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The Life of Jesus

by Ernest Renan · English · Gutenberg #16581 · 724,851 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Life of Jesus

Author: Ernest Renan


        
Release date: August 22, 2005 [eBook #16581]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF JESUS ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









THE

LIFE

OF

JESUS


BY

ERNEST RENAN


INTRODUCTION BY

JOHN HAYNES HOLMES

[Transcriber's note: Introduction by John Haynes Holmes not included
in this etext due to copyright restrictions.]


MODERN LIBRARY
NEW YORK


INTRODUCTION COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY THE MODERN LIBRARY, INC.


_Random House_ IS THE PUBLISHER OF

THE MODERN LIBRARY

BENNETT A. CERF * DONALD S. KLOPPER * ROBERT K. HAAS

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed by Parkway Printing Company * Bound by H. Wolff




TO THE PURE SOUL OF

MY SISTER HENRIETTE

_Who Died at Byblus on the 24th of September, 1861_


Dost thou recall, from the bosom of God where thou reposest, those
long days at Ghazir, in which, alone with thee, I wrote these pages,
inspired by the places we had visited together? Silent at my side,
thou didst read and copy each sheet as soon as I had written it,
whilst the sea, the villages, the ravines, and the mountains, were
spread at our feet. When the overwhelming light had given place to the
innumerable army of stars, thy shrewd and subtle questions, thy
discreet doubts, led me back to the sublime object of our common
thoughts. One day thou didst tell me that thou wouldst love this
book--first, because it had been composed with thee, and also because
it pleased thee. Though at times thou didst fear for it the narrow
judgments of the frivolous, yet wert thou ever persuaded that all
truly religious souls would ultimately take pleasure in it. In the
midst of these sweet meditations, the Angel of Death struck us both
with his wing: the sleep of fever seized us at the same time--I awoke
alone!... Thou sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy
Byblus and the sacred stream where the women of the ancient mysteries
came to mingle their tears. Reveal to me, O good genius, to me whom
thou lovedst, those truths which conquer death, deprive it of terror,
and make it almost beloved.




PREFACE


In presenting an English version of the celebrated work of M. Renan,
the translator is aware of the difficulty of adequately rendering a
work so admirable for its style and beauty of composition. It is not
an easy task to reproduce the terseness and eloquence which
characterize the original. Whatever its success in these respects may
be, no pains have been spared to give the author's meaning. The
translation has been revised by highly competent persons; but although
great care has been taken in this respect, it is possible that a few
errors may still have escaped notice.

The great problem of the present age is to preserve the religious
spirit, whilst getting rid of the superstitions and absurdities that
deform it, and which are alike opposed to science and common sense.
The works of Mr. F.W. Newman and of Bishop Colenso, and the "Essays
and Reviews," are rendering great service in this direction. The work
of M. Renan will contribute to this object; and, if its utility may be
measured by the storm which it has created amongst the _obscurantists_
in France, and the heartiness with which they have condemned it, its
merits in this respect must be very great. It needs only to be added,
that whilst warmly sympathizing with the earnest spirit which pervades
the book, the translator by no means wishes to be identified with all
the opinions therein expressed.

_December 8, 1863._




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE

Introduction, by John Haynes Holmes                                 15

Introduction, in Which the Sources of This History Are Principally
Treated                                                             25

CHAPTER I

Place of Jesus in the History of the World                          67

CHAPTER II

Infancy and Youth of Jesus--His First Impressions                   81

CHAPTER III

Education of Jesus                                                  89

CHAPTER IV

The Order of Thought Which Surrounded the Development
of Jesus                                                            99

CHAPTER V

The First Saying of Jesus--His Ideas of a Divine Father
and of a Pure Religion--First Disciples                            119

CHAPTER VI

John the Baptist--Visit of Jesus to John, and His Abode in
the Desert of Judea--Adoption of the Baptism of John               135

CHAPTER VII

Development of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom
of God                                                             148

CHAPTER VIII

Jesus at Capernaum                                                 160

CHAPTER IX

The Disciples of Jesus                                             173

CHAPTER X

The Preachings on the Lake                                         184

CHAPTER XI

The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the
Poor                                                               194

CHAPTER XII

Embassy from John in Prison to Jesus--Death of John--Relations
of His School with That of Jesus                                   206

CHAPTER XIII

First Attempts on Jerusalem                                        213

CHAPTER XIV

Intercourse of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans            227

CHAPTER XV

Commencement of the Legends Concerning Jesus--His Own
Idea of His Supernatural Character                                 235

CHAPTER XVI

Miracles                                                           248

CHAPTER XVII

Definitive Form of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom
of God                                                             259

CHAPTER XVIII

Institutions of Jesus                                              273

CHAPTER XIX

Increasing Progression of Enthusiasm and of Exaltation             285

CHAPTER XX

Opposition to Jesus                                                295

CHAPTER XXI

Last Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem                                 305

CHAPTER XXII

Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus                               319

CHAPTER XXIII

Last Week of Jesus                                                 329

CHAPTER XXIV

Arrest and Trial of Jesus                                          344

CHAPTER XXV

Death of Jesus                                                     360

CHAPTER XXVI

Jesus in the Tomb                                                  370

CHAPTER XXVII

Fate of the Enemies of Jesus                                       376

CHAPTER XXVIII

Essential Character of the Work of Jesus                           381




AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION,

In Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated


A history of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to embrace all the
obscure, and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which extend
from the first beginnings of this religion up to the moment when its
existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of
all. Such a history would consist of four books. The first, which I
now present to the public, treats of the particular fact which has
served as the starting-point of the new religion, and is entirely
filled by the sublime person of the Founder. The second would treat of
the apostles and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the
revolutions which religious thought underwent in the first two
generations of Christianity. I would close this about the year 100, at
the time when the last friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the
books of the New Testament were fixed almost in the forms in which we
now read them. The third would exhibit the state of Christianity under
the Antonines. We should see it develop itself slowly, and sustain an
almost permanent war against the empire, which had just reached the
highest degree of administrative perfection, and, governed by
philosophers, combated in the new-born sect a secret and theocratic
society which obstinately denied and incessantly undermined it. This
book would cover the entire period of the second century. Lastly, the
fourth book would show the decisive progress which Christianity made
from the time of the Syrian emperors. We should see the learned
system of the Antonines crumble, the decadence of the ancient
civilization become irrevocable, Christianity profit from its ruin,
Syria conquer the whole West, and Jesus, in company with the gods and
the deified sages of Asia, take possession of a society for which
philosophy and a purely civil government no longer sufficed. It was
then that the religious ideas of the races grouped around the
Mediterranean became profoundly modified; that the Eastern religions
everywhere took precedence; that the Christian Church, having become
very numerous, totally forgot its dreams of a millennium, broke its
last ties with Judaism, and entered completely into the Greek and
Roman world. The contests and the literary labors of the third
century, which were carried on without concealment, would be described
only in their general features. I would relate still more briefly the
persecutions at the commencement of the fourth century, the last
effort of the empire to return to its former principles, which denied
to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would only
foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, reversed the
position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious movement
an official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its turn.

I know not whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to
complete a plan so vast. I shall be satisfied if, after having written
the _Life of Jesus_, I am permitted to relate, as I understand it, the
history of the apostles, the state of the Christian conscience during
the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the formation of the
cycle of legends concerning the resurrection, the first acts of the
Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of
Nero, the appearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the
foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation
of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor
originated by John. Everything pales by the side of that marvellous
first century. By a peculiarity rare in history, we see much better
what passed in the Christian world from the year 50 to the year 75,
than from the year 100 to the year 150.

The plan followed in this history has prevented the introduction into
the text of long critical dissertations upon controverted points. A
continuous system of notes enables the reader to verify from the
authorities all the statements of the text. These notes are strictly
limited to quotations from the primary sources; that is to say, the
original passages upon which each assertion or conjecture rests. I
know that for persons little accustomed to studies of this kind many
other explanations would have been necessary. But it is not my
practice to do over again what has been already done well. To cite
only books written in French, those who will consult the following
excellent writings[1] will there find explained a number of points
upon which I have been obliged to be very brief:

     _Études Critiques sur l'Évangile de saint Matthieu_, par M.
     Albert Réville, pasteur de l'église Wallonne de
     Rotterdam.[2]

     _Histoire de la Théologie Chrétienne au Siècle Apostolique_,
     par M. Reuss, professeur à la Faculté de Théologie et au
     Séminaire Protestant de Strasbourg.[3]

     _Des Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs pendant les Deux
     Siècles Antérieurs à l'Ère Chrétienne_, par M. Michel
     Nicolas, professeur à la Faculté de Théologie Protestante de
     Montauban.[4]

     _Vie de Jésus_, par le Dr. Strauss; traduite par M. Littré,
     Membre de l'Institut.[5]

     _Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Chrétienne_, publiée
     sous la direction de M. Colani, de 1850 à 1857.--_Nouvelle
     Revue de Théologie_, faisant suite à la précédente depuis
     1858.[6]

[Footnote 1: While this work was in the press, a book has appeared
which I do not hesitate to add to this list, although I have not read
it with the attention it deserves--_Les Évangiles_, par M. Gustave
d'Eichthal. Première Partie: _Examen Critique et Comparatif des Trois
Premiers Évangiles_. Paris, Hachette, 1863.]

[Footnote 2: Leyde, Noothoven van Goor, 1862. Paris, Cherbuliez. A
work crowned by the Society of The Hague for the defence of the
Christian religion.]

[Footnote 3: Strasbourg, Treuttel and Wurtz. 2nd edition. 1860. Paris,
Cherbuliez.]

[Footnote 4: Paris, Michel Lévy frères, 1860.]

[Footnote 5: Paris, Ladrange. 2nd edition, 1856.]

[Footnote 6: Strasbourg, Treuttel and Wurtz. Paris, Cherbuliez.]

The criticism of the details of the Gospel texts especially, has been
done by Strauss in a manner which leaves little to be desired.
Although Strauss may be mistaken in his theory of the compilation of
the Gospels;[1] and although his book has, in my opinion, the fault of
taking up the theological ground too much, and the historical ground
too little,[2] it will be necessary, in order to understand the
motives which have guided me amidst a crowd of minutiæ, to study the
always judicious, though sometimes rather subtle argument, of the
book, so well translated by my learned friend, M. Littré.

[Footnote 1: The great results obtained on this point have only been
acquired since the first edition of Strauss's work. The learned critic
has, besides, done justice to them with much candor in his after
editions.]

[Footnote 2: It is scarcely necessary to repeat that not a word in
Strauss's work justifies the strange and absurd calumny by which it
has been attempted to bring into disrepute with superficial persons, a
work so agreeable, accurate, thoughtful, and conscientious, though
spoiled in its general parts by an exclusive system. Not only has
Strauss never denied the existence of Jesus, but each page of his book
implies this existence. The truth is, Strauss supposes the individual
character of Jesus less distinct for us than it perhaps is in
reality.]

I do not believe I have neglected any source of information as to
ancient evidences. Without speaking of a crowd of other scattered
data, there remain, respecting Jesus, and the time in which he lived,
five great collections of writings--1st, The Gospels, and the
writings of the New Testament in general; 2d, The compositions called
the "Apocrypha of the Old Testament;" 3d, The works of Philo; 4th,
Those of Josephus; 5th, The Talmud. The writings of Philo have the
priceless advantage of showing us the thoughts which, in the time of
Jesus, fermented in minds occupied with great religious questions.
Philo lived, it is true, in quite a different province of Judaism to
Jesus, but, like him, he was very free from the littlenesses which
reigned at Jerusalem; Philo is truly the elder brother of Jesus. He
was sixty-two years old when the Prophet of Nazareth was at the height
of his activity, and he survived him at least ten years. What a pity
that the chances of life did not conduct him into Galilee! What would
he not have taught us!

Josephus, writing specially for pagans, is not so candid. His short
notices of Jesus, of John the Baptist, of Judas the Gaulonite, are dry
and colorless. We feel that he seeks to present these movements, so
profoundly Jewish in character and spirit, under a form which would be
intelligible to Greeks and Romans. I believe the passage respecting
Jesus[1] to be authentic. It is perfectly in the style of Josephus,
and if this historian has made mention of Jesus, it is thus that he
must have spoken of him. We feel only that a Christian hand has
retouched the passage, has added a few words--without which it would
almost have been blasphemous[2]--has perhaps retrenched or modified
some expressions.[3] It must be recollected that the literary fortune
of Josephus was made by the Christians, who adopted his writings as
essential documents of their sacred history. They made, probably in
the second century, an edition corrected according to Christian
ideas.[4] At all events, that which constitutes the immense interest
of Josephus on the subject which occupies us, is the clear light which
he throws upon the period. Thanks to him, Herod, Herodias, Antipas,
Philip, Annas, Caiaphas, and Pilate are personages whom we can touch
with the finger, and whom we see living before us with a striking
reality.

[Footnote 1: _Ant._, XVIII. iii. 3.]

[Footnote 2: "If it be lawful to call him a man."]

[Footnote 3: In place of [Greek: christos outos ên], he certainly had
these [Greek: christos outos elegeto].--Cf. _Ant._, XX. ix. 1.]

[Footnote 4: Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl._, i. 11, and _Demonstr. Evang._,
iii. 5) cites the passage respecting Jesus as we now read it in
Josephus. Origen (_Contra Celsus_, i. 47; ii. 13) and Eusebius (_Hist.
Eccl._, ii. 23) cite another Christian interpolation, which is not
found in any of the manuscripts of Josephus which have come down to
us.]

The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, especially the Jewish part
of the Sibylline verses, and the Book of Enoch, together with the Book
of Daniel, which is also really an Apocrypha, have a primary
importance in the history of the development of the Messianic
theories, and for the understanding of the conceptions of Jesus
respecting the kingdom of God. The Book of Enoch especially, which was
much read at the time of Jesus,[1] gives us the key to the expression
"Son of Man," and to the ideas attached to it. The ages of these
different books, thanks to the labors of Alexander, Ewald, Dillmann,
and Reuss, is now beyond doubt. Every one is agreed in placing the
compilation of the most important of them in the second and first
centuries before Jesus Christ. The date of the Book of Daniel is still
more certain. The character of the two languages in which it is
written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise, dated
announcement of events, which reach even to the time of Antiochus
Epiphanes, the incorrect descriptions of Ancient Babylonia, there
given, the general tone of the book, which in no respect recalls the
writings of the captivity, but, on the contrary, responds, by a crowd
of analogies, to the beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of
the time of the Seleucidæ; the Apocalyptic form of the visions, the
place of the book in the Hebrew canon, out of the series of the
prophets, the omission of Daniel in the panegyrics of Chapter xlix. of
Ecclesiasticus, in which his position is all but indicated, and many
other proofs which have been deduced a hundred times, do not permit of
a doubt that the Book of Daniel was but the fruit of the great
excitement produced among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. It
is not in the old prophetical literature that we must class this book,
but rather at the head of Apocalyptic literature, as the first model
of a kind of composition, after which come the various Sibylline
poems, the Book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of John, the Ascension of
Isaiah, and the Fourth Book of Esdras.

[Footnote 1: Jude Epist. 14.]

In the history of the origin of Christianity, the Talmud has hitherto
been too much neglected. I think with M. Geiger, that the true notion
of the circumstances which surrounded the development of Jesus must be
sought in this strange compilation, in which so much precious
information is mixed with the most insignificant scholasticism. The
Christian and the Jewish theology having in the main followed two
parallel ways, the history of the one cannot well be understood
without the history of the other. Innumerable important details in the
Gospels find, moreover, their commentary in the Talmud. The vast Latin
collections of Lightfoot, Schoettgen, Buxtorf, and Otho contained
already a mass of information on this point. I have imposed on myself
the task of verifying in the original all the citations which I have
admitted, without a single exception. The assistance which has been
given me for this part of my task by a learned Israelite, M. Neubauer,
well versed in Talmudic literature, has enabled me to go further, and
to clear up the most intricate parts of my subject by new researches.
The distinction of epochs is here most important, the compilation of
the Talmud extending from the year 200 to about the year 500. We have
brought to it as much discernment as is possible in the actual state
of these studies. Dates so recent will excite some fears among persons
habituated to accord value to a document only for the period in which
it was written. But such scruples would here be out of place. The
teaching of the Jews from the Asmonean epoch down to the second
century was principally oral. We must not judge of this state of
intelligence by the habits of an age of much writing. The Vedas, and
the ancient Arabian poems, have been preserved for ages from memory,
and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form.
In the Talmud, on the contrary, the form has no value. Let us add that
before the _Mishnah_ of Judas the Saint, which has caused all others
to be forgotten, there were attempts at compilation, the commencement
of which is probably much earlier than is commonly supposed. The style
of the Talmud is that of loose notes; the collectors did no more
probably than classify under certain titles the enormous mass of
writings which had been accumulating in the different schools for
generations.

It remains for us to speak of the documents which, presenting
themselves as biographies of the Founder of Christianity, must
naturally hold the first place in a _Life of Jesus_. A complete
treatise upon the compilation of the Gospels would be a work of
itself. Thanks to the excellent researches of which this question has
been the object during thirty years, a problem which was formerly
judged insurmountable has obtained a solution which, though it leaves
room for many uncertainties, fully suffices for the necessities of
history. We shall have occasion to return to this in our Second Book,
the composition of the Gospels having been one of the most important
facts for the future of Christianity in the second half of the first
century. We will touch here only a single aspect of the subject, that
which is indispensable to the completeness of our narrative. Leaving
aside all which belongs to the portraiture of the apostolic times, we
will inquire only in what degree the data furnished by the Gospels may
be employed in a history formed according to rational principles.[1]

[Footnote 1: Persons who wish to read more ample explanations, may
consult, in addition to the work of M. Réville, previously cited, the
writings of Reuss and Scherer in the _Revue de Théologie_, vol. x.,
xi., xv.; new series, ii., iii., iv.; and that of Nicolas in the
_Revue Germanique_, Sept. and Dec., 1862; April and June, 1863.]

That the Gospels are in part legendary, is evident, since they are
full of miracles and of the supernatural; but legends have not all the
same value. No one doubts the principal features of the life of
Francis d'Assisi, although we meet the supernatural at every step. No
one, on the other hand, accords credit to the _Life of Apollonius of
Tyana_, because it was written long after the time of the hero, and
purely as a romance. At what time, by what hands, under what
circumstances, have the Gospels been compiled? This is the primary
question upon which depends the opinion to be formed of their
credibility.

Each of the four Gospels bears at its head the name of a personage,
known either in the apostolic history, or in the Gospel history
itself. These four personages are not strictly given us as the
authors. The formulæ "according to Matthew," "according to Mark,"
"according to Luke," "according to John," do not imply that, in the
most ancient opinion, these recitals were written from beginning to
end by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,[1] they merely signify that
these were the traditions proceeding from each of these apostles, and
claiming their authority. It is clear that, if these titles are exact,
the Gospels, without ceasing to be in part legendary, are of great
value, since they enable us to go back to the half century which
followed the death of Jesus, and in two instances, even to the
eye-witnesses of his actions.

[Footnote 1: In the same manner we say, "The Gospel according to the
Hebrews," "The Gospel according to the Egyptians."]

Firstly, as to Luke, doubt is scarcely possible. The Gospel of Luke is
a regular composition, founded on anterior documents.[1] It is the
work of a man who selects, prunes, and combines. The author of this
Gospel is certainly the same as that of the Acts of the Apostles.[2]
Now, the author of the Acts is a companion of St. Paul,[3] a title
which applies to Luke exactly.[4] I know that more than one objection
may be raised against this reasoning; but one thing, at least, is
beyond doubt, namely, that the author of the third Gospel and of the
Acts was a man of the second apostolic generation, and that is
sufficient for our object. The date of this Gospel can moreover be
determined with much precision by considerations drawn from the book
itself. The twenty-first chapter of Luke, inseparable from the rest of
the work, was certainly written after the siege of Jerusalem, and but
a short time after.[5] We are here, then, upon solid ground; for we
are concerned with a work written entirely by the same hand, and of
the most perfect unity.

[Footnote 1: Luke i. 1-4.]

[Footnote 2: _Acts_ i. 1. Compare Luke i. 1-4.]

[Footnote 3: From xvi. 10, the author represents himself as
eye-witness.]

[Footnote 4: 2 Tim. iv. 11; Philemon 24; Col. iv. 14. The name of
_Lucas_ (contraction of _Lucanus_) being very rare, we need not fear
one of those homonyms which cause so many perplexities in questions of
criticism relative to the New Testament.]

[Footnote 5: Verses 9, 20, 24, 28, 32. Comp. xxii. 36.]

The Gospels of Matthew and Mark have not nearly the same stamp of
individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author
totally disappears. A proper name written at the head of works of this
kind does not amount to much. But if the Gospel of Luke is dated,
those of Matthew and Mark are dated also; for it is certain that the
third Gospel is posterior to the first two and exhibits the character
of a much more advanced compilation. We have, besides, on this point,
an excellent testimony from a writer of the first half of the second
century--namely, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave man, a man of
traditions, who was all his life seeking to collect whatever could be
known of the person of Jesus.[1] After having declared that on such
matters he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two
writings on the acts and words of Christ: First, a writing of Mark,
the interpreter of the apostle Peter, written briefly, incomplete, and
not arranged in chronological order, including narratives and
discourses, ([Greek: lechthenta ê prachthenta],) composed from the
information and recollections of the apostle Peter; second, a
collection of sentences ([Greek: logia]) written in Hebrew[2] by
Matthew, "and which each one has translated as he could." It is
certain that these two descriptions answer pretty well to the general
physiognomy of the two books now called "Gospel according to Matthew,"
"Gospel according to Mark"--the first characterized by its long
discourses; the second, above all, by anecdote--much more exact than
the first upon small facts, brief even to dryness, containing few
discourses, and indifferently composed. That these two works, such as
we now read them, are absolutely similar to those read by Papias,
cannot be sustained: Firstly, because the writings of Matthew were to
Papias solely discourses in Hebrew, of which there were in circulation
very varying translations; and, secondly, because the writings of Mark
and Matthew were to him profoundly distinct, written without any
knowledge of each other, and, as it seems, in different languages.
Now, in the present state of the texts, the "Gospel according to
Matthew" and the "Gospel according to Mark" present parallel parts so
long and so perfectly identical, that it must be supposed, either that
the final compiler of the first had the second under his eyes, or
_vice versa_, or that both copied from the same prototype. That which
appears the most likely, is, that we have not the entirely original
compilations of either Matthew or Mark; but that our first two Gospels
are versions in which the attempt is made to fill up the gaps of the
one text by the other. Every one wished, in fact, to possess a
complete copy. He who had in his copy only discourses, wished to have
narratives, and _vice versa_. It is thus that "the Gospel according to
Matthew" is found to have included almost all the anecdotes of Mark,
and that "the Gospel according to Mark" now contains numerous
features which come from the _Logia_ of Matthew. Every one, besides,
drew largely on the Gospel tradition then current. This tradition was
so far from having been exhausted by the Gospels, that the Acts of the
Apostles and the most ancient Fathers quote many words of Jesus which
appear authentic, and are not found in the Gospels we possess.

[Footnote 1: In Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, iii. 39. No doubt whatever
can be raised as to the authenticity of this passage. Eusebius, in
fact, far from exaggerating the authority of Papias, is embarrassed at
his simple ingenuousness, at his gross millenarianism, and solves the
difficulty by treating him as a man of little mind. Comp. Irenæus,
_Adv. Hær._, iii. 1.]

[Footnote 2: That is to say, in the Semitic dialect.]

It matters little for our present object to push this delicate
analysis further, and to endeavor to reconstruct in some manner, on
the one hand, the original _Logia_ of Matthew, and, on the other, the
primitive narrative such as it left the pen of Mark. The _Logia_ are
doubtless represented by the great discourses of Jesus which fill a
considerable part of the first Gospel. These discourses form, in fact,
when detached from the rest, a sufficiently complete whole. As to the
narratives of the first and second Gospels, they seem to have for
basis a common document, of which the text reappears sometimes in the
one and sometimes in the other, and of which the second Gospel, such
as we read it to-day, is but a slightly modified reproduction. In
other words, the scheme of the _Life of Jesus_, in the synoptics,
rests upon two original documents--first, the discourses of Jesus
collected by Matthew; second, the collection of anecdotes and personal
reminiscences which Mark wrote from the recollections of Peter. We may
say that we have these two documents still, mixed with accounts from
another source, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without
reason, the name of the "Gospel _according_ to Matthew" and of the
"Gospel _according_ to Mark."

What is indubitable, in any case, is, that very early the discourses
of Jesus were written in the Aramean language, and very early also his
remarkable actions were recorded. These were not texts defined and
fixed dogmatically. Besides the Gospels which have come to us, there
were a number of others professing to represent the tradition of
eye-witnesses.[1] Little importance was attached to these writings,
and the preservers, such as Papias, greatly preferred oral
tradition.[2] As men still believed that the world was nearly at an
end, they cared little to compose books for the future; it was
sufficient merely to preserve in their hearts a lively image of him
whom they hoped soon to see again in the clouds. Hence the little
authority which the Gospel texts enjoyed during one hundred and fifty
years. There was no scruple in inserting additions, in variously
combining them, and in completing some by others. The poor man who has
but one book wishes that it may contain all that is clear to his
heart. These little books were lent, each one transcribed in the
margin of his copy the words, and the parables he found elsewhere,
which touched him.[3] The most beautiful thing in the world has thus
proceeded from an obscure and purely popular elaboration. No
compilation was of absolute value. Justin, who often appeals to that
which he calls "The Memoirs of the Apostles,"[4] had under his notice
Gospel documents in a state very different from that in which we
possess them. At all events, he never cares to quote them textually.
The Gospel quotations in the pseudo-Clementinian writings, of
Ebionite origin, present the same character. The spirit was
everything; the letter was nothing. It was when tradition became
weakened, in the second half of the second century, that the texts
bearing the names of the apostles took a decisive authority and
obtained the force of law.

[Footnote 1: Luke i. 1, 2; Origen, _Hom. in Luc._ 1 init.; St. Jerome,
_Comment. in Matt._, prol.]

[Footnote 2: Papias, in Eusebius, _H.E._, iii. 39. Comp. Irenæus,
_Adv. Hær._, III. ii. and iii.]

[Footnote 3: It is thus that the beautiful narrative in John viii.
1-11 has always floated, without finding a fixed place in the
framework of the received Gospels.]

[Footnote 4: [Greek: Ta apomnêmoneumata tôn apostolôn, a kaleitai
euangelia]. Justin, _Apol._ i. 33, 66, 67; _Dial. cum Tryph._, 10,
100-107.]

Who does not see the value of documents thus composed of the tender
remembrances, and simple narratives, of the first two Christian
generations, still full of the strong impression which the illustrious
Founder had produced, and which seemed long to survive him? Let us
add, that the Gospels in question seem to proceed from that branch of
the Christian family which stood nearest to Jesus. The last work of
compilation, at least of the text which bears the name of Matthew,
appears to have been done in one of the countries situated at the
northeast of Palestine, such as Gaulonitis, Auranitis, Batanea, where
many Christians took refuge at the time of the Roman war, where were
found relatives of Jesus[1] even in the second century, and where the
first Galilean tendency was longer preserved than in other parts.

[Footnote 1: Julius Africanus, in Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, i. 7.]

So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels named the synoptics.
There remains a fourth, that which bears the name of John. Concerning
this one, doubts have a much better foundation, and the question is
further from solution. Papias--who was connected with the school of
John, and who, if not one of his auditors, as Irenæus thinks,
associated with his immediate disciples, among others, Aristion, and
the one called _Presbyteros Joannes_--says not a word of a _Life of
Jesus_, written by John, although he had zealously collected the oral
narratives of both Aristion and _Presbyteros Joannes_. If any such
mention had been found in his work, Eusebius, who points out
everything therein that can contribute to the literary history of the
apostolic age, would doubtless have mentioned it.

The intrinsic difficulties drawn from the perusal of the fourth Gospel
itself are not less strong. How is it that, side by side with
narration so precise, and so evidently that of an eye-witness, we find
discourses so totally different from those of Matthew? How is it that,
connected with a general plan of the life of Jesus, which appears much
more satisfactory and exact than that of the synoptics, these singular
passages occur in which we are sensible of a dogmatic interest
peculiar to the compiler, of ideas foreign to Jesus, and sometimes of
indications which place us on our guard against the good faith of the
narrator? Lastly, how is it that, united with views the most pure, the
most just, the most truly evangelical, we find these blemishes which
we would fain regard as the interpolations of an ardent sectarian? Is
it indeed John, son of Zebedee, brother of James (of whom there is not
a single mention made in the fourth Gospel), who is able to write in
Greek these lessons of abstract metaphysics to which neither the
synoptics nor the Talmud offer any analogy? All this is of great
importance; and for myself, I dare not be sure that the fourth Gospel
has been entirely written by the pen of a Galilean fisherman. But
that, as a whole, this Gospel may have originated toward the end of
the first century, from the great school of Asia Minor, which was
connected with John, that it represents to us a version of the life of
the Master, worthy of high esteem, and often to be preferred, is
demonstrated, in a manner which leaves us nothing to be desired, both
by exterior evidences and by examination of the document itself.

And, firstly, no one doubts that, toward the year 150, the fourth
Gospel did exist, and was attributed to John. Explicit texts from St.
Justin,[1] from Athenagorus,[2] from Tatian,[3] from Theophilus of
Antioch,[4] from Irenæus,[5] show that thenceforth this Gospel mixed
in every controversy, and served as corner-stone for the development
of the faith. Irenæus is explicit; now, Irenæus came from the school
of John, and between him and the apostle there was only Polycarp. The
part played by this Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system
of Valentinus,[6] in Montanism,[7] and in the quarrel of the
Quartodecimans,[8] is not less decisive. The school of John was the
most influential one during the second century; and it is only by
regarding the origin of the Gospel as coincident with the rise of the
school, that the existence of the latter can be understood at all. Let
us add that the first epistle attributed to St. John is certainly by
the same author as the fourth Gospel,[9] now, this epistle is
recognized as from John by Polycarp,[10] Papias,[11] and Irenæus.[12]

[Footnote 1: _Apol._, 32, 61; _Dial. cum Tryph._, 88.]

[Footnote 2: _Legatio pro Christ_, 10.]

[Footnote 3: _Adv. Græc._, 5, 7; Cf. Eusebius, _H.E._, iv. 29;
Theodoret, _Hæretic. Fabul._, i. 20.]

[Footnote 4: _Ad Autolycum_, ii. 22.]

[Footnote 5: _Adv. Hær._, II. xxii. 5, III. 1. Cf. Eus., _H.E._, v.
8.]

[Footnote 6: Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, I. iii. 6; III. xi. 7; St.
Hippolytus, _Philosophumena_ VI. ii. 29, and following.]

[Footnote 7: Irenæus, _Adv. Hær._, III. xi. 9.]

[Footnote 8: Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, v. 24.]

[Footnote 9: John, i. 3, 5. The two writings present the most complete
identity of style, the same peculiarities, the same favorite
expressions.]

[Footnote 10: _Epist. ad Philipp._, 7.]

[Footnote 11: In Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._, III. 39.]

[Footnote 12: _Adv. Hær._, III. xvi. 5, 8; Cf. Eusebius, _Hist.
Eccl._, v. 8.]

But it is, above all, the perusal of the work itself which is
calculated to give this impression. The author always speaks as an
eye-witness; he wishes to pass for the apostle John. If, then, this
work is not really by the apostle, we must admit a fraud of which the
author convicts himself. Now, although the ideas of the time
respecting literary honesty differed essentially from ours, there is
no example in the apostolic world of a falsehood of this kind.
Besides, not only does the author wish to pass for the apostle John,
but we see clearly that he writes in the interest of this apostle. On
each page he betrays the desire to fortify his authority, to show that
he has been the favorite of Jesus;[1] that in all the solemn
circumstances (at the Lord's supper, at Calvary, at the tomb) he held
the first place. His relations on the whole fraternal, although not
excluding a certain rivalry with Peter;[2] his hatred, on the
contrary, of Judas,[3] a hatred probably anterior to the betrayal,
seems to pierce through here and there. We are tempted to believe that
John, in his old age, having read the Gospel narratives, on the one
hand, remarked their various inaccuracies,[4] on the other, was hurt
at seeing that there was not accorded to him a sufficiently high place
in the history of Christ; that then he commenced to dictate a number
of things which he knew better than the rest, with the intention of
showing that in many instances, in which only Peter was spoken of, he
had figured with him and even before him.[5] Already during the life
of Jesus, these trifling sentiments of jealousy had been manifested
between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples. After the death
of James, his brother, John remained sole inheritor of the intimate
remembrances of which these two apostles, by the common consent, were
the depositaries. Hence his perpetual desire to recall that he is the
last surviving eye-witness,[6] and the pleasure which he takes in
relating circumstances which he alone could know. Hence, too, so many
minute details which seem like the commentaries of an annotator--"it
was the sixth hour;" "it was night;" "the servant's name was Malchus;"
"they had made a fire of coals, for it was cold;" "the coat was
without seam." Hence, lastly, the disorder of the compilation, the
irregularity of the narration, the disjointedness of the first
chapters, all so many inexplicable features on the supposition that
this Gospel was but a theological thesis, without historic value, and
which, on the contrary, are perfectly intelligible, if, in conformity
with tradition, we see in them the remembrances of an old man,
sometimes of remarkable freshness, sometimes having undergone strange
modifications.

[Footnote 1: John xiii. 23, xix. 26, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20.]

[Footnote 2: John xviii. 15-16, xx. 2-6, xxi. 15-16. Comp. i. 35, 40,
41.]

[Footnote 3: John vi. 65, xii. 6, xiii. 21, and following.]

[Footnote 4: The manner in which Aristion and _Presbyteros Joannes_
expressed themselves on the Gospel of Mark before Papias (Eusebius,
_H.E._, III. 39) implies, in effect, a friendly criticism, or, more
properly, a sort of excuse, indicating that John's disciples had
better information on the same subject.]

[Footnote 5: Compare John xviii. 15, and following, with Matthew xxvi.
58; John xx. 2 to 6, with Mark xvi. 7. See also John xiii. 24, 25.]

[Footnote 6: Chap. i. 14, xix. 35, xxi. 24, and following. Compare the
First Epistle of St. John, chap. i. 3, 5.]

A primary distinction, indeed, ought to be made in the Gospel of John.
On the one side, this Gospel presents us with a rough draft of the
life of Jesus, which differs considerably from that of the synoptics.
On the other, it puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses of which the
tone, the style, the treatment, and the doctrines have nothing in
common with the _Logia_ given us by the synoptics. In this second
respect, the difference is such that we must make choice in a decisive
manner. If Jesus spoke as Matthew represents, he could not have
spoken as John relates. Between these two authorities no critic has
ever hesitated, or can ever hesitate. Far removed from the simple,
disinterested, impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John
shows incessantly the preoccupation of the apologist--the mental
reservation of the sectarian, the desire to prove a thesis, and to
convince adversaries.[1] It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy,
badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus
founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us that Matthew
wrote the sayings of Jesus in their original tongue, the natural,
ineffable truth, the charm beyond comparison of the discourses in the
synoptics, their profoundly Hebraistic idiom, the analogies which they
present with the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their
perfect harmony with the natural phenomena of Galilee--all these
characteristics, compared with the obscure Gnosticism, with the
distorted metaphysics, which fill the discourses of John, would speak
loudly enough. This by no means implies that there are not in the
discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits which truly come
from Jesus.[2] But the mystic tone of these discourses does not
correspond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as
we picture it according to the synoptics. A new spirit has breathed;
Gnosticism has already commenced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of
God is finished; the hope of the near advent of Christ is more
distant; we enter on the barrenness of metaphysics, into the darkness
of abstract dogma. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and, if the son
of Zebedee has truly traced these pages, he had certainly, in writing
them, quite forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth, and the charming
discourses which he had heard upon its shores.

[Footnote 1: See, for example, chaps. ix. and xi. Notice especially,
the effect which such passages as John xix. 35, xx. 31, xxi. 20-23,
24, 25, produce, when we recall the absence of all comments which
distinguishes the synoptics.]

[Footnote 2: For example, chap. iv. 1, and following, xv. 12, and
following. Many words remembered by John are found in the synoptics
(chap. xii. 16, xv. 20).]

One circumstance, moreover, which strongly proves that the discourses
given us by the fourth Gospel are not historical, but compositions
intended to cover with the authority of Jesus certain doctrines dear
to the compiler, is their perfect harmony with the intellectual state
of Asia Minor at the time when they were written. Asia Minor was then
the theatre of a strange movement of syncretical philosophy; all the
germs of Gnosticism existed there already. John appears to have drunk
deeply from these strange springs. It may be that, after the crisis of
the year 68 (the date of the Apocalypse) and of the year 70 (the
destruction of Jerusalem), the old apostle, with an ardent and plastic
spirit, disabused of the belief in a near appearance of the Son of Man
in the clouds, may have inclined toward the ideas that he found around
him, of which several agreed sufficiently well with certain Christian
doctrines. In attributing these new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a
very natural tendency. Our remembrances are transformed with our
circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have known changes as we
change.[1] Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could
not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the
truth.

[Footnote 1: It was thus that Napoleon became a liberal in the
remembrances of his companions in exile, when these, after their
return, found themselves thrown in the midst of the political society
of the time.]

If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had
little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than
by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes,
coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very
different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. In fact, certain
portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the
entire twenty-first chapter,[1] in which the author seems to wish to
render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to
the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from
the death of John himself, (ver. 21-23.) Many other places bear the
trace of erasures and corrections.[2] It is impossible at this
distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many
surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate
the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than
once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a
decisive test. Every one who sets himself to write the Life of Jesus
without any predetermined theory as to the relative value of the
Gospels, letting himself be guided solely by the sentiment of the
subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narration of
John to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus
especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of
the passion, unintelligible in the synoptics,[3] resume both
probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On
the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of Jesus with any
meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner
of incessantly preaching and demonstrating himself, this perpetual
argumentation, this stage-effect devoid of simplicity, these long
arguments after each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the
tone of which is so often false and unequal,[4] would not be tolerated
by a man of taste compared with the delightful sentences of the
synoptics. There are here evidently artificial portions,[5] which
represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render
us the conversations of Socrates. They are, so to speak, the
variations of a musician improvising on a given theme. The theme is
not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination
of the artist has given itself full scope. We are sensible of the
factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.[6] Let us add
that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of
which we speak. The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so
familiar to the Master,[7] occurs there but once.[8] On the other
hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth
Gospel, presents the most complete analogy with that of the Epistles
of St. John; we see that in writing the discourses, the author
followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat monotonous
movement of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is
introduced, a language of which the synoptics had not the least idea
("world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.). If Jesus had
ever spoken in this style, which has nothing of Hebrew, nothing
Jewish, nothing Talmudic in it, how, if I may thus express myself, is
it that but a single one of his hearers should have so well kept the
secret?

[Footnote 1: The verses, chap. xx. 30, 31, evidently form the original
conclusion.]

[Footnote 2: Chap. vi. 2, 22, vii. 22.]

[Footnote 3: For example, that which concerns the announcement of the
betrayal by Judas.]

[Footnote 4: See, for example, chaps. ii. 25, iii. 32, 33, and the
long disputes of chapters vii., viii., and ix.]

[Footnote 5: We feel often that the author seeks pretexts for
introducing certain discourses (chaps. iii., v., viii., xiii., and
following).]

[Footnote 6: For example, chap. xvii.]

[Footnote 7: Besides the synoptics, the Acts, the Epistles of St.
Paul, and the Apocalypse, confirm it.]

[Footnote 8: John iii. 3, 5.]

Literary history offers, besides, another example, which presents the
greatest analogy with the historic phenomenon we have just described,
and serves to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, never wrote, is
known to us by two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato, the first
corresponding to the synoptics in his clear, transparent, impersonal
compilation; the second recalling the author of the fourth Gospel, by
his vigorous individuality. In order to describe the Socratic
teaching, should we follow the "dialogues" of Plato, or the
"discourses" of Xenophon? Doubt, in this respect, is not possible;
every one chooses the "discourses," and not the "dialogues." Does
Plato, however, teach us nothing about Socrates? Would it be good
criticism, in writing the biography of the latter, to neglect the
"dialogues"? Who would venture to maintain this? The analogy,
moreover, is not complete, and the difference is in favor of the
fourth Gospel. The author of this Gospel is, in fact, the better
biographer; as if Plato, who, whilst attributing to his master
fictitious discourses, had known important matters about his life,
which Xenophon ignored entirely.

Without pronouncing upon the material question as to what hand has
written the fourth Gospel, and whilst inclined to believe that the
discourses, at least, are not from the son of Zebedee, we admit still,
that it is indeed "the Gospel according to John," in the same sense
that the first and second Gospels are the Gospels "according to
Matthew," and "according to Mark." The historical sketch of the fourth
Gospel is the Life of Jesus, such as it was known in the school of
John; it is the recital which Aristion and _Presbyteros Joannes_ made
to Papias, without telling him that it was written, or rather
attaching no importance to this point. I must add, that, in my
opinion, this school was better acquainted with the exterior
circumstances of the life of the Founder than the group whose
remembrances constituted the synoptics. It had, especially upon the
sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem, data which the others did not possess.
The disciples of this school treated Mark as an indifferent
biographer, and devised a system to explain his omissions.[1] Certain
passages of Luke, where there is, as it were, an echo of the
traditions of John,[2] prove also that these traditions were not
entirely unknown to the rest of the Christian family.

[Footnote 1: Papias, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 2: For example, the pardon of the adulteress; the knowledge
which Luke has of the family of Bethany; his type of the character of
Martha responding to the [Greek: diêchouei] of John (chap. xii. 2);
the incident of the woman who wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair;
an obscure notion of the travels of Jesus to Jerusalem; the idea that
in his passion he was seen by three witnesses; the opinion of the
author that some disciples were present at the crucifixion; the
knowledge which he has of the part played by Annas in aiding Caiaphas;
the appearance of the angel in the agony (comp. John xii. 28, 29).]

These explanations will suffice, I think, to show, in the course of my
narrative, the motives which have determined me to give the preference
to this or that of the four guides whom we have for the _Life of
Jesus_. On the whole, I admit as authentic the four canonical Gospels.
All, in my opinion, date from the first century, and the authors are,
generally speaking, those to whom they are attributed; but their
historic value is very diverse. Matthew evidently merits an unlimited
confidence as to the discourses; they are the _Logia_, the identical
notes taken from a clear and lively remembrance of the teachings of
Jesus. A kind of splendor at once mild and terrible--a divine
strength, if we may so speak, emphasizes these words, detaches them
from the context, and renders them easily distinguishable. The person
who imposes upon himself the task of making a continuous narrative
from the gospel history, possesses, in this respect, an excellent
touchstone. The real words of Jesus disclose themselves; as soon as we
touch them in this chaos of traditions of varied authenticity, we feel
them vibrate; they betray themselves spontaneously, and shine out of
the narrative with unequaled brilliancy.

The narrative portions grouped in the first Gospel around this
primitive nucleus have not the same authority. There are many not well
defined legends which have proceeded from the zeal of the second
Christian generation.[1] The Gospel of Mark is much firmer, more
precise, containing fewer subsequent additions. He is the one of the
three synoptics who has remained the most primitive, the most
original, the one to whom the fewest after-elements have been added.
In Mark, the facts are related with a clearness for which we seek in
vain amongst the other evangelists. He likes to report certain words
of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean.[2] He is full of minute observations,
coming doubtless from an eye-witness. There is nothing to prevent our
agreeing with Papias in regarding this eye-witness, who evidently had
followed Jesus, who had loved him and observed him very closely, and
who had preserved a lively image of him, as the apostle Peter himself.

[Footnote 1: Chaps. i., ii., especially. See also chap. xxvii. 3, 19,
51, 53, 60, xxviii. 2, and following, in comparing Mark.]

[Footnote 2: Chap. v. 41, vii. 34, xv. 24. Matthew only presents this
peculiarity once (chap. xxvii. 46).]

As to the work of Luke, its historical value is sensibly weaker. It is
a document which comes to us second-hand. The narrative is more
mature. The words of Jesus are there, more deliberate, more
sententious. Some sentences are distorted and exaggerated.[1] Writing
outside of Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem,[2]
the author indicates the places with less exactitude than the other
two synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he
represents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions.[3]
He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives
agree;[4] he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on
account of a more exalted idea of the divinity of Christ;[5] he
exaggerates the marvellous;[6] commits errors in chronology;[7] omits
Hebraistic comments;[8] quotes no word of Jesus in this language, and
gives to all the localities their Greek names. We feel we have to do
with a compiler--with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses,
but who labors at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree.
Luke had probably under his eyes the biographical collection of Mark,
and the _Logia_ of Matthew. But he treats them with much freedom;
sometimes he fuses two anecdotes or two parables in one;[9] sometimes
he divides one in order to make two.[10] He interprets the documents
according to his own idea; he has not the absolute impassibility of
Matthew and Mark. We might affirm certain things of his individual
tastes and tendencies; he is a very exact devotee;[11] he insists that
Jesus had performed all the Jewish rites,[12] he is a warm Ebionite
and democrat, that is to say, much opposed to property, and persuaded
that the triumph of the poor is approaching;[13] he likes especially
all the anecdotes showing prominently the conversion of sinners--the
exaltation of the humble;[14] he often modifies the ancient traditions
in order to give them this meaning;[15] he admits into his first pages
the legends about the infancy of Jesus, related with the long
amplifications, the spiritual songs, and the conventional proceedings
which form the essential features of the Apocryphal Gospels. Finally,
he has in the narrative of the last hours of Jesus some circumstances
full of tender feeling, and certain words of Jesus of delightful
beauty,[16] which are not found in more authentic accounts, and in
which we detect the presence of legend. Luke probably borrowed them
from a more recent collection, in which the principal aim was to
excite sentiments of piety.

[Footnote 1: Chap. xiv. 26. The rules of the apostolate (chap. x.)
have there a peculiar character of exaltation.]

[Footnote 2: Chap. xix. 41, 43, 44, xxi. 9, 20, xxiii. 29.]

[Footnote 3: Chap. ii. 37, xviii. 10, and following, xxiv. 53.]

[Footnote 4: For example, chap. iv. 16.]

[Footnote 5: Chap. iii. 23. He omits Matt. xxiv. 36.]

[Footnote 6: Chap. iv. 14, xxii. 43, 44.]

[Footnote 7: For example, in that which concerns Quirinius, Lysanias,
Theudas.]

[Footnote 8: Compare Luke i. 31 with Matt. i. 21.]

[Footnote 9: For example, chap. xix. 12-27.]

[Footnote 10: Thus, of the repast at Bethany he gives two narratives,
chap. vii. 36-48, and x. 38-42.]

[Footnote 11: Chap. xxiii. 56.]

[Footnote 12: Chap. ii. 21, 22, 39, 41, 42. This is an Ebionitish
feature. Cf. _Philosophumena_ VII. vi. 34.]

[Footnote 13: The parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Compare chap.
vi. 20, and following, 24, and following, xii. 13, and following, xvi.
entirely, xxii. 35. _Acts_ ii. 44, 45, v. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 14: The woman who anoints his feet, Zaccheus, the penitent
thief, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and the prodigal
son.]

[Footnote 15: For example, Mary of Bethany is represented by him as a
sinner who becomes converted.]

[Footnote 16: Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the bloody sweat, the
meeting of the holy women, the penitent thief, &c. The speech to the
women of Jerusalem (xxiii. 28, 29) could scarcely have been conceived
except after the siege of the year 70.]

A great reserve was naturally enforced in presence of a document of
this nature. It would have been as uncritical to neglect it as to
employ it without discernment. Luke has had under his eyes originals
which we no longer possess. He is less an evangelist than a biographer
of Jesus, a "harmonizer," a corrector after the manner of Marcion and
Tatian. But he is a biographer of the first century, a divine artist,
who, independently of the information which he has drawn from more
ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a
happiness of treatment, with a uniform inspiration, and a distinctness
which the other two synoptics do not possess. In the perusal of his
Gospel there is the greatest charm; for to the incomparable beauty of
the foundation, common to them all, he adds a degree of skill in
composition which singularly augments the effect of the portrait,
without seriously injuring its truthfulness.

On the whole, we may say that the synoptical compilation has passed
through three stages: First, the original documentary state ([Greek:
logia] of Matthew, [Greek: lechthenta ê prachthenta] of Mark), primary
compilations which no longer exist; second, the state of simple
mixture, in which the original documents are amalgamated without any
effort at composition, without there appearing any personal bias of
the authors (the existing Gospels of Matthew and Mark); third, the
state of combination or of intentional and deliberate compiling, in
which we are sensible of an attempt to reconcile the different
versions (Gospel of Luke). The Gospel of John, as we have said, forms
a composition of another orders and is entirely distinct.

It will be remarked that I have made no use of the Apocryphal Gospels.
These compositions ought not in any manner to be put upon the same
footing as the canonical Gospels. They are insipid and puerile
amplifications, having the canonical Gospels for their basis, and
adding nothing thereto of any value. On the other hand, I have been
very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by the Fathers of the
Church, of the ancient Gospels which formerly existed parallel with
the canonical Gospels, and which are now lost--such as the Gospel
according to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the
Gospels styled those of Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two are
principally important because they were written in Aramean, like the
_Logia_ of Matthew, and appear to constitute one version of the Gospel
of this apostle, and because they were the Gospel of the
_Ebionim_--that is, of those small Christian sects of Batanea who
preserved the use of Syro-Chaldean, and who appear in some respects to
have followed the course marked out by Jesus. But it must be confessed
that in the state in which they have come to us, these Gospels are
inferior, as critical authorities, to the compilation of Matthew's
Gospel which we now possess.

It will now be seen, I think, what kind of historical value I
attribute to the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the
manner of Suetonius, nor fictitious legends in the style of
Philostratus; they are legendary biographies. I should willingly
compare them with the Legends of the Saints, the Lives of Plotinus,
Proclus, Isidore, and other writings of the same kind, in which
historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are
combined in various degrees. Inexactitude, which is one of the
features of all popular compositions, is there particularly felt. Let
us suppose that ten or twelve years ago three or four old soldiers of
the Empire had each undertaken to write the life of Napoleon from
memory. It is clear that their narratives would contain numerous
errors, and great discordances. One of them would place Wagram before
Marengo: another would write without hesitation that Napoleon drove
the government of Robespierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit
expeditions of the highest importance. But one thing would certainly
result with a great degree of truthfulness from these simple recitals,
and that is the character of the hero, the impression which he made
around him. In this sense such popular narratives would be worth more
than a formal and official history. We may say as much of the Gospels.
Solely attentive to bring out strongly the excellency of the Master,
his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists display entire
indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus.
The contradictions respecting time, place, and persons were regarded
as insignificant; for the higher the degree of inspiration attributed
to the words of Jesus, the less was granted to the compilers
themselves. The latter regarded themselves as simple scribes, and
cared but for one thing--to omit nothing they knew.[1]

[Footnote 1: See the passage from Papias, before cited.]

Unquestionably certain preconceived ideas associated themselves with
such recollections. Several narratives, especially in Luke, are
invented in order to bring out more vividly certain traits of the
character of Jesus. This character itself constantly underwent
alteration. Jesus would be a phenomenon unparalleled in history if,
with the part which he played, he had not early become idealized. The
legends respecting Alexander were invented before the generation of
his companions in arms became extinct; those respecting St. Francis
d'Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid metamorphosis operated in the
same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of
Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the peculiarities of an ideal
legend. Death adds perfection to the most perfect man; it frees him
from all defect in the eyes of those who have loved him. With the wish
to paint the Master, there was also the desire to explain him. Many
anecdotes were conceived to prove that in him the prophecies regarded
as Messianic had had their accomplishment. But this procedure, of
which we must not deny the importance, would not suffice to explain
everything. No Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies
exactly declaring what the Messiah should accomplish. Many Messianic
allusions quoted by the evangelists are so subtle, so indirect, that
one cannot believe they all responded to a generally admitted
doctrine. Sometimes they reasoned thus: "The Messiah ought to do such
a thing; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore Jesus has done such a
thing." At other times, by an inverse process, it was said: "Such a
thing has happened to Jesus; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore such
a thing was to happen to the Messiah."[1] Too simple explanations are
always false when analyzing those profound creations of popular
sentiment which baffle all systems by their fullness and infinite
variety. It is scarcely necessary to say that, with such documents, in
order to present only what is indisputable, we must limit ourselves to
general features. In almost all ancient histories, even in those which
are much less legendary than these, details open up innumerable
doubts. When we have two accounts of the same fact, it is extremely
rare that the two accounts agree. Is not this a reason for
anticipating many difficulties when we have but one? We may say that
amongst the anecdotes, the discourses, the celebrated sayings which
have been given us by the historians, there is not one strictly
authentic. Were there stenographers to fix these fleeting words? Was
there an analyst always present to note the gestures, the manners, the
sentiments of the actors? Let any one endeavor to get at the truth as
to the way in which such or such contemporary fact has happened; he
will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by different
eye-witnesses differ essentially. Must we, therefore, reject all the
coloring of the narratives, and limit ourselves to the bare facts
only? That would be to suppress history. Certainly, I think that if we
except certain short and almost mnemonic axioms, none of the
discourses reported by Matthew are textual; even our stenographic
reports are scarcely so. I freely admit that the admirable account of
the Passion contains many trifling inaccuracies. Would it, however, be
writing the history of Jesus to omit those sermons which give to us in
such a vivid manner the character of his discourses, and to limit
ourselves to saying, with Josephus and Tacitus, "that he was put to
death by the order of Pilate at the instigation of the priests"? That
would be, in my opinion, a kind of inexactitude worse than that to
which we are exposed in admitting the details supplied by the texts.
These details are not true to the letter, but they are true with a
superior truth, they are more true than the naked truth, in the sense
that they are truth rendered expressive and articulate--truth
idealized.

[Footnote 1: See, for example, John xix. 23-24.]

I beg those who think that I have placed an exaggerated confidence in
narratives in great part legendary, to take note of the observation I
have just made. To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it
were confined to that which is materially certain? Even partly
erroneous traditions contain a portion of truth which history cannot
neglect. No one has blamed M. Sprenger for having, in writing the life
of Mahomet, made much of the _hadith_ or oral traditions concerning
the prophet, and for often having attributed to his hero words which
are only known through this source. Yet the traditions respecting
Mahomet are not superior in historical value to the discourses and
narratives which compose the Gospels. They were written between the
year 50 and the year 140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish
schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth
of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of
attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel the maxims ascribed to them
by the _Mishnah_ and the _Gemara_, although these great compilations
were written many hundreds of years after the time of the doctors in
question.

As to those who believe, on the contrary, that history should consist
of a simple reproduction of the documents which have come down to us,
I beg to observe that such a course is not allowable. The four
principal documents are in flagrant contradiction one with another.
Josephus rectifies them sometimes. It is necessary to make a
selection. To assert that an event cannot take place in two ways at
once, or in an impossible manner, is not to impose an _à priori_
philosophy upon history. The historian ought not to conclude that a
fact is false because he possesses several versions of it, or because
credulity has mixed with them much that is fabulous. He ought in such
a case to be very cautious--to examine the texts, and to proceed
carefully by induction. There is one class of narratives especially,
to which this principle must necessarily be applied. Such are
narratives of supernatural events. To seek to explain these, or to
reduce them to legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of
theory; it is to make the observation of facts our groundwork. None of
the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under
scientific conditions. Observation, which has never once been
falsified, teaches us that miracles never happen but in times and
countries in which they are believed, and before persons disposed to
believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the presence of men capable
of testing its miraculous character. Neither common people nor men of
the world are able to do this. It requires great precautions and long
habits of scientific research. In our days have we not seen almost all
respectable people dupes of the grossest frauds or of puerile
illusions? Marvellous facts, attested by the whole population of small
towns, have, thanks to a severer scrutiny, been exploded.[1] If it is
proved that no contemporary miracle will bear inquiry, is it not
probable that the miracles of the past, which have all been performed
in popular gatherings, would equally present their share of illusion,
if it were possible to criticise them in detail?

[Footnote 1: See the _Gazette des Tribunaux_, 10th Sept. and 11th
Nov., 1851, 28th May, 1857.]

It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the
name of universal experience, that we banish miracle from history. We
do not say, "Miracles are impossible." We say, "Up to this time a
miracle has never been proved." If to-morrow a thaumaturgus present
himself with credentials sufficiently important to be discussed, and
announce himself as able, say, to raise the dead, what would be done?
A commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, persons
accustomed to historical criticism, would be named. This commission
would choose a corpse, would assure itself that the death was real,
would select the room in which the experiment should be made, would
arrange the whole system of precautions, so as to leave no chance of
doubt. If, under such conditions, the resurrection were effected, a
probability almost equal to certainty would be established. As,
however, it ought to be possible always to repeat an experiment--to do
over again what has been done once; and as, in the order of miracle,
there can be no question of ease or difficulty, the thaumaturgus would
be invited to reproduce his marvellous act under other circumstances,
upon other corpses, in another place. If the miracle succeeded each
time, two things would be proved: First, that supernatural events
happen in the world; second, that the power of producing them belongs,
or is delegated to, certain persons. But who does not see that no
miracle ever took place under these conditions? but that always
hitherto the thaumaturgus has chosen the subject of the experiment,
chosen the spot, chosen the public; that, besides, the people
themselves--most commonly in consequence of the invincible want to see
something divine in great events and great men--create the marvellous
legends afterward? Until a new order of things prevails, we shall
maintain then this principle of historical criticism--that a
supernatural account cannot be admitted as such, that it always
implies credulity or imposture, that the duty of the historian is to
explain it, and seek to ascertain what share of truth or of error it
may conceal.

Such are the rules which have been followed in the composition of
this work. To the perusal of documentary evidences I have been able to
add an important source of information--the sight of the places where
the events occurred. The scientific mission, having for its object the
exploration of ancient Phoenicia, which I directed in 1860 and
1861,[1] led me to reside on the frontiers of Galilee and to travel
there frequently. I have traversed, in all directions, the country of
the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria; scarcely
any important locality of the history of Jesus has escaped me. All
this history, which at a distance seems to float in the clouds of an
unreal world, thus took a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The
striking agreement of the texts with the places, the marvellous
harmony of the Gospel ideal with the country which served it as a
framework, were like a revelation to me. I had before my eyes a fifth
Gospel, torn, but still legible, and henceforward, through the
recitals of Matthew and Mark, in place of an abstract being, whose
existence might have been doubted, I saw living and moving an
admirable human figure. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir,
in Lebanon, to take a little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the
image which had appeared to me, and from them resulted this history.
When a cruel bereavement hastened my departure, I had but a few pages
to write. In this manner the book has been composed almost entirely
near the very places where Jesus was born, and where his character was
developed. Since my return, I have labored unceasingly to verify and
check in detail the rough sketch which I had written in haste in a
Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me.

[Footnote 1: The work which will contain the results of this mission
is in the press.]

Many will regret, perhaps, the biographical form which my work has
thus taken. When I first conceived the idea of a history of the origin
of Christianity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of
doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a
place. Jesus would scarcely have been named; I should have endeavored
to show how the ideas which have grown under his name took root and
covered the world. But I have learned since that history is not a
simple game of abstractions; that men are more than doctrines. It was
not a certain theory on justification and redemption which brought
about the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism,
Judaism might have been able to have combined under every form; the
doctrines of the Resurrection and of the Word might have developed
themselves during ages without producing this grand, unique, and
fruitful fact, called Christianity. This fact is the work of Jesus, of
St. Paul, of St. John. To write the history of Jesus, of St. Paul, of
St. John is to write the history of the origin of Christianity. The
anterior movements belong to our subject only in so far as they serve
to throw light upon these extraordinary men, who naturally could not
have existed without connection with that which preceded them.

In such an effort to make the great souls of the past live again, some
share of divination and conjecture must be permitted. A great life is
an organic whole which cannot be rendered by the simple agglomeration
of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all,
moulding them into perfect unity. The method of art in a similar
subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would know how
to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is, that
they shall form a living system of which all the parts are mutually
dependent and related.

In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth
is, to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that
they shall constitute a logical, probable narrative, harmonious
throughout. The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic
products, of the melting of minute distinctions, ought to be consulted
at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the
material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify, but the very
soul of history; what must be sought is not the petty certainty about
trifles, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the
truthfulness of the coloring. Each trait which departs from the rules
of classic narration ought to warn us to be careful; for the fact
which has to be related has been living, natural, and harmonious. If
we do not succeed in rendering it such by the recital, it is surely
because we have not succeeded in seeing it aright. Suppose that, in
restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced a
dry, jarring, artificial whole; what must we conclude? Simply that the
texts want an appreciative interpretation; that we must study them
quietly until they dovetail and furnish a whole in which all the parts
are happily blended. Should we then be sure of having a perfect
reproduction of the Greek statue? No; but at least we should not have
the caricature of it; we should have the general spirit of the
work--one of the forms in which it could have existed.

This idea of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our
guide in the general arrangement of the narrative. The perusal of the
Gospels would suffice to prove that the compilers, although having a
very true plan of the _Life of Jesus_ in their minds, have not been
guided by very exact chronological data; Papias, besides, expressly
teaches this.[1] The expressions: "At this time ... after that ...
then ... and it came to pass ...," etc., are the simple transitions
intended to connect different narratives with each other. To leave all
the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which
tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as
the history of a celebrated man would be written, by giving pell-mell
the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his
maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner,
fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has yielded
its secret to an ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which
the fragments were composed has been discovered so as to leave little
room for doubt. Such a rearrangement is much more difficult in the
case of the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and
less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Meanwhile, the
attempt to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to
be taxed with gratuitous subtlety. There is no great abuse of
hypothesis in supposing that a founder of a new religion commences by
attaching himself to the moral aphorisms already in circulation in his
time, and to the practices which are in vogue; that, when riper, and
in full possession of his idea, he delights in a kind of calm and
poetical eloquence, remote from all controversy, sweet and free as
pure feeling; that he warms by degrees, becomes animated by
opposition, and finishes by polemics and strong invectives. Such are
the periods which may plainly be distinguished in the Koran. The order
adopted with an extremely fine tact by the synoptics, supposes an
analogous progress. If Matthew be attentively read, we shall find in
the distribution of the discourses, a gradation perfectly analogous to
that which we have just indicated. The reserved turns of expression of
which we make use in unfolding the progress of the ideas of Jesus will
also be observed. The reader may, if he likes, see in the divisions
adopted in doing this, only the indispensable breaks for the
methodical exposition of a profound, complicated thought.

[Footnote 1: _Loc. cit._]

If the love of a subject can help one to understand it, it will also,
I hope, be recognized that I have not been wanting in this condition.
To write the history of a religion, it is necessary, firstly, to have
believed it (otherwise we should not be able to understand how it has
charmed and satisfied the human conscience); in the second place, to
believe it no longer in an absolute manner, for absolute faith is
incompatible with sincere history. But love is possible without faith.
To abstain from attaching one's self to any of the forms which
captivate the adoration of men, is not to deprive ourselves of the
enjoyment of that which is good and beautiful in them. No transitory
appearance exhausts the Divinity; God was revealed before Jesus--God
will reveal Himself after him. Profoundly unequal, and so much the
more Divine, as they are grander and more spontaneous, the
manifestations of God hidden in the depths of the human conscience are
all of the same order. Jesus cannot belong solely to those who call
themselves his disciples. He is the common honor of all who share a
common humanity. His glory does not consist in being relegated out of
history; we render him a truer worship in showing that all history is
incomprehensible without him.




LIFE OF JESUS




CHAPTER I.

PLACE OF JESUS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.


The great event of the History of the world is the revolution by which
the noblest portions of humanity have passed from the ancient
religions, comprised under the vague name of Paganism, to a religion
founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the Incarnation of the
Son of God. It has taken nearly a thousand years to accomplish this
conversion. The new religion had itself taken at least three hundred
years in its formation. But the origin of the revolution in question
with which we have to do is a fact which took place under the reigns
of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a superior
personage, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was
able to inspire, became the object and fixed the starting-point of the
future faith of humanity.

As soon as man became distinguished from the animal, he became
religious; that is to say, he saw in Nature something beyond the
phenomena, and for himself something beyond death. This sentiment,
during some thousands of years, became corrupted in the strangest
manner. In many races it did not pass beyond the belief in sorcerers,
under the gross form in which we still find it in certain parts of
Oceania. Among some, the religious sentiment degenerated into the
shameful scenes of butchery which form the character of the ancient
religion of Mexico. Amongst others, especially in Africa, it became
pure Fetichism, that is, the adoration of a material object, to which
were attributed supernatural powers. Like the instinct of love, which
at times elevates the most vulgar man above himself, yet sometimes
becomes perverted and ferocious, so this divine faculty of religion
during a long period seems only to be a cancer which must be
extirpated from the human race, a cause of errors and crimes which the
wise ought to endeavor to suppress.

The brilliant civilizations which were developed from a very remote
antiquity in China, in Babylonia, and in Egypt, caused a certain
progress to be made in religion. China arrived very early at a sort of
mediocre good sense, which prevented great extravagances. She neither
knew the advantages nor the abuses of the religious spirit. At all
events, she had not in this way any influence in directing the great
current of humanity. The religions of Babylonia and Syria were never
freed from a substratum of strange sensuality; these religions
remained, until their extinction in the fourth and fifth centuries of
our era, schools of immorality, in which at intervals glimpses of the
divine world were obtained by a sort of poetic intuition. Egypt,
notwithstanding an apparent kind of Fetichism, had very early
metaphysical dogmas and a lofty symbolism. But doubtless these
interpretations of a refined theology were not primitive. Man has
never, in the possession of a clear idea, amused himself by clothing
it in symbols: it is oftener after long reflections, and from the
impossibility felt by the human mind of resigning itself to the
absurd, that we seek ideas under the ancient mystic images whose
meaning is lost. Moreover, it is not from Egypt that the faith of
humanity has come. The elements which, in the religion of a Christian,
passing through a thousand transformations, came from Egypt and Syria,
are exterior forms of little consequence, or dross of which the most
purified worships always retain some portion. The grand defect of the
religions of which we speak was their essentially superstitious
character. They only threw into the world millions of amulets and
charms. No great moral thought could proceed from races oppressed by a
secular despotism, and accustomed to institutions which precluded the
exercise of individual liberty.

The poetry of the soul--faith, liberty, virtue, devotion--made their
appearance in the world with the two great races which, in one sense,
have made humanity, viz., the Indo-European and the Semitic races. The
first religious intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially
naturalistic. But it was a profound and moral naturalism, a loving
embrace of Nature by man, a delicious poetry, full of the sentiment of
the Infinite--the principle, in fine, of all that which the Germanic
and Celtic genius, of that which a Shakespeare and a Goethe should
express in later times. It was neither theology nor moral
philosophy--it was a state of melancholy, it was tenderness, it was
imagination; it was, more than all, earnestness, the essential
condition of morals and religion. The faith of humanity, however,
could not come from thence, because these ancient forms of worships
had great difficulty in detaching themselves from Polytheism, and
could not attain to a very clear symbol. Brahminism has only survived
to the present day by virtue of the astonishing faculty of
conservation which India seems to possess. Buddhism failed in all its
approaches toward the West. Druidism remained a form exclusively
national, and without universal capacity. The Greek attempts at
reform, Orpheism, the Mysteries, did not suffice to give a solid
aliment to the soul. Persia alone succeeded in making a dogmatic
religion, almost Monotheistic, and skilfully organized; but it is very
possible that this organization itself was but an imitation, or
borrowed. At all events, Persia has not converted the world; she
herself, on the contrary, was converted when she saw the flag of the
Divine unity as proclaimed by Mohammedanism appear on her frontiers.

It is the Semitic race[1] which has the glory of having made the
religion of humanity. Far beyond the confines of history, resting
under his tent, free from the taint of a corrupted world, the Bedouin
patriarch prepared the faith of mankind. A strong antipathy against
the voluptuous worships of Syria, a grand simplicity of ritual, the
complete absence of temples, and the idol reduced to insignificant
_theraphim_, constituted his superiority. Among all the tribes of the
nomadic Semites, that of the Beni-Israel was already chosen for
immense destinies. Ancient relations with Egypt, whence perhaps
resulted some purely material ingredients, did but augment their
repulsion to idolatry. A "Law" or _Thora_, very anciently written on
tables of stone, and which they attributed to their great liberator
Moses, had become the code of Monotheism, and contained, as compared
with the institutions of Egypt and Chaldea, powerful germs of social
equality and morality. A chest or portable ark, having staples on each
side to admit of bearing poles, constituted all their religious
_matériel_; there were collected the sacred objects of the nation, its
relics, its souvenirs, and, lastly, the "book,"[2] the journal of the
tribe, always open, but which was written in with great discretion.
The family charged with bearing the ark and watching over the portable
archives, being near the book and having the control of it, very soon
became important. From hence, however, the institution which was to
control the future did not come. The Hebrew priest did not differ much
from the other priests of antiquity. The character which essentially
distinguishes Israel among theocratic peoples is, that its priesthood
has always been subordinated to individual inspiration. Besides its
priests, each wandering tribe had its _nabi_ or prophet, a sort of
living oracle who was consulted for the solution of obscure questions
supposed to require a high degree of clairvoyance. The _nabis_ of
Israel, organized in groups or schools, had great influence. Defenders
of the ancient democratic spirit, enemies of the rich, opposed to all
political organization, and to whatsoever might draw Israel into the
paths of other nations, they were the true authors of the religious
preeminence of the Jewish people. Very early they announced unlimited
hopes, and when the people, in part the victims of their impolitic
counsels, had been crushed by the Assyrian power, they proclaimed that
a kingdom without bounds was reserved for them, that one day Jerusalem
would be the capital of the whole world, and the human race become
Jews. Jerusalem and its temples appeared to them as a city placed on
the summit of a mountain, toward which all people should turn, as an
oracle whence the universal law should proceed, as the centre of an
ideal kingdom, in which the human race, set at rest by Israel, should
find again the joys of Eden.[3]

[Footnote 1: I remind the reader that this word means here simply the
people who speak or have spoken one of the languages called Semitic.
Such a designation is entirely defective; but it is one of those
words, like "Gothic architecture," "Arabian numerals," which we must
preserve to be understood, even after we have demonstrated the error
that they imply.]

[Footnote 2: I Sam. x. 25.]

[Footnote 3: Isa. ii. 1-4, and especially chaps. xl., and following,
lx., and following; Micah iv. 1, and following. It must be recollected
that the second part of the book of Isaiah, beginning at chap. xl., is
not by Isaiah.]

Mystical utterances already made themselves heard, tending to exalt
the martyrdom and celebrate the power of the "Man of Sorrows."
Respecting one of those sublime sufferers, who, like Jeremiah, stained
the streets of Jerusalem with their blood, one of the inspired wrote a
song upon the sufferings and triumph of the "servant of God," in which
all the prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed
concentrated.[1] "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,
and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness. He
is despised and rejected of men; and we hid, as it were, our faces
from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath
borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of
our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was
oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is
brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. And he made his grave with the
wicked. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall
see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord
shall prosper in his hand."

[Footnote 1: Isa. lii. 13, and following, and liii. entirely.]

Important modifications were made at the same time in the _Thora_. New
texts, pretending to represent the true law of Moses, such as
Deuteronomy, were produced, and inaugurated in reality a very
different spirit from that of the old nomads. A marked fanaticism was
the dominant feature of this spirit. Furious believers unceasingly
instigated violence against all who wandered from the worship of
Jehovah--they succeeded in establishing a code of blood, making death
the penalty for religious faults. Piety brings, almost always,
singular contradictions of vehemence and mildness. This zeal, unknown
to the coarser simplicity of the time of the Judges, inspired tones of
moving prophecy and tender unction, which the world had never heard
till then. A strong tendency toward social questions already made
itself felt; Utopias, dreams of a perfect society, took a place in the
code. The Pentateuch, a mixture of patriarchal morality and ardent
devotion, primitive intuitions and pious subtleties, like those which
filled the souls of Hezekiah, of Josiah, and of Jeremiah, was thus
fixed in the form in which we now see it, and became for ages the
absolute rule of the national mind.

This great book once created, the history of the Jewish people
unfolded itself with an irresistible force. The great empires which
followed each other in Western Asia, in destroying its hope of a
terrestrial kingdom, threw it into religious dreams, which it
cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the
national dynasty or political independence, it accepted all
governments which permitted it to practise freely its worship and
follow its usages. Israel will henceforward have no other guidance
than that of its religious enthusiasts, no other enemies than those of
the Divine unity, no other country than its Law.

And this Law, it must be remarked, was entirely social and moral. It
was the work of men penetrated with a high ideal of the present life,
and believing that they had found the best means of realizing it. The
conviction of all was, that the _Thora_, well observed, could not fail
to give perfect felicity. This _Thora_ has nothing in common with the
Greek or Roman "Laws," which, occupying themselves with scarcely
anything but abstract right, entered little into questions of private
happiness and morality. We feel beforehand that the results which will
proceed from it will be of a social, and not a political order, that
the work at which this people labors is a kingdom of God, not a civil
republic; a universal institution, not a nationality or a country.

Notwithstanding numerous failures, Israel admirably sustained this
vocation. A series of pious men, Ezra, Nehemiah, Onias, the Maccabees,
consumed with zeal for the Law, succeeded each other in the defense of
the ancient institutions. The idea that Israel was a holy people, a
tribe chosen by God and bound to Him by covenant, took deeper and
firmer root. An immense expectation filled their souls. All
Indo-European antiquity had placed paradise in the beginning; all its
poets had wept a vanished golden age. Israel placed the age of gold in
the future. The perennial poesy of religious souls, the Psalms,
blossomed from this exalted piety, with their divine and melancholy
harmony. Israel became truly and specially the people of God, while
around it the pagan religions were more and more reduced, in Persia
and Babylonia, to an official charlatanism, in Egypt and Syria to a
gross idolatry, and in the Greek and Roman world to mere parade. That
which the Christian martyrs did in the first centuries of our era,
that which the victims of persecuting orthodoxy have done, even in the
bosom of Christianity, up to our time, the Jews did during the two
centuries which preceded the Christian era. They were a living protest
against superstition and religious materialism. An extraordinary
movement of ideas, ending in the most opposite results, made of them,
at this epoch, the most striking and original people in the world.
Their dispersion along all the coast of the Mediterranean, and the use
of the Greek language, which they adopted when out of Palestine,
prepared the way for a propagandism, of which ancient societies,
divided into small nationalities, had never offered a single example.

Up to the time of the Maccabees, Judaism, in spite of its persistence
in announcing that it would one day be the religion of the human race,
had had the characteristic of all the other worships of antiquity, it
was a worship of the family and the tribe. The Israelite thought,
indeed, that his worship was the best, and spoke with contempt of
strange gods; but he believed also that the religion of the true God
was made for himself alone. Only when a man entered into the Jewish
family did he embrace the worship of Jehovah.[1] No Israelite cared to
convert the stranger to a worship which was the patrimony of the sons
of Abraham. The development of the pietistic spirit, after Ezra and
Nehemiah, led to a much firmer and more logical conception. Judaism
became the true religion in a more absolute manner; to all who wished,
the right of entering it was given;[2] soon it became a work of piety
to bring into it the greatest number possible.[3] Doubtless the
refined sentiment which elevated John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul
above the petty ideas of race, did not yet exist; for, by a strange
contradiction, these converts were little respected and were treated
with disdain.[4] But the idea of a sovereign religion, the idea that
there was something in the world superior to country, to blood, to
laws--the idea which makes apostles and martyrs--was founded. Profound
pity for the pagans, however brilliant might be their worldly fortune,
was henceforth the feeling of every Jew.[5] By a cycle of legends
destined to furnish models of immovable firmness, such as the
histories of Daniel and his companions, the mother of the Maccabees
and her seven sons,[6] the romance of the race-course of
Alexandria[7]--the guides of the people sought above all to inculcate
the idea, that virtue consists in a fanatical attachment to fixed
religious institutions.

[Footnote 1: Ruth i. 16.]

[Footnote 2: Esther ix. 27.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. xxiii. 15; Josephus, _Vita_, 23; _B.J._, II. xvii.
10, VII. iii. 3; _Ant._, XX. ii. 4; Horat., Sat. I., iv., 143; Juv.,
xiv. 96, and following; Tacitus, _Ann._, II. 85; _Hist._, V. 5; Dion
Cassius, xxxvii. 17.]

[Footnote 4: Mishnah, _Shebiit_, X. 9; Talmud of Babylon, _Niddah_,
fol. 13 _b_; _Jebamoth_, 47 _b_, _Kiddushim_, 70 _b_; Midrash, _Jalkut
Ruth_, fol. 163 _d_.]

[Footnote 5: Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, _Cod. pseud.,
V.T._, ii., 147, and following.]

[Footnote 6: II. Book of Maccabees, ch. vii. and the _De Maccabæis_,
attributed to Josephus. Cf. Epistle to the Hebrews xi. 33, and
following.]

[Footnote 7: III. Book (Apocr.) of Maccabees; Rufin, Suppl. ad Jos.,
_Contra Apionem_, ii. 5.]

The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes made this idea a passion,
almost a frenzy. It was something very analogous to that which
happened under Nero, two hundred and thirty years later. Rage and
despair threw the believers into the world of visions and dreams. The
first apocalypse, "The Book of Daniel," appeared. It was like a
revival of prophecy, but under a very different form from the ancient
one, and with a much larger idea of the destinies of the world. The
Book of Daniel gave, in a manner, the last expression to the Messianic
hopes. The Messiah was no longer a king, after the manner of David and
Solomon, a theocratic and Mosaic Cyrus; he was a "Son of man"
appearing in the clouds[1]--a supernatural being, invested with human
form, charged to rule the world, and to preside over the golden age.
Perhaps the _Sosiosh_ of Persia, the great prophet who was to come,
charged with preparing the reign of Ormuzd, gave some features to this
new ideal.[2] The unknown author of the Book of Daniel had, in any
case, a decisive influence on the religious event which was about to
transform the world. He supplied the _mise-en-scène_, and the
technical terms of the new belief in the Messiah; and we might apply
to him what Jesus said of John the Baptist: Before him, the prophets;
after him, the kingdom of God.

[Footnote 1: Chap. vii. 13, and following.]

[Footnote 2: _Vendidad_, chap. xix. 18, 19; _Minokhired_, a passage
published in the "_Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft_," chap. i. 263; _Boundehesch_, chap. xxxi. The want of
certain chronology for the Zend and Pehlvis texts leaves much doubt
hovering over the relations between the Jewish and Persian beliefs.]

It must not, however, be supposed that this profoundly religious and
soul-stirring movement had particular dogmas for its primary impulse,
as was the case in all the conflicts which have disturbed the bosom of
Christianity. The Jew of this epoch was as little theological as
possible. He did not speculate upon the essence of the Divinity; the
beliefs about angels, about the destinies of man, about the Divine
personality, of which the first germs might already be perceived, were
quite optional--they were meditations, to which each one surrendered
himself according to the turn of his mind, but of which a great number
of men had never heard. They were the most orthodox even, who did not
share in these particular imaginations, and who adhered to the
simplicity of the Mosaic law. No dogmatic power analogous to that
which orthodox Christianity has given to the Church then existed. It
was only at the beginning of the third century, when Christianity had
fallen into the hands of reasoning races, mad with dialectics and
metaphysics, that that fever for definitions commenced which made the
history of the Church but the history of one immense controversy.
There were disputes also among the Jews--excited schools brought
opposite solutions to almost all the questions which were agitated;
but in these contests, of which the Talmud has preserved the principal
details, there is not a single word of speculative theology. To
observe and maintain the law, because the law was just, and because,
when well observed, it gave happiness--such was Judaism. No _credo_,
no theoretical symbol. One of the disciples of the boldest Arabian
philosophy, Moses Maimonides, was able to become the oracle of the
synagogue, because he was well versed in the canonical law.

The reigns of the last Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the
excitement grow still stronger. They were filled by an uninterrupted
series of religious movements. In the degree that power became
secularized, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish
people lived less and less for the earth, and became more and more
absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating in their
midst. The world, distracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge
of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds
abreast of their age were, however, better informed. The tender and
clear-sighted Virgil seems to answer, as by a secret echo, to the
second Isaiah. The birth of a child throws him into dreams of a
universal palingenesis.[1] These dreams were of every-day occurrence,
and shaped into a kind of literature which was designated Sibylline.
The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination; the
great era of peace on which it entered, and that impression of
melancholy sensibility which the mind experiences after long periods
of revolution, gave birth on all sides to unlimited hopes.

[Footnote 1: Egl. iv. The _Cumæum carmen_ (v. 4) was a sort of
Sibylline apocalypse, borrowed from the philosophy of history familiar
to the East. See Servius on this verse, and _Carmina Sibyllina_, iii.
97-817; cf. Tac., _Hist._, v. 13.]

In Judea expectation was at its height. Holy persons--among whom may
be named the aged Simeon, who, legend tells us, held Jesus in his
arms; Anna, daughter of Phanuel, regarded as a prophetess[1]--passed
their life about the temple, fasting, and praying, that it might
please God not to take them from the world without having seen the
fulfillment of the hopes of Israel. They felt a powerful presentiment;
they were sensible of the approach of something unknown.

[Footnote 1: Luke ii. 25, and following.]

This confused mixture of clear views and dreams, this alternation of
deceptions and hopes, these ceaseless aspirations, driven back by an
odious reality, found at last their interpretation in the incomparable
man, to whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of
God, and that with justice, since he has advanced religion as no other
has done, or probably ever will be able to do.




CHAPTER II.

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.




CHAPTER III.

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.]




CHAPTER IV.

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.]




CHAPTER V.

THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS--HIS IDEAS OF A DIVINE FATHER AND OF A PURE
RELIGION--FIRST DISCIPLES.


Joseph died before his son had taken any public part. Mary remained,
in a manner, the head of the family, and this explains why her son,
when it was wished to distinguish him from others of the same name,
was most frequently called the "son of Mary."[1] It seems that having,
by the death of her husband, been left friendless at Nazareth, she
withdrew to Cana,[2] from which she may have come originally. Cana[3]
was a little town at from two to two and a half hours' journey from
Nazareth, at the foot of the mountains which bound the plain of
Asochis on the north.[4] The prospect, less grand than at Nazareth,
extends over all the plain, and is bounded in the most picturesque
manner by the mountains of Nazareth and the hills of Sepphoris. Jesus
appears to have resided some time in this place. Here he probably
passed a part of his youth, and here his greatness first revealed
itself.[5]

[Footnote 1: This is the expression of Mark vi. 3; cf. Matt. xiii. 55.
Mark did not know Joseph. John and Luke, on the contrary, prefer the
expression "son of Joseph." Luke iii. 23, iv. 22; John i. 45, iv. 42.]

[Footnote 2: John ii. 1, iv. 46. John alone is informed on this
point.]

[Footnote 3: I admit, as probable, the idea which identifies Cana of
Galilee with _Kana el Djélil_. We may, nevertheless, attach value to
the arguments for _Kefr Kenna_, a place an hour or an hour and a
half's journey N.N.E. of Nazareth.]

[Footnote 4: Now _El-Buttauf_.]

[Footnote 5: John ii. 11, iv. 46. One or two disciples were of Cana,
John xxi. 2; Matt. x. 4; Mark iii. 18.]

He followed the trade of his father, which was that of a
carpenter.[1] This was not in any degree humiliating or grievous. The
Jewish customs required that a man devoted to intellectual work should
learn a trade. The most celebrated doctors did so;[2] thus St. Paul,
whose education had been so carefully tended, was a tent-maker.[3]
Jesus never married. All his power of love centred upon that which he
regarded as his celestial vocation. The extremely delicate feeling
toward women, which we remark in him, was not separated from the
exclusive devotion which he had for his mission. Like Francis d'Assisi
and Francis de Sales, he treated as sisters the women who were loved
of the same work as himself; he had his St. Clare, his Frances de
Chantal. It is, however, probable that these loved him more than the
work; he was, no doubt, more beloved than loving. Thus, as often
happens in very elevated natures, tenderness of the heart was
transformed in him into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, and a
universal charm. His relations, free and intimate, but of an entirely
moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by
the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which
made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could
contribute to it.[4]

[Footnote 1: Mark vi. 3; Justin, _Dial. cum Tryph._, 88.]

[Footnote 2: For example, "Rabbi Johanan, the shoemaker, Rabbi Isaac,
the blacksmith."]

[Footnote 3: _Acts_ xviii. 3.]

[Footnote 4: Luke vii. 37, and following; John iv. 7, and following;
viii. 3, and following.]

What was the progress of the ideas of Jesus during this obscure period
of his life? Through what meditations did he enter upon the prophetic
career? We have no information on these points, his history having
come to us in scattered narratives, without exact chronology. But the
development of character is everywhere the same; and there is no
doubt that the growth of so powerful individuality as that of Jesus
obeyed very rigorous laws. A high conception of the Divinity--which he
did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been in all its parts
the creation of his great mind--was in a manner the source of all his
power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to
us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In
order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of
Jesus, we must forget all that is placed between the gospel and
ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology.
The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of
Descartes, the deep-rooted irreligion of the eighteenth century, by
lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of
everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of
modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact,
is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have
peculiar relations with God is a "visionary," and as the physical and
physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions are
illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the
great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in
suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the
living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best
comprehended God--Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi,
and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life)--Deists or
Pantheists? Such a question has no meaning. The physical and
metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to
them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in
the first rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus
had no visions; God did not speak to him as to one outside of Himself;
God was in him; he felt himself with God, and he drew from his heart
all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by constant
communication with Him; he saw Him not, but he understood Him, without
need of the thunder and the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing
tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar
genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The
imagination and the hallucination of a St. Theresa, for example, are
useless here. The intoxication of the Soufi proclaiming himself
identical with God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave
utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed
himself to be in direct communion with God; he believed himself to be
the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in
the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus.

We understand, on the other hand, how Jesus, starting with such a
disposition of spirit, could never be a speculative philosopher like
Cakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the
Gospel.[1] The speculations of the Greek fathers on the Divine essence
proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as
Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a
theoretical principle, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought
to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his disciples;[2] he
demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his
opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds
often present, associated with much elevation, that character of
perpetual attention to themselves, and extreme personal
susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women.[3] Their
conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with
them, is so strong, that they have no fear of obtruding themselves
upon others; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others,
which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. This
exaltation of self is not egotism; for such men, possessed by their
idea, give their lives freely, in order to seal their work; it is the
identification of self with the object it has embraced, carried to its
utmost limit. It is regarded as vain-glory by those who see in the new
teaching only the personal phantasy of the founder; but it is the
finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by
side here with the inspired man, only the fool never succeeds. It has
not yet been given to insanity to influence seriously the progress of
humanity.

[Footnote 1: The discourses which the fourth Gospel attributes to
Jesus contain some germs of theology. But these discourses being in
absolute contradiction with those of the synoptical Gospels, which
represent, without any doubt, the primitive _Logia_, ought to count
simply as documents of apostolic history, and not as elements of the
life of Jesus.]

[Footnote 2: See Matt. ix. 9, and other analogous accounts.]

[Footnote 3: See, for example, John xxi. 15, and following.]

Doubtless, Jesus did not attain at first this high affirmation of
himself. But it is probable that, from the first, he regarded his
relationship with God as that of a son with his father. This was his
great act of originality; in this he had nothing in common with his
race.[1] Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has understood this
delightful theology of love. The God of Jesus is not that tyrannical
master who kills us, damns us, or saves us, according to His pleasure.
The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him in listening to the gentle
inspiration which cries within us, "Abba, Father."[2] The God of Jesus
is not the partial despot who has chosen Israel for His people, and
specially protects them. He is the God of humanity. Jesus was not a
patriot, like the Maccabees; or a theocrat, like Judas the Gaulonite.
Boldly raising himself above the prejudices of his nation, he
established the universal fatherhood of God. The Gaulonite maintained
that we should die rather than give to another than God the name of
"Master;" Jesus left this name to any one who liked to take it, and
reserved for God a dearer name. Whilst he accorded to the powerful of
the earth, who were to him representatives of force, a respect full of
irony, he proclaimed the supreme consolation--the recourse to the
Father which each one has in heaven--and the true kingdom of God,
which each one bears in his heart.

[Footnote 1: The great soul of Philo is in sympathy here, as on so
many other points, with that of Jesus. _De Confus. Ling._, § 14; _De
Migr. Abr._, § 1; _De Somniis_, ii. § 41; _De Agric. Noë_, § 12; _De
Mutatione Nominum_, § 4. But Philo is scarcely a Jew in spirit.]

[Footnote 2: Galatians iv. 6.]

This name of "kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven,"[1] was the
favorite term of Jesus to express the revolution which he brought into
the world.[2] Like almost all the Messianic terms, it came from the
book of Daniel. According to the author of this extraordinary book,
the four profane empires, destined to fall, were to be succeeded by a
fifth empire, that of the saints, which should last forever.[3] This
reign of God upon earth naturally led to the most diverse
interpretations. To Jewish theology, the "kingdom of God" is most
frequently only Judaism itself--the true religion, the monotheistic
worship, piety.[4] In the later periods of his life, Jesus believed
that this reign would be realized in a material form by a sudden
renovation of the world. But doubtless this was not his first idea.[5]
The admirable moral which he draws from the idea of God as Father, is
not that of enthusiasts who believe the world is near its end, and who
prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is
that of men who have lived, and still would live. "The kingdom of God
is within you," said he to those who sought with subtlety for external
signs.[6] The realistic conception of the Divine advent was but a
cloud, a transient error, which his death has made us forget. The
Jesus who founded the true kingdom of God, the kingdom of the meek and
the humble, was the Jesus of early life[7]--of those chaste and pure
days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer
tones. It was then for some months, perhaps a year, that God truly
dwelt upon the earth. The voice of the young carpenter suddenly
acquired an extraordinary sweetness. An infinite charm was exhaled
from his person, and those who had seen him up to that time no longer
recognized him.[8] He had not yet any disciples, and the group which
gathered around him was neither a sect nor a school; but a common
spirit, a sweet and penetrating influence was felt. His amiable
character, accompanied doubtless by one of those lovely faces[9] which
sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination
from which no one in the midst of these kindly and simple populations
could escape.

[Footnote 1: The word "heaven" in the rabbinical language of that time
is synonymous with the name of "God," which they avoided pronouncing.
Compare Matt. xxi. 25; Luke xv. 18, xx. 4.]

[Footnote 2: This expression occurs on each page of the synoptical
Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul. If it only appears
once in John (iii. 3, 5), it is because the discourses related in the
fourth Gospel are far from representing the true words of Jesus.]

[Footnote 3: Dan. ii. 44, vii. 13, 14, 22, 27.]

[Footnote 4: Mishnah, _Berakoth_, ii. 1, 3; Talmud of Jerusalem,
_Berakoth_, ii. 2; _Kiddushin_, i. 2; Talm. of Bab., _Berakoth_, 15
_a_; _Mekilta_, 42 _b_; _Siphra_, 170 _b_. The expression appears
often in the _Medrashim_.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 33, xii. 28, xix. 12; Mark xii. 34; Luke xii.
31.]

[Footnote 6: Luke xvii. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 7: The grand theory of the revelation of the Son of Man is
in fact reserved, in the synoptics, for the chapters which precede the
narrative of the Passion. The first discourses, especially in Matthew,
are entirely moral.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. xiii. 54 and following; Mark vi. 2 and following;
John v. 43.]

[Footnote 9: The tradition of the plainness of Jesus (Justin, _Dial.
cum Tryph._, 85, 88, 100) springs from a desire to see realized in him
a pretended Messianic trait (Isa. liii. 2).]

Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of
the young Master had not far transcended the level of ordinary
goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the
human race. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral
consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite
feeling. Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined
toward consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise
aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and
strange.[1] Some of these maxims come from the books of the Old
Testament. Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially
those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which
had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs.
The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sentences, which
formed a kind of current proverbial literature.[2] Jesus adopted
almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior
spirit.[3] Exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders,
he demanded perfection. All the virtues of humility--forgiveness,
charity, abnegation, and self-denial--virtues which with good reason
have been called Christian, if we mean by that that they have been
truly preached by Christ, were in this first teaching, though
undeveloped. As to justice, he was content with repeating the
well-known axiom--"Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do
ye even so to them."[4] But this old, though somewhat selfish wisdom,
did not satisfy him. He went to excess, and said--"Whosoever shall
smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any
man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy
cloak also."[5] "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast
it from thee."[6] "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you,
pray for them that persecute you."[7] "Judge not, that ye be not
judged."[8] "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven."[9] "Be ye therefore
merciful as your Father also is merciful."[10] "It is more blessed to
give than to receive."[11] "Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be
abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."[12]

[Footnote 1: The _Logia_ of St. Matthew joins several of these axioms
together, to form lengthened discourses. But the fragmentary form
makes itself felt notwithstanding.]

[Footnote 2: The sentences of the Jewish doctors of the time are
collected in the little book entitled, _Pirké Aboth_.]

[Footnote 3: The comparisons will be made afterward as they present
themselves. It has been sometimes supposed that--the compilation of
the Talmud being later than that of the Gospels--parts may have been
borrowed by the Jewish compilers from the Christian morality. But this
is inadmissible--a wall of separation existed between the Church and
the Synagogue. The Christian and Jewish literature had scarcely any
influence on one another before the thirteenth century.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. vii. 12; Luke vi. 31. This axiom is in the book of
_Tobit_, iv. 16. Hillel used it habitually (Talm. of Bab., _Shabbath_,
31 _a_), and declared, like Jesus, that it was the sum of the Law.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 39, and following; Luke vi. 29. Compare
Jeremiah, _Lamentations_ iii. 30.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 29, 30, xviii. 9; Mark ix. 46.]

[Footnote 7: Matt. v. 44; Luke vi. 27. Compare Talmud of Babylon,
_Shabbath_, 88 _b_; _Joma_, 23 _a_.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. vii. 1; Luke vi. 37. Compare Talmud of Babylon,
_Kethuboth_, 105 _b_.]

[Footnote 9: Luke vi. 37. Compare _Lev._ xix. 18; _Prov._ xx. 22;
_Ecclesiasticus_ xxviii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 10: Luke vi. 36; Siphré, 51 _b_ (Sultzbach, 1802).]

[Footnote 11: A saying related in _Acts_ xx. 35.]

[Footnote 12: Matt. xxiii. 12; Luke xiv. 11, xviii. 14. The sentences
quoted by St. Jerome from the "Gospel according to the Hebrews"
(Comment. in _Epist. ad Ephes._, v. 4; in Ezek. xviii.; _Dial. adv.
Pelag._, iii. 2), are imbued with the same spirit.]

Upon alms, pity, good works, kindness, peacefulness, and complete
disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the doctrine of
the synagogue.[1] But he placed upon them an emphasis full of unction,
which made the old maxims appear new. Morality is not composed of more
or less well-expressed principles. The poetry which makes the precept
loved, is more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract truth.
Now it cannot be denied that these maxims borrowed by Jesus from his
predecessors, produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that
in the ancient Law, in the _Pirké Aboth_, or in the Talmud. It is
neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed
the world. Little original in itself--if we mean by that that one
might recompose it almost entirely by the aid of older maxims--the
morality of the Gospels remains, nevertheless, the highest creation of
human conscience--the most beautiful code of perfect life that any
moralist has traced.

[Footnote 1: _Deut._ xxiv., xxv., xxvi., &c.; Isa. lviii. 7; _Prov._
xix. 17; _Pirké Aboth_, i.; Talmud of Jerusalem, _Peah_, i. 1; Talmud
of Babylon, _Shabbath_, 63 _a_.]

Jesus did not speak against the Mosaic law, but it is clear that he
saw its insufficiency, and allowed it to be seen that he did so. He
repeated unceasingly that more must be done than the ancient sages had
commanded.[1] He forbade the least harsh word;[2] he prohibited
divorce,[3] and all swearing;[4] he censured revenge;[5] he condemned
usury;[6] he considered voluptuous desire as criminal as adultery;[7]
he insisted upon a universal forgiveness of injuries.[8] The motive on
which he rested these maxims of exalted charity was always the
same.... "That ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good. For if
ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the
publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye
more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore
perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."[9]

[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 20, and following.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. v. 22.]

[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 31, and following. Compare Talmud of Babylon,
_Sanhedrim_, 22 _a_.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. v. 33, and following.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. v. 38, and following.]

[Footnote 6: Matt. v. 42. The Law prohibited it also (_Deut._ xv. 7,
8), but less formally, and custom authorized it (Luke vii. 41, and
following).]

[Footnote 7: Matt. xxvii. 28. Compare Talmud, _Masséket Kalla_ (edit.
Fürth, 1793), fol. 34 _b_.]

[Footnote 8: Matt. v. 23, and following.]

[Footnote 9: Matt. v. 45, and following. Compare _Lev._ xi. 44, xix.
2.]

A pure worship, a religion without priests and external observances,
resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of
God,[1] on the direct relation of the conscience with the heavenly
Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from
this bold conclusion, which made him a thorough revolutionist in the
very centre of Judaism. Why should there be mediators between man and
his Father? As God only sees the heart, of what good are these
purifications, these observances relating only to the body?[2] Even
tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jews, is nothing compared to
sincerity.[3] The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned
their heads to see if they were observed, who gave their alms with
ostentation, and put marks upon their garments, that they might be
recognized as pious persons--all these grimaces of false devotion
disgusted him. "They have their recompense," said he; "but thou, when
thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand
doeth, that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in
secret, Himself shall reward thee openly."[4] "And when thou prayest,
thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray
standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that
they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their
reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet; and when
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and
thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. But when
ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think
that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Your Father knoweth
what things ye have need of before ye ask Him."[5]

[Footnote 1: Compare Philo, _De Migr. Abr._, § 23 and 24; _De Vita
Contemp._, the whole.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xv. 11, and following; Mark vii. 6, and following.]

[Footnote 3: Mark vii. 6, and following.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. vi. 1, and following. Compare _Ecclesiasticus_
xvii. 18, xxix. 15; Talm. of Bab., _Chagigah_, 5 _a_; _Baba Bathra_, 9
_b_.]

[Footnote 5: Matt. vi. 5-8.]

He did not affect any external signs of asceticism, contenting himself
with praying, or rather meditating, upon the mountains, and in the
solitary places, where man has always sought God.[1] This high idea of
the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even after him,
have been capable, is summed up in a pr

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