that its irrelevancy has already been admitted by
Origen, and its authority rejected by every writer who has the least pretensions
to historical criticism.
8
Matt, xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34-87; John xix. 28-30.
compassionate
hand of the man, raising the vinegar, was arrested by others, who, a few
perhaps in trembling curiosity, but more in bitter mockery, supposing that He
called not on God (Eli) but on Elias, commanded him to wait and see, whether,
even now, that great and certain sign of the Messiah, the appearance of Elijah,
would at length take place.
Their
barbarous triumph was uninterrupted; and He who yet (his followers were not
without some lingering hope, and the more superstitious of his enemies not
without some trembling apprehension) might awaken to all his terrible and
prevailing Deathof majesty, had now manifestly expired.1 The j€SUS' Messiah,
the imperishable, the eternal Messiah, had quietly yielded up the ghost.
Even the
dreadful earthquake2
which followed, seemed to pass away without appalling the enemies of Jesus. The
rending of the veil of the Temple from the top to the bottom, so strikingly
significant of the approaching abolition of the local worship, would either be
concealed by the priesthood, or attributed, as a natural effect, to the
convulsion of the earth. The same convulsion would displace the stones which
covered the ancient tombs, and lay open many of the innumerable rock-hewn
sepulchres which perforated the hills on every side of the city, and expose the
dead to public view. To the awe-struck and depressed minds of the followers of
Jesus, no doubt, were confined those visionary appearances of the spirits of
their deceased brethren, which are obscurely intimated in the rapid narratives
of the evangelists.3
1 Luke xxiii. 46.
2 Seiofidg is the ordinary word for an
earthquake.
8 This is the prohable and consistent view
of Michaelis. Those who assert a supernatural eclipse of the sun rest on the
most dubious and suspicious
But these
terrific appearances, which were altogether lost on the infatuated Jews, were
not without effect on the less prejudiced Roman soldiery: they seemed to bear
the testimony of Heaven to the innocence, to the divine commission, of the
crucified Jesus. The centurion who guarded the spot, according to St. Luke,
declared aloud his conviction that Jesus was “ a just man; ” according to St.
Matthew, that He was “ the Son of God.”1
Secure now,
by the visible marks of dissolution, by the piercing of his side, from which
blood and water flowed out, that Jesus was actually dead; and still, Burial of even
111 tHeir most irreligious acts of cruelty • jesus. ail(i
wickedness, punctiliously religious (since it was a sin to leave the body of
that blameless being on the cross during one day,2 whom it had been no sin. but rather an act of the highest
virtue, to murder the day before), — the Sanhedrin gave their consent to a
wealthy adherent of Jesus, Joseph, of the town of Arimathea, to bury the body.
The sanction of Pilate was easily obtained: it was taken down from the cross,
and consigned to the sepulchre prepared by Joseph for his own family, but in
which uo body had yet been laid.3
The sepulchre was at no great distance from
tradition;
while those who look with jealousy on the introduction of natural causes,
however so timed as in fact to be no less extraordinary than events altogether
contraiy to the course of nature, forget or despise the difficnlty of
accounting for the apparently slight sensation produced on the minds of the
Jews, and the total silence of all other history. Compare the very sensible
note of M. Guizot, on the latter part of Gibbon’s fifteenth chapter.
1 Matt, xx vii. 64; Luke xxiii. 47.
Lightfoot supposes that by intercourse with the Jews he may have learned their
phraseology; Grotius, that he had a general impression that Jesus was a
superior being.
2 Deut. xxi. 23. The Jews usually buried
executed criminals ignommi- ously, but, at the request of a family, would
permit a regular burial. — Ligbt- foot, from Babyl. San.
s Matt,
xxvii. 67-60; Mark xv. 42-47; Liike xxiii. 60-66; John xix 88-42.
the place of
execution ; the customary rites were performed ; the body was wrapped in fine
linen, and anointed with a mixture of costly spice and myrrh, with which the
remains of those who were held in respect by their kindred were usually
preserved. As the sabbath was drawing on, the work was performed with the
utmost despatch, and Jesus was laid to rest in the grave of his faithful
adherent.
In that
rock-hewn tomb might appear to be buried for ever both the fears of his enemies
and The religion the hopes of his followers. Though some ™ e™''7 at rumors of his predictions
concerning his resurrection had crept abroad, sufficient to awaken the caution
of the Sanhedrin, and to cause them to seal the outward covering of the
sepulchre, and, with the approbation of Pilate, to station a Roman guard upon
the spot; yet, as far as the popular notion of the Messiah, nothing could be
more entirely and absolutely destructive of their hopes than the patient
submission of Jesus to insult, to degradation, to death. However, with some of
milder nature, his exquisite sufferings might excite compassion; however the
sav'age and implacable cruelty with which the rulers urged his fate might
appear revolting to the multitude, after their first access of religious
indignation had passed away, and the recollection returned to the gentle
demeanor and beneficent acts of Jesus, — yet the hope of redemption, whatever meaning they might
attach to the term, whether deliverance from their enemies or the restoration
of their theocratic government, had set in utter darkness. However vague or contradictory
this notion among the different sects or classes, with the mass of the people,
nothing less than an immediate instantaneous reappearance in some appalling or
imposing form could
have
reinstated Jesus in his high place in the populai expectation. Without this,
his career was finally closed, and He would pass away at once, as one of the
brief wonders of the time; his temporary claims to respect or attachment
refuted altogether by the shame, by the ignominy, of his death. His ostensible
leading adherents were men of the humblest origin, and, as yet, of 110
distinguished ability, men from whom little danger could be apprehended, and
who might safely be treated with contemptuous neglect. No attempt appears to
have been made to secure a single person, or to prevent their peaceful retreat
to their native Galilee. The whole religion centred in the person of Jesus,
and in his death was apparently suppressed, crushed, extinguished for ever.
After a few days, the Sanhedrin would dread nothing less than a new disturbance
from the same quarter; and Pilate, as the whole affair had passed off without
tumult, would soon suppress the remonstrances of his conscience at the
sacrifice of an innocent life, since the public peace had been maintained, and
no doubt his own popularity with the leading Jews considerably heightened, at
so cheap a price. All, then, was at an end: yet, after the death of Christ,
commences strictly speaking, the history of Christianity.
CHAPTER I.
The
Resurrection, and first Promulgation of Christianity.
The resurrection
of Jesus is the basis of Christianity; it is the groundwork of the Christian
doc- . trine of the immortality of the soul. Hence- doctrine
t* _ . iii
• the im-
forward that
great truth begins to assume mortality
. of the soul.
a new
character, and to obtain an influence over the political and social as well as
over the individual happiness of man, unknown in the former ages of the world.1 It is no longer a feeble and
uncertain instinct, nor a remote speculative opinion, obscured by the more
pressing necessities and cares of the present life, but the universal
predominant sentiment, constantly present to the thoughts, inwoven with the
usages, and pervading the whole moral being of man. The dim and scattered rays,
either of traditionary belief, of intuitive feeling, or of philosophic
reasoning, were brought as it were to a focus, condensed and poured with an
immeasurably stronger, an expanding, an all-permeating light upon the human
soul.2 What-
1 Our Saviour assumes the doctrine of
another life as the hasis of his doctrines, because, in a certain sense, it
was already the popular helief among the Jews; but it is very different with
the apostles, when they address the heathen, who formed far the largest part of
the converts to Christianity.
2 I have found some of these observations,
and even expressions, anticipated by the striking remarks of Lessing: “Und so
ward Christus der erste
[351]
ever its
origin, whether in human nature, or the aspirations of high-thouglited individuals,
propagated through their followers, or in former revelation, it received such
an iinpi‘3so; an-1
was so deeply and universally moulded up with the popular mind in all orders,
that from this period may be dated the true era of its dominion. If hy no means
new iu its elementary principle, it was new in the degree and the extent to
which it began to operate in the affairs of men.1
znverlassige praktische Lehrer der Unsterblichkeit der Seele. Der erste
zii- verlassige Lehrer. Zuverlassig durch seine Weissagungen, den in ihm
erfullt schienen; zuverlassig durch die Wunder die er verrichtete; zuverlassig
durch seine eigne Wiederhelebung nach einem Tode, durch den er seine Lehre
versiegclt hatte. Der erste praktische Lehrer. Denn ein anders ist, die Unsterblichkeit
der Seele, als eine philosophische Speculation, vermu- then, wunschen, glauben;
ein anders seine innem und aussem Handlungen damach einrichten.” — Werke, x. p.
321.
1
The most remarkable evidence of the extent to which German specula tion has wandered
away from the first principles of Christianity is this, — that one of the most
religious writers, the one who has endeavored with the most earnest sincerity
to reconnect religious belief with the philosophy of the times, has actually
represented Christianity without, or almost without, the immortality of the
soul; and this the ardent and eloquent translator of Plato! Copious and full on
the moral regeneration effected by Christ in this world, with the loftiest
sentiments of the emancipation of the human soul from the bondage of sin by the
Gospel, Schleiermacher is silent, or almost silent, on the redemption from
death. He beholds Christ distinctly as bringing life, only vaguely and remotely
as bringing immortality, to light. I acknowledge that I mistrusted the extent
of my own acquaintance with the writings of Schleiermacher and the accuracy
with which I had read them (chiefly the Glaubenslehre and some of those sermons
which were so highly admired at Berlin)} but I have found my own conclusions confirmed
by an author whom I cannot suspect to be unacquainted with the writings, or
unjust to the character, of one for whom he entertains the most profound
respect. M So geschah es,
dass dieser Glaubenslehre unter den Handen der Begriff des Heiles sich aus
einem wcsentlich jenseitigen in einem wesentlich diesseitigen ver- wandelte. .
. . Hiermit ist nun aber die eigentliche Bedeutung des alten Glauben grim
dsatzes in der That verloren gegangen. Wo die Aussicht auf eine dereinstige,
aus dem dann iu Schauen umgesetsten Glauben emporwach- sende Seligkeit so, wie
in Schleiermacher’s eigener Darstellung in den Hin- tergrund tritt, so ganz nur
als eine beilaiifige, iu Bezug auf das Wie ganz und gar prohlematisch bleibende
Folgerung, ja fast als ein hors d’ceuvre
The calm
inquirer into the history of human nature, as displayed ii, the existing
records of our Effects of race, if unhappily disinclined to receive the trMed0C‘
Christian faith as a divine revelation, must nevertheless behold in this point
of time the crisis, and in this circumstance the governing principle, of the
destinies of mankind during many centuries of their most active and fertile
development. A new race of passions was introduced into the political arena, as
well as into the individual heart, or rather the natural and universal passions
were enlisted in the service of more absorbing and momentous interests. The
fears and hopes by which man is governed took a wider range, embracing the
future life in many respects with as much, or even stronger, energy and
iutenseness than the present. The stupendous dominion erected by the Church,
the great characteristic feature of modern history, rested almost entirely on
this basis; it ruled as possessing an inherent power over the destiny of the
soul in a future world. It differed in this primary principle of its authority
from the sacerdotal castes of antiquity. The latter rested their influence on
hereditary claims to superiority over the rest of mankind; and though they
dealt sometimes, more or less largely, in the terrors and hopes of another
state of being, especially in defence of their own power and privileges, theirs
was a kind of mixed aristocracy of birth and priest craft. But if this new and
irresistible power lent itself, in certain stages of society, to human
ambition, and, as a stern and inflexible lictor, bowed down the
hinzngehracht wird: da wird auch demjenigeri Bewusstsein
welches seine diesseitige Befriedigung in dem Glauben an Christus gewonnen hat,
offenhar seine machtigste, ja seine einzige Waffe gegen alle die ihm die
Wahrheit sol- cher Befriedigung hestreiten, oder bezweifeln, aus den Han den
gerissen.” — Weisse, Die Evangelische Gesehichte, Band. ii. p. 451. vol. i. 23
whole mind of
man to the fasces of a spiritual tyranny, it must be likewise contemplated hi
its far wider and more lasting, though perhaps less imposing character, as the
parent of all which is purifying, ennobling, unselfish, in Christian
civilization; as a principle of every humanizing virtue which philosophy must
ever want; of self-sacrifice, to which the patriotism of antiquity shrinks into
a narrow and national feeling: and as introducing a doctrine of equality as
sublime as it is without danger to the necessary gradations which must exist in
human society. Since the promulgation of Christianity, the immortality of the
soul, and its inseparable consequence, future retribution, have not only been
assumed by the legislator as the basis of all political institutions ; but the
general mind has been brought into such complete unison with the spirit of the
laws so founded, that the individual repugnance to the principle has been
constantly overborne by the general predominant sentiment. In some periods, it
has seemed to survive the religion on which it was founded. Wherever, at all
events, it operates upon the individual or social mind, wherever it is even
tacitly admitted and assented to by the prevalent feeling of mankind, it must
be traced to the profound influence which Christianity has, at least at one
time, exercised over the inner nature of man. This was the moral revolution
which set into activity before unprecedented, and endowed with vitality till
then unknown, this great ruling agent in the history of the world.1
Still,
however, as though almost unconscious of the
1 This
primary blessing of Christianity seems to me too often lost sight of. Theology,
even ordinary religion, has dwelt almost exclusively on other questions
relating to salvation. But men required to be assured that they had immortal
souls to be saved, before they became anxious how they wersJo_he saved.
future
effects of this event, the narratives of the evangelists, as they approach
this crisis in their styleofthe own as well as in the destinies of
man, pre- eTaDseUBts' serve their serene and unimpassioned
flow. Bach follows his own course, with precisely that discrepancy which might
he expected among inartificial writers relating the same event, without any
mutual understanding or reference to each other’s work, but all with the same
equable and unexalted tone.
The sabbath
passed away without disturbance or commotion. The profound quiet which
prevailed in the crowded capital of Judaea on the seventh day, at these times
of rigid ceremonial observance, was unbroken by the partisans of Jesus. Yet
even the sabbath did not restrain the leading members of the Sanhedrin from
taking the necessary precautions to guard the body of their victim: their
hostile jealousy, as has been before observed, was more alive to the
predictions of the resurrection than was the attachment of the disciples. To
prevent any secret or tumultuous attempt of the followers to possess themselves
of the remains of their Master, they caused a seal to be attached to the stone
which formed the door to the sepulchral enclosure, and stationed the guard
which was at their disposal, probably for the preservation of the public peace,
in the garden around the tomb. The guard, being Roman, might exercise their
military functions on the sacred day. The disciples were no doubt restrained by
the sanctity of the sabbath, as well as by their apprehensions of re-awakening
the popular indignation, even from approaching the burial- place of their
Master. The religion of the sabbath- day lulled alike the passions of the
rulers, the popular tumult, the fears and the sorrows of the disciples.
It was not
till the early dawn of the following morn ing1 that some of the women set out to pay the last melancholy
honors at the sepulchre. They had bought The women some of those precious drugs
which were nich£.fep" used for the preservation of the remains
of the more opulent, on the evening of the crucifixion; and though the body had
been anointed and wrapt in spices in the customary manner, previously to the
burial, this further mark of respect was strictly according to usage. But this
circumstance, thus casually mentioned, clcarly shows, that the women, at least,
had no hope whatever of any change which could take place as to the body of
Jesus.2 The party of
women consisted of Mary of Magdala, a town near the Lake of Tiberias; Mary, the
wife of Alpheus, mother of James and Joses; Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod’s
steward; and Salome, “ the mother of Zebedee’s children.” They were all
Galileans, and from the same neighborhood; all faithful attendants on Jesus, and
related to some of the leading disciplcs. They set out very early; and as
perhaps they had to meet from different quarters, some not unlikely from
Bethany,
1
Matt, xxviii.; Mark xvi.; Luke xxiv.; John xx.
9 In a prolusion of Griesbach, “ De
fontibus unde Evangelist* suas de resurrectione Domini narrationes bauserint,11
it is observed, that the evangelists seem to have dwelt on those particular
points in which they were personally concerned. This appears to furnish a very
simple key to their apparent discrepancies. Jobn, who received bis first
intelligence from Mary Magdalene, makes her the principal person in his
narrative; while Matthew, who, with the rest of the disciples, derived his
information from the other women, gives their relation, and omits the
appearance of Jesus to the Magdalene. St. Mark gives a few additional minute
particulars; but the narrative of St. Luke is altogether more vague and
general. He blends together, as a later historian, studious of compression, the
two separate transactions: be ascribes to the women collectively that
communication of the intelligence to the assembled body of the apostles which
appears to have been made separately to two distinct parties; and, disregarding
the order of time, he after that reverts to the visit of St Peter to the
sepulchre.
the sun was
rising before they reached the garden. Before their arrival, the earthquake or
atmospheric commotion1
had taken place; the tomb had burst open; and the terrified guard had fled to
the city. Of the scaling of the stone, and the placing of the guard, they
appear to have been ignorant, as, in the most natural manner, they seem
suddenly to remember the difficulty of removing the ponderous stone which
closed the sepulchre, and which would require the strength of several men to
raise it from its place. Sepulchres in the East, those at least belonging to
men of rank and opulence, were formed of an outward small court or enclosure,
the entrance to which was covered by a huge stone; and within were cells or
chambers, often hewn in the solid rock, for the deposit of the dead. As the
women drew near, they saw that the stone had been removed, and the first glance
into the open sepulchre discovered that the body was no longer there. At this
sight, Mary Magdalene appears to have hurried back to the city, to give
information to Peter and John. These disciples, it may be remembered, were the
only two who followed Jesus to his trial; and it is likely that they were
together in some part of the city, while the rest were scattered in different
quarters, or perhaps had retired to Bethany. During the absence of Mary, the
other women made a closer inspection; they entered the inner chamber, they saw
the grave-clothes lying in an orderly manner, the bandage or covering of the
head rolled up, and placed on one side: this circumstance would appear
incompatible with the haste of a surreptitious, or the carelessness of a
violent, removal. To their minds
l Setqudf, as before remarked, usually
means an earthquake, but possibly may admit of a wider sense.
thus highly
excited, and bewildered with astonishment, with terror, and with grief,
appeared what is described by the evangelist as “a vision of angels.” One or
more beings in human form, seated in the shadowy twilight within the sepulchre,
and addressing them with human voices, told them that their Master had risen
from the grave, — that He was to go before them into Galilee. They had departed
to communicate these wonderful tidings to the other disciples, before the two
summoned by Mary Magdalene arrived: of
Arrival of
these the younger and more active, John,
John. outran
the older, Peter. But he only entered the outer chamber, from whence he could
see the state in which the grave-elothes were lying; but, before he entered the
inner chamber, he awaited the arrival of his companion. Peter went in first,
and afterwards John, who, as he states, not till then believed that the body
had been taken away; for, up to that time, the apostles themselves had no
thought or expectation of the resurrection.1 These two apostles returned home, leaving Mary Magdalene,
who, probably wearied by her walk to the city and her return, had not come up
with them till they had completed their search. The other women, meantime, had
fled in haste, and in the silence of terror, through the hostile city; and
until, later in the day, they found the apostles assembled together, did not
unburden their hearts of this extraordinary secret. Mary Magdalene 2 was left alone; First ap- s^e
8,8 ^ secn an<^ heard nothing: but, jesmTto °f on
l00kins down into the sepulchre, she saw Mary Mag- the same vision which
had appeared to the others, and was in her turn addressed by
1 John xx. 8, 9: “ For as yet they knew not
the Scripture, that He should rise again from the dead.”
2 Mark xvi. 0-11; John xx. 11—3 S.
the angels;
and it seems that her feelings were those of unmitigated sorrow. She stood near
the sepulchre, weeping. To her Jesus then first appeared. So little was she
prepared for his presence, that she at first mistook Him for the person who had
the charge of the garden. Her language is that of grief, because unfriendly
hands have removed the body, and carried it away to some unknown place. Nor was
it till He again addressed her, that she recognized his familiar form and
voice.
The second1 appearance of Jesus was to the
other party of women, as they returned to the city, and perhaps separated to
find out the different Pearancea- apostles, to whom, when assembled,
they related the whole of their adventure. In the mean time, a third appearance2 had taken place to two
disciples who had made an excursion to Emmaus, a village between seven and
eight miles from Jerusalem: a fourth to the Apostle Peter; this apparition is
not noticed by the evangelists ; it rests on the authority of St. Paul.3 The intelligence of the women had been received with the utmost
incredulity by the assembled apostles. The arrival of the two disciples from
Emmaus, with their more particular relation of his conversing with them ; his
explaining the Scriptures ; his breaking bread with them, — made a deeper
impression. Still mistrust seems to have predominated; and when Jesus appeared
in the chamber, the doors of which had been closed from fear lest their meeting
should be interrupted by the hostile rulers, the first sensation was
1 Matt xxviii. 9, 10. 2 Mark xvi.
12,13; Luke xxiv. 13-32.
8
It does not appear possible that Peter could be one of the disciples near
Emmaus. It would harmonize the accounts if we could suppose that St. Paul (1
Cor. xv. 5) originally dictated KT&wa, which was changed for the more
familiar Kij<pa
terror rather
than joy. It was not till Jesus conversed with them, and permitted them to
ascertain by actual touch the identity of his body, that they yielded to
emotions of gladness. Jesus appeared a second time, eight days after,1 in the public assembly of the
disciples, and condescended to remove the doubts of one apostle, who had not
been present at the former meeting, by permitting him to inspect and touch his
wounds.
This
incredulity of the apostles, related with so incredulity nmch simplicity, is,
on many accounts, most *LtheiteP°8'
remarkable, considering the apparent dis- cuufie. tinctness with which Jesus
appears to have predicted both his death and resurrection, and the rumor which
put the Sanhedrin on their guard against any clandestine removal of the body.
The key to this difficulty is to be sought in the opinions of the time. The
notion of a resurrection was intimately connected with the coming of the
Messiah ; but that resurrection was of a character very different from the
secret, the peaceful, the unimposing re-appearance of Jesus after his death. It
was an integral, an essential part of that splendid vision which represented
the Messiah as summoning all the fathers of the chosen race from their graves
to share in the glories of his kingdom.2 Even after the
resurrection, the bewildered apostles inquire whether that kingdom, the only
sovereignty of which they yet dreamed, was about to commence.3 The
death of Jesus, notwithstanding his care to prepare their minds for that
appalling event, took them by surprise: they seem to have been stunned and
confounded. It had shaken their faith by its utter
1 Mark xvi. 14-18; Luke sxiv. 86-49; John
xx. 10-29.
2 See Book I. ch. i. p. 87. 8
Acts ii. 6. Compare Luke xxiv. 21.
incongruity
with their preconceived notions, rather than confirmed it by its accordance
with his own predictions ; and, in this perplexed and darkling state, the
resurrection came upon them not less strangely at issue with their conceptions
of the manner in which the Messiah would return to the world. When Jesus had
alluded with more or less prophetic distinctness to that event, their minds
had, no doubt, reverted to fheir rooted opinions on the subject, and moulded up
the plain sense of his words with some vague and confused interpretation
framed out of their own traditions; the latter so far predominating, that their
memory retained scarcely a vestige of the simpler truth, until it was forcibly
re-awakened by its complete fulfilment in the resurrection of tbeir Lord.
Excepting
among the immediate disciples, the intelligence of the resurrection remained,
it is probable, a profound secret; or, at all events, little more than vague
and feeble rumors would reach the ear of the Sanhedrin. For though Christ had
taken the first step to re-organize his religion, by his solemn commission to
the apostles at his first appearance in their assembly, it was not till after
the return to Galilee, more particularly during one interview near Return of
the Lake of Geunesareth, that He invested ^es^03'
Peter, and with him the rest of the apostles, 6aUle°- with the
pastoral charge over his new community. For, according to their custom, the
Galilean apostles had returned to their homes during the interval between the
Passover and the Pentecost; and there, among the former scenes of his
beneficent labors, on more than one occasion, the living Jesus had appeared,
and conversed familiarly with them.1
Forty days
after the crucifixion, and ten before the Apostles in Pentecost, the apostles
were again assembled jntaa. at their uguaj place 0f resort,
in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, the village of Bethany. It was here, on the
slope of the Mount of Olives, that, in the language of St. Luke, “ He was
parted from them; ” “ He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their
sight.”1
During the
interval between the ascension and thrf- day of Pentecost, the
apostles of Jesus regularly performed their devotions in the Temple; but they
may have been lost and unobserved among the thousands who either returned to
Jerusalem for the second great annual festival, or, if from more remote parts,
remained,
account,
omits the journey to Galilee. Luke (xxiv. 49) seems to intimate the contrary,
as if he had known nothing of this retreat. This verse, however, may be a kind
of continuation of verse 47, and is not to he taken in this strict sense, so as
positively to exclude an intermediate journey to Galilee.
1
Neander has closed his Life of Christ with some forcible observations on the
ascension, to which it has heen objected, that St. Luke alone, though in two
places (Gosp. xxiv. 50, 51; Acts i. 9-11), mentions this extraordinary event:
“How could the resurrection of Christ have been to the disciples the groundwork
of their belief in everlasting life, if it had been again followed by his death
? With the death of Christ, the faith, especially in his resurreo tion and
re-appearance, must again, of necessity, have sunk away. Christ would again
have appeared to them an ordinary man; their belief in Him, as the Messiah,
would have suffered a violent shock. How in this manner could that conviction
of the exaltation of Christ have formed itself within them, which we find
expressed in their writings with so much force and precision ? Though tbe fact
of his ascension, as visible to the senses, is witnessed expressly only by St.
Luke, the language of St. John concerning his ascent to the Father, the
declarations of all the apostles concerning his exaltation to heaven [see
especially the strong expression of St. Mark, xvi. 19. — H. M.], presuppose
their conviction of his supernatural elevation from the earth, since the notion
of his departure from this earthly life in the ordinary manner is thereby
altogether excluded. Even if none of the apostolic writers had mentioned this
visible and real fact, we might have safely inferred from all which they say of
Christ, that in some form or other they presupposed a supernatural exaltation
of Christ from this visible earthly world.” Leben
Jesu, p *56.
as was
customary, in the capital from the Passover to the Pentecost. The election of a
new apostle to fill the mysterious number of twelve — a number hallowed to
Jewish feeling as that of the tribes of their ancestors— shows that they now
looked upon themselves again as a permanent body, united by a federal principle,
and destined for some ulterior purpose; and it is possible that they might look
with eager hope to the feast of Pentecost, the celebration of the delivery of
the Law on Mount Sinai;1
the birthday, Election of
* l* 1 1-
• • • A a neW
as it were,
of the religious constitution of apostle, the Jews, as an epoch peculiarly
suited for the reorganization and reconstruction of the new kingdom of the
Messiah.
The Sanhedrin
doubtless expected any thing rather than the revival of the religion of Jesus.
The guards, who had fled from the sepulchre, had been bribed to counteract any
rumor of the resurrection, by charging the disciples with the clandestine
removal of the body. The city had been restored to peace, as if no extraordinary
event had taken place. The Galileans, the followers of Jesus among the rest,
had retired to their native province. In the popular estimation, the claims of
Jesus to the Messiahship were altogether extinguished by his death. The
attempt to re-instate Him, who had been condemned by the Sanhedrin and crucified
by the Romans, in public reverence and belief as the promised Redeemer, might
have appeared a proceeding so desperate as could not enter into the most
enthusiastic mind. The character of the disciples of Jesus was as little
calculated to awaken apprehension. The few richer or more influential persons
who had
1 See thb
traditions on the subject in Meuschen, N. T., a Talmude illua- tratum, p. 740.
been inclined
to embrace his cause, even during his lifetime, had maintained their obnoxious
opinions in secret. The ostensible leaders were men of low birth, humble
occupations, deficient education, and — no unimportant objection in the mind of
the Jews — Galileans. Never, indeed, was sect so completely centred in the
person of its founder: the whole rested ou his personal authority, emanated
from his personal teaching: and however it might be thought that some of his
sayings might lie treasured in the minds of his blind and infatuated adherents;
however they might refuse to abandon the hope that He would appear again, as
the Messiah, — all this delusion would gradually die away, from the want of any
leader qualified to take up and maintain a cause so lost and hopeless. Great must
have been their astonishment at the intelligence, Re-appear- that the religion
of Jesus had re-appeared, religion of6 111 a new, in a more attractive form; that, on the
feast-day which next followed their total dispersion, those humble, ignorant,
and despised Galileans were making converts by thousands, at the very gates,
even perhaps within the precincts, of the Temple. The more visible
circumstances of the miracle which took place on the day of Pentecost, the
descent of the Holy Ghost, under the appearance of fiery tongues, in the
private assembly of the Christians, might not reach their ears; but they could
not long remain ignorant of this strange and alarming fact, that these
uneducated men, apparently re-organized, and acting with the most fearless
freedom, were familiarly conversing with, and inculcating the belief in the
resurrection of Jesus on, strangers from every quarter of the world, in all
their various languages or dialects.1
1
Kuinoel (in loc. Act.) gives a lucid view of the various Rationalist au4
The Jews
whose families had been long domiciliated in the different provinces of the
Roman and the Parthian dominions, gradually lost, or had never learned, the
vernacular tongue of Palestine; they adopted the language of the surrounding
people. The original sacred Hebrew was understood only by the learned. How far,
on one side the Greek, on the other the Babylonian Chaldaic, which was nearly
allied to the vernacular Aramaic, were admitted into the religious services of
the synagogue, appears uncertain; but the different synagogues in Jerusalem
were appropriated to the different races of Jews. Those from Alexandria, from
Cyrene, the Libertines, descended from freed slaves at Rome, perhaps therefore
speaking Latin, the Cilicians and Asiatics, had their separate places of
assembly:1 so, probably, those who came from more remote quarters,
where Greek, the universal medium of communication in great part of the Roman
empire, was less known, as in Arabia, Mesopotamia, and beyond the Euphrates.
The scene of
this extraordinary incident must have been some place of general resort, yet
scarcely within the Temple, where, though there were many chambers
Anti-rationalist
interpretations of this miracle. The most ingenious and probable is that (vet
it is difficult to reconcile it with the language of the Acts) of Neander and
Bunsen: they slightly differ. (See Christianity and Mankind, 1., II.) Every way
there are aimost insurmountable difficulties. Taking the common notion, it is
certainly remarkable that there is no mention of the use of this gift in early
Christian history, or even, I believe, in tradition, for the purpose of
conversion. In my youthful zeal, I attempted to prove the contrary: my attempt,
I confess, was a total failure. The mention of the gift of tongues in Corinth
perplexes rather than elucidates the difficulty. It was obviously thought a
very secondary gift, not the extraordinary endowment inferred from the passage
in the Acts; and of all places in Greece, Corinth, though the resort of commercial
strangers from different parts of the world, would be that in which this
special gift would be least wanted for thi extension of the religion.
1
Acts vi.
set apart for
instruction in the Law, and other devo* Disciples tional purposes, the apostles
were not likely Temple! to have obtained admittance to one of these, t’ongues.
or to have been permitted to carry on their teaching without interruption. If
conjecture might be hazarded, we should venture to place their house of
assembly in one of the streets leading to the Temple ; that, perhaps, which,
descending the slope of the hill, led to the Mount of Olives, and to the
village of Bethany. The time, the third hour, nine in the morning, was that of
public prayer in the Temple. Multitudes, therefore, would throng all the
avenues to the Temple, and would be arrested on their way by the extraordinary
sight of Peter and his colleagues thus addressing the various classes in their
different dialects; asserting openly the resurrection of Jesus; arraigning the
injustice of his judicial murder; and re-establishing his claim to be received
as the Messiah.
These
submissive, timid, and scattered followers of Jesus thus burst upon the public
attention, suddenly invested with courage, endowed with commanding eloquence;
in the very scene of their Master’s cruel apprehension and execution, asserting
his Messiah- ship, in a form as irreconcilable with their own preconceived
notions as with those of the rest of the people; arraigning the rulers, and, by
implication, if not as yet in distinct words, the whole nation, of the most
heinous act of impiety, as well as barbarity,— the rejection of the Messiah ;
proclaiming the resurrec-
Spoecli of
tion and
defying investigation. The whole Peter' speech of Peter clashed with
the strongest prejudices of those who had so short a time before given such
fearful evidence of their animosity and
remorselessness.
. It proclaimed, that “ the last days,” the days of the Messiah, the days of
prophecy and wonder, had already begun. It placed the Being whom but fifty days
before they had seen helplessly expiring upon the cross, far above the pride,
almost the idol, of the nation, King David. The ashes of the king had long
reposed in the tomb, which was before their eyes: but the tomb could not
confine Jesus; death had no power over his remains. Nor was his resurrection
all: the crucified Jesus was now “ on the right hand of God: ” He had assumed
that last, the highest distinction of the Messiah, — the superhuman majesty;
that intimate relation with the Deity, which, however vaguely and indistinctly
shadowed out in the Jewish notion of the Messiah, was, as it were, the
crowning glory, the ultimate height to which the devout hopes of the most
strongly excited of the Jews followed up the promised Redeemer: “ Therefore let
all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus,
whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”1
Three
thousand declared converts were the result of this first appeal to the Jewish
multitude. The religion thus re-appeared, in a form new, complete, and more
decidedly hostile to the prevailing creed and dominant sentiments of the
nation. From this' time the Christian community assumed its separate and
organized, existence, united by the federal rite of baptism ; and the popular
mind was deeply impressed by the preternatural powers exercised by its leading
followers. Many of the converts threw their property, or part of it, into a
common stock; now become necessary, as the teachers of Christianity had to take
up their
permanent residence in Jerusalem, at a distance from their homes and the scenes
of their humble labors. The religion spread, of course, with the greatest
rapidity among the lower orders. Assistance in their wants, and protection
against the hostility, or at least the coldness and estrangement, of the
powerful and opulent, were necessary to hold together the young so.ciety. Such
was the general ardor that many did not hesitate to sell their landed property,
the tenure of which, however loosened by time and by the successive changes in
the political state of the country, probably, at this period of the Messiah’s
expected coming, assumed a new value. This, therefore, was no easy triumph
over Jewish feeling. Yet common nothing like an Essenian community of community
goods ever appears to have prevailed in the of goods. Christian Church: such a
system, however favorable to the maintenance of certain usages or opinions
within a narrow sphere, would have been fatal to the aggressive and comprehensive
spirit of Christianity; the vital and conservative principle of a sect, it was
inconsistent with an universal religion; and we cannot but admire the wisdom
which avoided a precedent so attractive, as conducing to the immediate
prosperity, yet so dangerous to the ultimate progress, of the religion.1
The Sanhedrin
at first stood aloof, — whether from c™auct awe, or miscalculating contempt,
or, it is sanhedrin. possible, from internal dissension. It was not till they
were assailed, as it were, in the heart of their own territory, — not till the
miracle of healing the
1 Mosheim appears to me to have proved this
point conclusively. At a later period, every exhortation to alms-giving, and
every sentence which alludes to distinctions of rich and poor in the Christian
churches, is decisive against the community of goods.
lame man near
the Beautiful Gate of the Temple (this gate opened into the inner court of the
Temple, and, from the richness of its architecture, had received that name),
and the public proclamation of the resurrection, in the midst of the assembled
worshippers, in the second recorded speech of Peter, had secured five thousand
converts, — that at length the authorities found it necessary to interfere,
and to arrest, if possible, the rapid progress of the faith. The second second
speech of the apostle1
was in a some- K? °f what more calm and conciliating tone than the
former: it dwelt less on the crime of the crucifixion, than on the advantages
of belief in Jesus as. the Messiah. It did not shrink, indeed, from
re-asserting the guilt of the death of the Just One; yet it palliated the
ignorance through which the people, and even the rulers, had rejected Jesus,
and stained the city with his blood. It called upon them to repent of this
national crime; and, as if even yet Peter himself was not disencumbered of that
Jewish notion, it seemed to intimate the possibility of an immediate
re-appearance of Christ,2
to fulfil to the Jewish people all that they hoped from this greater than
Moses, this accomplisher of the sublime promise made to their father Abraham.
To the Sauhedrin, the speech was, no doubt, but vaguely reported; but any
speech delivered by such men, in such a place, and on such a subject, demanded
their interference. Obtaining the assistance of the commander of the Roman
guard, mounted, as
1 Acta iii. 12-26.
2 lb. 19, 20, 21: ‘‘The times of
refreshing; ” when “He shall send Jesus Christ, whieh hefore was preached unto
you; whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things.”
This restitution of all things, in the common Jewish belief, was to be almost
simultaneous ‘with, or to follow very closely, the appearance of the Messiah.
has been
said, in the gallery leading to the Antonia, they seized and imprisoned the
apostles. The next morning, they were brought up for examination. The boldness
of the apostles, who asserted their doctrines with calm resolution, avowed and
enforced their belief in the resurrection and Messiahship of the crucified
Jesus, as well as the presence of the man who had been healed, perplexed the
council. After a private conference, they determined to try the effect of
severe threatenings, and authoritatively commanded them to desist from
disseminating their obnoxious opinions. The apostles answered by an appeal to a
higher power: “ Whether it be right, in the sight of God, to hearken unto you
more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have
seen and heard.”1
A remarkable
revolution had taken place, either in Sadducees ^ie internal
politics of the Sanhedrin, or in toethe&uSl their prevailing
sentiments towards Chris- drin- tianity. Up to the death of Jesus,
the Pharisees were his chief opponents: against their authority He seemed
chiefly to direct his rebukes ; and, by their jealous animosity, He was
watched, criminated, and at length put to death. Now, in their turn, the Sadducees
2 take the lead ;
either because the doctrine of the resurrection struck more directly at the
root of their system, or, otherwise, because their influence had gained a
temporary ascendency in the great council
1 Acts iv. 19, 20.
2 Acts iv. 1. Annas is mentioned as
the high-priest, and then Caiaphas, who, it appears from the Gospels and from
Josephus (Ant. xviii. 2, § 2,4, § 3), was not deposed till a later period. The
interpretation of Krebs (Observa- tiones in N". T., e Josepho, p. 177)
appears to me the best. Annas was the second high-priest, or deputy; but is
named first, as the head of the family in which the high-priesthood was vested,
being father-in-law to Caiaphas. The rest were the assessors of the high-priest "
But this
predominance of the unpopular Sadducean party on the throne of the high-priest
and in the council, if it increased their danger from the well-known severity
with which that faction administered the law; on the other hand, it powerfully
contributed to that re-action of popular favor, which again overawed the
hostile Sanhedrin.1
This triumph of the apostles over their adversaries; this resolute
determination to maintain their cause at all hazards (sanctioned, as it
seemed, by the manifest approval of the Almighty) ; the rapid increase in their
possessions, which enabled them to protect all the poorer classes who joined
their ranks; the awful death of Ananias and Sapphira,2 into the circumstances of
which their enemies ventured no inquiry ; the miracles of a gentler and more
beneficent character, which they performed in public; the concourse from the
neighborhood of Jerusalem to partake in their powers of healing, and to hear
their doctrines ; the manifest superiority, in short, which Christianity was
gaining over the established Judaism, — determined the Sanhedrin, after a
short time, to make another effort to suppress their growing power. The
apostles were seized, and cast ignominiously into the common prison. In the
morning, they were sought in vain: the doors were found closed, but the
prisoners had disappeared ; and the dismayed Sanhedrin received intelligence
that they had taken up their customary station in the Temple. Even the Roman
officer, despatched to secure their persons, found it necessary to act with
caution and gentleness: for the multitude were ready to undertake their
defence, even against the
1 “They let them go, finding nothing how
they might punish them, because of the people; for all men glorified God for
that which was done.” — Acte iv- 21.
2 Acts v.
armed
soldiery; and stones were always at hand in the neighborhood or precincts of
the Temple, for any Apostles tumultuary resistance. The apostles, how sanhedrin.
ever, peaceably obeyed the citation of the Sanhedrin ; but the language of
Peter was now even more bold and resolute than before: he openly proclaimed, in
the face of the astonished council, the crucified Jesus to be the Prince and
the Saviour, and asserted the inspiration of himself and his companions by the
Spirit of God.1
The Sadducaic
faction were wrought to the highest pitch of frenzy; they were eager to press
the capital charge. But the Pharisaic party endeavored, not without success, to
mitigate the sentence. The perpetual rivalry of the two sects, and the general
leniency of the Pharisaic administration of the law, may have concurred, with
the moderation and judgment of the individual, to induce Gamaliel to interpose
the weight of his own personal authority and that of his party. Gamaliel docs
not appear, himself, to have been inclined to Christianity: he was most likely
the same who is distinguished in Jewish tradition as president of the Sanhedrin
(though the high-priest, being now present, would take the chief place), and as
the master under whom St. Paul had studied the Law. The speech of Gamaliel,
with singular address, confounded the new sect with those of two adventurers,
Judas the Galilean and Theudas, whose insurrections had excited great
expectation, but gradually died away. With these, affairs were left to take
their course; against their pretensions God had decided by their failure:
leave, then, to the same unerring Judge the present decision.
To this
temporizing policy the majority of the council assented, — part probably
considering that either the sect would, after all, die away, without
establishing any permanent influence, or, like some of those parties mentioned
by Gamaliel, run into wild excess, and so provoke the Roman Government to
suppress them by force; others from mere party spirit, to counteract the power
of the opposite faction; some from more humane principles and kindlier motives;
others from perplexity; some, perhaps, from awe, which, though it had not yet
led to belief, had led to hesitation; some from sincere piety, as, in fact,
expecting that an event of such importance would he decided by some manifest
interposition, or overruling influence at least, of the Almighty. The majority
were anxious, from these different motives, to escape the perilous responsibility
of decision. The less violent course was therefore followed. After the
apostles had suffered the milder punishment of scourging, — a punishment inflicted
with great frequency among the Jews, yet ignominious to the sufferer, — the
persecution, for the present, ceased: the apostles again appeared in public;
they attended in the Temple: but how long this period of security lasted, from
the uncertain chronology of the early Christian history,1 it is impossible to decide.
1 There
is no certain date in the Acts of the Apostles, except that of the death of
Herod, A.D. 44, even if that is certain. Nothing can he more easy than to array
against each other the names of the most learned authorities, who from the
earliest days have labored to build a durable edifice out of the insufficient
materials in their power. Perhaps, from Jerome to Dr. Burton and Mr. Greswell.
no two systems agree. The passage in St. Paul (Gal. ii. 1), which might 'oe
expected to throw light on this difficult subject, involves it in still greater
intricacy. In the first place, the reading, fourteen years, as Grotius and many
others have shown, not without manuscript authority, is by no means certain.
Then, from whence is this period to be calculated? — from the conversion, with
Pearson and many modem writers; or from the first visit of St. Paul to
Jerusalem, with others? All is doubtful, contested,
Yet, as the
jealousies which appear to have arisen in the infant community would require
some time to mature and grow to a head, I should interpose two or three years
between this collision with the authorities and the next, which first imbrued
the soil of Jerusalem with the blood of a Christian martyr. Nor would the
peaceful policy adopted through the authority of Gamaliel have had a fair
trial in a shorter period of time: it would scarcely have been overborne at
once and immediately by the more violent party.
The first
converts to Christianity were Jews,1
but of two distinct classes: 1. The natives of Palestine, who spoke the Syrian
dialect, and among whom perhaps were included the Jews from the East; 2. The
“Western Jews, who, having been settled in the different provinces of the
Roman empire, generally spoke Greek. This class may likewise have comprehended
proselytes to Judaism. Jealousies arose between these two parties. The Greeks
complained that the distribution of the general charitable fund was conducted
with partiality; that their “ widows were neglected.” The dispute led to the
establishment of a new order institution in the community. The
apostles withdrew of deacons. from laborious, it might be the
invidious, office; and seven disciples, from whose names we may conjecture that
they were chosen from the Grecian party, were invested by a solemn ceremony, the
impo-
conjectural.
The only plan, therefore, is to adopt, and uniformly adhere to, some one
system. In fact, the cardinal point of the whole calculation, the year of our
Saviour’s death, being as uncertain as the rest, I shall state that I assume
that to have been A.D. 31. From thence I shall proceed to affix my dates
according to my own view, without involving my readers in the inex- tncahle
labyrinth to which I am convinced that there is no certain or satisfactory
clue. If I notice any arguments, they will be chiefly of a historical nature.
1 Acts vi.
sition of
hands, as deacons or ministers, with the superintendence of the general funds.
It was in the
synagogues of the foreign, the African and Asiatic Jews, that the success of
Stephen, one of these deacons, excited the most violent ' ’ ' hostility. The
indignant people found that not even the priesthood was a security against this
spreading apostasy: many of that order enrolled themselves among the disciples
of Christ.1 Whether
the execution of this first martyr to Christianity was a legal or tumultuary
proceeding, — whether it was a solemn act of the Sanhedrin, the supreme
judicial as well as civil tribunal of the nation, or an outbreak of popular indignation
and resentment, — the preliminary steps, at least, appear to have been
conducted with regularity. He was formally arraigned before the Sanhedrin of
blasphemy, as asserting the future, destruction of the Temple, and the
abrogation of the Law. This accu sation, although the witnesses are said to have
been false and suborned, seems to intimate that in those Hellenistic
congregations Christianity had already assumed a bolder and more independent
tone; that it had thrown aside some of the peculiar character which adhered to
it in the other communities; that it already aspired to be an universal, not a
national religion; and one destined to survive the local worship in Jerusalem
and the abolition of the Mosaic institutes.2 Whether inflamed
by these popular topics of accusation, which struck at the vital principles of
their religious influence, or again taking alarm at the progress
1 Acts vi. 7.
2 Stephen has heen called hy some modem
writers the forerunner of St. Paul. See Neander, Geschichte der Pflanzung der
Christlichen Kirchet p. 41 ^ a work which I had not the advantage of
consulting when this part of the present volume was written.
of
Christianity, the Pharisaic party, which we found after the resurrection had
lost their supremacy in the council, appear, from the active concurrence of
Saul, and from the re-awakened hostility of the multitude, over whom the
Sadducees had no commanding influence, to have re-united themselves to the
more violent enemies of the faith. The defence of Stephen recar pitulated in
bold language the chief points of the national history, the privileges and the
crimes of the race of Israel, which gradually led to this final consummation of
their impiety and guilt, the rejection of the Messiah, the murder of the Just
One. It is evidently incomplete; it was interrupted by the fury of his
opponents, who took fire at liis arraigning them, not merely of the death of
Jesus, but of this perpetual violation of the Law: “ who have received the law
by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.”1 This charge struck directly at the Pharisaic party; the populace, even
under their control, either abandoned the Christians to their fate, or joined
in the hasty and ruthless vengeance. The murmurs, the gestures, of the
indignant Sanhedrin, and of others, perhaps, who witnessed the trial, betrayed
their impatience and indignation: they gnashed their teeth; and Stephen,
breaking off, or unable to pursue his continuous discourse, in a kind of
prophetic ecstasy declared that at that instant he beheld the Son of Man Death
of standing at the right hand of God. Whether ^™t0"
legal or tumultuary, the execution of Stephen (a.d. si). was
conducted with so much attention to form, that he was first carried beyond the
walls of the city;2
the witnesses, whose office it was to cast the
1 Acts vii. 53.
2 In one instance, it may be remembered,
the multitude was so excited as to attempt to stone our Saviour within the
precincts of the 'JVinnlA
first stone,1 put off their clothes, and
perhaps observed the other forms peculiar to this mode of execution. He died as
a true follower of Jesus, praying the divine mercy upon his barbarous
persecutors; but neither the sight of his sufferings, nor the beauty of his
dying words, allayed the excitement which had now united the conflicting
parties of the Jews in their common league against Christianity. Yet the mere
profession of Christianity did not necessarily involve any capilal charge; or,
if it did, the Jews wanted power to carry the sentence of death into execution
on a general scale. Though, therefore, they on this occasion had either
deliberately ventured, or yielded to a violent impulse of fury, their vengeance
in other cases was confined to those subordinate punishments which were left
under their jurisdiction, — imprisonment; public scourging in the synagogue ; and
that which, of course, began to lose its terrors as soon as the Christians
formed separate and independent communities, the once-awful excommunication.2
The martyrdom
of Stephen led to the most important results, not merely as first revealing
that great lesson which mankind has been so slow to learn, that religious
persecution which stops short of extermination always advances the cause which
it endeavors to
1 Dent- xvii. 7.
2 Michaelis, followed by Eichhorn, has
argued, with considerable plausibility, that these violent measures would
scarcely have been ventured hy the Jews under the rigorous administration of
Pilate. Vitellius, on the other hand, by whom Pilate was sent in disgrace to
Rome, A.D. 36, visited Jerusalem, A.D. 37, was received with great honors, and
seems to have treated the Jewish authorities with the utmost respect. On these
grounds he places this persecution as late as the year 37. Yet the government
of Pilate appears to have been capriciously, rather than systematically severe.
The immediate occasion of his recall was his tyrannical conduct to the
Samaritans. It may have been fiis policy, while his administration was drawing
to a close, to court the ruling authorities of the Jews.
repress. It
showed that Christian, faith was stronger than death, the last resort of human
cruelty. Thenceforth its triumph was secure. For every death, courageously,
calmly, cheerfully endured, where it appalled one dastard into apostasy, made,
or prepared the minds of, a hundred proselytes. To the Jew, ready himself to
lay down his life in defence of his Temple, this self-devotion, though an
undeniable test of sincerity in the belief of facts of recent occurrence, was
less extraordinary: to the heathen, it showed a determined assurance of
immortality, not less new, as an active and general principle, than attractive
and ennobling.
The more
immediate consequences of the persecution were 110 less favorable to the
progress of Christianity.
The
Christians were driven out of Jerusalem, where the apostles alone remained firm
at their posts. Scattered through the whole region, if not beyond the
precincts of Palestine, they bore with them the seed of the religion. The most
important progress was made in Samaria; but the extent of their success in this
region, and the opposition they encountered among this people, deeply tinged
with Oriental opinion, will be related in another part of this work. Philip,
one of the most active of the deacons, made another convert of rank and
importance,—an officer1
who held the highest station and influence with Candace, the Queen of the
Ethiopians. The name of Candace2
was the hereditary appellation of the queens of Meroe, as
u
The word “ eunuch ” may be here used in its primary sense (cubicularius)
without any allusion to its later meaning; as, according to the strict words of
the law, a Jewish eunuch was disqualified from appearing at the public
assemblies.
2 li Regnare fceminam
Candacen, qnod nomen multis jam annis ad reginaa transiit.” -* Plin. vi. 29.
Conf. Strabo, xvii. p. 1175. Dion Oara.
liv.
Pharaoh of
the older, and Ptolemy of the later, Egyptian kings. The Jews had spread in
great numbers to that region; and the return of a person of such influence, a
declared convert to the new religion, can scarcely have been without
consequences, of which, unhappily, we have no record.
Hut far the
most important result of the death of Stephen was its connection with the
conver- of sion of St. Paul. To propagate Christianity Taraua'
in the enlightened West, where its most extensive, at least most permanent,
conquests were to be made; to emancipate it from the trammels of Judaism,—a man
was wanting of larger and more comprehensive views, of higher education, and
more liberal accomplishments. Such an instrument for its momentous scheme of
benevolence to the human race, Divine Providence found in Saul of Tarsus. Born
in the Grecian and commercial town of Tarsus, where he had acquired no
inconsiderable acquaintance with Grecian letters and philosophy; but brought up
in the most celebrated school of Pharisaic learning, that of Gamaliel, for
which purpose he had probably resided long in Jerusalem; having inherited,
probably from the domiciliation of his family in Tarsus,1 the valuable privilege of
Roman citizenship; yet with his Judaism in no degree weakened by his Grecian
culture, — Saul stood, as it were, on the confines of both regions, qualified
beyond all men to develop a system which should unite Jew and Gentile under one
more harmonious and comprehensive faith. The zeal with which Saul
1
Compare Strabo’s account of Tarsus. The natives of this city were remarkably
addicted to philosophical studies; but, in general, travelled and settled in
foreign countries: Ovd' avrol ovtqi uevovotv aiirodt, aXla Kal rzkavom% rat
tudrifjovvTeg, koI rekuaQkvTeg %evitevovolv qdedg, KarepxovTai $ bTutyoi.—
Strabo, lib. xiv. p. 673.
urged on the
subsequent persecution showed that the death of Stephen had made, as might have
been expected, no influential impression upon a mind so capable, unless blinded
by zeal, of appreciating its moral sublimity. The commission from the
Sanhedrin, to bring in safe custody to Jerusalem such of the Jews of Damascus
as had embraced Christianity, implies their unabated reliance on his fidelity.
The national confidence which invested him in this important office, the
unhesitating readiness with which he appears to have assumed it, in a man of
his apparently severe integrity and unshaken sense of duty, imply, in all
ordinary human estimation, that he had in no degree relaxed from that zeal
which induced him to witness the execution of Stephen, if not with stern
satisfaction, yet without commiseration. Even then, if the nhnd of Paul was in
any degree prepared, by the noble manner in which Stephen had endured death, to
yield to the miraculous interposition which occurred on the road to Damascus,
nothing less than some occurrence of the most extraordinary and unprecedented
character could have arrested so suddenly, and diverted so completely from its
settled purpose, a mind of so much strength, and, however of vivid imagination,
to all appearance very superior to popular superstition. Saul set forth from
Jerusalem, according to the narrative of the Acts, with his mind wrought up to
the most violent animosity against these apostates from the faith of their
ancestors.1 He set
forth, thus manifestly inveterate iu his prejudices, unshaken in his ardent
attachment to the religion of Moses, the immutability and perpetuity of which
he considered it
1 “Breathing threatenings and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord.” — Acts ix. 1-22.
treasonable
and impious to question, with an austere and indignant sense of duty; fully authorized,
by the direct testimony of the Law, to exterminate all renegades from the
severest Judaism. The ruling Jews must have heard with the utmost amazement,
that the persecuting zealot, who had voluntarily demanded the commission of the
high-priest to repress the growing sect of the Christians, had arrived at
Damascus, blinded for a time, humbled; and that his first step had been openly
to join himself to that party which he had threatened to exterminate.
The
Christians, far from welcoming so distinguished a proselyte, looked on him at
first with natural mistrust and suspicion. And although at Damascus this
jealousy was speedily allayed by the interposition of Ananias, a leading
Christian, to whom his conversion had been revealed, by a vision, at Jerusalem
his former hostile violence had made so deep an impression, that, three years
after his conversion, even the apostles stood aloof, and with reluctance
admitted a proselyte of such importance, yet whose conversion to them still
appeared so highly improbable.
No event in
Christian history, from this improbability, as well as its influence on the
progress of the religion, would so demand, if the expression may be used, the
divine intervention as the conversion of St. Paul. Paul was essentially necessary
to the development of the Christian scheme. Neither the self-suggested workings
of the imagination, even if coincident with some extraordinary but fortuitous
atmospheric phenomena; nor any worldly notion of aggrandizement, as the head of
a new and powerful sect; nor that more noble ambition, which might anticipate
the moral and social blessings of Christian
ity, and,
once conceived, would strike resolutely into the scheme for their
advancement,—furnish even a plausible theory for the total change of such a
man, at such a time, and under such circumstances. The minute investigation of
this much-agitated question could scarcely be in its place in the present work;
but to doubt, in whatever manner it took place, the divine mission of Paul,
would be to discard all providential interposition in the design and
propagation of Christianity.
Unquestionably
it is remarkable how little encouragement Paul seems at first to have received
from the party, to join which he had sacrificed all his popularity with his countrymen,
the favor of the supreme magistracy, and a charge, if of a severe and cruel,
yet of an important character; all, indeed, which hitherto appeared the ruling
objects of his life. Instead of assuming at once, as his abilities and
character might seem to command, a distinguished place in the new community
into which he had been received; instead of being hailed, as renegades from the
opposite faction usually are, by a weak and persecuted party,— his early
course is lost in obscurity. He passes several years in exile, as it were, from
both parties; he emerges by slow degrees into eminence, and hardly wins his way
into the reluctant confidence of the Christians, who, however they might at
first be startled by the improbability of the fact, yet felt such reliance in
the power of their Lord and Redeemer, as scarccly we should have conceived to
be affected by lasting wonder at the conversion of any unbeliever.
Part of the
three years which elapsed between the conversion of Paul and his first visit to
Jerusalem were
passed in
Arabia.1 The cause of
this retirement into a foreign region, and the part of the extensive country,
which was then called Arabia, in which he resided, are altogether unknown. It
is possible, indeed, that he may have sought refuge from the Jews of Damascus,
or employed himself in the conversion of the Jews who were scattered in great
numbers in every part of Arabia. The frontiers of the Arabian king bordered Paul
in closely 011 the territory of Damascus, and Paul Arabia' may
have retired but a short distance from that city. During this interval, Aretas,
whose hostile intentions against Herod the Tetrarch of Galilee, the Prefect of
Syria, Vitellius, had made preparations to repress, had the boldness to invade
the Syrian prefecture, and to seize the important city of Damascus. It is
difficult to conceive this act of aggression to have been hazarded unless at
some period of public confusion, such as took place at the death of Tiberius.
According to Josephus, Yitellius, who had collected a great force to invest
Petra, the capital of the Arabian king, on the first tidings of that event,
instantly suspended his operations, and withdrew his troops into their winter
quarters. At all events, at the close of these three years Damascus was in the
power of Aretas. The Jews, who probably were under the authority of an ethnarch
of their own people, obtained sufficient influence with the Arabian governor
to carry into effect their designs against the life of Paul.2 His sudden apostasy from their
cause, his extraordinary powers, his ardent zeal, his unexampled success, had
wrought
1 The time of St. Paul’s residence in
Arabia is generally assumed to have been one whole year, and part of the
preceding and the following. The expression in the Epistle to the Galatians (i.
17,18) appears to me by no means to require this arrangement.
a Acts ix.
23.
their
animosity to this deadly height; and Paul was with difficulty withdrawn from
their fury by being let down from the walls in a basket, the gates being
carefully guarded by the command of the Arabian governor.
Among the
most distinguished of the first converts was Barnabas, a native of Cyprus, who
had contributed largely from his possessions in that island to the common
fund, and whose commanding character and abilities gave him great influence.
When Paul, after his escape from Damascus, arrived at Jerusalem, so imperfect
appears to have been the correspondence between the more remote members of the
Christian community (possibly from Damascus and its neighborhood having been
the seat of war, or because Paul had passed-considerable part of the three
years in almost total seclusion), at all events, such was the obscurity of the
whole transaction, that no certain intelligence of so extraordinary an event as
his conversion had reached the apostolic body, or rather Peter and James, the
only apostles then resident in Jerusalem.1 Bama- oas alone espoused his cause, removed the timid
suspicions of the apostles, and Paid was admitted into the reluctant Christian
community. As peculiarly skilled in the Greek language, his exertions to
advance Christianity were particularly addressed to those of the Jews to whom
Greek was vernacular. But a new conspiracy again endangering his life, he was
carried away by the care of his friends to Cassarea, and thence proceeded to
his native city of Tarsus.2
About this
time, a more urgent and immediate dan- ot theJem £er than the
progress of Christianity occupied by Caligula, the mind of the Jewish people.
The very
existence of
their religion was threatened; for the frantic Caligula had issued orders to
place his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem. The historian of the Jews must
relate the negotiations, the petitions, the artful and humane delays
interposed by the prefect Petronius, and all the incidents which show how
deeply and universally the nation was absorbed by this appalling subject.1 It caused, no doubt, as it
were a diversion in favor of the Christians; and the temporary peace enjoyed by
the churches is attributed, with great probability, rather to the fears of the
Jews for their own religious independence, than to the relaxation of their
hostility against the Christians.2
This peace
was undisturbed for about three years 3 The apostles
pursued their office of dissemi-
A.D. 89-41.
nating the
Gospel in every part of Judsea, until Herod Agrippa took possession of the
hereditary dominions, which had been partly granted by the favor of Caligula,
and were secured by the gratitude of Claudius. Herod Agrippa affected the
splendor of his grandfather, the first Herod; but, unlike that monarch, he
attempted to ingratiate himself with his subjects by the strictest profession
of Judaism.4 His
power appears to have been as despotic as that of his ancestor; and at the
instigation, no doubt, of the leading Jews, he determined to take vigorous
measures for the suppression of Christianity. James, the brother of Death of
St. John, was the first victim. He appears James' to have been
summarily put to death by the military
1 Joseph., Ant. xviii. 8. Hist, of the
Jews, ii. 145,150.
2 Benson (Hist of First Planting of
Christianity) and Lardner take thif view.
8
Acts ix. 31. From 39 to 41, the year of Caligula's death*
4 Hist, of Jews, ii. 157,160. vol. i. 25
mandate of
the king, without any process of the Jewish law.1 The Jews rejoiced, no doubt, that the uncou- trolled power
of life and death was again restored to one who assumed the character of a
national king. They were no longer restrained by the caprice, the justice, or
the humanity of a Roman prefect, who might treat their intolerance with
contempt or displeasure; and they were encouraged in the hope, that at the same
great festival, during which some years before they had extorted the death of
Jesus from the reluctant Pilate, their new kiug would more readily lend himself
to their revenge against his most active • and powerful follower. Peter was
cast into prison, perhaps with the intention of putting him to death before the
departure of Herod from the capital. He was delivered from his boudage by supernatural
intervention.2 If the
author of the Acts has preserved the order of time, two other of the most
important adherents of Christianity ran considerable danger. The famine,
predicted by Agabus at
Antioch,
commenced in Judasa, in the fourth
A.D.
44. j* •
year of
Claudius, the last of Herod Agrippa. If, then, Barnabas and Paul proceeded to
Jerusalem on their charitable mission to bear the contributions of the
Christians in Antioch to their poorer brethren in Judasa,3 they must have arrived there
during the height of the persecution. Either they remained in concealment, or
the extraordinary circumstances of the escape of Peter from prison so
confounded the king and his advisers, notwithstanding their attempt to prove
the connivance of the guards, to which the lives of the miserable meu were
sacrificed, that
1 Blasphemy was the only crime of which he
could be accused, and stoning was the ordinary mode of execution for that
offence. James was “ cut off by the sword.”
2 *ii. 1-23. « Acts xi. 30. Hist, of the Jews.
for a time
the violence of the persecution was suspended, and those who would inevitably
have been its next victims obtained, as it were, a temporary respite.
The death of
Herod, during the same year, delivered the Christians from their determined
enemy. Death of In its terrific and repulsive circumstances, Uero4,
they could not but behold the hand of their protecting God. In this respect
alone differ the Jewish and the Christian historian, Josephus and the writer of
the Acts. In the appalling suddenness of his seizure in the midst of his
splendor and the impious adidations of his court, and in the loathsome nature
of the disease, their accounts fully coincide
Christianity
and Judaism.
Christianity had now made rapid and extensive
progress of progress throughout the Jewish world. The christmmty. (jgg^ an(j
resurrection of Jesus; the rise of a new religious community, which proclaimed
the Son of Mary to be the Messiah, taking place ou a scene so public as the
metropolis, and at the period of the general concourse of the nation,—must have
been rumored, more or less obscurely, in the most remote parts of the Roman
Empire, and eastward as far as the extreme settlements of the Jews. If the
religion may not have been actually embraced by any of those pilgrims from the
more distant provinces who happened to be present during the great festivals,
yet its seeds may have been already widely scattered. The dispersion of the
community, during the persecution after the death of Stephen, carried many zealous
and ardent converts into the adjacent regions of Syria and the island of
Cyprus. It had obtained a permanent establishment at Antioch, the chief city
of Syria, where the community first received the distinctive appellation of
Christians.
Christianity,
however, as yet, was but an expanded Judaism: it was preached by Jews ; it was
addressed to Jews. It was limited, national, exclusive. The race of Israel
gradually recognizing in Jesus of Nazar reth the promised Messiah;
superinducing, as it were,
the exquisite
purity of evangelic morality upon the strict performance of the moral law;
redeemed from the sins of their fathers and from their own by Christ; assured
of the resurrection to eternal life,—the children of Abraham were still,
according to the general notion, to stand alone and separate from the rest of
mankind, sole possessors of the divine favor, sole inheritors o%God’s
everlasting promises. There can be no doubt, that most Christians still looked
for the speedy, if not the immediate, consummation of all things ; the Messiah
had as yet performed but part of his office; He was to come again, at no
distant period, to accomplish all which was wanting to the established belief
in his mission. His visible, his worldly kingdom was to commence; He had passed
his ordeal of trial, of suffering, and of sacrifice; the same age, and the same
people, were to behold Him in his triumph, in his glory, and even, some
self-deemed and self-named Christians would not hesitate to aver, in his
revenge. At the head of his elect of Israel, He was to assume his dominion;
and, if his dominion was to be founded upon a still more rigid principle of
exclusion than that of one favored race, it entered not into the most remote
expectation that it could be formed on a wider plan, unless, perhaps, in favor
of the few who should previously have acknowledged the divine legislation of
Moses, and sued for and obtained admission among the hereditary descendants of
Abraham. Nothing is more remarkable than to see the horizon of the apostles
gradually receding, and, instead °f resting on the borders of the Holy Land,
enlarge-
liiii i i
menfc of the
comprehending
at length the whole world; -news of the
apostles.
barrier after
barrier falling down before the superior wisdom which was infused into their
minds;
first the
proselytes of the Gate, the foreign conform ists to Judaism, and ere long the
Gentiles themselves, admitted within the pale; until Christianity stood forth,
demanded the homage, and promised its rewards to the faith, of the whole human
race; proclaimed itself, in language which the world had as yet never heard,
the one, true, universal religion.
As an
universal religion, aspiring to fbe complete Christianity moral conquest of the
world, Christianity had
an
universal , .
religion. to
encounter three antagonists, — Judaism, Paganism, and Orientalism. It is my
design successively to exhibit the conflict with these opposing forces, its
final triumph not without detriment to its own native purity and its divine
simplicity, from the interworking of the yet unsubdued elements of the former
systems into the Christian mind; until each, at successive periods, and in
different parts of the world, formed a modification of Christianity equally
removed from its unmingled and unsullied original: the Judaeo-Christianity of
Palestine, of which the Ebi- onites appear to have been the last
representatives; the Platonic Christianity of Alexandria, as, at least at this
early period, the new religion could coalesce only with the sublimer and more philosophical
principles of Paganism; and, lastly, the Gnostic Christianity of the East.
With Judaism
Christianity had to maintain a double conflict, —one external, with the Judaism
of conflict of the Temple, the Synagogue, the Sanhedrin;
Christianity 1 ' , .
with jute- a
contest of authority on one side, and the irrepressible spirit of moral and
religious liberty on the other; of fierce intolerance against the and in-
stubborn endurance of conscientious faith; *ermL of
relentless persecution against the calm
and
death-despising, or often death-seeking, heroism of martyrdom: the other, more
dangerous and destruo- i i vo, tho Judaism of tho infant. Glut roll ; the . old
prejudices and opinions, which oven Christianity could not altogether extirpate
or correct, in tlio earlier Jewish piosolvt.es; tho perpetual tendency to
contract again the expanding circle; tho enslavement of Christianity to the
provisions of tho Mosaic Law, and to tho spirit of tlio antiquated roligiou of
Palestine. Until tho iiist. stops wore taken to throw open tho new roligiou to
mankind at largo ; until Christianity, it may bo said without disparagement,
from a Jewish sect assuilicd the dignity of an independent religion, — oven tho
external animosity of Judaism had not roachod its height. But tho successive
admission of tlio proselytes of tho Gate, and at length of tho idolatrous
Gentiles, into an equal participation in tlio privileges of (ho faith, showed
that the broach was altogether irreparable. From that period, the two systems
stood in direct and irreconcilable opposition. To tlio eye of the Jew, tho
Christian became, from a rebellions and heretical son, an irreclaimable
apostate; and, to the Christian, tho temporary designation of Jesus as the
Messiah of tho Jews was merged in tho more sublime title, — the Redeemer of the
world.
Tho same
measures rendered the internal conflict with tho lingering Judaism within tho
Church more violent and desperate. Its dying struggles, as it wore, to maintain
its ground, rent, for some time, the infant eonunuuitv witli civil divisions.
But the predominant influx of Gentile converts gradually obtained the ascendency
; Judaism slowly died out in tlio great body of tho Church ; and the
Judaio-Ohristian sects in the East languished, and at length expired in
obscurity.
Divine
Providence had armed the religion of Christ with new powers adapted to the
change in its situation and design, both for resistance against the more
violent animosity which was exasperated by its growing success, and for
aggression upon the ignorance, the vice, and the misery which it was to
enlighten, to purify, or to mitigate. Independent of the supernatural powers
occasionally displayed by the apostles, the accession of two men so highly
gifted with natural abilities, as well as with all the peculiar powers
conferred on the Paul and first apostles of Christianity, the enrolment
Bamabas. j>arnajjas au(j paui m the
apostolic body showed, that, for the comprehensive system about to be
developed, instruments were wanting of a different character from the humble
and uninstructed peasants of Galilee. However extraordinary the change wrought
in the minds of the earlier apostles by the spirit of Christianity; however
some of them, especially Peter and John, may have extended their labors beyond
the precincts of Palestine, — yet Paid appears to have exercised by far the
greatest influence, not merely in the conversion of the Gentiles, but in
emancipating the Christianity of the Jewish converts from the inveterate
influence of their old religion.
Yet the first
step towards the more comprehensive system was made by Peter. Samaria, indeed,
DiffGtGDC6fl
between had
already received the new religion to a
Jew
and . . T .
Qentiie great
extent; an innovation upon Jewish pro
partially . . m .
abrogated iudice,
remarkable both in itself and its
by
Peter. .
results. The
most important circumstance in that transaction, the collision with Simon the
magician, will be considered in a future chapter, — that which describes the
conflict of Christianity with Orientalism. The vision of Peter, which seemed by
the divine
sanction to annul the distinction of meats, of itself threw down one of those
barriers which separated the Jews from the rest of mankind.1 This sacred usage prohibited,
not merely all social intercourse, but all close or domestic communication,
with other races. But the figurative instruction which the apostle inferred
from this abrogation of all distinction between clean and unclean animals was
of still greater importance. The proselytes of the Gate — that is, those
heathens who, without submitting to circumcision, or acknowledging the claims
of the whole Law to their obedience, had embraced the main principles of
Judaism, more particularly the Unity of God—were at once admitted into the
Christian community.
Cornelius
was, as it were, the representative ’
of this
class; his admission by the federal rite of baptism into the Christian
community, the public sanction of the Almighty to this step by “ the pouring
out the gift of the Holy Ghost” upon the Gentiles, decided this part of the
question.2 Still the
admission
1 Acts x. 11 to 21.
2 It is disputed whether Cornelius was, in
fact, a proselyte of the Gate (See, on one side, Lord Barrington’s Works, vol.
i. p. 128, and Benson’s History of Christianity; on the other, Kuinoel, in
he.) He is called Evoefiqg and <j>o[3ovfit'vog rbv Qebv, the usual
appellation of. proselytes: he hestowed alms on the Jewish people; he observed
the Jewish hours of prayer; he was evidently familiar with the Jewish belief in
angels, and not unversed in the Jewish Scriptures. Yet, on the other hand, the
objections are not without weight. The whole difficulty appears to rise from
not considering how vaguely the term of “proselyte at the Gate” must, from the
nature of things have been applied, and the different feelings entertained
towards such converts by the different classes of the Jews. While the
proselytes, properly so called, — those who were identified with the Jews by
circumcision, — were a distinct and definite class; the proselytes of the Gate
must have comprehended all who made the least advances towards Judaism, from
those who regularly attended on the services of the synagogue, and conformed in
all respects, except circumcision, with the ceremonial law, down, through the countless
shades of opinion, to those who merely admitted the first principle of Judaism,--the
Unity of God; were occasional attendants in the synagogue*
into
Christianity was through Judaism,. It required all the influence of the
apostle, and his distinct asseveration that he acted by divine commission, to
induce the Christians of Jerusalem to admit Gentiles imperfectly Judaized, and
uninitiated by the national rite of circumcision into the race of Israel, to a
participation in the kingdom of the Messiah.
To this
subject I must, however, revert, when I attempt more fully to develop the
internal conflict of Christianity with Judaism.
The
conversion of Cornelius took place before the persecution of Herod Agrippa,
down to which period this history has traced the external conflict maintained
by Christianity against the dominant Judaism. On the death of Herod, his son
Agrippa being a minor and state of ju- educated
at Rome, a Roman prefect resumed the provincial government of Judasa. This
prefect ruled almost always with a stern, sometimes
and had only,
as it were, ascended the first steps on the threshold of conversion. The more
rigid Jews looked with jealousy even on the circumcised proselytes; the terms
of admission were made as difficult and repulsive as possible; on the imperfect
they looked with still greater suspicion, and were rather jealous of
communicating their exclusive privileges, than eager to extend the influence of
their opinions. But the more liberal must have acted on different principles;
they must have encouraged the advances of incipient proselytes; the synagogues
were open throughout the Roman Empire, and many who, like Horace, “went to
scoff,” may “have remained to pray.” As, then, the Christian apostles always
commenced their labors in the synagogue of their countrymen, among all who
might assemble there from regular habit or accidental curiosity, they would
address Heathen minds in every gradation of Jewish belief, from the proselyte
who only wanted circumcision, to the Gentile who had only just begun to
discover the superior reasonableness of the Jewish Theism. Hence the step from
the conversion of imperfect proselytes to that of real Gentiles must have been
imperceptible; or rather, even with the Gentile convert, that which was the
first principle of Judaism, the belief in one God, was an indispensable
preliminaiy to his admission of Christianity. The one great decisive change was
from the decree of the apostolic council (Acts xiv.), obviously intended for
real though imperfect proselytes, to the total abrogation of Judaism by the
doctrines of St. Paul.
with an iron
hand, and the gradually increasing turbulence of the province led to severity;
severity with a profligate and tyrannical ruler degenerated into oppression ;
until the systematic cruelty of Floras maddened the nation into the last fatal
insurrection. The Sanhedrin appear at no time to have possessed sufficient
influence with the prefect to be permitted to take violent measures against the
Christians.
With Cuspius
Fadus, who had transferred jSjaSp* the custody of the high-priest’s robes into
' ’ ' the Antonia, they were on no amicable terms. Tiberius Alexander, an
apostate from Judaism, was little likely to lend himself to any acts ' ' ' of
bigotry or persecution. During the prefecture of Cumanus, the massacre in the
Temple, the sanguinary feuds between the Jews and ' ' ' Samaritans, occupied
the public mind; it was a period of political disorder and confusion, which
continued for a considerable time.
The
commencement of the administration of the whole province by the corrupt and
dissolute Felix, the insurrection of Theudas, the re- ' ' ’ appearance of the
sons of the Galilean Judas, the incursions of the predatory bands which rose in
all quarters, would divert the attention of the ruler from a peaceful sect,
who, to his apprehension, differed from their countrymen only in some harmless
speculative opinions, and in their orderly and quiet conduct. If the
Christians were thus secure in their peacefulness and obscurity from the
hostility of the Roman rulers, the native Jewish authorities, gradually more
and more in collision with their foreign masters, would not possess the power
of conducting persecution to any extent. Instead of influencing the counsels of
the prefect,
the high-priest was either a mere instru ment, appointed by his caprice, or, if
he aspired to independent authority, in direct opposition to his tyrannous
master. The native authorities were, in fact, continually in collision with the
foreign ruler; mgh-priest, one, Ananias, had been sent in chains to 49.' Rome
as accessary to the tumults which had arisen between the Jews and the Samaritans;
his v . successor, Jonathan, fell by the hand of an
High
priest, * 7 *
a.d. 49. assassin, in the employ, or at least
with the connivance, of the Roman governor. On his acquittal at Rome, Ananias
returned to Jerusalem, and re-assumed the vacant pontificate; and it was
during this period that Christianity, in the person of Paul, came again into
conflict with the constituted authorities, as well as with the popular
hostility. The prompt and decisive interference of the Roman guard; the pro
tection and even the favor shown to Paul, directly it was discovered that lie
was not identified with any of the insurgent robbers; the adjournment of the
cause to the tribunal of Felix at Caesarea, — show how little weight or power
was permitted either to the high- priest or the Sanhedrin, and the slight
respect paid to the religious feelings of the people.
The details
of this remarkable transaction will command our notice, in the order of time,
when we have traced the proceedings of Paul and his fellow-mission- aries among
the Jews beyond the borders of Palestine, and exhibited the conflict which they
maintained with Judaism in foreign countries. The new opening, as it were, for
the extension of Christianity, after the conversion of Cornelius, directed the
attention of Barnar bas to Saul, who, since his flight from Jerusalem, had
remained in secure retirement at Tarsus. Prom
thence he was
summoned by Barnabas to Antioch.1 Antioch, where the body of believers assumed
the name of Christians, became, as it were, the headquarters of the foreign
operations of Christianity.2. After the mission of Paul and
Barnabas to Jeru- Paul and salem during the famine (either about the apostles,
time of, or soon after, the Herodian persecution), these two distinguished
teachers of the Gospel were invested, with the divine sanction, in the
apostolic office.3
Prom this
time, St. Paul stands forth as the great central figure in the great unfolding
drama of the conversion of the world to Christianity. Of the chosen twelve,
except Peter and John, some immediately, some after a certain time, are
altogether lost to historic vision: they fade away into the dim page of legend.
One, indeed, James the brother of John, has been cruelly cut off by the hand of
Herod. Three, at least two, survive in their writings: James the brother of the
Lord (and there seems no valid reason for abandoning the popular belief), by
common consent, assumed a kind of headship of the Church in Jerusalem; it was
he who presided in the councils, and, from his conformity to the Jewish Law,
received the appellation of James the Just, whose death is to be hereafter
recorded. St. Matthew lives in his Gospel; but where that Gospel was written,
in what language originally, are questions to which no authoritative answer can
be given. But it seems to me that it is undoubtedly Palestinian. It may have
been written originally in Hebrew (Aramaic), for the Christians of Palestine
and the East, or in Greek, for more general and universal use; or possibly, as
Josephus wrote his History, in both languages, — both in Greek and Aramaic.
But to my
judgment, in the selection of facts, in imagery and in allusion, it has a
native stamp, — native, I mean, to the scene of our Lord’s labors, and to the
life of him whose calling was that of a publican in Judasa. Jude (Tliaddeus,
Lebbeus) is known by his Epistle. This writing too, from its perpetual
allusions to Jewish history and to Jewish tradition, must have been addressed
to Christians of Jewish descent: it would have been unintelligible to Gentile Christians.
Jude’s sphere of action must therefore have been in Palestine or the East. Of
those whose voices have not come down to us, we know historically nothing. The
magnificent scheme of the partition of the world, each province of Asia,
Europe, Africa, to its apostolic conqueror; their triumphal progress, each in
his separate domain; the martyrdom of most in the scene of their labors,—is a
creation of later times, glaringly opposed to the quiet and practical modesty
of the authentic Scripture. Even of Andrew in Achaia and in Scythia, of
Thaddeus in Edessa, Matthew or Matthias in ^Ethiopia, of Thomas in Parthia and
Southern India, of Bartholomew in Judasa, there remain but vague, late,
contradictory rumors, which hardly aspire to legends.
St. Peter
himself recedes from view. After he had taken the first step to the more
comprehensive Christianity, which would embrace the world, and know no
distinction, “ Jew or Gentile, Greek or Barbarian, bond or free,” he seems
almost to relapse into that Judaism which was openly resisted at Antioch by St.
Paul. His great sphere in Babylonia, and in those churches of Asia to which his
First Epistle is addressed, would afford ample scope for his holy activity
among the brethren of the circumcision, so widely dispersed.
St. John, if
we may judge by internal evidence, became more distinctly Greek, — Asiatic
Greek. Tradition designates Ephesus as the seat of his more confined activity
(most of these Asiatic churches had already been founded by St. Paul), or of
his contemplative quiescence, out of which grew the last Gospel, the crown
and consummation of Christian fkith, and the three Epistles, the most exquisite
and perfect expression of Christian love. The Revelation/, if, as _ ' I am
disposed to believe, of St. John, belong,vto an earlier period of
his life, before the destruction of Jerusalem.
St. Paul
alone stands out in the fuller light of authoritative and documentary history.
He is in all the great capital cities of the West; in all the great centres of
civil, of commercial, and intellectual greatness ; in Antioch, in Ephesus, in
Athens, in Corinth, in Rome. He is among Barbarians at Lystra, in Galatia, in
Melita. He is the one active ruling missionary of what we may call the foreign
operations of the Christian Church.
But these
foreign operations of the great Hebrew missionary or missionaries were at first
altogether confined to the Jewish population, which was scattered throughout
the whole of Syria and Asia Minor. On their arrival in a town which they had
not visited before, they of course sought a hospitable reception among their
countrymen: the first scene of their labors was the synagogue.1 In the island of Cyprus, the
native country of Barnabas, a consider- Cyprus' able part of the
population must have been of Jewish descent.2 Both at Salamis at the eastern, and at
1 Acts xiii, 4-12.
2 Hist, of the Jews, ii. 421. In the fatal
insurrection during the reign of
Paphos 011
the -western, extremity, and probably in other places during their journey
through the whole length of the island, they found flourishing communi-
sero-ius ties of their countrymen. To the governor, Pauius. a man 0f
iuquiring and philosophic mind,1 the simple principles of Judaism could not
be unknown ; and perhaps the contrast between the chaste and simple and
rational worship of the synagogue and the proverbially sensual rites of
Heathenism, for which Paphos was renowned, may have heightened his respect
for, or increased his inclination to, the purer faith. The arrival of two new
teachers among the Jews of the city could not but reach the ears of Sergius
Pauius: the sensation they excited among their countrymen awoke his curiosity. He
had already encouraged the familiar attendance of a Jewish wonderworker, a man
who probably misused some skill in natural science for purposes of fraud and
gain. Bar- Jesus (the son of Jesus or Joshua) was probably less actuated, in
his opposition to the apostles, by Jewish bigotry, than by the apprehension of
losing his influence with the governor. He saw, no doubt, in the apostles,
adventurers like himself. The miraculous blindness with which the magician was
struck, convinced the governor of the superior claims of the apostles; the
beauty of the Christian doctrines filled him with astonishment; and the Roman
proconsul, though not united by baptism to the Christian com-
Hadrian, they
are said to have massacred 240,000 of the Grecian inhabitants, and obtained
temporary possession of the island.
1 The remarkable accuracy of St. Luke in
naming the governor u proconsul,” has been frequently observed. The
provincial governors appointed by the emperors were called “propraetors;” those
by the senate, “procousuls.” That of Cyprus was properly in the nomination of
the emperor; but Augus« tus transferred his right, as to Cyprus and Naibonese
Gaul, to tbe senate.— Pton Cassius, 1. liv. p. 523.
munity, must,
nevertheless, have added great weight, hy his acknowledged support, to the
cause of Christianity in Cyprus.1
From Cyprus
they crossed to the southern shore of Asia Minor, landed at Perga in Pamphylia,
JeW8in and passed through the chief cities of that $ Yi?3 region. In the more flourishing towns they Mmor- found
a considerable Jewish population; and the synagogue of the Jews appears to
have been attended by great numbers of Gentiles, more or less disposed to
embrace the tenets of Judaism. Everywhere the more rigid Jews met them with
fierce and resentful opposition ; but among the less bigoted of their
countrymen, and this more unprejudiced class of proselytes, they made great
progress. At the first considerable city in which they appeared, Antioch in
Pisidia,2 the address
of St. Paul to the mingled congregation of Jews and proselytes appears at some
length. He dwelt on the prophesied Messiahship of Jesus, on the resurrection,
on the forgiveness of sins, unattainable by the Law, attainable through faith
in Jesus. The opposition of the Jews seems to have been so general, and the
favor able disposition of their Gentile hearers, proselytes, so decided, that
the apostles avowedly disclaimed all farther connection with the more violent
party, and united themselves to the Gentile believers. Either from the number
or the influence of the Jews in this Antioch, the public interest in that
dispute, instead of being confined within the synagogue, prevailed through the
whole city; but the Jews had so much weight, especially with some of the women
of rank,
1 Had he thus become altogether Christian,
his baptism would assuredly have been mentioned by the sacred writer.
2 Acts xiii. 14-52.
vol. i. 26
that they at
length obtained the expulsion of the apostles from the city by the ruling
authorities. The apostles shook off the dust from their feet, as renouncing
all further connection with the stern bigots, and went their way. At Iconium,
to which city they retired, the opposition was still more violent; the populace
was excited; and here, many of the Gentiles uniting with the Jews against them,
they were constrained to fly for their lives into the barbarous district of
Lycaonia. Lystra and Derbe appear to have been almost entirely Heathen towns.
The remarkable collision of the apostles with Paganism in the former of these
places will hereafter be considered. To Lystra the hostility of the Jews
pursued them, where, by some strange revulsion of popular feeling, Paul, a
short time before worshipped as a god, was cast out of the city, half-dead.
They proceeded to Derbe, and thence returned through the same cities to
Antioch in Syria. The ordination of “ elders,”1 to preside over the Christian communities, implies their
secession from the synagogues of their countrymen. In Jerusalem, from the
multitude of synagogues which belonged to the different races of foreign Jews,
another might arise, or one of those usually occupied by the Galileans might
pass into the separate possession of the Christians, without exciting much
notice, particularly as great part of the public devotions of all classes were
performed in the Temple, where the Christians were still regular attendants.'
Most likely the first distinct community which met in a- chamber or place of
assemblage of their own, the first “Church,” was formed at Antioch. To the
Heathen this would appear nothing more than the establishment of a new
Jewish
synagogue; an event, whenever their numbers were considerable, of common
occurrence. To the Jew alone, it assumed the appearance of a dangerous and
formidable apostasy from the religion of his ancestors.
The barrier
was now thrown down; but Judaism rallied, as it were, for a last effort behind
its ruins. It was now manifest that Christianity would Jewish at_ no
longer endure the rigid nationalism of to'the^w. the Jew, who demanded that
every proselyte A'D'49' to his faith should be
enrolled as a member of his race. Circumcision could no longer be maintained as
the seal of conversion;1
but still the total abrogation of the Mosaic Law, the extinction of all their
privileges of descent, the substitution of a purely religious for a national
community, to the Christianized Jew, appeared, as it were, a kind of treason
against the religious majesty of their ancestors. A conference became necessary
between the leaders of the Christian community to avert an inevitable
collision, which might be fatal to the progress of the religion. Already the
peace of the flourishing community at Antioch2 had been disturbed by some of the more zealous converts
from Jerusalem, who still asserted the indispensable necessity of circumcision.
Paul and Barnabas proceeded as delegates from the community at Antioch; and
what is called3 the
Council of Jerusalem, a full
1 The adherence, even of those Jews who
might have been expected to he less bigoted to their institutions, to this
distinctive rite of their religion, is illustrated by many curious particulars
in the history. Two foreign princes, Aziz, King of Emesa, and Polemo, King of
Cilicia, submitted to circumcision; an indispensable stipulation, in order to
obtain in marriage, the former Dru- silla, the latter Bernice, princesses of
the Herodian family. On one occasion the alliance of some foreign troops was
rejected, unless they would first qualify themselves in this manner for the
distinction of associating with the Jews.
2 Acts xv. 1.
8
It is not absolutely certain whether James who presided in this assembly
assembly of
all the apostles then present in the . metropolis, solemnly debated this great
ques-
jerusaiem,
tion. How far the earlier apostles were
A.D. 49
themselves
emancipated from the inveterate Judaism does not distinctly appear; hut the
situation of affairs required the most nicely balanced judgment, united with
the utmost moderation of temper. On one side, a Pharisaic party had brought
into Christianity a rigorous and passionate attachment to the Mosaic institutes,
in their strictest and most minute provisions. On the other hand, beyond the
borders of Palestine, far the greater number of converts had been formed from
that intermediate class which stood between Heathenism and Judaism. There might
seem, then, no alternative but to estrange one party by the abrogation of the
Law, or the other by the strict enforcement of all its provisions. Each party
might appeal to the divine sanction. To the eternal, the irrepealable sanctity
of the Law, the God of their fathers, according to the Jewish opinion, was
solemnly pledged ; while the vision of Peter, which authorized the admission of
the Gentiles into Christianity, — still more, the success of Paul and Barnabas
in proselyting the Heathen, accompanied by undeniable manifestations of divine
favor, — seemed irresistible evidence of the divine sanction to the abrogation
of the Law, as far as concerned the Gentile proselytes. The influence of James
effected a discreet and temperate compromise: Judaism, as it were, capitulated
on honorable terms. The Christians were to be left to that freedom enjoyed by
the proselytes of the Gate; but they were enjoined to pay so much respect to
was either of
the two Jameses included among the twelve apostles, or a distinct person, a
relative of Jesus. The latter opinion rests on the authority of Eusebius.
those with
whom they were associated in religious worship, as to abstain from those
practices which were most offensive to their habits.1 The partaking of the
sacrificial feasts in the idolatrous temples was so plainly repugnant to the
first principles, either of the Jewish or the Christian Theism, as to be
altogether irreconcilable with the professed opinions of a proselyte to
either. The using things strangled, and blood, for food, appears to have been
the most revolting to Jewish feeling ; and perhaps, among the dietetic
regulations of the Mosaic Law, none, in a southern climate, was more conducive
to health. The last article in this celebrated decree was a moral prohibition,
but, not improbably, directed more particularly against the dissolute rites of
those Syrian and Asiatic religions in which prostitution formed an essential
part, and which prevailed to a great extent in the countries bordering upon
Palestine.2
The second
journey3 of Paul
brought him more immediately into contact with Paganism. gecond
Though, no doubt, in every city there were J„0fup“^
resident Jews with whom he took up his A-D-50-
1 The reason assigned for these regulations
appears to Infer, tbat as yet the Christians, in general, met in the same
places of religious assemblage with the Jews: at least, this view gives a clear
and simple sense to a much- contested passage. These provisions were necessary
hecause the Mosaic Law was universally read and from immemorial usage in the
synagogues. The direct violation of its most vital principles by any of those
who joined in the common worship would be incongruous, and, of course, highly
offensive to the more zealous Mosaists.
2 It should be remembered that as yet Christianity
had only spread into countries where this religious TLopvsta chiefly prevailed,
into Syria and Cyprus. Of the first we may form a fair notion from Lucian’s
Treatise De Dea Syria, and the Daphne of Antioch had, no douht, already
ohtained its voluptuous celebrity; the latter, particularly Paphos, can require
no illustration. Bentley’s ingenious reading of Xotoeta, swine’s flesh, wants
the indis pensable authority of manuscripts.
8
Acts xvi. 1 to xviii. 22
abode, and
his first public appearance was in the synagogue of his countrymen, yet he is
now more frequently extending, as it were, his aggressive operar tions into the
dominions of Heathenism. If he found hospitality, no doubt he encountered
either violent or secret hostility from his brethren. Few circumstances,
however, occur which belong more especially to the conflict between Judaism and
Christianity.
Paul and
Barnabas set out together on this more extensive journey: but, on some dispute
as to the companions who were to attend upon them, Barnabas turned aside with
Mark to his native country of Cyprus; while Paul, accompanied by Silas,
revisited those cities in Syria and Cilicia where they had already established
Christian communities.
At Lystra,
Paul showed his deference to Jewish opinion by permitting a useful disciple,
named Timo- theus, to be circumcised.1 But this case was peculiar, as Timotheus, by his mother’s
side, was a Jew; and though, by a connection with a man of Greek race, she had
forfeited, both for herself and her offspring, the privileges of Jewish
descent, the circumcision of the son might, in a great degree, remove the
stigma which attached to his birth, and which would render him less acceptable
among his Jewish brethren. Having left this region, the apostle ranged
northward, through Phrygia, Galatia, and Mysia: but, instead of continuing his
course towards the shore of the Black Sea to Bithynia, admonished by a vision,
he passed to Europe; and at Neapolis, in Macedonia,2 landed the obscure and unregarded man to whom Europe, in
Christianity, owes the great principle of her civih-
zation, the
predominant element in her superiority over the more barbarous and
unenlightened quarters of the world. At Philippi, the Jews, being few in
number, appear only to have had a Proseucha, a smaller place of public worship,
as usual, near the sea-side ; at Thessalonica, they were more numerous, and had
a synagogue ;1 at
Berea, they appear likewise to have formed a flourishing community; even at
Athens, the Jews had made many proselytes. Corinth, a new colony of settlers
from all quarters, a central mercantile mart, through which passed a great part
of the commerce between the East and West, offered a still more eligible
residence for the Jews, who, no doubt, had already become traders to a
considerable extent.2
Their numbers had been lately increased by their expulsion from Rome, under the
Emperor Claudius.3
This edict is attributed by Suetonius to the
1 Acts xvii. 1. Thessalonica is a city
where the Jews have perhaps resided for a longer period, in considerable
numbers, than in any other, at least in Europe. When the Jews fled from
Christian persecution to the milder oppression of the Turks, vast numbers
settled at Thessalonica. — Hist. Jews, iii. 338. Yon Hammer states the present
population of Thessalonica (Saloni- chi) at 16,000 Greeks, 12,000 Jews, and
50,000 Turks. — Osmanische Ge- schichte, i. 442.
2 Corinth, since its demolition by
Mummius,had lain in ruins tilt the time of Julius Cffisar, who established a
colony on its site. From the advantages of its situation, the connecting link,
as it were, between Italy, the north of Greece, and Asia, it grew up rapidly to
all its former wealth and splendor.
8
The manner in which this event is related by the epigrammatic biographer, even
the mistakes in his account, are remarkably characteristic: “ Ju- dzeos,
Chresto duce, assidue tumultuantes Eoma expulit.” The confusion between the
religion and its founder, and the substitution of the word Chres- tos, a good
man, which would bear an intelligihle sense to a Heathen, foi Christos (the
anointed), which would only convey a distinct notion to a Jew, illustrate the
state of things. “ Cum perperam Chrestianus pronuntiatur a vobis (nam
nec nominis est certa notitia penes vos) de suavitate vel benigni- tate
compositum est.” — Tert, Apolog. c. 3. “ Sed
exponeuda hnjus nominis ratio est propter ignorantium errorem, qui eum immutata
liter& Chrestum solent dicere.” — Lact., Inp*.. 4, 7, 6.
tumults
excited by the mutual hostility between the Jews and Christians. Christianity,
therefore, must thus early have made considerable progress in Rome. The scenes
of riot were probably, either like those which took place in the Asiatic
cities, where the Jews attempted to use violence against the Christians ; or,
as in Corinth itself, where the tribunal of the magistrate was disturbed by
fierce, and to him unintelligible, disputes between, as he supposed, two Jewish
factions. With two of the exiles, Aquila and Priscilla, Paul, as practising the
same trade, that of tent-makers,1
made a more intimate connection, residing with them, and pursuing their craft
in common.2 At Corinth, possibly for the first time, the
Christians openly seceded from the Jews, and obtained a separate school of
public instruction; even the chief ruler of the synagogue, Crispus, became a
convert. But the consequence of this secession was the more declared and open
animosity of the Jewish party, whieh ended in an appeal to the public tribunal
of the governor. The result of the trial before the judgment-seat of Gallio,
the proconsul of Achaia, appears to have been an ebullition of popular
indignation in favor of the Christians, as another of the chief rulers of the
syna gogue, probably the prosecutor of the Christians, underwent the punishment
of scourging before the tribunal.
1 The Jews thought it right that every one,
even the learned, should know some art or trade. u Sapicntes
plurimi artem aliquam fecerant ne alioram beneficentia indigerent.” —
Maimonides. See Lightfoot, iii. 227.
2 There was a coarse stuff called Cilieium,
made of goats’ hair, manufactured in the native country of Paul, and used for
the purpose of portable tents, which it is ingeniously conjectured may have
been the art practised bv Paul.
From Corinth1
Paul returned by sea to Caesarea,* and from thenoe to Antiooh.
, The third
journey of St. Paul8 belongs still more exclusively to the oonfliot
of Christianity Third
Journey
with
Paganism. At Ephesus* alone, whore of Paid, he arrived after a oirouit through
Phrygia and Galatia, he encountered some wondering wonder-working sons of a
oertain Soeva, a Jew, who attempted to imitate the miraoulous oures whioh he
wrought. The failure of the exorcism whioh they endeavored to perform by the
name of Jesus, and which only increased tho violenoe of the lunatic, made a
deep impression on the whole Jewish population. His circuit through Maoedonia,
Groeoe, baok to Philippi, down the -ffigoan to Miletus, by Cos, Rhodes, Patara
to Tyre, and thonce to Cresarea, brought him again near to Jerusalem, where ho
had determined to appear at the feast of Penteoost. Notwithstanding the remon-
ctranoos of his friends, and the prophetic denunciation of his imprisonment by
a certain Agabus, he adhored to his resolution of confronting the whole
1 From
Corinth, after he bad been rqjolned by Silas (Sllvanus) and Timo- theus, ms moat
probably written the First Epistie to the Thessalonians. This Epistlo is full
of allusions to his reoent journey. On his arrival at Athens, he had sent back
Timotheus to asr main the state of the infant church. Subsequently it appears
that the more Jewish opinion of the immediate ro- apsaranoe of the Messixh to
judgment had gained great ground in the community. It is flightly alluded to
in the First Epistle, v. 9,8. The second seems to have bvon written expressly
to oounteract this notion.
* I make no observation on the vow made at
Conch ren, as I follow the natural construction of the words. The "V
uipite, St. Chrysostom, and many more commentators, attribute the vow, whatever
it was, to Aquiln, not to Paul.
There i.
great doubt es to the authenticity of the rlawe, ver. 21 (“ I must by all means
keep this feast that oometh in Jerueeiem ”). Thr.' o who eup- pose it to be
genuine explain the dva/}<tf in the next verse, as going up to Jerusalem;
but, on the whole, I am inclined to doubt any such visit.
* AoU xviii. 98 i xxi. 0. < Aots xviii. 94.
hostile
nation at their great concourse. For not the Jews alone, but perhaps the Jewish
Christians likewise, in the headquarters of Judaism, would con federate
against this renegade, who not only asserted Jesus to be the Messiah, but had
avowedly raised the uncircumcised Gentiles to the level of, if not to a paui
in superiority over, the descendant of Israel. Jerusalem. Yet of the real
nature of St. Paul’s Christianity, they were still singularly, though charac- Bg
teristically, ignorant: they could not yet ' ' ’ persuade themselves that
Christianity aspired to a total independence of Judaism. Their Temple was
still, as it were, the vestibule to the divine favor; and, having 110 notion
that the Gentile converts to Christianity would be altogether indifferent as to
the local sanctity of any edifice, they appear to have apprehended an invasion,
or, at least, a secret attempt to introduce the uncircumcised to the privilege
of worship within the hallowed precincts.
The motive of
Paul in visiting Jerusalem was probably to allay the jealousy of his
countrymen; the period selected for his visit was, as it were, the birthday of
the Law;1 the
solemnity which commemorated the divine enactment of that code, which every
Jew considered of eternal and irreversible authority. Nor did he lay aside his
customary prudence. He paui in the comphed with the advice of his
friends; and Temple. instead of-appearing in the Temple
as an ordinary worshipper, as if he would show his own personal reverence for
the usages of his ancestors, he united himself to four persons who had taken
upon
1
The ceasing to attend at the Passover, after in h,-= , „ t
gre*t
Passover had b*a sacrificed,’- is * ciTe^ °7 ^ worthy of notice. ’ * clrcumstance by no means un-
them a vow, a
deliberate acknowledgment, not merely of respect for, but of zeal beyond, the
Law.1 His person,
however, was too well known to the Asiatic Jews not to be recognized; a sudden
outcry was raised against him; he was charged with having violated the
sanctity of the holy precincts by introducing an uncircumcised stranger,
Trophimus, an Ephesian, with whom he had been familiarly conversing in the
city, within those pillars, or palisades, which, in the three predominant
languages of the time, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, forbade the advance of any
who were not of pure Jewish descent. He was dragged out, no doubt, into the
court of the Gentiles; the doors closed; and but for the prompt interference of
the Roman guard, which was always mounted, particularly during the days of
festival, he would have fallen a victim to the popular fury. For, while the unconverted
Jews would pursue his life with implacable indignation, he could, at best,
expect no assistance from the Jewish Christians. The interposition APPrehen-
. sion of
of the Roman
commander in Jerusalem was im-
called forth, rather to suppress a dangerous riot, thau to rescue an innocent
victim from the tumultuous violence of the populace.
Lysias
at first supposed Paul to be one of the insurgent chieftains who had disturbed
the public peace during the whole administration of Felix. His fears identified
him with a Jew of Egyptian birth, who, a short time before, had appeared on the
Mount of Olives at the head of above thirty thousand fanatic followers; and,
though his partisans were scattered by the decisive measures of Felix, had
contrived to make his escape.2
The impression that his insurrec- 1 Acts xxi. 17-26. 2 Hist, of Jews, ii. 171.
tion had made
on the minds of the Romans is shown by the terror of his re-appearance, which
seems to have haunted the mind of Lysias. The ease and purity with which Paul
addressed him in Greek, as these insurgents probably communicated with their
followers only in the dialect of the country; the commanding serenity of his
demeanor; and the declaration that he was a citizen of an Asiatic town, not a
native of Palestine, — so far influenced Lysias in his favor, as to permit him
to address the multitude. It was probably from the flight of steps which led
from the outer court of the Temple up into the Antonia that Paul commenced his
harangue. He spoke in the vernacular language of the country, and was heard in
silence, as far as his account of his conversion to the new religion; but,
directly that he touched on the dangerous subject of the admission of the
Gentiles to the privileges of Christianity, the popular frenzy 6roke out again
with such violence as scarcely to be controlled by the Roman military. Paul was
led away into the court of the fortress; and the commander, who probably
understood nothing of his address, but only saw that instead of allaying, it
increased, the turbulence of the people (for, with the characteristic violence
of an Asiatic mob, they are described as casting off their clothes, and throwing
dust into the air), gave orders that he should suffer the usual punishment of
scourging with rods, in order that he might be forced to confess the real
origin of the disturbance. But this proceeding was arrested by Paul’s claiming
the privilege of a Roman citizen, whom it was treason against the majesty of
the Roman people to expose to such indignity.1 The soldiers, or
1
Acts xxii. 24-29.
lictors,
engaged in scourging him, recoiled in terror. The respect of Lysias himself for
his prisoner rose to more than its former height; for, having himself purchased
this valuable privilege at a high price, one who had inherited the same right
appeared an important personage in his estimation.
The next
morning, the Sanhedrin was convened, and Paul was again brought into the
Temple, to the Gazith, the chamber where the Sanhedrin held its judicial
meetings. Ananias presided in the assembly as high-priest, an office which he
possessed rather by usurpation than by legitimate authority. Paul before After
the tumults between the Samaritans arm. and the Jews, during the administration
of Cumanus, Ananias had, as was before briefly stated, been sent as a prisoner
to Rome, to answer for the charges against his nation.1 After two years, he had been
released by the interest of Agrippa, and allowed to return to Jerusalem. In the
mean time, the high- priesthood had been filled by Jonathan, who was murdered
by assassins in the Temple, employed, or at least connived at, by the governor.2 Ananias appears to have
resumed the vacant authority, until the appointment of Ismael, son of Pabi, by
Agrippa.3 Anar- nias
was of the Sadducaic party, a man harsh, venal, and ambitious. Paction most
probably ran very high in the national council. I am inclined to suppose, from
the favorable expressions of Josephus, that the murdered Jonathan was of the
Pharisaic sect; and his recent death, and the usurpation of the office by
Ananias, would incline the Pharisaic faction to resist all measures proposed by
their adversaries.
1 Joseph., Ant. xx. 6, 2. 2 Joseph., xx. 8, 5.
8 A.D. 56.
Joseph., Ant. xx. 8,8.
Of this state
of things Paul seems to have been fully aware. He commenced with a solemn
protestation of his innocence, which so excited the indignation of Ananias,
that he commanded him to be struck over the mouth, a common punishment in the
East foi language which may displease those in power.1 The answer of St. Paul to this
arbitrary violation of the Law (for, by the Jewish course of justice, no punishment
could be inflicted without a formal sentence) was in a tone of vehement
indignation, — “ God shall smite thee, thou whited wall; for sittest thou to
judge me after the Law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to the Law ? ”
Rebuked for thus disrespectfully answering the high-priest, Paul replied that
he did not know that there was any one at that time lawfully exercising the
office of high-priest,2
— an office which he was bound, by the strict letter of the sacred writings, to
treat with profound respect. He proceeded, without scruple, to avail himself of
the dissensions of the court; for, by resting his defence on his belief in the
resurrection, he no doubt irritated more violently the Sadducaic party, but
threw that of the Pharisees on his own side. The angry discussion was
terminated by the interposition of the Roman commander, who again withdrew Paul
into the citadel. Yet his life was not secure even there. The crime of
assassination had become fearfully frequent in Jerusalem. Neither did the sanctity
of the Temple protect the unsuspicious worshipper from the secret dagger, nor,
as we have seen, did the majesty of the high- priest s office secure the first
religious and civil magis*
1 Acts xxiii. 2, 3.
2 “ I wist not that there was a
high-priest: ” such appears to be the translation of this passage, suggested
by Mr. Greswell, most agreeable to the een ee. w
trate of the
nation from the same ignoble fate. A conspiracy was formed by some of these
fanatic zealots against the life of Paul; but the plot being discovered by one
of his relatives, a sister’s son, he was sent under a strong guard to Ceesarea,
the residence of the Roman provincial governor, the dissolute and tyrannical
Felix.
The Sanhedrin
pursued their hated adversary to the tribunal of the governor; but with Felix Pa,ulBeiltto
they possessed no commanding influence. A broughtV hired orator, whom from his
name we may fore FeUx‘ conjecture to have been a Roman, employed
perhaps according to the usage, which provided that all legal proceedings
should be conducted in the Latin language, appeared as their advocate before
the tribunal.1 But the defence of Paul against the charge
of sedition, of innovation, and the profanation of the Temple, was equally
successful with Felix, who was well acquainted with the Jewish character, and
by no means disposed to lend himself to their passions and animosities. The
charge,'therefore, was dismissed. Paul, though not set at liberty, was allowed
free intercourse with his Christian brethren. Felix himself even conde scended
to hear, and heard not without emotion, the high moral doctrines of St. Paul,
which were so much at variance with his unjust and adulterous life. But it was
not so much the virtue as the rapacity of Felix which thus inclined him to look
with favor upon the apostle; knowing probably the profuse liberality of the
Christians, aud their zealous attachment to their teacher, he expected that the
liberty of Paul would be purchased at any price he might demand. For the last
two years, therefore, of the administration of
Felix, Paul
remained a prisoner; and Felix, at his paui m departure, well aware that
accusations were cSsarea. lodged against him by the representatives of the
Jewish nation, endeavored to propitiate their favor by leaving him still in
custody.1
Nor had the
Jews lost sight of this great object of animosity. Before the new governor,
Porcius Festus, a man of rigid justice, and less acquainted with the Jewish
character, their charges were renewed with the utmost acrimony. On the first
visit of ' ’ ' Festus to Jerusalem, the high-priest demanded that Paul should
be sent back for trial before the Sanhedrin; and, though Festus refused the
petition till he should himself have investigated the case at Caesarea, on his
return he proposed that Paul should undergo a public examination at Jerusalem
in his own presence. The design of the Jews was to surprise and assassinate the
prisoner; and Paul, probably informed of their secret intentions, persisted in
his appeal to Caesar. To this appeal from a Roman citizen, the governor could
not refuse his assent.
1 There is great chronological difficulty
in arranging this part of the administration of Felix. But the difficulty
arises, not so much in harmonizing the narrative of the Acts with the
historians of the period, as in reconciling Josephus with Tacitus. Taking the
account of Josephus, it is impossible to compress all the events of that part
of the administration of Felix, which he places after the accession of Nero,
into a single year. Yet he states, that, on the recall of Felix, he only
escaped punishment for his crimes through the interest of his brother, Pallas.
But, according to Tacitus, the influence of Pallas with Nero ceased in the
second year of his reign; and he was deposed from all his offices. In the
third, he was indicted of leze majesie; and his acquittal was far from
acceptable to the emperor. In the fourth year, his protectress Agrippina was
discarded for Poppaa; in the next, she was put to death. In the ninth of Nero’s
reign, Pallas himself, though charged with no new crime, was poisoned. The
question therefore is, whether, in any intermediate period, he could have
regained, by any intrigue, sufficient influence to shield his brother from the
prosecution of the Jews.
The younger
Agrippa had now returned from Rome, where he had resided during his minority.
He had succeeded to part only of his father’s dominions; he was in possession
of the Asmonean palace at Jerusalem, and had the right of appointing the
high-priest, which he exercised apparently with all the capricious despotism of
a Roman governor. He appeared in great pomp at Caesarea, with his sister
Bornice, on a visit to Festus. The Roman governor seems to have consulted him,
as a man of moderation and knowledge of the Jewish Law, upon the case of Paul. Paul
The apostle was summoned before him. The Asrippa' defence of Paul
made a strong impression upon Agrippa, who, though not a convert, was probably
from that time favorably disposed to Christianity. The appeal of Paul to the
emperor was irrevocable by an inferior authority; whether he would have
preferred remaining in Judasa, after an acquittal from Festus, and perhaps
under the protection of Agrippa, or whether to his own mind Rome offered a more
noble and promising field for his Christian zeal, Paul, setting forth on his
voyage, left probably for ever Paul gent the land-of his
forefathers, — that land be- toKome- yond all others inhospitable to
the religion of Christ, — that land which Paul, perhaps almost alone of Jewish
descent, had ceased to consider the one narrow portion of the habitable world,
which the love of the Universal Father had sanctified as the chosen dwelling
of his people, as the future seat of dominion, glory, and bliss.
The great
object of Jewish animosity had escaped the hostility of the Sanhedrin: but an
opportunity soon occurred of wreaking their baffled vengeance on another
victim, far less obnoxious to the general feel-
vol. i. 27
ings even of
the more bigoted among the Jews. The head of the Christian community in
Jerusalem wag James, whom Josephus himself, if the expression in that
remarkable passage be genuine (which is difficult to believe), dignifies with
the appellation of the brother of Jesus. On the death of Festus, and before the
arrival of his successor Albinus, the high-priest- liood was in the hands of
Annas or Ananus, the last of five sons of the former Annas, who had held that
rank. Annas was the head of the Sadducaic party, and seized the opportunity of
this suspension of the "Roman authority to re-assert the power of the
Sanhedrin over life and death. Many persons, whom it is impossible not to
suppose Christians, were executed by the legal punishment of stoning. Among ' '
these, the head of the community was the most exposed to the animosity of the
government, Martyrdom anc*- therefore least likely to escape in
their of James, 0f temporary power. The fact of the murder of St.
James, at least of certain supposed offenders against the law, whom it is
difficult not to identify with the Christians,1 rests on the authority of the Jewish historian:2 in the details which are related
on the still more questionable testimony of
1 Connecting this narrative of Josephus,
even without admitting the authenticity of the passage about St. James, with
the proceedings against St. Paul as related in the Acts, it appears to me
highly improbable, that, if Ananus put any persons to death for crimes against
religion, they should have heen any other than Christians. Who but Christians
would be obnoxious to capital punishment? and against whom, but them, would a
legal conviction he obtained? Certainly not against tbe Pharisees, who went
beyond the law, or the Zealots and followers of Judas the Galilean, whose fate
would have excited little commiseration or regret among the moderate and
peaceful part of the community. Lardner, therefore, appears to me in error in
admitting the persecutions of Ananus, but disconnecting them from the Christian
history.
2 Joseph., Ant. xx. 8,1. See also Lardner’s
Jewish Testimonies, vol. iii p. 8±2, 4to edit.
Hegesippus,1 we feel that we are passing
from the clear and pellucid air of the apostolic history into the misty
atmosphere of legend. I would willingly attempt to disentangle the more
probable circumstances of this impressive story from the embellishments of
later invention ; but it happens that its more striking and picturesque
incidents are precisely the least credible. After withdrawing every particular
inconsistent either with the character or usages of the time, little remains
but the simple facts that James was so highly esteemed in Jerusalem as to have
received the appellation of the Just (a title, it would seem, clearly of
1
This narrative of Hegesippus has undergone the searching criticism of Scaliger
in Chron. Euseb. and Le Clerc, Hist. Eccles. and Ars Critica: it has been
feebly defended by Petavius, and zealously by Tillemont. Heinichen, the recent
editor of Eusebius, seems desirous to trace some vestiges of truth. In these
early forgeries, it is interesting and important to ascertain, not only the
truth or falsehood of the traditions themselves, but the design and the authors
of such pious frauds. This legend seems imagined in a spirit of Christian
asceticism, endeavoring to conform itself to Jewish usage, of which, nevertheless,
it betrays remarkable ignorance. It attributes to the Christian bishop the
Nazaritish abstinence from the time of his birth, not only from wine, but, in
the spirit of Buddhism, from every thing which had life: the self-denial of the
luxury of anointment with oil, with a monkish abhorrence of ablutions, — a
practice positively commanded in the Law, and from which no Jew abstained. It
gives him the power of entering the Holy Place at all times, — a practice
utterly in opposition to the vital principles of Judaism, as he could not have
been of the race of Levi. It describes his kneeling till his knees were as hard
as those of a camel, — another indication of the growing spirit of monkery. I
may add the injudicious introduction of the “ scribes and Pharisees,” in
language borrowed from the Gospel, as the authors of his fate; which, according
to the more probable account of Josephus, and the change in the state of
feeling in Jerusalem, was solely to be attributed to the Sadducees. The final
improbability is the leading to the pinnacle of the Temple (a circumstance
obviously borrowed from our Lord’s temptation) a man who had been for years the
acknowledged head of the Christian community in Jerusalem, that he might
publicly dissuade the people from believing in Christ; still further, his
burial, after such a death, within the walls of the city, and close to the
Temple: all these incongruities indicate a period at which Christianity had
begun to degenerate into asceticism, and bad been so long estranged from
Judaism as to be ignorant of its real character aud usages.
Jewish
origin); that he perished during this short period of the sanguinary
administration of Ananus,— possibly was thrown down iu a tumult from the precipitous
walls of the Temple, where a more merciful persecutor put an end to his
sufferings with a fuller’s club; finally, that these cruel proceedings of
Ananus were contemplated with abhorrence by the more moderate, probably by the
whole Pharasaic party: his degradation from the supreme office was demanded,
and hailed with satisfaction by the predominant sentiment of the people.
But the days
of Jewish persecution were drawing to a close. Even religious animosity was
sub- ‘ dued iu the collision of still fiercer passions. A darker and more absorbing
interest, the fate of the nation in the imminent, the inevitable conflict with
the arms of Rome, occupied the Jewish mind in every quarter of the world. In
Palestine, it mingled personal apprehensions, and either a trembling sense of
the insecurity of life, or a desperate determination to risk life itself for
liberty, with the more appalling anticipar tions of the national destiny, of
the total extinction of the Heaven-ordained polity, the ruin of the city of
Sion, and the Temple of God. To the ferocious and fanatical party, who
gradually assumed the ascendency, Christianity would be obnoxious, as secluding
its peaceful followers from all participation in the hopes, the crimes, or
what, in a worldly sense, might have been, not unjustly, considered the glories
of the insurrection. Still, to whatever dangers or trials they were exposed,
these were the desultory and casual attacks of individual hostility, rather
than the systematic and determined persecution of one ruling party. Nor, perhaps,
were the Christians looked upon with the same
animosity as
many of the more eminent and influential of the Jews, who vainly attempted to
allay the wild ferment. A general tradition, preserved by Eusebius, intimates
that the Christian community, especially forewarned by Providence, left
Jerusalem before the formation of the siege, and took refuge,in the town of
Pella, in the Transjordanic province. According to Josephus, the same course
was pursued by most of the higher order, who could escape in time from the
sword of the Zealot or the Idumean. Rabbinical tradition dates from the same
period the flight of the Sanhedrin from the capital: its first place of refuge,
without the walls of Jerusalem, was Jafna (Jamnia), from whence it passed to
other cities, until its final settlement in Tiberias.1
The Jewish
war, the final desolation of the national polity, the destruction of the city,
and the demolition of the Temple, were events which could not but influence
the progress of Christianity to a far greater extent than by merely depriving
the Jews of the power to persecute under a legal form. While the Christian
beheld in all these unexampled eiiectofthe
1 1 ,.
, „ T
■ 0f JerU"
horrors the
accomplishment 01 predictions saiemon
# 1 # Christianity
uttered hy
his Lord, the less infatuated among the Jews could not be ignorant that such
predictions prevailed among the Christians. However the prudence of the latter
might shrink from exasperating the more violent party by the open promulgation
of such dispiriting and ill-omened auguries, they must have transpired among
those who were hesitating between the two parties, and powerfully tended to
throw that fluctuating mass into the preponderating scale of Christianity. With
some of the Jews, no doubt, the
hope of the
coming of the Messiah must have expired with the fall of the Temple. Not merely
was the period of time assigned, according to the general interpretation of
the prophecies, for the appearance of the Deliverer, gone by, but their less
stern and obstinate Judaism must have begun to entertain apprehensions that
the visible rejection of the people intimated, not obscurely, the withdrawal of
the divine favor. They would thus be thrown back, as it were, upon Jesus of
Nazareth as the only possible Messiah, and listen to his claims with greater
inclination to believe. The alternative might seem to be between Christ and the
desperate abandonment, or the adjournment to an indefinite period, of all their
hopes of redemption. The hearts of many would be softened by the experience of
personal suffering, or the sight of so many Effect on cases of individual
misery. Christianity, the jews. jj-s consolatory promises, must have
appeared the only refuge to those with whom the wretchedness of their
temporal condition seemed to invalidate their hopes of an hereditary claim to
everlasting life as children of Abraham: where they despaired of a temporal,
they would be more inclined to accept a spiritual and moral, deliverance. At
the same time, the temporary advantage of the few converts, gained from such
motives, would be counterbalanced by the more complete alienation of the Jewish
mind from a race who not only apostatized from the religion of their fathers,
but by no means repudiated the most intimate connection with the race of Esau;
for thus the dark hostility of the Jews began to denominate the Romans. By the
absorption of this intermediate class, who had wavered between Christianity and
Judaism, and who either melted into the mass of the Christian
party, or
yielded themselves to the desperate infatuation of Judaism, the breach between
the Jew and the Christian became more wide and irreparable. The prouder and
more obstinate Jew sternly wrapped himself up in his sullen isolation: his
aversion from the rest of mankind, under the sense of galling oppression and
of disappointed pride, settled into hard hostility. That which those of less
fanatic Judaism found in Christianity, he sought in a stronger attachment to
his own distinctive ceremonial; in a more passionate and deep-rooted conviction
of his own prerogative, as of the elect people of God. He surrendered himself,
a willing captive, to the new priestly dominion, that of the Rabbins, which
enslaved his whole life to a system of minute ordinances ; he rejoiced in the
riveting and multiplying those bonds, which had been burst by Christianity, but
which he wore as the badge of hopes still to be fulfilled, of glories which
were at length to compensate for his present humiliation.
This more
complete alienation between the Jew and the Christian tended to weaken that
internal spirit of Judaism, which, nevertheless, was eradicated with the utmost
difficulty, and indeed has perpetually revived within the bosom of Christianity
under another name. Down to the destruction of Jerusalem, Palestine, or rather
Jerusalem itself, was at once the centre and the source of this predominant
influence. In foreign countries, as I shall presently explain, the irrepeala-
ble and eternal sanctity of the Mosaic Law was the repressive power which was
continually struggling against the expansive force of Christianity. In Jerusalem,
this power was the holiness of the Temple ; and therefore, with the fall of the
Temple, this strongest bond, irith which the heart of the Jewish Christian
was riveted
to his old religion, at once burst asunier. To him the practice of his Lord and
the apostles had seemed to confirm the inalienable local sanctity of this “
chosen dwelling ” of God ; and, while it yet stood in all its undegraded
splendor, to the Christian of Jerusalem it was almost impossible fully to admit
the first principle of Christianity, that the Universal Father is worshipped in
any part of his created universe with equal advantage. One mark by which the
Jewish race was designated as the great religious caste of mankind was thus for
ever abolished. The synagogue had no reverential dignity, no old and sacred
majesty, to the mind of the convert, beyond his own equally humble and
unimposing place of devotion. Hence, even before the destruction of the Temple,
this feeling depended upon the peculiar circumstances of the individual
convert.
Though, even
among the foreign Jews, the respect for the Temple was maintained by
traditionary reverence ; though the impost for its maintenance was regularly
levied and willingly paid by the race of Israel in every part of the Roman
empire; and occasional visits to the capital at the periods of the great
festivals revived in many the old sacred impressions, — still, according to the
universal principles of human nature, the more remote the residence, and the
less frequent the impression of the Temple services upon the senses, the
weaker became this first conservative principle of Jewish feeling.
But there
remained another element of that exclu- jewishat- siveness, which was the primary
principle of
tachment
. . . . r r
to the Law.
the existing Judaism, — that exclusiveness which, limiting the divine favor to
a certain race, would scarcely believe that foreign branches could be en
grafted into
the parent stock, even though incorporated with it; and still obstinately
resisted the notion, that Gentiles, without becoming Jews, could share in the
blessings of the promised Messiah; or, in their state of unoircumcision, or at
least of insubordination to the Mosaic ordinances, become heirs of the kingdom
of heaven.
What the
Temple was to the inhabitant of Jerusalem, the Law was to the worshipper in
the synagogue. As early, no doubt, as the pres- w' ent time, the
book of the Law was the one great sacred object in every religious edifice of
the Jews in all parts of the world. It was deposited in a kind of ark; it was
placed in that part of the synagogue which represented the Holy of Holies; it
was brought forth with solemn reverence by the “ angel ” of the assembly; it
was heard as an “ oracle of God ” from the sanctuary. The whole Kabbinical
supremacy rested on their privilege as interpreters of the Law; and tradition,
though, in fact, it assumed a co-ordinate authority, yet veiled its pretensions
under the humbler character of an exposition, a supplementary comment, on the
Heaven-enacted code. If we re-ascend, in our History,"towards the period
in which Christianity first opened its pale to the Gentiles, we shall find that
this was the prevailing power by which the internal Judaism maintained its
conflict with purer and more liberal Christianity within its own sphere. Even
at Antioch, the Christian community had been in danger from this principle of
separation; the Jewish converts, jealous of all encroachment upon the Law, had
drawn off and insulated themselves from those of the Gentiles.1
1
It is difficult to decide whether this dispute took place before or after the
decree of the assembly in Jerusalem, Planck, in his Geschichte des
Peter
withdrew within the narrower and more exclusive party; Barnabas alone, the
companion and supporter of Paul, did not incline to the same course.1 It required all the energy and resolution of Paul to resist the example
and influence of the older apostles. His public expostulation had the effect of
allaying the • discord at Antioch ; and the temperate and conciliatory measures
adopted in Jenisalem, to a certain degree re-united the conflicting parties.
Still, in most places where Paul established a new community, immediately after
his departure this same spirit of Judaism seems to have rallied, and attempted
to re-establish the great exclusive principle, that Christianity was no more
than Judaism, completed by the reception of Jesus as the Messiah. The universal
religion of Christ was thus in perpetual danger of being contracted into a
national and ritual worship. The eternal Law of Moses was still to maintain its
authority with all its cumbrous framework of observances: and the Gentile
proselytes who were ready to submit to the faith of Christ, with its simple and
exquisite morality, were likewise to submit to all the countless provisions,
and now, in many respects, unmeaning and unintelligible regulations, of diet,
dress, manners, and conduct.
This conflict
may be traced most clearly in the Epistles of St. Paul, particularly in those
to the remote communities in Galatia and in Rome. The former, written probably
during the residence of the apostle at Ephesus, was addressed to the Christians
of Galatia, a district in the northern part of Asia Minor, occu-
Christenthums,
places it before the decree; and, on the whole, this appears the most probable
opinion. The event is noticed here as exemplifying tho Judaizing spirit rather
than in strict chronological order.
1 Acts xv.
pied by a
mingled population.1
The descendants of the Gaulish invaders, from whom the region derived its name,
retained, to a late period, vestiges of their original race, in the Celtic
dialect; and probably gr«at numbers of Jews had settled in these quar-
The
ters. Paul
had twice visited the country, strength
# # # J 7 of the
and his
Epistle was written at no long period after his second visit. But, even in that
Church’16 short interval, Judaism had revived its pre- stppauiby
tensions. The adversaries of Paul had even gone so far as to disclaim him as an
apostle of Christianity ; and before he vindicates the essential independence
of the new faith, and declares the Jewish Law to have been only a temporary
institution,2 designed,
during a dark and barbarous period of human society, to keep alive the first
principles of true religion, he has to assert his own divine appointment as a
delegated teacher of Christianity.3
The Epistle
to the Romans4 enters
with more full and elaborate argument into the same momentous question. The
history of the Roman community is most remarkable. It grew up in silence,
founded by some unknown teachers,5
probably of those who were
1 I decline the controversy concerning the
place and time at -which the different Epistles were -written: I shall give
only the result, not the process, of my investigations. This to the Galatians I
suppose to have been written during St. Paul’s first visit to Ephesus (Acts
xix.).
2 Gal. iii. 19. 3 Gal. i. 1, 2.
4 This Epistle, there seems no doubt, was
written from Corinth, during
St.
Paul’s second residence in that city.
5 The foundation of the Church of Home by
either St. Peter or St. Paul is utterly irreconcilahle with any reasonable viewr
of the apostolic history. Among Roman-Catholic writers, Count Stolberg ahandons
this point, and carries St. Peter to Rome for the first time at the
commencement of Nero’s reign. The account in the Acts seems to be so far
absolutely conclusive. Many Protestants of the highest learning are as
unwilling to reject the general tradition of St. Peter’s residence in Rome.
This question will recur on another occasion. As to St. Paul, the first chapter
of this Epistle ia
present in
Jerusalem at the first publication of Christianity by the apostles. During the
reign of Claudius, it had made so much progress as to excite open tumults and
dissensions among the Jewish population of Rome: these animosities rose to such
a height, that the attention of the government was aroused, and both parties
expelled from the city. With some of these exiles, Aquila and Priscilla, St.
Paul, as we have seen, formed an intimate connection during his first visit to
Corinth: from them he received informs tion of the extraordinary progress of
the faith in Rome. The Jews seem quietly to have crept back to their old
quarters, when the rigor with which the imperial edict was- at first executed,
had insensibly relaxed; and from these persons, on their return to the capital,
and most likely from other Roman Christians, who may have taken refuge in
Corinth,1 or in other
cities where Paul had founded Christian communities, the first, or at least
the more perfect, knowledge of the higher Christianity, taught by the Apostle
of the Gentiles, would be conveyed to Rome. So complete, indeed, does he appear
to consider the first establishment of Christianity in Rome, that he merely
proposes to take that city in his way to a more remote region, — that of Spain.2 The manner in which he
positive
evidence that the foundation of the Church in Rome was long previous to his
visit to the western metropolis of the world.
1 It would appear prohahle, that the
greater part of the Christian community took refuge with Aquila and Priscilla,
in Corinth and the neighboring port of Cenchrea.
2 The views of Paul on so remote a province
as Spain, at so early a period of his journey, appear to justify the notion
that there was a considerable Jewish population in that country. It is not
impossible that many of the “ Lihertines ” may nave made their way from
Sardinia. There is » curious tradition among the Spanish Jews, that they were
resident in that country before the hirth of our Saviour, and consequently had
no concern in his death. See Hist, of Jews, ii. p. 455.
recounts, in
the last chapter, the names of the more distinguished Roman converts, implies,
both that the community was numerous, and that the name of Paul was held in
high estimation by its leading members. It is evident that Christianity had
advanced already beyond the Jewish population, and the question of necessary
conformity to the Mosaic Law was strongly agitated. It is therefore the main
scope of this celebrated Epistle to annul for ever this claim of the Mosaic
Law to a perpetual authority, to show Christianity as a part of the providential
design in the moral history of man; while Judaism was but a temporary
institution, unequal to, as it was unintended for, the great end of revealing
the immortality of mankind, altogether repealed by this more wide and universal
system, which comprehends, in its beneficent purposes of redemption, the whole
human race.
Closely alhed
with this main element of Judaism, which struggled so obstinately against the
Christianity of St. Paul, was the notion of the approach- Belief in the
ing end of the world, the final consummation endofa*1® of all things
in the second coming of the world' Messiah. It has been shown how
essential and integral a part of the Jewish belief in the Messiah was this
expectation of the ultimate completion of his mission in the dissolution of
the world, and the restoration of a paradisiacal state, in which the
descendants of Abraham were to receive their destined inheritance. To many of
the Jewish believers, the death and resurrection of Jesus were but (if the
expression be warranted) the first acts of the great drama, which was
hastening onward to its immediate close. They had bowed in mysterious wonder
before the incongruity of the life and sufferings of Jesus with the
preconceived
appearance of
the “ Great One,” but expected their present disappointment to be almost
instantly compensated by the appalling grandeur of the second coming of
Christ. If, besides their descent from Abraham, and their reverence for the Law
of Moses, faith in Jesus as the Messiah was likewise necessary to secure their
title to their peculiar inheritance, yet that faith was speedily to receive its
reward; and the original Jewish conception of the Messiah, though put to this
severe trial, though its completion was thus postponed, remained in full
possession of the mind, and seemed to gather strength and depth of coloring
from the constant state of high-wrought agitation in which it kept the whole
moral being. This appears to have been the last Jewish illusion from which the
minds of the apostles themselves were disenchanted; and there can be no doubt,
both that many of the early Christians almost hourly expected the final
dissolution of the world, and that this opinion awed many timid believers into
the profession of Christianity, and kept them in trembling subjection to its
authority. The ambiguous predictions of Christ himself, in which the
destruction of the Jewish polity, and the ruin of the city and Temple, were
shadowed forth under images of more remote and universal import; the language
of the apostles, so liable to misinterpretation, that they were obliged
publicly to correct the erroneous conclusions of their hearers,1 — seemed to countenance an
opinion so disparaging to the real glory of Christianity, which was only to
attain its object, after a slow contest of many centuries, perhaps of ages,
with the evil of human nature. Wherever Christianity made its way into a mind
deeply impregnated with Judaism, the
1 2
Thess. ii. 1,2. 2 Peter iii. 4, 8.
moral
character of the Messiah had still to maintain a strong contest with the
temporal; and, though experience yearly showed that the commencement of this
visible kingdom was but more remote, at least the first generation of
Christians passed away, before the mar jority had attained to more sober
expectations. And, at every period of more than ordinary religious excite ment,
a millennial, or at least a reign partaking of a temporal character, has been
announced, as 011 the eve of its commencement; the Christian mind has retrograded
towards that state of Jewish error which prevailed about the time of Christ’s
coming.1
As
Christianity advanced in all other quarters of the world, its proselytes were
in far larger proportion of Gen tile than of Jewish descent. ?udaismana The
Synagogue and the Church became more and more distinct, till they stood opposed
in irreconcilable hostility. The Jews shrunk back into their stern seclusion,
while the Christians were literally spreading in every quarter through the
population of the empire. Prom this total suspension of intercourse, Judaism
gradually died away within the Christian pale; time and experience corrected
some of the more inveterate prejudices ; new elements came into action. The
Grecian philosophy, and at a later period influ-
1 Compare tbe strange Rabbinical notion of
the fertility of the earth during the millennial reign of Christ, given by
Irenseus as an actual prophecy of our Lord: 44 Venieut dies in
quibus vine® nascentur, singulas decern millia palmitum habentes, et in una
palmite decem millia brachiorum, et in uno vero brachio dena millia
flagellorum, et in unoquoque flagello dena millia botrorum, et in unoquoque
botro dena millia acinorum; et unumquodqne acinum expressum, dabit viginti
quinque metretas vini; et cum apprehendet aliquis sanctorum botrum, alius
clamabit, — Botrus ego melior sum, me some, et per me Dominum benedic.” These
chapters of Ireuseus show the danger to which pure and spiritual Christianity
was exposed from this gross and carnal. Judaizing spirit. Irenseus (ch. 35)
positively denies that any of these images can be taken in an allegorical
sense. —De Haeres. v. c. 33.
ences still
more adverse to that of Judaism, mingled with the prevailing Christianity. A
kind of latent Judaism has, however, constantly lurked within the bosom of the
Church. During the darker ages of Christianity, its sterner spirit, harmonizing
with the more barbarous state of the Christian mind, led to a frequent and
injudicious appeal to the Old Testament. Practically, the great principle of
Judaism, that the Law, as emanating from Divine Wisdom, must be of eternal
obligation, was admitted by conflicting parties; the books of Moses and the
Gospel were appealed to as of equal authority; while the great characteristic
of the old religion — its exclusiveness, its restriction of the divine
blessings within a narrow and visible pale — was too much in accordance both
with pride and superstition, not to re-assert its ancient dominion. The
sacerdotal and the sectarian spirit had an equal tendency to draw a wider or a
more narrow line of demarcation around that which, in Jewish language, they
pronounced to be the “ Israel ” of God; and to substitute some other criterion
of Christianity for that exquisite perfection of piety, that sublimity of
virtue, in disposition, iu thought, and in act, which was the one true test of
Christian excellence.
In Palestine,
as the external conflict with Judaism was longest and most violent, so the
internal influence of the old religion was latest obliterated. But, when this
separation at length took place, it was even more complete and dccided than in
any other countries. In Jerusalem, the Christians were perhaps still called and
submitted to be callcd, Nazarenes, while the appellation which had been assumed
at Antioch was their common designation in all other parts of the world. The
Christian community of Jerusalem, which
had taken
refuge at Pella, bore with them their unabated reverence for the Law. But
insensibly the power of that reverence decayed; and on the foundation of the
new colony of iElia by the Emperor Hadrian, after the defeat of Barchocliab and
the second total demolition of the city, the larger part having nominated a man
of Gentile birth, Marcus, Mark) Bishop as their bishop, settled in
the new city, and of Jerusalem- thus proclaimed their final and
total separation from their Jewish ancestors.1 For not only must they have disclaimed all Jewish
connection, to be permitted to take up their residence in the new colony, the
very approach to which was watched by Roman outposts, and prohibited to every
Jew under the severest penalties, but even the old Jewish feelings must have
been utterly extinct. For what Jew, even if he had passed under the image of a
swine which was erected in mockery over the Bethlehem Gate, would not have
shrunk in horror at beholding the Hill of Moriah polluted by a Pagan temple,
and the worship of Heathen deities profaning by their reeking incense, and
their idolatrous sacrifices, the site of the Holy of Holies ? The Christian,
absorbed in deeper veneration for the soil which had been hallowed by his
Redeemer’s footsteps and was associated with his mysterious death and
resurrection, was indifferent to the daily infringement of the Mosaic Law,
which God himself had annulled by the substitution of the Christian faith, or
to the desecration of the site of that Temple which God had visibly abandoned.
The rest of
the Judseo-Christian community at Pella, and in its neighborhood, sank into an
obscure sect, distinguished by their obstinate rejection of the
1
Evtseb., H. E. iv. 6. Hieronym., Epist. ad Hedybiam, Quasst. 8.
vol. i. 28
writings of
St. Paul, and by their own Gospel, most probably the original Hebrew of St.
Matthew. But the language, as well as the tenets, of the Jews were either
proscribed by the Christians, as they still farther receded from Judaism, or
fell into disuse:1
and whatever writings they possessed, whether originals or copies in the
vernacular dialect of Palestine, of the genuine apostolic books, or
compilations of their own, entirely perished, so that it is difficult, from the
brief notices which are extant, to make out their real nature and character.
In Palestine,
as elsewhere, the Jew and the Christian were no longer confounded with each
other, but constituted two totally different and implacably hostile races. The
Roman government began to discriminate between them, as clearly appears from
the permission to the Christians to reside in Hadrian’s new city, on the site
of Jerusalem, which was interdicted to the Jews. Mutual hatred was increased by
mutual alienation : the Jew, who had lost the power of persecuting, lent
himself as a willing instrument to the Heathen persecutor against those whom he
still considered as apostates from his religion. The less enlightened Christian
added to the contempt of all the Roman world for the Jew a principle of deeper
hostility. The language of Tertullian is that of triumph, rather than of
commiseration for the degraded state of the Jew.2 Strong jealousy of
the pomp and power assumed by the Patriarch of Tiberias may be traced in the
vivid
4 Sulpicius Severus, H. E. Mosheim, De Reb. Christ, ante Constant. Le
Clere, Hist. Ecclesiastica.
2 “
Dispersi, palabundi, et coeli et soli sui extorres vagantur per orbem, eine
nomine, sine Deo rege, quibus nec advenanun jure terram patriam saltern
veetigio salutare conceditur.”— Lib. cont. Judseos, 15.
description
of Origen.1 No
sufferings could too profoundly debase, no pride could become, those who
shared in the hereditary guilt of the crucifixion of Jesus.
1
Origen, Epist. ad Africanum. Hist, of Jews, ii. 466.
Christianity
and Paganism.
The conflict of
Christianity with Judaism was a civil Relationship war > that
with Paganism, the invasion and dai™e“ndU' conquest of a
foreign territory. In the former Christianity. cas0) jt was
the declared design of the innovation to perfect the established constitution
on its primary principles; to expand the yet-undeveloped system, according to
the original views of the Divine Legislator: in the latter, it contemplated the
total subversion of the existing order of things, a reconstruction of the
whole moral and religious being of mankind. With the Jew, the abolition of the
Temple service, and the abrogation of the Mosaic Law, were indispensable to the
perfect establishment of Christianity. The first was left to be accomplished by
the frantic turbulence of the people, and the remorseless vengeance of Rome.
Yet, after all, the Temple service maintained its more profound and indelible
influence only over the Jew of Palestine; its hold upon the vast numbers which
were settled in all parts of the world was that of remote, occasional,
traditionary reverence. With the foreign Jew, the service of the synagogue was
his religion; and the synagogue, without any violent change, was transformed into
a Christian church. The same Almighty God, to whom it was primarily dedicated,
maintained his place; and the sole difference was, that He was worshipped
through the mediation of the cru
cified Jesus
of Nazareth. With the Pagan, the whole of his religious observances fell under
the unsparing proscription. Every one of the countless temples and shrines, and
sacred groves, and hallowed fountains, were to be desecrated by the abhorrent
feelings of those who looked back with shame and contempt upon their old idolatries.
Every image, from the living work of Phidias or Praxiteles to the rude and
shapeless Hermes or Terminus, was to become an unmeaning mass of wood or
stone. In every city, town, or even village, there was a contest to be
maintained, not merely against the general system of Polytheism but against the
local and tutelary deity of the place. Every public spectacle, every
procession, every civil or military duty, was a religious ceremonial. Though
later, when Christianity was in the ascendant, it might expel the deities of
Paganism from some of the splendid temples, and convert them to its own use;
though insensibly many of the usages of the Heathen worship crept into the
more gorgeous and imposing ceremonial of triumphant Christianity; though even Djrectoppo-
many of the vulgar superstitions incorporated Christianity themselves with the
sacred Christian associa- t0
Pagam8m- tions, — all tins re-action was long subsequent to the
permanent establishment of the new religion. At first, all was rigid and
uncompromising hostility; doubts were entertained by the more scrupulous,
whether meat exposed to public sale in the market, but which might have formed
part of a sacrifice, would not be dangerously polluting to the Christian. The
apostle, though anxious to correct this sensitive scrupulousness, touches on
the point with the utmost caution and delicacy.1
The private
life of the Jew was already, in part at least, fettered by the minute and
almost Brahminieal observances with which the later Bobbins established their
despotic authority over the mind. Still some of these usages harmonized with
the spirit of Christianity ; others were less inveterately rooted in the
feelings of the foreign Jew. The trembling apprehension of any thing
approaching to idolatry, the concentration of the heart’s whole devotion upon
the One Almighty God, prepared the soul for a Christian bias. The great
struggle to Jewish feeling was the abandonment of circumcision, as the sign of
his covenant with God. But, this once over, baptism, the substituted ceremony,
was perhaps already familiar to his mind; or, at least, emblematic ablutions
were strictly in unison with the genius and the practice of his former
religion. Some of the stricter Pharisaic distinctions were local, and limited
to Palestine, — as, for instance, the payment of tithe; since the Temple
tribute was the only national tax imposed by his religion on the foreign Jew.
Their sectarian symbols, which in Palestine were publicly displayed upon their
dress, were of course less frequent in foreign countries; and, though worn in
secret, might be dropped and abandoned by the convert to Christianity, without
exciting Universality observation. The whole life of the Heathen, «f paganism. wiiethei-
of the philosopher who despised, or the vulgar who were indifferent to, the
essential part of the religion, was pervaded by the spirit of Polytheism. It
met him in every form, in every quarter, in every act and function of every
day’s business; not merely in the graver offices of the state, in the civil and
military acts of public men ; in the senate, which commenced its deliberations
with sacrifice; in the
camp, the
centre of which was a consecrated temple. The Pagan’s domestic hearth was
guarded by the Penates, or by the ancestral gods of his family or tribe ; by
land he travelled under the protection of one tutelar divinity, by sea of
another; the birth, the bridal, the funeral, had each its presiding deity; the
very commonest household utensils and implements were cast in mythological
forms; he could scarcely drink without being reminded of making a libation to
the gods; and the language itself was impregnated with constant allusions to
the popular religion.
However, as a
religion, Polytheism might be undermined and shaken to the base, yet, as part
of the existing order of things, its inert resistance would everywhere present
a strong barrier against the invasion of a foreigii faith. The priesthood of
an effete religion, as long as the attack is conducted under the decent disguise
of philosophical inquiry, or is only aimed at the moral or the speculative part
of the faith; as long as the form, of which alone they are become the
ministers, is permitted to subsist, — go on calmly performing the usual
ceremonial: neither their feelings nor their interests are actively alive to
the veiled and insidi9us encroachments which are made upon the power and
stability of their belief. In the Roman part of the Western world, the religion
was an integral part of the state. The greatest men of the last days of the
republic, the Ciceros and Cassars, the emperors themselves, aspired to fill the
pontifical offices, and discharged their duties with grave solemnity, however
their declared philosophical opinions were subversive of the whole system of
Polytheism. Men might disbelieve, deny, even substitute foreign superstitions
for the accustomed rites of their country,
provided they
did not commit any overt act of hostility, or publicly endeavor to bring the
ceremonial into contempt. Such acts were not only impieties; thoy were treason
against the majesty of Rome. In the Grecian cities, on the other hand, the
interests and the feelings of the magistracy and the priesthood were less
intimately connected, — the former, those at least who held the higher
authority, being Roman; the latter, local or municipal. Though it was the province
of the magistrate to protect the established religion, and it was sufficiently
the same with his own to receive his regular worship, yet the strength with
which he would resist, or the jealousy with which he would resent, any
dangerous innovation, would depend on the degree 'of influence possessed by the
sacerdotal body, and the pride or enthusiasm which the people might feel for
their local worship. Until, then, Christianity had made such progress as to
producc a visible diminution in the attendance on the Pagan worship; until the
temples were comparatively deserted, and the offerings less frequent, — the
opposition encountered by the Christian teacher, or the danger to which he
would be exposed, would materially depend on the peculiar religious
circumstances of each city.1
1
In a former publication, the author attempted to represent the manner in which
the strength of Polytheism, and its complete incorporation with the public and
private life of its votaries, might present itself to the mind cf a Christian
teacher on his first entrance into a Heathen city. The passage has been quoted
in Archbishop Whately’s book on Rhe oric.
“ Conceive,
then, the apostles of Jesus Christ, the tent-maker or the fisherman, entering
as strangers into one of the splendid cities of Syria, Asia Minor, or Greece.
Conceive them, I mean, as unendowed with miraculous powers, having adopted
their itinerant system of teaching from human motives, and for human purposes
aloue. As they pass along to the remote and obscure quarter, where they expect
to meet with precarious hospitality among their countrymen, they survey the
strength of the established religion, which it is their avowed purpose to
overthrow. Everywhere they
behold
temples, on which the utmost extravagance of expenditure has been lavished by
succeeding generations; idols of the most exquisite workmanship, to which,
even if the religious feeling of adoration is enfeebled, the people are strongly
attached by national or local vanity. They meet processions in which the idle
find perpetual occupation; the young, excitemcnt; the voluptuous, a continual
stimulant to their passions. They behold a priesthood, numerous, sometimes
wealthy; nor are these alone wedded by interest to the established faith: many
of the trades, like those of the makers of silver sbrines at Ephesus, are
pledged to the support of that to which they owe their maintenance. They pass a
magnificent theatre, on the splendor and success of which the popularity of the
existing authorities mainly depends; and in which the serious exhibitions are
essentially religious, the lighter as intimately connected with the indulgence
of the baser passions. They hehold another public building, where even worse
feelings, the cruel and the sanguinary, are pampered by the animating contests
Df wild beasts and of gladiators, in which they themselves may shortly play a
dreadful part, —
‘ Butchered
to make a Roman holiday! ’
Show and
spectacle are the characteristic enjoyments of a whole people; and every show
and spectacle is either sacred to the religious feelings, or incentive to the
lusts of the flesh, — those feelings which must be entirely eradicated, those
lusts which must be hrought into total subjection to the law of Christ. They
encounter likewise itinerant jugglers, diviners, magicians, who impose upon the
credulous to excite the contempt of the enlightened, — in the first case,
dangerous rivals to those who should attempt to propagate a new faith by
imposture and deception; in the latter, naturally tending to prej udice the
mind against all miraculous pretensions whatever: here, like Elymas, endeavoring
to outdo the signs and wonders of the apostles, thcrehy throwing suspicion on
all asserted supernatural agency, by the frequency and clumsiness of their
delusions. They meet philosophers, frequently itinerant like themselves; or
teachers of new religions, priests of Isis and Serapis, who have brought into
equal discredit what might otherwise have appeared a proof of philanthropy, —
the performing laborious journeys at the sacrifice of personal ease and
comfort, for the moral and religious improvement of mankind; or at least bave
so accustomed the public mind to similar pretensions, as to take away every
attraction from their boldness or novelty. There are also the teachers of the
different mysteries, which would engross all the anxiety of the inquisitive,
perhaps excite, even if they did not satisfy, the hopes of the more pure and
lofty-minded. Such must have been among the ohstacles which must have forced
themselves on the calmer moments of the most ardent, — such the overpowering
difficulties of which it would be impossible to overlook the importance, or
elude the force; which required no soher calculation to estimate, no laborious
inquiry to discover: wbich met and confronted them wherever they went, and
which, either in
adventures of
tbe apostles in tbe different cities of Asia Minor and Greece are singularly
characteristic of the population and the state of the existing Polytheism in
each. It was not till it had extended beyond the borders of Palestine that
Christianity came into direct collision with Paganism. The first Gentile
convert admitted into the Christian community by St. Peter, Cornelius, if not a
proselyte to Judaism, approached very nearly to it. He was neither Polytheist
nor philosopher; he was a worshipper of One Almighty Creator, and familiar, it
might seem, with the Jewish belief in angelic appearances. Even beyond the Holy
Land, Christianity did not immediately attempt to address the general mass of
the Pagan community: its first collisions were casual and accidental; its
operar tions commenced in the synagogue. A separate community was not
invariably formed, or, if formed, appeared to the common observation only a new
assemblage for Jewish worship ; to which, if Heathen proselytes gathered in
more than ordinary numbers, it was but the same thing on a larger, which had
excited little jealousy on a smaller, scale.1
During the
first journey of St. Paul, it is manifest that in Cyprus particularly, and in
the towns Christianity of Asia Minor, the Jewish worship was au object of
general respect; and Christianity, appearing
desperate
presumption or deliberate reliance on their own preternatural powers, they must
have contemned and defied.” — Bampton Lectures, pp. 269, 273.
1
The extent to which Jewish proselytism had been carried is a most intricate
question. From the following passage, quoted from Seneca by St. Augustine, if genuine,
it would seem that it had made great progress: “ Cum interim usque eo
sceleratissimse gentis consuetudo convaluit, ut per oranea terras jure recepta
sit, victi victorihus leges dederunt.” St. Augustine positively asserts that
this sentence does not include the Christians. — De Civit Dei, vi. 11.
as a
modification of Jewish belief, shared in that deference which had been long
paid to the national religion of the Jewish people. Sergius Panins,1 the governor of Cyprus, under
the influence of the Jew Elymas, was already more than half, if not altogether,
alienated from the religion of Rome. Barnabas and Paul appeared before him at
his own desire; and their manifest superiority over his former teacher easily
transformed him from an imperfect proselyte to Judaism into a convert to
Christianity.
At Antioch in
Pisidia there was a large class of proselytes to Judaism, who espoused the
Antioch in cause of the Christian teachers, and who pisidia-
probably formed the more considerable part of the Gentile hearers addressed by
Paul on his rejection by the leading Jews of that city.
At Lystra,2 in Lycaonia, the apostle
appears for the first time, in the centre, as it were, of a Pagan population;
and it is remarkable, that, in this wild and inland region, we find the old
barbarous religion maintaining a lively and commanding influence over the
popular mind. In the more civilized and commercial part of the Roman world, in
Ephesus, in Athens, or in Rome, such extraordinary cures as that of the cripple
at Lystra might have been publicly wrought, and might have excited a wondering
interest in the multitude; but it may be doubted whether the lowest or most
ignorant would have had so much faith in the old fabulous appearances of their
own deities, as immediately to have imagined their actual and visible
appearance in the persons of these
1 Acts xiii. 6-12.
3 Acts xiy. 6-19. There were Jews resident
at Lystra, as appears by Acts xvi. 1, 2. Timotheus was the offspring of an
intermarriage between a Jewish woman and a Greek; his name is Greek.
surprising
strangers. It is only in the remote and savage Lystra, where the Greek language
had not predominated over the primitive barbarous dialect1 (probably a branch of the Cappadocian), that the popular emotion
instantly metamorphoses these public benefactors into the Jove and Mercury of
their own temples. The inhabitants actually make preparation for sacrifice, and
are with difficulty persuaded to consider such wonder-working men to be of the
same nature with themselves. Nor is it less characteristic of the versatility
of a rude people, that no sooner is the illusion dispelled than they join with
the hostile Jews in the persecution of those very men whom their superstition,
but a short time before, had raised into objects of divine worship.
In the second
and more extensive journey of St. Paul, having parted from Barnabas,2 he was accompanied by
Timotheus and Silas or Sylvanus; but of the Asiatic part of this journey,
though it led through some countries of remarkable interest in the history
ph gia Paganism>
no particulars are recorded. Phrygia, which was a kind of link
between Greece and the remoter East, still at times sent out into the Western
world its troops of frantic Orgiasts; aud the Phrygian vied with the Isiac and
Mithraic mysteries in its influence in awakening the dormant fanaticism of the
Roman world. It is probable, that, in these regions, the apostle confined
himself to the Jewish settlers and their proselytes. In Galatia, it is clear
that the converts were almost entirely
Galatia. J
of Hebrew
descent. The vision which in*
1 Jablonski, Dissertatio de LinguSl
LycaonicS, reprinted in Talpy’s edition of Stephens’s Thesaurus.
2 Acts xv. 36 to xviii. 18.
vited the
apostle to cross from Troas to Macedonia led him into a new region, where his
countrymen, though forming flourishing communities in many of the principal
towns, were not, except perhaps at Corinth, by any means so numerous as in the
greater part of Asia Minor. His vessel touched at Samothrace, where the most
ancient and remarkable mysteries still retained their sanctity and veneration
in that holy and secluded island.
At Philippi
he first came into collision with those whose interests were concerned in the
maintenance of the popular religion. Though PhlUppi' these were
only individuals, whose gains were at once put an end to by the progress of
Christianity, the owners of the female soothsayer of Philippi were part of a
numerous and active class, who subsisted on the public credulity. The
proseucha, or oratory, of the Jews (the smaller place of worship, which they
always established when their community was not sufficiently flourishing to
maintain a synagogue), was, as usual, by the water side. The river, as always
in Greece and in all Southern countries, was the resort of the women of the
city, partly for household purposes, partly perhaps for bathing. Many of this
sex were in consequence attracted by the Jewish proseucha, and had become, if
not proselytes, at least very favorably inclined to Judaism. Among these was
Lydia, whose residence was at Thyatira, and who, from her trading in the costly
purple dye, may be supposed a person of considerable wealth and influence.
Having already been so far enlightened by Judaism as to worship the One God,
she became an immediate convert to the Christianity of St. Paul. Perhaps the
influence or the example of so many of her own sex worked upon
the mind of a
female of a different character and occupation. She may have been an impostor,
but more probably was a young girl of excited temperament, whose disordered
imagination was employed by men of more artful character for their-own sordid
purposes. The enthusiasm of this “ divining ” damsel now took another turn.
Impressed with the language and manner of Paul, she suddenly deserted her old
employers, and throwing herself into the train of the apostle, proclaimed,
with the same exalted fervor, his divine mission and the superiority of his
religion. Paul, troubled with the publicity and the continual repetition of her
outcries, exorcised her in the name of Jesus Christ. Her wild excitement died
away; the spirit passed from her; and her former masters found that she was no
longer fit for their service. She could no longer be thrown into those
paroxysms of temporary derangement, in which her disordered language was
received as oracular of future events. This conversion produced a tumult
throughout the city : the interests of a powerful body were at stake ; for the
trade of soothsaying, at this time, was both common and lucrative. The
employers of the prophetess inflamed the multitude. The apostle and his
attendants were seized, arraigned before the magistrates, as introducing an
unlawful religion. The magistrates took part against them. They suffered the
ordinary punishment of disturbers of the peace, — were scourged, and cast into
prison. While their hymn, perhaps their evening hymn, was heard through the
prison, a violent earthquake shook the whole building; the doors flew open,
and the fetters, by which probably they were chained to the walls, were
loosened. The affrighted jailor, who was responsible for their appearance,
expected them to
avail
themselves of this opportunity of escape, and, in his despair, was about to
commit suicide. His hand was arrested by the calm voice of Paul, and, to his
wonder, he found the prisoners remaining quietly in their cells. His fears and
his admiration wrought together; and the jailor of Philippi, with his whole
family, embraced the Christian faith. The magistrates, when they found that
Paul had the privilege of Roman citizenship, were in their turn alarmed at
their hasty infringement of that sacred right, released them honorably from the
prison, and were glad to prevail upon them to depart peacefully from the city.
Thus, then,
we have already seen Christianity in collision with Polytheism, under two of
its contrast of
Polytheism
various
forms: at Lystra, as still the old at Lystra,
. . Philippi,
poetic faith
of a barbarous people, insensible an<1
Athena, to the progress made elsewhere in the human mind, and devoutly
believing the wonders of their native religion; in Philippi, a provincial town
in a more cultivated part of Greece, but still at no high state of
intellectual advancement, as connected with the vulgar arts, not of the
established priesthood, but of itinerant traders in popular superstition. In
Athens, Paganism has a totally different character,—inquiring, argumentative,
sceptical, Polytheism in form, and that form embodying all that could excite
the imagination of a highly polished people; in reality admitting and
delighting in the freest discussion, altogether inconsistent with sincere
belief in the ancient and established religion.
Passing
through Amphipolis and Apollonia, Paul and his companions arrived at
Thessalonica; but in this city, as well as in Berea, their Tt“!S£alonic<t
chief intercourse appears to have been with the Jewa
The riot by
which they were expelled from Thes- salonica was blindly kept up by the
disorderly populace, instigated by many of the Jewish community, indignant at
the apparent countenance given to the Christians by Jason their chief, who had
received them into his house. Having left his companions, Timotheus and Silas,
at Berea, Paul arrived alone at Athens.
At Athens,
the centre at once and capital of the Greek philosophy and Heathen
superstition, takes place the first public and direct conflict between
Christianity and Paganism. Up to this time, there is no account of any one of
the apostles taking his station in the public street or market-place, and addressing
the general multitude.1
Their place of teaching had invariably been the synagogue of their nation, or,
as at Philippi, the neighborhood of their customary place of worship. Here,
however, Paul does not confine himself to the synagogue, or to the society of
his countrymen and their proselytes. He takes his stand in the public
market-place (probably not the Ceramicus, but the Eretriac Forum2),
which, in the reign of Augustus, had begun to be more frequented, and at the
top of which was the famous portico, from which the Stoics assumed their name.
In Athens, the appearance of a new public teacher, instead of offending the
popular feelings, was too familiar to excite astonishment, and was rather welcomed,
as promising some fresh intellectual excitement ; and in Athens, hospitable to
all religions and all opinions, the foreign and Asiatic appearance and
1 This appears to be intimated in the
expression (Acts xvii. 16); M spirit was stirred within him when he
saw the city wholly given to idol*- by.”
2 Strabo, x. 447.
possibly the
less polished tone and dialect of Paul would only awaken the stronger
curiosity. Though they affect at first (probably the philosophic part of his
hearers) to treat him as an idle “ babbler,” and others (the vulgar, alarmed
for the honor of their deities) supposed that he was about to introduce some
new religious worship, which might endanger the su premacy of their own tutelar
divinities ; the apostle is conveyed, not without respect, to a still more
public and commodious place, from whence he may explain his doctrines to a
numerous assembly without dis turbance. On the Areopagus (the Hill of Mars)1 the Christian teacher takes
his stand, surrounded Paul on the on every side with whatever was
noble, beau- AreopaffuB' tiful, and intellectual in the older world,
— temples, of which the materials were only surpassed by the architectural
grace and majesty; statues, iu which the ideal Anthropomorphism of the Greeks
had almost sanctified the popular notions of the Deity, by embodying it in
human forms of such exquisite perfection ; public edifices, where the civil
interests of man had been discussed with the acuteness and versatility of the
highest Grecian intellect, in all the purity of the inimitable Attic dialcct,
where oratory had obtained its highest triumphs by “ wielding at will the
fierce democracy; ” the walks of the philosophers, who unquestionably, by
elevating the human mind to an appetite for new and nobler knowledge, had
prepared the way for a loftier and purer religion. It Speeohof was
in the midst of these elevating associar Paul- tions, to which the
student of Grecian literature in
i It has been supposed by some, that Paul
was summoned before the Court of the Areopagus, -who took cognizance of causes
relating to religion. But there is no indication, in the narrative, of any of
the forms of a judicial
proceeding.
Tarsus, the
reader of Menander and of the Greet philosophical poets, could scarcely be
entirely dead O' ignorant, that Paul stands forth to proclaim the lowly yet
authoritative religion of Jesus of Nazareth- His audience was chiefly formed
from the two prevailing sects, the Stoics and Epicureans, with the populace,
the worshippers of the established religion. In his discourse, the heads of
which are related hy St. Luke, Paul, with singular felicity, touches on the
peculiar opinions of each class among his hearers:1 he expands the
popular religion into a higher philosophy; he imbues philosophy with a profound
sentiment of rdigion.2
It is
impossible not to examine with the utmost interest the whole course of this (if
we consider its remote consequences, and suppose it the first fall and public
argument of Christianity against the Heathen religion and philosophy), perhaps
the most extensively and permanently effective oration ever uttered by man. We
may contemplate Paul as the representative of Christianity, in the presence, as
it were, of the concentrated religion of Greece; and of the spirits, if we may so speak, of Zocrates and Plato
and Zeno. The opening of the apostle’s speech is according to those most
perfect rules of art which are but the expressions of the general sentiments of
nature. It is calm, temperate. conciliatory. It is no fierce denunciation of
idolatry, no contemptuous disdain of the prevalent
1 “ Panins gumma arte oratkmem snam ita
tempera!, nt modo cum vulgo contra philosophas. modo com phOosophis contra
plebem, modo contra ntzoe- qtte pognet-’* —Eosenmuller n Joe.
2 The art and the propriety of this speech
are considerably maned bv the mistranslation of one word in oar version,
6aciAai^avttrrepaj^9—which not imply reproof, as in the rendering
“too superstitions.” Conciliation, not effiace,of tbe public feeling,
especially at the opening of a speech, is tte fiisi principle of all oratory,
more particularly of Christian
philosophic
opinions ; it has nothing of the sternness of the ancient Jewish prophet, nor
the taunting defiance of the later Christian polemic. “ Already the religious
people of Athens had, unknowingly indeed, worshipped the universal deity; for
they had an altar to the Unknown God.1 The nature, the attributes, of this sublimer Being,
hitherto adored in ignorant and unintelligent homage, he came to unfold. This
God rose far above the popular notion; He could not be confined in altar or
temple, or represented by any visible image. He was the universal Father of mankind,
even of the earth-born Athenians, who boasted that they were of an older race
than the other families of man, and co-eval with the world itself. He was the
fountain of life, which pervaded and sustained the universe; He had assigned
their separate dwellings to the separate families of man.” Up to a certain
point in this higher view of the Supreme Being, the philosopher of the Garden,
as well as of the Porch, might listen with wonder and admiration. It soared,
indeed, high above the vulgar religion; but in the lofty and serene Deity, who
disdained to dwell in the earthly temple, and needed nothing from the hand of
man,2 the Epicurean might almost suppose that he
heard the language of his own teacher. But the next sentence, which asserted
the providence of God as the active, creative energy, — as the conservative,
the ruling, the ordaining principle, — annihilated at once the atomic
1 Of all the conjectures (for all is purely
conjectural) on the contested point of the “ altar to the Unknown God,” the
most ingenious and natural, in my opinion, is that of Eichhom. There were, he
supposes, very ancient altars, older perhaps than the art of writing, or on
which the inscription had heen effaced hy time: on these the piety of later
ages had engraven the simple words, u To the Unknown God.”
2 “ Needing nothing: ” the coincidence with
the nihil indiga rnstri of Ln- cretius is curious, even if accidental.
theory, and
the government of blind chance, to which Epicurus ascribed the origin and
preservation of the universe. “ This high and impassive Deity, who dwelt aloof
in serene and majestic superiority to all want, was perceptible in some
mysterious manner by man; his all-pervading providence comprehended the whole
human race; man was in constant union with the Deity, as an offspring with its
parent.” And still the Stoic might applaud with complacent satisfaction the
ardent words of the apostle; he might approve the lofty condemnation of
idolatry. “ We, thus of divine dcscent, ought to think more nobly of our universal
Father than to suppose that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone,
graven by art or man’s device.” But this Divine Providence was far different
from the stern and all-controlling Necessity, the inexorable Fatalism, of the
Stoic system. While the moral value of human action was recognized by the
solemn retributive judgment to be passed on all mankind, the dignity of Stoic
virtue was lowered by the general demand of repentance. The perfect man, the
moral king, was deposed, as it were, and abased to the general level; he had to
learn new lessons in the school of Christ, — lessons of humility and conscious
deficiency, the most directly opposed to the principles and the sentiments of
his philosophy.
The great
Christian doctrine of the resurrection closed the speech of Paul, — a doctrine
received with mockery perhaps by his Epicurean hearers, with suspension of
judgment probably by the Stoic, with whose theory of the final destruction of
the world by fire, and his tenet of future retribution, it might appear in some
degree to harmonize. Some, however, became deelared converts; among whom are
particularly
named
Dionysius, a man of sufficient distinction to be a member of the famous court
of the Areopagus; and a woman, named Damaris, probably of considerable rank and
influence.
At Athens,
all this free discussion on topics relating to the religious and moral nature
of man, and involving the authority of the existing religion, passed away
without disturbance. The jealous reverence for the established faith, which,
conspiring with its perpetual ally, political faction, had in former times
caused the death of Socrates, the exile of Stilpo, and the proscription of
Diagoras the Melian, had long died away. With the loss of independence,
political animosities had subsided; and the toleration of philosophical and
religious indifference allowed the utmost latitude to speculative inquiry, however
ultimately dangerous to the whole fabric of the national religion. Yet
Polytheism still reigned in Athens in its utmost splendor: the temples were
maintained with the highest pomp; the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which religion
and philosophy had in some degree coalesced, attracted the noblest and the
wisest of the Romans, who boasted of their initiation in these sublime
secrets. Athens was thus, at once, the headquarters of Paganism, and at “the
same time the place where Paganism most clearly betrayed its approaching
dissolution.
From Athens,
the apostle passes to Corinth. Corinth was at this time the common emporium of
the Eastern and Western divisions of the Roman empire. It was the Venice of the
Old World, in whose streets the continued stream of commerce, either flowing Corinth
from or towards the great capital of the world, A D-52m
out of all the Eastern territories, met and crossed.1
1
After its destruction fey Mummius, Corinth was restored, beautified, and
Tha basis of
the population of Corinth was Roman, of very recent settlement; but colonists
from all quarters had taken np their permanent residence in a place so
admirably adapted for mercantile purposes. In no part of the Roman empire were
both the inhabitants and the travellers through the city so various and
mingled; nowhere, therefore, would a new religion spread with so much rapidity,
and send out the ramifications of its influence with so much success; and, at
the same time, excite so little observation amid the stir of business and the
perpetual influx and efflux of strangers, or be less exposed to jealous
opposition. Even the priesthood, newly settled, like the rest of the colony,
could command no ancient reverence; and, in the perpetual mingling and
confusion of all dresses and dialects, no doubt there was the same concourse of
religious itinerants of every description.1 At Corinth, therefore, but for the
colonized by
Julius Caesar — Strabo, viii. 381. For its history, wealth, and commercial
situation, see Diod. Sic., Fragm. The profligacy of Corinthian manners was
likewise proverbial: tvoKlv oIksltb
t&v ovauv re nal yeyevTj- fievuv k'KafypQdLTOTtLTTjv. — Dio
Chrysost., Orat. 37, v. ii. p. 110.
1
Corinth was a favorite resort of the Sophists (Aristid., Isthm. Athenseus, 1.
xiii.); and, in an oration of Dio Chrysostom, there is a lively and graphic
description of what may be called one of the fairs of antiquity, the Isthmian
Games, which happily illustrates the general appearance of society. Among the
rest, the Cynic philosopher Diogenes appears, and endeavors to attract an
audience among the vast and idle multitude. He complains, however, “that if he
were a travelling dentist or an oculist, or had any infallible specific for the
spleen or the gout, all who were afflicted with such diseases would have
thronged around him; but as he only professed to cure mankind of vice,
ignorance, and profligacy, no one troubled himself to seek a remedy for those
less grievous maladies.” — “And there was around the Temple of Neptune a crowd
of miserable Sophists, shouting and abusing one another; and of their so-called
disciples, fighting with each other; and many authors reading their works, to
which nobody paid any attention; and many poets chanting their poems, with
others praising them; and many jugglers showing off their tricltand many
prodigy-mongers noting down their wonders; and a thousand rhetoricians
perplexing causes; and not a few shopkeepers retailing their
hostility of
his countrymen, the Christian apostle might, even longer than the eighteen months
which he passed in that city, have preserved his peaceful course. The
separation which at once took place between the Jewish and the Christian
communities in Corinth, — the secession of Paul from the synagogue into a
neighboring house, — might have allayed even this intestine ferment, had not
the progress of Christianity, and the open adoption of the new faith by one of
the chiefs of the synagogue, re-awakened that fierce animosity which had
already caused the expulsion of both parties from Rome, and the seeds of which
no doubt rankled in the hearts of many. Here, therefore, for the first time,
Christianity was brought under the cognizance of a higher authority than the
municipal magistrate of one of the Macedonian cities.
The
contemptuous dismissal of the cause by the Proconsul of Achaia, as beneath the
majesty of the Roman tribunal; his refusal to interfere, when some of the
populace, with whom the Christians were apparently the favored party, on the
repulse of the 6allio accusing Jews from the seat of justice, fell A
D-53- upon one of them, named Sosthenes, and maltreated him
with considerable violence, shows how little even the most enlightened men yet
comprehended the real nature of the new religion. The affair was openly treated
as an unimportant sectarian dispute about the national faith of the Jews. The
mild1 and popular
wares
wherever they could find a customer. And presently some approached the
philosopher, — not indeed the Corinthians; fbr, as they saw him every day in
Corinth, they did not expect to derive any advantage from hearing him,—but
those that drew near him were strangers, each of whom having listened a short
time, and asked a few questions, made his retreat, from fear of his rebukes.” —
Dio Cbrys., Orat. viii.
1 “Nemo mortalium uni tam dulcis est quam hie omnibus.”
— Senee., Nat. Quast. 4, Prsef. “ Hoc plusquam Senecam dedisse
mundo. Et dulcem generasse Gallionem.” — Stat., Sylv. ii. 7. Compare Dion Cass.
lx.
character of
Gallio; his connection with his brother Seneca,1 in whose philosophic writings the morality of Heathenism
had taken a higher tone than it ever assumes, unless perhaps, subsequently, in
the works of Marcus Antoninus, — excite regret that the religion of Christ was
not brought under his observation in a manner more likely to conciliate his
attention. The result of this trial was the peaceful establishment of
Christianity in Corinth, where, though secure from the violence of the Jews, it
was, however, constantly exposed, by its situation, to the intrusion of new comers,
with different modifications of Christian opinions. This, therefore, was the
first Christian community which was rent into parties, and in which the
authority of the apostle was perpetually wanting to correct opinions not purely
Jewish in their origin.
Thus eventful
was the second journey of Paul; over so wide a circuit had Christianity already
heen disseminated, almost entirely by his personal exertions. In many of the
most flourishing and populous cities of Greece, communities were formed, which
were continually enlarging their sphere.
The third
journey,2 starting
from the headquarters of Christianity, Antioch, led Paul again through the same
regions of Asia, Calatia, and Phrygia. But now, instead of crossing over into
Macedonia, he proceeded along the west of Asia Minor, to the important
1 Among the later forgerica was a
correspondence between Seneca and St. Paul; and many Christian writers, as
unacquainted with the ln-l/.ry of their own religion a* with the state of the
Heathen rmnd,have been anxious to trace all that is striking and beautiful in
the writings of the Stoic to Christian influence.
Mons. de
Champagny (Les C<!sai~-, t. ii. 231, Sec., and Appendix, p. 417) has labored
ingeniously, but without success, to work out this theory. M. Ihibois Gii<
han (Tacite et son Si tele) takes the opposite view.
* Act# xviii. M to xxi. S.
city of
Ephesus. Ephesus.1 at this time, may be considered the capital, the
chief mercantile city, j-phesn£i of Asia Minor. It was inhabited by
a miu- AJ)- gled population : and probably united, more than any
city in the East. Grecian and Asiatic habits, manners, and superstitions.2
Its celebrated temple was one of the most splendid models of Grecian
architecture ; the image of the goddess retained the symbolic form of the old
Eastern nature-worship. It was one of the great schools of magic: the Ephesian
amulets, or talismans.8 were in high request. Polytheism had thus
effected an amicable union of Grecian art with Asiatic mysticism and magical
superstition: the vender of the silver shrines, which represented the great
Temple, one of the wonders of the world, vied with the trader in charms and in
all the appurtenances of witchcraft. Great numbers of Jews had long inhabited
the chief cities of Asia Minor; many had attained to opulence, and were of
great mercantile importance. Augustus had issued a general rescript to the
cities of Asia Minor for the protection of the Jews, securing to them the
freedom of religious worship, legalizing the transmission of the Temple
tribute to Jerusalem by their own appointed receivers, and making the plunder
of their synagogues sacrilege.4 Two later edicts of Agrippa and Julius
Antonius, proconsuls, particularly addressed to the magistracy of Ephesus,
acknowledged and confirmed the imperial decree. From this period, nothing cau
yet have occurred to lessen their growing prosperity, or to lower
1 BcsenmufleT. Das alte raid neue Morgenlan
I, 6-50.
2 Compare Matter. Hist, da Gnosticisme, L
137.
* rEtysoia
ypa+iuara.
* TEpocv/da, Joseph., Ant- xvi. 6. Krebs, Deereta Eomanonnn
pro Jn- fcis, Lipsixe, 1778.
them in the
estimation of their Gentile neighbors. Among the numerous Jews in this great
city, Paul Disdpies of found some who, having been in Judaea dur- Baptist. ing
the teaching of John the Baptist, had embraced his opinions, and received
baptism, either at his hands or from his disciples, but appear not only not to
have visited the mother country, but to have kept up so little connection with
it as to be almost, if not entirely, iguorant of Christ and of Christianity.
The most eminent of them, Apollos, had left the city for Corinth, where,
meeting with St. Paul’s companions, the Roman Jews, Priscilla and Aquila, he
had embraced Christianity; and, being a man of eloquence, immediately took such
a lead in the community as to be set up by one of the conflicting parties as a
kind of rival of the apostle. The rest of this sect in Ephesus willingly
listened to tbe teaching of Paul: to the number of twelve, they “ received tbe
Holy Ghost,”
and thus became
the nucleus of a new Christian com!
munity in
Ephesus. The followers of John the Baptist, no doubt, conformed in all
respects with the customary worship of their countrymen: their peculiar
opinions were superinduced, as it were, upon their Judaism; they were still
regular members of the synagogue. In the synagogue, therefore, Paul commenced
his labors, the success of which was so great as evidently to excite the
hostility of the leading Jews: hence, here likewise, a complete separation took
place; the apostle obtained possession of a school belonging to a person named
Tyrannus, most likely a Grecian sophist; and the Christian church stood alone,
as a distinct and independent place of divine worship.
Paul
continued to reside in Ephesus two years, during which the rapid extension of
Christianity was
accelerated
by many wonderful cures. In Ephesus, such cures were likely to be sought with
avidity; but, in this centre of magical superstition, would Ephesi!U1 by no means command belief in the divine "!agIC‘
mission of the worker of miracles. Jews, as well as Heathens, admitted the
unlimited power of supernatural agencies, and vied with each other in the
success of their rival enchantments. The question then would arise, by what
more than usually potent charm or mysterious power such extraordinary works
were wrought. The followers of both religions had implicit faith in the magic
influence of certain names. With the Jews, this belief was moulded up Jewisll
with their most sacred traditions. It was exorcist8- by the holy
TetrarGrammaton,1 the
Sem-ham-phorash, according to the Alexandrian historian of the Jews, that Moses
and their gifted ancestors wrought all the wonders of their early history.
Pharaoh trembled before it, and the plagues of Egypt had been obedient to the
utterance of the awful monosyllable, the ineffable name of the Deity.
Cabalism, which assigned at first sanctity, and afterwards power over the
intermediate spirits of good and evil, to certain combinations of letters and
numbers, though not yet cultivated to its height, existed, no doubt, in its
earlier elements, among the Jews of this period. Upon this principle, some of
the Jews who practised exorcism attributed all these prodigies of St. Paul to
some secret power possessed by the name of Jesus. Among these were some men of
high rank, the sons of one of the high-
1 Artapanus apud
Euseb., Praep. Evangel, viii. 28. Compare Clemens. Alex. Strom, v.
p. 562. It is curious enough, that the constant repetition of the mysterious
name of the Deity, Oum, should be. the most acceptable act of devotion among
the Indians; among the Jews, the most awful and inexpiable impiety
priests,
named Sceva. They seem to have believed in the superstition by which they ruled
the minds of others, and supposed that the talismanic influence, which probably
depended on Cabalistic art, was inseparably connected with the pronunciation
of this mystic name. Those whom this science or this trade of exorcism
(according as it was practised by the credulous or the crafty) employed for
their purposes, were those unhappy beings of disordered imagination, possessed,
according to the belief of the times, by evil spirits. One of these, on whom
they were trying this experiment, had probably before been strongly impressed
with the teaching of Paul, and the religion which he prcached ; and, irritated
by the interference of persons whom he might know to be hostile to the
Christian party, assaulted them with great violence, and drove them naked and
wounded out of the house.1
This extraordinary
event was not only fatal to the pretensions of the Jewish exorcists, bnt at
once seemed to put to shame all who believed and who practised magical arts,
and the manufacturers of spells and talismans. Multitudes came forward, and
voluntarily gave up, to be burned, not only all their store of amulets, but
even the books which contained the magical formularies.2 Their value, as probably they
were rated and estimated at a high price, amounted to 50,000 pieces of silver,
most likely Attic drachms, or Roman silver denarii, a coin very current in Asia
Minor, and worth about 7£<f. of our money. The sum would thus make something
more than £1,600.
These
superstitions, however, though domiciliated
1
It is not improbable that they may have taken off their ordinary dress, for the
purpose of performing their incantation with greater solemnity.
3 On the E fecta ypafifiara there are some
amusing and instructive observations in Kreuser, Vorfiagen fiber Homeros, p.
112.
at Ephesus,
were foreign ; and perhaps, according to the Roman provincial regulations,
unlawful. Yet even the established religion, at least some of those dependent
upon it for their subsistence, began to tremble at the rapid increase of the
new faith. A collision now, for the first time, took place with the interests
of that numerous class who were directly connected with the support of the
reigning Polytheism. The Temple of Ephesus, as one of the wonders of the
world, was constantly visited by strangers; by a few, perhaps, from religion,
by many from curiosity or admiration of the unrivalled architecture; at all
events, by the greater number of those who were always passiug accidentally, or
with mercantile views, through one of the most celebrated marts of the East.
There was a common article of trade, a model or shrine of silver representing
the Temple, which was preserved as a memorial, or perhaps as endowed with some
sacred and talismanic power. The sale of these works gradually fell off; and
the artisans, at the instigation of a certain Demetrius, raised a vio-
Demetrius, lent popular tumult, and spread the exciting silver shrines,
watchword that the worship of Diana was AJ>' 57‘ in
danger. The whole city rung with the repeated outcries, “ Great is Diana of the
Ephesians.” Two of Paul’s companions were seized and dragged into the public
theatre, the place where in many cities the public business was transacted.
Paul was eager to address the multitude, but was restrained by the prudence of
his friends, among whom were some of the most eminent men of the province, the
Asiarchs.1 The
1
This office appears to have been a wreck of the ancient federal constitution
of the Asiatic cities. The Asiarchs were elective, by certain cities, and represented
the general league or confederation. They possessed the supreme lacerdotal
authority; regulated and presided in the theatric exhibitiors.
Jews appear
to have been implicated in the insurrection ; and, probably to exculpate
themselves, and to disclaim all connection with the Christians, they put
forward a certain Alexander, a man of eloquence and authority. The appearance
of Alexander seems not to have produced the effect that they intended. As a
Jew, he was considered hostile to the Polytheistic worship ; his voice was
drowned by the turbulence; and, for two hours, nothing could be heard in the
assembly but the reiterated clamor, “ Great is Diana of the Ephesians.” The
conduct of the magistrates seems to indicate, that they were acting against a part
of the community, in whose favor the imperial edicts were still in force.
Either they did not yet clearly distinguish between the Jews and Christians,
or supposed that the latter, as originally Jews, were under the protection of
the same rescripts. Expressing the utmost reverence for the established
religion of Diana, they recommend moderation; exculpate the accused from the
charge of intentional insult, either against the Temple or the religion of the
city; require that the cause should be heard in a legal form; and, finally,
urge the danger which Ephesus incurred of being punished for the breach of the
public peace by the higher authorities,— the proconsular governor of Asia. The
tumult was allayed ; but Paul seems to have thought it prudent to withdraw
from the excited city, and to pursue his former line of travel into Macedonia
and Greece.
Prom Ephesus,
accordingly, we trace his course through Macedonia to Corinth. Great changes
had probably taken place in this community. The exiles from Rome, when the
first violence of the edict of
Their
pontifical character renders it more remarkable that they should have been
favorably disposed towards Paul.
Claudius had
passed away, both Jews and Christians, quietly stole back to their usual
residences in the metropolis. In writing his Epistle to the Roman Christians
from this place, Paul seems to intimate both that the religion was again
peaceably and firmly established in Rome (it counted some of the imperial
household among its converts); and, likewise, that he was addressing many
Christians with whom he was personally acquainted. As, then, it is quite clear,
from the early history, that he had not himself travelled so far as Italy,
Corinth seems the only place where he can have formed these connections.
His return
led him, from fear of his hostile countrymen, back through Macedonia to Troas;
thence, taking ship at Assos, he visited the principal islands of the jEgean, —
Mitylene, Chios, and Samos; landed at Miletus, where he had an interview with
the heads of the Ephesian community; thence, by sea, touching at Coos, Rhodes,
and Patara, to Tyre. Pew incidents occur during this long voyage: the solemn
aud affecting parting from the Ephesian Christians, who came to meet him at
Miletus, implies a profound sense of the dangers which awaited him on his
return to Palestine. The events which occurred during his journey, and his
residence in Jerusalem, have been already related. This last collision with his
native Judaism, and his imprisonment, occupy between two and three years.1
The next
place in which the apostle surveyed the strength and encountered the hostility
of Paganism was in the metropolis of the world. Released from his imprisonment
at Cassarea, the Christian
i , A.D.
61.
apostle was
sent to answer for his conduct
1
For the period between the years G8 and 61, gee the last chapter.
in Jerusalem
before tbe imperial tribunal, to which, as a Roman citizen, he had claimed his
right of appeal. His voyage is singularly descriptive of the precarious
navigation of the Mediterranean at that time ; and it is curious, that, in the
wild island of Mehta, the apostle, having been looked upon as an atrocious
criminal because a viper had fastened upon his hand, when he shook the reptile
off without having received any injury, was admired as a god. In the barbarous
Melita. as in the barbarous Lystra, the belief in gods under the human form had
not yet given place to the incredulous spirit of the age. He arrives, at
length, at the port in Italy where voyagers from Syria or Egypt usually
disembarked, — Puteoli. There appear to have been Christians in that town, who
received Paul, and with whom he resided for seven days. Many of the Roman
Christians, apprised of his arrival, went out to meet him as far as the village
of Appii Forum, or a place called the Three Taverns. But it is remarkable that
so complete by this time was the separation hetween the Jewish and Christian
communities, that the former had no intelligence of his arrival, and, what is
more singular, knew nothing whatever of his case.1 Possibly the usual correspondence with Jerusalem had been
interrupted at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome, and had not
been reestablished with its former regularity: or, as is more probable, the
persecution of Paul, being a party and Sadducaic measure, was neither avowed
nor supported by the great body of the nation. Those who had visited, and
returned from, Jerusalem, being chiefly of the Pharisaic or more religious
party, were either ignorant or imperfectly informed of the extraordinary adven-
tures of Paul
in their native city; and two years had elapsed during his confinement at
Cassarea. Though still in form a prisoner, Paul enjoyed almost perfect freedom;
and his first step was a general appeal to the whole community of the Jews then
resident in Rome. To them he explained the cause of his arrival. It was not
uncommon in disputes between two parties in Jerusalem, that both should be
summoned or sent at once by the governor, especially if, like Paul, they
demanded it as a right to plead their cause before the imperial courts. More
than once, the high-priest himself had been reduccd to the degrading situation
of a criminal before a higher tribunal; and there are several instances in
which all the arts of court intrigue were employed to obtain a decision on some
question of Jewish politics. Paul, while he acknowledges that his conflict with
his countrymen related to his belief in Christ as the Messiah, disclaims all
intention of arraigning the ruling authorities for their injustice: he had no
charge to advance against the nation. The Jews, in general, seem to have been
inclined to hear from so high an authority the real doctrines of the Gospel.
They assembled for that purpose at the house in which the apostle was confined;
and, as usual, some were favorably disposed to the Christianity of Paul, others
rejected it with the most confirmed obduracy.
But, at this
instant, we pass at once from the firm
and solid
ground of authentic and credible a.d. 63.
i • i i „ st-Paul
history, upon the quaking and insecure foot- leaves Rome.
ing of
legendary tradition. A few scattered notices
of the
personal history of Paul may be gathered from
the later
Epistles ; but the last fact which we receive
from the
undoubted authority of the writer of the Acts
TOL.
i. 30
is, that two
years passed before the apostle left Rome.1 To what
examination he was subjected, in what manner his release was obtained, all is
obscure, or rather •without one ray of light. But to the success of Paul in
Borne, and to the rapid progress of Christianity during these two eveiitful
years, we have gloomy and melancholy evidence. The next year after his departure
is darkly noted in the annals of Rome as the era of that fatal fire which
enveloped in ruin all the ancient grandeur of the Eternal City, — in
those of Christianity, as the epoch of the first heathen persecution. a.d. 64. This event throws considerable light on the Kome. ° state of the
Christian Church at Rome. Xo secret or very inconsiderable community would have
attracted the notice, or satisfied the bloodthirsty cruelty, of Xero. The
people would not have consented to receive them as atoning victims for the
dreadful disaster of the great conflagration ; nor would the reckless tyranny
of the emperor have condescended to select them as sacrificial offerings to
appease the popular fury, unless they had beeu numerous, far above contempt,
and already looked upon with a jealous eye. Xor is it less clear, that, even to
the blind discernment of popular indignation and imperial cruelty, the
Christians were by this time distinguished from the Jews. They were no longer a
mere sect of the parent nation, but a separate, a marked, and peculiar people,
known by their distinctive usages, and incorporating many of Gentile descent
into their original Jewish community.
1 'Whatever might be the reason for the
abrupt termination of the book of the Acts, which could neither be the death of
the author, for he probably survived St- Paul, nor his total separation from
him, for he was with him towards the do*e of his career (2 Tim. iv. 11), the
expression in the last vem bat one of the Act? limits the residence of St, Paul
in Rome, at thal time, to two years.
Though at
first there appears something unaccountable iu this proscription of a harmless
and unobtrusive sect, against whom the worst charge, at last, was the
introduction of a new and peaceful form of worshipping one Deity, — a privilege
which the Jew had always enjoyed without molestation, — yet the process by
which the public mind was led to this outburst of fury, and the manner in which
it was directed against the Christians, are clearly indicated by the historian.1 After the first consternation and distress, an access of awe-struck
superstition seized on the popular mind. Great public calamities can never be
referred to obvious or accidental causes. The trembling people had recourse to
religious rites, endeavored to ascertain by what offended deities this dreadful
judgment had been inflicted, and sought for victims to appease their yet
perhaps unmitigated gods.2 But when superstition has once
found out victims, to whose guilt or impiety it may ascribe the divine anger,
human revenge mingles itself with the relentless determination to propitiate
offended Heaven, and contributes still more to blind the judgment and
exasperate the passions. The other foreign religions, at which the native
deities might take offence, had been long domiciliated in Rome. Christianity
was the newest, perhaps was making the most alarming progress: it was no
national religion; it-was disclaimed with eager animosity by the Jews, among
whom it originated; its principles and practices were obscure and
unintelligible; and that obscurity the excited imagination of the hostile
A “
Mox petita diis piacnla, aditique Sibyllas libri, ex quibus supplicatum Vulcano
et Cereri Proserpinaeque, ac propitiata Juno per matronas, primum in Capitolio,
dehide apud proximum mare,” &e. — Tac., Ann. xv. 44.
2 “ Sed non ope humanii, non largitionibus
principia, aut detoi placamentis decedebat infamia, quin jnssum incendium
crederetur.”
people might
fill up with the darkest and most monstrous forms.
I have
sometimes thought it possible, that incau- Probable tious or misinterpreted
expressions of the causes which Christians themselves might have attracted
implicated 0
the
Christians f ]lc bi;n(i resentment of the people. The
WlttL
ttLia -*•
event. minds
of the Christians were constantly occupied with the terrific images of the
final coming of the Lord to judgment in fire ; the conflagration of the world
was the expected consummation, which they devoutly supposed to be instantly at
hand. When, therefore, they saw the great metropolis of the world, the city of
pride, of sensuality, of idolatry, of bloodshed, blazing like a fiery furnace
before their eyes,— the Babylon of the West wrapped in one vast sheet of
destroying flame, — the more fanatical, the Jewish part of the community,1 may have looked on with
something of fierce hope and eager anticipation; expressions almost triumphant
may have burst from unguarded lips. They may have attributed the ruin to the
righteous vengeance of the Lord ; it may have seemed the opening of that
kingdom which was to commence with the discomfiture, the desolation, of
Heathenism, and to conclude with the establishment of the millennial kingdom of
Christ. Some of these, in the first instance, apprehended and examined, may
have made acknowledgments before a passionate and astonished tribunal, which
would lead to the conclusion, that, in the hour of general destruction, they
had some trust, some security, denied to the rest of mankind ; and this
exemption from common misery, if it
1 Some deep and permanent cause of hatred
against the Christians, it may almost seem, as connected with this disaster,
can alone account for the strong expressions of Tacitus, writing so many years
after: “ Sontes et novissima exempla me-'*'" ” _
•would not
mark them out in some dark manner1
as the authors of the conflagration, at all events would convict them of that
hatred of the human race so often advanced against the Jews.
Inventive
cruelty sought out new ways of torturing these victims of popular hatred and
imperial injustice. The calm and serene patience with which they wero armed by
their religion against the most excruciating sufferings may have irritated
still further their ruthless persecutors. The sewing up men in the skins of
beasts, and setting dogs to tear them to pieces, may find precedent in the
annals of human barbarity:2
but the covering them over with a kind of dress smeared with wax, pitch, or
other combustible matter, with a stake under the chin to keep them upright, and
then placing them to be slowly consumed, like torches in the pnblic gardens of
popular amusement, — this seems to have been an invention of the time ; and,
from the manner in which it is mentioned by the Roman writers, as the most
horrible torture known, appears to have made a profound impression 011 the
general mind. Even a people habituated to gladiatorial shows, and to the
horrible scenes of wholesale execution which
1 “ Haiid perinde in crimine incendii quam
odio generis humani convicti sunt.”
M. de
Pressens6 (t. ii. p. 97) has adopted and followed out this notion. “Us parlaient sans doute de ces fiarames du jugement qui devoient
d6vorer un monde impie.” Compare the whole passage.
2 “ Et
pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis obtecti, laniatu canum
interirent; aut crucibus affixi, aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies, in
nsum nocturai luminis urerentur.” — Tac., Ann. xv. 54. Juvenal calls
this “tunica molesta” (viii. 235): —
tsedit
lucebis in ill!
Qua stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture fumant Et latum media, aulcum
deducit areni. — i. 156.
“Hlam tunicam
alimentis ignium illitam et intextam.” — Senec., Epist. xix It was probably
thought appropriate to consume witb slow fire the authors ol the conflagration.
were of daily
occurrence during the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, must yet have
been in an unusual state of exasperated excitement to endure, or rather to take
pleasure in, the sight of these unparalleled barbarities. Thus, the gentle, the
peaceful religion of Christ was welcomed upon earth by new applications of
man’s inventive faculties, to inflict suffering, and to satiate revenge.1
The apostle
was, no doubt, absent from Rome at the commencement, and during the whole, of
this persecution. His course is dimly descried by the hints scattered through
his later epistles. It is probable that he travelled into Spain. The assertion
of Irenseus, that he penetrated to the extreme West,2 coincides
1 Gibbon’s extraordinary “ conjecture ”
that the Christians in Rome were confounded with the Galileans, the fanatical
followers of Judas the Gaulonite, is most improbable. The sect of Judas was not
known beyond the precincts of Palestine. The insinuation that the Jews may have
escaped the proscription, through the interest of the beautiful Poppasa and
the favorite Jewish player Aliturus, though not very likely, is more in
character with the times.
Notwithstanding
the doubts of some, — of one historian, especially, for whom I feel the utmost
respect, — few historical facts appear to me to rest on more authentic
testimony than the Neronian persecution. The traditionary abhorrence of Nero in
the Christian Church, the expectation ot‘ his re-appearance as Antichrist,
which prevailed for two or three centuries, is a curious, to me a strong,
confirmation of the fact. It is certainly extraordinary, that at so early a
period the Christians should be numerous enough and important enough to be
charged with such a crime. But it must be remembered, that it was the object of
all to find victims, however obscure, to glut the popular fury; to appease the
angry gods, of whom the Christians were the notorious, the avowed enemies (the
most irreligious in days of calamity are seized with paroxysms of religions
terror and vengeance); above all, to divert the suspicions of the people,
already directed to the highest quarters, to the emperor himself. It was
imputed to Nero that he was utterly indifferent; tbat he made an indecent
theatrical amusement of the ruin of the imperial city and the sufferings of the
people. No doubt there were those who brooded over darker charges against him.
2 The visit of St. Paul to Britain, in my
opinion, is a fiction of religious national vanity. It has few or no advocates,
except English ecclesiastical antiquarians. In fact, the state of the island,
in which the precarious sove«
with his
intention of visiting that province declared at an earlier period. As it is
difficult to assign to any other part of his life the establishment of Christianity
in Crete, it may be permitted to suppose, that from Spain his course lay
eastward, not improbably with the design of revisiting Jerusalem. That he
entertained this design, there appears some evidence; none, however, that lie
accomplished it.1 The
state of Judaea, in which Roman oppression had now begun, under Albinus, if not
under Florus,2 to
grow to an intolerable height; the spirit of indignant resistance which was
fermenting in the mind of the people,— might either operate to deter or to
induce the apostle to undertake the journey. On the one hand, if the Jews
should renew their implacable hostility, the Christians, now having become
odious to the Roman government, could expect no protection ; the rapacious
tyranny of the new rulers would seize every occasion of including the Christian
community under the grinding and vexatious system of persecution; and such
occasion would be furnished by any tumult in which they might be implicated. On
the other hand, the popular mind among the Jews being absorbed by
reignty of
Kome was still fiercely contested by the native barbarians, seems to be
entirely forgotten. Civilization had made little progress in Britain till the
conquest of Agricola. Up to that time, it was occupied only by the invading
legionaries, fully employed in extending and guarding their conquests, and by
our wild ancestors with their stem Druidical hierarchy. From which class were
the apostle’s hearers or converts? My friend Dr. Cardwell, in a recent essay on
this subject, concurs with this opinion.
1 This is inferred from Heb. xiii. 23. This
inference, however, assumes several points, — in the first place, that Paul is
the author of the Epistle to tbe Hebrews. To this opinion, though by no means
certain, I rather incline. But it does not follow that Paul fulfilled his
intention; and even the intention was conditional, and dependent on the speedy
arrival of Timothy, which may or may not have taken place.
* Florus succeeded Albinus, A.D. 64.
stronger
interests, engrossed by passions even more powerful tlian hatred of
Christianity, the apostle might have entered the city unnoticed, and remained
concealed among his Christian friends ; particularly as the frequent change in
the ruling authorities, and the perpetual deposal of the high-priest, during
tlia long interval of his absence, may have stripped his leading adversaries of
their authority.
Be this as it
may, there are manifest vestiges of his having visited many cities of Asia
Minor, — Ephesus, Colossee,1
Miletus,2 Troas;3 that he passed a winter at
Nicopolis, in Epirus.4
From hencc he may have descended to Corinth;5 and, from Corinth, probable reasons may be assigned for
his return to Rome. In all these cities, and doubtless in many others, where we
have no record of the first promulgation of the religion, the Christians formed
regular and organized communities. Constant intercourse seems to have been
maintained throughout the whole confederacy. Besides the apostles, other
persons seem to have been constantly travelling about, some entirely devoted to
the dissemination of the religion, others uniting it with their own secular
pursuits. Onesi- phorus,6
it may be supposed, a wealthy merchant, resident at Ephesus, being in Rome at
the time of Paul’s imprisonment, labored to alleviate the irksomeness of his
confinement. Paul had constantly one, sometimes many, companions in his
journeys. Some of these he seems to have established, as Titus in Crete, to
preside over the young communities; others were left behind for a time to
superintend the inter-
1
Philem. 22. 2 2 Tim. iv. 20.
8 2
Tim. iv. 13. Compare Paley, Horae Paulinas.
4 Titus iii. 12. 6
2 Tim. iv. 20. 6 2 Tim. 16-18.
ests of the
religion; others, as Luke, tlio author of the Acts, were in more regular attendance
upon him, and appear to have been only occasionally separated by accidental
circumstances. But, if we may judge from the authentic records of the New
Testament, the whole Christianity of the West emanated from Paul alone. The
indefatigable activity of this one man had planted Christian colonies, each of
which became the centre of a new moral ’ ' ' civilization, from the borders of
Syria, as far as Spain, and to the city of Rome.
Tradition
assigns to the last year of Nero the martyrdom both of St. Peter and St. Paul.
That of the former rests altogether on unauthoritative testimony ; that of the
latter is rendered highly probable, I think certain, from the authentic record
of the Second Epistle to Timothy. This letter was written by the author when hi
custody at Rome,1
apparently under more rigorous confinement than during his first imprisonment;
not looking forward to his release,2
but with steadfast presentiment of his approaching violent death. It contains
allusions to his recent journey in Asia Minor and Greece. He had already
undergone a first examination;3
and the danger was so great, that he had. been deserted by some of his most
attached followers, particularly by Demas. If conjecture be admitted, the
preparations for the reception of Nero at Corinth, during the celebration of
the Isthmian Games, may have caused well-grounded apprehensions to the
Christian community in that city.
1 AH the names of the Church who unite in
the salutation (iv. 21) are Roman.
2 2 Tim. iv. 5, 6, 7.
8 2
Tim. i. 12-16. Rosenmiiller,however (in he.), understands this of tl.e
examination during his first trial.
Paul might
have thought it prudent to withdraw from Corinth, whither his last journey had
brought him, and might seize the opportunity of the emperor’s absence to visit
and restore the persecuted community at Rome. During the absence of Nero, the
government of Rome and of Italy was intrusted to the freed slave Helius, a fit
representative of the absent tyrant. He had full power of life and death, even
over the senatorial order. The world, says Dion, was enslaved at once to two
autocrats, Helius and Nero. Thus Paul may have found another Nero in the
hostile capital; and the general tradition, that he was put to death, not by
order of the emperor, but of the governor of the city, coincides with this
state of things.
The fame of
St. Peter, from whom she claims the supremacy of the Christian world, has
eclipsed that of St. Paul in the Eternal City. The most splendid temple which
has been erected by Christian zeal, to rival or surpass the proudest edifices
of heathen magnificence, bears the name of that apostle; while that of St.
Paul rises in a remote and unwholesome suburb. Studious to avoid, if possible,
the treacherous and slippery ground of polemic controversy, I must be permitted
to express my surprise, that in no part of the authentic Scripture occurs the
slightest allusion to the personal history of St. Peter, as connected with the
Western churches. At all events, the conversion of the Gentile world was the acknowledged
province of St. Paul. In that partition treaty, in which these two moral
invaders divided the yet-unconquered world, the more civilized province of
Greek and Roman Heathenism was assigned to him who was emphatically called the
Apostle of the Gentiles, while the Jewish population fell under the particular
caro
of the
Galilean Peter. For the operations of the latter, no part of the world,
exclusive of Palestine, which seems to have been left to James the Just, would
afford such ample scope for success as Babylonia and the Asiatic provinces, to
which the Epistles of Peter are addressed. His own writings distinctly show
that he was connected by some intimate tie with these communities; and, as it
appears that Galatia was a stronghold of Judaical Christianity, it is probable
that the greater part of those converts were originally Jews or Asiatics, whom
Judaism had already prepared for the reception of Christianity. Where Judaism
thus widely prevailed was the appropriate province of the Apostle of the
Circumcision. While, then, those whose severe historical criticism is content
with nothing less than contemporary evidence, or, at least, probable inferences
from such records, will question the permanent establishment of Peter in the
imperial city, those who admit the authority of tradition will adhere to, and
may, indeed, make a strong case in favor of St. Peter’s residence;1 or his martyrdom at Rome.2
1 The authorities are Irenseus, Dionysius
of Corinth apud Eusebium, and Epiphanius.
2 Pearson, in his Opera Posthuma (Diss. de
Serie et Successione Romse Episcop.), supposes Peter to have been in Rome. The
explanation of Babylon as Rome is as old as Clem. Alex. See Routh, i. p. 34.
Compare Townson on the Gospels, piss. 5, sect. v. Barrow (Treatise of the Pope’s
Supremacy) will not “ avow ’’the opinion of those who argue him never to have
been at Rome, vol. vi. p. 139 (Oxford ed. 1818). Lightfoot, whose profound
knowledge of every thing relating to the Jewish nation entitles bis opinions
to respect, observes, in confirmation of his assertion that Peter lived and
died in Chaldea, — “ quam absurdum est statuere, ministrum prsecipuum
eireumcis- ionis sedem suam figere in metropoli preputiatorum, Roma.” —
Lightfoot’s Works, 8vo edit. x. 392.
If, then,
with Barrow I may “ bear some civil respect to ancient testimonies and
traditions ” (foe. ci£.)> the strong bias of my own mind is to tht following
solution of this problem. With Lightfoot, I believe that Baby-
The spent
wave of the Neronian persecution1 may have recovered sufficient
force to sweep away those who were employed in reconstructing the shattered
edifice of Christianity in Rome. The return of an individual, however
personally obscure, yet connected with a sect so recently proscribed, both by
popular odium and public authority, would scarcely escape the vigilant police
of the metropolis. One man is
Ionia was the
scene of St. Peter’s labors. But T am likewise confident, that in Rome, as in
Corinth, there were two communities,— a Petrine and a Pauline,— a Judaizing
and an Hellenizing Church. The origin of the two communities in the doctrines
attributed to the two apostles may have beeu gradually transmuted into the
foundation first of each community, then generally of the Church of Rome, by
the two apostles. All the difficulties in the arrangement of the succession to
the episcopal see of Home vanish, if we suppose two contemporary lines. Here,
as elsewhere, the Judaizing Church either expired or was absorbed in the
Pauline community.
Tbe passage
in the Corinthians by no means necessarily impbes the personal presence of
Peter in that city. There was a party there, — no douht, a Judaizing one, —
which professed to preach the pure doctrine of “Cephas,” in opposition to that
of Paul, and who called themselves, therefore, “of Cephas.”
“ Dum primos
eccleshe Romance fundatores quaero occurrit illud.” Acts ii. 10: ‘O£
kmdrifXQvvrez 'Yioualot, *lovdaiOL re teal TtpQorpivroL. — Lightfoot’a Works, 8vo edit. x. 392.
1 As to the extent of the Neronian
persecution, whether it was general, or confined to the city of Rome, 1 agree
with Mosheiui that only one valid argument is usually advanced on either side.
On the one hand, that of Dod- well, that, the Christians heing persecuted not
on account of their religion, but on the charge of incendiarism, that charge
could not have been brought against those who lived heyond the precincts of the
city. Though, as to this point, it is to he feared that many an honest
Protestant would have considered the real crime of the Gunpowder Plot, or the
imputed guilt of the Fire of London, ample justification for a general
persecution of the Roman Catholics. On the other hand is alleged the authority
of Tertullian, who refers, in a public apology, to the laws of Nero and
Domitian against the Christians,— an expression too distinct to pass for
rhetoric, even in that passionate writer, though he may have magnified
temporary edicts into general laws. The Spanish inscription not only wants
confirmation, but even evidence that it ever existed. There is, however, a
point of some importance in favor of the first opinion. Paul appears to have
travelled about through a great part of the Roman empire during this interval,
3’et we have no intimation of hia being in more than ordinary personal danger.
It was not till his return to Rome that he was again apprehended, and at length
suflered martyrdom.
named,
Alexander the coppersmith, whose seemingly personal hostility had caused or
increased the danger in which Paul considered himself during his second imprisonment.
He may have been the original informer, who betrayed his being in Rome, or his
intimate alliance with the Christians; or he may have appeared as evidence
against him during his examination. Though there may have been no existing law
or imperial rescript against the Christians ; and Paul, having been absent from
Rome at the time, could not be implicated in the charge of incendiarism,—• yet
the representative of Nero,1 if faithfully described by Dion
Cassius,2 would pay little regard to the forms of criminal justice,
and would have no scruple in ordering the summary execution of an ob- Martyrdom
scure individual, since it does not appear of PuuL that, in
exercising the jurisdiction of prefect of the city, he treated the lives of
knights or of senators with more respect. There is, therefore, no improbability
that the Christian Church in Rome may have faithfully preserved the fact of
Paul’s execution, and even cherished in their pious memory the spot on the
Ostian road watered by the blood of the apostle. As a Roman citizen, Paul is
said to have been beheaded,
1 The remarkable phrase, fiaprvpTjaag km
t&v fyyov fiiv g>v, used by Clement of Rome, is singularly in accordance
with this view. It would have been a strange word to apply to the emperor, but
veiy appropriate when the imperial authority in Rome was, as it were, in
commission: it would answer to “ the authorities.”
2 Toif fxivroL tv rig fP<j|urj
not ry 'Ire/Mg. navTag 'HTuy tlvl KaioapEtu kudoTovQ TrapeSuKE. Uavra yap
hir/Lwf avT$ inereTpamx), uare teal uevelv, Kal (pvyaSEVELV, Kal
anoKTivvvvat (nal ttplv &r{kuGai r<p Nipovt) koZ IStuTag dfioiag, Kal
InirEag Kal BovTievrag. 0vra fdv Sq tote 7} t&v 'Papa'iuv apX7) 6vo
airoKpaTOpocv a^ia kSovfavs, Nipuvi Kal 'HTug).
Ovde fyo eIttelv diroTEpog avmv
xe'lPav — ^ion Cass, (or XiphiUn),
lxitf c. 12.
instead of
being suspended to a cross, or exposed to any of those horrid tortures invented
for the Christians ; and, so far, the modest probability of the relation may
confirm rather than impeach its truth. The other circumstances — his conversion
of the soldiers who carried him to execution, and of the executioner
himself—bear too much the air of religious romance ; though, indeed, the Roman
Christians had not tho same interest in inventing or embellishing the martyrdom
of Paul as that of the other great apostlo from whom they derive their
supremaov.
Tile
deliverance of St. Paul from custody at Rome; his subsequent missionary
journey, possibly to Spain, certainly to Greece and Asia Minor; and his second
imprisonment, —have undergone the severe scrutiny of modem criticism, and have
been rejected by very many able writers, of whom Wieseler may be held the best
and fairest representative. I am bound to give reasons for my adherence to the
old opinion; and the importance of the subject may justify some length in this
digression. I will not insist on the difficulty which I find in crowding the
whole vast work of conversion, the recorded visits to so many wide-spread
churches, within the limited period in Paul’s life before the imprisonment in
Rome; still less on the marked and almost generally admitted difference,—I. In
the style and language between the Epistles acknowledged by all to have been
written during the first (?) imprisonment at Rome, those to the Ephesians,
Colossians, Philemon (which Wieseler adduces strong grounds for supposing to be
that to the Laodiceans), Philippians, and those which are commonly called the
Pastoral Epistles. On this difference Baur has mainly rested his denial of the
authenticity of these latter Epistles. Wieseler, on the other hand, so little
admits it as to ascribe the First Epistle to Timothy to the apostle’s two
years’ residence in Ephesus (Acts xix., about A.D. 56). In the Pastoral
Epistles, above fifty words (they are drawn out in Coneybeare and Howson’s
book) are either not used at all in the older Epistles, or used with some
peculiar modification of sense in the later. The whole construction of the
style in the Pastoral Epistles, clear, simple, sententious, is in striking
contrast with the involved, parenthetical, obscure manner of the addresses to
the churches, — obscure, I mean, not from want of clear conception, but from a
kind of eager, thronging press of argument.
II. In the
apparently advanced, more developed, at least progressive state of the
churches in the Pastoral Epistles, their more settled constitutions, if I may
so speak; the manifest and growing dawn of those divergences of opinion, not
only of J uda-
izing
opinion, but the incipient fermentation of those tenets which gradually grew up
into the Gnostic heresies : I may add the still worse growing heresies of the
unchristian life; the departure from the primitive simplicity, fervor,
holiness, discipline, concord; the heresies against the life as well as the
faith of the first days. These discrepancies, which I think the ordinary reader
may perceive if he will peruse attentively the two classes of Epistles, are
altogether inconsistent with the notion that they were written simultaneously.
Some time must have elapsed to account both for the variation in the manner of
writing and in the state of the Christian world. On these points, however, I do
not dwell.
The gist of
the question rests mainly, I say, not exclusively, on the concluding verses of
the Acts and the last chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy.
Now, it is
generally admitted (Wieseler determines this point without hesitation) that St.
Paul arrived in Rome, and commenced his first imprisonment in the spring of
A.D. 61. St. Luke thus closes the Book of the Acts of the Apostles: “And Paul
dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in
unto him; preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern
the Lord Jesus Christ." These two years of what may be called easy, if not
honorable, captivity (it is not necessary to inquire what restrictions were
placed on his freedom, or what measures were taken for his safe custody) were
passed undisturbed, uninterrupted, with free access to all who wished to
approach him, and unlimited intercourse with the outer world. There was
absolutely no restraint on what we may venture to call his apostolical usefulness.
The words of St. Luke, therefore, seem to preclude the supposition of any
hearing, trial, or defence during those two years. Why the prosecution was
suspended, we know not: whether the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, which on Paul’s
arrival at Rome had not sent any deputation or even letters to the Jews of Rome
to make good their charge (Acts xxviii. 21), had still neglected to do so
(content, it might be, with ridding themselves of so dangerous an adversary in
Jerusalem); whether from changes in the dominant parties, and so in the
politics of the Sauhedrin; or whether the fact may be attributed to
circumstances in Rome. It has been suggested that the marriage of Poppaea with
the Emperor (Poppaea, as we learn from Josephus, was a Jewish proselyte) towards
the close of the two years may have so strengthened the influence of the
Jews in Rome
as to induce them — galled, perhaps, by the progress of Christianity through
the unchccked exertions of Paul—■ to revive or press on the prosecution.
All this, too, is pure conjecture.
These two
years bring ua to the spring o£ A.D. 63. In the year and a quarter between this
time and the Fire in Rome (July 19, A. D. 64), must have taken place, — 1st,
The trial of St. Paul. At this trial (2 Tim. iv. 16) (I give hereafter my
reasons, to me conclusive, for referring this passage to the first, the only
recorded trial), though allowed all the privileges of Roman citizenship, Paul
was in great danger. He was deserted by all his friends and disciples. He stood
alone before the awful tribunal; according to his own strong expression, “ No
man stood with me, but all forsook me.” God, however, inspired him with more
than ordinary courage, with such power of eloquence, that uot only does the
accusation entirely fail, but his defence (he did not content himself with
rebutting the charges against him, but seized the opportunity of preaching the
faith) had considerable effect on the Pagan auditory in raising at least their
respect for the religion of Christ. “ Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me,
and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that
all the Gentiles might hear." The trial ended in his acquittal; “ and I
was delivered out of the mouth, of the lion.’'
What
then became of him on his acquittal ? Was he remanded to prison, to be brought
up a second time on the same charges before the same tribunal within a few
months, condemned to death (as Wieseler supposes, in the beginning of A.D. 64),
and executed as a malefactor ? The charges were, as we may conclude, insult to
the Jewish ceremonies and Temple, which, as Judaism was a lawful religion, were
under the protection of the Romans, and (what was a capital offence) provoking
a violation of the peace of the empire, and stirring up sedition against its authority.
There could be no new charges. The interest of the Jews with Poppsea could
hardly hava so much increased as to bring on such a crisis for a second time.
There was nothing to do away with the favorable impression produced on the
Romans by his demeanor, eloquence, persuasiveness at the first trial. Remember
that the Fire had not taken place ; the malice of the Government and the fury
of the populace had not yet been excited against the Christians as
incendiaries. By what law, by whose judgment then, on what accusation, was he
thus, in those vol. i. 31
yet peaceful
times, made a martyr ? It is less improbable (and some, I believe, of those who
reject the second imprisonment take this view) that he perished in the general
massacre of the Neronian persecution. This, however, is contrary to all tradition
; and, though in general I have no superstitious respect for tradition, I
cannot but think that of such a death, at such a time, under such terrible,
unforgotten circumstances, tradition would not have been silent.
Now, turn to
the last chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy. That this was the latest
Epistle written by St. Paul, all who admit the Pastoral Epistles are agreed. No
one can refuse to observe the contrast between the manner in which the apostle
writes of his prospects in the earlier Epistles written from Rome and in this.
In the Epistles to the Ephesians, the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the
Philippians, there is no apprehension of imminent danger of his life. On the
contrary, there is a glowing and sanguine expectation of future success in the
propagation of the Gospel (Ephes. vi. 19, 20; Coloss, passim, iv. 18; Philem.
21). In the Philippians, a kind of doubtfulness and gentle melancholy appears
to have crept over him; it might seem as if his trial were approaching, yet he
has good hope of visiting again the Philippian Church (Philip, i. 20, 26). In
the Second Epistle to Timothy there is, on the other hand, a calm, deliberate
presentiment, almost a prophecy of his imminent, his approaching death. “ He
has fought his good fight; he has finished his course; he awaits his crown.”
Yet he can hardly have contemplated immediate, instant martyrdom ; for, if so,
he would not have summoned Timothy to join him, and to bring with him certain
effects and persons who might be useful to him. He was not in actual danger;
but manifestly danger was closing around him. Demas, who, when he wrote to the
Colossians (iv. 14) and to Philemon, was with him (named together with the
faithful Luke), had now fallen off from him.
Is it
probable, is it possible, that all this change can have taken place in the few
months between the date of his first trial and that assigned for his death by
Wieseler, or even during the year and a quarter before the Fire of Rome? We have
to find time also for the writing the Epistle. Indeed, as to the Fire, the
charge of incendiarism must have burst as suddenly and unexpectedly on the
Christians as the Fire upon the inhabitants of Rome. Are we to suppose that St.
Paul wrote this epistle amid
the terror
and confusion of those days ? Even he would hardly have written so calmly and
with such a quiet anticipation of death; still less would he if he had had time
allowed in this fierce and hasty persecution. At all events, he could not have
summoned disciples to come to him at Rome. This is utterly impossible ; I
think Wieseler’s theory hardly less inconceivable.
But this last
chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy must undergo still closer
investigation. It teems with allusions, as it seems, — and has seemed to all
but comparatively late inquirers, — to a recent journey in different parts of
Greece and Asia Minor, with notices of different persons encountered during
that journey. If it was .not after the first imprisonment and trial, the journey
must have taken place above five years before ; for the going up to Jerusalem
was in A.D. 58 ; the close of St. Paul’s captivity in Home, whether by release
or death, A.D. 63. Now, — I. As to the cloak, books, and parchments left at
Troas in the care of a certain Carpus. If St. Paul had been lately there, we
can conceive his anxiety about them. But after five or six years, or longer
(see Acts xvi., xx.), it seems hardly to be accounted for. II. Erastus abode at
Corinth. This appears to imply that he had recently left Erastus there. “
Trophimus have I left at Miletus, sick.” This cannot have been five or six
years before. With this difficulty Wieseler seems to me to struggle entirely
without success. III. The incidents relating to Timotheus are to me equally
conclusive. In the Epistle to the Philippians, written, as all agree, from Kome
in 61 or 62, Timotheus was with St. Paul at Rome. The apostle was about to send
him to the East (ii. 19, 23). That he did go to the East there can he no doubt,
and with a charge of the most solemn responsibility, requiring a long time to
organize churches, to fulfil arduous missions in many places and in many ways.
Yet Timotheus is summoned back to St. Paul in Kome (iv. 9). Now, if this Second
Epistle was written early, — according to Wieseler’s theory, A.D. 63, — we have
St. Paul engaged in a design not less magnificent than evangelizing at least
the Roman empire, sending forth, if I may so say, his legate, with instructions
to visit, to organize, to correct, to be, as it were, his own vicar, a kind of
apostle all over the East among a multitude of distant and wide-spread
communities; and then recalling him after so brief a time, when his task could
not have approached fulfilment, to Rome, it would appear, to share his own
dangers, perhaps to share his own mar
tyrdom. This
after a few years is conceivable, — a few years of common labor : in less than
a few years, it is to me utterly incredible.
For all these
reasons, I adhere with confidence to the view, as old as Eusebius, if not as
old as Clement of Rome, as to the second imprisonment of St. Paul after some
years of reaewed apostolic labors. I adhere to Eusebius, and differ from some
writers of credit, as Pearson, in referring the first answer — the Trparr)
airokoyia (2 Tim. iv. 16) — to the close of the first imprisonment. Nothing
could be more natural, than, as danger for a second time was darkening around
him, that his mind should revert to his former danger, to the desertion of
friends who might again desert him; now that the Hon had begun to roar again
and to open his threatening jaws, that he should remember how God once had
delivered him from the terrors of that lion. Moreover, that he should be
permitted, after the Neronian persecution, to make any defence; that he should
make a defence even temporarily successful; that he should have been permitted
in that defence to preach Christ, and that such preaching of Christ should be
heard not unfavorably even by Gentiles, is absolutely inconceivable. For Paul
was not at that period, according to his own view, » Jew, arraigned by the
Jews of Palestine on some strange, to the Romans unintelligible, questions of
their Law, at worst of being the cause, it might be the blameless cause, of
riot against the peace of the empire; he was now the ringleader, the notorious,
avowed, boastful ringleader of a wicked, hateful sect, convicted, as it was
generally believed, of having burned glorious, holy Rome, — a sect which the
blood- battened magnates and populace of Rome had seen with gloating joy and
vengeance exposed to torments at which even they might shudder ; mockery added
to martyrdom ; sewn up in skins, swathed in pitch-vosts and set on fire,
holding in their agony torches over the voluptuous banquets of senators.
But one word more.
How came Paul at Rome? at Rome, at such a time ? Because he was the apostle of
Christ, — of Christ who died for men. What could be more expedient, what more
necessary, than the restoration, the re-organization, the resettlement of the
Roman Church, persecuted, soattered, decimated,— •worse than decimated, — by
the fierce persecution; of the few faithful, probably most in concealment, whom
not less than the pro- foundest faith could keep from apostasy; not less than
that love
which
Christianity alone inspires could keep from disclaiming their spiritual kindred
? And to whom but an apostle, to whom hut to St. Paul, belonged the perilous,
the almost desperate office of confronting Rome, glutted but not satiated with
Christian blood? — of offering, if necessary, his life, and of leaving his
blood of martyrdom as the prolific seed of the future Church in the Im7 perial
City ?
END OB' VOL.
I.