INTERCOURSE OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS AND THE SAMARITANS.
Following out these principles, Jesus despised all religion which was
not of the heart. The vain practices of the devotees,[1] the exterior
strictness, which trusted to formality for salvation, had in him a
mortal enemy. He cared little for fasting.[2] He preferred forgiveness
to sacrifice.[3] The love of God, charity and mutual forgiveness, were
his whole law.[4] Nothing could be less priestly. The priest, by his
office, ever advocates public sacrifice, of which he is the appointed
minister; he discourages private prayer, which has a tendency to
dispense with his office.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xv. 9.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. ix. 14, xi. 19.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 23, and following, ix. 13, xii. 7.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xxii. 37, and following; Mark xii. 28, and
following; Luke x. 25, and following.]
We should seek in vain in the Gospel for one religious rite
recommended by Jesus. Baptism to him was only of secondary
importance;[1] and with respect to prayer, he prescribes nothing,
except that it should proceed from the heart. As is always the case,
many thought to substitute mere good-will for genuine love of
goodness, and imagined they could win the kingdom of heaven by saying
to him, "Rabbi, Rabbi." He rebuked them, and proclaimed that his
religion consisted in doing good.[2] He often quoted the passage in
Isaiah, which says: "This people honor me with their lips, but their
heart is far from me."[3]
[Footnote 1: Matt. iii. 15; 1 _Cor._ i. 17.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. vii. 21; Luke vi. 46.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xv. 8; Mark vii. 6. Cf. Isaiah xxix. 13.]
The observance of the Sabbath was the principal point upon which was
raised the whole edifice of Pharisaic scruples and subtleties. This
ancient and excellent institution had become a pretext for the
miserable disputes of casuists, and a source of superstitious
beliefs.[1] It was believed that Nature observed it; all intermittent
springs were accounted "Sabbatical."[2] This was the point upon which
Jesus loved best to defy his adversaries.[3] He openly violated the
Sabbath, and only replied by subtle raillery to the reproaches that
were heaped upon him. He despised still more a multitude of modern
observances, which tradition had added to the Law, and which were
dearer than any other to the devotees on that very account. Ablutions,
and the too subtle distinctions between pure and impure things, found
in him a pitiless opponent: "There is nothing from without a man,"
said he, "that entering into him can defile him: but the things which
come out of him, those are they that defile the man." The Pharisees,
who were the propagators of these mummeries, were unceasingly
denounced by him. He accused them of exceeding the Law, of inventing
impossible precepts, in order to create occasions of sin: "Blind
leaders of the blind," said he, "take care lest ye also fall into the
ditch." "O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good
things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh."[4]
[Footnote 1: See especially the treatise _Shabbath_ of the Mishnah and
the _Livre des Jubilés_ (translated from the Ethiopian in the
_Jahrbücher_ of Ewald, years 2 and 3), chap. I.]
[Footnote 2: Jos., _B.J._, VII. v. 1; Pliny, _H.N._, xxxi. 18. Cf.
Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, i. 406, and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xii. 1-14; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 1-5, xiii. 14,
and following, xiv. 1, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. xii. 34, xv. 1, and following, 12, and following,
xxiii. entirely; Mark vii. 1, and following, 15, and following; Luke
vi. 45, xi. 39, and following.]
He did not know the Gentiles sufficiently to think of founding
anything lasting upon their conversion. Galilee contained a great
number of pagans, but, as it appears, no public and organized worship
of false gods.[1] Jesus could see this worship displayed in all its
splendor in the country of Tyre and Sidon, at Cæsarea Philippi and in
the Decapolis, but he paid little attention to it. We never find in
him the wearisome pedantry of the Jews of his time, those declamations
against idolatry, so familiar to his co-religionists from the time of
Alexander, and which fill, for instance, the book of "Wisdom."[2] That
which struck him in the pagans was not their idolatry, but their
servility.[3] The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with
Judas the Gaulonite, and admitting no master but God, was hurt at the
honors with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the
frequently mendacious titles given to them. With this exception, in
the greater number of instances in which he comes in contact with
pagans, he shows great indulgence to them; sometimes he professes to
conceive more hope of them than of the Jews.[4] The kingdom of God
would be transferred to them. "When the lord, therefore, of the
vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these husbandmen? He will
miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard
unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their
seasons."[5] Jesus adhered so much the more to this idea, as the
conversion of the Gentiles was, according to Jewish ideas, one of the
surest signs of the advent of the Messiah.[6] In his kingdom of God he
represents, as seated at a feast, by the side of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, men come from the four winds of heaven, whilst the lawful heirs
of the kingdom are rejected.[7] Sometimes, it is true, there seems to
be an entirely contrary tendency in the commands he gives to his
disciples: he seems to recommend them only to preach salvation to the
orthodox Jews,[8] he speaks of pagans in a manner conformable to the
prejudices of the Jews.[9] But we must remember that the disciples,
whose narrow minds did not share in this supreme indifference for the
privileges of the sons of Abraham, may have given the instruction of
their master the bent of their own ideas. Besides, it is very possible
that Jesus may have varied on this point, just as Mahomet speaks of
the Jews in the Koran, sometimes in the most honorable manner,
sometimes with extreme harshness, as he had hope of winning their
favor or otherwise. Tradition, in fact, attributes to Jesus two
entirely opposite rules of proselytism, which he may have practised in
turn: "He that is not against us is on our part." "He that is not with
me, is against me."[10] Impassioned conflict involves almost
necessarily this kind of contradictions.
[Footnote 1: I believe the pagans of Galilee were found especially on
the frontiers--at Kedes, for example; but that the very heart of the
country, the city of Tiberias excepted, was entirely Jewish. The line
where the ruins of temples end, and those of synagogues begin, is
to-day plainly marked as far north as Lake Huleh (Samachonites). The
traces of pagan sculpture, which were thought to have been found at
Tell-Houm, are doubtful. The coast--the town of Acre, in
particular--did not form part of Galilee.]
[Footnote 2: Chap. XIII. and following.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xx. 25; Mark x. 42; Luke xxii. 25.]
[Footnote 4: Matt. viii. 5, and following, xv. 22, and following; Mark
vii. 25, and following; Luke iv. 25, and following.]
[Footnote 5: Matt. xxi. 41; Mark xii. 9; Luke xx. 16.]
[Footnote 6: Isa. ii. 2, and following, lx.; Amos ix. 11, and
following; Jer. iii. 17; Mal. i. 11; _Tobit_, xiii. 13, and following;
_Orac. Sibyll._, iii. 715, and following. Comp. Matt. xxiv. 14; _Acts_
xv. 15, and following.]
[Footnote 7: Matt. viii. 11, 12, xxi. 33, and following, xxii. 1, and
following.]
[Footnote 8: Matt. vii. 6, x. 5, 6, xv. 24, xxi. 43.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. v. 46, and following, vi. 7, 32, xviii. 17; Luke
vi. 32, and following, xii. 30.]
[Footnote 10: Matt. xii. 30; Mark ix. 39; Luke ix. 50, xi. 23.]
It is certain that he counted among his disciples many men whom the
Jews called "Hellenes."[1] This word had in Palestine divers meanings.
Sometimes it designated the pagans; sometimes the Jews, speaking
Greek, and dwelling among the pagans;[2] sometimes men of pagan origin
converted to Judaism.[3] It was probably in the last-named category of
Hellenes that Jesus found sympathy.[4] The affiliation with Judaism
had many degrees; but the proselytes always remained in a state of
inferiority in regard to the Jew by birth. Those in question were
called "proselytes of the gate," or "men fearing God," and were
subject to the precepts of Noah, and not to those of Moses.[5] This
very inferiority was doubtless the cause which drew them to Jesus, and
gained them his favor.
[Footnote 1: Josephus confirms this (_Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3). Comp.
John vii. 35, xii. 20, 21.]
[Footnote 2: Talm. of Jerus., _Sota_, vii. 1.]
[Footnote 3: See in particular, John vii. 35, xii. 20; _Acts_ xiv. 1,
xvii. 4, xviii. 4, xxi. 28.]
[Footnote 4: John xii. 20; _Acts_ viii. 27.]
[Footnote 5: Mishnah, _Baba Metsia_, ix. 12; Talm. of Bab., _Sanh._,56
_b_; _Acts_ viii. 27, x. 2, 22, 35, xiii. 16, 26, 43, 50, xvi. 14,
xvii. 4, 17, xviii. 7; Gal. ii. 3; Jos., _Ant._, XIV. vii. 2.]
He treated the Samaritans in the same manner. Shut in, like a small
island, between the two great provinces of Judaism (Judea and
Galilee), Samaria formed in Palestine a kind of enclosure in which was
preserved the ancient worship of Gerizim, closely resembling and
rivalling that of Jerusalem. This poor sect, which had neither the
genius nor the learned organization of Judaism, properly so called,
was treated by the Hierosolymites with extreme harshness.[1] They
placed them in the same rank as pagans, but hated them more.[2] Jesus,
from a feeling of opposition, was well disposed toward Samaria, and
often preferred the Samaritans to the orthodox Jews. If, at other
times, he seems to forbid his disciples preaching to them, confining
his gospel to the Israelites proper,[3] this was no doubt a precept
arising from special circumstances, to which the apostles have given
too absolute a meaning. Sometimes, in fact, the Samaritans received
him badly, because they thought him imbued with the prejudices of his
co-religionists;[4]--in the same manner as in our days the European
free-thinker is regarded as an enemy by the Mussulman, who always
believes him to be a fanatical Christian. Jesus raised himself above
these misunderstandings.[5] He had many disciples at Shechem, and he
passed at least two days there.[6] On one occasion he meets with
gratitude and true piety from a Samaritan only.[7] One of his most
beautiful parables is that of the man wounded on the way to Jericho. A
priest passes by and sees him, but goes on his way; a Levite also
passes, but does not stop; a Samaritan takes pity on him, approaches
him, and pours oil into his wounds, and bandages them.[8] Jesus argues
from this that true brotherhood is established among men by charity,
and not by creeds. The "neighbor" who in Judaism was specially the
co-religionist, was in his estimation the man who has pity on his kind
without distinction of sect. Human brotherhood in its widest sense
overflows in all his teaching.
[Footnote 1: _Ecclesiasticus_ l. 27, 28; John viii. 48; Jos., _Ant._,
IX. xiv. 3, XI. viii. 6, XII. v. 5; Talm. of Jerus., _Aboda zara_, v.
4; _Pesachim_, i. 1.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. x. 5; Luke xvii. 18. Comp. Talm. of Bab., _Cholin_,
6 _a_.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. x. 5, 6.]
[Footnote 4: Luke ix. 53.]
[Footnote 5: Luke ix. 56.]
[Footnote 6: John iv. 39-43.]
[Footnote 7: Luke xvii. 16.]
[Footnote 8: Luke x. 30, and following.]
These thoughts, which beset Jesus on his leaving Jerusalem, found
their vivid expression in an anecdote which has been preserved
respecting his return. The road from Jerusalem into Galilee passes at
the distance of half an hour's journey from Shechem,[1] in front of
the opening of the valley commanded by mounts Ebal and Gerizim. This
route was in general avoided by the Jewish pilgrims, who preferred
making in their journeys the long detour through Perea, rather than
expose themselves to the insults of the Samaritans, or ask anything of
them. It was forbidden to eat and drink with them.[2] It was an axiom
of certain casuists, that "a piece of Samaritan bread is the flesh of
swine."[3] When they followed this route, provisions were always laid
up beforehand; yet they rarely avoided conflict and ill-treatment.[4]
Jesus shared neither these scruples nor these fears. Having come to
the point where the valley of Shechem opens on the left, he felt
fatigued, and stopped near a well. The Samaritans were then as now
accustomed to give to all the localities of their valley names drawn
from patriarchal reminiscences. They regarded this well as having been
given by Jacob to Joseph; it was probably the same which is now called
_Bir-Iakoub_. The disciples entered the valley and went to the city to
buy provisions. Jesus seated himself at the side of the well, having
Gerizim before him.
[Footnote 1: Now Nablous.]
[Footnote 2: Luke ix. 53; John iv. 9.]
[Footnote 3: Mishnah, _Shebiit_, viii. 10.]
[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XX. v. 1; _B.J._, II. xii. 3; _Vita_, 52.]
It was about noon. A woman of Shechem came to draw water. Jesus asked
her to let him drink, which excited great astonishment in the woman,
the Jews generally forbidding all intercourse with the Samaritans. Won
by the conversation of Jesus, the woman recognized in him a prophet,
and expecting some reproaches about her worship, she anticipated him:
"Sir," said she, "our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say
that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. Jesus saith
unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in
this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour
cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth."[1]
[Footnote 1: John iv. 21-23. Verse 22, at least the latter clause of
it, which expresses an idea opposed to that of verses 21 and 23,
appears to have been interpolated. We must not insist too much on the
historical reality of such a conversation, since Jesus, or his
interlocutor, alone would have been able to relate it. But the
anecdote in chapter iv. of John, certainly represents one of the most
intimate thoughts of Jesus, and the greater part of the circumstances
have a striking appearance of truth.]
The day on which he uttered this saying, he was truly Son of God. He
pronounced for the first time the sentence upon which will repose the
edifice of eternal religion. He founded the pure worship, of all ages,
of all lands, that which all elevated souls will practice until the
end of time. Not only was his religion on this day the best religion
of humanity, it was the absolute religion; and if other planets have
inhabitants gifted with reason and morality, their religion cannot be
different from that which Jesus proclaimed near the well of Jacob. Man
has not been able to maintain this position: for the ideal is realized
but transitorily. This sentence of Jesus has been a brilliant light
amidst gross darkness; it has required eighteen hundred years for the
eyes of mankind (what do I say! for an infinitely small portion of
mankind) to become accustomed to it. But the light will become the
full day, and, after having run through all the cycles of error,
mankind will return to this sentence, as the immortal expression of
its faith and its hope.