EDUCATION OF JESUS.
This aspect of Nature, at once smiling and grand, was the whole
education of Jesus. He learned to read and to write,[1] doubtless,
according to the Eastern method, which consisted in putting in the
hands of the child a book, which he repeated in cadence with his
little comrades, until he knew it by heart.[2] It is doubtful,
however, if he understood the Hebrew writings in their original
tongue. His biographers make him quote them according to the
translations in the Aramean tongue;[3] his principles of exegesis, as
far as we can judge of them by those of his disciples, much resembled
those which were then in vogue, and which form the spirit of the
_Targums_ and the _Midrashim_.[4]
[Footnote 1: John viii. 6.]
[Footnote 2: _Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs_, Levi. 6.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34.]
[Footnote 4: Jewish translations and commentaries of the Talmudic
epoch.]
The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the _hazzan_, or reader
in the synagogues.[1] Jesus frequented little the higher schools of
the scribes or _sopherim_ (Nazareth had perhaps none of them), and he
had none of those titles which confer, in the eyes of the vulgar, the
privileges of knowledge.[2] It would, nevertheless, be a great error
to imagine that Jesus was what we call ignorant. Scholastic education
among us draws a profound distinction, in respect of personal worth,
between those who have received and those who have been deprived of
it. It was not so in the East, nor, in general, in the good old
times. The state of ignorance in which, among us, owing to our
isolated and entirely individual life, those remain who have not
passed through the schools, was unknown in those societies where moral
culture, and especially the general spirit of the age, was transmitted
by the perpetual intercourse of man with man. The Arab, who has never
had a teacher, is often, nevertheless, a very superior man; for the
tent is a kind of school always open, where, from the contact of
well-educated men, there is produced a great intellectual and even
literary movement. The refinement of manners and the acuteness of the
intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call
education. It is the men from the schools, on the contrary, who are
considered badly trained and pedantic. In this social state,
ignorance, which, among us, condemns a man to an inferior rank, is the
condition of great things and of great originality.
[Footnote 1: Mishnah, _Shabbath_, i. 3.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 54, and following; John vii. 15.]
It is not probable that Jesus knew Greek. This language was very
little spread in Judea beyond the classes who participated in the
government, and the towns inhabited by pagans, like Cæsarea.[1] The
real mother tongue of Jesus was the Syrian dialect mixed with Hebrew,
which was then spoken in Palestine.[2] Still less probably had he any
knowledge of Greek culture. This culture was proscribed by the doctors
of Palestine, who included in the same malediction "he who rears
swine, and he who teaches his son Greek science."[3] At all events it
had not penetrated into little towns like Nazareth. Notwithstanding
the anathema of the doctors, some Jews, it is true, had already
embraced the Hellenic culture. Without speaking of the Jewish school
of Egypt, in which the attempts to amalgamate Hellenism and Judaism
had been in operation nearly two hundred years, a Jew--Nicholas of
Damascus--had become, even at this time, one of the most distinguished
men, one of the best informed, and one of the most respected of his
age. Josephus was destined soon to furnish another example of a Jew
completely Grecianized. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus
declares that he himself was an exception among his contemporaries;[4]
and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a degree
from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in
the Talmud or in Jewish tradition. Certain it is that Greek was very
little studied at Jerusalem, that Greek studies were considered as
dangerous, and even servile, that they were regarded, at the best, as
a mere womanly accomplishment.[5] The study of the Law was the only
one accounted liberal and worthy of a thoughtful man.[6] Questioned as
to the time when it would be proper to teach children "Greek wisdom,"
a learned rabbi had answered, "At the time when it is neither day nor
night; since it is written of the Law, Thou shalt study it day and
night."[7]
[Footnote 1: Mishnah, _Shekalim_, iii. 2; Talmud of Jerusalem,
_Megilla_, halaca xi.; _Sota_, vii. 1; Talmud of Babylon, _Baba Kama_,
83 _a_; _Megilla_, 8 _b_, and following.]
[Footnote 2: Matthew xxvii. 46; Mark iii. 17, v. 41, vii. 34, xiv. 36,
xv. 34. The expression [Greek: ê patrios phônê] in the writers of the
time, always designates the Semitic dialect, which was spoken in
Palestine (II. Macc. vii. 21, 27, xii. 37; _Acts_ xxi. 37, 40, xxii.
2, xxvi. 14; Josephus, _Ant._, XVIII. vi. 10, xx. sub fin.; _B.J._,
prooem I; V. vi. 3, V. ix. 2, VI. ii. 1: _Against Appian_, I. 9; _De
Macc._, 12, 16). We shall show, later, that some of the documents
which served as the basis for the synoptic Gospels were written in
this Semitic dialect. It was the same with many of the Apocrypha (IV.
Book of Macc. xvi. ad calcem, &c.). In fine, the sects issuing
directly from the first Galilean movement (Nazarenes, _Ebionim_, &c.),
which continued a long time in Batanea and Hauran, spoke a Semitic
dialect (Eusebius, _De Situ et Nomin. Loc. Hebr._, at the word [Greek:
Chôba]; Epiph., _Adv. Hær._, xxix. 7, 9, xxx. 3; St. Jerome, _In
Matt._, xii. 13; _Dial. adv. Pelag._, iii. 2).]
[Footnote 3: Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, xi. 1; Talmud of Babylon, _Baba
Kama_, 82 _b_ and 83 _a_; _Sota_, 49 _a_ and _b_; _Menachoth_, 64 _b_;
comp. II. Macc. iv. 10, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._ XX. xi. 2.]
[Footnote 5: Talmud of Jerusalem, _Peah_, i. 1.]
[Footnote 6: Jos., _Ant._, _loc. cit._; Orig., _Contra Celsum_, ii.
34.]
[Footnote 7: Talmud of Jerusalem, _Peah_, i. 1; Talmud of Babylon,
_Menachoth_, 99 _b_.]
Neither directly nor indirectly, then, did any element of Greek
culture reach Jesus. He knew nothing beyond Judaism; his mind
preserved that free innocence which an extended and varied culture
always weakens. In the very bosom of Judaism he remained a stranger to
many efforts often parallel to his own. On the one hand, the
asceticism of the Essenes or the Therapeutæ;[1] on the other, the fine
efforts of religious philosophy put forth by the Jewish school of
Alexandria, and of which Philo, his contemporary, was the ingenious
interpreter, were unknown to him. The frequent resemblances which we
find between him and Philo, those excellent maxims about the love of
God, charity, rest in God,[2] which are like an echo between the
Gospel and the writings of the illustrious Alexandrian thinker,
proceed from the common tendencies which the wants of the time
inspired in all elevated minds.
[Footnote 1: The _Therapeutæ_ of Philo are a branch of the Essenes.
Their name appears to be but a Greek translation of that of the
_Essenes_ ([Greek: Essaioi], _asaya_, "doctors"). Cf. Philo, _De Vita
Contempl._, init.]
[Footnote 2: See especially the treatises _Quis Rerum Divinarum Hæres
Sit_ and _De Philanthropia_ of Philo.]
Happily for him, he was also ignorant of the strange scholasticism
which was taught at Jerusalem, and which was soon to constitute the
Talmud. If some Pharisees had already brought it into Galilee, he did
not associate with them, and when, later, he encountered this silly
casuistry, it only inspired him with disgust. We may suppose, however,
that the principles of Hillel were not unknown to him. Hillel, fifty
years before him, had given utterance to aphorisms very analogous to
his own. By his poverty, so meekly endured, by the sweetness of his
character, by his opposition to priests and hypocrites, Hillel was the
true master of Jesus,[1] if indeed it may be permitted to speak of a
master in connection with so high an originality as his.
[Footnote 1: _Pirké Aboth_, chap. i. and ii.; Talm. of Jerus.,
_Pesachim_, vi. 1; Talm. of Bab., _Pesachim_, 66 _a_; _Shabbath_, 30
_b_ and 31 _a_; _Joma_, 35 _b_.]
The perusal of the books of the Old Testament made much impression
upon him. The canon of the holy books was composed of two principal
parts--the Law, that is to say, the Pentateuch, and the Prophets, such
as we now possess them. An extensive allegorical exegesis was applied
to all these books; and it was sought to draw from them something that
was not in them, but which responded to the aspirations of the age.
The Law, which represented not the ancient laws of the country, but
Utopias, the factitious laws and pious frauds of the time of the
pietistic kings, had become, since the nation had ceased to govern
itself, an inexhaustible theme of subtle interpretations. As to the
Prophets and the Psalms, the popular persuasion was that almost all
the somewhat mysterious traits that were in these books had reference
to the Messiah, and it was sought to find there the type of him who
should realize the hopes of the nation. Jesus participated in the
taste which every one had for these allegorical interpretations. But
the true poetry of the Bible, which escaped the puerile exegetists of
Jerusalem, was fully revealed to his grand genius. The Law does not
appear to have had much charm for him; he thought that he could do
something better. But the religious lyrics of the Psalms were in
marvellous accordance with his poetic soul; they were, all his life,
his food and sustenance. The prophets--Isaiah in particular, and his
successor in the record of the time of the captivity,--with their
brilliant dreams of the future, their impetuous eloquence, and their
invectives mingled with enchanting pictures, were his true teachers.
He read also, no doubt, many apocryphal works--_i.e._, writings
somewhat modern, the authors of which, for the sake of an authority
only granted to very ancient writings, had clothed themselves with the
names of prophets and patriarchs. One of these books especially struck
him, namely, the Book of Daniel. This book, composed by an
enthusiastic Jew of the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, under the name of
an ancient sage,[1] was the _résumé_ of the spirit of those later
times. Its author, a true creator of the philosophy of history, had
for the first time dared to see in the march of the world and the
succession of empires, only a purpose subordinate to the destinies of
the Jewish people. Jesus was early penetrated by these high hopes.
Perhaps, also, he had read the books of Enoch, then revered equally
with the holy books,[2] and the other writings of the same class,
which kept up so much excitement in the popular imagination. The
advent of the Messiah, with his glories and his terrors--the nations
falling down one after another, the cataclysm of heaven and
earth--were the familiar food of his imagination; and, as these
revolutions were reputed near, and a great number of persons sought to
calculate the time when they should happen, the supernatural state of
things into which such visions transport us, appeared to him from the
first perfectly natural and simple.
[Footnote 1: The legend of Daniel existed as early as the seventh
century B.C. (Ezekiel xiv. 14 and following, xxviii. 3). It was for
the necessities of the legend that he was made to live at the time of
the Babylonian captivity.]
[Footnote 2: _Epist. Jude_, 14 and following; 2 Peter ii. 4, 11;
_Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs_, Simeon, 5; Levi, 14, 16; Judah,
18; Zab., 3; Dan, 5; Naphtali, 4. The "Book of Enoch" still forms an
integral part of the Ethiopian Bible. Such as we know it from the
Ethiopian version, it is composed of pieces of different dates, of
which the most ancient are from the year 130 to 150 B.C. Some of these
pieces have an analogy with the discourses of Jesus. Compare chaps.
xcvi.-xcix. with Luke vi. 24, and following.]
That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is apparent
from each feature of his most authentic discourses. The earth appeared
to him still divided into kingdoms warring with one another; he seemed
to ignore the "Roman peace," and the new state of society which its
age inaugurated. He had no precise idea of the Roman power; the name
of "Cæsar" alone reached him. He saw building, in Galilee or its
environs, Tiberias, Julias, Diocæsarea, Cæsarea, gorgeous works of the
Herods, who sought, by these magnificent structures, to prove their
admiration for Roman civilization, and their devotion toward the
members of the family of Augustus, structures whose names, by a
caprice of fate, now serve, though strangely altered, to designate
miserable hamlets of Bedouins. He also probably saw Sebaste, a work of
Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would lead to the belief
that it had been carried there ready made, like a machine which had
only to be put up in its place. This ostentatious piece of
architecture arrived in Judea by cargoes; these hundreds of columns,
all of the same diameter, the ornament of some insipid "_Rue de
Rivoli_" these were what he called "the kingdoms of the world and all
their glory." But this luxury of power, this administrative and
official art, displeased him. What he loved were his Galilean
villages, confused mixtures of huts, of nests and holes cut in the
rocks, of wells, of tombs, of fig-trees, and of olives. He always
clung close to Nature. The courts of kings appeared to him as places
where men wear fine clothes. The charming impossibilities with which
his parables abound, when he brings kings and the mighty ones on the
stage,[1] prove that he never conceived of aristocratic society but as
a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his
simplicity.
[Footnote 1: See, for example, Matt. xxii. 2, and following.]
Still less was he acquainted with the new idea, created by Grecian
science, which was the basis of all philosophy, and which modern
science has greatly confirmed, to wit, the exclusion of capricious
gods, to whom the simple belief of ancient ages attributed the
government of the universe. Almost a century before him, Lucretius had
expressed, in an admirable manner, the unchangeableness of the general
system of Nature. The negation of miracle--the idea that everything in
the world happens by laws in which the personal intervention of
superior beings has no share--was universally admitted in the great
schools of all the countries which had accepted Grecian science.
Perhaps even Babylon and Persia were not strangers to it. Jesus knew
nothing of this progress. Although born at a time when the principle
of positive science was already proclaimed, he lived entirely in the
supernatural. Never, perhaps, had the Jews been more possessed with
the thirst for the marvellous. Philo, who lived in a great
intellectual centre, and who had received a very complete education,
possessed only a chimerical and inferior knowledge of science.
Jesus, on this point, differed in no respect from his companions. He
believed in the devil, whom he regarded as a kind of evil genius,[1]
and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were
produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him. The
marvellous was not the exceptional for him; it was his normal state.
The notion of the supernatural, with its impossibilities, is
coincident with the birth of experimental science. The man who is
strange to all ideas of physical laws, who believes that by praying he
can change the path of the clouds, arrest disease, and even death,
finds nothing extraordinary in miracle, inasmuch as the entire course
of things is to him the result of the free will of the Divinity. This
intellectual state was constantly that of Jesus. But in his great soul
such a belief produced effects quite opposed to those produced on the
vulgar. Among the latter, the belief in the special action of God led
to a foolish credulity, and the deceptions of charlatans. With him it
led to a profound idea of the familiar relations of man with God, and
an exaggerated belief in the power of man--beautiful errors, which
were the secret of his power; for if they were the means of one day
showing his deficiencies in the eyes of the physicist and the chemist,
they gave him a power over his own age of which no individual had been
possessed before his time, or has been since.
[Footnote 1: Matt. vi. 13.]
His distinctive character very early revealed itself. Legend delights
to show him even from his infancy in revolt against paternal
authority, and departing from the common way to fulfill his
vocation.[1] It is certain, at least, that he cared little for the
relations of kinship. His family do not seem to have loved him,[2]
and at times he seems to have been hard toward them.[3] Jesus, like
all men exclusively preoccupied by an idea, came to think little of
the ties of blood. The bond of thought is the only one that natures of
this kind recognize. "Behold my mother and my brethren," said he, in
extending his hand toward his disciples; "he who does the will of my
Father, he is my brother and my sister." The simple people did not
understand the matter thus, and one day a woman passing near him cried
out, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which gave thee
suck!" But he said, "Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word
of God, and keep it."[4] Soon, in his bold revolt against nature, he
went still further, and we shall see him trampling under foot
everything that is human, blood, love, and country, and only keeping
soul and heart for the idea which presented itself to him as the
absolute form of goodness and truth.
[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 42 and following. The Apocryphal Gospels are
full of similar histories carried to the grotesque.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 57; Mark vi. 4; John vii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 48; Mark iii. 33; Luke viii. 21; John ii. 4;
Gospel according to the Hebrews, in St. Jerome, _Dial. adv. Pelag._,
iii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Luke xi. 27, and following.]