A Boy of Babylon. The Founder of Judaism. Philo, the
Philosopher. An out-door Man. The Poet-Carpenter. Staying in
the Desert. The Silence of History. Where was Jesus in these
silent years?
Let us go back to that long ago for a little while. At the foot of one
of the little streets, close by the square and the fountain, stands a
simple shop for carpenters. At the door, ax and saw in hand, we see
again that Galilean youth. He is a carpenter's apprentice now, and is
working with Joseph, His father. He is tall and beautiful, His eyes
are blue, and very mild--His hair is yellow. He is wearing the
working-man's costume common to Galileans of His age. He is perhaps
twenty--handsome in countenance, and kindly beyond expression. He has
long since finished with the little village school, where the tasks
consisted only in chanting verses from the Scriptures with the other
boys and girls of the village. But as He was apt, He has learned the
Scriptures well. He knows them by heart almost; and later at the
synagogue He heard the priests read from the Great Hillel, the
Babylonian, who is writing and saying things about life, religion, and
the Scriptures that are shaking the religious world. Philo, also, He
almost knows by heart. He also knows the Psalms of David, the Proverbs
of Solomon, as well as the aphorisms and maxims, the dreams and
stories of great men who were writing in Palestine just before He was
born. It was a day of maxims in literature. Men wrote short, strong,
simple sentences, full of thought. Their sayings were easy to
remember. Indeed, even to-day, there is no book so easy to commit to
memory as the Bible.
The young carpenter stored them all in a retentive mind. Some day He
would have use for them. At times the youth stops His work and talks
with His father Joseph about the magnificent temple that Herod is just
completing up there at Jerusalem. He has seen it often as a boy, and
He tells of the strange questions the priests there once asked Him,
and how easily He answered every one. He is talking in the peculiar
Arimean dialect, a speech ridiculed in great Jerusalem, as everywhere
else, outside His Galilee. Occasionally, too, He is relating to His
father the beautiful aphorisms from the gentle Hillel.
And who is this wonderful Hillel of whom Testament writers and
teachers say almost nothing at all? Few of the young ever heard of
him. We must ask, for some have even called him another Jesus, he was
so good and great. He was a very princely Jew, this Hillel, this lover
of mankind, this gentle and humane reformer, whose life benefited the
whole age in which he lived. As a poor Babylonian youth, he went over
to Jerusalem to study under the great rabbis of the church. He soon
became very distinguished, and through him Jewish life and religion
were reformed. He is often called the founder of Judaism as taught in
the Talmud. Herod made him president of the great Sanhedrin, with the
title of prince, and the honor descended in his family. His
aphorisms, his maxims, his wise sayings were known to every Jew in
Palestine, and affected all Jewish life. One of his sayings was: "Do
not unto others what thou wouldst not have done unto thyself. This is
the whole law; the rest go and finish." Another: "Do not believe in
thyself till the day of thy death." Again: "If I do not care for my
soul, who will do it for me?" Still one: "Say not I will repent at
leisure. Leisure may never come." And another: "Whosoever is ambitious
of aggrandizing his name will destroy it." Beyond a doubt, many of the
sayings of this great and gentle teacher were as familiar to the young
carpenter working at His bench in little Nazareth as the Galilean's
own sayings are to the youth of to-day.
Hillel was thirty years older than Christ, and survived Him ten years.
Many of the heart-sayings of the Master can be traced to Hillel, to
Philo, the Egyptian, or to Moses. Let us not forget that He was
human--divinely so--and that His mind, like that of any other human
being, was susceptible to the teachings, the sayings, the surroundings
that were nearest. He not only absorbed all, He refined all.
Philo was another of the great philosophers whose works helped to
influence the young Galilean. He, though a Jew, lived all his life in
Egypt. There he wrote maxims worthy of the Master himself. He was
twenty years older than the Galilean. He had studied Plato, and spent
his life in trying to harmonize religious Greek thought with the
thoughts of Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews.
We will hear little in our Testament writers of these two wise men,
who must have had a tremendous influence on the youth at Nazareth.
Indeed, as already said, the Testament anyway tells us not much of the
life at Galilee, or elsewhere. The larger part of the Testament story
relates to the deeds of the passion week, or the last days of the
Master's life. One-third of the book is taken up with that single
week. It has been guessed that had the details of the Galilean's
whole life been written out fully, it would have made a book eighty
times as big as our Bible.
The things that the Galileans heard in the village synagogue, the
things that He read in the old Scriptures, all, all that found its way
to the village from Hillel, from Philo, and other men renowned then,
and forgotten now, were reflected in Him. More, He beautified all,
simplified all, glorified all. Most of all, however, His divine
instinct enlarged itself from scenes in nature. The young carpenter
was a poet. No beauty of the fields, the hills, the brooks, the lovely
lake escaped His eye, or failed to feed His soul. He was an outdoor
man. Scarcely one of His miracles later, but would be performed out of
doors. The wedding at Cana was probably on the green lawn of a
peasant's home. The stilling of the tempest, the feeding of the five
thousand, the transfiguration, the numberless wonders and cures in all
the Galilean villages were nearly always performed out of doors. Half
His parables have to do with things out of doors. To Him God was in
everything--the rocks, the trees, the blue sky of Galilee, the very
desolation of the Dead sea inspired Him. How often the Testament tells
of His flying away from crowds to be alone with nature. Is it not
altogether possible, almost certain, that these long absences were in
the wilderness of the desert? His long stay in solitary places, later,
communing with God at first hand, may they not account for so much of
the silence of history as to much of His life? It need not seem
strange to us at all. In the old Jewish days half a lifetime of
contemplation in the solitude of the desert was regarded by every one
a first step to leadership.
Whoever sought a high religious calling, or sought to be a founder of
a new belief, went through this solitary preparation in the desert.
Even Moses did it, and spent forty years as a shepherd on the plains.
John did it, Jerome did it, Mahomet did it. Why not Jesus? Even great
teachers of modern times locked themselves up in the desert of
cloister cells for years. Savonarola did it--Martin Luther did
it--Assisi did it--so did a thousand other luminaries of the religious
world.
Certainly most of the Galilean's life is a blank to human history,
otherwise not explained. Why should He not have been absent in some
desert solitude, some wilderness, preparing for immortal deeds,
immortal words? There is absolutely no other explanation for these
silent years.
How little the youth at this moment is dreaming of all that future as
He works by His father's side, or goes about the village encouraging
and helping by His gentle smile! He is healing by His strong faith and
His pure soul. The poor love Him, not yet knowing who He is. He
himself does not know. We even wonder if He knows how it is that He
helps so many. He is no magician, no doer of wonders just to make a
show. Perhaps He only knows as yet that goodness and kindness and love
and extreme faith can do everything. Anyway He is the loved of every
one. How easy it all is to be loved. One can be just a carpenter, and
yet by love do everything. Of all things He is a helper of the poor,
the unfortunate. Sometimes the very ignorant adopt the notion that
salvation is for the poor only. They, too, misunderstand and
exaggerate. A little later a sect of the overzealous poor build a
church on the theory that the poor only, go to Heaven. They call
themselves "Ebionites," or "The Poor." Of course, these sects in a few
years ended in religious suicide. They had forgotten that the Galilean
could be no respecter of class or persons.
To-morrow this young carpenter, this village doctor, will again
disappear in the wilderness of the desert; who knows how long? Old
church writings say that He was seven years in the desert of Egypt as
a child. He is used to solitude. Legends tell, too, that He studied
law in these days--by law they meant the books of Moses and the
prophets. Likely enough He took the parchment rolls with Him, and in
the long days there in the desert learned them all by heart. Later He
will tell all the people to go and read the same great Scriptures.
What His life may have been at such times in the desert we can more
than guess. It was a meditation, an inspiration. It is told of John
the Baptist, whose coming birth like that of Christ was announced by
an angel, that he also spent years as a hermit of the desert, and in
its solitude learned a language and received a revelation not
vouchsafed to ordinary man. What then must the great soul of the
Galilean not have absorbed there alone with the voice of the great
creation speaking to Him all the day--the night there with the "floor
of Heaven inlaid with patines of bright gold, and the music of the
spheres sounding in his ears forever." His was a soul to enjoy and to
be inspired with such a scene.
Little as the sacred writings tell of Him, silent as history is in the
Galilean days, we have other glimpses of the times, and of what He was
doing, by reading the old books, now called Apocryphal, that were
discarded from our present Testament in the fourth century. Why all
of them were discarded, is hard to imagine; for, though buried in an
ocean of nonsense and legend, there was still at the bottom of them a
grain of pure gold. Besides, for over three centuries these discarded
books were regarded as part of the sacred writings.