INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS--HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
Jesus was born at Nazareth,[1] a small town of Galilee, which before
his time had no celebrity.[2] All his life he was designated by the
name of "the Nazarene,"[3] and it is only by a rather embarrassed and
round-about way,[4] that, in the legends respecting him, he is made
to be born at Bethlehem. We shall see later[5] the motive for this
supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence of the Messianic
character attributed to Jesus.[6] The precise date of his birth is
unknown. It took place under the reign of Augustus, about the Roman
year 750, probably some years before the year 1 of that era which all
civilized people date from the day on which he was born.[7]
[Footnote 1: Matt. xiii. 54, and following; Mark vi. 1, and following;
John i. 45-46.]
[Footnote 2: It is neither named in the writings of the Old Testament,
nor in Josephus, nor in the Talmud.]
[Footnote 3: Mark i. 24; Luke xviii. 37; John xix. 19; _Acts_ ii. 22,
iii. 6. Hence the name of _Nazarenes_ for a long time applied to
Christians, and which still designates them in all Mohammedan
countries.]
[Footnote 4: The census effected by Quirinus, to which legend
attributes the journey from Bethlehem, is at least ten years later
than the year in which, according to Luke and Matthew, Jesus was born.
The two evangelists in effect make Jesus to be born under the reign of
Herod (Matt. ii. 1, 19, 22; Luke i. 5). Now, the census of Quirinus
did not take place until after the deposition of Archelaus, _i.e._,
ten years after the death of Herod, the 37th year from the era of
Actium (Josephus, _Ant._, XVII. xiii. 5, XVIII. i. 1, ii. 1). The
inscription by which it was formerly pretended to establish that
Quirinus had levied two censuses is recognized as false (see Orelli,
_Inscr. Lat._, No. 623, and the supplement of Henzen in this number;
Borghesi, _Fastes Consulaires_ [yet unpublished], in the year 742).
The census in any case would only be applied to the parts reduced to
Roman provinces, and not to the tetrarchies. The texts by which it is
sought to prove that some of the operations for statistics and tribute
commanded by Augustus ought to extend to the dominion of the Herods,
either do not mean what they have been made to say, or are from
Christian authors who have borrowed this statement from the Gospel of
Luke. That which proves, besides, that the journey of the family of
Jesus to Bethlehem is not historical, is the motive attributed to it.
Jesus was not of the family of David (see Chap. XV.), and if he had
been, we should still not imagine that his parents should have been
forced, for an operation purely registrative and financial, to come to
enrol themselves in the place whence their ancestors had proceeded a
thousand years before. In imposing such an obligation, the Roman
authority would have sanctioned pretensions threatening her safety.]
[Footnote 5: Chap. XIV.]
[Footnote 6: Matt. ii. 1, and following; Luke ii. 1, and following.
The omission of this narrative in Mark, and the two parallel passages,
Matt. xiii. 54, and Mark vi. 1, where Nazareth figures as the
"country" of Jesus, prove that such a legend was absent from the
primitive text which has furnished the rough draft of the present
Gospels of Matthew and Mark. It was to meet oft-repeated objections
that there were added to the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew
reservations, the contradiction of which with the rest of the text was
not so flagrant, that it was felt necessary to correct the passages
which had at first been written from quite another point of view.
Luke, on the contrary (chap. iv. 16), writing more carefully, has
employed, in order to be consistent, a more softened expression. As to
John, he knows nothing of the journey to Bethlehem; for him, Jesus is
merely "of Nazareth" or "Galilean," in two circumstances in which it
would have been of the highest importance to recall his birth at
Bethlehem (chap. i. 45, 46, vi. 41, 42).]
[Footnote 7: It is known that the calculation which serves as basis of
the common era was made in the sixth century by _Dionysius the Less_.
This calculation implies certain purely hypothetical data.]
The name of _Jesus_, which was given him, is an alteration from
_Joshua_. It was a very common name; but afterward mysteries, and an
allusion to his character of Saviour, were naturally sought for in
it.[1] Perhaps he, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect.
It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been
caused by a name given to a child without premeditation. Ardent
natures never bring themselves to see aught of chance in what concerns
them. God has regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of
the supreme will in the most insignificant circumstances.
[Footnote 1: Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 31.]
The population of Galilee was very mixed, as the very name of the
country[1] indicated. This province counted amongst its inhabitants,
in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews (Phoenicians, Syrians,
Arabs, and even Greeks).[2] The conversions to Judaism were not rare
in these mixed countries. It is therefore impossible to raise here any
question of race, and to seek to ascertain what blood flowed in the
veins of him who has contributed most to efface the distinction of
blood in humanity.
[Footnote 1: _Gelil haggoyim_, "Circle of the Gentiles."]
[Footnote 2: Strabo, XVI. ii. 35; Jos., _Vita_, 12.]
He proceeded from the ranks of the people.[1] His father, Joseph, and
his mother, Mary, were people in humble circumstances, artisans living
by their labor,[2] in the state so common in the East, which is
neither ease nor poverty. The extreme simplicity of life in such
countries, by dispensing with the need of comfort, renders the
privileges of wealth almost useless, and makes every one voluntarily
poor. On the other hand, the total want of taste for art, and for that
which contributes to the elegance of material life, gives a naked
aspect to the house of him who otherwise wants for nothing. Apart from
something sordid and repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with
it, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much
differ from what it is to-day.[3] We see the streets where he played
when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways which separate
the dwellings. The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor
shops, lighted by the door, serving at once for shop, kitchen, and
bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one
or two clay pots, and a painted chest.
[Footnote 1: We shall explain later (Chap. XIV.) the origin of the
genealogies intended to connect him with the race of David. The
Ebionites suppressed them (Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, XXX. 14).]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3; John vi. 42.]
[Footnote 3: The rough aspect of the ruins which cover Palestine
proves that the towns which were not constructed in the Roman manner
were very badly built. As to the form of the houses, it is, in Syria,
so simple and so imperiously regulated by the climate, that it can
scarcely ever have changed.]
The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was
rather numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters,[1] of whom he seems
to have been the eldest.[2] All have remained obscure, for it appears
that the four personages who were named as his brothers, and among
whom one, at least--James--had acquired great importance in the
earliest years of the development of Christianity, were his
cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary,[3] who
married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to
designate the same person[4]), and was the mother of several sons who
played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These
cousins-german who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers
opposed him,[5] took the title of "brothers of the Lord."[6] The real
brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his
death.[7] Even then they do not appear to have equaled in importance
their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose
character seems to have had more originality. Their names were so
little known, that when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of
Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural
relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented
themselves to him.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xii. 46, and following, xiii. 55, and following;
Mark iii. 31, and following, vi. 3; Luke viii. 19, and following; John
ii. 12, vii. 3, 5, 10; _Acts_ i. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. i. 25.]
[Footnote 3: That these two sisters should bear the same name is a
singular fact. There is probably some error arising from the habit of
giving the name of Mary indiscriminately to Galilean women.]
[Footnote 4: They are not etymologically identical. [Greek: Alphaios]
is the transcription of the Syro-Chaldean name Halphaï; [Greek:
Klôpas] or [Greek: Kleopas] is a shortened form of [Greek:
Kleopatros]. But there might have been an artificial substitution of
one for the other, just as Joseph was called "Hegissippus," the
Eliakim "Alcimus," &c.]
[Footnote 5: John vii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 6: In fact, the four personages who are named (Matt. xiii.
55, Mark vi. 3) as sons of Mary, mother of Jesus, Jacob, Joseph or
Joses, Simon, and Jude, are found again a little later as sons of Mary
and Cleophas. (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; _Gal._ i. 19; _Epist.
James_ i. 1; _Epist. Jude_ 1; Euseb., _Chron._ ad ann. R. DCCCX.;
_Hist. Eccl._, iii. 11, 32; _Constit. Apost._, vii. 46.) The
hypothesis we offer alone removes the immense difficulty which is
found in supposing two sisters having each three or four sons bearing
the same names, and in admitting that James and Simon, the first two
bishops of Jerusalem, designated as brothers of the Lord, may have
been real brothers of Jesus, who had begun by being hostile to him and
then were converted. The evangelist, hearing these four sons of
Cleophas called "brothers of the Lord," has placed by mistake their
names in the passage _Matt._ xiii. 5 = _Mark_ vi. 3, instead of the
names of the real brothers, which have always remained obscure. In
this matter we may explain how the character of the personages called
"brothers of the Lord," of James, for instance, is so different from
that of the real brothers of Jesus as they are seen delineated in John
vii. 2, and following. The expression "brother of the Lord" evidently
constituted, in the primitive Church, a kind of order similar to that
of the apostles. See especially 1 _Cor._ ix. 5.]
[Footnote 7: _Acts_ i. 14.]
His sisters were married at Nazareth,[1] and he spent the first years
of his youth there. Nazareth was a small town in a hollow, opening
broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain
of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four
thousand, and it can never have varied much.[2] The cold there is
sharp in winter, and the climate very healthy. The town, like all the
small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without
style, and would exhibit that harsh and poor aspect which villages in
Semitic countries now present. The houses, it seems, did not differ
much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance,
which still cover the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which,
surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are still very agreeable. The
environs, moreover, are charming; and no place in the world was so
well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. Even in our times
Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in
Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden
which oppresses it in this unequaled desolation. The people are
amiable and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr,
at the end of the sixth century, drew an enchanting picture of the
fertility of the environs, which he compared to paradise.[3] Some
valleys on the western side fully justify his description. The
fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little town were
concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a
muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the
evening--that beauty which was remarked even in the sixth century, and
which was looked upon as a gift of the Virgin Mary[4]--is still most
strikingly preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its languid grace.
No doubt Mary was there almost every day, and took her place with her
jar on her shoulder in the file of her companions who have remained
unknown. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, generally
disdainful to Christians, were here full of affability. Even now
religious animosity is weaker at Nazareth than elsewhere.
[Footnote 1: Mark vi. 3.]
[Footnote 2: According to Josephus (_B.J._, III. iii. 2), the smallest
town of Galilee had more than five thousand inhabitants. This is
probably an exaggeration.]
[Footnote 3: _Itiner._, § 5.]
[Footnote 4: Ant. Martyr, _Itiner._, § 5.]
The horizon from the town is limited. But if we ascend a little the
plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which overlooks the highest
houses, the prospect is splendid. On the west are seen the fine
outlines of Carmel, terminated by an abrupt point which seems to
plunge into the sea. Before us are spread out the double summit which
towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with
their holy places of the patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the
small, picturesque group to which are attached the graceful or
terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its
beautiful rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a
depression between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the
valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peræa, which form a
continuous line from the eastern side. On the north, the mountains of
Safed, in inclining toward the sea conceal St. Jean d'Acre, but permit
the Gulf of Khaïfa to be distinguished. Such was the horizon of Jesus.
This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his
world. Even in his later life he departed but little beyond the
familial limits of his childhood. For yonder, northward, a glimpse is
caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Cæsarea-Philippi, his
furthest point of advance into the Gentile world; and here southward,
the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the
dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a scorching wind of
desolation and death.
If the world, remaining Christian, but attaining to a better idea of
the esteem in which the origin of its religion should be held, should
ever wish to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal
sanctuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is
upon this height of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There,
at the birthplace of Christianity, and in the centre of the actions of
its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all
Christians may worship. There, also, on this spot where sleep Joseph,
the carpenter, and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes who never passed
beyond the horizon of their valley, would be a better station than any
in the world beside for the philosopher to contemplate the course of
human affairs, to console himself for their uncertainty, and to
reassure himself as to the Divine end which the world pursues through
countless falterings, and in spite of the universal vanity.