THE ORDER OF THOUGHT WHICH SURROUNDED THE DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.
As the cooled earth no longer permits us to understand the phenomena
of primitive creation, because the fire which penetrated it is
extinct, so deliberate explanations have always appeared somewhat
insufficient when applying our timid methods of induction to the
revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of
humanity. Jesus lived at one of those times when the game of public
life is freely played, and when the stake of human activity is
increased a hundredfold. Every great part, then, entails death; for
such movements suppose liberty and an absence of preventive measures,
which could not exist without a terrible alternative. In these days,
man risks little and gains little. In heroic periods of human
activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or
at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such,
form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold;
characters have distinctive features, which engrave them as eternal
types in the memory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no
historical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed,
to develop those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and
which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril.
If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the
greatest philosopher were the man best fitted to tell his fellows
what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection
that those great moral and dogmatic truths called religions would
proceed. But it is not so. If we except Cakya-Mouni, the great
religious founders have not been metaphysicians. Buddhism itself,
whose origin is in pure thought, has conquered one-half of Asia, by
motives wholly political and moral. As to the Semitic religions, they
are as little philosophical as possible. Moses and Mahomet were not
men of speculation; they were men of action. It was in proposing
action to their fellow-countrymen, and to their contemporaries, that
they governed humanity. Jesus, in like manner, was not a theologian,
or a philosopher, having a more or less well-composed system. In order
to be a disciple of Jesus, it was not necessary to sign any formulary,
or to pronounce any confession of faith; one thing only was
necessary--to be attached to him, to love him. He never disputed about
God, for he felt Him directly in himself. The rock of metaphysical
subtleties, against which Christianity broke from the third century,
was in nowise created by the Founder. Jesus had neither dogma nor
system, but a fixed personal resolution, which, exceeding in intensity
every other created will, directs to this hour the destinies of
humanity.
The Jewish people had the advantage, from the captivity of Babylon up
to the Middle Ages, of being in a state of the greatest tension. This
is why the interpreters of the spirit of the nation during this long
period seemed to write under the action of an intense fever, which
placed them constantly either above or below reason, rarely in its
middle path. Never did man seize the problem of the future and of his
destiny with a more desperate courage, more determined to go to
extremes. Not separating the lot of humanity from that of their
little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought for a
general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined
within itself, and solely attentive to petty quarrels, has had
admirable historians; but before the Roman epoch, it would be in vain
to seek in her a general system of the philosophy of history,
embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a kind of
prophetic sense which renders the Semite at times marvellously apt to
see the great lines of the future, has made history enter into
religion. Perhaps he owes a little of this spirit to Persia. Persia,
from an ancient period, conceived the history of the world as a series
of evolutions, over each of which a prophet presided. Each prophet had
his _hazar_, or reign of a thousand years (chiliasm), and from these
successive ages, analogous to the Avatär of India, is composed the
course of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end of the
time when the cycle of chiliasms shall be exhausted, the complete
paradise will come. Men then will live happy; the earth will be as one
plain; there will be only one language, one law, and one government
for all. But this advent will be preceded by terrible calamities.
Dahak (the Satan of Persia) will break his chains and fall upon the
world. Two prophets will come to console mankind, and to prepare the
great advent.[1] These ideas ran through the world, and penetrated
even to Rome, where they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems, of which
the fundamental ideas were the division of the history of humanity
into periods, the succession of the gods corresponding to these
periods--a complete renovation of the world, and the final advent of a
golden age.[2] The book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and certain
parts of the Sibylline books,[3] are the Jewish expression of the same
theory. These thoughts were certainly far from being shared by all;
they were only embraced at first by a few persons of lively
imagination, who were inclined toward strange doctrines. The dry and
narrow author of the book of Esther never thought of the rest of the
world except to despise it, and to wish it evil.[4] The disabused
epicurean who wrote Ecclesiastes, thought so little of the future,
that he considered it even useless to labor for his children; in the
eyes of this egotistical celibate, the highest stroke of wisdom was to
use his fortune for his own enjoyment.[5] But the great achievements
of a people are generally wrought by the minority. Notwithstanding all
their enormous defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow,
subtle, and sophistical, the Jewish people are the authors of the
finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm which history records.
Opposition always makes the glory of a country. The greatest men of a
nation are those whom it puts to death. Socrates was the glory of the
Athenians, who would not suffer him to live amongst them. Spinoza was
the greatest Jew of modern times, and the synagogue expelled him with
ignominy. Jesus was the glory of the people of Israel, who crucified
him.
[Footnote 1: _Yaçna_, xiii. 24: Theopompus, in Plut., _De Iside et
Osiride_, sec. 47; _Minokhired_, a passage published in the
_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, i., p.
263.]
[Footnote 2: Virg., Ecl. iv.; Servius, at v. 4 of this Eclogue;
Nigidius, quoted by Servius, at v. 10.]
[Footnote 3: Book iii., 97-817.]
[Footnote 4: Esther vi. 13, vii. 10, viii. 7, 11-17, ix. 1-22; and in
the apocryphal parts, ix. 10, 11, xiv. 13, and following, xvi. 20,
24.]
[Footnote 5: Eccl. i. 11, ii. 16, 18-24, iii. 19-22, iv. 8, 15, 16, v.
17, 18, vi. 3, 6, viii. 15, ix. 9, 10.]
A gigantic dream haunted for centuries the Jewish people, constantly
renewing its youth in its decrepitude. A stranger to the theory of
individual recompense, which Greece diffused under the name of the
immortality of the soul, Judea concentrated all its power of love and
desire upon the national future. She thought she possessed divine
promises of a boundless future; and as the bitter reality, from the
ninth century before our era, gave more and more the dominion of the
world to physical force, and brutally crushed these aspirations, she
took refuge in the union of the most impossible ideas, and attempted
the strangest gyrations. Before the captivity, when all the earthly
hopes of the nation had become weakened by the separation of the
northern tribes, they dreamt of the restoration of the house of David,
the reconciliation of the two divisions of the people, and the triumph
of theocracy and the worship of Jehovah over idolatry. At the epoch of
the captivity, a poet, full of harmony, saw the splendor of a future
Jerusalem, of which the peoples and the distant isles should be
tributaries, under colors so charming, that one might say a glimpse of
the visions of Jesus had reached him at a distance of six
centuries.[1]
[Footnote 1: Isaiah lx. &c.]
The victory of Cyrus seemed at one time to realize all that had been
hoped. The grave disciples of the Avesta and the adorers of Jehovah
believed themselves brothers. Persia had begun by banishing the
multiple _dévas_, and by transforming them into demons (_divs_), to
draw from the old Arian imaginations (essentially naturalistic) a
species of Monotheism. The prophetic tone of many of the teachings of
Iran had much analogy with certain compositions of Hosea and Isaiah.
Israel reposed under the Achemenidae,[1] and under Xerxes (Ahasuerus)
made itself feared by the Iranians themselves. But the triumphal and
often cruel entry of Greek and Roman civilization into Asia, threw it
back upon its dreams. More than ever it invoked the Messiah as judge
and avenger of the people. A complete renovation, a revolution which
should shake the world to its very foundation, was necessary in order
to satisfy the enormous thirst of vengeance excited in it by the sense
of its superiority, and by the sight of its humiliation.[2]
[Footnote 1: The whole book of Esther breathes a great attachment to
this dynasty.]
[Footnote 2: Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, _Cod. pseud.,
V.T._, ii. p. 147, and following.]
If Israel had possessed the spiritualistic doctrine, which divides man
in two parts--the body and the soul--and finds it quite natural that
while the body decays, the soul should survive, this paroxysm of rage
and of energetic protestation would have had no existence. But such a
doctrine, proceeding from the Grecian philosophy, was not in the
traditions of the Jewish mind. The ancient Hebrew writings contain no
trace of future rewards or punishments. Whilst the idea of the
solidarity of the tribe existed, it was natural that a strict
retribution according to individual merits should not be thought of.
So much the worse for the pious man who happened to live in an epoch
of impiety; he suffered, like the rest, the public misfortunes
consequent on the general irreligion. This doctrine, bequeathed by the
sages of the patriarchal era, constantly produced unsustainable
contradictions. Already at the time of Job it was much shaken; the old
men of Teman who professed it were considered behind the age, and the
young Elihu, who intervened in order to combat them, dared to utter as
his first word this essentially revolutionary sentiment, "Great men
are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment."[1]
With the complications which had taken place in the world since the
time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still
more intolerable.[2] Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law,
and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus.
Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of meaning,
would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the
unfaithfulness of the people.[3] What! these victims who died for
their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons,
will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the
corruption of the grave?[4] Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might
possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage,
like Antigonus of Soco,[5] might indeed maintain that we must not
practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we
must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be
contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle of
philosophical immortality, imagined the righteous living in the memory
of God, glorious forever in the remembrance of men, and judging the
wicked who had persecuted them.[6] "They live in the sight of God; ...
they are known of God."[7] That was their reward. Others, especially
the Pharisees, had recourse to the doctrine of the resurrection.[8]
The righteous will live again in order to participate in the Messianic
reign. They will live again in the flesh, and for a world of which
they will be the kings and the judges; they will be present at the
triumph of their ideas and at the humiliation of their enemies.
[Footnote 1: Job xxxiii. 9.]
[Footnote 2: It is nevertheless remarkable that Jesus, son of Sirach,
adheres to it strictly (chap. xvii. 26-28, xxii. 10, 11, xxx. 4, and
following, xli. 1, 2, xliv. 9). The author of the book of _Wisdom_
holds quite opposite opinions (iv. 1, Greek text).]
[Footnote 3: Esth. xiv. 6, 7 (apocr.); the apocryphal Epistle of
Baruch (Fabricius, _Cod. pseud., V.T._, ii. p. 147, and following).]
[Footnote 4: 2 _Macc._ vii.]
[Footnote 5: _Pirké Aboth._, i. 3.]
[Footnote 6: _Wisdom_, ii.-vi.; _De Rationis Imperio_, attributed to
Josephus, 8, 13, 16, 18. Still we must remark that the author of this
last treatise estimates the motive of personal recompense in a
secondary degree. The primary impulse of martyrs is the pure love of
the Law, the advantage which their death will procure to the people,
and the glory which will attach to their name. Comp. _Wisdom_, iv. 1,
and following; _Eccl._ xliv., and following; Jos., _B.J._, II. viii.
10, III. viii. 5.]
[Footnote 7: _Wisdom_, iv. 1; _De Rat. Imp._, 16, 18.]
[Footnote 8: 2 _Macc._, vii. 9, 14, xii. 43, 44.]
We find among the ancient people of Israel only very indecisive traces
of this fundamental dogma. The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was
in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee,
the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator. But in
religion it is always the zealous sect which innovates, which
progresses, and which has influence. Besides this, the resurrection,
an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul,
proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the
position of the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its
elements.[1] In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah,
and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed
those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the
orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them),
pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from
one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of
dogmatic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at
one time, even upon so primary a point Sometimes the righteous were to
await the resurrection;[2] sometimes they were to be received at the
moment of death into Abraham's bosom;[3] sometimes the resurrection
was to be general;[4] sometimes it was to be reserved only for the
faithful;[5] sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new
Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the
universe.
[Footnote 1: Theopompus, in _Diog. Laert._, Proem, 9. _Boundehesch_,
xxxi. The traces of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Avesta are
very doubtful.]
[Footnote 2: John xi. 24.]
[Footnote 3: Luke xvi. 22. Cf. _De Rationis Imp._, 13, 16, 18.]
[Footnote 4: Dan. xii. 2.]
[Footnote 5: 2 _Macc._ vii. 14.]
Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning
atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just
stated. These ideas were taught in no school; but they were in the
very air, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations
and our doubts never reached him. On this summit of the mountain of
Nazareth, where no man can sit to-day without an uneasy, though it may
be a frivolous, feeling about his destiny, Jesus sat often untroubled
by a doubt. Free from selfishness--that source of our troubles, which
makes us seek with eagerness a reward for virtue beyond the tomb--he
thought only of his work, of his race, and of humanity. Those
mountains, that sea, that azure sky, those high plains in the horizon,
were for him not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates
Nature upon her fate, but the certain symbol, the transparent shadow,
of an invisible world, and of a new heaven.
He never attached much importance to the political events of his time,
and he probably knew little about them. The court of the Herods formed
a world so different to his, that he doubtless knew it only by name.
Herod the Great died about the year in which Jesus was born, leaving
imperishable remembrances--monuments which must compel the most
malevolent posterity to associate his name with that of Solomon;
nevertheless, his work was incomplete, and could not be continued.
Profanely ambitious, and lost in a maze of religious controversies,
this astute Idumean had the advantage which coolness and judgment,
stripped of morality, give over passionate fanatics. But his idea of a
secular kingdom of Israel, even if it had not been an anachronism in
the state of the world in which it was conceived, would inevitably
have miscarried, like the similar project which Solomon formed, owing
to the difficulties proceeding from the character of the nation. His
three sons were only lieutenants of the Romans, analogous to the
rajahs of India under the English dominion. Antipater, or Antipas,
tetrarch of Galilee and of Peræa, of whom Jesus was a subject all his
life, was an idle and useless prince,[1] a favorite and flatterer of
Tiberius,[2] and too often misled by the bad influence of his second
wife, Herodias.[3] Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanea, into
whose dominions Jesus made frequent journeys, was a much better
sovereign.[4] As to Archelaus, ethnarch of Jerusalem, Jesus could not
know him, for he was about ten years old when this man, who was weak
and without character, though sometimes violent, was deposed by
Augustus.[5] The last trace of self-government was thus lost to
Jerusalem. United to Samaria and Idumea, Judea formed a kind of
dependency of the province of Syria, in which the senator Publius
Sulpicius Quirinus, well known as consul,[6] was the imperial legate.
A series of Roman procurators, subordinate in important matters to
the imperial legate of Syria--Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius Rufus,
Valerius Gratus, and lastly (in the twenty-sixth year of our era),
Pontius Pilate[7]--followed each other, and were constantly occupied
in extinguishing the volcano which was seething beneath their feet.
[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, VIII. v. 1, vii. 1 and 2; Luke iii. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., XVIII. ii. 3, iv. 5, v. 1.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., XVIII. vii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., XVIII. iv. 6.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., XVII. xii. 2; and _B.J._, II. vii. 3.]
[Footnote 6: Orelli, _Inscr. Lat._, No. 3693; Henzen, _Suppl._, No.
7041; _Fasti prænestini_, on the 6th of March, and on the 28th of
April (in the _Corpus Inscr. Lat._, i. 314, 317); Borghesi, _Fastes
Consulaires_ (yet unedited), in the year 742; R. Bergmann, _De Inscr.
Lat. ad. P.S. Quirinium, ut videtur, referenda_ (Berlin, 1851). Cf.
Tac., _Ann._, ii. 30, iii. 48; Strabo, XII. vi. 5.]
[Footnote 7: Jos., _Ant._, l. XVIII.]
Continual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosaism, did not cease,
in fact, to agitate Jerusalem during all this time.[1] The death of
the seditious was certain; but death, when the integrity of the Law
was in question, was sought with avidity. To overturn the Roman eagle,
to destroy the works of art raised by the Herods, in which the Mosaic
regulations were not always respected[2]--to rise up against the
votive escutcheons put up by the procurators, the inscriptions of
which appeared tainted with idolatry[3]--were perpetual temptations to
fanatics, who had reached that degree of exaltation which removes all
care for life. Judas, son of Sariphea, Matthias, son of Margaloth, two
very celebrated doctors of the law, formed against the established
order a boldly aggressive party, which continued after their
execution.[4] The Samaritans were agitated by movements of a similar
nature.[5] The Law had never counted a greater number of impassioned
disciples than at this time, when he already lived who, by the full
authority of his genius and of his great soul, was about to abrogate
it. The "Zelotes" (Kenaïm), or "Sicarii," pious assassins, who imposed
on themselves the task of killing whoever in their estimation broke
the Law, began to appear.[6] Representatives of a totally different
spirit, the Thaumaturges, considered as in some sort divine, obtained
credence in consequence of the imperious want which the age
experienced for the supernatural and the divine.[7]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., the books XVI. and XVIII. entirely, and _B.J._,
books I. and II.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XV. x. 4. Compare Book of Enoch, xcvii. 13,
14.]
[Footnote 3: Philo, _Leg. ad Caium_, § 38.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVII. vi. 2, and following; _B.J._, I.
xxxiii. 3, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. iv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 6: Mishnah, _Sanhedrim_, ix. 6; John xvi. 2; Jos., _B.J._,
book IV., and following.]
[Footnote 7: _Acts_ viii. 9. Verse 11 leads us to suppose that Simon
the magician was already famous in the time of Jesus.]
A movement which had much more influence upon Jesus was that of Judas
the Gaulonite, or Galilean. Of all the exactions to which the country
newly conquered by Rome was subjected, the census was the most
unpopular.[1] This measure, which always astonishes people
unaccustomed to the requirements of great central administrations, was
particularly odious to the Jews. We see that already, under David, a
numbering of the people provoked violent recriminations, and the
menaces of the prophets.[2] The census, in fact, was the basis of
taxation; now taxation, to a pure theocracy, was almost an impiety.
God being the sole Master whom man ought to recognize, to pay tithe to
a secular sovereign was, in a manner, to put him in the place of God.
Completely ignorant of the idea of the State, the Jewish theocracy
only acted up to its logical induction--the negation of civil society
and of all government. The money of the public treasury was accounted
stolen money.[3] The census ordered by Quirinus (in the year 6 of the
Christian era) powerfully reawakened these ideas, and caused a great
fermentation. An insurrection broke out in the northern provinces. One
Judas, of the town of Gamala, upon the eastern shore of the Lake of
Tiberias, and a Pharisee named Sadoc, by denying the lawfulness of the
tax, created a numerous party, which soon broke out in open revolt.[4]
The fundamental maxims of this party were--that they ought to call no
man "master," this title belonging to God alone; and that liberty was
better than life. Judas had, doubtless, many other principles, which
Josephus, always careful not to compromise his co-religionists,
designedly suppresses; for it is impossible to understand how, for so
simple an idea, the Jewish historian should give him a place among the
philosophers of his nation, and should regard him as the founder of a
fourth school, equal to those of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the
Essenes. Judas was evidently the chief of a Galilean sect, deeply
imbued with the Messianic idea, and which became a political movement.
The procurator, Coponius, crushed the sedition of the Gaulonite; but
the school remained, and preserved its chiefs. Under the leadership of
Menahem, son of the founder, and of a certain Eleazar, his relative,
we find them again very active in the last contests of the Jews
against the Romans.[5] Perhaps Jesus saw this Judas, whose idea of the
Jewish revolution was so different from his own; at all events, he
knew his school, and it was probably to avoid his error that he
pronounced the axiom upon the penny of Cæsar. Jesus, more wise, and
far removed from all sedition, profited by the fault of his
predecessor, and dreamed of another kingdom and another deliverance.
[Footnote 1: Discourse of Claudius at Lyons, Tab. ii. sub fin. De
Boisseau, _Inscr. Ant. de Lyon_, p. 136.]
[Footnote 2: 2 Sam. xxiv.]
[Footnote 3: Talmud of Babylon, _Baba Kama_, 113 _a_; _Shabbath_, 33
_b_.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. i. 1 and 6; _B.J._, II. viii. 1;
_Acts_ v. 37. Previous to Judas the Gaulonite, the _Acts_ place
another agitator, Theudas; but this is an anachronism, the movement of
Theudas took place in the year 44 of the Christian era (Jos., _Ant._,
XX. v. 1).]
[Footnote 5: Jos., _B.J._, II. xvii. 8, and following.]
Galilee was thus an immense furnace wherein the most diverse elements
were seething.[1] An extraordinary contempt of life, or, more properly
speaking, a kind of longing for death,[2] was the consequence of these
agitations. Experience counts for nothing in these great fanatical
movements. Algeria, at the commencement of the French occupation, saw
arise, each spring, inspired men, who declared themselves
invulnerable, and sent by God to drive away the infidels; the
following year their death was forgotten, and their successors found
no less credence. The Roman power, very stern on the one hand, yet
little disposed to meddle, permitted a good deal of liberty. Those
great, brutal despotisms, terrible in repression, were not so
suspicious as powers which have a faith to defend. They allowed
everything up to the point when they thought it necessary to be
severe. It is not recorded that Jesus was even once interfered with by
the civil power, in his wandering career. Such freedom, and, above
all, the happiness which Galilee enjoyed in being much less confined
in the bonds of Pharisaic pedantry, gave to this district a real
superiority over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the
belief in the Messiah, caused here a general fermentation. Men deemed
themselves on the eve of the great renovation; the Scriptures,
tortured into divers meanings, fostered the most colossal hopes. In
each line of the simple writings of the Old Testament they saw the
assurance, and, in a manner, the programme of the future reign, which
was to bring peace to the righteous, and to seal forever the work of
God.
[Footnote 1: Luke xiii. 1. The Galilean movement of Judas, son of
Hezekiah, does not appear to have been of a religious character;
perhaps, however, its character has been misrepresented by Josephus
(_Ant._, XVII. x. 5).]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVI. vi. 2, 3; XVIII. i. 1.]
From all time, this division into two parties, opposed in interest and
spirit, had been for the Hebrew nation a principle which contributed
to their moral growth. Every nation called to high destinies ought to
be a little world in itself, including opposite poles. Greece
presented, at a few leagues' distance from each other, Sparta and
Athens--to a superficial observer, the two antipodes; but, in reality,
rival sisters, necessary to one another. It was the same with Judea.
Less brilliant in one sense than the development of Jerusalem, that of
the North was on the whole much more fertile; the greatest
achievements of the Jewish people have always proceeded thence. A
complete absence of the love of Nature, bordering upon something dry,
narrow, and ferocious, has stamped all the works purely Hierosolymite
with a degree of grandeur, though sad, arid, and repulsive. With its
solemn doctors, its insipid canonists, its hypocritical and
atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem has not conquered humanity. The North
has given to the world the simple Shunammite, the humble Canaanite,
the impassioned Magdalene, the good foster-father Joseph, and the
Virgin Mary. The North alone has made Christianity; Jerusalem, on the
contrary, is the true home of that obstinate Judaism which, founded by
the Pharisees, and fixed by the Talmud, has traversed the Middle Ages,
and come down to us.
A beautiful external nature tended to produce a much less austere
spirit--a spirit less sharply monotheistic, if I may use the
expression, which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all
the dreams of Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps
the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the contrary, was a very
green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs,
and the songs of the well-beloved.[1] During the two months of March
and April, the country forms a carpet of flowers of an incomparable
variety of colors. The animals are small, and extremely
gentle--delicate and lively turtle-doves, blue-birds so light that
they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, crested larks which
venture almost under the feet of the traveller, little river tortoises
with mild and lively eyes, storks with grave and modest mien, which,
laying aside all timidity, allow man to come quite near them, and seem
almost to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the
mountains spread themselves out with more harmony, or inspire higher
thoughts. Jesus seems to have had a peculiar love for them. The most
important acts of his divine career took place upon the mountains. It
was there that he was the most inspired;[2] it was there that he held
secret communion with the ancient prophets; and it was there that his
disciples witnessed his transfiguration.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jos., _B.J._, III. iii. 1. The horrible state to which
the country is reduced, especially near Lake Tiberias, ought not to
deceive us. These countries, now scorched, were formerly terrestrial
paradises. The baths of Tiberias, which are now a frightful abode,
were formerly the most beautiful places in Galilee (Jos., _Ant._,
XVIII. ii. 3.) Josephus (_Bell. Jud._, III. x. 8) extols the beautiful
trees of the plain of Gennesareth, where there is no longer a single
one. Anthony the Martyr, about the year 600, consequently fifty years
before the Mussulman invasion, still found Galilee covered with
delightful plantations, and compares its fertility to that of Egypt
(_Itin._, § 5).]
[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 1, xiv. 23; Luke vi. 12.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xvii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 1, and following;
Luke ix. 28, and following.]
This beautiful country has now become sad and gloomy through the
ever-impoverishing influence of Islamism. But still everything which
man cannot destroy breathes an air of freedom, mildness, and
tenderness, and at the time of Jesus it overflowed with happiness and
prosperity. The Galileans were considered energetic, brave, and
laborious.[1] If we except Tiberias, built by Antipas in honor of
Tiberius (about the year 15), in the Roman style,[2] Galilee had no
large towns. The country was, nevertheless, well peopled, covered with
small towns and large villages, and cultivated in all parts with
skill.[3] From the ruins which remain of its ancient splendor, we can
trace an agricultural people, no way gifted in art, caring little for
luxury, indifferent to the beauties of form and exclusively
idealistic. The country abounded in fresh streams and in fruits; the
large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the gardens were
filled with trees bearing apples, walnuts, and pomegranates.[4] The
wine was excellent, if we may judge by that which the Jews still
obtain at Safed, and they drank much of it.[5] This contented and
easily satisfied life was not like the gross materialism of our
peasantry, the coarse pleasures of agricultural Normandy, or the heavy
mirth of the Flemish. It spiritualized itself in ethereal dreams--in a
kind of poetic mysticism, blending heaven and earth. Leave the
austere Baptist in his desert of Judea to preach penitence, to inveigh
without ceasing, and to live on locusts in the company of jackals. Why
should the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is
with them? Joy will be a part of the kingdom of God. Is she not the
daughter of the humble in heart, of the men of good will?
[Footnote 1: Jos., _B.J._, III. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. ii. 2; _B.J._, II. ix. 1; _Vita_,
12, 13, 64.]
[Footnote 3: Jos., _B.J._, III. iii. 2.]
[Footnote 4: We may judge of this by some enclosures in the
neighborhood of Nazareth. Cf. Song of Solomon ii. 3, 5, 13, iv. 13,
vi. 6, 10, vii. 8, 12, viii. 2, 5; Anton. Martyr, _l.c._ The aspect of
the great farms is still well preserved in the south of the country of
Tyre (ancient tribe of Asher). Traces of the ancient Palestinian
agriculture, with its troughs, threshing-floors, wine-presses, mills,
&c., cut in the rock, are found at every step.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. ix. 17, xi. 19; Mark ii. 22; Luke v. 37, vii. 34;
John ii. 3, and following.]
The whole history of infant Christianity has become in this manner a
delightful pastoral. A Messiah at the marriage festival--the courtezan
and the good Zaccheus called to his feasts--the founders of the
kingdom of heaven like a bridal procession; that is what Galilee has
boldly offered, and what the world has accepted. Greece has drawn
pictures of human life by sculpture and by charming poetry, but always
without backgrounds or distant receding perspectives. In Galilee were
wanting the marble, the practiced workmen, the exquisite and refined
language. But Galilee has created the most sublime ideal for the
popular imagination; for behind its idyl moves the fate of humanity,
and the light which illumines its picture is the sun of the kingdom of
God.
Jesus lived and grew amidst these enchanting scenes. From his infancy,
he went almost annually to the feast at Jerusalem.[1] The pilgrimage
was a sweet solemnity for the provincial Jews. Entire series of psalms
were consecrated to celebrate the happiness of thus journeying in
family companionship[2] during several days in the spring across the
hills and valleys, each one having in prospect the splendors of
Jerusalem, the solemnities of the sacred courts, and the joy of
brethren dwelling together in unity.[3] The route which Jesus
ordinarily took in these journeys was that which is followed to this
day through Ginæa and Shechem.[4] From Shechem to Jerusalem the
journey is very tiresome. But the neighborhood of the old sanctuaries
of Shiloh and Bethel, near which the travellers pass, keeps their
interest alive. _Ain-el-Haramie_,[5] the last halting-place, is a
charming and melancholy spot, and few impressions equal that
experienced on encamping there for the night. The valley is narrow and
sombre, and a dark stream issues from the rocks, full of tombs, which
form its banks. It is, I think, the "valley of tears," or of dropping
waters, which is described as one of the stations on the way in the
delightful Eighty-fourth Psalm,[6] and which became the emblem of life
for the sad and sweet mysticism of the Middle Ages. Early the next day
they would be at Jerusalem; such an expectation even now sustains the
caravan, rendering the night short and slumber light.
[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 41.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ii. 42-44.]
[Footnote 3: See especially Ps. lxxxiv., cxxii., cxxxiii. (Vulg.,
lxxxiii., cxxi., cxxxii).]
[Footnote 4: Luke ix. 51-53, xvii. 11; John iv. 4; Jos., _Ant._, XX.
vi. 1; _B.J._, II. xii. 3; _Vita_, 52. Often, however, the pilgrims
came by Peræa, in order to avoid Samaria, where they incurred dangers;
Matt. xix. 1; Mark x. 1.]
[Footnote 5: According to Josephus (_Vita_, 52) it was three days'
journey. But the stage from Shechem to Jerusalem was generally divided
into two.]
[Footnote 6: lxxxiii. according to the Vulgate, v. 7.]
These journeys, in which the assembled nation exchanged its ideas, and
which were almost always centres of great agitation, placed Jesus in
contact with the mind of his countrymen, and no doubt inspired him
whilst still young with a lively antipathy for the defects of the
official representatives of Judaism. It is supposed that very early
the desert had great influence on his development, and that he made
long stays there.[1] But the God he found in the desert was not his
God. It was rather the God of Job, severe and terrible, accountable
to no one. Sometimes Satan came to tempt him. He returned, then, into
his beloved Galilee, and found again his heavenly Father in the midst
of the green hills and the clear fountains--and among the crowds of
women and children, who, with joyous soul and the song of angels in
their hearts, awaited the salvation of Israel.
[Footnote 1: Luke iv. 42, v. 16.]