Joseph Klausner - Jesus of Nazareth - His Life, Times, and Teaching-Varda Books (2009)

JESUS OF NAZARETH
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JESUS OF NAZARETH
HIS LIFE, TIMES, AND TEACHING
BY
J O S E P H K L A U S N E R , P H . D . (HEIDELBERG)
JERUSALEM
TRANSLATED FROM T H E ORIGINAL HEBREW
BY
H E R B E R T DANBY, D.D. (OXFORD)

RESIDENTIARY CANON, ST. GEORGE‫׳‬S CATHEDRAL
C H U R C H , JERUSALEM
ißeto g o t *
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1926
All rights reserved
COPYRIGHT, 1935,
ß y T H E MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped.

Published September, 192s.
New ISBN 1-59045-956-3

Copyright© 2009 by Varda Books
Skokie, Illinois, United States of America
Printed in the United States of America by

J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Dr. Joseph Klausner, though not widely known among non-Jews
(outside the small group of Christian students interested in the
Rabbinical sources for the New Testament period) has a high and
well-earned reputation as writer, historian and leader of thought in
those Jewish circles which are working in the cause of the present
Hebrew cultural revival, commonly called Zionism. To this cause
he has devoted his whole life. He was born in Russia in 1874. H e
early came under the influence of "Ahad ha-Am" (Asher Ginsberg),
the philosopher of the Zionist movement and editor of the principal
Hebrew periodical, "Ha‫־‬Shiloach." In 1897 he entered the Uni-
versity of Heidelberg where he studied Philosophy and Semitic lan-
guages. For his degree of Ph.D. he wrote the thesis "Die messian-
ischen Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der Tannaiten"
(i.e. Jewish Messianic ideas in the Tannaitic period), a subject of
study at which he has ever since persistently worked and which
compelled him to devote an attention, closer and more minute than
had yet been given by any Jewish scholar, to the subject of Jesus, his
Messianic claims, and the problem of Christian origins. Dr. Klaus-
ner's "Die messianischen Vorstellungen" was published (in German)
in 1904, and it is by this book that he has hitherto been known in
non-Jewish circles. The bulk of his literary output since has been
in Hebrew. This output has been considerable. Apart from the
present book (published in Jerusalem in the spring of 1922) his most
important publications are :
The Messianic Idea in Israel (3 vols.: vol. i, In the Prophets

[Cracow, 1909] ; vol. ii, In the apocalyptic and pseudepigraphic
literature [Jerusalem, 1921] ; vol. iii, In the taunaitic period, i.e.,
first two centuries A.D. [Jerusalem, 1923, translated from the
German edition of 1904 and revised] ) ;
The History of Israel (4 vols.: vol. i, Till the Maccabsean age
[Odessa, 1909, 3rd ed., Odessa, 1919] ; vol. ii, The Maccabsean
Age [Jerusalem, 1923] ; vol. iii, The Herodian Age [Jerusalem,
1924] ; vol. iv, The Jewish Revolt and the Destruction of the
Temple [Jerusalem, 1924]).
In 1905 Dr. Klausner succeeded "Ahad ha-Am" as editor of

"Ha-Shiloach," and he has edited this, the most important Hebrew
literary periodical, ever since. From 1904 till 1919 he held various
academic posts in Jewish institutions in Odessa. H e came to Pales-
5
6 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
tine in 1920 and at once took a leading position, both as writer and
public worker, in the new Hebrew life of the "Jewish National
Home."
This is not the place to touch upon the merits of Dr. Klausner's
"Life of Jesus"; but a few remarks may be offered as to its sig-
nificance. As the author points out, this is the first time such a work
has been attempted in Hebrew with neither satiric nor apologetic bias.
The book was intended for "Jewish Hebrew readers," i.e. for those
Jews with the revived "Hebrew cultural outlook" on life—a life
whose spiritual centre is, or is hoped to be, in Palestine, far removed
from the distractions, the obstacles, the fears, and the Gentile hos-
tility which (too often) form the dominating features of the
"Galuth." The Jewish nationalist historian, resident at last in
Palestine, assured of the safety of his national life, feels himself
free to scan the whole range of his nation's life in Palestine, and he
no longer thinks it a danger to look with open eyes at the persons
and events which ushered in the Christian age. He can look upon
them as specifically Jewish events, and he can bring the historian's
craft to bear and, to the best of his ability and without rancour,
define the causes which made possible the rise of Christianity and
estimate what, to his mind, constitutes the significance of the Founder
of Christianity. Or, from another point of view, the Jewish his-
torian, seeking to display the national and cultural achievements of
his people, is free to include in his gallery the person and life of
Jesus of Nazareth. Dr. Klausner has, therefore, thought it a duty
to his people to place this life before them, and to throw such light
upon it as he was able by means of his own learning and researches
in contemporary Jewish history and literature, and his knowledge of
the critical work done by his predecessors, Jews and non-Jews.
The book is not, of course, intended for Christians. They will,
and quite rightly, find much in it to dislike. Though the author is
conscientiously convinced that he has been quite untouched by sub-
jective influences, the Christian reader will not agree. But apart
from this, the Christian reader, and especially the Christian scholar,
will be thankful for the material which the book provides for the
better understanding of the Jewish mental and historical environment
in which our Lord worked and lived. The fact is deserving of
considerable emphasis that here, probably for the first time, 1 there is
set out a full range of what modern Jewish scholarship has to offer
on the subject of the Jewish background of the Gospels. On some
minor points Jewish scholars will be found to differ, but the picture
as a whole may be taken as representing the best that unimpeachable
Jewish learning has to show. The Rabbinical sources are a most
formidable subject of study and quite beyond the capacity of all but
1
Mr. Israel Abrahams of Cambridge, the late Dr. S. Schechter, and, earlier,
Daniel Chwolsohn have contributed much in this sphere; but they have only
touched on isolated points.
7 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
the smallest handful of non-Jewish students. Hitherto Christians
have depended on such works as A. Edersheim's "Life and Times of
Jesus the Messiah/' and the collections of Rabbinical illustrative
matter by Lightfoot, Schöttgen and Wetstein, in all of which there is
no pretence at critical sifting or weighing of the Jewish material.
For a critical knowledge of the Jewish background of the Gospels
the Christian can never wholly dispense with Jewish scholarship. 2
The present work gives this in a handy, accessible form, and this fact
alone seemed to justify its translation into English.
The book was composed in "modern Hebrew" and this is prob-
ably the first time that a modern Hebrew book of any considerable
size has been translated into English. At the express wish of the
author literalness in the translation has been preserved to the very
limit of what is endurable in English, 3 though it is hoped that the
limit has not been transgressed. The Hebrew vocabulary in use is
not extensive, and its adverbs and adjectives are comparatively few
and inelastic; this must excuse the somewhat dead-level of the
narrative.
Since the work was intended for Hebrew-reading Jews, the
references, whenever possible, are to accessible Hebrew books dealing
with the subject in question, in spite of the fact that more standard
and more authoritative works in other languages were in existence.
These references have been preserved (though their practical utility
may be small) with the idea of showing something of the scope of
modern Hebrew literature and to how great a degree it interests
itself in the subject of the present work. The translator regrets
that the obviously desirable course was not followed of replacing,
by references to English versions (original or translated), references
to the same authority (translated or original) in a language other
than English. But this would have involved labour for which the
leisure was lacking.
Jerusalem,
January 30, 1925.
3
Good as is Schiirer's Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, it
uses but a small fragment of the available Rabbinical material, and much of
his treatment, even of that, is open to criticism.
3
The author's hope is that many of his fellow-Jews, who are English-
speaking, may be helped by this translation to acquire a knowledge of present-
day Hebrew.
INTRODUCTION
Voltaire, who was by no means a friend of the Jews, wrote a
"Dialogue du douteur et de l'adorateur," 1 in which he makes the
rational-minded Believer say many very severe things about the Jews
—that they are the "crudest of Asiatics," while their historical tradi-
tions are, to his mind, "the most utterly foolish and futile." To this
the Doubter replies :
"I agree that the Jewish faith was futile and abominable; but,
after all, Jesus, whom you love, was a Jew. He always observed the
Jewish religion and adhered to all its customs."
The Believer, obviously perplexed, answers :
"This again is a great contradiction: though he was a Jew, his
followers were not Jews."
By these words—which certainly fell from him unintentionally—
Voltaire suggested that he too did not attempt either to explain or
to ignore this "great contradiction" which is the chief feature in the
difficult and complicated central problem in any book dealing with the
life of Jesus. The present book is an attempt to solve this problem.
W e have before us two facts : (a) Jesus was born, lived and died
in Israel and was a Jew in every respect; (b) his disciples, and still
more disciples' disciples, removed far away f r o m Israel, or, rather,
the more numerous and more powerful of the Jews rejected the
teaching of Jesus : they rose up against it during his lifetime and, even
when all the world drew nearer and nearer to Christianity, would not
become Christians. Christianity was born within Israel, and Israel
as a nation rejected it utterly. Why ?
Many Jews and Christians would find the reason in the fact that
Christianity, from the time of Paul, absorbed many Greek and
heathen elements which all but stifled the Hebrew elements which
were all that Jesus knew. Yet, when all is said and done, "as is the
tree so is the fruit" ; and from a man's disciples, and even from his
disciples' disciples, it is possible to draw conclusions about the orig-
inal teacher. Had there not been in Jesus' teaching something con-
trary to the "world-outlook" of Israel, there could never have arisen
out of it a new teaching so irreconcilable with the spirit of Judaism :
ex nihilo nihil fit. Though Jesus' teaching may not have been delib-
erately directed against contemporary Judaism, it certainly had within
it the germs from which there could and must develop in course of
time a non-Jewish and even an anti-Jewish teaching.
1
Dialogues satiriques et philosophiques, XI. M
9
10 INTRODUCTION
This is the most important, though by no means the only, problem
which we seek to solve in the present book. Firstly, by a full account
of the times of Jesus and of his Jewish environment, and, secondly,
by an account of his life and teaching (which in the case of any
great pioneer are one and the same thing), we shall get a clear idea
of what there was in him of earlier and contemporary Judaism, and
likewise of what there was in him which was opposed to the Judaism
of his own time as well as to that of the past and the future genera-
tions of Israel.
We shall thus ascertain not the superiority of Christianity to
Judaism (that we leave to Christian apologists and missionaries),
and not the superiority of Judaism to Christianity (that we leave to
Jewish apologists and to those who would prove Israel's world-
mission), but simply how Judaism differs and remains distinct from
Christianity or Christianity from Judaism. This alone is the object
of the present book; and every effort has been made to keep it
within the limits of pure scholarship and to make it as objective as
possible, avoiding those subjective religious and nationalist aims
which do not come within the purview of scholarship. Should there
emerge from the study of this difference and distinctness the right
of Judaism to exist, this will be an advantage, but it is not a purpose
for which I could permit myself to deviate from scientific truth or
to modify facts out of zeal for the Jewish religion or the Jewish race.
I have no wish here to argue for or against Judaism and Chris-
tianity, but merely to explain and expound the "great contradiction"
spoken of by Voltaire. The fact that Judaism gave birth to Chris-
tianity proves that Christianity much resembles Judaism; but the
fact that Judaism never became Christianity and always followed its
own particular path, is a standing witness that in many ways Judaism
is not like Christianity. It only remains to show wherein they are
alike and wherein they differ, without discussing at all whether the
differences are or are not to the advantage of either. Only so can
one remain within the limits of pure scholarship and avoid subjec-
tivity. Only by such an attitude to the problem can one keep from
becoming a religious or national apologist.
Such an objective attitude the writer has struggled to maintain
throughout the entire book. If Christian students suspect it of sub-
jectivity simply because the author is a Jew and because the book
was written in Hebrew, I can only say to them: Remove first the
beam from your own eye ! As Christians they are far more suspect
of a leaning towards Jesus the Christian. They whose faith is para-
mount, conducing to wealth and honour, they who continue to estab-
lish missionary societies not only for the benefit of the heathen but
also for the Jews—they are open to the suspicion of subjectivity in
all that touches Jesus and Christianity, far more than are we, the
Jews, whose faith is trodden down to the lowest depths and who
neither wish nor are able to practice proselytism among Christians.
INTRODUCTION It
But the explanation of Jesus' relation to Judaism and the relation
of the Jews to Jesus, is not the sole aim. Above all things, the
writer wished to provide in Hebrew for Hebrews a book which shall
tell the history of the Founder of Christianity along the lines of
modern criticism, without either the exaggeration and legendary ac-
counts of the evangelists, or the exaggeration and the legendary and
depreciatory satires of such books as the Toi'doth Yeshu, or the
Ma'asëh Talui. Of the necessity for such a book it is needless to
speak at length : it is enough to say that there has never yet been in
Hebrew any book on Jesus the Jew which had not either a Christian
propagandist aim—to bring Jews to Christianity, 2 or a Jewish re-
ligious aim—to render Christianity obnoxious to Jews.
If I can give Hebrew readers a truer idea of the historic Jesus,
an idea which shall be alike far from that of Christian or Jewish
dogma, which shall be objective and scientific in every possible way,
which shall also give some conception of a teaching akin to Judaism
yet at the same time far removed from it, and some conception of the
civil, economic and spiritual environment of the Jews in the days
of the Second Temple, 3 an environment which made possible this his-
torical scene and this new teaching—then I shall know that I have
filled a blank page ( f r o m the point of view of Hebrew writers) in
the History of Israel which has so far been written upon almost
solely by Christians.
Of the contents and form of this book I need say little: the
reader will grasp them by himself. I would only remark that the
work is divided into several "books," each complete in itself and of
the nature of a short monograph, preceded in each case by a detailed
list of the more important books on the subject, supplementing the
books of secondary importance noted at the commencement of the
sub-sections and in the footnotes. Thus the First Book is devoted
to a study of the sources for the history of Jesus, the Second to a
description of the political, economic and spiritual life of his days,
while those which follow are devoted to a description of the life and
the teaching of Jesus.
The reader who is anxious to know the history of Jesus himself
must needs possess himself of a little patience, unless he prefers to
pass over the first two books. More especially patience is required
from the average reader in the First Book: study of sources never
makes very easy reading, and so this section may prove tiresome to
a reader unaccustomed to Hebrew learning and science in general.
But no other course was possible : to lay a firm foundation for any
,
S u c h as Sefer Tol'doth Yeshu, by Eben Tzohar (Lichtenstein), Leipzig,
1885 ; and Ben Adam: the Life of Jesus Christ and his Works, by P. Levertoff,
published by the Eduth I'Yisrael [a Jewish Mission in London], London-
Cracow, 1905.-^
8
"The Second Temple" is the term adopted throughout the book to signify
the period of Jewish history from the Return from Exile until the destruc‫־‬
tion of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. ·^
12 INTRODUCTION
considerable building one must first clear the foundation of stones
and fragments and sand.
I am quite aware that the method of this book will provoke
abundant hostile criticism from Jews and Christians alike. But here
again I ask for patience: I have strong hopes that either side, once
it reads the book without prejudice, will acknowledge that, whether
right or wrong, it is at least written with the best intentions. I only
beg one thing: the book has been written during a long course of
years crammed with work and the search for truth : may its readers
peruse it with the same good intentions with which it was written!
[Lausanne, Eve of Sukkoth, 1907—Jerusalem, 16 Marches wan, 19 22.]
CONTENTS
*AGB
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE S
INTRODUCTION 9
GLOSSARY 15
FIRST BOOK: T H E SOURCES 17
GENERAL REMARKS 17
I. T H E HEBREW SOURCES:
(A) TALMUD AND MIDRASH 18
(B) "TOL'DOTH YESHU" 47
II. T H E GREEK A N D LATIN SOURCES:

(A) JOSEPHUS 55
(B) TACITUS, S U E T O N I U S A N D P L I N Y T H E YOUNGER . . . 60
III. P A U L T H E A P O S T L E 63
IV. T H E EARLY F A T H E R S O F T H E C H R I S T I A N C H U R C H 65
V. T H E A P O C R Y P H A L A N D U N C A N O N I C A L G O S P E L S 67
VI. T H E CANONICAL G O S P E L S A N D T H E STUDY O F
THE LIFE OF JESUS 71
V I I . SUMMARY O F C O N C L U S I O N S 125
SECOND B O O K : T H E P E R I O D 129
GENERAL REMARKS 129
I. P O L I T I C A L C O N D I T I O N S 135
II. E C O N O M I C C O N D I T I O N S 174
III. RELIGIOUS A N D I N T E L L E C T U A L C O N D I T I O N S . . 193
T H I R D B O O K : Τ HIE E A R L Y L I F E O F J E S U S : J O H N T H E
BAPTIST 229
I. T H E C H I L D H O O D A N D Y O U T H O F J E S U S . . . . 229
II. J O H N T H E B A P T I S T 239
III. T H E B A P T I S M O F J E S U S : H I S T E M P T A T I O N S A N D
HIS FIRST MANIFESTATION 251
F O U R T H B O O K : T H E B E G I N N I N G O F J E S U S ' M I N I S T R Y . 259
I. J E S U S ' EARLY M I N I S T R Y : T H E P R E A C H E R O F
P A R A B L E S A N D T H E P E R F O R M E R O F MIRACLES 259
13
14 CONTENTS
PAGE
II. J E S U S A T T H E H E I G H T O F H I S SUCCESS: HIS

ENCOUNTER WITH T H E PHARISEES 273
III. T H E TWELVE APOSTLES: FRESH ENCOUNTERS
WITH THE PHARISEES 283
F I F T H B O O K : J E S U S REVEALS H I M S E L F AS M E S S I A H . 293
I. J E S U S IN T H E BORDERS O F T Y R E A N D SIDON A N D
IN DECAPOLIS 293
II. A T CAESAREA P H I L I P P I : J E S U S REVEALS H I M -
S E L F T O H I S D I S C I P L E S AS T H E M E S S I A H . . . 299
III. T H E J O U R N E Y T O J E R U S A L E M : A T J E R I C H O . . 304
IV. IN B E T H P H A G E : J E S U S R E V E A L S H I M S E L F PUB-
LICLY AS M E S S I A H 308
SIXTH B O O K : J E S U S IN J E R U S A L E M 311
I. T H E CLEANSING O F T H E T E M P L E 311
II. T H E D I S P U T E S IN T H E T E M P L E - C O U R T . . . . 317
III. JUDAS ISCARIOT: T H E LAST SUPPER 324
IV. G E T H S E M A N E : T H E GREAT TRAGEDY 330
S E V E N T H B O O K : T H E TRIAL A N D CRUCIFIXION O F J E S U S 333
I. T H E A R R E S T IN T H E GARDEN O F G E T H S E M A N E . 333
II. T H E T R I A L 339
III. T H E C R U C I F I X I O N 349
IV. T H E ACCOUNT O F T H E R E S U R R E C T I O N . . . . 356
E I G H T H B O O K : TH1E T E A C H I N G O F J E S U S 361
I. GENERAL NOTE 361
II. T H E J E W I S H N E S S O F J E S U S 363
III. P O I N T S O F O P P O S I T I O N B E T W E E N J U D A I S M A N D
T H E TEACHING OF JESUS 369
IV. J E S U S ' IDEA O F GOD 377
V. T H E E T H I C A L T E A C H I N G O F J E S U S 381
VI. T H E DAY O F J U D G M E N T A N D T H E KINGDOM O F
HEAVEN 398
VII. Γ Η Ε C H A R A C T E R O F J E S U S AND T H E SECRET O F
HIS INFLUENCE 408
VIII. CONCLUSION: W H A T IS JESUS TO T H E J E W S ? . . 413
INDEX 415
SHORT GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL HEBREW
TERMS OCCURRING IN T H E TRANSLATION
Amoraim (sing. Amora; adj. amoraitic) : Authorities, from the
third to the fifth centuries, whose comments and disputations
form the substance of the Gemara (q.v.) in both Talmud
Babli and Talmud Verushalmi.
Baraita: A tradition emanating as a rule from the Tannaim (q.v.)
or from the tannaitic period, and quoted in the later strata
of the Talmuds and other Rabbinical literature, but not in-
eluded in the Mishna, the authoritative code of the tannaitic
traditions.
Gemara: The later (and very much the more profuse) stratum in
the two Talmuds, containing the comments, additions and dis-
putations contributed by the Amoraim to the subject-matter of
the Mishna, either by way of explanation or as (more or less)
bearing on the points raised in the Mishna.
Haggada (adj. haggadic or haggadistic) : A type of scriptural
exegesis, homiletic and edifying rather than logical or legalistic
in character; it utilizes at will any current beliefs, legends or
folklore. It is rarely used in the Mishna, but figures largely
in Gemara and certain other Rabbinical writings.
Halakha (adj. halakhic) : A legal binding decision derived by Rab-
binical logical processes from the written Torah.
Midrash (adj. midrashic) : ( a ) Interpretation of Scripture, either
haggadic or halakhic in character; (b) a systematic commen-
tary on "midrashic" lines, on a portion of the Scriptures (thus
Genesis Rabba is a Midrash" or Rabbinical commentary on
the book of Genesis).
Mishna: The earlier stratum of the two Talmuds and (with ex-
ceptions) identical in each. It is a codification of the "Oral
Law" arranged according to subjects and subdivided into sixty-
three "tractates." It was completed in its present form by
R. Vehuda ha-Nasi at the beginning of the third century.
Shema' ( " H e a r ! " ) : The most essential portion of a Jewish act
of prayer. It is made up of the three passages : Deut. vi. 4-9
(beginning "Hear, Ο Israel!‫)״‬, Deut. xi. 13-21, and Numbers
xv. 37-41.
15
16 TECHNICAL HEBREW TERMS
Talmud Babli and Talmud Verushalmi: Around the Mishna arose
a mass of comment, expository matter, illustration and debate,
known as Gemara. Two Jewish centres, in Palestine and
Babylonia, produced each an independent Gemara. The Gemara
of the Palestinian centre and that of the Babylonian centre, to-
gether with the original Mishna, constitute respectively the Tal-
mud Verushalmi and the Talmud Babli. The former was com-
pleted in the fourth century, and the latter about a century
later. The Talmud Verushalmi is much shorter than the Babli
and treats only 39 of the 63 divisions of the Mishna.
Tcmrudm (adj. tannaitic) : The authorities of the first two cen-
turies, from Hillel and Shammai to R. Vehuda ha-Nasi. It
is their views, and the traditions they preserved, which are codi-
fied in the Mishna.
Torah (lit. instruction) : (a) The books of "the Law" (of Moses),
i.e. the Pentateuch; (b) the traditional. Jewish "Law" gener-
ally, both written and oral (i.e. both the written Pentateuch and
the "Tradition of the elders").
Tosefta: A compilation of tannaitic material similar in scope and
arrangement to the Mishna. Its relation to the Mishna is un-
certain: parts of it seem to come from collections of traditions
earlier than the present Mishna, but its completion, in the form
we have it, must be much later. It often gives much fuller
treatment and includes matters omitted by the Mishna.
(For a fuller explanation of these terms the reader is referred t o : A
Short Survey of the Literature of Rabbinical and Mediœval Judaism by
W. Ο. E. Oesterley and G. H. Box (London, 1920), or Introduction to the
Talmud, by M. Mielziner (2nd ed., New York, 1903).)
FIRST BOOK:
THE SOURCES
JESUS OF NAZARETH
FIRST BOOK
T H E SOURCES
GENERAL REMARKS
[One or more special chapters in almost every book on the Life of Jesus
are devoted to the sources for this life. A valuable and scholarly account
of these may be found in the second chapter of Holtzmann's "Leben Jesu,"
Tübingen u. Leipzig, 1901, pp. 6-47. An entirely scholarly though popular
account is to be found in Paul Wernle, "Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu"
("Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher," I i ) , 2nd ed. Tübingen, 1906. See
also the more polemical work of Wilhelm Bousset, "Was wissen wir von
Jesus?" 2nd ed., Tübingen, 1906. But in none of these works is there
any mention of the Hebrew sources, although earlier writers of the Life
of Jesus gave much attention to them, e.g., Theodor Keim, "Geschichte
Jesu von Nazara," 1867-1872.]
The sources of the Life of Jesus vary as to their origin, language

and importance. The primary sources are the Canonical Gospels;
but since these were written by men who believed in Jesus as a super-
natural being, we are compelled to inquire carefully whether there
exist more objective sources for the Life of Jesus, namely secular
sources composed by non-believers, Jews or heathen. To these may
be added one which is very early, the earliest of all—namely the
Epistles of Paul the Apostle, whose ministry began shortly after the
death of Jesus; and a later source, containing statements about the
life and teachings of Jesus by certain of the earlier Church Fathers,
Papias and Justin Martyr, together with a further though question-
able source—the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical Gospels.
The Hebrew sources must come first, since Jesus lived and died
among the Jews. And the Canonical Gospels must come last, since
while all the other sources deal with Jesus only incidentally or in the
form of legend (e.g., the Τ01'doth Jeshu), they, the Canonical Gos-
pels, complete and sum up our knowledge of Jesus and his teaching.
The remaining sources come in between. Thus, the following are the
sources of the Life of Jesus, and they will be dealt with in this
17
18 JESUS OF NAZARETH
First Book in this order: (a) The Hebrew sources, (b) the Greek
and Latin sources, (c) the Epistles of Paul, (d) the early Fathers of
the Church, (e) the ApocrypJml and Pseudepigraphical Gospels, and
( f ) the Canonical Gospels.
ι. T H E H E B R E W SOURCES
(A) Talmud and Midrash
[The accounts of Jesus in Talmud and Midrash are collected in the

pamphlet "Hesronoth ha-Sha's" (Königsberg, i860; Cracow, 1895), or
in "Kuntres l'malloth hesronoth ha-Sha's," of which many copies exist
in MS. In these books are to be found all the omissions from the Talmud
and Midrash made by the papal censorship in the Middle Ages. Most
of the omissions are also given in the parts of "Dikduke Sof'rim," pub-
lished by R. Rabinovitz, 1867-1886, giving variant readings (from Talmud
MSS. in Munich and Oixford, and from various printed editions) in
many of the tractates. Almost all of these omissions are given in their
Hebrew and Aramaic original by G. Dalman, "Die Thalmudischen Texte
(über Jesu)," published as an appendix to Heinrich Laible, "Jesus Christus
im Talmud," 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1900, a pamphlet giving all the Talmudic
and Midrashic texts and sometimes also valuable notes, though these on
the whole are not sufficiently scholarly, while their aim is entirely mis-
sionary. The same texts, in their original Hebrew and Aramaic, with
more scholarly explanations, are given by the English scholar, R. Travers
Herford, "Christianity in Talmud and Midrash," London, 1905 (pp. 401-
436, the original passages; pp. 35-96, translation and notes; pp. 344-369,
summary and estimate of the historical value of the passages). The
earlier literature on the subject is detailed in the introduction to the
above-mentioned book by Laible, contributed by Hermann Strack, pp. IV-
V I ; and also in the latter's "Jesus, die Häretiker u. d. Christen," 1910.
Valuable comments on the value of these texts occur in: Richard von der
Alm (Ghillany), "Die Urteile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der
vier ersten christlichen Jahrhunderte über Jesus und die ersten Christen,"
Leipzig, 1865 ; Daniel Chwolsohn, "Das Letzte Passamahl Christi und der
Tag seines Todes," 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1908, pp. 85-125; Samuel Krauss,
"Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen," Berlin, 1902, pp. 181-194.]
It might have been supposed that the earliest mention of Jesus

and his teaching ought to be found in the Talmud; for Jesus lived
at the same time which saw Hillel, and Shammai and their "schools"
at the height of their influence in Judaea, and when the main founda-
tion of that religious-literary structure known as the "Talmud" had
already been laid. But such is not the case. The references in the
Talmud (this applies of course only to the old editions or manu-
scripts which have escaped the hand of the Christian censorship) to
Jesus are very few ; and even these have little historical value, since
they partake rather of the nature of vituperation and polemic against
THE HEBREW SOURCES 19
the founder of a hated party, than of objective accounts of historical
value.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, the Talmud authorities
on the whole refer rarely to the events of the period of the Second
Temple, and do so only when the events are relevant to some halakhic
discussion, or else they mention them quite casually in the course
of some haggada. What, for example, should we have known of the
great Maccabaean struggle against the kings of Syria if the apocryphal
books, I and II Maccabees, and the Greek writings of Josephus had
not survived, and we had been compelled to derive all our informa-
tion about this great event in the history of Israel from the Talmud
alone? We should not have known even the very name of Judas
Maccabasus !
Secondly, the appearance of Jesus during the period of disturb-
ance and confusion which befell Jud2ea under the Herods and the
Roman Procurators, was so inconspicuous an event that the con-
temporaries of Jesus and of his first disciples hardly noticed it; and
by the time that Christianity had become a great and powerful sect,
the "Sages of the Talmud" were already far removed from the time
of Jesus, and no longer remembered in their true shape the historical
events which had happened to the Christian Messiah: they were
satisfied with the popular stories which were current concerning him
and his life. (Many of these stories were known to the heathen
philosopher, Celsus, and so must have been very widespread.) I n
the mouths of the Jews and heathen opponents of Christianity, these
stories were turned into subjects of ridicule: all the noble qualities
of Jesus which the disciples had found in him were twisted into
defects, and all the miracles attributed to him, into horrible and
unseemly marvels.
It should be noticed that the earliest of these stories, of which
we will speak later, date from a time before the latest of the sur-
viving Gospels reached their present form and before they were
accepted as of canonical rank; yet these Talmud stories seem as
though they are deliberately intended to contradict events recorded
in the Gospels : the selfsame facts are perverted into bad and blame-
able acts. For example, the Gospels say that Jesus was born of the
Holy Spirit and not of a human father; the Talmud stories assert
that Jesus was indeed born without a father, yet not of the Holy
Spirit but as the result of an irregular union. The Gospels say that
he performed signs and wonders through the Holy Spirit and the
power of God; the Talmud stories allow that he did indeed work
signs and wonders, but by means of magic.
In the Gospels Jesus' opposition to the Pharisees and Scribes and
their "rote-learned precepts of men," and his own teaching as to
what constitutes true religion, are held up for admiration; the
Talmud, however, avers that he was a "sinner in Israel" and a
"scoffer against the words of the wise." And there is much more
in the same strain. This proves that before the latest of the existing
Gospels received their final shape, many accounts, oral or even
written, of the life and teaching of Jesus were current among the
first Christians, accounts drawn upon by the evangelists who are
known to us.
It therefore follows that the accounts in the first three Gospels
are fairly early, and that it is unreasonable to question either the
existence of Jesus (as certain scholars have done both in the eight-
eenth century and in our own time) or his general character as it
is depicted in these Gospels. This is the single historical value which
we can attribute to the early Talmudical accounts of Jesus.
Yet they have another kind of historical importance equally
valuable: we can tell from them what the "Sages of Israel" thought
of the origin and teaching of Jesus some seventy years after he was
crucified, and sometimes we can see the reasons which alienated from
him most of the Jews, including the most learned among them.
But can we also seek for historical truth among these Talmudic
references ? Can we find facts there which the Gospels, on religious
grounds, have purposely passed over or modified?
Before we answer this, we must first of all differentiate between
the statements which were handed down by the Tannaim (and which
survive in the Mishnah, the Baraitas and early Midrashim), and
those handed down by the Amoraim (and which survive in the
Gemara and later Midrashim). While the latter can have no objec-
tive historical value (since by the time of the Amoraim there was
certainly no clear recollection of Jesus' life and works) it may yet
be possible to attach some historical importance to the accounts
coming from the time of the Tannaim (though only to such of them
as contain no open controversy with Christian opinions or with the
accounts given in the Gospels, which, as already pointed out, were
well known among Christians before the Gospels reached their près-
ent shape). Consequently we shall make no use of the statements
from the Amoraim; those who wish may read them in the books
and pamphlets cited in the Bibliography.
But in this brief study on Jesus in Talmud and Midrash, not only
must we disregard the later references but also all those referring to
"Ben Stada," whom the Amoraim, and especially Rab Hisda (217‫־‬
309 C.E.), identified with Ben Pandera and Jesus. 1 The reason for
this is simple : there is no proof that the Tannaim ever regarded them
as identical. Rabbenu Tam (Shabbath 104b) declared that "this was
not Jesus of Nazareth." Even in the Τ01'doth Yeshu (to be dis-
cussed later) Jesus is referred to only as "Ben Pandera," never as
"Ben Stada," although it attributes to Jesus the introduction of
"spells from Egypt in a cut in his flesh." Therefore as late as the
composition of the Toi'doth Yeshu, Ben Stada was not looked upon
1
Shab. 104b; Sank. 67a. •4
as an habitual pseudonym of Jesus. Last century, Derenbourg 2
and Joel 3 both discriminated between what was said of Ben Stada
and what could be said of Jesus; and recently two scholars, a Jew
and a Christian, 4 have both concluded that by "Ben Stada" is in-
tended the Egyptian false prophet mentioned in Josephus ("Antiqui-
ties" XX, viii; " W a r s " II, xiii) and in the Acts of the Apostles.
This false prophet had attracted multitudes to the wilderness and
promised that at his command the walls of Jerusalem should fall.
Felix, Procurator of Judaea at the time (52-60 C.E.), went out to
him with a strong force of cavalry and infantry and killed four
thousand and captured two hundred of the false prophet's followers;
but the Egyptian himself disappeared.
Among the references by the Tannaim to Ben Stada, we find the
following :
(a) Rabbi Eliezer said to the Wise: "Did not Ben Stada
bring spells from Egypt in a cut in his flesh ?" They answered :
" H e was a madman, and you cannot adduce proof from mad-
men." (Shabb. 104b; Sank. 6γα.)
(b) In the case of any one who is liable to death penalties
enjoined in the Torah, it is not proper to lie in wait for him
except he be a beguiler. How do they lie in wait? Two scholars
are stationed in an inner room, while the culprit is in an outer
room. A candle is lit and so placed that they can see him as
well as hear his voice. And so they did to Ben Stada in Lod.
They concealed 6 two scholars, and stoned him. ( T. Sank. X 11 ;
/ . Sank. V I I 16 ; and in more detail, B. Sank. 67 a.)
It is difficult to suppose that all this applies to Jesus. The

Talmud authorities did not regard him merely as a shoteh (a mad-
man), but as a dangerous beguiler who attracted a large following.
They could not say of him that he was stoned by the Jewish court of
law (Beth Din) when he was really crucified by the Romans.® And
it was impossible to say of Jesus that he was condemned and executed
at Lod when he was really condemned and executed in Jerusalem.
But these objections no longer apply once we conclude that Ben
*Essai sur l'histoire de la Palestine, Paris, 1867, p. 478. In the Hebrew
translation, Massa Eretz Yisrael, the reference was omitted from fear of the
censorship. Λ
' Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte usw, II 55. ^‫־‬
4
H . P. Chajes in his article Ben Stada (Notes on the period before the
Destruction of the Second Temple), in S. A. Horodetski's Ha-Goren, Berdi-
chev, 1903, IV, pp. 33-37; and R. T. Herford, Christianity in Talmud and
Midrash, p. 345 η. Λ
8
Chajes (op. cit. p. 35) rightly amends 0‫ מנו‬to ‫^־ ·׳חכמינו‬
' T. Sanh. X 11 says "they stoned him," and only the Babylonian Talmud,
giving opinions of the Amoraim, that Ben Stada was Jesus, writes "and
hanged him on the eve of Passover."
Stada was not, as the Amoraim supposed, Jesus but the Egyptian
prophet, who, as a matter of fact, did perform acts of foolishness
and madness in promising the crowds that, at his command, the walls
of Jerusalem should fall, and who was a "beguiler" and led the
people to the wilderness. 7 After he disappeared and escaped from
Felix it is possible that he was found later in Lod, which is not f a r
from Jerusalem, and was there stoned by order of the Beth Din after
concealment of witnesses in the manner prescribed in the above ex-
tract from the Tosefta. This episode happened near the time of the
Destruction (since Felix's rule ended in 60 C.E.) and so could have
been known to R. Eliezer, who had seen the Temple while it was
yet standing ( Git. 56a; Suk. 27a; Gen. R. 421; Ab. R. Ν. VI, 1st
vers., X I I I 2d vers., ed. Schechter, p. 30), and of whom it was said,
"Go . . . after R. Eliezer to Lod" (Sank. 32b).
That Ben Stada is not Jesus may be seen not only from what has
already been said about the Toi'doth Yeshu, and Rabbenu Tarn's die-
tum, but also from the fact, noticed by Herford, 8 that although we
find in the Talmud such titles as "Ben Pandera" (or "Ben Pantere")
and "Yeshu ben Pandera" (or Pantere), we nowhere find "Yeshu
ben Stada."
How thoroughly unreliable are those Amoraim who identified
Ben Stada with Jesus may be seen from the way they confuse Pappus
ben Yehuda with the father of Jesus, and Miriam M'gadd'la N'shaya
(the "women's hairdresser") with the mother of Jesus, and even
make the name "Stada" a pseudonym of Miriam (Stada = S'tath da,
i.e. she went astray [from her husband]). 9 As to Pappus ben
Yehuda there is a Baraita: R. Meir says, "Like opinions on food
so are opinions on women. There are some who, if a fly fall into
their cup will pour it away and not drink it ; and such was the nature
of Pappus ben Yehuda who used to shut his wife in the house when
he went out" (Git. goa; T. Sota V 9). The wife of this Pappus
(mentioned in the Talmud as a contemporary of Akiba and one of
his fellow-disputants, 10 must have committed some offence which
made him so jealous that he would not allow her to leave the house;
*The Tosefta lacks the argument between the witness and the beguiler
("How can we leave our God who is in heaven and worship idols?") which
occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, and is not possible in the case of the
Egyptian false prophet. ‫^־‬
β
Herford, op. cit. p. 345 n. •4
"For greater clearness the entire passage may be quoted: "Ben Stada—
is he not Ben Pandera? R. Hisda said, The husband was Stada, Pandera
was the paramour. Was not the husband Pappus ben Yehuda? His mother
was Stada. Was not his mother Miriam M'gadd'la N'shaya? As they say
in Pumbeditha, 'S'tath da,' i.e. she went astray from her husband." (Shab.
104&; Sanh. 67a.) ·^
"Ber. 61 a ( = Midr. Prov. IX 2) ; Mech. Ex. X I V 29 ( = Can. R. I 9)
and elsewhere; cf. W. Bacher, Agada der Tannaiten I 317-320. Against the
theory of Derenbourg (op. cit. p. 470) that this is Yehuda ben Pappus ( / .
Β er. II 9; Baba Β. V 1) see J. H. Shor, Jüdische Zeitschrift, VI 289-290. ·^
and R. Meir, the pupil of R. Akiba, knew of the episode which may
have happened about his time.
But in the days of the Amoraim, when the illegitimate birth of
Jesus was a current idea among the Jews, and, from a Jewish source,
known also to Celsus (c. 150 C.E.), 1 1 they confused this incident
told of Pappus ben Yehuda with what happened to Joseph, the
father of Jesus. As for Miriam M'gadd'la N'shaya, who, apparently,
was the wife of Pappus, 12 and whose name was somewhat suggestive
of that of Mary Magdalen in the New Testament, they confused her
with Miriam the mother of Jesus. But neither Pappus ben Yehuda
nor Miriam M'gadd'la N'shaya (the latter of whom is mentioned by
the Amoraim only) has any connection with Jesus, a fact which has
been rightly pointed out by Samuel Krauss. 13
It is quite otherwise with the name "Ben Pandera" or "Ben
Pantere." Only the Amoraim use the name in connexion with Ben
Stada; but it occurs alone in several Baraitas (quoted below) from
the time of R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and R. Yishmael (at the end of
the first and beginning of the second Christian century). This
pseudonym is certainly very old, for we learn from Origen 1 4 that
the heathen Celsus, about the year 178, heard from a Jew a statement
to the effect that Miriam was divorced from her husband, a carpenter
by trade, after it had been proved that she was an adulteress.
Discarded by her husband and wandering about in shame, she
bore Jesus in secret, whose father was a certain soldier, Pan-
theras ( Π ανθήρας). And Origen himself says15 that James, the
father of Jesus' father, Joseph, was called by the name "Panther."
Origen apparently wished in this way to explain why Jesus the son
of Joseph was called "Ben Pandera" or "Ben Pantere" by the Jews ;
according to Origen, Jesus was so called after the name of his
grandfather.
At all events, the name "Ben Pandera" is very early. It is
impossible for us to assume that there really was a Roman soldier
of the name Pandera or Pan theras, who had relations with the
mother of Jesus, since the entire story of the birth of Jesus by a
Roman soldier is only a legend owing its origin to the conviction of
the Christians, from the time of Paul, that Jesus was born without
a natural father ; therefore we must seek elsewhere for the source of
this curious name. 16 Of all the explanations so far offered, that of
u
Origen, Contra Celsum I ix 1, 32 and 33. See below on "Pandera." ‫^־‬
u
Hag. 4b refers to Miriam M'gadd'la N'shaya in the time of Rab Bibi bar
Abayi, an Amora of the end of the 3rd century; but the Talmud commen-
tators remark there to the effect that "the angel of death told R. Bibi an
event that happened hundreds of vears earlier." M
"Op. cit. pp. 186-188, 274-277. <
1
*Contra Celsum I ix 1. See Laible, op. cit. 20-21, Krauss, op. cit. 187,
277· < .
18
Epiphanius, Haereses, 78. See Herford, op. cit. 39 η. 2. M
18
Deissmann, in the volume dedicated to Nöldeke, p. 871 ff. contributed
an entire article proving that this name was to be found among the Roman
Nîetsch and Bleek appears preferable—that "Pantere" is a corrupt
travesty of Παρθένος, virgin. 17 The Jews constantly heard that the
Christians (the majority of whom spoke Greek from the earliest
times) called Jesus by the name "Son of the Virgin," υ to ς της
Παρθένου; and so, in mockery, they called him "Ben ha-Pantera,"
i.e. son of the leopard. It was gradually forgotten that Jesus was
so called after his mother, and the name "Pantere," or "Pantori,"
or "Pandera" was thought to be that of his father, 18 and since this
is not a Jewish name, there arose the legend that the natural father
was a foreigner; and (as in the case of Miriam bath Bilgah, who
married the "Sradiot," ‫סרדיוט‬, the soldier [T. Suk. I V 28; B. Suk
56b; J. Suk. V 7 ] ) , it was concluded that Miriam, the mother of
Jesus, committed adultery with a soldier, and, of course, with a
Roman soldier, since there were Roman legions in Judaea at the
time. 19
If, therefore, we set aside from the Talmudic evidence all the
statements of the Amoraim, and all that refers to Ben Stada, to
Pappus ben Yehuda and to Miriam M'gadd'la N'shaya, there remain
only the following Tannaitic passages :
(a) A certain Baratta, the conclusion of which makes Jesus the
contemporary of Yehoshua ben Perachya, is, to our mind, doubtful.
It runs as follows :
Let thy left hand ever repel and thy right hand invite. Not
like Elisha who repelled Gehazi with both hands, nor like
R. Yehoshua ben Perachya who repelled Yeshu [the Nazarene]
with both hands.
There follows this explanation, in Aramaic, about Yehoshua ben

Perachya and his relations with Yeshu:
When king Jannaeus slew our Rabbis, Yehoshua and Yeshu
went to Alexandria of Egypt. When there was peace [between
the king and the Pharisees] Shimeon ben Shetah sent to him (as
follows) : From me, Jerusalem the Holy City, to thee, Alexandria
of Egypt, my sister: My husband dwells in thy midst and I sit
soldiers. But that a Roman soldier of this name had relations with the
mother of Jesus is manifestly an outcome of the Christian conviction that
Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit; and because the name "Pantera" was to
be found among the Roman soldiers it was applied to the imaginary paramour. Λ
"Studien u. Kritiken, 1840, p. 116; Laible, p. 25; Herford's objections
(p· 39) are not convincing.
18
There perhaps still survives an indication of this change of the names
of mother and father in the reported debate between R. Hisda and his col-
leagues, who thought that "Ben Stada" was not the name of the father but
of the mother, and said, punningly, "S'tath da"—she went astray from her
husband. ‫י י‬
18
See on this, Gustav Dalman, note to p. 21 of Laible, op. cit.; and Krauss,
op. cit. p. 276, n. 13. 4
desolate. So they (Yehoshua ben Perachya and Yeshu) came and
they chanced on a certain inn where they were treated with much
honour. H e (R. Yehoshua ben Perachya) said: How fair is
the hostess! Yeshu said to him: Rabbi, her eyelashes are too
short. Yehoshua ben Perachya said to him: Wretched man, do
you occupy yourself with such things? He sent out four hun-
dred trumpets and anathematized him. Yeshu came before him
many times and said, Receive me back. But he gave no heed to
him. One day Yehoshua ben Perachya was reciting the Shema'.
Yeshu came before him and Yehoshua ben Perachya was minded
to receive him. H e made a sign to him with his hand (that he
should wait while he recited the Shema• , since he did not wish to
be interrupted). Yeshu thought that he had repulsed him and
went and set up a brick and worshipped it. Yehoshua ben
Perachya said to him : "Repent !" Yeshu said to him : Thus did
I learn from thee: Everyone that sins and makes many to sin,
they give him no opportunity to repent. The Baraita says:
Yeshu [of Nazareth] practised sorcery and beguiled and led
Israel astray. 20
First of all it should be noticed that whatever is here told in

Aramaic does not belong to the Baraita but to the Gemara of the
Amoraim period; also that there is absent from the second version
(Sota 4 y a ) , "The Baraita says : Yeshu, etc."—A Baraita whose près-
ence would serve to prove that the whole story of the return from
Egypt is concerned with Yeshu and none other ; and finally, that in
the third version ( / . Hag.) the episode is described in general terms,
Yeshu is not even mentioned, and the particular incident happened,
not to Yehoshua ben Perachya, but to Yehuda ben Tabbai and "one
of his disciples." 21 On these grounds H e r f o r d 2 2 supposes that this
third version, from the Jerusalem Talmud, is the original and that
the two Babylonian Talmud versions are due to later Babylonian
accretions, arising out of the names "Elisha" and "Gehazi" 23 which
precede this story about Yehoshua ben Perachya and Yeshu.
"‫ מ‬Sank. 107b; Sota 47b; J. Hag. II 2 (p. 7477‫·)־‬Λ ‫י‬
The Yeruskalmi version runs : "Yehuda ben Tabbai—the people of Jeru-
salem wished to appoint him as President (of the Sanhédrin) in Jerusalem.
He fled and went to Alexandria. The people of Jerusalem wrote: From
Jerusalem the Great to Alexandria the Little: How long doth my espoused
dwell with you while I sit mournful for him? He embarked and went
on a ship. He said : Debora, the hostess who received us, what was
defective in her? One of his disciples said to him: Rabbi, her eyes were
bad. He answered: There are two things lacking in you; one, that you
suspected me, and other that you inspected her closely. What did I say?
that she was handsome to look at? ( N o ) , but that she was good in action.
(The disciple) was angry and went away." A
" H e r f o r d , op. cit. p. 52, 54; see Laible, p. 41. ·^
" H e r f o r d thinks that Gehazi is used here and in another place as a
pseudonym of the apostle Paul ; see op. cit. pp. 97-103, and pp. 34-71. 1^‫־‬
The reasons which led to this change of names or to their près-
ence in this passage are, in the present writer's opinion: (a) Yehuda
ben Tabbai and Yehoshua ben Perachya lived about the same time,
and since Yehuda ben Tabbai formed a "pair" with Shimeon ben
Shetah (Aboth I 5-9), Shimeon ben Shetah is also mentioned in the
Babli version; (b) the name Yeshu-Yeshua, resembles the name
Yehoshua (ben Perachya) ; and (c) the story contains suggestions
of the Christian traditions found in the Gospel : in the Gospel Jesus
escapes with his parents to Egypt because of a cruel king (Herod),
and here also Yeshu escapes with his master to Egypt because of a
cruel king (Jannaeus) ; and in the Gospel Jesus attracted women
toward him and some of them formed his most enthusiastic followers,
and among them were even fallen women (John viii. 11 ), and here too
he gives close attention to a woman. 24 This explains why, in the
Yerushalmi version, the name "Yeshu" is added, and the story con-
sequently changed and considerably enlarged. In the Babli form the
story is so transformed and so late that it is needless to waste a
single word in proof of its unhistorical nature. 25
Jesus as a worshipper of a brick—nothing could be more absurd ;
and Jesus as the disciple of Yehoshua ben Perachya and contempo-
rary with Shimeon ben Shetah and king Jannaeus, who reigned in
Judaea 103-76, before the Christian era, and about the year 88 B.C.
overcame the Pharisees who for six years had fought against him,
and killed eight hundred of them, and compelled eight thousand
others to escape from Judaea (an episode alluded to here in the
words "when Jannaeus slew our Rabbis")—could there be a grosser
anachronism? This glaring contradiction between the Talmudic and
Gospel accounts moved a certain writer, who remained anonymous
(G. R. S. Mead), to put forward the hypothesis that Jesus really
lived in the days of Alexander Jannseus and Yehoshua ben Perachya,
as the Talmud says ; but that the Evangelists confused him with one
or other false prophets who caused a disturbance and was put to
death in the time of Pontius Pilate. 26
It is obvious that this hypothesis (even its anonymous propounder
did· not put it forward as absolute truth) which is based solely on
a single Talmudic passage ( f r o m which is derived also everything
that the Amoraim and the Tot'doth Yeshu say on the subject), does
not deserve much attention. The present writer is inclined to sup-
*Laible, p. 42. •4
* T h a t Krauss (pp. 246-257) could suggest that we fill the gap in Jesus'
life, from his twelfth to his thirtieth year, with the aid of this Talmudic
story about Jesus' visit to Egypt (with which he combines also the story
of Celsus, that Jesus sold himself to be a slave in Egypt) as an historical
fact—was only possible through his supposing that Ben Stada (of whom the
early Tanna R. Eliezer said that "he brought spells from Egypt in a cut in
his flesh") was Jesus of Nazareth. A
" S e e Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?, Theosophical Publication Society, London
and Benares, 1903; A. Schweitzer, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte
der Leb en-Je su-F ors chung, Tübingen, 1906, p. 326. ^
pose that not only is the Babli Amoraitic story very late, but that the
conclusion of the Baratta itself ("Not like Elisha who repelled Gehazi
with both hands, nor like Yehoshua ben Perachya who repelled Yeshu
[of Nazareth] with both hands") is only a late addition, and that
the main point of the Baraita is simply the saying: "Let thy right
hand ever repel and thy left hand invite," which is certainly very old
and, apparently, uttered by R. Eliezer the Great (see Mech. Yithro,
§ Amalek 81 ; ed. Friedmann 55a and b ; see H . P . Chajes in
Ha-Goren I V 34 end of n. 2). 2 7
(b) There is a second Baraita of greater historical value. It is
as follows :
On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu [of Nazareth]
and the herald went before him for forty days saying, "[Yeshu
of Nazareth] is going forth to be stoned in that he hath practised
sorcery and beguiled and led astray Israel. Let everyone know-
ing aught in his defence come and plead for him." But they
found naught in his defence and hanged him on the eve of
Passover. 28
Following this Baraita come these remarks of the Amora , Ulla :
,
Ulla said: And do you suppose that for [Yeshu of Nazareth]
there was any right of appeal ? 2 9 He was a beguiler, and the
Merciful One hath said : Thou shalt not spare neither shalt thou
conceal him. It is otherwise with Yeshu, for he was near to the
civil authority.
( , Ulla was a disciple of R. Yochanan and lived in Palestine at
the end of the third century.)
In this Baraita attention should be paid to the emphasis given
to the statement that Jesus "practised sorcery and beguiled and led
astray Israel," and this, apparently, is what "the Baraita said" which
is quoted at the end of the previous Talmudic extract. The Talmud
* , The objections of M. Friedländer ("Die religiösen Bewegungen innerhalb
des Judentums in Zeitalter Jesu," Berlin, 1905, ρ. 233 η) which he urges
against those who find anything about Jesus in the Talmud (he himself
thinks that all such passages are late additions and pure forgeries) thus fall
to the ground; he objected that, on the one side, Jesus was a contemporary
of Yehoshua ben Perachya, and, on the other, a contemporary of Pappus ben
Yehuda, the contemporary of R. Akiba; that is to say, he lived a hundred
years previous to the Jesus of the Gospels, and a hundred years after. We
have shown that Pappus ben Yehuda has nothing to do with Yeshu, and
we here see that there is no value to be attached to the statement that he
was a disciple of Yehoshua ben Perachya. The other Talmudic statements,
such as are early, are not in such opposition to the Gospel accounts. •4
88
Sank. 43a. The bracketed words are from Dikduke Sofrim, from the
Munich MS. In a Florentine MS. is written "On the eve of Passover and
the eve of Sabbath" ; and this agrees with the explanation of Chwolsohn that
Jesus was crucified on a Sabbath eve which fell on the eve of Passover.
See Chwolsohn, op. cit. pp. 11-55.
20
Herford, op. cit. pp. 89, 349, wrongly translates: "Would it be thought
that anything could be said in favour of Jesus, a revolutionary ?"
authorities do not deny that Jesus worked signs and wonders, but
they look upon them as acts of sorcery. 30 We find the same thing
in the Gospels : "And the Scribes which came down from Jerusalem
said, He hath Beelzebub, and, By the prince of the devils he casteth
out devils" (Mark iii. 2 2 ) ; and in Matthew (ix. 34; xii. 24) the
Pharisees speak in similar terms.
That it was as a seducer and beguiler that Jesus was put to death
was clear to the Tannadm, for in their days his disciples had become
a separate Jewish sect which denied many of the religious principles
of Judaism; therefore their teacher, Jesus, had beguiled them and
led them astray from the Jewish faith. But it is noteworthy that the
Baraita stresses the fact that they made no haste in putting Jesus
to death in spite of his being a beguiler, and that they delayed the
execution of his sentence f o r forty days, in case anybody should
come to plead in his favour (a matter of surprise to the Amora
,
Ulla).
This is the exact opposite to the Gospel accounts, according to
which the trial of Jesus before the Sanhédrin was finished very
hurriedly and the sentence hastily carried out by the Roman Pro-
curator. In the opinion of the present writer the statement about
the herald has an obvious "tendency," and it is difficult to think that
it is historical.
Over against this, the Talmudic story agrees with the historic
fact that Jesus was put to death on the eve of Passover (which fell
on the eve of the Sabbath) as recorded in the Fourth Gospel:
"On the eve of that Passover" (John xix. 14), with which should be
compared the statement in Mark : "At the feast of the killing of the
Passover," which contradicts what goes before: "the first day of
unleavened bread" (Mark xiv. 12) ; a condition of things which is
also proved from the fact that on the first day of the week, after
three days, he was not found in his tomb. The Talmud, however,
speaks of hanging in place of crucifixion, since this horrible Roman
form of death was only known to Jewish scholars from Roman
trials, and not from the Jewish legal system. Even Paul
the Apostle (Gal. iii. 13) expounds the passage "for a curse
of God is that which is hanged" (Deut. xxi. 23) as applicable to
Jesus. 31
(c) Immediately after this Baraita comes a second (Sanh. 43a) :
Jesus had five disciples, Mattai, Naqai, Netser, Buni and
Todah.
This is at once followed by a late Amoraitic addition, recognizable

as such by the Aramaic language and the punning witicisms :
‫מ‬
See L. Blau, Das alt jüdische Zauberwesen, Budapest, 1898, p. 29. Justin
Martyr, Dial, cum Tryphone Judœo, c. 69, shows that at that time the Jews
spoke of Jesus as a sorcerer. A
n
See Laible, op. cit. 81-83. A
They brought Mattai (to the judges). H e said to them,
"Shall Mattai be killed?—it is written: Mattai (lit. when) shall
come and appear before God." They said to him : "Yea, Mattai
shall be killed, for it is written : Mattai (lit. when) shall die and
his name perish."
They brought Naqai. H e said to them, "Shall Naqai be
killed?—it is written: And Naqi (lit. the innocent) and the
righteous thou shalt not kill." They said to him, "Yea, Naqai
shall be killed, for it is written : In the secret places he killeth
Naqi" (lit. the innocent).
They brought Netser. He said to them, "Shall Netser be
killed?—it is written: And Netser (lit. a branch) from his roots
shall blossom." They said to him, "Yea, Netser shall be killed,
for it is written : And thou wast cast forth from thy grave like an
abhorred Netser" (lit. branch).
They brought Buni. H e said, "Shall Buni be killed?—it is
written: B'ni (lit. my son), my first-born, Israel." They said to
him, "Yea, Buni shall be killed, for it is written: I will slay
Bm'kha (lit. thy son), thy firstborn."
They brought Todah. H e said, "Shall Todah be killed?—
it is written: A psalm for Todah (lit. thanksgiving)." They said
to him, "Yea, Todah shall be killed, for it is written: Whoso
sacrificeth Todah (lit. thankofferings) honoureth me."
All this scriptural gymnastics cannot possibly belong to the

Baraita. At all events it cannot be historical, for it is impossible
that a court of law should indulge in such "pilpul," verbal quips,
with verses of Scripture at the expense of the condemned before
leading them out to execution; or that five disciples of Jesus were
all killed together. 32 The Baraita itself asserts that Jesus had five
disciples, while the Gospel speaks of twelve. Since the number in
the Gospel corresponds to the number of the Tribes of Israel, it
may be that this was so devised by Jesus himself and is therefore
historical; but it may also have been devised by the writers of the
Gospel and be unhistorical, just as the statement about the Seventy
Disciples whom Jesus chose (Luke x. 1)—a number devised to
correspond with the "Seventy nations" and the "Seventy tongues"—
is likewise unhistorical. 33
In any case the Baraita itself is lacking in accuracy, for although
the names are those of real disciples, they include some who were
not disciples of Jesus himself, but disciples of the second generation.
Thus we have both Mattai and Naqai, who are obviously, as Krauss
M
W e certainly find in Christian martyrologies and also in papyri contain-
ing reports of cases in Roman times, ‫ ־‬similar arguments; but it is hard to
suppose that such typical Talmudic discussion of names ever came before
courts of law. A
u
Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, I I I , I 2 9 6,‫״‬,η. 4.
perceived,34 Matthew and Luke. Netser is either a pun on Νotsrim,
(Christians), (so Krauss), 3 5 or, maybe, a corruption of Andrai
(Andrew), the brother of Simon Peter (Mark iii. 18; Matt. x. 2 ;
Luke vi. 14). Buni is supposed by most Christian scholars to be
the Nicodemus mentioned in the Gospel of John (iii. 1-10, xix. 39),
since we find in a Baraita ( Taanith 20a) dealing with Nakdimon ben
Gorion : "His name is not Nakdimon but Buni. And why is his name
called Nakdimon?—because the sun shone (naq'da) because of
him. ,,3e The present writer is of the opinion that "Buni" is a cor-
ruption of "Yuhanni" or "Yuani," i.e. John the brother of James,
the son of Zebedee. The last disciple, Todah, is certainly Thaddasus,
also called Lebbaeus (Matt. x. 3; Mark iii. 18). 37
But since this Baraita is anonymous, its early date is not decisive.
Some 3 8 suppose that the Baraita was uttered in the time of R. Akiba
and Bar Kokhbah, when many Christians were punished because they
would not renounce the messiahship of Jesus and confess that of
Bar Kokhbah; but ( a ) Christians were not then put to death, but
only scourged, as Justin Martyr tells us ("Apology" I 3 1 ) ; and
(b) the killing of these disciples is only related in the course of a
scriptural "pilpulistic," casuistical, argument, late in date, and form-
ing no part of the Baraita proper.
( d ) It is questionable whether this following Talmudic story is
primarily concerned with Jesus:
"An impudent one:" R. Eliezer holds that this means a
bastard, while R. Yehoshua says that it is a "son of uncleanness"
[ben niddah; see Lev. xv. 32] ; R. Akiba holds that it is both the
one and the other. The elders were once sitting [at the gate].
Two children passed before them, one covered his head and the
other uncovered his head.* The one who uncovered his head,
R. Eliezer calls a "bastard," R. Eliezer, "son of uncleanness,"
and R. Akiba, "bastard and son of uncleanness." They asked
R. Akiba, How do you dare to contradict the findings of your
colleagues ? H e said to them, I will prove what I say. He went
to the mother of the child and saw her sitting and selling peas in
the market. H e said to her, My daughter, if you tell me what I
ask, I will bring thee to the life of the world to come. She said
to him, Swear it to me. R. Akiba swore with his lips but dis-
avowed it in his heart. He said to her, What is the nature of
"Op. cit. 57, η. 3·<
* Ibid. η. 4. See also Laible, p. 7 1 . ^
ω
See in detail, Laible, pp. 70-71 ; Graetz, III, I · 303 n. ; Herford (p.
93) sees in most of these names some reference to Jesus : he is "the Naqi,"
the innocent, "the Netserbranch, from the root of Jesse, and "the Son"
(Buni).-4
" S e e Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, Leipzig, 1898, p. 4 0 . 4
"Laible, 37-71; cf. Herford, 91-95.4
• T o uncover the head before a superior is a mark of gross disrespect
among Jews, as among other orientals.
this thy son? She answered, When I entered the bridal chamber
I was in my uncleanness and my husband remained apart from me
and my groomsman came in unto me and I had this son. The
child was thus both a bastard and a "son of uncleanness." Then
said they, Great was R. Akiba who put his teachers to shame.
At the selfsame hour they said, Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel, who revealed his secret to R. Akiba ben Yosef. 39
Jesus is never mentioned explicitly in this story nor is there any

ground for supposing that the Christian censor in the Middle Ages
deleted the name of the child.40 Had not Celsus and the Talmud
preserved the legend of his illegitimacy, a legend which originated
solely from the conviction of the Christians that Jesus was born
without a human father, then the author of the Tol'doth Yeshu
would never have used the present Talmudic story as a basis for his
legend of the "uncleanness" of Miriam, Jesus' mother, and of the
unlawful connexion with the groomsman; and, consequently, it
would never have occurred to him to suppose that this account treats
of Jesus. Certainly the solemn conclusion, "Blessed be the Lord
God of Israel who hath revealed his secret to R. Akiba ben Yosef,"
would suggest that there is here a "hidden" mystery, and that some-
thing of great importance has been "revealed," and that the story is
not merely concerned with the origin of some street-child.
But this conclusion is unquestionably later than the story itself.
There was already one conclusion, and a simpler one, namely, "They
said, Great was R. Akiba who put his teachers to shame." The
second and more solemn conclusion is therefore a later addition,
added at a time when it was thought that the story really referred
to Jesus. The passage only occurs in Masseketh Kallah and Kallah
Rabbati, lesser tractates put together at a very late period, and so
containing many accretions which were then either new in sub-
stance or corrupt in form.
Jesus as a contemporary of R. Akiba is not an idea emanating
from the earlier Talmud authorities, but a product of the imagination
of the later generation which could suppose that Pappus ben Yehuda
was the husband of Miriam, the mother of Jesus. The only reason
" Tractate Kallah, ed. Koronel, p. 18& (Hamishshah Kuntresim, Vienna,

1864, p. 36) ; Kallah, Talmud, ed. Ram. p. 51a; Bâte Midrashoth, ed. S. A.
Wertheimer, Jerusalem, 1895, III 23; Dalman, appendix to Laible, pp. 7-8. J
4
‫״‬On this see Laible, p. 34, who comes to the conclusion that the child is
meant to be Jesus, because what is here said does not refer to any bastard
child in general. This, to the present writer, does not seem to be the case:
the story is only intended to show whose opinion is correct about the word
"impudent." See also Herford, pp. 49-50, and Krauss, op. cit. pp. 262, 278.
Jesus might be accounted "impudent" because he "scoffed at the words of the
Sages" (see below), on the basis of what is recorded in Luke ii. 41-47,
about the child Jesus, who argued with the Scribes when he was twelve years
old. On the illegitimacy see below, in the saying of Ben 'Azzai. 4(
for quoting the story here, is that the author of the Tol'doth Yeshu—·
of which more later—founded an entire book upon it.
(e) From the time of Abraham Geiger, Jewish scholars have
found early references to Jesus in certain Talmudic passages where
Balaam is mentioned. 41 According to this view Jesus is referred to
in the two following passages from the Mishnah:
Three kings and four commoners have no share in the world
to come . . . four commoners: Balaam and Doeg and Ahitophel
and Gehazi (Sank. X 2.). The disciples of the wicked Balaam
shall inherit Gehenna and go down to the pit of destruction, as
it is said : "The men of blood and deceit shall not live out half
their days‫( ״‬Aboth V 19).
That in these early passages, and in other early and late passages in
Talmud and Midrash, Jesus is meant by Balaam, has become among
Jewish scholars one of the accepted things, so patent as no longer
to call for serious proof. 42 Yet, in the opinion of the present writer,
this supposition is not altogether inevitable. Friedländer 43 is per-
haps more correct—not so much in his assertion that the antinomians
("who hold by the teaching of Balaam" and who are referred to in
the New Testament [Jude, 11]) are intended—but in denying that
Jesus is ever referred to under the pseudonym of Balaam in any
really early passage.
And on what is the hypothesis based? Why should the Mishnah
authorities conceal their intention and call Jesus Balaam? We shall
see later that when the Sages, for any reason, did not wish to men-
tion Jesus by name, they called him "Such-an-one," which is quite
unambiguous. But to call him by the name "Balaam" (a name
familiar in the Torah as that of a man of well-defined character and
an idolator, whereas, on the contrary, the characteristic features of
Jesus as depicted in the Talmud, are not in the least clearly outlined,
and he is a Jew as well) would be to give further opportunity for
error, and was neither necessary nor desirable. Furthermore, were
"an evil eye and a haughty spirit and a greedy soul," in the time of
the Mishnah authorities, the outstanding marks of the disciples of
Jesus and of them only? 44 And why should the Balaam mentioned
‫ ״‬S e e Geiger, Bileam u. Jesus, Jüdische Zeitschrift, V I (1868), pp. 31 -37.
The literature on the subject is given by Hermann Strack in his introduc-
tion to Laible, op. cit. p. VI ; S. Krauss, op. cit. p. 361. See Laible, pp. 57-58,
and the appendix by Dalman, p. 12 (the Hebrew original) ; Herford, pp.
64-78 and 404-405 (appendix giving Hebrew original). 4
43
See e.g. H. P. Chajes, Am^Haarez e Min, Rivista Israelitica I I I (1906)
94 η. <
**Der
4
Antichrist, Göttingen, 1901, p. 190fï.M
*Even Chajes, quoted in the last note but one as agreeing with Geiger,
says (Markus-Studien, Berlin, 1899, P· 25, n. 2) : "The scholars Geiger, Perles
and Schor take a one-sided view in finding Jesus described in the Talmud
in the guise of Balaam" ; though he sometimes agrees with them and brings
additional proof for their theory from the Aboth d. Rab. Nathan (XXI 1st
in Mishnah Sanhédrin, in conjunction with Doeg and Ahitophel and
Gehazi, necessarily be Jesus and none other? Geiger,45 and after
him Laible 46 and Herford, 4 7 are convinced that the Balaam in this
passage must be Jesus, because reference is here made to Israelites
who have no share in the world to come, and Balaam was not an
Israelite. But neither was Doeg the Edomite an Israelite. Therefore
Laible 48 and H e r f o r d 4 9 are forced to the conclusion that Doeg,
Ahitophel and Gehazi were likewise pseudonyms, signifying the
apostles Peter, James and John, or else Judas Iscariot (Doeg the
traitor), Peter (Ahitophel) and Paul (Gehazi). But are not all of
these hypotheses "mountains hung on a hair"? Furthermore, as
we shall see later, it was still a subject for dispute whether Jesus
had in truth no share in the world to come. Quite apart from this,
there are two items of evidence which argue against this pseudon-
ymous use of Balaam, namely, two straightforward passages where
Jesus is mentioned side by side with Balaam and completely differ-
entiated from him.
( f ) The story is told of "Onkelos son of Kalonymos, son of
Titus' sister," that he wished to become a proselyte. He first
called up Titus by means of spells. Titus advised him not to
become a proselyte because Israel had so many commandments
and commandments hard to observe ; rather would he advise him
to oppose them. Onkelos then called up Balaam, who said to
him in his rage against Israel, "Seek not their peace nor their
good." Not till then did he go and "raise up Jesus by spells
and say to him : What is the most important thing in the world ?
H e said to him, Israel. H e asked, And how if I should join
myself with them? H e said to him, Seek their .good and do not
seek their harm ; everyone that hurteth them is as if he hurt the
apple of God's eye. H e then asked, And what is the fate of
that man? he said to him, Boiling filth. A Baraita has said:
Everyone that scofïeth against the words of the wise is con-
demned to boiling filth. Come and see what there is between
the transgressors in Israel and the prophets of the nations of
the world" (Gitt. 56&-57Ä).
Whether this passage is early or late is hard to decide. Its
Aramaic style 50 and the introduction of the formula "a Baraita
has said," would prove its lateness. Yet it mentions "the son
vers.), he still thinks that "wherever mention is made of the immorality
of 48Balaam, the Nicolaitans are intended."^
46
Jüdische Zeitschrift, V I 3233‫ ·־‬Λ
4T
Laible, 52-53· *‫י‬
48
Herford, p. 66. <
Op. cit. pp. 54-55· <
*"Op. cit. p. 71. <
80
There are actually Aramaic passages older than those in Hebrew, but
not passages in dialogue form like the present.
of the sister of Titus" who, according to Graetz 5 1 was Flavius
Clemens (corrupted to Kalonymos or Kalonikos, as in Aboda
Zara 11a), the nephew of Domitian (and therefore also of Titus,
Domitian's brother) who was put to death as an atheist (we know
that the heathen regarded belief in a one and invisible God as
atheism) about the year 96 C.E. Therefore the chief actor in the
story goes back to an early date. Furthermore, the story only
charges Jesus with being "a scoffer against the words of the wise"
and "a transgressor in Israel," and even makes him say good things
about Israel, thereby estimating him as not only higher than Titus,
but higher than Balaam the "prophet of the nations of the world."
This, to the present writer, is a proof of the earliness of the
story.
To the Talmud authorities Jesus was always a Jew ; he may have
been a Jew who was a transgressor and a "scoffer against the words
of the wise" (which he certainly was, especially in view of Matthew
xxiii, where he pours scorn on the Pharisees and their burden-
some interpretations of the Torah, and ridicules them for tithing
mint and anise and cummin, straining out a gnat and swallowing
a camel; and much more to the same effect), yet the "Jewish spark"
was still alight in him and he cared for his people's good. From this
point of view the passage is important—not, that is to say, for the
better understanding of the events of Jesus' life or of his opinions,
but for understanding the attitude of the Talmud to Jesus the Jew.
The passage is also important since Balaam and Jesus are here
not only separated entirely, but even placed in opposition. Geiger 52
and H e r f o r d 5 3 felt this and so had to modify their statements and
allow that Balaam is not always Jesus, and the two are not always
inseparable. We, however, for our part, do not find a single passage
in Talmud or Midrash where we feel bound to say that Balaam is
Jesus and no other. There is no adequate reason for such pseu-
donymity since Jesus is mentioned many times explicitly by name,
or by the term "such-an-one" (to be explained by their general
unwillingness to refer to him).
(g) W e again find Jesus and Balaam clearly kept apart in the
following later Tannaitic passage:
R. Eliezer ha-Kappar said : God gave strength to his
(Balaam's) voice so that it went from one end of the world to
the other, because he looked forth and beheld the nations that
bow down to the sun and moon and stars, and to wood and stone,
and he looked forth and saw that there was a man, born of a
woman, who should rise up and seek to make himself God,
and to cause the whole world to go astray. Therefore God gave
a
Geschichte IV, 109 403-405 η. 12, 411 η. See also Derenbourg, op. cit.
II 178 (Heb. trans.). <
62
Jüdische Zeitschr. VI 36-37. 4
88
Op. cit. p. 39· Λ
power to the voice of Balaam that all the peoples of the world
might hear, and thus he spake : Give heed that ye go not astray
after that man, for it is written, "God is not man that he should
lie." And if he says that he is God he is a liar; and he will
deceive and say that he departeth and cometh again at the end. 54
H e saith and he shall not perform. See what is written: And
he took up his parable and said, "Alas, who shall live when God
doeth this." Balaam said, Alas, who shall live—of that nation
which heareth that man who hath made himself God.55
R. Eliezer ha‫־‬Kappar, the father of Bar Kappara (whose sayings
are often attributed to the father owing to the similarity of their
names) was a contemporary of R. Yehuda ha-Nasi and lived in the
third century, 56 dying about the year 260. So although the present
passage is Tannaitic, it is comparatively late. And since we know it
only from comparatively modern Midrashim, such as Y'lamm'denu
and the Yalkut Shimeoni, which consist of earlier fragments ex-
panded by later additions, we cannot regard the present passage as
primitive or in its original shape. Also the words concerning Jesus
may belong to the Amora R. Abbahu. 57
In any case the fact comes out clearly that whether at the end
of the Tannaitic or during the Amoraitic period (when there were
more important reasons for not mentioning the name of Jesus) the
names of Balaam and Jesus were still kept apart. Though it must be
granted that the very fact that the names of Jesus and Balaam are
twice brought into such close connexion, gives ground for thought.
W e come now to earlier Talmudic statements, the earliest in
Hebrew literature dealing with Jesus :
(h) R. Shimeon ben , Azzai said: I found a genealogical roll
in Jerusalem wherein was recorded, "Such-an-one is a bastard of
an adulteress" ( Yeb. I V 3 ; 49a).
Current editions of the Mishnah add: "To support the words of
R. Yehoshua" (who, in the same Mishnah, says: What is a bastard?
Everyone whose parents are liable to death by the Beth Din).
That Jesus is here referred to seems to be beyond doubt, although
Dalman disputes this. 58 H. P. Chajes 59 says that "the statement must
necessarily have referred to someone well-known, and not to some-
84
We have here clear indications of the "Second Coming" (the Parousia)
which is bound up with the Milennium (Chiliasm). •4
65
Yalkut Shimeoni (Salonica) §725 on wa-yissa m'shalo (Num. xxiii. 7),
according to Midrash Y'lamm'denu. Quoted in Yellinek's Beth Midrash, V
207 ff; Dalman in appendix to Laible, pp. 10-11; Herford, p. 404. See also
David Kahana, M'bo I'pharashath Bileam, Lwow, 1883, pp. 13-14. ^‫־‬
89
W. Bacher, op. cit. II 496, 500-508; Sokoloff, He-Asif III 330.
‫מ‬
Cf. Bacher, op. cit. II 506, η. 2, and Herford, op. cit. 46. •4
6
*LHe Worte Jesu, p. 4. η. 2. •4
89
Ri7Asta Isr. II 94; the same view is held by Derenbourg, R.E.J. I l l
293, and Laible, pp. 31-32. Suidas (underΊησοΰς) says in the name of the
one of no special significance," and Herford 60 rightly urges that
unless there had been some strong reason for avoiding his name,
the name would have been given, since giving the name would have
served to strengthen the case of Ben , Azzai and "to support the
words of R. Yehoshua."
In the time of Ben 'Azzai (and also in that of his elder contem-
porary R. Eliezer), there was adequate reason for not mentioning
Jesus by his name, because, as we shall see, the disciples of Jesus
used at that time to heal the sick "in the name of Jesus."
It is also possible that the word "such-an-one" was later intro-
duced into this passage when Christianity was more widespread and
they would no longer mention the name openly "by reason of the
anger of Minim" (i.e., Jews rightly or wrongly suspected of a lean-
ing towards the new Christian "heresy"). (Ber. 12a; Pes. 56a.)
Ben 'Azzai was the "colleague-disciple of R. Akiba" (Baba Bathra
158b) and flourished before the Bar Kokhbah rebellion, and was,
it seems, killed after this rebellion subsided (Ekha Rabbati I I 2 ;
Midrash Tehillim IX 13, ed. Buber, p. 88) ; his words may, then,
have been uttered about the time of Celsus who, as we have seen,
reported "in the name of a Jew" that Jesus was illegitimately born,
although, according to Celsus, it happened to Miriam when she was
still only espoused, while Ben 'Azzai refers to an esheth ish, the
terminology invariably used to indicate a married woman. But in
the time of the Talmud espousal was in all respects equivalent to
marriage. 61 That there is no historical foundation for the tradition
of Jesus' illegitimate birth and that the tradition arises from oppo-
sition to the Christian view that Jesus was born without a natural
father—all this we have repeatedly seen, and we shall have reason to
refer to it again when we come to the actual history of Jesus (see
the beginning of the Third Book).
( j ) About the same time, R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (or R. Eliezer
the Great), one of the earliest and greatest of the Tannaim, makes use
of the same pseudonym "such-an-one." W e read in an early Baraita:
They asked R. Eliezer, "What of such-an-one as regards the
world to come?" He said to them, "You have only asked me
about such-an-one. . . . What of a bastard as touching inherit-
ance?—What of him as touching the levirate duties? What of
him as regards whitening his house?—What of him as regards
whitening his grave?"—not because he evaded them by words,
but because he never said a word which he had not heard from
his teacher (T. Yeb. I l l 3; Yoma 66b).62
Byzantine Jew Theodosius, that the genealogical roll of Jesus was preserved
at Tiberias (Krauss, op. cit. p. 159) ; and Ben , Azzai lived in Tiberias
(Bacher's criticism on Herford, J.Q.R. XVII, 175). A
60
Op. cit. pp. 43-45· <
el
Krauss, op. cit. pp. 186-187 (n. 10). •4
Dalman, who in his appendix to Laible quotes the saying of Ben , Azzai
about "such-an-one" and also two Amoraitic stories where "p'lan" is used
The Amoraim who discussed these passages in Y orna did not know
to whom the questioners referred, and thought that by the word
"such-an-one" King Solomon was meant. But taking into account
the above statement of Ben , Azzai, and the story told in the
Amoraitic period ( / . Ab. Zar. I I 2 [p. 40, 4] ; / . Shab. X I V 4
[p. 14, 4] ; Qoh. R. on Yesh ra'a) where the term "such-an-one"
(p'loni or pJlan) refers to Jesus, and taking into consideration also
the fact that in the present Baraita the various questions about the
bastard follow immediately after the question about "such-an-one,"
it is tolerably certain that the "such-an-one" here is likewise Jesus. 63
Büchler 64 maintains that R. Eliezer's answer to the question whether
Jesus had any share in the world to come was, like his answer to
the other questions, in the affirmative.
But if, with Chwolsohn, 65 we regard his answer as ambiguous,
"neither yes nor no," we can even so conclude (as Chwolsohn rightly
does) that since R. Eliezer would not wholly deprive Jesus of his
share in the world to come, the Tannaim, the successors of the Phari-
sees, were at the end of the first Christian century, far from re-
garding Jesus as anything more than "a transgressor in Israel," and
were still accustomed to come into close religious touch with the
Christians. This last fact we also observe in another early Baraitat
where we find R. Eliezer again the central figure, and where Jesus
is mentioned openly by name—but again, not in utter condemnation.
(k) Our teachers have taught: When R. Eliezer [the Great]
was arrested for Minuth they brought him to the tribunal for
judgment. The Procurator said to him, Does an old man like
you busy himself with such idle matters? H e answered, I trust
him that judges me. So the Procurator thought that he spoke of
him, whereas he spoke of his heavenly Father. The Procurator
said to him, Since you trust in me you are dimissus, acquitted.
When he returned home his disciples came in to console him, but
he would not accept their consolations. R. Akiba said to him,
Suffer me to tell you one thing of what you have taught me. He
answered, (Say on). H e said, Perhaps [a word of] minuth came
upon you and pleased you and therefore you were arrested
(Tosefta reads : Perhaps one of the Minim had said to thee a word
of Minuth and it pleased thee?). H e answered, Akiba, you have
reminded me! Once I was walking along the upper market
(Tosefta reads "street") of Sepphoris and found one [of the
as a pseudonym for Jesus, does not quote the present passage by R. Eliezer
at all, since Laible also does not quote it. For an explanation of the form
of the entire Baraita see Graetz I V " 194 (n. 5). •4
68
See Hame'iri in Beth ha-Behirah, Jerusalem, 1885, p. 60c; R. Brüll's
M'bo ha-Mishnah, p. 274 (n. 31) ; C. A. Tottermann, R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus,
Leipzig, 1877, p. 17 ff. ; D. Chwolsohn, op. cit. p. 101 (n. 4 ) . 4
M
A. Büchler, Der Galiläische Amhaares des zweiten Jahrhunderts, Vienna,
1906, pp. 292-3 η. •4
85
Op. cit. 100-102, •4
disciples of Jesus of Nazareth] 66 and Jacob of Kefar Sekanya
( Tosefta reads "Sakkanin") was his name. He said to me, It is
written in your Law, "Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot,
etc." What was to be done with it—a latrine for the High Priest ?
But I answered nothing. H e said to me, So [Jesus of Nazareth]
taught me ( T o s e f t a reads "Yeshu ben Pantere") : "For of the
hire of a harlot hath she gathered them, and unto the hire of a
harlot shall they return ;" from the place of filth they come, and
unto the place of filth they shall go. And the saying pleased me,
and because of this I was arrested for Minuth. And I trans-
gressed against what is written in the Law : "Keep thy way far
from her"—that is Minuth; "and come not nigh the door of her
house"—that is the civil government. 67
In spite of M. Friedländer's various attempts to persuade us that,

"every Talmudist worthy of the name knows that the few Talmudic
passages which speak of Jesus are a late addition," 68 and "the
Talmudic sources of the first century and the first quarter of the
second afford not the least evidence of the existence of Jesus or
Christianity," 69—in spite of this, there can be no doubt that the
words, "one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth," and "thus Jesus
of Nazareth taught me," are, in the present passage, both early in
date and fundamental in their bearing on the story; and their
primitive character cannot be disputed on the grounds of the slight
variations in the parallel passages; 7 0 their variants ("Yeshu ben
Pantere" or "Yeshu ben Pandera," instead of "Yeshu of Nazareth")
are merely due to the fact that, from an early date, the name
"Pantere," or "Pandera," became widely current among the Jews as
the name of the reputed father of Jesus.
We know of R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (Gen. R. 42; Ab. d'R.
Nathan VI 1st vers. X I I I 2nd vers., ed. Schechter, p. 30) that until
his twenty-second or twenty-eighth year he had been engaged in
agriculture on his father's estate. He then went up to Jerusalem
and spent many years studying the Law under R. Yochanan ben
Zakkai, with such success that when his father, Hyrcanus, came to
Jerusalem, his son Eliezer expounded in the presence of R. Yochanan
ben Zakkai things "such as ear had never heard." 71
So we may say that R. Eliezer was born at least thirty or even
" T h e words in square brackets are given in Dikduke Sof'rim to Aboda
Zara, edited by Dr. Rabinovitz from the Munich MS. 4
67
Ab. Zar. 16b-17a; T. Hulin, II 24. See also Qoh. R. on Kol-ha-Tfvarim
and Yalkut Shimeoni, Micah 1, and Prov. 5, 5. 4
w
See his Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnosticismus, Göttingen, 1898, pp.
71-74; Der Antichrist, introd. pp. X I X - X X ; Die religiösen Bewegungen, pp.
191-192; 206-207η; 215-221. •4
89
Die religiösen Bewegungen, p. 215. Λ _
70
See what Herford writes against the view of Friedländer, op. cit. υ - .-<‫״‬
371· <
"Graetz, op. cit. I V 3 40-41.
forty years before the Destruction of the Temple, between 30 and
40 C.E. 72 R. Eliezer cannot have been very young at the time of the
Destruction, since his younger contemporary, R. Yehoshua ben
Hanania, was one of the Levitical choristers in the Temple ( S i f r e to
Numbers 116, ed. Friedmann, p. 53a and b) and hence must have
reached maturity by the year 70 C. E. 73 W e also gather from the
Talmud.| (Sukkah 27a) that King Agrippa (the Second) and his
steward consulted R. Eliezer on certain religious matters, and even if,
with Derenbourg, 74 we assume that such discussion took place after
the Destruction, we must yet allow that it must have been between
the years 79 and 85 C.E. ; for from the year of the Destruction until
the accession of Titus (70-79 C.E.) Agrippa was in Rome, and in
85 C. E., during the reign of Domitian, he lost those Jewish territories
bestowed on him by Claudius and Nero, and also, perhaps, by
Vespasian, 75 and his discussions with R. Eliezer could only have
taken place while he was king and in the habit of coming to his
capital, Caesarea Philippi, where R. Eliezer was to be found (Sukkah
2
7b). ‫״‬
This latter fact is mentioned in Sukkah immediately after the
questions of Agrippa's steward, showing that the discussion was with
R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus and with him only, and that he was then so
well known that it was to him that the king appealed. Therefore
about the year 80 C. E . (and probably even before the Destruction)
he must have been well advanced in years ; and we can safely say
that he was born by the year 40 or even 30 C. E., a short time after
Jesus was crucified. So it is not impossible that he should have
spoken with one of Jesus' actual disciples, and not simply with one
of those of the second generation as Laible 7 6 and Herford 77 felt
bound to suppose.
Herford himself holds that R. Eliezer was arrested for heresy
(Minuth) in the year 109, during Trajan's first persecution of the
Christians, when S. Simeon, the aged Bishop of Jerusalem, was
killed.78 But he makes the encounter with Jacob of Kefar Sekanya
occur too soon before R. Eliezer's arrest. A long time elapsed be-
tween the two, since R. Eliezer had forgotten the meeting and R.
Akiba had to remind him of it—an impossibility if, as Herford
supposes, only a few months or even a year or two had intervened.
At the time of the arrest R. Eliezer was quite old, as is apparent
n
78
Herford, op. cit. p. 143 n. 1. •4
Derenbourg, Essai (Heb. Trans. II 172).·^
14
Ibid. p. 134. In n. 5 the writer says : ' Perhaps King Agrippa only
asked these questions of R. Eliezer after the Destruction of the Temple."^‫־‬
‫י‬5 Graetz III, 2, 52-53 ; cf. Schürer, Geschichte des Jüd. Volkes im Zeit-
alter Jesu Christi, I·, pp. 587588‫־‬, n. 45. M
" Laible, pp. 60-71. •4
" H e r f o r d , pp. 106, 143-145· •4
"Ibid. p. 141· H. P. Chajes (Ha-Goren I V 34n.) places the date of his
arrest earlier, in the time of Domitian. ^
from the remark of the Procurator: "Does an old man like you
occupy himself in such matters?" I f , with Chajes, we conclude
that the arrest took place in 95 C.E., the year of Domitian's perse-
cution, and assume that R. Eliezer was then sixty years old, it is
easily possible that he encountered Jacob of Kefar Sekanya twenty-
five or thirty years earlier, about the year 60 C. E. during his early
manhood. By that time Jacob of K e f a r Sekanya may have been
well advanced in years and in his younger life (about thirty years
earlier) have been a disciple of Jesus, from whom he personally
heard the interpretation of "the hire of the harlot." It is quite im-
possible to explain the straightforward words, "thus Jesus of Naza-
reth taught me," as applicable to a second-hand tradition.
Laible and Herford find it difficult to accept this conclusion (that
R. Eliezer encountered an actual disciple of Jesus rather than one
of the second generation) owing to another Baraita which men-
cions a certain Jacob who healed the sick in the name of Jesus :
It happened to R. Eliezer ben Dama [son of R. Ishmael's
sister] 79 that a serpent bit him; and Jacob of K e f a r Sama
[Sekanya] came to heal him in the name of Yeshu ben Pandera.
But R. Ishmael forbade him. H e said, Ben Dama, you are not
permitted! H e (R. Eliezer ben Dama) answered, I will bring
thee a proof that he may heal me [I will bring thee a verse from
the Law showing that it is permitted]. But ere he could bring
a proof he died. R. Ishma'el said [called to him] : Happy art
thou, Ben Dama, that thou hast gone in peace [that thy body
is clean and thy soul has gone forth in purity] and hast not
broken down the fence of the Wise." 80
Friedländer 8 1 argues that the words "in the name of Yeshu ben
Pandera," lacking in the version from the Babylonian Talmud (Ab.
Zar. 2jb) come from the story of "the grandson of R. Yehoshua
ben Levi" (J. Shab. end of X, p. 14b), where it follows the story
of Ben Dama ; but how then could they have come into the Tosefta
and the Jerusalem Talmud ( I I 5, p. 40d and 41a) ? It is more to
the point to decide whether "Jacob of Kefar Sama" and "Jacob
the Min of Kefar Sekanya" are identical. Herford 82 argues that
since Kefar Sekanya (the modern Sukneh) and Kefar Sama (the
modern village of Somiah) are only nine miles apart, Jacob the
Min may have lived in both and have been called sometimes by the
name of one village and sometimes by the name of the other. But
if we decide that Jacob the Min, who had dealings with R. Eliezer,
"Bracketed words are from the version in Ab. Zar. 27b; the rest f r o m
T. Hut. I I 22-23. <
80
T. Hui. II 22-23; B. Ab. Zar. 27b; J. Shab end of xiv (p. 14«*) ; J. Ab.
Zar.81 II 2 (ρ. 40d and 41a). Λ
83
Relig. Beweg, pp. 218-220. Λ
Op. cit. p. 106. ‫י‬
was one of Jesus' actual disciples and that R. Eliezer met him about
the year 60 C.E., we cannot then identify him with the Jacob the
Min, who wished to cure the nephew of R. Ishmael; because R.
Ishmael was ransomed from the Romans by R. Yehoshua immedi-
ately after the Destruction while still a young boy ; 8 3 therefore the
incident of Jacob of Kefar Sekanya and R. Ishmael , s nephew could
not have taken place before the year 90 ; some would even put it as
late as 116 84 or 130.85 Obviously no disciple of Jesus could have
survived for so long.
But if we suppose that Jacob of K e f a r Sekanya and Jacob
of Kefar Soma were two distinct people (the latter not being
introduced as a disciple of Jesus but only as healing the sick "in
the name of Jesus"—a practice of the second generation of dis-
ciples 86 ) we can then regard the former not simply as a disciple
of Jesus, but even as his brother, "James the brother of the Lord"
(Galatians i. 19), or "James the brother of Jesus" ("Antiquities,"
X X I X i ) , or "James the Righteous" (δ δίκαιος). This James
who, as the brother (or near relative) of Jesus, became the chief
of the disciples after the crucifixion, was one of the most ardent
advocates of the Jewish written and oral Law. The disciples of
Jesus were then a small party of Ebionites or "Nazarenes," and
James, their leader, lived an abnormally severe ascetic life. Eusebius,
quoting Hegesippus, 87 tells how he drank no wine nor strong
drink, ate no flesh, never cut his hair, clothed himself in cotton and
never in woollens, possessed only one garment, and spent much
time fasting and praying in the Temple. 88 He and his companions
requested Paul the apostle to give money to the Nazarites to shave
their heads (which they had left uncut while under a vow) and
that he himself should sanctify himself with them and enter the
Temple (Acts xxi. 18-26), all in accordance with the teaching
of the Pharisees. In the presence of the followers of this same
James, Peter and Barnabas were afraid to eat with the Gentiles, and
were forced to keep apart from the uncircumcised and to abstain
from forbidden foods (Galatians ii. 12-13).
James "the righteous," "Brother of the Lord," was, then,
distinguishable from the Pharisees only in regarding the Suffering
Messiah as the Redeemer and Saviour, and in supposing that the
Messiah was already come; whereas the Pharisees still awaited
him and looked for him to appear in both material and moral triumph
and glory. It is not, then, a matter of great surprise that when
Hanan (Annas) the Second, the Bœthusean High Priest (who
held office in the interim between the death of the Procurator Festus
M
84
See Bacher, op. cit. I 186, 232.-4
Chwolsohn, op. cit. η. 3 to pp. 99-100. ·^
88
Herford, op. cit. 105,B 145. 4
M
Graetz, op. cit. III, I , 312-313. 4
m
Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica Π, 23. •4
and the coming of Albinus), condemned to death "James the brother
of Jesus which was called Messiah," the Pharisees complained
against this perversion of justice on the part of the Sadducaean-
Bcethusean High Priest and sent secret messengers to Agrippa I I
and Albinus, reporting the miscarriage of justice, with the result
that he was deposed by Agrippa. Such is the account of Josephus
("Antiq." XX, ix 1).
W e show later (p. 59) that there is no foundation for the
doubt of Jewish scholars like Graetz 8 9 and Christians like Schürer 90
as to the historical value of this account so far as it affects James
the brother of Jesus. James was, therefore, put to death in the
interim between the procuratorships of Festus and Albinus, i.e. 62
C.E. Schürer 90a considers that this date is not definitely ascertainable,
because Hegesippus states that immediately after the death of James
the war of Vespasian and Titus broke out, so placing the event
at a later date. In any case it was not earlier than 62 C.E. ; and
since we have already seen that R. Eliezer was well known by the
year 60 it is quite possible that he had met "James the brother of
the Lord" and spoken with him about the interpretation which he
had heard from Jesus. They met at Sepphoris in Galilee, whereas
James' regular place of residence was Jerusalem; but this need not
surprise us since we know that the first Christians used often to go
backwards and forwards between Jerusalem and Galilee : they were
almost all of them Galilasans. Neither need the discussion with
R. Eliezer on the exposition of Scripture, though it now strikes us
as unseemly, be a matter of surprise.
There is no attempt in the story to pour contempt on Jesus:
on the contrary, the saying reported in the name of Jesus pleases
the great Tanna. All this goes to show that we have here a story
bearing the stamp of truth. Certainly, at first sight, this exposition
dealing with the hire of the harlot and the latrine does not accord
with the character of Jesus' teachings as we know them from the
Gospels: there we are accustomed to see him preach only about
ethics and personal piety. But we should note that the Pharisaic
methods of exposition are by no means foreign to him, as may be
observed from the way in which he expounds the passage: "The
Lord said unto my lord, Sit thou on my right hand," asking "How
can David call the Messiah 'Lord/ when the Messiah is David's son ?"
(Mark xii. 35-37; Luke xx. 41-44; Matthew xxii. 41-45).
The compilers of the Gospels did not, of course, see fit to quote
sayings of Jesus dealing with religious rulings and ceremonial laws,
88
Krauss, Das Leben Jesu, pp. 23, 193, 299-300; Schwegler, Das nach-
apostolische
89
Zeitalter, I 173. •4
80
Op. cit. III
4
2 5, 444, η. 2. 4
Op. cit. I 581-583. A
Ma
P. 582 and n. 43 to that and following page. Derenbourg, one of the
best Jewish scholars, regards the story as true ( I I 106, 67) and in this he is
supported by Chwolsohn, op. cit. pp. 101-104.·^
since they wrote their books at a time when Christianity was en-
deavouring in every possible way to emphasize the opposition between
the teaching of Jesus and Pharisaism—Judaism par excellence. But
such an Ebionite and observer of the Law as "James the brother of
the Lord" could still remember this halakhic exposition by Jesus,
the same Jesus who had been hailed by the title "Rabbi" and
"Mari" 91 just like any Pharisaic Rabbi ; 9 2 and when the opportunity
came, James repeated it to one of the great Tannaim.
It is worth while paying attention to these words, improbable
though they may at first sight appear, 9 3 especially to Christian
scholars. Two distinguished Christian scholars, W. Brandt 9 4 and
W . Wrede 9 5 have concluded that Jesus was simply a teacher and
a Rabbi, and that his messianic attributes are the creation of the
early Christian sect ("Gemeindetheologie"). We are not concerned
at the moment with the truth of this, but will come to that question
later; yet in any case, this exposition serves to show that Jesus
often resembled the Pharisees in his mode of teaching. Friedlän-
der, 96 however, thinks it impossible that Jesus could so "demean
himself" ("erniedrigen konnte") as to treat Scripture in such an
"unholy" fashion; but let us remember that Jesus, like all Israel's
sages, from the Prophets to the Amoraim, thought nothing "unholy"
which concerned the needs of mankind. It is not only the Talmud
which expounds Scripture in ways which, to our modern taste, are
unseemly, but even Jesus, in the Gospels, speaks of human needs
with a freeness unacceptable in these days : "Whatsoever goeth into
the mouth passeth into the belly and is cast out into the draught"
( ε?ς άφεδρώναι) (Matt. xv. 17) ; "Whatsoever entereth a man from
without, cannot defile him; because it goeth not into his heart but
into his belly and goeth out thence into the draught" (Mark vii.
18-19).
That it should have been to R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus in partie-
ular that Jacob told the exposition, is not a great matter of surprise.
‫מ‬
‫ מ ר י‬is the Κbpie of the Gospels, as in Syriac. ‫ ר ב י ו מ ו ר י‬for ‫ר ב י ו מ ר י‬
is an old mistake already pointed out by S. D. Luzzatto in Bethulath bath
Yehudah p. I I I ; and he mentions in his French article Editions rares (Stein-
Schneider Hamaskir, i 87) that he had found in Berachoth, ed. Sonzino,
1483, the reading ‫ ש ^ ו ם עיציר ר ב י ו מ ר י‬in place of ‫ ·רבי ו מ ו ר י‬See also
Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, pp. 268, 276.^‫־‬
92
Graetz ( I I I 2 B 759; IV 3 , n. 9, pp. 399400‫ )־‬concludes that the name
"Rabbi" in the Gospels is an anachronism, since previous to the Destruction
no great Pharisee was so called. But, in the mind of the present writer,
this is only half true: the official title may not hav^ been "Rabbi," but it
may have been used popularly to signify the Scribes.^
93
Laible (op. cit. pp. 59-62) agrees with the view that Jesus may have
uttered such an exposition, since it was of importance in the time of the
Temple. M
94
Die evangelische Geschichte u. der Ursprung des Christenthums, Leip-
zig, 1898. ^
96
Das Messianitätsgeheimniss in den Evangelien, Göttingen, 1909.
** Op. cit. p . 220. •4
We have already seen that R. Eliezer was not able to deny Jesus
a share in the world to come ; and certain of his sayings survive which
bear a resemblance to sayings in the Gospels. For example, his
saying, "Everyone who has a morsel of food in his basket and
says, What shall I eat tomorrow? is of little faith" (Sota 45fr),
corresponds to the saying in Matthew (vi. 30-34), " . . . how much
more you, Ο ye of little faith; therefore be not anxious saying,
What shall we eat and what shall we drink . . . be not anxious there-
fore for the morrow." The short prayer of R. Eliezer, "Do thy will
in heaven above and give comfort to them that fear thee here
below and do what is good in thine eyes" (Berachoth 29b; T. Ber.
I l l , 11), corresponds to the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples;
"Our Father in heaven . . . thy will be done, as in heaven so also
on earth" (Matt. vi. 9-11 ; Luke xi. 2) ; and to the passage in the
Gospel, "Glory to God in the highest and peace to the children of
men" (Luke ii. 14).
Perhaps such similarity caused his arrest for Minuth.97 R. Elie-
zer's connexion with Christianity was certainly distasteful to his
neighbours, who opposed Minuth to their utmost. Evidence of this
is forthcoming in the last Talmudic extract, which we quote here
because it deals with R. Eliezer, and because it explains a further
point in Jesus' teaching as it is portrayed in the Gospels :
(1) Imma Shalom was the wife of R. Eliezer and sister of
Rabban Gamaliel. There lived near her a philos οph who had the
reputation of never taking a bribe. They sought to make a mock
of him. She sent him a lamp of gold. They came before him.
She said to him, "I desire that they give me a share in the
family property." H e said to them, "From the day when ye
were exiled from your land, the Law of Moses has been taken
away, and the law of the Evangelicm has been given, and in it
is written, "A son and a daughter shall inherit alike." The next
day he (R. Gamaliel), in his turn, sent to him a Lybian ass. H e
(the philosoph) said to them, "I have looked further to the end
of the book, and in it is written, '1 am not come to take away
from the Law of Moses and I am not come to add to the Law
of Moses,' and it is written, 'Where there is a son, a daughter
does not inherit.' " She said to him, "Let your light shine as
a lamp." R. Gamaliel said to her, "The ass has come and trod-
den out the lamp." [i.e. the Lybian ass, as a bribe, has pre-
vailed over the bribe of the golden lamp] (Shab. 116a and b).
This interesting story occurs nowhere else in Talmud or Midrash,

nor is it indicated as being a Baraâta. Its Aramaic style, recalling
the style of the story of Onkelos bar Kalonymos (see above, f, pp. 33-
" T h e point is discussed by H. P. Chajes (Ha-Goren, I V 34, n. 2). He
thinks that it was perhaps because of this resemblance that "his (R. Eliezer's)
companions brought forth weapons to anathematize him."·^
34) testifies to its lateness, as do the words "aven• gillayori' or
"avon gUlayon," names first applied to the Gospel by R. Meir and
R. Yochanan (Shab. 116a—shortly before the present story). There-
fore the present form of the narrative is undoubtedly late, though
the fact recorded is not necessarily invented. The figures in the
story are: Imma Shalom, 98 wife of R. Eliezer and sister of Rabban
Gamaliel, and Rabban Gamaliel himself (i. e. R. Gamaliel of Yab-
neh, Gamaliel I I ) . Laible 99 offers the hypothesis, worth noticing,
that neither the wife nor the father-in-law of R. Eliezer felt easy at
the friendly relations existing between R. Eliezer and the Minim; and
so they sought to hold up to ridicule the Christian Philosoph who
lived near Rabban Gamaliel, and to show R. Eliezer what sinners
and wrongdoers were these Minim, who could be perverted by a
bribe.
But the present writer would suggest that there is a still subtler
intention : it was not requisite only to draw ridicule on the Philosoph,
but also to show that there was something equivocal in the relation
of Jesus and the Christians to the Law. In this case we obviously
have before us the Gospel passage: I came not to destroy but to
fulfil (ούκ ηλθον καταλύσαι αλλά χληρώσαι Matthew v. 17). Instead
of the reading "and I am not (‫ )ויצא‬come to add," etc., there occurs
in the Talmud version the variant "but (‫ )א^א‬I am come to add,"
etc.—agreeing entirely with the Gospel f o r m : "I came not to
destroy but to fulfil." 1 0 0 Güdemann 1 0 1 argues that the correct
version is, "and I am not come to add," whereas Matthew, in writing
"but to fulfil," has mistaken the Aramaic original from which he
drew the saying. I n any case we may deduce from Jesus' words
that he did not come to set aside the ceremonial laws, although many
other verses of the Gospels speak of their annulment by Jesus. The
early Tannaim perceived this inner contradiction, and Imma Shalom
and her brother wished to expose it to R. Eliezer and so alienate
him from Minuth altogether. 102
For many reasons the view of Nicholson 103 and H e r f o r d 1 0 4 is to
be accepted—that the episode occurred immediately after the De-
struction, about the year 73 ; and Güdemann 1 0 5 and Herford 1 0 ( 5 are
w
On the name "Imma Shalom" see Geiger Yochanan ben Zakkai und
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, in Jüdische Zeitschrift, VI 134 η. Λ
aa
Op. cit. ρ. 63. ^
100
Chwolsohn (op. cit. p. 99, η. 3) accepts this reading. 4
M1
Religionsgeschichtliche Studien, pp. 69-70. With him agree Graetz
( I I I I e 292 n. 3) and H. P. Chajes, Markus-Studien, Berlin, 1899, p. 39. ^‫־‬
10a
See Herford, op. cit. pp. 151-155, on further anti-Christian hints in the
remarks attributed to Imma Shalom and her brother (e.g., "Let thy light
shine"; Matt. v. 15; and the ass as symbol oi the Messiah). •4
108
For details see Ε. B. Nicholson, The Gospel according to the Hebrews,
p. 146 η. •4
104
Herford, op. cit. p. 148. 4
108
Güdemann, op. cit. pp. 69-70. 4
10
"Herford, op. cit. pp. 150-151. ^
to be followed in saying that the Philosoph drew the parable: "I
came not to take away from the Law of Moses," etc., not from the
Gospel of Matthew (since it is very doubtful whether it existed at
the time), but from a collection of the Words of Jesus (Logia)
from which Matthew himself drew.
This brings us to the end of the early statements about Jesus in
the Talmud. They may be summarized as follows :
(a) There are reliable statements to the effect that his name
was Yeshu'a (Yeshu) of Nazareth; that he "practised sorcery"
(i. e. performed miracles, as was usual in those days) and beguiled
and led Israel astray; that he mocked at the words of the Wise;
that he expounded Scripture in the same manner as the Pharisees ;
that he had five disciples ; that he said that he was not come to take
aught away from the Law or to add to it; that he was hanged
(crucified) as a false teacher and beguiler on the eve of the Passover
which happened on a Sabbath; and that his disciples healed the sick
in his name.
(b) There are statements of a tendencious or untrustworthy
character to the effect that he was the bastard of an adulteress and
that his father was Pandera or Pantere ; that for forty days before
his crucifixion a herald went out proclaiming why Jesus was to be
put to death, so that any might come and plead in his favour, but
none was found to do so; that there was doubt whether Jesus had
any share in the world to come. Some of these latter statements
are important (namely those about the illegitimacy and the name
Ben Pandera) since they are to be found in Celsus, while their
appearance in the Talmud testifies to their early character and to
their being very widespread at a very early date.
But these statements quoted from the Talmud have a still greater
value: we see from them what was the attitude to Jesus and his
teaching of the first generation of the Tannaim who lived after the
Destruction, and who counted among them the most learned and
pious of the nation. This attitude does not display the same bitter
hatred and hostility which we find later, when the Christian peoples,
those who bore aloft the name of Jesus of Nazareth, began to
oppress and persecute the Jews with all their might.
Primarily, in the eyes of the sages of Israel, till the time of
Trajan and Hadrian (the reader has, without doubt, noticed that
the most important and the earliest Talmudic notices about Jesus
come from R. Eliezer and his contemporaries), Jesus was a true
J e w : he may have been "an Israelite who had sinned," or "a trans-
gressor in Israel," yet he remained an Israelite in every respect.
H e is raised to a rank higher than the "prophets of the Gentiles,"
and none dare deny him a share in the world to come. More even
than this : he is described as one of the Scribes and Tannaim, who
expounded the Scriptures and who created the Midrashic Hag gada;
and his treatment of the verse about the "hire of the harlot" pleased
so severe and demanding a Tanna as R. Eliezer the Great; but his
attitude to the Law, which, one moment, he emphatically says he
came to support, while another time he sets it aside and makes a
"mock of the words of the Wise"—this aroused the ire and the
severe condemnation of the Talmud authorities.
It was because of this that they tried to transform the merits
which later, in the Gospels, were held up for admiration (at the end
of the first Christian century they were still only current orally),
into drawbacks and even grave faults. They never doubted that
he worked miracles: they merely looked upon them, as we have
already found, as acts of sorcery; while his birth by the Holy
Spirit they transformed into an illegitimate birth. Furthermore, it
is not in the earlier passages from the Talmud, but at the very end
of the Tannaitic era, some two hundred years after the Crucifixion,
that we find a Tanna (R. Eliezer ha‫־‬Kappar, a contemporary of R.
Yehuda ha‫־‬Nasi, the editor of the Mishna) accusing Jesus of
"making himself God."
The early Tannaim knew nothing whatever of this. They only
knew that his disciples used to heal the sick in his name ; and they
used to prohibit this method of healing even when there was danger
of the illness proving fatal—as was laid down in a Halakha: "A
man may not be cured by the Minim even if it is doubtful whether
he will live more than a short time." 107 In the earlier period they
were more averse to the Minim than to Jesus himself, since in them
they saw a danger to the national existence. 108 It is this which ac-
counts for the "rite of the Benediction of the Minim" [Ber. 2Sb-2ga;
Herford, op. cit. 125-137] at Yabneh at the end of the first century,
and the Halakha about breaking off all relations with the Minim,
occurring in the Tosefta [T. Hui. I I 20-21]. But to Jesus, at least
until the end of the second century, we find no such aversion.
(B) T H E TOL'DOTH YESHU

[The earlier literature dealing with the Tol'doth Yeshu or Ma'aseh
Talui is to be found in Wagenseil, "Tela ignea Satanae," Altdorf, 1681,
which gives the Tol'doth Yeshu in Hebrew (a revised version giving a
good text) with a Latin translation, together with a "Refutation." The
entire material necessary for the critical study of the book is carefully
amassed in S. Krauss, "Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen," Berlin,
1902, giving three Hebrew versions from various types of MSS. together
with fragments from MSS. illustrating other types, including fragments
*"Ab. Zar. 27b; T. Hui. II 20-21. Friedländer (Die Religiösen Beweg-
ungen, pp. 172-178) tries unsuccessfully to show that this has nothing to do
with the Christians, but only with the antinomians among the Jews {i.e.,
opponents of the ceremonial laws} and pagans. These latter may have been
included, but there is no doubt that the passage deals also with the Christians.
See Herford, op. cit. pp. 177-189. Λ
in Aramaic. Krauss has discussed minutely and expertly everything
bearing on the Toi'doth Yeshu, and the present and previous chapters
have drawn largely from his work. The Toi'doth Yeshu was published
in Yiddish, in German characters, by E. Bischoff : "Ein jüdisch-deutsches
Leben Jesu," Leipzig, 1895. Most of the matter contained in the Hebrew
version is to be found in Gershom Bader's "Helqath M'hoqeq"—History
of the Christian Lawgiver, Cracow, 1893; the author pretends to draw
only from MSS. but he actually reproduces accounts of the life of Jesus
from the Tol'doth Yeshu and from Christian sources. Useful comments
on the legends in the Tol'doth Yeshu and on their origin may be found
in Richard von der Alm (Ghillany) : "Die Urtheile heidnischer und
jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten christlichen Jahrhunderte über
Jesus und die ersten Christen," Leipzig, 1864.]
This book is not now common, though at one time it had a wide
circulation (under various titles, such as Tol'doth Yeshu, Ma'aseh
Talui, Ma'aseh do'otho v'eth b'no, and the like) in Hebrew and
Yiddish among the simpler minded Jews, and even more educated
Jews used to study the book during the nights of Natal (Christmas).
Now, however, readers of Hebrew are rare among the Jewish masses
outside of Russia and Poland, and there the book was banned by
the censor. Yet the book may still be found in MS, and in p r i n t 1
among many educated Jews. Our mothers knew its contents by
hearsay—of course with all manner of corruptions, changes, omis-
sions and imaginative additions—and handed them on to their
children. Different versions of the book exist in MS., some expanded
to greater length and others abbreviated; some following closely the
Talmudic legends about Ben Stada, Pandera, Pappus ben Yehuda,
Miriam M'gadd'la Neshaya and Yeshu, while others differ from
them considerably. But though such changes are sometimes great,
as a rule they affect only details, especially names; some versions
added longer or shorter episodes, while in others certain episodes
are omitted. But the general tenor of the story, its general spirit,
and the outstanding features remain the same in all.
The contents are roughly as follows :
A certain Yochanan, "who was learned in the Law and who
feared God," of the House of David (according to some versions,
it is Pappus Ben Yehudah, following the Talmud), espoused to
himself in Bethlehem Miriam, the daughter of his widowed neigh-
bour, a respectable and humble virgin. But Miriam attracted a
handsome villain named Joseph Pandera (or Ben Pandera) who
betrayed her at the close of a certain Sabbath. Miriam supposed
that it was her espoused husband, Yochanan, and, submitting only
against her will, marvelled at the act of her pious betrothed; and
when he himself came, she mentioned her astonishment. He
suspected Pandera and told his suspicions to Rabban Shimeon ben
1
Recently there appeared an edition of Ma'aseh Talui without date or
place of publication. ^
Shetah. When Miriam was with child and Yochanan knew that it
was not by him but that he could not prove who was the guilty
party, he fled to Babylon.
Miriam brought forth a son and called him Yehoshua after the
name of her mother's brother; and this name was corrupted to
Yeshu. The child learnt much Torah from an able teacher and
distinguished scholar; but he proved "an impudent child," and on
one occasion he passed in front of the Sages with uncovered head
(and, according to another version, delivered an offensive exposition
about Moses and Jethro), whereupon the Sages said that he was a
bastard and "a son of uncleanness." Miriam confessed to this (the
whole account follows the episode told in Tractate Kallah; see above,
(pp. 30-31) and Shimeon ben Shetah recalled what his disciple
Yochanan had told him.
Yeshu then fled to Jerusalem and in the Temple learnt the
"Ineffable Name." I n order that the brazen dogs, which stood by
the gate of the place of sacrifice and barked at all who learned the
Name and so made them forget the name [this resembles the legend
of the lions of Solomon's throne told in the "Second Targum"]—
in order that they should not make him forget the Name, Yeshu
wrote it on a piece of leather and sewed it in the flesh of his thigh.
H e gathered around him in Bethlehem a group of young Jews and
proclaimed himself the Messiah and Son of God; and as a retort to
those who rejected his claims he said that "they sought their own
greatness and were minded to rule in Israel," while to confirm his
claims he healed a lame man and a leper by the power of the
"Ineffable Name." He was brought before Queen Helena, 2 the
ruler of Israel, and she found him guilty of acts of sorcery and
beguilement.
But Yeshu restored a dead man to life, and the queen, in her
alarm, began to believe in him. H e next went to Upper Galilee
where he continued his miracles and drew many people after him.
The Sages of Israel then saw that it was essential that one of their
number, Yehuda Iskarioto (some versions give R. Yehuda the
Pious), should learn the "Ineffable Name" just as Yeshu did, and
so rival him in signs and wonders. Yehuda and Yeshu came before
the queen. Yeshu flew in the air, but Yehuda flew higher and
defiled him so that he fell to earth. The queen condemned Yeshu
to death and delivered him up to the Sages of Israel. They took
him to Tiberias and imprisoned him there. But he had instilled
into his disciples the belief that whatever happened to him had
been prepared for the Messiah, the Son of God, from the days of
a
It would seem that Helena, queen of Adiabene, mother of King Monobaz,
and Helena, the wife of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, have here
been confused with Shelom-Zion (Shalminon, Alexandra), the queen who,
according to the Talmud, was sister of Shimeon ben Shetah (Berach. 48a;
Gen. R. 91; Qoh. R. on the verse Tobah Hokhmah).^
Creation, and that the Prophets had prophesied it all. So the
disciples of Yeshu fought against the Sages of Israel, rescued
Yeshu and fled with him to Antioch.
From Antioch Yeshu went to Egypt to fetch spells [as is recorded
in the Talmud of Ben Stada], but Yehuda (Iskarioto or "the
Pious") had mingled among his disciples and robbed him in the
meantime of the "Name." Yeshu then went a second time to
Jerusalem to learn the "Name." Yehuda reported this intended
visit to the Sages of Israel in Jerusalem, and told them that when
Yeshu should come to the Temple, he, Yehuda, would bow before
him, and thus the Sages would be able to distinguish between
Yeshu and his disciples, for he and his disciples all dressed in
garments "of one colour" (or, according to another version, because
all his disciples had sworn never to say of him, "This is he").
And so it came to pass: the Sages of Israel recognized him and
arrested him. They took and hanged him on the eve of Passover
(as recorded in several of the Talmudic versions) on a cabbage
stem—for no other tree would bear him, because Yeshu, during his
lifetime, had adjured all trees by the "Ineffable Name" not to receive
his body when he was hanged; but he failed so to adjure the
cabbage stem since that does not count as a tree. The body was
taken down while it was yet the eve of the Sabbath (in order not
to violate the prohibition : "His body shall not remain there for
the night") and at once buried. But Yehuda the gardener removed
the body from the tomb and cast it into a water-channel in the
garden, and let the water flow over it as usual.
When the disciples came and did not find the body in the tomb,
they announced to the queen that Yeshu had been restored to life.
The queen believed this and was minded to put to death the Sages
of Israel for having laid their hands upon the Lord's Anointed.
All the Jews mourned and wept and fasted because of this dire
decree, until at last R. Tanchuma [who lived four hundred years
after Jesus!] found the corpse in Yehuda's garden by the help of
the Holy Spirit. The Sages of Israel removed it, tied it to the tail
of a horse and brought it before the queen in order that she might
see how she had been deceived.
W e are next told how the disciples of Yeshu fled and mingled
among all the nations. Among these disciples were twelve apostles
who sorely distressed the Jews. One of the Sages of Israel, Shimeon
Kepha [Petros—Peter—"rock," in Greek, of which the Aramaic
equivalent is "Kepha"], thereupon undertook to separate the dis-
ciples of Yeshu from the Jews and give them religious laws of their
own, so that they might no longer affect the Jews. 3 After he had
acted in such a way as to feign belief in Yeshu, he went and lived
by himself in a tower built in his honour [a reference to the Church
8
Obviously a distant echo of the dispute between Peter and Paul about
the keeping of the ceremonial laws, which Peter supported and Paul opposed ‫^״‬
of St. Peter in Rome] where he composed hymns and psalms full
of devotion and piety which he sent to all the scattered communities
of Israel, by whom they are sung in the Synagogues to this day.4
The Tol'doth Yeshu also gives an account of Nestorius and his
teaching, but that is outside our subject.
The most superficial reading of this book serves to prove that we
have here nothing beyond a piece of folklore, in which are confusedly
woven early and late Talmudic and Midrashic legends and sayings
concerning Jesus, together with Gospel accounts (which the author
of the Toi ,doth perverts in a fashion derogatory to Jesus), and other
popular legends, many of which are mentioned by Celsus, and
Tertullian and later Church Fathers, and which Samuel Krauss
labels a "folkloristische Motive." 5 Specially noticeable is the attitude
adopted by the Tol'doth to the Gospel accounts. Scarcely ever does
it deny anything: it merely changes evil to good and good to evil.
The Gospels tell how Jesus performed miracles; the author of
the Tol'doth Yeshu also tells us so, but while the former say that he
performed them by the help of the Holy Spirit, the latter says that
he performed them through the "Ineffable Name," which he had
learnt for an evil purpose, and through the magic spells which he
had brought from Egypt. The Gospels say that Jesus was born of
the Holy Spirit, while the Tol'doth asserts that Jesus was born as a
result of deceit and seduction. The Gospels say that the body was
not found after burial; the Tol'doth also says that the body disap-
peared, but while the Gospels say that the body disappeared because
it had been restored to life, the Tol'doth holds that it disappeared
because Yehuda the gardener cast it out of the tomb.
And there is much more similar contradiction. This alone proves
that the book contains no history worth the name. It is possible
that certain accounts, inserted later, were current among the Jews by
the beginning of the second century, as is shown by the relevant
passages in Origen and Tertullian. It is also possible that some book
entitled Tol'doth Yeshu—though more or less different in content
and altogether different in form and Hebrew style—was in the hands
of the Jews as early as the fifth century, and that it was the same
book which fell into the hands of Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, (who
refers to it in his book "De judaicis superstitionibus," which he com-
posed in conjunction with others about the year 830), and into the
hands of Hrabanus Maurus, who became Archbishop of Magenta
in 847, and, in his book, "Contra Judasos," referred to Jewish legends
about Jesus which correspond to much of the contents of the surviv-
ing ToVdoth Yeshu. Certain Aramaic fragments of disparaging
stories about Jesus (published by Krauss in his "Leben Jesu," and
in the "Revue des Etudes Juives," L X I I 28-31 : "Fragments
4
Clearly a confusion between Simon Peter and the hymn-writer, R.
Shimeon.
8
See Krauss, op. cit. pp. 154-236 and the notes pp. 249-298.
Araméens du Toldot Jéschou") also testify to the existence of such
an ear 1 y book. But the language of the earliest of the versions which
have been recovered, and most of the stories they contain, stamped
as they are with the marks of a later age, forbid us to suppose with
Krauss 6 that the present book was composed, almost in its entirety,
about the year 500. The episode about the "impudence" of Yeshu,
by which R. Akiba "recognized that he was a bastard and a 'son of
uncleanness'," is unknown to us from sources previous to the Troc-
täte Kallah, which itself, as regards many of its contents, and expia-
nations and legends, is as late as 500 C.E. ; and even Krauss con-
siders it unlikely ("unwahrscheinlich") that the author of the
Tol'doth Yeshu drew his material direct from Hegesippus, believing
that he obtained it through the medium of Yosippon, 7 though not, so
Krauss believes—from the present Yosippon (which was only pub-
lished in the tenth century), but from an earlier Yosippon referred
to by an Arab writer, Ibn Hazm (d. 1063), and the author of The
Chronicles of Yerachmeel.8 But Ibn Hazm says of "Yusuf ibn
Quorion" (Joseph ben Gorion) that he makes little mention of
Yoseph ben Miriam, 9 as is actually the case in all the versions of
Yosippon; and so the author of Tol'doth Yeshu could not have
derived his many legends from that source. As for the author of
The Chronicles of Yerachmeel, it is more probable that he confused
the original Josephus with Joseph ben Gorion. Some of what The
Chronicles quotes in the name of Ben Gorion 1 0 does occur in
Josephus (who speaks of John the Baptist, of Jesus and of James the
brother of Jesus) ; and Josephus may have originally contained much
more than we now possess ; while what we now possess may have
once existed in a different shape owing to omission and modifications
by Christian copyists (as may be illustrated from the present account
of Jesus in Josephus, which is adapted in several points). 11 Also
the author of The Chronicles of Yerachmeel may have added certain
matter from memory to the statements of the Gospels, matter which
he had read in other books. But even if that other source was
Josephus (whom many ancient writers confused with Yoseph ben
Gorion, since this Hebrew name was familiar to them from the
Talmudic "Nakdimon ben Gorion"), he could have read there only
about John and Jesus and James.
But in any case we may not rely on such a doubtful and isolated
item of evidence in order to date Yosippon earlier, and thereby argue
that it was the source of the Tol'doth, and that the Tol'doth could
therefore be dated in the fifth century. The present Hebrew
β
Op. cit. 246-248. <
‫ י‬Ibid., 241. <«
6
Ibid., 238-9.*«
‫ ״‬Α . Neubauer, J.Q.R. X I 356. 4
10
Α. Neubauer, Mediœval Jeivish Chronicles, Oxford, 1887, I 190; Krauss,
op. cit. 239.
u
4‫־‬
For details see next chapter. 4
Tol'doth Yeshu, even in its earliest form, is not earlier than the
present Yosippon, i.e. it was not composed before the tenth century. 12
Therefore it cannot possibly possess any historical value nor in
any way be used as material for the life of Jesus.
Yet it has another value, which may, in some sense be described
as a historical value. We can gather from it what was the view of
the Jews on the life and teaching of Jesus, from the fifth to the tenth
centuries (for many of the statements must be earlier than the time
when they were set down in writing), just as we may gather from
the remarks about Jesus in the Talmud what were the views of the
Jews about Jesus during the first five centuries. Krauss rightly
says : " I am far from investigating on the basis of the statements
contained in the Tol'doth Yeshu such far-reaching questions as the
truths of the Christian faith; I do not think the book in the least
suitable for this. I do not regard the Tol'doth Yeshu as a criterion
of the fundamental truths of Christianity, but it can make clear what
were the views on Christianity which arose among the Jews. That
is to say, it does not contain objective, but subjective truths, for
while it does not know what really occurred, it does know how these
events looked in the eyes of the Jews." 13
And if we look into it solely for these subjective truths, its value
is great. We see from it that the attitude to Jesus became worse
when the Gentiles began to embrace the new faith and to despise
Judaism; and that it became still worse when the Christians, of non-
Jewish or Jewish origin, began to persecute the Jews and "throw
stones into the well whence they had drunk." The Jews, unable to
exact physical vengeance from their strong enemies, retaliated in
speech and writing. The inventions and legends, compact of hatred
and sometimes of penetrating and stinging ridicule against Christian-
ity and its Founder, went on increasing.
Nothing in the Gospels was denied : it was only perverted into a
source of ridicule and blame. The Jews of the Middle Ages did not
deny that Jesus worked miracles but (and this shows their state of
mind at the time) agreed that he really did do so, but it was by use
of the "Ineffable Name," by magic and with evil purpose ! . . . Nor
did they deny the moral good in Jesus' teaching: they asserted that
it had been introduced into the new religion by Simon Cephas,
Peter—the Jewish Christian against whom Paul quarrelled for
retaining the ceremonial observances; and all this moral good he
derived from the religion of Israel, to which all his life he secretly
remained faithful.
This is the spirit which runs through the ToVdoth Yeshu, and
which was certainly the spirit which prevailed among all the Jews
" I t is impossible to draw reliable conclusions from the fragments in
Aramaic and the statements by Agobard and Hrabanus Maurus. ·^
"Op. cit. p. 237. ^
during the early Middle Ages. Thus, though it is valueless for a
knowledge of the historical events affecting Jesus, or of his character
and teaching, the book is very important for a knowledge of the
spirit which prevailed among the Jews at that particular time.
II. THE GREEK AND LATIN SOURCES
[Virtually every "Life of Jesus," ancient or modern, treats of these
sources; cf. Albert Réville, "Jésus de Nazareth," Paris, 1897, I 266-281;
P. W. Schmidt, "Die Geschichte Jesu, erläutert," Tübingen u. Leipzig,
1904, pp. 18-21 ; Oscar Holtzmann, "Leben Jesu," Tübingen u. Leipzig,
1901, pp. 10-13; and, more briefly, in the following: Paul Wernle, "Die
Quellen des Lebens Jesu," pp. 3-4; Wilhelm Bousset, "Was wissen wir
von Jesu?" pp. 15-17. See also the notes to the two following chapters.]
(A) JOSEPHUS
[See Schürer, "Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu

Christi," 1 8 544549‫( ־‬app. 2) ; Joseph Salvador, "Jésus-Christ et sa doc-
trine," Paris, 1838, I 157-158 note; A. Réville, op. cit. I 279; Chwolsohn,
"Das Letzte Passamahl," pp. 101-102.]
Ypseph ben Mattathiah ha-Cohen, or, as he is usually called,

Flavius Josephus, was born in the year 37-38 C.E. In his books,
"The Antiquities of the Jews" and "The Wars of the Jews," written·
a few years after the Destruction of the Temple, he ignored nothing
of the political and social events in Judaea, especially those from the
time of Herod the First till the Destruction. There is no passing
revolt, no temporary tumult, no just or unjust condemnation to
death, if it have some social or political interest, but finds a detailed
description in his writings. It is, then, natural to suppose that they
should contain a detailed account of the movement which arose in
Palestine in the time of Pontius Pilate, in consequence of the teach-
ing and death of Jesus.
But in place of such a detailed account we find in the "Antiqui-
ties" (written in the last decade of the first century) the fewest
possible words, less even than are devoted in the same book to John
the Baptist; and, what is still more unsatisfactory, these few words
contain what are manifest additions by Christian copyists. The
"Antiquities" speaks twice of Jesus. It is the first of the passages
in which the additions occur and which is here quoted (italics indicate
the suspected additions) :
Now there was about this time (i.e., about the time of the
rising against Pilate who wished to extract money from the
Temple for the purpose of bringing water to Jerusalem from a
distant spring) Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call kirn a man
(σοφδς όνήρ εΤγε ά'νδρα αυτόν λέγειν χρή). For he was a doer of
55
wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with
pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and
many of the Gentiles. He was the Messiah (δ Χριστός ο&τος ήν);
and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us
(ένδείξει των πρώτων άνδρών χαρ' ήμΐν),ΐΉά condemned him to the
cross, those that loved him at the first ceased not [so to do],
for he appeared to them alive again (‫׳‬rcaXtv ζών) the third day,
as the divine Prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other
wonderful things concerning him; and the race (φϋλον) of Chris-
tians, so named from him, are not extinct even now. 1
No Christian scholar, even, who has any regard for critical

methods, allows that the italicised words could have come from
Josephus, the Jew and Pharisee. Josephus could never have written
of Jesus such words as "he was the Messiah;" and Origen twice
states that Josephus did not admit that Jesus was the Messiah. 2
Some scholars throw doubt not only on part, but on the entire
passage in Josephus : they hold that everything about Jesus in the
"Antiquities" is a late addition by Christian copyists, who found it
difficult to accept the fact that a writer of the history of the time
should make no mention whatever of Jesus. 3 These same scholars
argue that it is incredible that a man like Josephus, who loved to
dilate on every petty incident, could be content to dispose of such
an event as the life and terrible death of Jesus in the few words
which are all that are left, after the obvious interpolations are
emitted.
Although none but his disciples could recognize the importance
of the event at the time when Jesus was crucified, yet the "Antiqui-
ties" was written about the year 93 when the Christians constituted
a large, widespread sect in Judaea, Rome, Asia Minor and elsewhere ;
how, then, could so verbose a historian be content with a few phrases
in recounting an important event such as this, from which had
sprung a great Jewish sect which even attracted many Greeks ? It is,
therefore, inadequate to explain, as many Christian and Jewish
scholars have done for the last hundred years, this excessive brevity
as due to the fact that all the acts of Jesus and his execution seemed
at the time to be of small moment.
Most of the scholars who consider the Jesus-passage as an inter-
1
Ant. X V I I I iii 3. Salvador (op. cit. I p. 157-811) already picked out
these italicised passages from the genuine elements. Réville (op. cit. I
272-280) also regards the phrase "a teacher of such men as receive the truth
with pleasure," as an addition. We shall see later that Salvador's view
is the more correct ; although he attached little importance to any of Josephus*
statements, even to those which appear to be genuine. Cf. also J.E. IV 50. •4
3
Contra Celsum I 47; Comm. in Matth, χ. 17. •4
' Schürer, I 4 544-549. This writer gives the passage in the original and
in translation, together with a very full bibliography, divided into (a) those
which regard the entire passage as genuine, (b) those who regard it as
partly interpolated, and (c) those who regard the whole as an interpolation. ^
polation, therefore conclude that Josephus deliberately avoided the
whole subject, since he could not touch on it without treating of the
Messianic ideas of the Jews; and Josephus was obviously chary of
dealing with such a topic, political to the core, in pages written for
the benefit of the Romans at the very time that the emperor Domitian
was persecuting all the descendants of the House of David. 4 Such
are the grounds which Schürer finds convincing for supposing that
nothing in the passage is genuine. 5
The present writer believes, however, that there are not sufficient
grounds for supposing the whole to be spurious. Josephus treats
of the life and death of John the Baptist at fair length, 6 and what
he says does not at all correspond with the Gospel account, and
there is no reason, therefore, to suspect Christian copyists of interpo-
lating this section as well, as does Graetz. 7 According even to
Schürer "the genuineness of this passage is only rarely open to
suspicion" 8 It is remarkable that Josephus tries his hardest to
conceal from his readers that John preached the coming of the
Messiah ( f o r reasons which we have mentioned) : in order to make
the episode comprehensible to Greek readers he describes John the
Baptist as "a good man who commanded the Jews to exercise virtue,
both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God,
and so to come to baptism." 9 Even the three Jewish parties, the
Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes, Josephus explains in terms of
philosophic schools, all with a view of making himself understood
by his Gentile readers.
And he did precisely the same with Jesus: he described him as
"a wise man," just as he described John the Baptist as "a good man ;"
he described Jesus as "a teacher of such men as receive the truth
with pleasure," just as he described John the Baptist as one who
"called upon the Jews to exercise virtue, etc;" and he described
Jesus as "a doer of wonderful works" ( f o r Josephus himself was
a firm believer in miracles). 10 H e could say of Jesus that "he drew
after him many Jews and also Greeks," because the Church con-
tained many Greeks at the time of writing, 93 C.E., and ancient
historians had a habit of judging earlier conditions from later times.
It was also Josephus who wrote that, "they who loved him at the
first did not cease to do so even after Pilate had condemned him to
4
See Eusebius, Eccles. Hist. ILL 19-20, quoting Hegesippus.
•9 Op. cit. I 547-9· <
Ant. XVIII ν 2. <
‫פ‬
*Op. cit. III I 2 7 7 **Ά
8 4
Op. cit. I 438, n. 2 4 ^
8
F o r further treatment see the chapter on John the Baptist. Λ
10
The present writer believes that it was from this sentence that the words
were taken which are quoted from Josephus in the Religious discussion in
the court of the Sassanids, published by Bratke (p. 36, lines 311‫ ; )־‬and there
is no cause to follow Bratke and Schürer in thinking that we have here
another Christian forgery in the Antiquities.
crucifixion at the suggestion of the principal men among us," and
that the "race (or tribe) of Christians, so named from him, are
not extinct to this day." Albert Reville 11 rightly urges that no
Christian interpolater would speak of Jesus as "a wise man," and so
necessitate the further interpolation, "If it be lawful to call him
a man." Nor would a Christian interpolator be satisfied to apply to
Jesus the general term "wonderful works" (παράδοξα εργα), or call
his disciples simply "lovers" (άγαπήσαντες) ; nor would he have given
the Christians such a name as "race" or "tribe"(<pûXov), with its
nuance of contempt. 12
W e must treat as interpolated only the italicised passages. It is
difficult to decide whether these passages stand in place of others
by Josephus not to the mind of the Christians, or whether they are
simply supplementary. But we can almost certainly say that Jo-
sephus, writing as a Pharisee and for the sake of the Romans, was
chary of saying anything either favourable or detailed about Jesus
or about Christians, and was satisfied to make just a few general
and superficial remarks, written with great care and containing
nothing of much positive value to the Christians, nor much about
their Messiah.
This was not at all to the liking of the early Christian copyists,
and in the third century they interpolated the spurious passages.
W e say "in the third century" because Eusebius, who lived in the
fourth century, knew the whole paragraph, interpolations and non-
interpolations, and used both at need; whereas Origen, who lived
during the first half of the third century, does not mention them
at all : in its primitive form the passage had no value for the Chris-
tianity of his day, for which Jesus was far from being only "a wise
man," or one "who did wonderful works and was a teacher of men."
(2) The second mention of Jesus by Josephus is where he tells
how Annas, the son of Annas, the High Priest, in the interim between
the death of the Procurator Festus and the arrival of his successor
Albinus, lost no time in bringing before the Sanhédrin one by
name James, "the brother of Jesus who was called the Messiah"
(τδν άδελφδν ,Ιησού τοϋ λεγομένου Χριστού , Ιάκωβος ονομααύτφ), and
others whom he regarded as breakers of the Law, and condemned
them to be stoned. The most ardent supporters of the Law pro-
tested against this illegal act, and in secret lodged a complaint
against the High Priest with Albinus and Agrippa II, with whom
lay the appointment of the High Priest. Agrippa immediately de-
posed Annas and appointed in his place Jesus the son of Damnasus.18
These words are also quoted by Eusebius ; 1 4 but several scholars
n
Op. cit. I I pp. 272-280. •4
13
Contrary to Holtzmann (Leben Jesu, p. 13) who holds that this word
signifies "a people," and so only comes aptly from a Christian.
13
Ant. XX, ix ι. Λ
1
*Hist. Eccles. I I 23. ^
question them on the following grounds: Origen, who is prior to
Eusebius, on three occasions 15 quotes the "Antiquities‫ ״‬to the effect
that the execution of "James, the brother of Jesus who is called
the Messiah," was the cause of the Destruction of the Temple; and
the writer of the Chronicon Pasc hale (I 463) quotes the selfsame
passage as from "The Wars of the Jews;" and Hegesippus 16 tells
how James was thrown down from the roof of the Temple, stoned,
and finally killed by a fuller with his felting-stick ; and immediately
after (ευθύς), Vespasian laid siege to Jerusalem. Thus Hegesippus
also connects the death of James with the siege of Jerusalem.
From this evidence of Origen, the Chronicon Paschate and
Hegesippus, these same scholars conclude (a) that in place of this
present passage in the "Antiquities" there was, prior to the time
of Eusebius, a completely different passage about the same event,
and (b) that James was most probably put to death later than
62 C.E., near to the time of the siege of Jerusalem; therefore what-
ever is said about James in the "Antiquities," as we now have it,
is a Christian interpolation. 17
But there is no need here to assume an interpolation. 18 Not only
the writer of the Chronicon Paschale (who confused the "Antiqui-
ties" with the "Wars of the Jews") but also Origen has here gone
astray in the matter of names, and confused the accounts of
"Josephus" with those of "Hegesippus" (which in Hebrew is also
"Joseph") ; Origen attributing them to the "Antiquities," and the
Chronicon Paschale to the "Wars." Hegesippus here only reports
Jewish-Christian legendary matter which has nothing to do with
the historical statement of Josephus. 19 Anyone reading the remarks
of Josephus in the existing "Antiquities" and keeping clear of an
exaggeratedly sceptical attitude, will see at once that there was
never any reason for any Christian to interpolate such statements :
they contain nothing in praise either of James or Jesus; Josephus
condemns the hasty sentence: he does not belaud the doings of
James (as is done in Origen and Hegesippus), nor defend him
against the charge brought against him.
Réville 20 rightly urges that no Christian would write of Jesus
"who was called (λεγομένου) the Messiah:" such an interpolation
would be subtlety overdone. None could write in such a fashion
but a Pharisaic Jew like Josephus, who had previously referred to
" Comm. in Matth, xiii. 55 ; Contra Celsum I 47 and II 13 end. ^
18
Quoted by Eusebius, loc. cit.
" F o r more details (and the relevant literature) see Schürer, op. cit. I 4
548, 581-3· <
18
Holtzmann, op. cit. p. 11, considers that "there is not the slightest room
for doubt"; and P. W. Schmidt (Geschichte Jesu, erläutert, p. 20) proves
that "it is unquestionably genuine" ("zweifellos echt").·^
ω
On Hegesippus as a source of Christian legends, see Krauss, op. cit.
pp. 238-41. <
70
Op. cit. p. 280. Chwolsohn, op. cit. pp. 97-98, also considers them
genuine. 4
Jesus and did not wish to say much either in praise or blame of the
Christians: he would not praise—because he was a Pharisaic Jew,
and he would not blame—because in his days his Greek and Roman
readers still confused the Christians with the Jews ; nor, as we have
seen, was it agreeable to him to make mention of the Messianic
beliefs of a certain Jewish sect.
Such are the two references of the "Antiquities" to Jesus; the
second we consider wholly genuine, and the first only genuine in
part. It must be confessed that from neither do we learn much
about Jesus; yet even from these fragmentary statements we at
least receive confirmation of his and his brother James' existence,
of his career as a wonder-worker and teacher, and of his terrible
death—his crucifixion at the hands of Pilate with, at least, the con-
sent of the principal Jews.
(B) TACITUS, S U E T O N I U S AND P L I N Y T H E YOUNGER
[Réville, op. cit. 269-272; Schmidt, op. cit. 18-20. On Suetonius, see
Schürer, op. cit. I I I 4 62-63; Graetz, op. cit. III ii 5 371 and 423; also I V 8
77. All these extracts are given in E. Preuschen, Analecta, Freiburg,
1893·]
So far, we have been dealing with Hebrew and Greek Jewish

sources. We come now to Latin non-Jewish sources.
Tacitus clearly refers to Jesus, and so we present him first.
In his "Annales," written about 115-7 C.E., while treating of
the burning of Rome in the time of Nero, an act for which the
Christians were accused, he speaks of the "Christiani" with open
dislike; and in explanation of the name "Christians" he says:
"Christus, from whom they derive their name, was condemned to
death in the reign of Tiberius by the Procurator Pontius Pilate." 1
These words would have had considerable value as the spon-
taneous evidence of a Gentile if they had been written earlier than
seventy-five years after the event. But we do not need the evidence
of Tacitus to know that at the beginning of the second century the
belief was widespread that there had been a "Messiah," or "Christ,"
who was condemned to death by Pontius Pilate.
Though no earlier, the evidence of Suetonius (65-135), a con-
temporary of Tacitus, is more important. He speaks of a Messianic
movement during the reign of Claudius, who preceded Nero and
was emperor from 41 to 54 C.E.
While dealing, in his "The Twelve Cassars," with Claudius, he
says : "Judœos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma
expulit" (he banished from Rome the Jews who made great tumult
because of Chrestus). 2 This entirely agrees with what we find in the
1
Annales X V 44. •4
3
Claudius 23.^
Acts of the Apostles (xviii. 2)—how Aquila of Pontus and his wife
Priscilla came from Italy during the time of Paul's missionary work
"because of the decree of Claudius that all the Jews should leave
Rome.‫ ״‬Orosius 3 says that this expulsion took place in Claudius'
ninth year as Caesar, 49 C.E., and it certainly could not have been
later than 52.4 I f , with very many scholars, we identify "Chrestus"
with "Christus" 5 we have here reliable evidence that, within fifteen
or twenty years after the death of Jesus, many Jews, even as far
off as Rome, believed that Jesus had existed and that he was the
Messiah. Graetz, 6 however, supposes that "Chrestus" is not the
same as "Christus," but that "Chrestus" was an apostle or Christian
teacher of the same type as Apollos, mentioned in the Acts; Graetz
also holds ti.1t in I Corinthians, i. 12, "Chrestus" should be read for
"Christ" (Χρήστου in place of Χρίστου).
Yet even if we suppose with Graetz that Suetonius here refers
to a Christian teacher, the fact that, only twenty years after the
death of Jesus, there were to be found Christian apostles and teach-
ers, is itself proof not only of his existence but also of the important
effect of his personal influence. Others, again, think that "Chrestus"
only points to some Jewish Messiah who rose up in Rome; but
Bousset 7 rightly points out that "the appearance of a messianic
revolutionary in Rome is not only inconceivable in itself, but is
unproved by any other source." Suetonius' words are, therefore, to
be connected with the movement and internal dissensions which arose
within the Jewish community at Rome owing to the spread of the
belief in Jesus; and this movement led, in the year 49 (or 52), to
the expulsion of all the Jews, or of a portion of them.
It therefore follows that a Christian community was founded
in Rome during the fifth decade of the first century, i.e. not later
than ten years after the crucifixion. This is an important fact from
every point of view.
A like importance attaches to the "Epistle" of Pliny the Younger,
which he wrote, in his capacity of Proconsul of the province of
Bithynia, to Trajan in the year I I I . 8 He describes Christianity as
a popular movement; and it may be gathered from his statements
that there were at that time members of the Christian community
who had been Christians for more than twenty years. He knows
nothing of the nature of Christianity and he is only able to say that
they sing some sacred hymn in which they appeal to Christus as God
("Carmen Christo quasi de ο die ere secum invicem").
This is very valuable from the point of view of Christianity as a
s
4
E d . Zangemeister 1882, V I I 6, 15; Schürer, I I I 4 62 η. Q2.4
Schürer, loc. cit. 4
8
Schürer,6
I I I 4 63 n. 93. He also believess them to be identical. •4
®III
1
ii 423 η. 3; cf. p. 371 η. 4, and I V 77 η.
8
Op. cit. pp. 16-17; cf. Schmidt, op. cit. p. 20. ^
Plinius Secundus, Epistoïœ, X 96-97. •4
movement and as a religion,9 but less valuable than Tacitus' evidence
as to the existence and teaching of Jesus. Pliny is writing some
eighty years after the crucifixion, and says nothing about the life or
death of Jesus; it only transpires from his evidence that by the
beginning of the second century Jesus was deified by the Christians.
Latin and Greek sources, Jewish or pagan, tell us little about
Jesus. If we possessed them alone, we should know nothing except
that in Judaea there had existed a Jew named Jesus who was called
the Christ, the "Anointed;" that he performed miracles and taught
the people; that he was killed by Pontius Pilate at the instigation
of the Jews ; that he had a brother named James, who was put to
death by the High Priest Annas, the son of Annas; that owing to
Jesus there arose a special sect known as Christians; that a com-
munity belonging to this sect existed in Rome fifty years after the
birth of Jesus, and that because of this community the Jews were
expelled from Rome; and, finally, that from the time of Nero the
sect greatly increased, regarded Jesus as virtually divine, and under-
went severe persecution.
W e pass now to the Christian sources.
"Réville, op. cit. 269-270. Λ
III. PAUL THE APOSTLE
[There is a work in Hebrew on Paul : P. Levertoff, "Paulus ha-Shaliach
ο Shaul ish-Tarsus," London, 1906; but it has a veiled conversionist ten-
dency. On Paul's relation to Jesus see P. Feine, "Jesus Christus und
Paulus," Tubingen, 1902. On the sayings of Jesus quoted by Paul, see
A. Resch, "Der Paulinismus und die Logia Jesu," 1904 ( T e x t e u. Unter-
suchungen. Neue Folge, X I I ) pp. 140-151; 405-464; 597-603; Α. Resch,
"Agrapha: Aussercanonische Schriftfragmente," 2 Aufl. 1996, pp. 24-34.
Against A. Kalthoff ("Die Entstehung des Christentums," Jena 1904, p.
I i o f f . ) who denies the genuineness of all the Pauline writings, see Bousset,
op. cit. pp. 17-26. See also P. W. Schmidt, op. cit. pp. 65-82; and for a
brief account of the importance of Paul for the history of Jesus, see P.
Wernle, op. cit. pp. 4-5.]
The earliest of all the Christian sources are the Epistles of Paul
contained in the New Testament. Not all of them are genuinely
attributable to him: most scholars question the genuineness of
II Thessalonians, I Timothy, and Titus, and the "Dutch School" of
New Testament criticism questions the genuineness of many others.
But whoever reads the bulk of the letters attributed to Paul will
feel at once that here we have documents dating from the earliest
days of Christianity and emanating from the "Apostle to the Gen-
tiles," an expert in combining the Haggadic and Midrashic methods
of the Sages of Israel with the Hellenistic methods of thought as
they had been developed during the twenty years before the
Destruction.
Romans and Corinthians and certain others, are, therefore, very
early and far nearer the time of Jesus than any other Christian or
non-Christian literature; for Paul became a Christian about the
time 32-33 C.E. 1 No matter how early we place the death of Jesus,
only a few years intervened before the conversion of Paul. Paul
knew not only of the life of Jesus and his death on the cross, but
believed also in his resurrection ; he testified to seeing him in a vision
on his way to Damascus, and also, what is more important, had
dealings with the brother of Jesus and his most intimate disciples.
Paul is, therefore, a trustworthy witness as to the existence of Jesus
and the powerful influence which the personality of Jesus exercised
upon his disciples. But we must immediately add that this witness
does not extend beyond Jesus' existence and influence. In all Paul's
writings we find no reliable historical facts about the life and work
1
Graetz, III ii 8 790-7, tries to show that Paul was converted between
43 and 48 C.E., but this is not confirmed by recent research. ^
63
of Jesus, beyond the vague hint that he was "the firstborn of many
brethren" (Romans viii. 29), the statement that he was crucified,
the account of the last supper which Jesus held on the night of his
arrest (I Corinthians xi. 23-26), and the questionable statement to
the effect that Jesus was of the lineage of the House of David (see
below, Book Three).
This might seem a matter for surprise seeing that his writings
include so many of Jesus' sayings (e.g. "Let not a woman separate
from her husband," I Cor. vii. 10; "Let them that preach the Gospel
live by the Gospel," I Cor. ix. 14) in the form of "codicils" by
Jesus; and in the Acts (xx. 35) he quotes in the name of Jesus
"It is better to give than to receive." But such surprise is uncalled
for. Paul consistently aimed at exalting the spiritual Jesus over the
material Jesus, the Jesus who rose from the dead over the Jesus
who lived a human life and performed human acts. He could not
otherwise lay claim to the title of "Apostle:" he was not one of
Jesus' disciples nor, apparently, had he ever seen him while he was
on earth ; in the latter event he must have been subservient to James,
the brother of Jesus, to Peter and the other Apostles.
Therefore since Paul believed himself, and impressed the belief
on others, that his own teaching was more important than that of
James and Peter and that he had authority to set aside the Jewish
Law and its ceremonial ordinances and make Christianity entirely
spiritual and a matter of personal piety—for this reason he was
bound to make little of the earthly life of Jesus. "To Paul's mind,
the centre of interest was not the teacher, the worker of miracles,
the companion of publicans and sinners, the opponent of the Phari-
sees ; it was the crucified Son of God raised from the dead, and
none other." It therefore follows from the character of Paul's
teaching that this earliest historical witness is least valuable for our
knowledge of the life of Jesus. 2
a
See Paul Wernle, op. cit. p. 5. What Paul makes known of the views
and character of Jesus is briefly summed up in O. Holtzmann, op. cit. pp.
6-9 ; and more fully in P. W. Schmidt, op. cit. 68-74.‫^־‬
IV. T H E EARLY FATHERS OF THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH
[On Justin and the additional facts he supplies about Jesus, see Holtz-
mann, op. cit. 14-16. The sayings of Jesus occurring in the three books
of Justin have been collected by A. Resch, "Agrapha," 2. Aufl., 98-104;
171-175, etc.]
After Paul, we may take into account those only of the early
Fathers of the Christian Church who wrote before the Canonical
Gospels became the prevailing standards. There are but two of
these: Justin Martyr and Papias.
The first of Justin Martyr's surviving writings, "Dialogus cum
Tryphone Judseo," was composed about 135 C.E. It has a further
importance for Jews, since, in this dispute with a Jew, are very
many of the messianic ideas (though sometimes distorted) such as
were current immediately after the Destruction, near the time of
the defeat at Bittir. Also it is supposed by some 1 that this "Trypho
the Jew" is the Tanna R. Tarphon, who used to engage in contro-
versy with R. Akiba. In this book we find a few statements about
the life of Jesus, e.g. that Jesus "the son of the carpenter" used to
make ox-goads and ploughs (Dial. 88) ; we also find several sayings
which Justin Martyr attributes to Jesus. 2 These will be dealt with
in their proper place. But they are so few and of such slight value
that they add little to the sum-total of our information.
The statements of Papias, who wrote his "Expositions of the
Oracles of the Lord" about 140, are of a different type. They sur-
vive only in fragments as quoted by Origen and Eusebius. The
fragments which Eusebius 3 quotes from Papias as coming from
"the Elder" (the Presbyter)—who, it transpires, was John of Asia
Minor (and not John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee) who lived
in the time of Trajan—deal with the origin of the Gospels, and we
will treat of them in detail in the next chapter (see p. 74). But
Origen's quotations 4 are concerned with Jesus himself. They de-
1
This is held by so cautious a scholar as Emil Schürer, op. cit. I I 4 4 4 4 < 5‫־‬
650 n. 98; R. Z. Frankel (Darke ha-Mishnah, p. 105 n. 7) opposes it on the
grounds of the gross errors in the statements of Trypho the Jew, but these
may be placed to the account of Justin, a Christian of pagan origin. For
bibliography of the "Apocryphal Sayings" see next chap., p. 67.
2
On these, see A. Resch, loc. cit. supra; Holtzmann, op. cit. 14-16. •4
" Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. I l l 39. •4
4
See further, J. Klausner, "Ha-Ra'yon ha-Meshihi b'Yisrael," pt. 2, Jeru-
salem 1921, pp. 55-56; Die Messianischen Vorstellungen des jüdischen Volkes
im Zeitalter der Tannaiten, Berlin, 1904, pp. 108-111.·^
65
scribe the material blessings, such as the abnormal fruitfulness of
nature, which will mark the kingdom of the Millennium, a descrip-
tion which in every detail calls to mind the description of the material
blessings of the "Days of the Messiah" (the messianic age) contained
in the Book of Baruch (29, 5-8), in the Talmud (Kethuboth I I I b ;
Shab. 30b; Kallah R. 2) and in the Midrash (Sifre to Deuteronomy,
315 and 317) ; and these descriptions are repeated as representing the
belief of Jesus. Modern Christian theologians, being as a rule pro-
nounced rationalists, are unwilling to allow that Jesus was so
"worldly" as to believe in such "material" things as the multiplied
fruitfulness of the vine and the "flour of wheat." 5 Yet we shall
see later, when we come to describe Jesus' messianic ideas (see
Book Eight), that this Papias tradition "in the name of John the
Elder" is very important, but that the modernizers of Jesus (intent
as they are to transform an eastern Jew of nineteen hundred years
ago into a European possessed of the same exalted beliefs as the best
of Christian theologians, beliefs compounded of the teachings of the
ancient Eastern prophets and Greek and modern philosophy) have
neither recognized nor wished to recognize this importance.
Apart from the contents of the canonical and uncanonical Gospels
(discussed in the following chapter), the writings of the early
Christian Fathers contain certain scattered sayings of Jesus. These
go by the name of "Agrapha," or uncanonical sayings.6 That most
of these are not genuine is universally admitted, and some well-
known scholars, such as Wellhausen 7 and Jülicher, 8 regard them
all as spurious. Resch, however, in the first edition of his "Agrapha"
(1889) reckons seventy-four of them as genuine, though in his
second edition (1906) he reduced the number to thirty-six. Ropes 9
considers only twelve to be authentic. It is certainly inadvisable to
make too great use of them. But even if the presumably genuine say-
ings contribute little to our knowledge of the character of Jesus, they
at least serve to approximate him more nearly to contemporary
Judaism and demonstrate the existence of a material element in his
messianic ideas; but when, from the time of Paul onwards, Jesus
was made more and more divine, the form of his ideas was, inten-
tionally or unintentionally, distorted beyond recognition.
®See Resch's characteristic remarks, op. cit. 2 Aufl. pp. 166-7, and, on
the other side, the cautious words of Holtzmann, op. cit. p. 41-2. 4
®Ably and scrupulously collected by A. Resch, op. cit.; also in J. H
Ropes, Sprüche Jesu die in den kanonischen Evangelien nicht überliefert
sind, Leipzig, 1896 ( T e x t e u. Untersuchungen, Bd. X I V 2). Some of them
may be found in Hebrew: J. E. Landsman, Sefer toi doth Yeshu'a ha-
Mashiah, London, 1907, pp. 219-220. See further on this book, infra pp.
72 n. 2. ·^
7
Wellhausen, Einleitung in die ersten drei Evangelien, Berlin, 1905, p.
85. See also P. W . Schmidt, op. cit. pp. 103-106.
8
See Jiilicher's article in Theologische Litteraturzeitung, 1905, no. 23.
9
Op. cit. 4
V. THE APOCRYPHAL AND UNCANONICAL GOSPELS
[The Apocryphal Gospels have been published by E. Hennecke, "Neu-
testamentiche Apocryphen in Verbindung mit Fachgelehrten in deutscher
Uebersetzung und mit Einleitungen herausgegeben," Tübingen und Leip-
zig, 1904. On their contents and sources see R. Hoffmann, "Das Leben
Jesu nach den Apocryphen," Leipzig, 1861. Fragments of the uncanonical
Gospels have been collected by E. Nestle, "Novi Testament! Graeci Sup-
plementum," Leipzig, 1896 ; and, with German translation, by E. Preuschen,
"Antilegomina : Die Reste der ausserkanonischen Evangelien und urchrist-
lichen Ueberlieferungen," Giessen, 1905. See also Baring-Gould, "The
Lost and Hostile Gospels," London, 1874. A satisfactory valuation of
these may be found in Holtzmann, op. cit., pp. 35-41, 42-43. On the
"Sayings of Jesus" in the Apocryphal and Uncanonical Gospels, see Resch,
op. cit., pp. 115-267 and 365-380.]
The Apocryphal Gospels exist in large numbers in the Christian

literature. They are all later than the Canonical Gospels and are
filled with legends (especially about the childhood of Jesus) showing
the wonderfully childlike faith of the Christian bodies from the
second century onwards. They have virtually no historical value, for
even if they should contain a grain of truth, it is impossible to extract
it from the thick overgrowth of legend.
But the same does not apply to the "Uncanonical Gospels" (by
which we mean those Gospels which were rejected from the Christian
Canon and have survived only in a few fragments) such as the
Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of the Egyptians, etc., and especially
the Gospel according to the Hebrews. This last (called in Greek
καθ' Εβραίους) existed, according to Resch, 1 in two versions: the
first was the Gospel of the Ebionites, of which fragments have been
handed down in Epiphanius (Haer. x x x ißff.), and which gave no
account of the birth and childhood of Jesus because the Ebionites
believed that Jesus was born in normal fashion of Joseph and Mary
(we may recognize here the influence of James the brother of Jesus,
the first leader of early, Ebionite, Christianity) ; the second version
was the Gospel of the Nazarenes, of which fragments have been
handed down by Jerome (Adv. Pelag. I l l 2 ; Comm. in Isaiam XI 2
and X L 12; m Ezech. X V I 13 and X V I I I 7, in Matth. X I I 17,
X X I I I 35 and X X V I I 9 ; Proem, in lib. XVIII Esaiae).
According to Resch both versions were compiled from fhe Gospel
according to Matthew, which was itself compiled for the sake of
1
Agrapha 1906, pp. 363-371. Λ
67
Jewish Christians—as is apparent from the "proof-passages" which
it adduces from the scriptures; and although Jerome saw the
Gospel according to the Hebrews (apparently in the "Nazarene"
version) written in Aramaic and in Hebrew characters, and translated
it into Latin and Greek, this Gospel was not originally composed in
Aramaic, but, like its source, Matthew, was at first written in Greek
and afterwards translated into Aramaic for the sake of the Jews
who had accepted Christianity. According to this view, the Gospel
according to the Hebrews also will be later than the Canonical Gos-
pels, or, at least, than Matthew (and therefore later than Mark
which preceded Matthew [see the following chapter]).
Most scholars, however, hold that there is no reason for confus-
ing together the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebi-
onites: the former, according to the evidence of Jerome, is the Gospel
of the Nazarenes, and was originally written in Hebrew (or
Aramaic). According to Harnack 2 this Gospel was written between
65 and 100 C.E., and so is at least no later than Luke and the Fourth
Gospel; it therefore ranks with some of the Canonical Gospels and
in some respects is superior to them in that it was certainly written
in Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, for the benefit of Jewish
Christians who were still akin in spirit to Jesus and his first
disciples, including his brother James. Its value is, therefore,
considerable.
The new facts which it supplies about the life of Jesus may not
be very important since they are mostly legendary ; but it is of value,
firstly, because of the many sayings of Jesus not included in the
present Gospels,3 and, secondly, because of the Hebrew (or Aramaic)
mannerisms of speech which cast light on the existing Greek text.
Thus, in connexion with Matthew vi. 11, in the Lord's Prayer,
Jerome tells us that in place of έπιούσιος ("continual") the Gospel
of the Hebrews read "mahar" ( = ‫ מ ת ר‬, tomorrow, translated by
Jerome as "crastinum") ; and in another place (Ep. 20 ad Damasum)
he says that the phrase ώσαννά êv τοις υψίστους (Matt. xxi. 9) was
there written "Osanna barrama, id est Osanna in excelsis" (repre-
senting the Hebrew ‫׳הושענא ברמה‬, "Hosanna in the highest").
Mention still remains to be made of additions to the Canonical
Gospels in certain ancient manuscripts. 4 The principal one is that
known as Codex Bezae or Codex Cantabrigiensis ( " D " ) , so called
because it was given by Theodore Bèze, one of the Reformation
theologians, in 1581 into the keeping of the University of Cambridge;
it is a sixth century manuscript and its archetype dates back as far
5
A. Harnack, Geschichte der alt christlichen Litteratur, I 6-10; 11 625-
651., <
Collected and explained at length in Resch, op. cit. pp. 215-252, and
briefly treated in Holtzmann, op. cit. pp. 3539‫ ·־‬Against their genuineness
and against the early date of this Gospel generally, see Schmidt, pp. 106-112.
4
Collected and annotated in Agrapha, pp. 36-54; see also Holtzmann,
op. cit. pp. 45-46. ^
THE UNCANONICAL GOSPELS 69
as the year 140 C.E. 5 It contains enough additions and differences
to show that the present text of the first three Gospels cannot repre-
sent the original text unchanged in every detail.
These additions and differences are most important as showing
a "Nazarene" tendency—not very extreme, yet a tendency, more or
less Jewish, and approaching nearer the messianic belief of Jesus
the Jew than do the later tendencies which are markedly influenced
by paganism. 6 Furthermore there are several additions throwing
light on Jesus' motives, e.g. the addition to Matthew xx. 28; also
worthy of note is the addition to Luke vi. 4 : "On the same day,
having seen one working on the Sabbath, he said to him, Ο man,
if thou knowest what thou doest, thou art blessed, but if thou knowest
not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the Law (παραβάτης του
νόμου)." Such a penetrating and semi-Je wish idea is not likely to
have been invented after the time of Jesus.
It may here be pointed out that the story of the woman taken in
adultery, found now only in the current text of John (vii. 52—
viii. 11)—though actually belonging to Mark xii. 18 or xii. 35—
is to be found in Codex Bezae; it also occurs in several MSS. in
Luke xxi. 38; other Gospels omit it, seeing in it something opposed
to current morals (this in itself argues its genuineness : none could
have invented it at a later date). This same Codex lacks the ending
to the Gospel of Mark, xvi. 9 to the end, as do also the best manu-
scripts ; the ending was apparently composed, according to an Armen-
ian manuscript, by Aristion, who lived in Asia Minor at the beginning
of the second century (hence its historical value, in any case not
great, it still more diminished). All these, together with many
papyrus fragments, containing sayings of Jesus, recently found at
various places, deserve attention as sources for the life of Jesus;
but they must be used with great caution, for since the time that
such Gospel material was banished from the Christian Canon, no
care was given to it, and it was modified or added to without the
reverence that would have been bestowed upon it had it possessed
canonical sanctity. Therefore, in spite of its great mass, the extent
of scientifically valuable matter which it contains is small.
3)c ‫«(נ‬ # * ^t ^c 3e|
If, before proceeding to the Canonical Gospels, we sum up what
we have so‫ ׳‬far learnt of the life of Jesus from the Hebrew, Greek,
Latin and even Christian sources (excluding the Canonical Gospels),
we quickly realize that, apart from a few facts about his life and
a few of his sayings, we have acquired but these two things : (a) we
"On its nature and importance see Agrapha‫׳׳‬, pp. 338-352, where the
detailed discussion is deserving of study. A
"Thus in a very old Syriac manuscript found by two English women in
the Monastery on Mt. Sinai, there occurs in Matt. i. 16 the reading: "And
Joseph, to whom was espoused Mary the virgin, begat Jesus." See Agnes
Lewis Smith, The Old Syriac Gospels, London, 1910, p. 2, Syriac text, p. b. Λ
learn the period and the environment in which Jesus lived, and the
political conditions and the religious and ethical ideals which pre-
vailed ; these are so important that we cannot overestimate the value
of what we learn from the Talmud and Midrash, the writings of
Joseph, Tacitus, Suetonius and the early Church Fathers; (b) frag-
mentary though the information is, we can confidently conclude from
it that Jesus did indeed exist, that he had an exceptionally remark-
able personality, and that he lived and died in Judsea during the
Roman occupation.7
All this stands out firm and irrefutable, and there is no solid
foundation for the doubts raised by Bruno Bauer and more recently
by Albert Kalthoff and Arthur Drews (cf. the following section).
During the time (fifty years or less) which elapsed between the
death of Jesus (at the date approximately recorded by the Canonical
Gospels) and the age of Josephus and R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, or
between Paul and Tacitus, it was quite impossible for a purely fab-
ricated presentment of the figure of Jesus so firmly to have gripped
people's imagination, that historians like Josephus and Tacitus, and
men like R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (who was so cautious in trans-
mitting what he had heard from his teachers), should believe in his
existence and all refer to him as one who had lived and worked
quite recently and had made for himself friends and disciples; or
that Paul should have had such a complete belief in him and never
doubt that James was the brother, and Peter and his fellows, disciples
of Jesus. That much is clear; and those who would utterly deny
not simply the form which Jesus now assumes in the world or that
which he assumes according to the Gospels, but even his very exist-
ence and the great positive, or negative, importance of his per-
sonality—such men simply deny all historic reality.
Joseph Salvador 8 speaks of the same problem, a problem raised
(very many years before Bauer) as early as the eighteenth century;
and in answer to sceptics, he quotes these words of Rousseau;
"In reality this (the denial of Jesus' existence) is only shirking the
difficulty (raised by the dissimilarities in the Gospels) and not getting
rid of it. It is far more incomprehensible that many men should
have agreed 'to compose this book than that one man alone should
have provided it with its subject matter. . . . So impossible of imi-
tation are the characteristics of the Gospels that the man who
invented them must needs be greater than his hero" (Emile, "Pro-
fession de foi"). 9
This may be taken also as an adequate rejoinder to the conglom-
eration of pseudo-scientific proofs advanced by Bruno Bauer,
Kalthoff and Drews!
7
T h e importance of the Talmudic statements in this respect was recog-
nized by Herford, op. cit. pp. 359-360. For an opposing view see Fried-
länder, Die religiösen Bewegungen, pp. 191-192. Λ
8
J. Salvador, Jésus-Christ et sa doctrine, I 156-159.
0
On this see further p. 76. 4
VI. T H E CANONICAL GOSPELS AND T H E STUDY O F
T H E LIFE OF JESUS
[A good account of the connexion between the first three Gospels is to

be found in P. Wernle, "Die synoptische Frage," Tübingen, 1899; for
details see J. Weiss, "Das älteste Evangelium," Göttingen, 1903, and espe-
cially J. Wellhausen, "Einleitung in die ersten drei Evangelien," Berlin,
1905. A clear account is also given in F. Godet, "Introduction au Nouveau
Testament," Neuchâtel, 1904, II 671-844. On the relation of the Fourth
to the first three Gospels, see the brief treatment in P. W. Schmiedel,
"Das 4te Evangelium gegenüber den drei ersten" ("Religiongesch.
Volksbb." I 8, 10), Tübingen, 1906. On the four Gospels as a whole,
see O. Holtzmann, "Leben Jesu," pp. 1735‫ ;־‬W. Wrede, "Die Entstehung
der Schriften des Neuen Testaments," Vorträge ("Lebensfragen," herausg.
von. H. Weinel) Tübingen, 1907, pp. 36-73; Maurice Vernes, "Evangile"
("Grande Encyclopédie," XVI, 863-874). Brief though adequate accounts
are also to be found in P. Wernle, "Die Quellen des Lebens Jesu," pp.
7-87; W. Bousset, "Was wissen wir von Jesu?" pp. 27-62. To illustrate
graphically the relations between the narratives of the first three Gospels,
synoptical tables, or "Synopses" have been compiled (on the term "Synop-
tics" see further in the course of the present chapter) giving the material
of the Gospels in parallel columns according to the Greek text. Such
are: A. Huck, "Synopse der drei ersten Evangelien," 2 Aufl. 1898; in
German translation: Koppelmann, "Deutsche Synopse. Zusammenstel-
lung der 3 ersten Evangelien," 1897; E. Morel et G. Chastand, "Con-
cordance des évangiles synoptiques," Lausanne, 1901 [in French, with
different colours to aid comparison]. In English: W. Wright, "A Synop-
sis of the Gospels," London, 1896. A sort of synopsis, or rather "har-
mony," in Hebrew is: Immanuel Landsman, Sefer Tol'doth Yeshu a
ha-Mashiach: containing all the narratives of the acts of Jesus and his
teaching as found in the four Gospels in their proper form and language,
in the translations of Prof. Franz Delitzsch, edited and arranged in
chronological order with references and table of contents, London,
1907. But the work has two marked defects : it gives the contents of
the Fourth Gospel without discriminating them from those of the first
three, and certain propagandist remarks in the introduction are not in
place in a scholarly work; but the notes, the glossary, and the "Uncanoni-
cal Sayings" are useful. On the researches devoted to the Life of Jesus
see especially H. Weinel, "Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Neue
Bearbeitung" Tübingen, 1907; A. Schweitzer, "Von Reimarus zu Wrede.
Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung," Tübingen, 1906. On the
various problems raised, see H . V. Soden, "Die wichtigsten Fragen im
Leben Jesu," Berlin, 1904.]
As a result of our examination of the non-Christian sources, and

the scattered sayings and details to be found in the uncanonical
71
Gospels and the early Fathers, we are forced to conclude that, as
the main source of knowledge for the life and teaching of Jesus,
we must draw from the Canonical Gospels alone.
But we are quickly faced with the following problem: the objec-
tive of the Gospels was not "history" in our sense, but the proclaim-
ing, spreading and confirmation of the new faith; how, then, can
we regard them as historical sources suited to scientific biography?
Again, was it within the power of the writers of the Gospels to
depict the events of Jesus' life in the terms of an ordinary historical,
human life? The attempt to answer this fundamental problem has
provided a powerful impetus alike to Gospel criticism and the study
of the history of Jesus—two subjects so interrelated as to be insep-
arable. Although it involves a chapter of exceptional length, we are
bound to deal with the two subjects together.
The word "Gospel," Evangelion (εύαγγέλιον), means "good tid-
ings." 1 It still remains a matter of doubt whether the Talmud is
referring to the Gospels when it says of the "Gilyonim and Books
of the Minim" that they should not be saved from burning, and that
(according to R. Ishmael) "they cast enmity and hatred and strife
between Israel and their heavenly Father," and that R. Tarphon was
prepared to burn them even though they contained the sacred names
of God (Shabb. 116a). 2 According to M. Friedländer 3 the
"Gilyonim and Books of the Minim" are the same as the "Books of
the magicians" referred to in the Talmud (Hul. 13a) and Tosefta
(Hul. II 20), composed by the Gnostics. H. P. Chajes 4 considers
that the Gilyonim are the Apocalypses, since the name given to the
"Book of Revelation, or Apocalypse of St. John" in Syriac is
Gelyana. Yet if we accept this view, it should be said that the
Talmud does not refer to Apocalypses generally, but only to those
of the Christians or Gnostics : the Tannaim could not possibly have
waxed so indignant over such Jewish Apocalypses as that of Baruch,
or Fourth Esdras, so full of moral guidance and devotion.5
The four Canonical Gospels are, following the order preserved
1
T h e avon-gülayon ( ‫ ג ^ י ח‬flltf, lit. iniquity-table) is referred to by the
Talmud in the story of Imma Shalom and Rabban Gamaliel, who came to the
"Philosoph" (Shabb. 116a and b; see above, pp. 37-8) ; but this spelling in
place of Π ‫ א י מ נ נ ט י‬is perhaps late and changed with derogatory intent as
we find among the late Tannaim and early Amoraim: "R. Meir calls it
‫ ; אוז ג ל י ח‬R. Yochanan calls it ‫( "עוון גיליון‬Shab. II6a in the Amsterdam
edition or in the collections of "Talmud omissions" given in the note to p. 18).
On the non-Jewish origin of the word "Evangelion" see Wellhausen, op. cit.
pp. 108-112. A
a
A s is explained in the Tractate Yadaim the proper treatment in such
cases is to store the writings away in the "Genizah."^‫־‬
3
Op. cit. 188-202.
4
p Se^ his La lingua ebraica net Cristianesimo primitivo, Firenze, 1905,
·?‫׳‬
6
J. Klausner, Sefarim Hitsonim ("Specimen Pages" of an Ο tsar ha•
Yahaduth, ed. "Ahiasaf," Warsaw, 1906, pp. 95-96. ^
THE STUDY Ol· THE LIFE OF JESUS 73
in the New Testament : the Gospel according to ( κατά ) Matthew,
the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Luke, and the
Gospel according to John. 6 St. Augustine 7 already perceived the
very close similarity that existed between the first three; on the
other hand, the briefest glance suffices to show how utterly the
fourth, "according to John," differs from the others. It is not
simply that its contents are different (we shall see shortly that such
differences occur also as between the first three Gospels themselves),
but that from beginning to end it is distinct from them entirely in
its plan and arrangement. It is permeated by a different atmosphere,
and the purpose of its author was different.
To distinguish the first three, with their common characteristics,
from the fourth "according to John," scholars are accustomed to call
the former by the title (first given them by Griesbach in his "Synop-
sis," 1797) "Synoptic Gospels," i.e. Gospels having a "common
aspect," such as can be taken in the same conspectus; while their
authors go by the name "Synoptists."
But the Synoptic Gospels are not only markedly different from
the Fourth Gospel: though they closely resemble one another, they
are not similar to one another. It is true that they are similar in
the wider sense—as regards the narratives they give of Jesus' life
and their reports of his sayings and teachings ; and sometimes the
similarity extends to a complete identity of words, expressions and
minutest details.
Yet just as often they differ in details, words and expressions,
and, frequently, in complete narratives; this is particularly the case
with his sayings and discourses, which are sometimes to be found
in one or two Gospels, and are absent in one or both of the others.
Thus the account of the supernatural birth, though it occurs in
Matthew and Luke, is lacking in Mark. In Luke, between the
account of Jesus' ministry in Galilee and his entry into Jerusalem,
there is a long passage containing many discourses—usually referred
to as "The travel-narrative" or "Persean section"—occupying nine
chapters, almost a third of the whole book (ix. 51—xviii. 14), none
of which occurs in Mark or Matthew, although the latter gives, in
abbreviated form and usually in the shape of continuous conversa-
tion, the sayings and discourses dispersed here and there in Luke's
"Persean section." On the other hand, Luke lacks the whole of
Mark vi. 45—viii. 26, and Matthew xiv. 22—xvi. 12.
Again, we find in Matthew the "Sermon on the Mount" (v. 3—
vii. 27), in which is concentrated virtually the whole of Jesus'
teaching; while in Mark we find, scattered here and there, only a
fraction of these teachings contained in the "Sermon on the Mount."
In Luke, out of the hundred and seven verses which make up the
6
Attention should be given to the expression "according to." Its mean-
ing and value will be explained later. ·^
1
De consensu evangelistarum, III 4, 13.^
"Sermon on the Mount," we find twenty-seven verses in Chapter vi,
twelve in Chapter xi, fourteen in Chapter xii, three in Chapter xiii,
one in Chapter xiv, three in Chapter xvi; while forty-seven are
wholly wanting.
Speaking generally, Mark is more concerned with the doings
of Jesus, Matthew prefers long and frequent discourses, while Luke
—who aims at a more finished literary form and style—reproduces
the same discourses which Matthew gives in disconnected fashion,
as though they arose out of certain specific causes or acts. Luke
again, more than the other Synoptists, relates many sayings and dis-
courses which are peculiar to him. The order of events in the
Synoptists is also varied for no apparent reason ; similarly words and
phrases have been changed in one or other of the Gospels without
our being able to see what could have been the original motive for
the change.
To take one example out of many: when Jesus is sending out
his twelve disciples to spread his teaching, he tells them, according
to Mark (vi. 8 ) , that "they should take naught save a staff," but in
Matthew (χ. i o ) and Luke (ix. 3), it is written that "they should
take naught, not even a staff." Again, whereas Matthew writes,
Blessed are the poor in spirit (Μακάριοι 01 πτωχοί τ φ πνεύματι),
Luke writes, Blessed are the poor (Μακάριοι 0? χτωχοί). Such cases
occur in plenty.
There thus arise two important problems: (a) Which are the
better historical records, the Synoptists or the Fourth Gospel? and
which of the three Synoptists ranks highest, whether in priority or
quality? (b) If we assume that the Synoptists drew from different
sources, how explain their remarkable similarities? If from a
common source or from one another, how account for their remark-
able differences?
There are two things which make the problems still more com-
plicated. First of all, John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, the
Church holds to be "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and therefore
an eyewitness. And, in the second place, as to Matthew and Mark,
the church supposes the former to be Matthew Levi, the publican
summoned by Jesus (Matt. ix. 9 ; Mark ii. 14; Luke v. 27) and one
of the twelve Apostles (Matt. x. 2 ; Mark iii. 18) ; and the latter John
Mark, the son of Mary, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as
the chief disciple of Peter (Acts xii. 12) and companion of Paul
(Acts xii. 25).
Furthermore, Eusebius has preserved the tradition of Papias,
an early Christian writer (see above, p. 65), which says: "Matthew
wrote the sayings (of Jesus) in Hebrew and each one translated
them as he was able" (Ματθαίος μεν ουν έβραΐδι διαλέκτψ τά Λόγια
συνεγράψατο, ήρμήνευσει δ‫ ׳‬αυτά ώς ήν δυνατός έκαστος); and again:
"Mark, who became the interpreter of Peter, wrote exactly, but not
in order (έρμηνευτής Πέτρου ακριβώς Ιγραψεν ου μεν τ‫־‬ή τάξει) all
whatsoever he remembered of the words and works of Christ, for
he (Mark) himself knew him not. . . . H e had but one care—not to
omit anything that he heard or to set down any false statement
therein." 8
John, Matthew and Mark were, therefore, accounted trustworthy
witnesses, and two of them actual eyewitnesses. As for Luke, we
find at the beginning of his Gospel the following words : "Forasmuch
as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative (διήγησις) con-
cerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, which
from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it
seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accu-
rately (άκρφώς) from the first, to write unto thee in order (καθεξής),
most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty
concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed" (Luke i. 14‫)־‬.
There were thus many different sources.
When, therefore, a critical spirit became apparent in Christian
theology, the following serious questions arose: How explain the
fact that the four Gospels contradict each other in certain details?
Which of them is earlier and which later? Which of them drew
from the others, or what was their common source? On which
should one rely more and on which less, and on which should one
not rely at all? These and similar questions have occupied the
wide range of literature devoted to Gospel criticism and that equally
wide range of literature devoted to the study of the life of Jesus.
We propose now to trace the course of these two lines of study,
important as they are in marking the stages of human thought.
Neither the question "What is the historical value of the Gos-
pels?" nor its corollary "What was the historical character of Jesus?"
(as we understand the problems) were raised in the Middle Ages
or in the time of the Reformation. Socin (1525-1562) and Michael
Servet (burnt at the instance of Calvin in 1553) both denied the
divinity of Jesus and regarded him only as a prophet and the founder
of a religion, but they found no problems in the actual life of Jesus,
nor had they learnt how to apply methods of historical criticism to the
Gospels.
More scientific was the attitude of the English Deists. 9 John
Toland (1671-1723), Peter Annet (d. 1768) and, most of all,
Thomas Woolston (1669-1731) denied the Gospel miracles and tried
to rationalize them, e.g. they held that Jesus did not raise the actual
dead but awakened them from a lethargic sleep that had the appear-
ance of death ; or that there was a conspiracy between such as were
apparently restored to life and between Jesus' disciples, since the
8
Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. I l l 39, 15· Cf. Graetz, op. cit. I I I ii 5 755-756.
"For detailed account see G. v. Lechler, Der englische Deismus, Stutt-
gart, 1841 ; Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century, vol. 2, 2d ed. London, 1881 ; J. Klausner, Ha-Deistim u-biqqoreth ha-
Migra, Ma'abaroth, 1920, I 512-519. •4
latter, seeing Jesus' faith in his messiahship weakening, wished to
revive this faith by means of the miracles which they engineered.
Jesus' own resurrection was also regarded by the Deists as based
merely on a phantom seen by visionaries and dreamers, or as a delib-
erate invention. 10
The Deists anticipated many of the ideas of early nineteenth
century writers on the subject. They looked on Jesus as a great
prophet and the founder of a religion which was the "natural re-
ligion" existing in all men and among all nations, but which was
revealed in a fashion more profound and more perfect in the words
of Jesus.
The English Deists exercised an influence on the great eighteenth
century French writers. Voltaire, for example, insists time after
time that Jesus was a great prophet and nothing more. They treated
the miracles and the advanced ethical code, which were not to the
liking of these rationalists, as the "barefaced inventions" of "artful
priests" (hence "priestcraft" and the corresponding French term
"prêtres rusés"), who invented them deliberately to take advantage
of the ignorance of the people and so secure a hold over them.
The English Deists (likewise Voltaire and his school) frequently
touch on such problems as Jesus' messianic claims which are bound
up in his title "Christ," his Jewish environment, the contemporary
beliefs and ideas of the Jews, and the like, and sometimes deal with
them at length ; yet they could never see in them problems demanding
scholarly research, irrespective of religious or anti-religious bias.
Discrepancies in the Gospels were seized upon as evidence of the
utter untrustworthiness of the Evangelists. Of the four Gospels
preference was given, not to the Synoptists, but to John—because
it was more philosophical, contained fewer miracles, and placed more
stress on Jesus' religious and ethical teaching than on his messianic
claims.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (in a letter dated 1769) also ranks the
"sage hébreu" (Jesus) with the "sage grec" (Socrates). H e holds
that Jesus' desire was to relieve the Jews from the Roman yoke and
make them free, and that his ethical teachings were intended to
revive the enthusiasm for freedom in such a manner as not to arouse
the suspicions of the Romans ; but that the Jews did not understand
him and he was too gentle by nature forcibly to press through a
political revolution.
Rousseau speaks generally of Jesus as of a "divine man" who
opposed miracles to the utmost ; 1 1 he is strongly opposed to the
theory that Jesus never lived and that the Evangelists invented him :
"My friend, such things are not invented; the matters told of
Socrates—whose existence no one doubts—rest on far slenderer
evidence than do those told of Jesus of Nazareth." W e have quoted
10
See, e.g., P. Arinet, Sufiranatural Examined, London, 1747. Ά
u
J. J. Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, Paris, 1846, IV 771-2.
already (p. 70) his remarks to the effect that we cannot solve the
problems enveloping Jesus by simply denying his existence, and
that it is far more difficult to explain how certain Jewish writers
(the Evangelists) invented such a wonderful character than it is
to admit that they were describing someone who did really exist. 12
Of the same school of thought as the Deists, though he far sur-
passed them, was Hermann Samuel Reimarus, professor of Oriental
Languages at Hamburg (1694-1768). In his epoch-making book,
"Vom Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger" (published by Lessing ten
years after its author's death, 1778, with an appended essay refuting
the author's opinions, entitled "Noch ein Fragment des Wolfen-
butteischen Ungenannten"), Reimarus was the first who tried to
explain Jesus not as a Son of God or as a prophet or lawgiver, but
as a Jewish Messiah. He emphasizes the fact that neither Jesus
nor his disciples ever explained what the "Kingdom of heaven" is,
for the simple reason that it was a familiar, widely current con-
ception among the Jews of the time, and that we shall, therefore,
best comprehend Jesus from a study of contemporary Jewish litera-
ture. Reimarus' presentation of Jesus' career may be summarized
as follows :
The keynote of Jesus' teaching was "Repent! for the kingdom
of heaven is at hand!"—a call which drew to him large numbers of
the Jews who were groaning under Roman tyranny and believed in
the coming of the Messiah. Jesus never opposed the Mosaic law
and, at the most, only emphasized the fact that mere observance of
ceremonial laws was not enough to prepare men for the kingdom of
heaven, but that a high ethical standard of life was requisite. He
bade his disciples to preach the gospel of the kingdom not to the
Gentiles but "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. x. 6) ;
and Peter, as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles (chh. χ and x i ) ,
greatly doubted whether he should admit the Gentile Cornelius to
baptism.
Like the rest of the Jews, Jesus observed the Passover without
introducing any change, and, in general, the sole difference between
the teaching of Jesus and contemporary Judaism, was that while the
latter believed in a Messiah still to come, Jesus taught that the
Messiah was come already. The miracles recorded in the Gospels
were either ordinary cures which Jesus' contemporaries regarded as
miraculous, or else marvels interpolated into the story with a view to
attributing to Jesus the same things written in the Old Testament of
the Prophets and their wonderful works and all that befel them. But
the Jews, as a whole, did not believe in him. At first he tried to
gain followers by sending his disciples to preach throughout the
cities of Israel and he believed that "they should not have gone
through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man was come" (Matt.
12
Of}, cit. II 597· ^
χ . 23) ; but the disciples did not attract many. H e then decided to
test his powers in Jerusalem, the centre of the Jews.
At first he was so successful as to be acclaimed in the terms:
"Hosanna, Son of David!" i.e., Messiah; with the result that he
made bold to execute judgment on the traffickers in the Temple. But
even in Jerusalem his following was but small and the Sanhédrin
and the Romans were able to arrest and crucify him. His cry on
the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" proves
that he neither thought nor wished to die, and that he looked on his
death as the end of all his work; he saw that God had abandoned
him and not helped him to finish what he had begun, to establish
an earthly kingdom and deliver his people from the Romans.
His disciples had expected earthly greatness and that, in the
kingdom about to be, they should be appointed by the Messiah rulers
and princes; in this they had been encouraged by Jesus' saying,
"There are some standing here that shall not taste of death till they see
the son of man coming in his kingdom" (Matt. xvi. 28) ; it had never
occurred to them that Jesus would be killed: otherwise they would
not have shown such cowardice at his trial and crucifixion; at first
they were wholly perplexed and afraid even to stir from their homes.
Later, however, their spirits revived and they remembered the other
Jewish messianic belief—a spiritual and not a material hope—found
in the Book of Daniel, in the Hebrew Apocalypses, in Talmudic
literature, and in Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew."
According to this idea, the Messiah must suffer and die, but he
would in the end rise again and, this second time, appear in glory
and establish the kingdom of heaven. To make this idea appear
true the disciples stole the body of Jesus and hid it; after fifty
days—by which time the body must have become unrecognizable even
if found, they spread the rumour that he was risen from the dead
and that he had shown himself alive to them. Thenceforward they
awaited his Second Coming (Parousia), when he should establish
his kingdom, the everlasting kingdom of heaven. And this Coming,
rather than the ethical teaching of Jesus, became the fundamental
hope and basis of early Christianity. All at first believed in his
speedy coming; but when there seemed no prospect of an early
coming they allocated it to a later age, to the close of a thousand
years (the Millennium).
Then the promise that the present generation should see the
Son of Man in his majesty, was changed into a new promise—that
Jesus should come only after the nation of Israel came to an end ;
"thus," says Reimarus, "through the art of the commentators, these
things were relegated to the far distant future, for the people of
Israel do not die." As to the abolition of the ceremonial laws, this
did not arise out of the teaching of Jesus but because his disciples,
completely severed from the Jews, sought to make adherents to
Christianity from among the Gentiles.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Reimarus for
the better understanding of the Gospels and the life of Jesus. H e
was the first to prefer the Synoptists to the Fourth Gospel; he
ignored the latter almost completely as a source for the life of Jesus.
H e was the first to set Jesus within the framework of his historical
and national environment. H e was the first to illustrate the "posi-
tive" attitude of Jesus to Judaism. H e was the first to emphasize the
importance of Jesus' messianic claims in their relation to Jewish
eschatology, Jewish teaching on the future life and the kingdom
of heaven, instead of looking upon him solely as a prophet or
lawgiver.
Finally, he was the first who thoroughly grasped the fact that
the Jewish messianic idea had a twofold basis, the one material and
political, and the other spiritual and ethical—the former apocalyptic
and the latter prophetic; but he erred in attributing only the first of
these to Jesus, and only the second to his disciples after his death.
He was also wrong in many of his rationalizations of Gospel inci-
dents, rationalizations which were the fruit of his own time and due
to Deist and Voltairean influence, and the "enlightenment" of the
eighteenth century. In short, Reimarus was scores of years in advance
of his contemporaries, and his influence on Gospel criticism did not
become apparent until the time of David Friedrich Strauss. Much
credit is due to Lessing for appreciating the value of Reimarus and
for publishing the work, despite all the opposition of his friends,
Moses Mendelssohn and Nicolai. 13
Lessing also helped towards the development of Gospel research.
In the same year in which he published Reimarus' book (1778), he
wrote his "Neue Hypothese über die Evangelisten als blosse mensch-
liehe Schriftsteller betrachtet," which only appeared after his death,
in 1784. As the title shows, Lessing took as his main thesis that
we look upon the Gospels not as verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit
but as writings of a religious and historical character ; also, which is
more important, he made the first serious attempt to account for
the genesis of the Synoptic Gospels and for the differences between
them. According to him, there existed in Palestine, previous to
the composition of the present Gospels, an account written in
Aramaic known as the Gospel "of the Nazarenes," or "of the Twelve
Apostles," or "of Matthew."
This was a collection of short, isolated narratives, which ulti-
mately suffered modifications and additions by readers or copyists
possessed of extra material. Matthew, who as a publican and
official had a knowledge of writing, translated this Aramaic document
into Greek when Christianity began to spread among the Gentiles.
Mark later translated it from a more condensed version ; and Luke,
with his more elegant Greek style, translated it from the same
u
A. Schweitzer in his Von Reimarus 2u Wrede, pp. 14-25, gives a good
account and estimate of Reimarus' work. A
version used by Matthew. According to this view, the Synoptic
Gospels have one common source—a primitive Gospel composed in
Palestine and written in Aramaic.
Griesbach (already mentioned as the originator of the term
"Synopsis") concluded, as early as 1790 (like most scholars of the
time), that Mark was only an abbreviator ("Epitomator"), and
that his Gospel had no independent value, but was only an abridgment
of Matthew and Luke.
Yet previous to this, Koppe ("Marcus non epitomator Matthaei,"
1782) and Storr ("Ueber den Zweck der evangelischen Geschichte
und der Briefe Johannis," 1786) had tried to adduce proof that not
only was Mark not dependent on Matthew, but that it was actually
the source used by Matthew and Luke, and was composed of accounts
derived from Peter, of whom Mark was one of the earliest disciples.
Otherwise it is hard to explain why he should have made so numerous
and extensive omissions from Matthew, or why he should have
added so little to Matthew and Luke, since he had at hand the
accounts of Peter.
Mark wrote for the Syrian churches after the persecutions suf-
fered by the Jerusalem church ; Matthew wrote later for the Palestine
churches in Aramaic, using Mark and Luke; while Luke was com-
posed in Rome with Mark as the basis, but with supplementary
matter derived from eye-witnesses in Jerusalem.
Johannes Gottfried Herder was, like Reimarus, before his time.
In his two books "Vom Erlöser der Menschen: nach unseren drei
ersten Evangelien," 1796, and "Von Gottes Sohn, der Welt Heiland:
nach Johannes-Evangelium," 1797, he first put forward the view that
while the first three Gospels are Palestinian and historical, describing
Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and replete with Palestinian ideas and
beliefs, the character of the Fourth Gospel is not historical so much
as doctrinal, giving more space to Greek ideas and beliefs, and aiming
at depicting Jesus, not as Jewish Messiah but as the Saviour of
the World. The Fourth Gospel miracles have only a symbolic value,
illustrating religious and philosophical ideas. It was composed after
the Synoptic Gospels.
Of these three, Mark is earliest. We have seen that until the time
of Herder, Mark was looked upon as the 'Epitomator" of Matthew
and Luke, because he omits the birth stories and many of Jesus'
sayings and discourses. Herder derides the notion of an "Apostolic
Committee" ("apostolische Kanzlei") engaged in arbitrary or neces-
sary abridging and supplementing ; he tries to show that Mark neither
abridged nor omitted, but that Matthew and Luke supplemented from
written or oral sources. Herder regards Mark as the corner-stone
of all the Gospels because it gives nothing but the simplest unadorned
details. The Matthsean and Lukan birth stories are additions arising
out of the later needs of the Church.
Similarly the prevailing tone in Mark and his fellow evangelists
is explicable from the point of view of current needs: Mark does

not deal harshly with the Jews since at the time of its composition
the Christians had not separated from the Jews ; the tone of Matthew
is more bitter because by that time the Jews had begun to persecute
the Christians and the latter had become convinced that it was
impossible for them to remain within Judaism. The basis of all
three Synoptists was a primitive oral Gospel as it was narrated in
brief form by the Apostles in Aramaic.
Out of this Mark first developed, from which it is as though we
still hear the accounts of Peter, and which made but little change
from the primitive Aramaic Gospel ; next came Luke, giving such
supplementary matter as he had acquired, and, finally, Matthew, who
added what he thought necessary. The primitive Gospel being oral
only, it is easy to account for the similarities and dissimilarities in
the surviving Gospels, since their authors were not historians in the
modern sense. Hence we are not to look to them for naked, una-
domed history: they are compilations, religious in their nature,
seeking to portray the messianic character of Jesus, and so ordering
the story of his life as to make it a fulfilment of the prophecies
contained in the Old Testament.
In all this, Herder was fifty years in advance of his contem-
poraries, and a pioneer in the path later followed by Strauss. He is
somewhat behindhand only in his attitude towards the miracles
which, according to him, are part of the faith of the Church and
whose truth it is impossible to examine, but which, within certain
limits, cannot be denied. In principle this opinion also approaches
closely to that of the best of modern scholars, who see in Jesus'
casting out of evil spirits, a healing of serious nervous disorders
by means of spiritual influence or "suggestion."
About this same time there were written two "romances" on the
life of Jesus, and these have some importance as marking a stage in
Gospel criticism.
Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792) between the years 1784 and
1792 published twelve volumes entitled "Ausführung des Plans und
Zwecks Jesu;" and Karl Heinrich Venturini (1758-1849) during the
years 1800-1802 wrote his "Natürliche Geschichte des grossen
Propheten von Nazareth," in four volumes. Both works aimed at the
same thing: to find a connecting link between the isolated episodes
recorded in the Gospels and to find reasons for what Jesus did and
why he suffered, and so account for all the miracles by natural means.
Link and reasons are both found in the Essenes, whom these two
authors describe as a secret order, of the type of the present-day
Freemasons. The Essenes taught Jesus certain methods of healing
by which he worked the supposed miracles, or else Luke, who was a
physician, assisted him in many instances of supposed death; such
are the acts which Jesus did and which were accounted as miracles by
the onlookers and the disciples. So, too, his resurrection was only
imaginary: Luke gave him drugs to render him insensible to the
acutest pain during the crucifixion, and immediately afterwards,
when he was apparently dead and put away in the tomb, Luke and
Joseph of Arithmathcea (who also was an Essene) or some other
Essenes (who with their white garments looked to the women and
the guardians of the tomb like angels) came and restored him out
of the trance. Thus all the miracles are explicable by natural causes
though they may have seemed to be supernatural to the uninitiated.
This rationalising system in explanation of the miracles reached
its extreme pitch of development at the hands of the Heidelberg
theologian Heinrich Eberhard Paulus, in his "Das Leben Jesu als
Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristenthums ,, (1828).
According to this, Jesus used drugs or else he worked on the nervous
systems of mentally diseased persons. When Jesus is described as
walking on the sea as though on dry land, this was only the fruit
of the disciples' imagination: when they saw him he was really
walking along the sea shore, but owing to the darkness he appeared
to them like a phantom hovering over the surface of the water.
When Jesus is described as feeding five thousand men with five
loaves and two fishes, and four thousand men with seven loaves and
a few small fishes—the true facts are plain: after Jesus and the
disciples had given the people all the food they had, all the others
who had food with them shared it with the crowd, and so the food
was sufficient for all and to spare.
Of course, those whom he raised from the dead were only seem-
ingly dead; and he himself only died in appearance—the spear
thrust (recorded in John xix. 34) served the purpose of blood-
letting and assisted his recovery. Every single miracle in the Gospels
is thus susceptible of explanation precisely after the manner by which
M. A. Shatzkes (1825-1898) explained the Talmud miracles, in his
"Ha-Maf teach."
Meanwhile, in 1794, Eichhorn had tried to account for the simi-
larities and differences in the Synoptists as due to a primitive
Aramaic source, composed and written down by one of the Apostles
under the supervision of the others, and furnishing the source of
our present first three Gospels. This explains the similarities. The
differences are due to the fact that this Aramaic original was ren-
dered into Greek in various versions, and modified by many emenda-
tions, additions and omissions ; it was from these various versions
that the Synoptists drew.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, in his "Ueber die Schriften des Lucas"
(1817), endeavoured to prove the contrary. According to him there
was not a single primitive document, but many short ones, containing
separate episodes or discourses ; these separate documents were used
for the composition of the present Gospels—a state of things indi-
cated in the preface to Luke. Schleiermacher regards Luke as the
most reliable of the Synoptists. His hypothesis explains both the
differences and the similarities, and it represents a certain step for-
ward in the attempt at solving the Synoptic problem.
Yet in his lectures, delivered in 1832, on the life of Jesus, and
published after his death in 1864, we still find the old-fashioned
view that the life of Jesus is best comprehended from the Fourth
Gospel since it contains fewer miracles, and Jesus is there depicted
chiefly as the founder of a religion and as world-redeemer.
As to the miracles, Schleiermacher wavered between advanced
rationalism and the more primitive rationalism; and with him dia-
lectics overrides the claims of historical research. Yet he advances
the understanding of the Synoptic Problem by showing, in the afore-
mentioned lectures, that the Aramaic Logia of Matthew mentioned
by Papias, could not have been our present Matthew, since this does
not consist of sayings only, and it was originally written not in
Aramaic but in Greek.
As opposed to Eichhorn and Schleiermacher who postulated, as
the source of the Synoptic Gospels, one or more written documents,
Gieseler ("Historisch-Kritischer Versuch über die Entstehung und
die frühesten Schicksale der schriftlichen Evangelien," 1818), like
Herder, supposed that they were based on an oral source : the very
word εύαγγελίζεσθοκ (to preach good tidings, to preach the Gospel)
points to oral statements. The simple nature of the Aramaic lan-
guage as well as the simple nature of the first Christians and the pic-
turesque speech used by Jesus, all combined to fix immutably in the
minds of the early Christians the apostolic narratives and the Jesus-
sayings: changes were inconsiderable despite the fact that nothing
was fixed in writing.
Gieseler shows, from the Talmudic literature, the Hindu Vedas
and early Arabic poetry, how it was possible for the simple orientals
with their fresh memories to preserve entire works orally. In this
fashion was the early Christian tradition preserved and, in course of
time with the conversion of many Greeks, made to assume (about the
end of the first century) a Greek f o r m ; and this oral tradition it was
which served as the groundwork of our present Gospels. In this
way Gieseler finds no difficulty in explaining the similarities and
differences: the latter were inevitable with an oral tradition.
David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), whose "Das Leben Jesu"
(1835-6) marks a new epoch in this line of study, based his work on
the ideas and researches of Gieseler. H e first overthrows the ration-
alism of Paulus, and maintains that the ungarnished Gospel accounts
of the miracles form the strongest possible proof against their being
simple natural acts. H e regards the Gospel discrepancies as proofs
that the Gospels are not historical works, but rather historico-religious
documents written by men with a deep sense of faith unable to
describe actual events without letting their own and their con-
temporaries' religious feelings and ideas colour their statements.
After showing in lengthy detail how the time when the Gospels
were written was an age of belief in miracles, he concludes that
we must regard the Gospel miracles in the same way as we regard
the miracles described in the historico-religious documents of Greeks
or Romans or Jews. The Gospel miracles had their origin in the
"legend-creating faith" (mythenbildender Glaube) of the first Chris-
tians, and in the natural desire to find in the doings of Jesus a ful-
filment of the Hebrew Scripture prophecies, and to rank him higher
than the prophets of Israel by showing how he both equalled and
surpassed them.
In this way, for example, we must account for the genealogical
tables in Matthew and Luke, which make Jesus a descendant of
David, as well as for most of the details of his sufferings and death.
Satan's temptation of Jesus is a parallel to Satan's temptation of
Job ; many of the healings and miracles (even according to Strauss
some of the healings may really have occurred, only there was noth-
ing miraculous in them), and the raisings from the dead, form a
parallel to the like incidents recorded of Elijah and Elisha; the face
of Jesus shone when he spoke with Moses and Elijah, just as the
Old Testament describes the face of Moses as shining ; Jesus ascends
into heaven because Elijah went up to heaven in a flame of fire.
And it is possible to draw many similar parallels.
According to Strauss, Jesus at first regarded himself as the fore-
runner of the Messiah, and subsequently as the actual Messiah and
"son of man," who should establish the kingdom of Israel and bring
the heathen to Judaism and do away with the ceremonial laws. But
these things he was to bring about not by political means, like a
Jewish King-Messiah, but by the help of his heavenly Father and
legions of angels. Not until the end of his life was it possible for
Jesus to think also of his "atoning death" and resurrection and
Second Coming, "with the clouds of heaven," at the right hand of
God in the kingdom of heaven. Strauss finally broke with the
conception of the Fourth Gospel as a historical document, and showed
clearly that its interest was solely theological.
On the other hand, he preferred Matthew, and even Luke, to
Mark : Mark's simplicity he thought artificial, and its omissions and
abridgments late. To him, Mark is still the "epitomator."
Strauss found a supporter in one of the greatest of New Testa-
ment critics, Ferdinand Christian Baur, the founder of the "Tübingen
School" and the author of "Kritische Untersuchung über die
kanonischen Evangelien" (1847). Like Strauss he abandoned belief
in the historical character of. the Fourth Gospel, and regarded Mark
as composed on the basis of Matthew and Luke. But he introduced
a new criterion for the interpretation of the Synoptic Problem: he
first showed the internal struggle which, shortly after the crucifixion,
waged between Peter and Paul, between the Apostle of the Jews
and the Apostle of the Gentiles ; he showed the gulf that lay between
"Nazarenism" or Jewish Christianity (Judenchristentum) and Non-
Jewish Christianity (Heidenchristentum) ; and he explained the dis-
pute (owing to the reception of Christianity by the Samaritans and
Gentiles) which arose between Simon Peter, supported by James the
Lord's brother and the other early Apostles and eyewitnesses and
Ebionitic Nazarenes, on the one side, and between Paul and his
sympathizers, on the other—a dispute which centred on the observ-
ance or non-observance of the ceremonial laws, especially those relat-
ing to circumcision and forbidden foods.
Baur (and Schwegler, who, to a certain extent, anticipated Baur
in his "Das nachapostolische Zeitalter," 1846), and Baur's "Tübingen
School" supporters, wished, on the basis of this apostolic dispute, to
account for the differences in the Synoptic Gospels. According to
this view, Matthew was the "Gospel of the Hebrews," with certain
modifications and additions, which was referred to by the early
Church Fathers, and which represented the views of the Nazarenes
or Jewish Christians; Luke was Marcion's extreme Pauline Gospel
(with, of course, certain modifications and additions), referred to by
Tertullian and Epiphanius, which represented the views and served
the needs of non-Jewish Christians, especially the followers of Paul ;
while Mark was a colourless Gospel mediating between the two
extremes. The Tübingen School thus introduced into the Synoptic
Problem the feature of deliberate motive: the Evangelists did not
simply compile their books free of arrière pensée, but were theo-
logians with a purpose in view.
Gustav Volkmar, a pupil of Baur, in his "Der Ursprung unserer
Evangelien" (1866), saw also in Mark a Pauline document. H e
regarded it as the work of the same Mark known to us as the
disciple of Peter, and as a retort, in 73 C.E., to the Apocalypse of
John, a Nazarene document. Matthew in its primitive form (Proto-
Matthäus) was replete with the Nazarene spirit; while Luke was
written on behalf of Pauline Christianity and to undermine the influ-
ence of the Proto-Matthew. The surviving Gospel of Matthew has
been modified, on the basis of Mark and Luke, to effect a compromise
between Nazarenism and Paulinism. Matthew and Luke, one after
the other, were both composed in the early decades of the second
century. Thus Volkmar also failed to grasp the true value of Mark.
This was, in the end, appreciated by C. H . Weisse ("Die evan-
gelische Geschichte, kritisch und philosophisch bearbeitet," 1838),
and C. H. Wilke ("Der Urevangelist," 1838). In the same year they
both proved that Mark was not an "epitomator" and that what does
not occur in Mark is not an omission but an addition on the part
of Matthew or Luke. According to these two scholars Luke first
drew from Mark, and afterwards from Matthew, who, according to
Wilke, drew also from Luke.
Credner ("Einleitung in das Neue Testament," 1836) and Reuss
"Geschichte der Heiligen Schriften Neuen Testaments," 1842)
argued on behalf of the theory that the present Synoptists are derived
from two sources—a proto-Marcus (of which Papias speaks), from
which were drawn the narrative sections of the Synoptists, and the
Logia of Matthew (also referred to by Papias) from which Matthew
and Luke drew for the discourses of Jesus. The present Mark
lacks most of these discourses, but it is the earliest and most original
among the Gospels.
A further, though more risky step was taken by Bruno Bauer
(1809-1882) in his "Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des
Johannes" (1840), and "Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der
Synoptiker" (1841-2). H e not only gave a late date to John, Mat-
thew and Luke, but even concluded that Mark's account of the life of
Jesus contained nothing of real historical value. In the end, Bauer
held that everything recorded of Jesus is nothing but the product of
Mark's able imagination. . . .
At first Bauer thought that Jesus might have existed, although
we do not know who he was or what he did; but later, in his
"Christus und die Cäsaren : der Ursprung des Christentums aus dem
römischen Griechentum" (1877), he concluded that there never had
been such a person : he was only an imaginary being—a combination
of the Roman philosopher Seneca and the Jewish Alexandrine philos-
opher Philo.
The total experiences of the early Church, its persecutions,
massacres, disputes with Jews and especially with Pharisees, were
all laid to the account of one great personality, who gathered up in
his own person all the characteristics and fortunes of the early
Church. Furthermore, the contemporary religio-philosophic ideas,
the exalted ethics of Seneca and the profound religious ideas of
Philo (which, fused together, were adopted by early Christianity),
were also ascribed to the same single personality. From all this
there emerged Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the religious innovator and
the embodiment of a lofty ethical ideal. . . .
Bruno Bauer had removed Christianity from its Jewish, Pales-
tinian setting into an Alexandrian-Jewish and Gréeco-Roman frame-
work. On the other hand, August Friedrich G frörer ("Kritische
Geschichte des Urchristentums," 1831-38) and Richard von der Alm,
the pseudonym of Friedrich Wilhelm Ghillany ("Theologische
Briefe an die Gebildeten der deutschen Nation," 1863), demonstrated
the intimate bond between Talmudic Judaism and the teaching of
Jesus and his disciples.
Gfrörer very carefully brought together the messianic ideas of
Judaism during the time of the Second Temple and during later
times ; and although he did not differentiate early and late ideas, the
ideas of the Mishnah and early Baraitas as distinct from those of the
later Amoraim, he yet succeeded in showing that none can understand
early Christianity who does not first understand the Judaism of
Jesus' time.
Richard von der Alm also, in his second book, "Die Urtheile
heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten christlichen
Jahrhunderte über Jesus und die ersten Christen" (1864), collected
most of the Talmudic statements concerning Jesus and the Minim
and much of what is told in the Tol'doth Yeshu; and he tried to
prove that the whole content and even the method of Jesus' teaching
were identical with those of the early Tannaim, and that all his ideas
were derived from contemporary Judaism, which can be understood
only from the Talmud and Midrashim.
H e was the first to show the importance of "Messiah the son of
Joseph" for the understanding of Christianity, and he also tried to
show that the Jews, too, recognized a "suffering Messiah." H e
insisted that the kingdom of heaven has not a political character
but that it is a transitory condition, and so Jesus could never have
thought of using material means to hasten its coming. Hence Jesus
was never an agent, who should hasten by action the coming of the
messianic age, but one who was on the alert for the dawn of the
kingdom of heaven. But when it failed to come he endeavoured to
hasten it by his death.
His death was to be an atonement for the sins of those who,
by refraining from repentance and good works, delayed "the end,"
at the very moment when, according to the belief of Jesus and his
companions (a secret sect akin to the Essenes), the kingdom of
heaven was at hand.
This latter book, in spite of its great importance for the under-
standing of many aspects of the life of Jesus, hardly made any
impression. On the other hand, Ernest Renan's "La vie de Jésus"
(1863) had an immense influence, greater perhaps than it deserved.
Within the author's lifetime, between the years 1863 and 1892, no
fewer than twenty-three editions were published and a complete
literature grew up around the book.
The Pope placed it on the "Index" and the Roman Church
offered up prayers to counteract its influence. The work owed
its influence to its elegant style and its excellent arrangement which
lent a unity to the inconsequent fragments of the Gospels—for, after
all, the Gospels do not provide a consecutive, chronological biography,
but only a collection of unconnected episodes. The psychological
illustrations which Renan scattered throughout the book are often
important and sometimes light up narratives and facts which at first
sight seem to have little value. Still more important—and this alone
makes the book worth reading—is the attention devoted to the geog-
raphy of Palestine and especially the very poetical picture of Gallilee
(Renan began the writing of his book in 1861, during the "Canaanit-
ish Expedition" on the summit of Mount Lebanon).
Otherwise "La vie de Jésus" is not important : it is rather a his-
torical novel than a work of scholarship ; it is significant that Renan
uses the Fourth Gospel as a historical document, preferring it to
the Synoptists. Matthew he regards as the nearest approach to the
Syro-Chaldaic Gospel promulgated by the Nazarene communities
who had escaped with James, the Lord's brother. Mark, who wrote
in Rome the first Greek Gospel, from accounts derived from Peter,
was the first of our Gospels, from which Matthew and Luke drew.
The "redactor" of Matthew also adapted the Hebrew Logia. Luke
employed Mark and a Hebrew Gospel, but was not acquainted either
with the Logia or with our present Matthew into which the Logia
have been introduced.
So Renan explains the Synoptic Problem—which he did, at least,
feel to be a problem: the other difficulties pointed out by Strauss,
Bruno Bauer, Weisse and others, Renan never felt at all. Everything
was quite simple to him ! What the Evangelists left out, this brilliant
writer filled in from his own rich imagination. The raising of
Lazarus (John xi), for example, was, according to Renan, merely a
trick practised on Jesus by his disciples who were anxious to fortify
his faith in himself which had begun to waver (precisely the expia-
nation of Thomas Woolston, the English Deist—see above, p. 75).
Talmudic literature and what is to be learnt from it about Jewish
life contemporary with Jesus, was known to Renan only at second
or third hand, yet he quoted freely from it when it suited his general
purpose. It was, none the less, a fine book and well written. The
Jesus it depicted was a liberal, a philosopher-poet, one closely akin
to the Central European rationalists of the 'sixties! Therefore
Renan's book made an immense impression in his time, far greater
than the Life of Jesus by Strauss, who had been Renan's teacher and
far surpassed him in depth and learning.
Following in Renan's footsteps came many writers of "The Life
of Jesus from the liberal point of view" (as Albert Schweitzer labels
the type). The first among these was David Friedrich Strauss him-
self, in his "Das Leben Jesu, f ü r das deutsche Volk bearbeitet"
(1864). All these "Lives" have the same thing in common: they
seek to present to modern people a modernist Jesus, because the
historic Jesus was too bizarre for the over-enlightened folk of to-day :
he was too close to the Jewish ideas of the time of the Second
Temple.
Thus Jesus, in these "Liberal Lives," became non-historical. H e
was not primarily a Messiah but an ethical teacher. All his escha-
tology, as being unsuited to the "spirit of the age," was softened
down or allowed to evaporate. Jesus became more antagonistic to
ancient Judaism, more replete with new ethical ideas—and less
historical.
Standing somewhat apart from this type is the great work, great
alike in quantity and quality, of Theodor Keim, "Die Geschichte Jesu
von Nazara" (1867-1873). Although a "liberal," the author de-
scribes with considerable skill Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Jew.
Keim was acquainted (though not always at first hand) with Jewish
history and literature of the Second Temple period and later, and
at every turn saw the Jew in Jesus. The Fourth Gospel he regarded
as late and unhistorical; but he preferred Matthew to Mark, while,
in his opinion, Papias made reference to the Gospel of Matthew
(written not in Greek but in Hebrew) and not simply to a collection
of discourses arranged by Matthew. Luke drew on an Ebionite and
Nazarene Gospel, while Mark drew from both Matthew and Luke
and from an oral tradition.
Keim was also the first, after Renan and Heinrich Julius Holtz-
mann (see below), to perceive two stages in the career of Jesus:
the period of success ("the Galilaean Spring," as he calls it) and
the period of failure. He perceived also a gradual development in
Jesus' consciousness: at first the kingdom of heaven seemed to be
something for the future, just as it did to John the Baptist; after-
wards more and more he felt himself to be the Messiah—an idea
which, though it retained something of its material, Jewish features,
was from the beginning mainly spiritual. At Caesarea Philippi Simon
Peter recognized in him such a Messiah, and to this Jesus offered no
disavowal; and as Messiah Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem.
Afterwards his messianic ideals became more spiritual as his
popular success became less, so that by the time of his trial he
looked upon his kingdom as "not of this world." Keim depicts the
stages of this development well and clearly.
Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, in his "Die synoptischen Evangelien"
(1863), explains this development in greater detail: he finds seven
stages in Jesus' Galilaean ministry, during which Jesus' success, at
first great, gradually diminished. Solely on account of this lack of
success did he decide to go to Jerusalem and there try his fortune.
After failing to attract the Jewish people, owing to his refusal to
work on their hopes of a political Messiah, he saw no other way
open before him except to go up to Jerusalem and there be put to
death.
Indeed, in Holtzmann's opinion, Jesus never at any time had in
his mind a Messianic kingdom—only an inner change in the moral
and religious consciousness. As for his own bodily resurrection
from the dead and the Second Coming as the "Son of Man," "with
the clouds of heaven," to inherit the kingdom of heaven which was to
be established on earth—of this he never even dreamed. Holtzmann
supported the priority of Mark and also the "two-source hypothesis"
—the theory of an "Urmarkus" as the source of the narrative
passages in the three Synoptists and the Logia as the source of the
discourses in Matthew and Luke. This hypothesis is now accepted
by most scholars and is the general basis of most of the literature
on the Synoptic Problem, though Holtzmann himself subsequently
rejected it in favor of a hypothesis put forward by Simons in his
"Hat der dritte Evangelist den kanonischen Matthäus benutzt?"
(1880), maintaining that there is no necessity for an "Urmarkus"
and that Luke used Matthew.
We may mention further the extensive works by Bernhard Weiss
(1882) and Wilibald Beyschlag (1885-6) which have found many
readers. The former is a dialectical compromise between the seien-
tific view of Jesus and the religious view of "Christ;" while the
latter combines the accounts of the Synoptists and the Fourth Gospel,
with by no means commendable results. Like Keim and Holtzmann,
Beyschlag also notes several stages in the life of Jesus. According
to him they are three in number. At first Jesus thought that the
kingdom of heaven was something for the future, and his preaching
aimed at hastening its coming. The people were aroused by this
teaching and Jesus inclined to the belief that the kingdom had
already come. But in the end came failure, and Jesus transferred the
coming of the kingdom of heaven to a time yet to come after his
death. Beyschlag thus emphasized the importance of the eschatolog-
ical factor in the life of Jesus.
* * * * * * *
A f t e r the "eighties" of last century we find fewer books on the

general criticism of the Gospels and on the life of Jesus, but an
increase of special studies 011 individual problems. We will deal
later on with the question of what language Jesus spoke and in
what language the primitive Gospel was written.
Weiffenbach, in his "Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu" (1873),
tried to throw light on the question of the Second Coming, or
"Parousia"—whether Jesus himself expected to come back to life
and reveal himself to the world, and promised this to his disciples
during his lifetime, or whether this expectation arose among his
disciples only afterwards—after he was crucified and dead—when his
followers could not consent to the idea that he was finally gone from
the world, especially in view of the fact that belief in the resurrection
from the dead was widespread in Judsea at the time. Weiffenbach
is inclined to believe that Jesus himself was responsible for such a
promise, otherwise we cannot find any link that will join up Jewish
with Christian eschatology.
Wilhelm Baldensperger, in his "Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu in
Lichte der messianischen Hoffnungen seiner Zeit" (1888), 14 a book
remarkably well informed about Jewish literature during and after
the period of the Second Temple, sought to prove that, in his own
consciousness, Jesus was the Messiah in the same sense as that of
the "Son of Man" in the Book of Daniel and the "Similitudes of
Enoch" (37-71), with, of course, no political projects of any kind,
but only such as were messianic in the spiritual sense; while, to all
this, was added a new ethical and religious content.
The full importance of eschatology in the life, the consciousness
and the teaching of Jesus is explained by Johannes Weiss in his
"Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes" (1892; a new and enlarged
" I n the 3rd edition, 1903, the section bearing on our subject is entitled
Die inessianisch-apocalyp tischen Hoffnungen des Judentums. Μ
edition in 1900). H e showed how seriously Jesus' teaching had been
misconstrued owing to those new ideas which had been read into it
by modernist theologians, and how, in consequence, we no longer
recognized the true Jesus, the historic Jesus, who, at the outset, was
neither teacher, nor religious innovator, nor even the founder of
the kingdom of heaven, nor really Messiah, but only one who
preached the coming of the kingdom and the Messiah. Only when
he became convinced that the kingdom was not yet at hand and that
the people did not repent, did he begin to realize that he himself
must play the rôle of Messiah and that his death must stand in
place of repentance—that his life must be an atonement for the
sins of the people.
So, after a temporary doubt, he died of his own will on behalf of
the people, in the expectation that he should return to life and
come "with the clouds of heaven" as "Son of Man" (i.e., as a spir-
itual Messiah) sitting on the right hand of "the ancient of days;"
and this, he anticipated, should come about during the lifetime of
the generation whom he had taught, following the "Day of Judg-
ment" as currently believed. All this was to happen not by force
nor by human aid, but by the grace of God, for the kingdom of
heaven is wholly spiritual: "The righteous shall sit with crowns on
their heads having joy in the splendour of the divine presence." 14&
This same question, whether or not Jesus' consciousness worked
along these eschatological lines, was treated, from opposing points
of view, by W . Wrede ("Das Messiasgeheimniss in den Evangelien,
zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständness des Marcusevangeliums,"
1901) and Albert Schweitzer ("Das Messianitäts und Leidensge-
heimniss: eine Skizze des Lebens Jesu" [Das Abendmahl im
Zusammenhang mit dem Leben Jesu und der Geschichte des U r -
Christentums] H e f t 2, 1901).
Wrede again threw doubt on the originality of Mark : he argued
that this Gospel, too, was the offspring of the religious conviction
of the early Church; that it could not persist with the belief in the
messiahship of the crucified Jesus. H e urged also that Mark, like
the other Gospels, is not a historical document wherein the recorded
events follow in chronological and logical order, but a collection of
episodes with a late messianic colouring.
Actually Jesus was not a Messiah but a "Rab," a teacher from
Galilee and a combination of preacher and prophet. He instructed
the people who followed him, and especially his disciples, and per-
formed miracles (mainly driving out evil spirits) after the custom
of most of the great men of the time ; Josephus records miracles in
connection with every man of note, as does the Talmud in con-
nection with Onias the "circle-maker" and others. In his teaching,
Jesus endeavoured to stress the inner significance of the laws of
Scripture, of which the ceremonial laws were but a cloak.
i4a
Β er. ι ‫ך‬a.
Hence he stood in opposition to the majority of the Pharisees
and their followers who made the external act the main object and
the underlying intention only a secondary matter; and he did not
reject even the publicans and sinners if only he found in them whole-
hearted faith and penitence. This aroused the indignation of the
Pharisees and Jewish leaders, and when he came to Jerusalem to
promulgate this same kind of teaching they arrested him and con-
demned him to death.
The sentence was carried out by the Romans, who opposed every
Jew who acquired influence over the masses, lest he use his power to
undermine their authority. Not till after Jesus' crucifixion and after
his disciples had perceived a hidden secret in his life and conduct,
did his followers account for this secret by crediting him with
messianic claims.
Much the same line of thought is followed by Wilhelm Brandt
in his "Die evangelische Geschichte und der Ursprung des Chris-
tentums" (1893), eight years earlier than Wrede's work; the only
difference is that Brandt supposed that the messianic consciousness
was developed out of the simple "Rab-consciousness" after Jesus, the
"Rab" and reformer, came to Jerusalem.
* * * * * * *
The first two decades of the twentieth century mark a noticeable

change, not so much in the study of the Gospels as in the study of
the character and teachings of Jesus and, especially, in the study of
his Jewish environment. We no more encounter the portraiture of
Jesus, the "meek and gentle," the "liberal" or the "romantic;" nor
a picture of Jesus unconnected with Judaism or Palestine.
The first, and also the most extreme, effort to change our con-
ception of the spiritual character of Jesus is from Albert Schweitzer,
in his "Das Messianitäts- und Leidensgeheimniss" (1901), and "Von
Reimarus zu Wrede" (1906), pp. 348-395. Like Johannes Weiss,
he rebels against the modernist interpretations of Jesus and stresses
the importance of eschatology for the better understanding of Jesus'
messianic consciousness : for Schweitzer, eschatology explains every-
thing that Jesus ever said or did, from first to last. To prove his
point Schweitzer draws not only from Mark, but, when necessary,
from Matthew also, since even Mark, as Wrede showed, was influ-
enced by Christian Church ideas which arose after the time of Jesus.
According to Schweitzer, Jesus is not a "Weltbejaher" but a
"Weltverneiner :" he dissociates himself completely from the life
and civilization of this world : his teaching aimed solely to prepare
his people to meet the future, the kingdom of heaven, which, as
interpreted by Jesus, meant the life to come. He therefore sends out
his disciples to summon the nation to repentance; but when their
preaching met with negligible success, and the "pangs of the Mes-
siah" (the trials and sufferings which must befall the world before
the coming of the Messiah—άρχή ώδίνων) delayed their coming, and
when the "Day of Judgment," which was to herald the final redemp-
tion, was brought no nearer by national penitence, then Jesus realized
that it must rest on him, through his own sufferings and death, the
death of the Messiah himself, to hasten the "pangs of the Messiah"
and the day of judgment. From the very beginning of his career,
i.e., his baptism by John, Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah in
the eschatological sense, "Son of Man" in the spiritual sense, who
was destined to come in the future.
At Caesarea Philippi he drew forth from Simon Peter an
acknowledgment of his messiahship and this event counts as the
central point of Jesus' life. The Galilaean incidents, up to the resolve
to go to Jerusalem, all lead up to it, and from it resulted the Jerusa-
lem resolution itself which aimed, through the death of the Messiah,
at bringing about the period of "the pangs of the Messiah," and so
hastening the coming of the Kingdom and the resurrection of the
Son of Man and his appearance at the right hand of God "with
the clouds of heaven," in all his pomp and glory; and all this was
to be during his disciples' lifetime.
It followed from this that the peculiar characteristic of Jesus'
moral teaching was a negative attitude to all that concerned this
present earthly life, the family, the state and property ; his teaching
was only an "Interimsethik," a moral code applicable only to the
short intervening period, between this "present world" and the
world to come—the "Days of the Messiah," when family, state and
property cease to have any value. Thus Jesus was and remained,
according to Schweitzer, not a "modernist" or "liberal," but a his-
torical though mystical personality, bound up almost entirely with the
beliefs of his own people and time and country.
Very different are the views of Wilhelm Bousset. In his two
books, "Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judentum" (1892),
and "Die Religion des Judentums in neutestamentlichen Zeitalter"
(1903), he tries to show the presence of two streams of Jewish
thought in Jesus' time: the one material, political, national and par-
ticularistic, unable to rise to the height of true universalism and
spirituality ; and the other more spiritual, more universal and
profound.
Jesus' final purpose was not to foster nationalism and sepa-
ratism, but the idea that men are "sons of God." This brought him
joy in life: he felt himself living in the midst of a long-drawn
festival; the nearness of the kingdom of heaven filled him with joy;
he saw himself as a bridegroom, and so he did not fast as did the
disciples of John and the Pharisees, but shared in festivities to
such a degree that the Pharisees regarded him as "a glutton and a
wine-bibber" (φάγος xal οίνοτυότης).
Jesus felt in himself that he was the Messiah and he believed
that the kingdom of heaven had already begun; therefore he could
not act the part of the Nazarite, the ascetic and the recluse ; all that
the Gospels say of his terrible visions of his end and the end of the
world are the product of the thought of a later age. He came to
root out the last remnants of Jewish nationalism and exclusive-
ness; therefore—without putting this forward as a new teaching—
he abolished the ceremonial laws which had stereotyped this nation-
alism and exclusiveness.
In this sense Jesus' messianic ideas approximated to the spiritual
aspect of the Messianic hope as it was held by most of the ancient
prophets, by "the humble and meek" of the Psalms, the Psalms of
Solomon, the Book of Enoch, and the Apocalypses of Baruch and
Fourth Esdras. Thus, according to Bousset, Jesus perfected Judaism
by raising himself above it, i.e., above the views of most Jews, of the
nation's leaders and writers and spiritual guides. Furthermore, Jesus
was not a "Weltverneiner" but a "Weltbejaher," he assumed not a
negative, but a positive attitude to the world—that world which was
now, with him and through him, entering into a new epoch, the
kingdom of heaven. "The Gospel develops hidden tendencies of the
Old Testament, but protests against prevailing ideas in Judaism."
Therefore Jesus was in strong antagonism with the Pharisaic
Judaism of the time. Such is Bousset's conclusion in his first
book. But in his second (see p. 52), he admits that "he was wrong
in stressing so strongly the antithesis between Jewish piety and
the teaching of the Gospels ;" and in his excellent conspectus "Jesus"
(Religionsgesch: Volksbücher, herausg. v. F. M. Schiele, Tübingen,
1907), he recognized the extremist character of Jesus' ethical teach-
ing as well as, historically, the essentially Jewish basis of his career,
Julius Wellhausen, in his "Israelitische und Jüdische Geschichte"
(1894), devoted a final chapter to the Gospels, and he, too, wavers
between a Jesus who maintains and a Jesus who destroys Judaism.
This chapter underwent modification from one edition to another.
In his fourth edition (Berlin, 1901, pp. 389-390, n. 1) he still insists
that Jesus introduced nothing new, and that "Micah vi. 6-8 and
Psalm lxxiii. 23-28 give us the complete Gospel." In his fifth edition
those words were deleted . . . but, even so, he still allowed that the
Pharisaic teaching comprised all that of Jesus : "the Pharisaic teach-
ing contains all, and very much more (Wellhausen's own italics) :
χλέον ^μισυ χαντός" (the half is more than the whole).
"The originality of Jesus was shown in his perception of what
was true and enduring in the confused mass (of Pharisaic Judaism),
and it was on this that he placed the utmost emphasis" (5th edition,
p. 390 n. 1). In the 7th and last edition (1914) these words also
are deleted, and in a note to "Das Evangelium," the last chapter of
the book (p. 358), he says: "I have left this chapter as it stands,
though I agree only with part of what is there said." . . .
And in this chapter we find that Jesus "did not desire thorough-
going changes, neither did he reverse anything nor lay any new
foundation" (Kein Woller, kein Umstürzer und Gründer, p. 366) ;
"he had no thought whatever of breaking down the Jewish Church
and setting up the Christian Church in its stead" (p. 366) ; "his
ministry was primarily concerned with instruction" (p. 360) ; and
"like the Pharisees he based his teaching on the Old Testament and
did not deny Judaism" (p. 360) ; "his discourse was not the stormy
discourse of the Prophets, but such as would be listened to peace-
fully as from a Jewish sage. H e expressed only what any honest soul
was bound to feel. What he said was not startling, but it was plain and
explicit ; and according to his innermost conviction it was the same as
was laid down in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets" (p. 367).
But in spite of this, Jesus was the antithesis of Judaism: he
ranged above the teaching of ceremonial laws in his ethical teaching,
and from this high ethical standpoint the material and political ideals
of the Jews lose their importance : mankind as a whole and not the
nation is the central point in religious thought and in "the world
to come." Jesus' teaching becomes thus the contrary not alone of
Pharisaic Judaism but also of Scriptural Judaism : it is therefore the
negation of Judaism.
From 1903 to 1905 Wellhausen engaged in the criticism of the
Synoptic Gospels, devoting a separate book to each. The results
of his labours (labours which did not meet with such entire approval
of fellow scholars as did his work on the Old Testament which
brought him most of his fame) he summed up in "Einleitung in die
drei ersten Evangelien" (1905). It is here that we find the remark-
able but shrewd conclusion: "Jesus was not a Christian: he was a
Jew. H e did not proclaim a new faith, but taught men to do the
will of God. According to Jesus, as to the Jews generally, this
will of God is to be found in the Law and the other canonical Scrip-
tures" (p. 113).
But he taught a new way by which to fulfil this divine will and
opposed the Pharisees who, in his opinion, choked the faith by their
accretions and their exaggerated respect for the ceremonial laws.
He thus unwittingly broke down the Jewish faith although he never
intentionally rebelled against it. I n the same way he broke down
Jewish nationality since he saw no importance in the Temple and
the sacrificial system (which, according to Wellhausen, constitutes
"Jewish nationality"!), in spite of the fact that he wished to remain
and did remain within Judaism (pp. 113-115).
Until Peter's avowal at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus, like any other
great Pharisee, was simply a teacher (p. 94) ; not till after this
avowal did he come to regard himself as the Messiah, and even
then did not so style himself. As Messiah he wished to reform
Judaism through the medium of personal piety and to restore it to the
primitive character which it wears in the Scriptures; but he never
dreamed of reviving the kingdom of the House of David, nor did
he anticipate his untimely death or his resurrection as the "Son
of Man."
In his literary criticism of the Gospels Wellhausen shows minutely
that all the Synoptists had an oral Aramaic source and perhaps also
a written one (p. 35). The first of the Synoptists was Mark.
Matthew and Luke drew from the present Mark and not from an
earlier source ; but they also drew from a second, slightly later, source
(called "Q") containing many sayings of Jesus (Logia) but not
confined to his discourses. Matthew is later than Mark but earlier
than Luke, which already tends in the direction of the Fourth Gospel
(p. 65). Mark and Matthew were written in Palestine, but not
Luke. Mark may have been composed before the Destruction of
the Second Temple, and the sections apparently referring to the
Destruction are a later addition; both Matthew and Luke were
written after the Destruction and embody beliefs and tendencies
characteristic of the early Christian Church. The Gospels do not
provide suitable or adequate material for systematic biography, since
they disregard chronological order and contain later ideas.
In Wellhausen's description of Jesus' relation to Judaism there
is much indecision and ambiguity. But his emphatic words "Jesus
was not a Christian : he was a Jew," do not lose their force in spite
of what he adds with the object of weakening their impression.
Never before did such a statement escape the pen of a Christian
scholar, and such a scholar, and such an enemy of Jews and Judaism,
as was Wellhausen!
Adolf Harnack's most famous book, "Das Wesen des Christen-
turns," was published in 1900, shortly before Wellhausen's last work.
There, the historical Jew, Jesus, disappears totally : virtually every
word he taught is made to be of permanent and universal humani-
tarian interest. The messianic features are abolished entirely and
virtually no importance is attached to Judaism in its capacity of
Jesus' environment : Jesus arose independently and so towered above
contemporary Judaism as to be untouched by it. It was not without
cause that Harnack devoted his last book to that extremist of early
Christian opponents of Judaism, Marcion ("Marcion," 1921).
Harnack's Jesus is altogether a modernist and philosopher, the Jesus
of the liberal and anti-Jewish Germany of the early twentieth
century.
Extremes meet ! The philosopher Edward von Hartmann, in his
"Das Christentum des Neuen Testaments" (1905), opposed this
modernist interpretation of Jesus and advocated the portrayal
of him in his primitive aspect. This book is a new and revised
edition of his "Briefe über die christliche Religion" (1871), which
he published under the pseudonym of Müller.
As opposed to Harnack and his school, Jesus is to von Hartmann
a true Jew, a Semite with all the Semite's defects. Jesus is a "quiet
zealot" who hates the world and its life and civilization, and despises
labour and property and family life; his teaching is fundamentally
plebeian ("grundplebejischer Natur") since he hated those of high
degree, the wealthy, those who had acquired possessions by their own
efforts, and also the intellectually great. And all this is attributed to
Jesus because he was a Jew and a Semite ! Hartmann acknowledged
that "the family instinct and the devotion to the family are one of
the best features of the ordinary Jewish character"—and this also
was entirely lacking in Jesus. But the root defect in Jesus was his
Semitism.
The most liberal of Aryans can never come to terms with Jesus
the Semite, Jesus the Jew, nor make any compromise with Chris-
tianity's rejection of the things of daily life, which (so such critics
erroneously suppose) is a Jewish characteristic. 15
Edward von Hartmann was a pupil of Schopenhauer, whose
system he supported and continued: Friedrich Nietzsche was also a
pupil of Schopenhauer but became his greatest opponent. But they
are at one in their idea of Jesus. Nietzsche's "Antichrist" emphasizes
Jesus' remoteness from daily life and the facts of existence: "culture
is unknown to Jesus even by hearsay ; he feels no need for opposing
it—he does not dispute it ;" that is to say, he does not even adopt a
negative attitude towards it since for him it does not exist at all.
"So, too, with what concerns the state, civil order and the society,
labour and war; he never had any grounds for denying the world,
for he never even realized the existence of the 'world' in its
ecclesiastical connotation." For him, nothing existed except heaven
and the future life. "He died as he had lived and as he had taught
—not so as 'to redeem mankind,' but so as to show how one should
live," for to him, true life was—death.
So he went to meet it willingly; he wished for it and sought
for it in Jerusalem. Therefore he did not defend himself at his
trial nor appeal for the justice which his judges deprived him.
Hence he loved them that hated him and murdered him: for they
benefited him by killing him as they did by hating him. In this
sense Jesus was for Nietzsche "the most interesting decadent." For,
to Nietzsche, "decadence" is the total denial of life, that life which
was fashioned to be near to nature and to develop with it and follow
it in all respects so as, in the future, to create the type of the "laugh-
ing lion," the "blonde beast" in the likeness of the "superman."
According to Nietzsche, the Gospels also represent "decadence"
as opposed to the Hebrew Scriptures, of which Nietzsche speaks in
terms of veneration such as have been uttered by no other author:
"Glory and honour to the Old Testament ! There we find great men,
an environment of heroes and, what is rarest on earth, the incom-
parable simplicity of the stout heart; still more, we find a nation.
But, on the other hand, in the New Testament, we find nothing but
petty party dealings, only 'rococo' of the soul, fondlings, flourishes,
only an atmosphere of secret meetings, an occasional unforgettable
" O n the "German Jesus" see the excellent comments of Schweitzer, in
his Von Reimarus cu IVrede, pp. 305-310, 400. Λ
flavour of bucolic sweetness peculiar to the age (as also to the Roman
state), which is not so much Jewish as Hellenistic. The juxtaposi-
tion of meekness and pride; sentimental babblings which almost
deafen the ears ; petty longings in place of passion ; a wearying game
of grimaces. Clearly we here have an utter absence of sound edu-
cation. How can worlds be stirred by petty blemishes, as was
done by these small mannikins! A mere creature would pay no
attention, let alone God ! And, in the end, they even expect a 'crown
of eternal life'—all these little villagers! And why? It would be
difficult to be more lacking in humility. . . . The New Testament
raises the more manly persons' gorge : the foolishnesses, the worries
and troubles of street-loungers—as though the essence of all essences
(God) were bound to care for such things; it never wearies nor
tires of dragging God himself into the pettiest care into which these
people are plunged." 18
Whereas, on the other hand, "in the Jewish Old Testament, the
book of divine righteousness, there are men, affairs and discourses
on so magnificent a scale as to surpass the Greek and Hindu litera-
tures. W e stand in awe and reverence before these titanic relics of
what man once was, and we are distressed when we think of Asia,
and of its small excrescence Europe which is so confident that
it represents human progress as compared with Asia.
"Of a surety, he who is himself only a meagre, domesticated ani-
mal with only the needs of a domesticated animal (like our present-
day intellectuals and the adherents of 'enlightened' Christianity),
will not be amazed or even distressed at those ruins (the criterion is
their appreciation of what constitutes 'greatness' or 'littleness' in
the Old Testament) ; and such a man may prefer the New Testament,
that book of 'lovingkindness' (which contains much of the real, vapid,
musty reek of brother-devotees and little minds). To take this
New Testament, so altogether 'rococo' in taste, and bind it together
artificially with the Old Testament, and make them into a single, com-
plete Bible, is perhaps the greatest piece of effrontery and the worst
kind of 'sin against the Holy Spirit' with which literary Europe
has ever burdened its conscience." 17
The absolute antithesis to Nietzsche is Leo Tolstoy. But even so,
Tolstoy's Jesus, "Jesus the spiritual anarchist," is not far removed
from the Jesus of Nietzsche. The Jesus of Tolstoy, like the Jesus
of Nietzsche, adopts a completely negative attitude to the state and
society, the only difference being that he does so not because he is
unaware of them, but because there is no need for them in "the
kingdom of heaven that is within us."
The Tolstoyan Jesus does not resist evil even in self-defence nor
M
F r . Nietzsche, Zur Genealogie der Moral, Werke, Leipzig, 1902, V I I
462-3. <
17
See Jenseits von Gut und Böse, I I I Hauptstück, 52. Werke, I Abteilung.
Leipzig, 1902, VII, 77· M
demand the justice that is denied him nor try to raise the level of
culture, and he ordains that a man "resist not evil by violence ;" but
all this, which Nietzsche holds up to ridicule, Tolstoy holds up for
admiration. What cannot be done by culture, since it merely in-
creases the world's egotism, can be accomplished by this love of one's
fellow m a n : other things can only harm and not help.
The Tolstoyan Jesus, any more than the Nietzschean Jesus, is not
the result of research, but is "made in the image of his creator."
And just like Nietzsche, Tolstoy bases his ideas of Jesus on the
Fourth Gospel and not on the Synoptists, since the former is more
abstract and spiritual, and less profuse in miracles and descriptions
of human frailties in Jesus. For to Tolstoy's mind the miracles in
this and the other Gospels are only parables and symbols. Accord-
ing to Tolstoy, Jesus' conception of God is pantheism mingled with
Schopenhauer's philosophy of the will, for Tolstoy, like Nietzsche,
was a disciple of Schopenhauer.
Naturally, with Tolstoy, scarcely anything of the historical Jesus
was left; Tolstoy tears him forcibly from his Jewish surroundings
since these same surroundings see in the kingdom of heaven not the
antithesis of national and political welfare, but its highest point.
Also in his attitude to Judaism Tolstoy remained the disciple of
Schopenhauer who was unable to endure "Jewish optimism" and
placed Jesus in the same rank as Buddha. 18
Friedrich Naumann (once a Protestant pastor and later the
founder of the "Socialist-Nationalist" party), in his "Briefe über
die Religion" (1903), accuses Jesus of being a hater of culture.
A journey which he made in Palestine aroused in him the thought:
What did Jesus do towards raising the level of civilization and im-
proving the economic condition of this poor country? Did he give
any care towards improving its roads, building bridges, bettering the
economic and educational condition of the inhabitants of Galilee
and Judaea? H e loved the poor, but did he really do anything to
help them? And did he think, by the performing of miracles, to
hold out to them any tangible help?
In this book Naumann departs somewhat from what he had said
of Jesus in his earlier "Jesus als Volksmann" (1894), where he
speaks of Jesus as the saviour of the poor. This book is part of a
series dealing with "Jesus the Socialist" (Lublinski, Lozinski,
Kautsky and others) ; nothing much need be said of them here since
they are not written on a scientific basis, and because their authors,
amateurs in the field of Gospel study and Jewish history, found in
Jesus nothing but their own ideals.19
M
O n Jesus and Buddha see R. Seydel, Das Evangelium von Jesu in
seinen Verhältnissen zur Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre (1882) ; H. Weinel,
Jesus im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, Neue Bearbeitung, Tübingen, 1907, pp.
240-260; Ε. Grimm, Die Ethik Jesu, 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1917, pp. 302-312. M
18
On these see the chapter "Jesus im Lichte der sozialen Frage," in H.
Weinel, op. cit. pp. 159-212. .4
Of the same character is what Houston Stuart Chamberlain says
of Jesus in his "Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts"
(1899). His Jesus is the complete German and modernist. Cham-
berlain's attitude to Judaism has nothing in it of the scientific, but is
crudely antisemitic. His knowledge of the Jewish environment and
the spirit of the age is derived at second and third hand.
The "startling" innovation in his book is this—that the father of
Jesus was an Aryan and not a Semite (this is the Jewish legend about
Pandera), an innovation, the doubtful honour of the discovery of
which Chamberlain must share with Ernst Häckel ("Die Welt-
räthsel") and Ernst B ose ("La vie ésotérique de Jésus Christ et les
origines orientales du Christianisme," 1902) and Dr. Aaron Kaminka
(who anticipated all of them) and Professor Paul Haupt ("The
Aryan Ancestry of Jesus," 1909).
The object of all these authors was not the same, but (with the
exception of the Jewish writer Kaminka 20 ) their common feature is
to "justify" the Aryan nations' acceptance of Christianity. For how,
indeed, was it possible that a faith which came to embrace the half
of mankind, could issue from that "tiny, feeble nation," which is
made great only when these authors come to describe the great loss,
which accrued to the Aryan nations because of it?
Otto Pfleiderer ("Urchristentum," 1887; "Die Entstehung des
Christentums," 1905) argued that all the early Christian beliefs about
Jesus' birth and resurrection originated From eastern pagan cults
which spread widely throughout the Roman Empire. Basing his
ideas on these books, Albert Kalthoff ("Das Christusproblem, Grund-
Linien einer Sozialtheologie," 1902; "Die Entstehung des Christen-
iums," 1903) went to the length of utterly denying the existence of
Jesus. According to him, Christianity originated not in Jerusalem
but in Rome, and not from the teaching of any Jesus of Nazareth,
but from the economic and social conditions prevalent in the first
century. Slavery and the bad economic conditions in Rome aroused
in the masses the desire for world reform, for a communistic move-
ment, and combined with this were the messianic and apocalyptic
hopes of the Jewish proletariat, hopes in the greatest measure worldly
and material, as we may see from the Apocalypse of Baruch, Fourth
Esdras, the Book of Enoch and the early Sibylline Oracles, as well
as from the Talmud and Midrash.
Communistic corporations were thus formed uniting the Roman
socialistic movement with the messianic and religio-philosophic beliefs
of Judaism. Out of this arose Christianity, whose mystical beliefs
(the resurrection from the dead, the Sacrament of the Saviour's
»Body and Blood, and the like) were taken from the religious beliefs
of the orientals who were accepted as members of these corporations
(θίασο().
The origin of Christianity is thus explained according to the
* A . Kaminka, Studien zur Geschichte Galiläas, Berlin, 1889. M
principles of "materialistic history." Jesus became the "saint" and

"hero" of the communistic societies, just as all the oriental mystical
societies had their semi-divine heroes. The recorded doings gf Jesus,
especially his sufferings and death, were derived from the events
which befell the Church, which, in the reigns of Nero and Trajan,
endured terrible persecutions ; and these events were, by the writers
of the Gospels, attributed to a single individuality which, even if
it had existed (and there may have lived in Judaea some political
Messiah, Jesus by name, who rebelled against Roman rule), had
scarcely any connexion with Christianity. 21
Kalthoff thus repeats Bruno Bauer's attempt. 22 But whereas
the latter accounted for the existence of Christianity and the story
of Jesus by a combination of Grasco-Roman philosophy and Jewish
religion (in its Alexandrine form) with its messianic ideas (as was
appropriate to Bauer's age that of Hegelian philosophy), Kalthoff
explained it from a combination of Roman economic conditions and
Jewish and pagan religious and messianic hopes (as was appropriate
to his time, that of the preaching of socialism with its materialistic
history.)
Another denial of the existence of Jesus is forthcoming from an
American writer, B. Smith, in "The Pre-Christian Jesus" (1906). H e
thinks that there never was such a town as Nazareth and that Jesus
was an object of worship to a sect of Nazarites who existed at the
time when Christianity came into being, and whom the Christian
father Epiphanius mentions at great length. Hence the name "Naza-
renos, Nazaraeos;" for Matthew (ii. 3) says: "And he (Joseph
together with Jesus) came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, to
fulfil what was spoken by the Prophet, For he shall be called a
Nazarite (Ναζωραίος)." We thus see how the Gospels already con-
fuse "Nazareth" and "Nazarite." 23
Yet another disbeliever in Jesus' existence is Arthur Drews, "Die
Christusmythe" (1909), whose views, as we shall see later, were
refuted by a Jewish scholar and another of Jewish origin. 24
More positive and conservative in its attitude to Jesus and the
events of his life is R. W. Husband's "The Prosecution of Jesus"
(1916), in which the author tries to show that the trial of Jesus
took place on the eve of a Sabbath, the fourteenth of Nisan, 33 C.E.,
because the eve of Passover fell on a Sabbath during the procurator-
‫מ‬
A detailed account and defence—inadequate in the present writer's
opinion—of Kalthoff's teaching (which has as an ultimate aim to deprive
Palestinian Judaism of its chief share in the creation of the new world
faith and so lessen the value of Judaism) is given in B. Kellermann's Krit-
ische Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Christentums, Berlin, 1906. See
the present writer's review of this book in Sulle origine del Cristianesimo
(Rivista
22
Israelitica, 1906, I I I 218-220). Λ
‫מ‬
See above, p. 86. ·^
See below, p. 230. 4
*See later, pp. 115 and 123. 4
ship of Pontius Pilate only in this year 33 ; and because Jesus began
his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, i.e. the year 29-30;
therefore his ministry lasted, as in the Johannine tradition, three
years (pp. 34-69).
More important is what Husband proves from the numerous
recently discovered papyri—that in Egypt the local authorities had
the right of arresting those suspected of smaller or greater crimes
and to conduct a preliminary investigation as to the gravity of the
crime; only if it were discovered to be a capital offence was the
prisoner handed over to the Roman authorities, who then tried
the culprit afresh and either condemned him to death or released him.
And this, the author thinks, was the case also with Jesus' trial :
the Sanhédrin, the local authority in Judaea, arrested Jesus through
the medium of the Temple police and carried out only a preliminary
enquiry; therefore this enquiry does not conform with the normal
judicial procedure required of every court of law established f o r
the conduct of actual trials (pp. 70-181). From this point of view
the writer shows that the Sanhedrin's judicial enquiry was legal and
constituted no injustice (pp. 181-208) ; furthermore, that the crime
alleged against Jesus was completely proved and that he was con-
demned to death according to the lex Juliana for treason, promul-
gated in the time of Augustus (pp. 281-2, 209-233).
This is the exact opposite of the conclusion arrived at by
G. Rosadi, "Il Processo di Jesù" (1904), who sees in Jesus' trial a
"judicial murder" and a travesty of all the claims of justice. 25
Gustav Dalman, who had published at the end of the nineteenth
century a work which is very important for the understanding of the
sayings of Jesus ("Die Worte Jesu," 1898), issued in 1909 his "Orte
und Wege Jesu," invaluable for the study of the Palestinian environ-
ment of Jesus ; the author pays attention to the Hebrew sources in the
Talmud and Midrash but he does not exhaust them.
Finally there has recently appeared ("Ursprung und Anfänge
des Christentums" I-II, Stuttgart and Berlin, 1921) two volumes
by the great student of ancient history and the period of the Second
Temple, Eduard Meyer (the third volume does not bear on our sub-
ject). The first volume deals with the Gospels and the second with
"the development of Judaism, and Jesus of Nazareth."
In the main, Meyer follows Wellhausen, though he is more con-
servative and accepts the genuineness of many details denied by
Wellhausen. And in this he is mostly right. But, on the other hand,
it is difficult to suppose that he is right in his conclusion about the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Book of Jubilees—
that the earlier portions of them were composed in the last decades
of the third pre-Christian century, and their later parts in the time
of Jason, 179-171 B.C. (See vol. II, pp. 11-12, 44-45, 167-170, on the
35
Against him, see H. P. Chajes, Π Processo di Gesù di Rosadi: Note
Marginali: Rivista Israelitica, 1904, I 41-57, 105-106. Λ
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs; I I 4 5 1 7 0 - 1 7 2,47‫־‬,on the
"Book of Jubilees").
Also it is difficult to agree with him about the Book of Damascus,
which is, he thinks, like the Book of Enoch and the later parts of the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs and the Book of Jubilees, to be
dated in the time of Jason, before the persecuting edicts of Antiochus
Epiphanes ( I I 47-49, 172-174; see also the same author's "Die
Gemeinde des Neues Bundes im Lande Damaskus," 1919).
In everything dealing with the history of the Maccabaean period,
he relies on I I Maccabees, thus following the footsteps of Niese,
Laqueur, Wilcken and others, although he does not go to such
extremes as Niese and still pays attention to I Maccabees. But in his
outlook on the Maccabœan dynasty and the Jews generally in Pales-
tine during the period of the Second Temple, he is influenced by
the opinions of Wellhausen and Wilcken, who, in their turn, had
been influenced by Mommsen and Renan. When speaking of Joseph
ben Tobias and his son Hyrcanus he finds it hard to refrain from a
crude attack on modern Judaism, quite out of place in a schol-
arly work; and this same attack occurs twice in his book ( I I 32
and 129).
Needless to say, the Maccabees and their supporters were gloomy
bigots, while truth and enlightenment were the possession of the
Hellenists, whom he calls "Reform Judaism," the Judaism which
wished to bring the Jewish people out into the open and to endow
it with enlightenment and love of its fellow races. The author is
regardless of the fact which transpires from his own remarks that
these "reformers" had no root within the nation, and that if they
had succeeded it would have meant the end of Judaism (and so no
Christianity could have arisen in Palestine).
But despite this, there is in these ideas an objective scientific
value apart from subjective attitudes to Judaism in general. Still,
he cannot keep himself from passing caustic remarks even about
this so-called "Reform Judaism." "At all times enlightened and
reformed Judaism has revealed an instinctive feeling to be drawn
after the dominant stream and after what it can turn to profitable
business" ( I I 146). If such be the case, then everything good that
the author has said of "Reform Judaism" crumbles away; but in the
prejudice which spoils his judgment, the author is oblivious of
all this. . . .
H e quotes with great glee the gibes of the early antisemites—
Poseidonius, Tacitus, Cicero and the rest; and for him as to most
of his ilk, the Maccabaean kingdom was a "robber-state" (Raubstaat),
and by destroying it Rome did a kindness to humanity; once the
Jews were made independent and granted a certain control, they
could do nothing but damage and destroy. And the cause of this
was, "thespirit of the book of Deuteronomy!" ( I I 279-828)—neither
more nor less. What wonder, then, if to him Philo of Alexandria is
"not a great spirit," and "his aims, though proper, are narrow"
( I I 366).
But in spite of all this, Eduard Meyer has much to say that is
new about what the Greek and Roman sources teach and emphasize
concerning the period of the Second Temple, and also a certain
amount about Persian influence on the Jews and Jewish literature.
But he has made scant use of the Hebrew sources, even of those
written in or translated into German. His single source for Jewish
learning is the antiquated work of Weber, "Jüdische Theologie" (in
its equally antiquated second edition).
It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise if he blunders over the
fact, well enough known, that the Jews conclude with the Hallel
(Psalms 113-118) only after one domestic meal in the year, i.e., the
"Seder," the first meal of the night on which Passover begins, and
supposes that the "Last Supper" of Jesus with his disciples was just
an ordinary meal which "as is well known" is concluded by the
singing of the Hallel ( I 177). 26
The last chapter of his second volume is devoted to Jesus of
Nazareth ( I I 420-453). It constitutes a summary of all his Gospel
criticism. Normally he relies on Mark except when it deals with
eschatology and the "suffering Messiah;" and in a lesser degree he
relies on the source "Q," the discourses in Matthew and Luke. H e
is driven to the conclusion that "the religious complexion of Jesus'
world is exactly that of the Pharisees" ( I I 425). Jesus was not,
like the Prophets, interested in the political and social events of
the day, but only in the kingdom of heaven ; "he did not, like many
others, found a new school 01‫ ־‬sect, still less a new religion—this
came about only after his death with the development of Christianity"
< Π 445). . . .
This is identical with Wellhausen's view, and, as with Wellhausen
so with Ed. Meyer, there here begins a "but" which contradicts what
goes before. The Pharisees possessed "a law taught of men," they
were immersed in the ceremonial laws and neglected those laws which
affected a man's relations to his fellowmen. This tendency was
opposed by Jesus, for whom the main issue was personal piety and
love of humankind; and Jesus' opposition went the length (though
it was not done deliberately) even of assuming a free attitude with
regard to the precepts contained in the "Law of Moses;" and thus
"Judaism, in its very essence, was overcome" ( I I 432).
In Judaism God is regarded as "Father" even in the sense of
begetter and creator of the Jewish nation; and so the Jews use
"Father" and "King" in the same breath ("Abinu Malkenu")
Jesus deprived this of its "nationalist motif" ( I I 437). He made
use of the title "Son of Man" (as against Lietzmann and Wellhausen,
who deny altogether its use by Jesus) purely because of its ambiguity
and because in itself it did not, before Peter's avowal at Caesarea
29
See later, p. 329 n. 32. 4
Philippi, disclose his messianic claims ( I I 345). His baptism by
John the Baptist is of doubtful authenticity since it is bound up with
Satan's temptation in the wilderness, which is only a legend or a
vision ( I 83-84; I I 425).
Jesus' "sending forth of the Apostles" is derived from the doings
of the early members of the Christian Church twenty years after
the crucifixion: Jesus himself never sent out any apostles ( I 278-
280). There was nothing fraudulent in Jesus' miracles, but they
were in all respects like those performed by contemporary Jewish
sorcerers and the Mormons of the present time ( I I 359).
When Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem he supposed that he
should suffer there as did the ancient prophets and John the Baptist,
but he knew nothing of the Christian teachings of a Suffering
Messiah who was to rise from the dead ( I I 449-450). He hoped
to attract the people and receive from them a recognition of his
messianic claims by some striking demonstration ; but having been
bred in the primitive conditions of Galilee, Jesus did not know the
condition of a great town like Jerusalem nor the power of those in
authority, and the result was inevitable ( I I 451).
The Synoptic Gospels (as distinct from the Fourth Gospel) were
wrong in describing the popular leaders in Jerusalem as mere
"hypocrites" who betrayed Jesus to Pilate because they wanted to
be rid of a dangerous opponent, and not because of any anxiety about
the welfare of the country and nation: there really was a political
danger involved in Jesus' appearance : such popular movements, in
times of stress and excitement, automatically become popular rebel-
lions ; and this might have been the case also with the popular move-
ment aroused by Jesus, even against his will ( I I 451, I 164-5).
Paul had been grounded in Pharisaic ideas and made use of all
the Rabbis' casuistical devices ( I I 349, 365 and elsewhere). Because
Christianity made its appeal to the unlettered, the "Am-haaretz," and
rejoiced over the "little ones" and "babes" (νήτηοί), the result was
mental darkness in the world for many centuries; the Christians
began, at an early date, to prefer emotionalism and blind faith to
intellect and knowledge; and thus there followed in the footsteps of
Christianity the prolonged reign of ignorance of the Middle Ages
( I 289-291).
Such is the way that the last great work to appear in recent
times looks upon the Gospels, Jesus and Christianity.
And when we look afresh into all that has been said of these three
during the first twenty years of this century, we come to the con-
elusion that nearly all the many Christian scholars, and even the
best of them, who have studied the subject deeply, have tried their
hardest to find in the historic Jesus something which is not Judaism ;
but in his actual history they have found nothing of this whatever,
since this history is reduced almost to zero. It is therefore no
wonder that at the beginning of this century there has been a revival
of the eighteenth and nineteenth century view that Jesus never
existed.
As to his teaching, the most they have found is the opposition
of a Pharisee to other Pharisees—Pharisees who failed to fulfil the
duties which they had assumed. The best of the Christian scholars
have so generalized this opposition as to make the opposition extend
to the whole of Judaism; and thus there remains to them of Chris-
tianity nothing but—hatred of Judaism. . . .
* * * * * * *
It still remains to give a brief account of complete works written

in recent times by Jewish scholars concerning Jesus. 27 "Complete
works" is emphasized, since there is scarcely a single Jewish scholar,
especially among those who have treated of the period of the Second
Temple, who, in his writings on Judaism, has not dealt with the
nature and importance of Jesus and his teaching.
The books of A. BücMer ("Die Priester und der Cultus im letzten
Jahrzehnt des Jerusalemischen Tempels," Wien, 1895 ; "Der gali-
läische Am-Haarez des zweiten Jahrhunderts," Wien, 1906; "The
Political and the Social Leaders of the Jewish Community of
Sepphoris in the Second and Third Centuries" [London 1909] ; "The
Economic Conditions of Judaea after the Destruction of the Second
Temple," London, 1912), of M. Güdemann ("Jüdische Apologetik,"
Glogau, 1906, and several other works), of J. Derenbourg ("Essai
sur l'histoire de la Paléstine," Paris, 1867 [also in a Hebrew transla-
tion: "Massa Eretz Yisrael," trans. Mibshan, Petrograd, 1896]),
of M. Joel ("Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte zu Anfang des 2.
christlichen Jahrhunderts," Breslau 1889), of H . P. Chajes
("Marcus-Studien," Berlin, 1899, and many articles in Hebrew,
German and Italian) ; also the works of Israel Levi, Bacher, Krauss,
Perles and others, are a valuable treasury for all who would com-
prehend the social and political environment from which Jesus arose,
on which he based his teaching, and to which he appealed.
But complete works by Jewish writers in any language, devoted
solely to Christianity and its Founder, are few; and even to these
few, Christian scholars have not paid proper attention.
The most important of such works is the famous book by one
who was a Jew on his father's side and a Roman Catholic on his
mother's side, and who remained faithful to the Jewish people all
his life—Joseph Salvador. "Jésus Christ et sa doctrine : histoire de la
naissance de l'église, de son organisation et de ses progrès pendant
le premier siècle," 2 vols. Paris, 1838.28 Although Schweitzer, in his
37
An important work still remaining to be done is a book on all that has
been written about Jesus in Jewish literature from the close of the Talmud
period until Jacob Emden. At present we have only the important article
by J. Broydé: Polemics and Polemical Literature (Jewish Encyclopedia, X
102-109).A
* For an account of the man and his writings, see the book written by
a kinsman, Gabriel Salvador, Joseph Salvador, sa vie, ses oeuvres et ses
"Von Reimarus zu Wrede," often treats at great length of very
many works of most doubtful value, he was not able to devote
more than a short note to this important book,29 and even so, a note
which is only one long error: instead of "Salvador" he calls him
"Salvator;" he makes him "one of the cleverest of Venturini's sue-
cessors," whereas there is scarcely a single resemblance between the
two; he says that "Salvator expected the spiritual and mystical
Mosaic system to overcome Christianity"—an idea which could never
have passed through Salvador's mind since he regarded the Mosaic
Law as the very antithesis of mysticism.
It would seem that Schweitzer had either never seen or never
read the book, either because it was written in French (and he only
treats in detail books written in German, referring only briefly to
others), or because it was written by a Jew, and books about Jesus
composed by Jews were antecedently suspect (only so can we account
for his not referring even to Graetz's "Sinaï et Golgotha" and the
chapter on Jesus in Graetz's third volume of the "History of the
Jews," while he devotes far more space than it is worth to the queer
book by De Jonge, a Jewish convert (see Schweitzer, op. cit. pp.
319-320 English translation, "The Quest of the Historical Jesus,"
321-2).
Had Schweitzer read "Salvator" carefully he would have found

there (especially in the last chapter of the first volume) strong
support of his, Schweitzer's, main conclusion—that Jesus' teaching
was that of a "Lebensverneiner."
Salvador often 3 0 stresses the idea enunciated later by Abraham
Geiger (see later, p. 115 f.), that Jesus never laid down a single
ethical precept not to be found in the Prophets or in contemporary
Jewish sages. H e finds the whole of the "Sermon on the Mount"
in Ben Sira, 31 so anticipating Kalthoff. Yet at the same time he
finds a great difference between the general tone of Pharisaic Judaism
and the teaching of Jesus. In the first place, he shows that Pharisaic
Judaism endeavoured to secure men earthly happiness so far as this
is possible without damage to their spiritual life, and so it occupied
itself with everyday life and its reform : it was a law of life intended
for a people living on the earth, and so it tried to reform earthly
life by the "fear of God" and by the inculcation of such good quali-
ties as are requisite for the reformed life of society—and no more.
Whereas Jesus, who cared not at all for the social life, and for
whom the religious and ethical life of the individual was the one
aim and object of his teaching, despised the civilized life of this
critiques, Paris, 1881. A fine character sketch of Salvador, the man and
the scholar, is given by James Darmesteter, Les prophètes d'Israël, Paris,
1895, pp. 279-387; especially with reference to the book under discussion
see pp. 323-342. M
"80 Op. cit. p. 161, η. I. •4
See especially, op. cit. I 355-6. •4
81
Op. cit. I 357, 401 ff. 4
world, and in his reaching forward to the future life, adopted a
negative attitude to the life of this present world as did all the
priests of the Oriental nations (the Egyptians, the Hindus, etc.),
who, caring only for the life of the soul after death, disregarded the
existing social order and abandoned themselves to asceticism and
despair of the present world.
Secondly, Salvador shows that Pharisaic Judaism felt itself
compelled, by interpretations derived from the Law, to lay down
rules regulating every human act and to pay special attention to the
prescribed ceremonial laws in order by such means to ensure national
persistence; this "règlement" embracing the whole life, moral or
social, matters of faith or matters of religious practice, served as a
buttress against the danger of assimilation and the obliteration of
the peculiar Jewish national features which must needs be preserved
in order that the Law of Israel might itself be preserved till such
time as redemption should come to the whole world.
Jesus, on the other hand, caring only for the religious and moral
life of the individual, gave no thought to the possible importance of
the social and ceremonial laws of the Torah in their capacity of a
defensive hedge guarding Jewish nationalism. This constitutes the
difference between the teaching of Jesus and contemporary tradi-
tional Judaism; and just because of this difference the decisive
majority of the Jews rejected his teaching. 32
Permeating the whole of Salvador's book is the theme that
Christianity arose out of a compromise between Judaism and pagan-
ism. In Jesus' time Paganism was in extremis, since its moral life
was rotten to the core; the pagan nations needed, therefore, a new
rule of life, yet one that should be adaptable to their ancient prin-
ciples, since paganism which had originated with them had become
ingrained in them. But Judaism had preserved its moral life intact
and so needed no change or transformation or compromise. The
Jews therefore rejected Christianity, and the pagans, in accepting it,
made it semi-pagan.
As the reader will observe, these ideas are profound and im-
portant and still by no means antiquated. W e shall have reason to
return to them again and again in the course of these pages.
But since Salvador, as he himself acknowledges, 33 was unable
to utilize Strauss's recently published work, and since he had con-
cerned himself but little in Old Testament and Gospel criticism ( f o r
which he is rightly blamed by Renan), his views frequently lack
scientific value. None the less, he instinctively arrived at many of
Strauss's views. Thus, for example, he perceived that much of what
was recorded of Jesus was inserted out of an impulse to fulfil what
had been written in the Holy Scriptures ; he explained that much of
what was told of the birth death and resurrection of Jesus was
82
Op. cit. pp. 356-414· ^
83
Op. cit. Preface XV-XX. 4
derived not from the Old Testament but from oriental and con-
temporary Greek mythology. 34 In this, and also in explaining the
genesis of Christianity from the pagan religious corporations (θίασοι)
Salvador anticipated the celebrated writings of Pfleiderer, f r o m
which Kalthoff drew most of his ideas.
From every point of view Salvador's book is in advance of
almost all the works on the life of Jesus till the advent of Strauss,
with the exception of Reimarus. As Darmesteter well says, he wrote
"not the human history of God," but "the divine history of man." 35
Salvador's views of the trial of Jesus were very original and caused
a great outcry at the time and even brought him to the criminal dock.
Apart from Salvador's writings, the present writer knows only
of three other complete works about Jesus written by Jews, one in
French and two in English. 30 Only one of these lays serious claims
to scholarship—that of Graetz. It was originally written in German
but never appeared in its original form, since it was almost all em-
bodied in his "History of the Jews" ( I I P Leipzig, 1905, pp. 271-
313). The French translator and editor was Moses Hess, the author
of "Rome and Jerusalem." Its French title is: H . Graetz, "Sinaï
et Golgotha, ou les origines du judaïsme et du christianisme, suivi
d'un examen critique des Evangiles anciens et modernes. Traduit
et mis en ordre par Maurice Hess." Paris, 1867. It (as also the
corresponding part of the "History") is, both in form and style, the
work of an artist ; and in many respects it is not yet antiquated.
Most of the book (to p. 270) is devoted to a detailed and very
clear survey of the history of the Jews till the time of Jesus, special
attention being given to the period from Maccabsean times to the
rule of the Roman Procurators. The remainder (pp. 270-^62)
deals with the life of Jesus and his teaching, the history of subsequent
Christianity being touched upon briefly. As an appendix we are
given a short critical account of the four "ancient" Gospels and a
more detailed criticism of the two "modern" Gospels (as Graetz
facetiously puts it) "according to Renan," and "according to Strauss"
(the latter's "Popular History of Jesus," published, 1864). Accord-
ing to Graetz, neither Renan's nor Strauss's "Life of Jesus" is a
piece of scientific work, but a "New Gospel."
Graetz regards Matthew, and not Mark, as the earliest of the
ancient Gospels, and holds that even that was not written until the
time of Bar Kokhbah (c. 136) ; this, he thinks, is clearly evident from
84
Darmesteter, op. cit. pp. 331-340. ·^
" op. cit. 332. 4
" T h e author was unfortunately unable to secure Hippolite Rodriguez',
and Michael Kolischer's books in spite of all his efforts. He may also have
overlooked other like books. Harris VVeinstock's Jesus the Jew (3rd ed.
New York, 1907) is merely a publicistic essay on the value of Jesus to the
Jews of to-day. There has recently appeared a work by E. Pappeport, Das
Buch Jeschua, Wien, 1920, the aim of which is to depict Jesus as a Jew.
But it has no scientific value. ^
Matthew xxiv and Mark xiii, where "the abomination that maketh
desolate" referred to is the image of Jupiter which Hadrian erected
on the site of the Temple after Jerusalem had been destroyed and
rebuilt under the name Aelia Capitolina. Mark was written shortly
after Matthew; Luke (and the Acts of the Apostles) was not com-
posed before 150; and John, which according to Graetz has no his-
torical value whatever, was composed between 170 and 180. The
Gospel of the Nazarenes was written in Aramaic as early as 100-130,
since it is mentioned in the Talmud,37 but it is not the Gospel of
Matthew. 38
In the light of this very late date of all the Gospels Graetz
"frankly acknowledges that even what seems most certain in the
study of the life of Jesus has only the value of a hypothesis. The
sole historical fact we possess is that Christianity arose out of
Essenism" (p. 376). On this point—the Essenic origin of Chris-
tianity—Graetz has a great deal to say both in the course of his
book and in the "Appendix" (pp. 407-415), and he is so obsessed
by the idea as to call Christianity "Essenism mixed with foreign
elements."
Apart from certain well-known passages in the Gospels to which
he attaches but small importance, Graetz' main evidence consists in
the facts that John the Baptist, who paved the way for Jesus'
manifestation, was an Essene in all his manner of life, and that
James the Lord's brother, who led the early Church after the cruci-
fixion, had all the habits of an Essene, and that even the entire
Church, while it yet consisted of those who had known Jesus per-
sonally, behaved in all respects like an Essene community.
But it was, furthermore, apparent to Graetz that Jesus "assumed
nothing more than the principal features of the Essenes, particularly
the love of poverty, community of goods, dislike of oaths, power to
heal those possessed with devils, lunatics and the like ; though, to all
appearances, he did not observe the less fundamental points ('points
accessoires') of Essenism, such as the scrupulous avoidance of
everything unclean, wearing the 'apron,' and the like. Nor does
he seem to have attached importance to the lustrations, since it is
never recorded that he himself carried out the rule or urged it
upon others" (p. 305).
Still another matter is apparent to Graetz—that Jesus never
proposed to abolish the ceremonial laws; and that whatever the
Gospels say of this is but a later addition by the followers of Paul ;
otherwise James the Lord's brother and Peter, Jesus' most intimate
disciple, and all their party, could never have observed these same
ceremonial laws; and Paul, who abolished them, would have justi-
fied his action by the words of Jesus; and we actually see the con-
trary in the Epistle to the Galatians, which Graetz regards as the
w
88
See above pp. 3538‫־‬. M
Sinai et Golgotha, pp. 380-381.·^
THE STUDY Ol· THE LIFE OF JESUS Ill
earliest Christian document and the one genuinely Pauline epistle. 39

The Sermon on the Mount (absent in both Mark and John, and
occurring only in isolated sayings in Luke) never, according to
Graetz, had any existence in fact. The question whether "the
founder of Christianity introduced any conception of God or any
moral law differing from or surpassing those in Judaism" is answered
by Graetz with a most definite negative. 40
And if any would protest: Is it possible that a universally ac-
cepted religion could arise out of nothing? or, Do not the intense
feelings of enthusiasm which the first disciples of Jesus felt towards
their teacher, and which they passed on to their disciples, and which
dominated the entire world—do not they constitute irrefutable evi*
dence that Jesus was an altogether exceptional being?—Graetz would
point to Shabbathai Zevi who, during his lifetime secured far more
followers than did Jesus, including many Christians and Moslems,
and who, even at the time when Graetz wrote, still had followers
in Poland and Turkey. 41
The deaf, the blind and the sick whom Jesus healed, and those
whom he raised from the dead, were, in actual fact, simply the
ungodly and sinful, the publicans and harlots, to whom he preached
the living words of God and showed a new way of life which should
cure their spiritual defects and revive their dead souls by this
loftier moral code. But Graetz would not deny that Jesus did, lit-
erally, engage in healing : he healed such as were afflicted with nerv-
ous illnesses and hysterical women, and such as, in those days, were
supposed to be possessed by an evil spirit; and this he did through
his spiritual influence.42 The proof of this is to be found in the fact
that his disciples also practised the driving out of evil spirits and
uttering incantations over a snake-bite. 43
This spiritual healing was the one thing in Jesus that was new ;
in all other respects Jesus was "a teacher honoured in his own
circle just as Hillel was in his circle; his 'sayings' or Logia were
impressed upon the memories of his disciples and they tried to hand
down what he taught to the coming generation." 44 In his religious
beliefs Jesus approached closer to Hillel than to Shammai—e.g. in
permitting the sick to be healed on the Sabbath; and it was from
Hillel that he inherited the great saying: What is hateful to thyself,
89
Sinai et Golgotha^pp. 314-318; 400-402; 416-417. ^‫־‬
40
Op. cit. 392-407. 4
41
Op. cit. pp. 376-377. It never, however, occurred to Graetz to maintain
that Shabbathai Zevi also was a great man; but only that the time and the
means did not fall out well, and because of a certain flaw in his character—
his love of power and pleasure—he was unfitted to give a new teaching
suited to his contemporaries ; and such was not Shabbathai Zevi's main pur-
pose, but only to gain an earthly kingdom which was just as impossible
then as in the time of the Romans in Judasa. A
4
*Cf. 312-3 and 321-2. M
‫ ־‬, See above, p. 40.
44
Op. cit. p. 383· 4
do not unto thy neighbour ; this is the whole of the Law. But Hillel
never expelled evil spirits and no miracles are recorded in con-
nexion with him.
Such are the opinions of Graetz as given in his French book.
In his "History of the Jews‫ ( ״‬I I I ch. 11) he puts forward the
same views in briefer form, so that chapter need not be dealt with
here. Worth notice, however, is the accurate sense of proportion
and the excellent "tact" shown there in his estimate of Jesus : he did
not multiply words unnecessarily, but offered his readers a multum
in parvo. Neither did he forget that whoever depreciates Jesus
thereby depreciates Judaism itself, since that was the source of Jesus'
teaching.
Furthermore, Graetz could not see in Jesus' sayings or in his
whole ministry any protest against contemporary Judaism, nor, 0:1
the whole, did he perceive any strong intention or desire to alter
any of its fundamental principles. Hence, according to this chap-
ter of the "History," as far as the ceremonial laws are concerned,
Christianity arose out of nothing at all : it arose solely in conse-
quence of the political oppression under the Romans, ably described
by Graetz, and as a result of the messianic hopes which grew stronger
at that time owing to that oppression.
The second book solely concerned with Jesus and written by a
Jew is "As Others Saw H i m : A Retrospect: A.D. 54," London,
1895.45 It is in the shape of a narrative written down for the sake
of a Greek physician in Corinth by a Jewish scribe in Alexandria,
Meshullam ben Zadok, who had lived in Jerusalem throughout the
whole of Jesus' ministry and had seen personally what Jesus did and
what was done to him in Jerusalem, although he knew nothing of
the Galilaean period. After relating the incident of the driving out
of the money-changers from the Temple, and giving briefly the
rumours of Jesus' origin and early life, the writer reports a dis-
course which Jesus gave in a Jerusalem synagogue, a discourse
founded almost entirely on the uncanonical sayings known as
Agrapha;46 and he offers this teaching as drawn from the Hebrew
book entitled "The Two Ways," which contains the ethical teaching
of Hillel (pp. 51-56). H e then gives the story of the woman taken
in adultery 47 and that of the rich young ruler ; he quotes Jesus'
teaching about the greatest commandment, which is, in the author's
opinion, Hillel's.
And then he gives a second discourse likewise based on uncanon-
ical sayings, which the author employs in such a way as to show the
difference between Jesus and the Prophets : they gave their message
45
The book was published anonymously, but in the bibliography to the
article Jesus of Nazareth in J.E. V I I 160-166, the author is stated to be
Joseph Jacobs. The views of the book under discussion form the basis of
this article, and so that article need not be specially dealt with here. A
46
See above, pp. 65-66. ‫י י‬
‫ *י‬See above, p. 69. A
in the form " T h u s saith the L o r d , " whereas he spoke in his own
name (pp. 85-9; see also p. 202).48 A t a " B a r M i t z v a h " feast (the
occasion when a Jewish boy reaches the age of thirteen and a day,
and is of an age to assume the responsibility of observing the L a w ) ,
Jesus makes his harsh remarks about the "hypocrite Pharisees,"
found in Matthew xxiii.
But his host argues that hypocrisy and insincerity are not the
outstanding characteristics of the Pharisees, that Hillel the Pharisee
was very f a r indeed from preferring the outward observance of the
ceremonial laws to purity of heart and love of mankind, and that
the Pharisees themselves expressed great dislike of hypocritical
Pharisees, including the type whose axiom was " W h a t am I bound
to do and I will do it," and those who were Pharisees only "out of
fear," and that even among the Ebionites, with w h o m Jesus was so
closely akin, there were many " w h o did not practise what they
preached." T o this Jesus replies that his strictures were aimed not
at the true Pharisees but at the insincere among them (pp. 9 5 - 1 0 5 ) .
V e r y many were induced to follow Jesus because they saw in
him a saviour f r o m the Romans whose yoke was pressing so hardly
upon them and because they saw in this bondage an insult to the
God of Israel, "the great, the mighty and the terrible ;" but when
Jesus bade them "give to Caesar that which was C2esar's" he entirely
lost his popularity (pp. 157-160). F o r such a reason must w e
explain the crowd's demanding f r o m Pilate to release to them not
Jesus "bar A m m a " (i.e., son of the mother, hinting at the popular
scandal about his origin), but Jesus "bar A b b a " (i.e., son of the
father) who had rebelled against Rome and was therefore popular
(pp. 192-195)·
Jesus was a Jew in all his sayings and w a y s : he observed all
the ceremonial l a w s ; as a true Jew he looked upon God as his
heavenly F a t h e r ; he had compassion on the poor, helped the fallen,
and rated the repentant more highly than the scrupulously pious.
H e even had the Jewish national defects : he never observed beauty
in nature ; he never smiled. H e taught by tears, threats and reproofs.
In all this Jesus was most Jewish of Jews. But in t w o respects
he differed from his nation and especially f r o m the prophets : in
the first place he did not speak as a messenger sent f r o m God but
as one who had power to command and teach his own views (see
above) ; and, in the second place, he lacked patriotic feelings. H e
was a stranger to the nation in everything affecting their longings
for freedom f r o m Roman subjection. " D i d he feel himself in some
w a y as not of our nation? I know n o t ; but in all ways we failed
to know him." " I n all his teaching he dealt with us as men, not as
Jews." A n d this was the reason for his rejection and death : the soul
of the people abhorred the " S o n of M a n " who felt no sorrow at the
national sorrow (pp. 200-2, 2 1 0 ) .
48
See "Ahad ha-Am," Collected Works, I V 42-44. A
The third book is Rabbi H . G. Enelow's "A Jewish View of
Jesus." New York, 1920. We get here Jesus the "Liberal." Jesus
gave nothing that was not already to be found in Judaism, but he
presented the old material in more striking fashion than did the sages
of Israel, and in all his sayings he left the impress of a unique
personality which moved him to embody his teaching in actual
practice.
Therefore although the Jews cannot see in him anything divine
(which would contradict the whole idea of Judaism), or even the
Messiah (since the Jewish expectations were not fulfilled in him
nor by his coming to the world), they should still look upon him as a
great and exceptional Rabbi and teacher, who gave a new aspect to
Jewish ideas and thereby influenced humanity more than any other
great man among the Jews. This presentation of Jesus is virtually
"Unitarianism."
There are three similar books on Christianity (and not solely
on Jesus) : one in German and two in English. The German work is
that by Rabbi J. Eschelbacher, "Das Judentum und das Wesen des
Christentums" (also translated into Hebrew: "Ha-Yahaduth
u‫־‬Mahuth ha‫־‬Natsruth," ed. "Ha-Zeman," Wilna, 1911), a polemical
work in defence of Judaism in retort to Bousset's book.
The second is that by C. G. Monteßore, "The Synoptic Gospels,"
2 vols., London, 1909, a Jewish commentary on the Gospels which
attempts to show, on the one hand, that much of what is in the
Gospels comes also in the Talmudic literature, and, on the other
hand, that the Gospels are generally superior to the Talmud and are
Hebrew works which should be acceptable to Jews. 48a It was this
work which stirred up "Ahad ha-Am" to write the celebrated article
"Al shte ha-s'ippim" (Collected Works, IV 38-58 [ = Ha-Shiloach
X X I I I 97-111]), in which that distinguished author points out the
distinctive features of Judaism and Christianity—how (a) Judaism
is not bound up with any tangible personality, (b) the religious and
ethical purpose of Judaism is directed towards society generally, and
(c) the moral basis of Judaism is absolute justice and not compro-
mise or asceticism.
Another rejoinder to Montefiore's book is G. Friedlander's "The
Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount," London, 1911. The
writer shows with much learning that not only the Sermon on the
Mount, but the entire Christian system (excluding its asceticism) is
borrowed from the Old Testament, the Book of Ben Sir a, the
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Philo of Alexandria and the
earlier portions of the Talmud and Midrash.
He shows further that Jesus himself was not consistent: he
taught that men should not make long prayers, but himself prayed
the whole night through; he taught that men should love their
480
See also his Some Elements of the Religious Teaching of Jesus, Lon-
don, 1910. 4
enemies, and himself spoke in hatred of the Pharisees ; he said "Judge
not that ye be not judged," and himself judged all his opponents
harshly; and other such examples might be adduced. The writer
also argues that society and the state must collapse if men lived
in accordance with the teaching of Jesus; but that Judaism was
given to such as belonged to civilization, to nations and societies and
states, that through it they might live and not die.
After Drews' "Die Christusmythe," (Berlin, 1909), which like
Kalthoff's "Entstehung des Christentums" (1903), denied Jesus'
existence, came G. Klein's "1st Jesus eine historische Persönlichkeit ?"
Leipzig, 191 ο, showing that all ancient Jewish literature proves that
Jesus was a real individual, though his portraiture had been more
or less obscured by the Evangelists.
W e have still to notice books by Jewish scholars which, though
not exclusively devoted to Jesus and his teaching, give special atten-
tion to the subject.
Abraham Geiger devoted three lectures to Jesus and his disciples
(Lectures 9 ‫ ־‬n ) in his Lectures on the History of Israel, published
in 1864 under the title "Das Judentum und seine Geschichte"
(I. Abteilung: bis zur Zerstörung des zweiten Tempels. 2 Aufl.,
1865, pp. 108-148), and like Graetz added a long appendix criticizing
the works of Strauss and Renan (pp. 162-187). He agrees with
Graetz in thinking that in Jesus' teaching "there is either nothing
new or that what is new is put before us in a somewhat enervated
form just as it originated during an enervated period" (p. 119).
But, unlike Graetz, he does not think that Jesus was an Essene
or something approaching an Essene, but "a Jew, a Pharisaic Jew
of Galilsean type, one who looked forward to the hopes held at the
time and who believed that those hopes would be fulfilled in himself.
H e propounded nothing whatever that was new, 49 nor did he
transcend the national limitations" (p. 117). Although, if our
sources are to be believed, he was compelled to belittle this or that
ceremonial observance if he found it a hindrance, yet he never
doubted his earlier conception that the commandments were from
God and that no jot nor tittle of the Law, of which they were part,
should ever pass away (pp. 117-118).
But "as distinct from the Pharisees, he praised poverty and con-
*This, together with Geiger's remark (which Franz Delitzsch wrongly
attributed to one of the assistants of Geiger's Jüdische Zeitschrift) that
"when all was said and done Jesus did nothing at all" (Jüd. Zeit. Χ 1872, p.
156), aroused Delitzsch's indignation against Geiger and his associates for
so grossly disparaging one whom hundreds of millions of eveiy age had
revered "and whose advent had unquestionably formed the dividing line
between the two divisions of universal history" (op. cit. pp. 308-9). Geiger's
reply (pp. 309-311) was that Christians had still more disparaged the sanctity
of Judaism—a satisfactory enough retort to the social-religious side of
Delitzsch's charge, but not to the scholarly historical side, i.e., to the prob-
lem: How can a belief accepted by hundreds of millions of mankind arise
from nothing? Λ
tempt of this world, a contempt of all that material life had called
forth, and he disliked sharing in the joy of this world's affairs"
(p. 119). But this in itself did not constitute opposition to the
teaching of the Pharisees nor a tendency towards Essenism—it was
only the result of the bad conditions of the Jews under the harsh
rule of the Procurators. The riddle—how a new faith was created
by one who "propounded no new idea of any kind"—Geiger explained
by the fact that Jesus during his lifetime had told his disciples that
he was the Messiah, and that with him had begun the era of "the
world to come" or the "new world."
H e found men who believed this. After his death this belief was
preserved and his disciples looked, from day to day, for the beginning
of this new world. They were thus spiritually convinced that Jesus
had risen again and would soon appear a second time. He may him-
self have believed that this new world, a wonderful world, should
begin before he died ; but after his death the belief was modified to
the form just described. And this is the one certain thing that we
know of him, a thing quite sufficient to account not only for his
appearance but also for its consequences.
This historic fact can neither be denied nor weakened; but
nothing more may be added to it, since apart from it we know
nothing for certain (pp. 180-181). Geiger differs from Graetz in
thinking that Mark's Gospel approaches nearest the truth, though
each of the Gospels is full of late tendencies (p. 118). Geiger's
criticism of the lives of Jesus by Renan and Strauss is very shrewd
and convincing, and more profound than that of Graetz.
Almost diametrically opposite to the views of Graetz and Geiger
are those put forward by M. Friedländer in the long chapter devoted
to the subject in "Die religiösen Bewegungen innerhalb des Juden-
turns im Zeitalter Jesu" (Berlin, 1905), pp. 314-341. Both here and
in his other books ("Zur Entstehungsgechichte des Christentums,"
Wien, 1894; "Das Judentum in der vorchristlichen griechischen
Welt," 1897; "Der vorchristliche jüdische Gnostizismus," 1898;
"Der Antichrist," 1902), he puts forward the opinion that the teach-
ing of the Pharisees was narrow-minded, superficial and atrophied as
compared with Alexandrine Judaism, which was broad, universal and
freed from the shackles of the ceremonial laws.
In Palestine itself there was an opposition to the Pharisees,
maintained by such men as the writers of apocalypses like the
Book of Enoch, who carried on the tradition of the Wisdom Litera-
ture (Job, Ecclesiastes, the Wisdom of Solomon, etc.), and in their
beliefs about the Messiah and his adversary Azazel, Belial-Samael
(the new culture), were influenced by Hellenistic literature and
especially the Sibylline Oracles (see especially pp. 289-314). These
apocalyptists filled the rôle of popular prophets ("Volkspropheten"),
prophets of the "Am-haaretz," the unlettered class, who were hated
and neglected by the Pharisees (pp. 22-77, 78-113) ; both John the
Baptist and Jesus were of this same type of popular prophets
(pp. 98-113).
Friedländer finds two stages of development in Jesus' views on
the ceremonial laws and in his personal consciousness. At first he
favoured the ceremonial laws if only they were observed with a
proper intention; then he rose in opposition only against insincere
Pharisees, the "street-corner Pharisees," the more disreputable among
them, whom the Talmud itself blames and dubs "the plague of
Pharisees;" not till later times did the Evangelists generalize Jesus'
strictures and repeat them as though they were aimed at the Pharisees
as a whole (pp. 227-230; 316-320).
In the later period, however, of Jesus' ministry he tended to set
aside the ceremonial laws, because he had become influenced by
Hellenistic Judaism through the medium of the Palestinian apoca-
lypses. And since he perceived more and more clearly the harm
caused by Pharisaic literalism, there grew up in him, quite unwit-
tingly and without any break in the unity of his own personality,
the tendency to replace the system of the ceremonial laws by a more
ethical system—the antithesis of the Pharisaic system and more akin
to that of the Palestinian apocalyptists, the popular prophets, akin
also to the systems of Philo and of the Essenes, the same Essenes
who, according to Friedländer, had been materially influenced by
Jewish-Hellenistic philosophy, and who, in their turn, exercised a
certain influence on John the Baptist, Jesus and the Nazarenes
(pp. 114-168; 321-2, 332).
A similar development, still leaving his personality intact, is also
recognizable in Jesus' personal consciousness : at first he only thought
of himself as continuing the work of John the Baptist, and only later
felt within himself that he was the Messiah, the religious reformer
and saviour of the world (pp. 322-323). He was unable to preach
to the Gentiles and so restricted his teaching to the Jews. But his
terrible death acted as a stimulus which resulted in his teaching being
spread by Paul among all the Gentiles, and in himself being accepted
as the saviour of the world (pp. 326-327).
In any case Jesus perfected the prophets' universalistic teaching,
ridding their expectations of all that savoured of "national limitations
and political hopes" and wholly spiritualising them (p. 335). The
love of God, as taught by him, was personal in the sense that it was
a cleaving to the living God, and impersonal in the sense that it was
not bound up with personal inclinations (pp. 334-336). H e did not
insist on asceticism but only allowed it to those who could choose it
in the proper spirit (pp. 336-338). The primary importance of his
teaching lies in his directing his chiefest care to individual piety and
combining it with the universal faith in a universal Godhead
(PP· 338-339)·
In his use of the Gospels Friedländer makes no distinction as a
rule between the three Synoptists; if he has any preference it is
for Matthew, or even Luke, rather than Mark, since those two are
more akin in spirit to Hellenism, so favoured by him. For this
reason he sometimes even uses the Fourth Gospel. Speaking gen-
erally he places no pedantic stress on the criticism of the ancient
sources, particularly of the Gospels; he considers that "every branch
of Judaism until the period after the Apostles, was remarkable for the
reverence which it paid to tradition," and no matter how much the
sages of Israel might wish to get rid of certain books, as a rule
they dared not do so, and so they would certainly not dare to make
changes in them, or additions or omissions ( Vorwort, p. xxiv).
In conclusion four other books may be passed in review, written
by converted Jews, and possessing some originality in contents or
language.
Alfred Edersheim, who became a Christian in 1846 at the age of
twenty-one, and acted for some time as a missionary in Jassy,
Roumania, 50 wrote (besides other books bearing on our subject, such
as "Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ," "The
Temple: its Ministry and its Services," London, 1874), "The Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah," 2 vols. London, 1883. This large
work, consisting of more than fifteen hundred pages, passed through
five editions during its author's lifetime, and a twelfth edition (Lon-
don, 1906) now lies before the present writer. It is in the highest
degree conservative : all the miracles, even the raisings from the dead,
are accepted by him as trustworthy facts. 51
Whatever the Gospels record, he accepts as historical, though he
gives unscientific reasons for some of the stranger stories. 52 H e
makes no use whatever of Gospel criticism: he prefers no single
Synoptjst to another, and treats the Fourth Gospel as wholly historical
and in no way differentiates it from the Synoptists. H e says in his
introduction that it was not his intention to write a Life of Jesus,
since the material in the Gospels was not enough for a biography in
the true sense, nor, indeed, did the Evangelists write their Gospels
as essays in biography ; 5 3 his book is, rather, more or less a com-
mentary on the four Gospels.54 Yet he gives in detail all the events
of Jesus' life as recorded in the Gospels, and he does this in the
most naïve way: what is lacking in Mark he fills in from Matthew,
Matthew he supplements from Luke, and Luke he supplements from
the Fourth Gospel, and vice versa.
It is a curious "harmony of the Gospels"—the heaping up of
narrative and legend. Occasionally he finds a "reasonable" cause
why one Evangelist omits something recorded by another, but usually
he refrains from searching for such reason, since he holds that we
" A n account of his life may be found in his posthumous autobiography,
Tohu va-Bohu, London, 1890. It is given briefly in I.E. V 39.·^
" Op. cit. I 138-143, 150-159, 558-560, 627-634, I I 308-326, 623-629, etc. ^
**E.g., the coming of the Magi, I 202-216.-^
63
Preface to First Edition, p. vii. •4
6
*Ibid., p. xiv. ^
cannot know the real reason why any particular Gospel was composed,
and such reason may well have induced the omission in one Gospel
of what actually occurred and is recorded in another Gospel whose
object was different ( I I 312). Thus Edersheim's treatment of the
events in Jesus' life has no scientific value, in spite of his close
acquaintance with the labours of his predecessors and his "reason-
able" objections to their arguments.
Yet it has a value of another sort, for we find in it (and also in
his other book, "Sketches of Jewish Social Life") reliable pictures
of the social life (and, to a certain extent, of the economic life) of
the Jews of the time of Jesus.
Here Edersheim's intimate knowledge of Jewish literature stood
him in good stead. The reader who wishes to know what was the
condition of the family, the society, the village, the town, the state,
child-education, labour, agriculture, dress, etc., may learn about them
from Edersheim ; the detail may be insufficient, but the information
is there to a far greater extent than in any other "Life of Jesus."
For this reason the book repays attention.
But, on the other hand, there are many things which detract from
the value of his description of the spiritual life of contemporary
Judaism. The main reason is that Edersheim could not forget his
former avocation of missionary, and he finds himself incessantly
bound to emphasize the superiority of Jesus' teaching over that of
the Pharisees (which he calls "traditionalism").
With this purpose before him he paints the teaching of the
Pharisees in the blackest possible colours. Occasionally he lets fall
words in praise of Judaism, but even then he tries to bring out the
fact that the teaching of Jesus surpassed it in every respect. 55 H e is,
for example, well aware that without the ceremonial laws of the
written Torah monotheism could not have survived, and that in order
that Israel should not become sunk in the degraded state of the
ancient world it was essential to mark out the distinctions between
Israel and the Gentiles ( I 3) ; but he will not extend the same com-
prehension to the ceremonial laws of the unwritten Torah.
Yet that is not the only drawback of the book. It contains three
crude errors into which virtually all Christian scholars have fallen,
though their ignorance is more pardonable than is his.
In the first place he disregards the fact that the Talmud in its
Halakhistic portions is not only a religious but a legal code ; and in
a legal code legislators are compelled to deal carefully with the tiniest
details. Therefore the traditional laws about Sabbath observance
(which he gives in a special appendix, I I 777-787, in the greatest
detail to show how petty and narrow were the religious ideas of the
"Rabbis"), were not so terrible; they were religious laws, and it is
the nature of laws to go into detail; and here, as in all that has to
do with jurisprudence, formality and "casuistry" are unavoidable.
w
See, e.g., what he says about Hillel, I 128-129.
In the second place he disregards the fact that the Talmud in its
Haggadistic portions is not only a religious book but also, and
primarily, a romantic and poetic book, a collection of folklore where
curious and extravagant legends are sure to find place. To quote
the curious legend in Baba Metzia 80a (about the dispute which
Rabba bar Nahmani decides between God and the heavenly beings,
I 409-410), and the Haggadistic fancy that the God of Israel studies
the Scriptures by day and the Mishna‫ ׳‬by night, and wears the
praying-shawl and phylacteries—as proving the pretentiousness of
the Rabbis, is futile ( I I 15-16, I 144η).
In the preface to the Second and Third Editions (pp. xvii‫־‬xx) he
is at pains to defend himself against suspicion of antisemitism, and
he insists that nothing which he quotes from the Talmud or Midrash
can supply the antisemites with material for attacking the Jews, for
three reasons: (a) the tirades in the Talmud and Midrash against
foreigners have no bearing on Christians, but only on heathen perse-
cutors of the Jews whom the Jews naturally hated ; 5 6 (b) the age, the
place and the causes should be borne in mind, and as modern Cal-
vinists are not to be blamed because their founder, Calvin, burnt
Michael Servet, so modern Jews are not to be blamed for the bit-
terness of Jews many hundreds of years ago against foreigners;
and (c) modern Jews do not abide by the antiquated ideas of the
Talmud, but their ethical standard is high. As to the claim that every
foolish remark in the Talmud is counterbalanced by a wise one, he
replies that his object was not to submit stray remarks and ideas of
the Rabbis but their general teaching and ideals (p. xix).
But it is precisely his own offence that he does not bear in mind
"the age and the place," and the "general teaching and ideals" of the
Rabbis, of Pharisaic Judaism. Had he done so, so many of the laws
and definitions and foolish legends would not have struck him as so
ridiculous, just as he is far from finding cause for ridicule in the
Gospel story of the driving out of the unclean spirits and their
entering into the swine. "Stray remarks and ideas" out of the
Talmud are precisely the things which he is able to regard as foolish
and even gross, and it is just "the general teaching and ideals" of
the Talmud which created the spiritual environment in which could
be born a man of such moral calibre and religious feeling as Hillel.
But from the standpoint of pure scholarship, worse than the
preceding two errors is the third error, common to all Christian
scholars who have written on the period, and also to nearly all
Jewish scholars as well: namely, that they make no distinction
between the really ancient sources for Pharisaic Judaism and those
which are relatively late.
Any one adducing arguments about the views of Jews con-
8
®This case for the defence of the ancient Jews he refers to again at
the end of his seventh chapter (I 89-92), where he describes the animosity
which the Talmud authorities bore to the Gentiles.
temporary with Jesus from the sayings of the Amoraim or from a
late Midrash like Pirqe d'Rahbi Eliezer (as does Edersheim in de-
scribing the Messianic ideas of the Jews, Appendix IX, II 710-741,
and also I 160-171), might just as well adduce proofs from Sophocles
or Euripides as to the beliefs prevalent in the time of the Homeric
epics, or even from the early Christian Scholastics as to the beliefs
of Jesus. This serious defect—to which we shall find reason to
refer constantly—detracts from the worth of Edersheim's work in
spite of all its care and detailed knowledge.
The reverse of Edersheim's book in all that concerns the esti-
mate of Judaism in the time of Jesus is Daniel Chwolsohn's "Das
letzte Passamahl Christi und der Tag seines Todes," St. Petersburg,
1892 (2nd edition, unchanged, but with much additional matter at
the close of the book, Leipzig, 1908). The book is mainly devoted
to a single problem in the history of Jesus : how to harmonize John's
statement—that Jesus was crucified on the eve of Passover which
fell on the eve of a Sabbath, and that he ate the Passover on the
thirteenth of Nisan—with that of the Synoptists, that Jesus was
crucified on the first day of Passover, also falling on the eve of a
Sabbath, and that he ate the Passover on the fourteenth of Nisan.
But in the course of his argument the author touches on many
important questions bearing on Jesus' connection with the Pharisees,
and the connection of the Sadducees with Jesus and the part played
by the Sadducees and Pharisees in his death ; 5 7 he also touches on the
value of the Talmudic literature towards the understanding of the
Gospels.58 In Chwolsohn's opinion, Jesus throughout behaved as a
true Pharisee and observed all the ceremonial laws in accordance
with Pharisaic teaching. It was not the Pharisees but the Sad-
ducees and Boethuseans who were debased (Annas and Caiaphas,
as we know, were of the House of Bœthus).
"Jesus said and taught nothing to which the true Pharisees could
not have subscribed, and did nothing with which they could find
fault" (note 2, pp. 95-96). "If cast in such a form that their creator
was not discernible, the collection of Jesus' sayings and teachings
would be regarded by every pious Jew as an excellent manual of
morals" (p. 88). The Jew was accustomed to the expressions
" O u r Father, our King" (‫ )אבינו מלכנו‬, "Our Heavenly Father"
,(‫)אבינו שבשמים‬, and "Ye are the sons of the Lord your God"
(‫ובנים אתם ל\זי איצהיכם‬, which is an expression occurring in the Torah
and of a piece with "Sons of God" (‫ )בנים למקום‬employed in the
Talmud.
If Jesus complains against insincere Pharisees (Matthew xxiii),
"Chwolsohn's excellent notes (p. 73-74) about the Talmud tirades against
the unlettered "Am-haaretz" deserve attention; they are a satisfactory reply
to the attacks and arguments of Friedländer in his Die religiösen Beweg-
ungen, pp. 78-113.
™Ibid. Appendix, pp. 67-125. ^
so also does the Talmud (R. Yehoshua ben Hanania, c. 130-150 C.E.,
in Sota I I I 4 ) when it speaks of "the plagues of Pharisees," and in
the well-known Baraita (Sota 22b and parallel passages), when it
mentions the seven kinds of Pharisee (supposed by Chwolsohn to
be very early since the popular names there used are not understood
by the Amoraim•: p. 117), and in Pesikta Rabbati (§22), which refers
to insincere Pharisees who cloaked themselves in praying-shawls and
phylacteries only to practise deception ; Jesus, too, only spoke against
the more degraded and insincere among them.
The transcriber of the Gospels in many instances confused the
word γραμματΐςε (scribes), replacing it by Φαρισαϊοι (Pharisees)
or adding this word after it, when actually the former word was
intended to denote the "scribes" of the Sadducees (p. 113). "The
just shall live by his faith" is in the Talmud (Makk. 23^-240), also
the foundation of the whole Law, and "what is hateful to thyself
do not unto thy neighbour," or "thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself," is the whole of the Law also according to the view of Hillel
(Shab. 31a).
In his practical manner of life Jesus also conducted himself like
a Pharisee : in breaking of bread, in careful observance of the blessing
of the bread and wine, and even in the matter of the Sabbath day's
journey; he eats the Passover and says the "Great Hallel." When
he allowed his disciples to pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, he
defends it by proofs drawn from David's eating of the altar-bread,
and from the offering of sacrifices in the Temple on the Sabbath,
and said that "the Sabbath was given for man and not man for the
Sabbath" (Matt. xii. 1-5, Mark ii. 23-27) ; and in exactly the same
way the Pharisees also proved by this a fortiori argument, from the
Temple and David's eating of the altar-bread (in Y'lamm'denu,
Yalkut I I §130), that the needs of life override the Sabbath re-
strictions (‫)פסוח גפש דוחה שבת‬: and they also said (the early Tanna
R. Shimeon ben Menassia, in Mechilta on Exodus 31, 14, beginning
of §1) : "The Sabbath was given for you : ye were not given for the
Sabbath" (p. 92).
In matters of divorce Jesus is nearer to the School of Shammai
than to that of Hillel, which made diverce easier. His prohibition
of swearing, even on the truth, agrees with the Talmud's "a righteous
yea and a righteous nay" (Sifra, "Qedoshim" 8, 7 and parallels).
His disciples attached little importance to the washing of hands ; but
this was not such a serious offence and, it would appear, the Jews
generally in the time of Jesus acted in the same way, since at first
the proviso applied only to the eating of sacrificial offerings. What
Jesus says against the Pharisees about the "tradition of the elders"
and vows (Mark vii. 11, Matt. xv. 5) is directly contrary to the
injunctions of the Talmud, and his remarks can certainly only apply
to some single Tanna and his disciples, whose view, as being that of
a single individual only, is not preserved in the Talmud. His views
on forbidden foods (Matt. xv. 11 20‫ ;־‬Mark vii. 15-23) cannot be
taken literally, for if so, Paul would have relied on them when he
did away with the ceremonial laws (so Graetz; see above, p. n o ) .
Thus Jesus' teachings and doings agree, almost entirely, with those
of the Pharisees ; and we actually see the Pharisees allowing him to
teach in their synagogues and inviting him to their feasts, and he
himself praises the words of one of them.
Why, then, could the Pharisees condemn him to death? A
"beguiler," or "one who leads astray," or "a false prophet," is not
guilty of death until he pervert someone to the extent of worshipping
an idol, a thing impossible in Jesus (p. 88 n. 1).
His trial with all its injustice did not conform with the régula-
tions of the Pharisees ; and, in fact, there was not then a majority of
Pharisees in the Sanhédrin. It was only the Sadducees—whose
sentences were severe compared with those of the Pharisees ("Ant."
X I I I χ 6 ; X X X ix I ; " W a r s " I I viii 14) and whose judges, because
of their excessive harshness, were popularly called "robber judges"
(dayyanë g'zëloth) and not "law-giving judges" (dayyane g'zëroth)—
who, unaware of the spiritual character of his teaching, feared that
Jesus as a Messiah might be a rebel and conspirator.
Therefore they condemned him to death by their severe laws
during a hasty night sitting and even hired some of the crowd to
clamour for his crucifixion (pp. 118-120, 124-125).
Chwolsohn believes that an Aramaic Gospel was the common
source of the Synoptists (pp. 11-12). Since he considers that John
and Luke still knew the Jewish Passover customs he concludes that
there is no reason to date them later than 50-55 C.E. (p. 66) ; but
elsewhere (p. 98) he hints that John is later than the others and
that all were influenced by the development of early Christianity.
Mark must have used earlier sources since he attributes to Jesus
matters not far removed from the Pharisaic customs and from the
spirit of contemporary Judaism.
Chwolsohn makes a specially noteworthy point that, rightly to
understand Pauline and post-Pauline Christianity, a knowledge of
the Sibylline Oracles, Philo and Greek literature generally, is most
important; but to understand Jesus, far more important are the
Prophets and the Talmudic Haggada which are even more valuable
than the early Palestinian Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, for Jesus
was not affected by Greek literature and hardly at all by the un-
canonical books. W e will return later to these important points.
Chwolsohn also wrote "Ueber die Frage, ob Jesus gelebt hat,"
Leipzig, 1910, in reply to Drews' "Die Christusmythe," and defended
Jesus' existence by proofs drawn from early Jewish literature and
the Gospels, and the Jewish and Palestinian spirit which pervades
the latter.
Entirely bereft of scientific worth is De Jonge's "Jeschua, der
klassische jüdischen Mann : Zerstörung des kirchlichen, Enthüllung
des jüdischen Jesus-Bildes," Berlin, 1904. De Jonge was a con-
verted German Jew who, after three years, tried to return to Judaism,
but with "evangelical reservations" (mit evangelischen Vorbehalten) ;
the Berlin Rabbis refused him. H e tries to prove that Jesus and his
disciples were true, proper Jews.
He holds that Jesus was a pupil of Hillel and did not hate worldly
life or culture or even rightly acquired riches. Jesus was not the
Messiah, but more than the Messiah. De Jonge is independent of
scientific proof: whatever contradicts his view is an early Christian
forgery ; he prefers the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptists, though only
where it is more in accord with his purpose of describing Jesus as
almost divine.
The last book is by Paul Levertoff, in Hebrew, 59 "Ben ha-Adam :
hayye Yeshu ha-Mashiach u-po'alâv," ed. Eduth Γ Y Israel (a mis-
sionary society), London, 1905 [Cracow]. The author is a converted
Russian Jew who became a missionary. In his introduction he
indulges in argument against "Ahad ha-Am," Dr. Neumark, S. J.
Horowitz, Dr. Bernfeld and the present writer, because in their
articles in Ha-Shiloach on the "Nature of Judaism" they did not
perceive the advantages of Christianity.
The plain purpose of the writer (in spite of what he says to the
contrary in his Preface, p. xxi) is to win adherents to Christianity
from among Russian Jews who read Hebrew; and such a book is
not to be relied upon for objective and single-minded scholarship.
The author skilfully refrains from imposing upon us most of the
unacceptable miracles; he follows (as he tells us in his preface)
P. W. Schmidt's excellent "Die Geschichte Jesu, erzählt [without
"erläutert"], save that he conceals a few miracles and some mis-
sionary teaching in an account of natural facts (obviously not always
explained as they should be) and a presentation of the ethical teach-
ings of Jesus. . . . And this has been the only work about Jesus in
modern Hebrew literature!
®There is another work in Hebrew: Helqat m'hoqcq, Cracow, 1893, by
Gershom Bader, who pretends to publish it from some manuscript; but it is
really based on the old Tol'doth Yeshu, supplemented by a few mangled
statements from the Gospels. It has no scientific and very small literary
value. Λ
VII. SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS
The last section has been deliberately, and, it might seem at first
sight, unnecessarily prolonged. But apart from the urgent need of
giving Hebrew readers (who have in their language no scholarly
book on the subject) a true idea of the far-reaching and difficult
work carried out by hundreds of scholars of all nations in the last
hundred years and more, in an effort to dissipate the most of religious
prejudice which had obscured the earliest sources of Christianity and
the life of its Founder,—apart from this, only after an account of
the main ideas about the Gospels and Jesus could we lay down what
we think to be the right conclusions arrived at by that wide research,
and start our account of the life of Jesus untrammelled by any need
of entering into any controversy on particular points. The points
of view which we have accepted and which will receive further con-
firmation in the course of the book, are as follows :
The Fourth Gospel is not a religio-historical but a religio-philo-
sophical book. It was not composed until about the middle of the
second Christian century, at a time when Christians were already
distinct from Jews (at least as a special party) with no dealings with
official Judaism, and after many pagans had been converted. The
object of the Fourth Gospel is to interpret Jesus as the Logos, the
"Word of God," in the extreme Philonic sense, and it therefore
passes over such details in the life and death of Jesus as would appear
too human. It may well include a few historical fragments handed
down to the author (who was certainly not John the disciple) by
tradition; but, speaking generally, its value is theological rather than
historical or biographical.
Of the Synoptic Gospels, the earliest is Mark, composed near
the time of the Destruction of the Temple (c. 66-68), possibly by
one of the disciples of Mark, the disciple of Peter. H e drew from
an early Aramaic (or Hebrew) source of which the author (accord-
ing to Papias : see above, p. 74) was the real Mark, the disciple of
Peter, and which contained both narratives and discourses, though
few of the latter. These Aramaic (or Hebrew) sources were written
and not oral, thus accounting ft r the many similarities : the important
differences are to be accounted for by a difference of source, and the
slighter differences by the fact that ancient writers were not pedan-
tically exact in quoting from other books or even from their own.
Slight differences in figures and words exist, for example, in abun-
dance in Josephus' writings, even where we see plainly that the
author had only one source. From such Aramaic sources is derived
125
the Aramaic passage occurring in the story of Imma Shalom and the
neighbouring "philosoph"—a story of an event which happened im-
mediately after the destruction of the Temple (see above, p. 44).
Following Mark came Matthew, founded on the present Mark
and an Aramaic (or Hebrew) collection of sayings (Logia) which,
according to Papias, were written down by Matthew the Publican,
the most educated of the disciples; it also contained further oral
traditions current among the first and second generations of the
disciples. It was composed after the Destruction and near the end
of the century by a disciple of Matthew for the sake of Jewish
Christians, whose one interest was to find scriptural warrant for all
the doings of Jesus and to accentuate his divine origin, because the
attitude of the Jews to Jesus was contempt rather than hatred.
Hence this Gospel reveals a strong dislike of the Jews and
especially of the Pharisees : for sects of the same religion which
still exist in close relations with each other, regard each other with
a hatred and jealousy far greater than is the case with sects which
have severed all bonds of union.
The last of the Synoptists is Luke, the physician, the disciple of
Paul. By his time many accounts of the life of Jesus had been
written and his object was to pick out what was most acceptable and
to retell it in orderly fashion (as he himself explains in his preface).
He had had a Greek education and he tried to give a historical cast
to the narratives and even to the legends, and to this end he associates
discourses with events, and to the events he tries to apply a chrono-
logical framework.
By this time, Christianity was farther removed from Judaism
than in the time of Mark and Matthew; hence he does not display
the same bitterness towards Jews and Pharisees. A Greek atmosphere
pervades the book and it forms a sort of bridge to the Fourth Gospel.
It was written at the beginning of the second Christian century.
According to Papias (see p. 75) Mark, the disciple of Peter,
wrote "accurately all that he remembered of the words and deeds
of Christ, but not in order." This lack of order survives in all the
Gospels which used this early source. Therefore it is difficult to
give a complete life of Jesus, not so much because of scarcity or
credibility of material, but because we do not know the chronological
order of his sayings or actions. The material was handed down by
the Apostles as they recalled it at the moment, and this material was
arranged later by their disciples, the Evangelists, according to their
(the Evangelists') liking and religious aims (not, of course, delib-
erately, but because to them the chief object in writing was not his-
torical or biographical, but religious).
But to cast wholesale doubt on the historicity of the Synoptic
Gospels becomes more impossible the more widely we study all the
branches of Judaism during the period of the Second Temple. Not-
withstanding all the efforts of the authors of the Gospels to stress
SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS 127
the great opposition between Jesus and Pharisaic Judaism, every step
he took, everything he did, every word he spoke, all recall to us—
chiefly by confirmation though sometimes by contradiction—the
Palestine of his time and contemporary Jewish life and Pharisaic
teaching.
It is no matter whether his acts, his parables or his arguments
support or do not support some Halakha, Haggada or Midrash: in
any case they cannot be understood without a knowledge of the
Oral Law as it was in the days of Hillel and Shammai.
In consequence of the results of Gospel literary criticism, of
study of the life of Jesus and of knowledge of contemporary Judaism,
the mystical and dogmatic atmosphere which enveloped Jesus is
removed, and we now know what in the Gospels to accept and what
to reject, what is early and what is late, what the Evangelists uncon-
sciously attributed to Jesus owing to their living under the influence
of the post-Pauline Church, and what, still unconsciously, they have
preserved of Jesus' national Jewish features.
Only after such a process of selection can we come to recognize
the historical Jesus, the Jewish Jesus, the Jesus who could have
arisen out of none other than Jewish surroundings, but whom the
Jews, from certain historical and personal reasons which we shall
understand later, could not receive as their Messiah nor his teaching
as the way of redemption.
SECOND BOOK
THE PERIOD
GENERAL REMARKS
[Virtually all the books so f a r cited touch on the political, economic

and religious conditions in the time of Jesus. We give here only the
more important works which give special attention to the subject: (In
Hebrew) : Yitzhaq Isaac Halevy, "Doroth ha-Rishonim," III 1 (from
the end of the Maccabsean period till the Roman Procurators), Frank-
furt-a.-Main, 1906; Z'eb Yaabetz, Tol'doth Yisrael, pt. 5 (from Herod
to the Destruction of the Temple), Cracow, 1904. (In German): H.
Graetz, "Geschichte der Juden," I I I ι6, Leipzig, 1905; E. Schürer,
"Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi," Bd. I‫־‬III,
4 Aufl. Leipzig, 1901-07; A. Schlatter, "Israels Geschichte von Alexander
dem Grossen bis Hadrian," Stuttgart, 1900; J. Wellhausen, "Israelitische
und jüdische Geschichte," 5 Aufl. Berlin, 1905. (In French) : J. Salvador,
"Histoire de la domination Romaine en Judée," Paris, 1847; Ε. Renan,
"Histoire du peuple d'Israël," T. 5, Paris, 1893; J. Juster, "Les Juifs
dans l'Empire Romain," T. 1-2, Paris, 1914.]
Before proceeding to the life of Jesus, a general idea must first

be given of the period in which he was born and in which he lived
and laboured, that is to say, the political, economic and religious con-
ditions of Palestine and the Jews in the days of Jesus.
Some preliminary remarks are further called for :
(1) It is only possible here to give a general idea of contem-
porary conditions : to go into details would demand more space than
is devoted to the entire life of Jesus. Also it would then have been
frequently necessary to return to the same things in the course of
the detailed events of Jesus' life and teachings, involving tedious
repetition; conditions are treated in detail only when this is called
for in Jesus' personal history.
(2) Without presuming to settle the vexed question: what is
the foundation of history and what its superstructure, whether
economic conditions are fundamental and the political and spiritual
life merely matters built thereon (as the school of materialistic
historians suppose), or whether, on the contrary, the essence of
history is the political and spiritual life for which economic conditions
are but a preparation—we think it right here to speak first of the
political life and afterwards of the economic and spiritual conditions.
The political conditions of Palestine in Jesus' time were occasioned
not so much by internal facts as by external, i.e., by the forces of
the Roman legions. Besides Judaea Rome had conquered innumerable
i2q
other states having entirely different economic conditions ; therefore
economic conditions arising out of internal development were not
the deciding factors in creating the political position which resulted
from the intrusion of an external power. So a description of the
political life precedes that of the economic and spiritual life.
(3) Those who write on the life of Jesus, or the history of
Christianity, or what Christian scholars call "The History of New
Testament Times," usually begin with the war of Antiochus, the
dawn of the Maccabaean period, and end with the war of Hadrian,
the revolt of Bar Kokhbah ; and, certainly, for the right understand-
ing of Christianity, to account for the internal development of Jesus'
teaching and its external expansion from the time of Paul, a
knowledge of the complete history of the Jews from Judas Maccabasus
to Bar Kokhbah, is important.
But to understand the rise of Jesus and his teaching it is enough
to have a thorough knowledge of the Herodian age, or at most of
the period from Pompey's conquest till the Destruction of the Temple.
It was not the might of the Maccabees nor their wars and victories
which caused the appearance of the suffering Messiah, but the
political collapse which began with Pompey's conquest and continued
until the Destruction, a collapse which, in Herod's time, was masked
with a veneer of pomp and splendour, but which, in the days of his
sons and the Roman Procurators, was unmasked in all its dreadful
reality.
Therefore we are here concerned merely with a general con-
spectus of the events immediately following the death of Salome-
Alexandra (the queen Shelom-Zion), events which inevitably brought
in their train an utter despair of political ambitions. We shall only
make passing reference to the Maccabasan victories in the time of
John Hyrcanus, Judas Aristobulus and Alexander Jannaeus.
(4) In speaking of economic conditions we shall endeavour
to restrict ourselves to facts bearing on the period between Pompey
and the Destruction, and if facts are adduced from an earlier or
later period these will only be those which, by their nature, are not
subject to rapid variations (such as geography, climate and natural
products). Unlike political conditions, which are influenced by ex-
ternal factors, economic conditions change but slowly ; and in ancient
times—and generally in the East—economic conditions are a more
stable and persistent factor than in modern times and in European
countries.
(5) In dealing with spiritual conditions we ignore those of the
Hellenistic Jews, whether outside Palestine or within its borders,
whether in Egypt or in Hellenized Palestinian towns. To understand
Christianity, i.e., the teachings of Paul and his successors, and to
understand the victory and growth of Christianity during its first
two hundred years, a knowledge of Hellenistic Judaism is very
necessary since it, alone, accounts for the origin of the Trinity and
SECOND BOOK: THE PERIOD 131
the "Word" as Son of God, and the introduction of Greek elements
into the Jewish Nazarene system, as well as the wonderful expansion
of the new faith. This last, especially, could never have been
possible but for the adherence of large numbers of Hellenized Jews
who had become far removed from their original Hebrew manner of
life and knew nothing of the Hebrew language and its original
literature.
But, on the other hand, the person of Jesus, his entire teaching
and his works and life are, from their advantageous or disadvan-
tageous sides, wholly explicable by means of Hebrew, Palestinian
Judaism alone—by the Judaism of the Scriptures and by the Judaism
of the Pharisees and early Tannaim, together with the Palestinian
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (excluding the Hellenistic Pseud-
epigrapha). This will appear in the account which we give of Jesus.
This same fact was recognized by Chwolsohn, who, however, goes
too far and excludes even the Palestinian Apocrypha and Pseud-
epigrapha·} Nothing whatever, therefore, will be said of Hellenistic
Judaism since our concern is the history of Jesus, not of Christianity.
(6) It is also of paramount importance not to confuse periods.
Christian scholars and also most Jewish scholars 2 are accustomed
to describe the spiritual condition of the Jews in the time of Jesus
not only on the basis of the writings of Josephus, but also on the
basis of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha and the Talmudic and
Midrashic literature. And, indeed, it is not possible to avoid doing so.
But at the same time it should not be forgotten that between Ben
Sira and the Midrash Ve-Yoshua there is an interval of at least
twelve hundred years, and that even from the time of Jesus and the
completion of the Talmud there is an interval of seven hundred
years.
It is impossible for ideas to remain stationary all that length of
time. How could the religious and moral life rest unchanged for a
thousand, or even five hundred years? To adduce evidence from the'
sayings of some Babylonian Amora as to the views of the Pharisees
of Jesus' day is as valid as to adduce evidence from St. Augustine
as to the views of Jesus; and to adduce evidence from such a late
Midrash as the Pesikta Rabbati, or the Midrash Va-Yoshua about
first century Judaism is tantamount to studying the ideas of Jesus
in the writings of Thomas Aquinas.
It should be further borne in mind that the Destruction of the
Temple, and especially the collapse of the Bar Kokhba rebellion, tore
the very soul of the Jews and effected a complete breach in their
religious and moral consciousness.
1
,
A n exception is the Jewish scholar, A. Büchler, who, in his writings
which we have already cited (p. 106) repeatedly emphasises the marked
difference between the ideas of the Jews before and after the Bar Kokhba
revolt. ^
Yet another change came about owing to the transferring of the
religious centre from Palestine to Babylon (after the time of Rab
Yochanan). There we must, at all costs, avoid the error of depicting
the spiritual conditions of Jesus' day in colours derived from late
Talmudic literature.
Even the Book of Ben Sira should be employed with caution;
for, in the first place, it is not consonant with the Pharisaic spirit,
and, in the second, it is two hundred years too early (or even three
hundred years, if, as some suppose, the book describes Simon the
First) ; and in that interval there occurred such portentous events as
the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Maccabaean War, the
struggles between the Sadducees and Pharisees, the conquest of
Palestine by Pompey, the rule of the Herods, the Procurators in
Judaea, and such men as Simeon ben Shetah, Hillel and Shammai.
Yet we should avoid the other extreme which would ignore alto-
gether such earlier sources as Ben Sira, or such later sources as the
Talmud. After all, beliefs in ancient times never changed completely
or easily gave place to new beliefs. Ben Sira was still in popular
use as late as the tenth century, since it is often quoted in the Talmud
and other Jewish literature and in Hebrew manuscripts unearthed
from the Cairo Geniza ; therefore his moral axioms must have been
traditionally current among the people of Jesus' time and must have
influenced him too.
As for the Talmud, it is possible to distinguish early ideas from
late. Special attention must be paid to the teachings prior to Jesus
and contemporary with him (such as the sayings of Simeon ben
Shetah, Shemaiah and Abtalion, Hillel and Shammai) ; and it is
also possible to take into account the teachings of the Tannaim who
flourished immediately after the Destruction and until the time of
Bar Kokhba: the majority of them had seen the Temple and were
almost contemporary with Jesus.
Such were R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus,
R. Yehoshua ben Hananiah, R. Eliezer ben Zadok, R. Ishmael ben
Elisha, and even R. Akiba ben Yoseph. But the sayings of the
Tannaim who had never seen the Temple, and of those who taught
after the fall of Bar Kokhbah and after the transference of the
religious centre from Judaea to Galilee—these may only be utilised
when there is a probability that the late Tanna is quoting a religious
opinion or tradition which he had received from his early teacher or
which had been preserved by popular tradition from a distant past.
Still greater care must be taken with the Amoraim (though they, too,
make occasional use of earlier opinions). But as for the very late
Midrashim it is always possible that they have been indirectly influ-
enced by Christianity. 3
The same applies not only to ideas and beliefs but also to religious
"See David Castelli, "II Messia secondo gli Ebrei," Firenze, 1874, PP·
222-4. M
SECOND BOOK: THE PERIOD 133
customs and even to many of the rulings which we find in the Mishnah
(and, needless to say, in the later literature as well). Many of these
were not observed at all in the time of Jesus, and those which were
in force were not then hedged about with the same precautions and
restrictions, and so did not bear so heavily on the people. So long
as the life of the state persisted it was not possible endlessly to
increase the burdensomeness of the Torah.
This applies to the rulings relating to the uncleanness of the
ordinary people ( 4 , ( ‫ע ם ־ ה א ר ץ‬ ‫טומאת‬ and the laws dealing with
punishment. 5 From among the undisputed capital sentences referred
to in the Talmud, one only conforms to the rules laid down in the
Mishna (the death-sentence on the son of Simeon ben Shetah), and
that one itself is of doubtful historicity. It is, of course, easy to
argue that in all the instances given it was a Sadducasan court of
law which was responsible or (as when Yehudah ben Tabbai killed
a false witness, or when Simeon ben Shetah hanged eighty women
in Ashkelon) that they were temporary measures. 6 But while the
Second Temple stood, the Sanhédrin which put to death one man in
seventy years was not yet called "bloodthirsty" ( 7 ,(‫ חובאנית‬nor were
the numerous and complicated rules (even those given in Tractate
Sanhédrin alone) about capital punishment yet carried out in practice.
To take one example: according to this Mishna,8 "even if the
prisoner say, '1 have something to plead in my own defence,' they
take him back to the Court—it may be even four or five times, if
only there be some ground for his assertions." Obviously the mean-
ing of the passage is that they may keep on bringing the prisoner
back again till the very last moment.
Yet, side by side with this, we find a saying of R. Hisda, sup-
ported by an ancient Baraita, that "when a man is going out to be
killed they suffer him to drink a grain of frankincense in a cup of
wine to deaden his senses." . . . the Baraita adds, "Wealthy women
of Jerusalem used to contribute these things and bring them." 9
This Baraita bears every sign of an early date in so far as it is
describing a historic fact. I f , however, the rule that the condemned
man could return four or even five times to plead fresh points in his
4
See Büchler, Der galiläische Am-Haare2 des zweiten Jahrhunderts, Vienna,
1906, pp. 41-46. •4
6
See Haqiroth Talmudiyoth by M. L. Lilienblum (Collected works, I
259-292). -4
e
A s does Yitzhaq Halevy in his Doroth-ha-Rishonim, I ii (Frankfurt-a.-
Main, 1906). Thus he decides in every instance where it is impossible to
explain away outstanding examples by abundant quotation or by crude
attacks on the best Jewish and non-Jewish scholars. But it is impossible
to argue with one who believes that the complete oral Law was finally com-
plete in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah; his researches are simply a result
of the necessity imposed on our orthodoxy of antedating everything.
‫ז‬
8
Makkoth I 10. 4
Sank. VI 1 . 4
* Sank. 43a. 4
defence, was in force at the time when the Jews could conduct
capital cases, how was it possible to carry out the custom of giving‫־‬
him "a grain of frankincense to deaden his senses?"
The general conclusion to be drawn from the account of Josephus
is that many of the regulations about the Sabbath, the behaviour of
kings, the Sanhédrin, and the like, which occupy so many of the
Talmudic tractates, were never in force such time as the Jews lived
a more or less normal life, in their own land, and with a certain
autonomy, at least in internal matters. 10
The above points will be borne in mind in the following three
sections. Every effort will be made to keep distinct early and late
evidence, and also to distinguish between what was actually in force
and what was only later enjoined by the Talmud, when independence
was no longer possible, and when it did not matter if they ignored
reality so long as they could fence in the Law and find support for
their rulings from the Scriptures.
10
This same idea—that we may not deduce from the Mishnah what were
the legal punishments and judicial procedure of the law courts contem-
porary with Jesus—has recently been put forward also by a Christian
scholar: H. Danby,^The Bearing of the Rabbinicial Criminal Code on the
Jewish Trial Narratives in the Gospels (Journal of Theological Studies, X X I
8, October, 1919, pp. 51-76).‫^־‬
I. POLITICAL CONDITIONS 1
The Maccabaeans built up a Jewish Palestine : the Herodian kings
destroyed it.
Those Jews who had returned in the time of Cyrus and Darius
and, later, in the time of Artaxerxes, only built up Judaea, a tiny
Judaea which never equalled in extent or importance the pre-Exilic
kingdom of Judaea. The coast towns were all of them Hellenic and
developed into independent republics; even Ekron and Gezer only
became part of Judaea in the Maccabaean period; the towns of
Transjordania and Samaria were independent; Galilee ("Galilee of
the Gentiles") was wholly separated from Judaea and its Jewish
inhabitants were so few that, according to the Book of Maccabees,
Judas Maccabaeus transferred all the Galilaean Jews, their wives,
children and belongings, to Judaea to save them from their foes. 2
So insignificant a state was Judaea that it was indistinguishable
within the great Persian Empire and even within the satrapy of
Transpotamia (Syria). Those Greek writers who were contem-
porary with the Maccabees scarcely knew of the existence of Judaea :
Syria they knew and Philistia they knew, but not Judaea. Herodotus,
painstaking though he was, never mentions it and only refers to "the
Syrians of Palestine" (ο! Σ υ pol της Παλαιστίνης).
Thus for three hundred and seventy-six years, from Zerubbabel
to Jonathan Maccabaeus (537-161 B.C.E.), Judaea remained a negligi-
ble state. 8 But after that, the Maccabees not only raised the small
Persian province into an independent kingdom, but, out of Judsea,
fashioned the Jewish Palestine. Jonathan annexed Ekron and the
three Samaritan districts ( νόμοι ), Ephraim, Lydd and Ramathaim,
while his brother Simon annexed Jaffa, Gezer and Beth-Zur; but
those who were mainly responsible for extending Judaea into a Jewish
Palestine were the three Maccabaeans, John Hyrcanus, Judas Aristo-
bulus and Alexander Jannaeus. Jewish history has been written by
Christians or by Jews who admired "culture" rather than politics, and
they could not forgive the "lay" character of John Hyrcanus (at the
1
For relevant literature see p. 129. ‫^־‬
a
I Mac. 5, 23 ; see Schürer op. cit. 1 * 183-184. He, however, exaggerates
the trustworthiness of the literal statements of the Book of Maccabees;
there certainly were still many Jews in Galilee, and from them (and not
from foreigners only) originated the populous Jewish settlement in Galilee
(see B. Meistermann, Capharnaüm et Bethsaïde, Paris, 1921, pp. 256-7 n.).
But the account has a certain value. 4
' On the state of Judaea throughout this protracted period see J. Klausner,
Historia Israelii, I 130-300. Λ
Ϊ35
end of his reign), or of Judas Aristobulus, and specially of Alexander
Jannaeus ; consequently Jewish history has never yet rightly appraised
the importance of the victories of these three Maccabaeans for the
history of the Second Temple or the history of Israel as a whole—
and perhaps for the entire history of humanity.
But for these victories a Jewish Palestine could never have come
into being : the Jewish state must have remained a tiny district called
"Judaea," lost within the greater expanse of Syria or the smaller
expanse of "Palestine."
It was through these Maccabaeans alone that the borders of Judaea
were enlarged and "Philistia" became the "Land of Israel." John
Hyrcanus conquered Samaria, Edom and part of Moab, and also,
perhaps, Lower Galilee; he converted the Edomites to Judaism and
settled Jews in Samaria and Moab. Judas Aristobulus, who assumed
the crown but reigned only one year (conjointly with his brother
Antigonus), succeeded during his brief reign in conquering and
Judaising a part of Galilee—apparently Upper Galilee,4 while Alex-
ander Jannaeus completed what his father John Hyhcanus, and his
brother Judas Aristobulus, had begun. He conquered Gadara,
Amathus, Pella, Dium, Hippos, Gerasa, Gaulana, Seleucia, the forti-
fied city of Gamala across Jordan, and the towns of Philistia which
had been completely Hellenised: Rafia, 5 Anthedon and Gaza.
Thenceforward Palestine ("Philistia") ceased to exist; it was
called "Judaea" by non-Jews and "Eretz Israel" (the Land of Israel)
by the Jews. But this did not content Alexander Jannaeus : he sub-
dued such parts of Moab as had not been conquered by his father,
Gilead, and, before he died, laid siege to the town of Ragaba across
Jordan, which place was captured immediately after his death. H e
thus enlarged the insignificant Judaea until its boundaries were virtu-
ally identical with those of David and Solomon.
These defeated cities were all compulsorily Judaised or repopu-
lated by Jews, and those few places which refused to accept Judaism
were mercilessly destroyed. From the moral side, needless to say, it
is impossible to justify such forcible conversion at the hands of kings
and rulers whose forefathers had endured such religious persecution,
persecution which itself had compelled the Maccabaeans to resort to
arms. But only by such methods were the Jews able to secure their
position beyond the confines of Judsea and lay the foundation of a
considerable kingdom such as should stand in no fear of the heathen
who surrounded these believers in the unity of God, and these who
preserved the moral teaching of the Prophets. But for the heroism
*It is difficult to conclude from Josephus' remarks (Ant. X I I I xi 3)
referring to the conquest and conversion of "a part of the Ituraeans" (quot-
ing Strabo), that Judas Aristobulus, during his short and tragic reign, was
able to conquer and convert the whole of Galilee, as Schürer supposes ( I
275-6). But he certainly did this to part of Galilee (see last note but one).·^
"Written ‫( ר פ י ח‬with heth) and not ‫( ר פ י ח‬with he) as is customary on
tfie ground of the Greek Ραφία. See Schürer I I 4 108. •<4
POLITICAL CONDITIONS 137
of the Maccabees the heathen must, finally, have swallowed up the
Jews.
Only by such conquests and forced conversions could Judaism
be established in its ancestral home and become a power, strong
politically and socially, so that even the Romans, great conquerors
though they were, were forced to take them seriously ; otherwise the
Jews must have remained a negligible quantity both in religion and
civilization. Such, then, constitutes what the great Maccabaean
conquerors accomplished for Judaism, and, therefore, for the whole
of humanity as well !
But all that the Maccabaeans built up was destroyed by the
Romans and by Herod "the Great," who, by the help of the Romans,
sat on the throne of Judaea.
The wife of Alexander Jannaeus, Queen Shelom-Zion, 6 did not
enlarge the Maccabaean realm, but neither did she cause it to decrease.
In her reign matters remained stationary instead of advancing as they
did, without exception, during the reign of all the Maccabaeans who
had gone before her. 7
But the period of deterioration set in quickly. The sons of Alex-
ander Jannaeus and Shelom-Zion, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II,
were rivals for the throne. When Hyrcanus the elder would have
given way and remained content with the high priesthood, Antipater
the Edomite, the father of Herod, appeared on the scene and per-
suaded him to withdraw from his conciliatory attitude. The king of
Arabia, Aretas, first intervened and afterwards, the Roman Pompey.
That year (65 B.C.E.), when Pompey's legate Scaurus intervened in
the civil war, marked the beginning of the destruction of the Land
of Israel.
For the next thirty years, until Herod sat on the throne of the
Maccabees, we witness a series of long, sanguinary wars (65-37
B.C.E.). These wars, combined with Herod's tyranny and, after
his death, the absolute power assumed in Judaea by the Romans,
were instrumental in destroying the best powers of the Jewish nation,
weakening it as a state, and stirring up both political Messiahs and
that conception of a Messiahship "not of this world," which played
on the popular mental confusion in Judaea and, as we shall see later,
also affected the mind of Jesus in the earlier part of his career.
These wars are almost too many to enumerate ; but each one
entailed the death, in numbers great or small, of part of the nation.
In 65 B.C.E. Aristobulus was defeated by Aretas, king of Arabia.
®In Talmudic and later literature: Shelzion, Shelomzah, Shelomtu, Shal-
minon, Shelomith Alexandra. Cf. Derenbourg, Massa Eretir Yisrael, p. 51
η. ι, and Chwolsohn, op. cit. p. 14 n. 3 ; Schürer, 1 4 287 n. 2. 4
"All the devious arguments alleged against this by Halevy, Doroth
Rishonim, I iii pp. 505-646, are of no avail in face of this outstanding fact
that in the time of Shelom-Zion the country of Judaea was in no way
enlarged, whereas it was continually being increased during the time of her
predecessors. •4
In this war Jews fell on either side since with Aretas were found
Jews who championed the cause of Hyrcanus. 8 In 63 B.C.E. Aristo-
bulus was obliged to accompany the army of Pompey in the latter's
expedition against the Nabatasan Arabs, after which Pompey immedi-
ately attacked Jerusalem. The party of Hyrcanus opened the gates
of Jerusalem to Pompey, but the followers of Aristobulus fortified
themselves within the Temple Mount. Pompey besieged the Temple
for three months, during which time more than a thousand Jews fell
in its defence and in defence of such other parts of the city as had not
been delivered up to him.
When Jerusalem was at last conquered (apparently on the
Day of Atonement, or on one of the Sabbaths in the winter
of 63), there began an orgy of slaughter. The fall of the Temple
was signalized by the death of twelve thousand Jews. 9 The Romans
thereupon commenced to "cut Judah in pieces they took from Judaea
all that the Maccabceans had conquered. The latter had augmented
Judaea into the Land of Israel : the Romans endeavoured to reduce the
Land of Israel once more to Judaea. They took from the Jews all the
coast towns from Rafia to Dor (Δψρα) and the Hellenistic cities of
Transjordania—Gadara, Dium, etc. They also tore away from
Judaea Samaria and Beth-Shean (Scythopolis). They made H y r -
canus ruler of the remnant, depriving him of the title "king" and
leaving him the high priesthood only. Of political rights nothing but
a vague memory was left.
In 57 B.C.E., Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, who was being
taken captive to Rome, escaped on the way and returned to Palestine.
There still remained an affection towards the Maccabaeans in the
hearts of the healthier-minded among the people who still had a long-
ing for freedom, and the fugitive quickly found a following of ten
thousand armed footmen and fifteen thousand horsemen. With this
army he captured the forts built by his predecessors, Alexandrion,
Hyrcania and Machasrus. He lost six thousand men in the battle
against Gabinius' army (which contained Jews of Hyrcanus' party
and Jewish adherents to Rome), and a large number of Jews in
the Roman army must also have been killed.10
Again, when Alexander later escaped to the fortress of Alex-
andrion and was besieged by Gabinius, many Jews were killed.11
Finally, to wipe out all memory alike of the Jewish kingdom and
of the remnants of Jewish political rights (which had dwindled down
to the central organization of the single Higher Upper Sanhédrin in
Jerusalem), Gabinius divided Judasa into five Sanhédrins, each to
control a part of Judaea, namely, Jerusalem, Gezer, Hamath, Jericho
8
Antiq.X I V ii 1. <
9
Antiq.X I V ii 4 ; Wars I vii
10
Wars I viii 3. Antiq. XIV ν 2 states that 3,000 were !killed and as
many captured. A
11
Wars I viii 4. <
and Sepphoris. Thus Jerusalem ceased to be the principal city and
political centre, and became simply a chief provincial town. The
government of the country was broken up into five fragments, ac-
cording to the Roman axiom : Divide et impera.
But the wretched country had not seen the end of disturbances :
the Maccabaeans fought like wild beasts for their throne. In the year
56 Aristobulus—who had graced Pompey's triumphal procession—
escaped from Rome to Judaea, and so great was the love of the
Judasans for this heroic family that he at once found thousands of
supporters It is true that he also found opponents among the
Pharisees, as is apparent from the Psalms of Solomon and from the
fact that when the followers of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus came to
settle their dispute before Pompey there also came "ambassadors from
the people" asking that the powers of the High Priest be restored
together with the theocratic order of pre-Maccabaean times.
But these "ambassadors from the people" were but the delegates
of the priests and elders (‫" חבר והיהודים‬The Association of the Jews")
and the wealthy class: the mass of the people longed for the Macca-
baean dynasty, and any scion of this family found thousands of fol-
lowers prepared to die for him. So Jews in their thousands attached
themselves both to Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, and to Aristo-
bulus himself.. So numerous were they that Aristobulus was com-
pelled to dismiss thousands owing to his inability to arm them. Eight
thousand only did he retain and with these went out to meet the
Romans. 12 Five thousand fell before the Roman attack and a thou-
sand more were killed when Aristobulus took up a fortified position
in Machaerus.
His son, Alexander, despite these heavy defeats, again revolted
and collected a still greater army, so great, indeed, that even after
part of them had deserted through the enticements of Antipater the
Edomite, thirty thousand still remained with him, and of these no
less than ten thousand fell in the battle against Gabinius near Mount
Tabor. 13 Then Gabinius again changed the manner of government
in accordance with the desires of Antipater. 14
Even after Aristobulus had again been taken captive to Rome it
was enough for a certain general named Pitholaus to summon the
people in the name of Aristobulus, and there straightway gathered
under his banner thirty thousand Jews. Thereupon Cassius, after
defeating the Parthians, turned aside to Judaea, captured Tarichaea,
killed Pitholaus and carried thirty thousand Jews into slavery
(53-51 B . C . E . ) .
The civil war broke out in Italy in 49 and lasted about twenty
years, from the day Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon until the death
of Antonius (49-30). Within this period Palestine four times
M
Antiq.
X I V vi 1 ; Wars I viii 6. M
13
Aniiq.
X I V vi 2-3; Wars I viii 7. <
14
Wars I viii 7• •4
changed masters. Owing to the quarrel between Pompey and Julius
Casar, Aristobulus was poisoned and his son, Alexander, put t.0
death. After the battle of Pharsalis and Pompey's death (48)
Hyrcanus (or rather Antipater, since Hyrcanus was but his tool)
went over to the winning party, Julius Caesar.
Antipater was ever one of those who support the stronger side,
and now, to show his devotion to his new master, he did not spare
his Jewish soldiers. In the year 47 he sent three thousand Jews to
help Julius Caesar, and in 45 provided a Jewish troop to support
Caesar's general, Antistius Vetus. For this Jewish blood he was well
rewarded: Caesar made him "Epitropos" (i.e., Procurator or Vice-
regent, a post to which, after Herod, Roman officials were appointed),
and Hyrcanus "Ethnarch" (Chief of the People, in Hebrew
‫)שר־עפ־אל‬. But this latter was only for appearance' sake: the
real government was in Antipator's hands and he appointed his son
Phasael 1 5 Governor of Jerusalem and district, and his son Herod
Governor of Galilee.
The father and his two sons governed tyranically. First they tried
to free themselves from the danger which threatened them from the
mass of the people who longed for Maccabaean rule. After the
violent deaths of Aristobulus and his son Alexander the people no
longer possessed strong Maccabaean leadership under which to rise
up against the Romans and their Edomite minions; so they formed
themselves into guerilla bands in the Jerusalem and Galilee districts,
hiding in the mountains, and avenged the blood of the people that had
been shed and the wounded national honour, on the Romans and their
supporters who had betrayed Israel—the confederates of Antipater
and his sons.16
Such patriotic "terrorists" are always forthcoming when a nation's
sufferings reach the highest pitch and when this nation is unable
forcibly to recover its freedom by open and decisive warfare. Such
bitter-minded warriors are always extreme nationalists whose feelings
overcome their intelligence, and who are prepared to accept martyr-
dom at all times on the national altar, their hearts burning with a
sacred fire—the fire of national love—but who have no clear plan of
rebellion. "Council and heroism for war :" "heroism" they have and
to spare, but "council" they have none.
After long, sanguinary wars and disorders in the entire political
life, desperation sets in under its two unhappy aspects: a feeble,
" N o t "Phazael" (with sain) as it is usually written in Hebrew. In a
Nabataean inscription a son of Aretas, king of Arabia, is called "Phatsael"
(see Schürer, I 4 p. 739 and n · 34)· The meaning of Phatsael is "God has
redeemed and brought relief" (like Padiel, Pedaiah), as in Ps. 144, 10:
"Who freeth ( ‫ ) ה פ ו צ ה‬David his servant from the evil sword." The tsade
is transliterated by sigma in Greek, following the pronunciation of tsad in
Arabic; hence the transliteration "Phasael."‫^־‬
" For greater detail see Graetz, I I I 1 6 in many places.
passive despair ending in abject slavery and a mute acceptance of
the new condition ; and an active, bitter-minded despair, the despair
of those who have nothing to lose, the despair of nervously dis-
ordered, excited fanatics, who put their confidence in a hoped-for
miracle and are capable of the utmost cruelty in their bitterness of
desperation. "Let my soul die with the Philistines," is their feeling
as they carry out their atrocities, killing every stranger and every
suspect they encounter, moved only by the fiery vengeance blazing
within them, plundering and ravaging suspected villages and caravans
to find themselves means of maintenance.
The foreign tyrants who hold by force the reins of government
could only see, in these zealous patriots, brigands and bandits (like the
Boxers in China, or the Combitadjis in Macedonia and Albania before
the last war), and sometimes not without reason, for in their ex-
cessive lust for revenge they did not always distinguish the innocent
from the guilty. Having no organization nor official status they were
not soldiers of a regular army ; they had no fixed control above them
and often indulged in brigandage. Yet they were essentially the true
defenders of the country, fighting a guerilla warfare for national free-
dom against the foreign conquerors and against the traitors from
among their own countrymen who were subject to these foreigners
and helped them.
The troops of Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan were
at first made up of such "sicarii." Of the same type were the
"brigands" and "bandits" who, especially in Galilee, combined to-
gether in large numbers and, under the leadership of Hezekiah the
Galilaean, became a "mighty host." This same Hezekiah and most of
his band were killed out of hand by Herod without any trial, and this
aroused against him the indignation of the people of Jerusalem who
compelled the feeble Hyrcanus to summon Herod to stand for
judgment before the Sanhédrin.
Herod came, supported by a large body of soldiers, and in all his
behaviour during the trial showed himself not the culprit but the
prince and ruler. The elders of the Sanhédrin were afraid of him
and dared not condemn him to the death to which he was right-
fully liable. One only among them, Shemayah or Shammai
(Σαμ-έας),17 dared to tell the truth openly to Herod, Hyrcanus and
the Sanhédrin, with the result that Herod was compelled to escape
lest the Sanhédrin, in the end, should take courage and pass the
sentence which he had incurred (47-46 B.C.E.). This shows what
was the actual nature of Hezekiah's "brigands" and what was the
attitude adopted towards them by the people as a whole and also
the leading people in Jerusalem.
It is important for our subject to take special note of the fact
11
Scholars are still uncertain whether Σαμέα* and ΠωΧΧίωρ are Shemayah
and Abtalion or Shammai and Hillel (see Doroth Rishonim, I iii 40-49),
but the difference in the present instance is not material. ·^
that these "brigand" bands were very numerous in Galilee, which
was far removed from the political and religious centre, and that
ignorance, disorder and injustice were there most frequent. Galilee
was far more suited than Judaea for the nurturing of unruly, unbal-
anced zealots. This affords an explanation why Jesus (who, as we
shall see later, regarded himself for a time as a Messiah of the usual
type) should arise in Galilee rather than elsewhere, and especially in
Galilee find disciples and admirers.
When Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C.E., Judaea fell into the
hands of Cassius who exploited it to the utmost. When he left, in
the year 42, fighting broke out in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem
which cost Phasael, the governor of Jerusalem and brother of Herod,
the loss of many men. Mattathias (as he is called in his coins)
Antigonus II, the second son of Aristobulus I I and son-in-law of
Ptolemy Menaeus of Chalcis, then with the help of the latter and
Marion, governor of Tyre, endeavoured to regain the throne of his
fathers. He, too, immediately found himself surrounded by Jewish
supporters. Herod went out to meet him and defeated him, and,
naturally, not without bloodshed.
This defeat of a member of the Maccabaean family did not greatly
please the people. They had wearied of the harsh rule of the sons of
Antipater, and after Antonius and Octavius had defeated Brutus
and Cassius (in the year 42), a Jewish delegation presented itself
before Antonius at Bithynia in 41, and complained against Herod
and Phasael. But Herod placated Antonius with a bribe and the
delegation was unsuccessful.
In the same year the Jews sent a second delegation, numbering a
hundred men, to Antonius at Daphne, near Antioch. They also com-
plained against the two brothers. This again had no effect : Hyrcanus
was afraid to say anything disparaging about Herod and Phasael,
and the result of the good things which he told about them in
Antonius' presence was that Antonius appointed them Tetrarchs, and
Hyrcanus lost even the shadow of power that he once had.
Still the Jews did not rest content : the iron yoke of the Edomites
was intolerable. They sent yet a third delegation to Antonius at
Tyre, comprising no less than a thousand men who, in the name oi
the entire people, protested against the rule of Herod and Phasael.
But Antonius was again heavily bribed by the brothers, and com-
manded the members of the delegation to be put to death! The
delegates were aware of this terrible order, yet, even so, were unwill-
ing to return before lodging their petition. The Romans then attacked
them and many were killed, wounded or imprisoned, and the rest
escaped home. On the people's protesting against this unheard of
atrocity Antonius ordered the death of the prisoners ! 1 8
The following year the Parthians attacked Syria and Mattathias
Antigonus tried to gain their help in restoring to him his ancestral
™Antiq. XIV xiii 2; Wars I xii 6-7. 4
throne with the promise (which either he did not fulfil or which
his enemies invented against him) of a thousand talents of gold and
five hundred women. The Parthians agreed for political reasons
(since the Parthians were ever the enemies of Rome and its allies)
and sent a large army to help him. But before this army arrived,
Mattathias Antigonus found, as did all the Maccabaeans, supporters
from among the Jews.
These formed a formidable army and laid siege to Jerusalem.
The followers of Herod and Phasael went to meet them, but most
of the people within the city were on the side of the Maccabaeans,
and the fighting was carried on in the streets of Jerusalem itself.
Those who favoured Antigonus burnt the supporters of Phasael and
Herod in their houses, for which Herod took dire vengeance and
put many of them to death. It was near the feast of Pentecost
and crowds of people had come to Jerusalem and all joined them-
selves to the army of Antigonus. The Galilaeans, too, supported
Antigonus against Herod. 19
When Phasael and Hyrcanus I I were captured and Herod was
forced to escape out of Jerusalem, so great was the Jews' hatred of
him that, according to Josephus, "the Jews, more even than the
Parthians, harassed him in his flight and fought against him for a
distance of sixty-nine stadia from the city." 20
Mattathias Antigonus was made king of Judaea—the last king
of pure Maccabaean stock (40-37). Then began the fierce war
between him and Herod which ended in the latter being made king.
This war between the Jewish Maccabaean king supported by the
Parthians and the Jewish Edomite king supported by the Romans,
drenched the Land of Israel in blood and enfeebled it to an extreme
limit. The Parthians looted Jerusalem and its neighbourhood as
well as many other cities of Palestine, and Herod also plundered
wherever he saw fit.21
Not only did Herod fight against the troops of Antigonus that
were found in Galilee, but he also began to kill at sight those
"brigands" and "sicarii," i.e., the zealot patriots who were hidden
away in the caves and mountains. Even Josephus, despite the fact
that he labels them as "brigands," thus describes their great moral
courage: "A certain aged Galilaean, one of the fanatics, had seven
sons, and when they would have obeyed Herod's command and left
their cave, he stood at the mouth of the cave and killed them all one
by one; and when Herod held out his hand and promised not to
punish him, the old man only reviled the king for his Edomite origin
and threw himself over the precipice." 22 So great was the hatred
19
Wars I xiii 4. <
70
Wars I xiii 8.
11
Wars I xv 6. A
M
Antiq. X I V xv 4-5; Wars I xvi 4. The present writer considers this
hero to be identical with "Taxo and his seven sons" who "came to a cave
in the country and preferred to die" referred to in the Assumption of Moses,
of the zealots against the Edomite slave, and so great their faith in
the Maccabaean house! Shortly afterwards we find the Galilaeans
drowning Herod's sympathisers in the lake of Galilee.23
Such were the Galilaeans near the time of Jesus, and such the
state of Galilee forty years before his birth! There could not have
been better material for a messianic movement.
In the course of these wars an incalculable number of Jews were
killed, especially in Galilee.24 Later, the war broke out again in
Samaria against Pappus, the general of Antigonous. Even Josephus
is moved by Herod's cruelty in this war. 25 Following these bloody
victories Herod besieged Jerusalem ; but so strongly did he realize the
Maccabaean popularity that, in the course of the war itself, he found
it incumbent upon him to marry one of the Maccabaean family and
so attach to himself some of their royal prestige. In the year 37 he
interrupted the siege of Jerusalem, went to Samaria and there married
Mariamne, the daughter of Hyrcanus II's daughter and Aristobulus
II's son.
H e then resumed the siege. Large numbers were killed in the
course of it, and the long siege culminated in a final attack, the terrible
nature of which appalled even Herod's stony heart. When the
Romans entered the city they spared none, men, women and children,
old and young, tender girls and aged women ; in the houses, markets,
streets and even in the Temple they slaughtered human beings like
sheep. A blind murderous fury overcame the Romans and the sol-
diers of Herod. Josephus tells us that "Herod's soldiers did their
utmost that not a man from the other side be left alive." 26
It is needless to dilate on the pillage and violence carried out in
the city; it reached such a pitch that Herod intervened and asked
Sosius, the Roman general : "Would the Romans deprive the city of
all its inhabitants and possessions and leave me a king of the
wilderness ?"
Such was indeed the case. By the time that Herod "the Great"
came to the throne (37 B.C.E.) not only the royal city, Jerusalem,
but the entire Land of Israel, was a wilderness. During the thirty
years which had elapsed from the death of the queen Shelom-Zion
till Herod became all-powerful (67-37) more than a hundred
thousand Jews were killed. And these were the pick of the nation,
the healthiest, mainly the young men, and the most enthusiastic, who
had refused to suffer the foreign yoke.
Thus the nation was enfeebled to the last degree. It no longer
contained men of bold courage for whom political freedom was more
precious than life ; there remained only those whom we have described
ix 1-7 (see also Assumption of Moses by A. S. Kaminetsky, Hashiloach, XV
47-48). ..<«
anAntiq.χ·
λ
xv 10 ; Wars I xvii 2. 4
34Antiq. XIV
3dAntiq. XIV xv 6-7 and 11-12.^
XIV xv 12. ^
Χ Wars I xviii 2. 4
—•the bitter-minded and the fervid of faith who did not shrink from
martyrdom for the sake of the Law. And even these, ere long,
Herod had crushed by force.
There remained no longer the possibility of a great, popular rising
which should venture forth, sword in hand, to meet the usurper, a
foreigner by birth and depending upon foreigners for support.
Josephus refers to the same fact : "Owing to perpetual wars the Jews
were no longer capable of revolting against anybody." 27 None re-
mained save companies of lurking patriot-terrorists who had fire in
their hearts but no clear plan in their minds ; and those others who
would fight for the faith, but, while their purpose was clear, could
not rise to the level of political activity because "their kingdom was
not of this world."
Both alike were a danger to Herod in that they were inflammable
material which, when the time was ripe, "would also be added to his
enemies," although in themselves they did not constitute a political
factor. But such was the best material for messianic movements,
whether political or religio-spiritual ; and such also was the material
out of which was formed the party which supported Jesus.
Of Herod "the Great" a certain historian has remarked : " H e
stole along to his throne like a fox, he ruled like a tiger and died like
a dog." And how true this epigram is ! W e have seen how Herod
possessed himself of the throne after hedging about with deceit the
weak Hyrcanus. And when he came to play the king he began to
ravage and tear like a wild beast.
First he tried to wipe out all memory of the Maccabaean house
and the noble families which supported it. So very strong was the
widespread popularity of the Maccabaeans that, according to the
spontaneous evidence of Strabo, "it was impossible to compel the Jews
to recognize Herod as king after he had been proclaimed in place of
Antigonus ; torture could not move the Jews to hail him as king ; so
highly did they value the former king (Antigonus)." 28 This popu-
larity must, therefore, be forcibly suppressed. So Herod persuaded
Antonius to behead Antigonus—a thing which the Romans had never
done before to any king. By this means he wished to prove that
Antigonus II, a king, the son of a king, and the grandson of a king,
was reckoned in the eyes of the Romans as a simple brigand.
We shall see later how, one after another, Herod destroyed every
member of the Maccabaean royal family and all their kindred.
After he came to the throne, Herod was not the cause of much
bloodshed in war. Despite his lust for blood and his military skill,
he did not, from fear of the Romans, organize any wars except those
with the Arabs in the years 32-31 B.C.E. and at the end of his life,
about the year 9. At least, during his reign Jewish blood was not
‫מ‬
Antiq. X V I I I i ι. «
®Josephus quotes this statement by the famous Greek writer in Antiq.
XV i 2.<
shed to the same degree as in the thirty preceding years of warfare.
Yet his efforts to choke the national spirit and the remnant of internal
freedom effected a loss to the nation greater far than that effected
by all the wars in the world.
Yitzhaq Isaac Halevy, the author of "Doroth ha-Rishonim," has
devoted a volume of many hundred pages to the period of Herod and
his sons.29 He does his best to depict Herod as one who, all his life,
aimed at being a "king of the Gentiles" and not a "king of the
Jews." His arguments are not very new and are somewhat per-
spicuous. Herod's many activities for the benefit of the Hellenistic
cities, the magnificent buildings which he set up there, the many
donations he gave them, the immense sums which he expended on
the Greek games—these easily create the impression that Herod was
minded to be a "king of the Gentiles," especially when we set over
against them the objections of the Jews to such actions.
But in spite of this, and perhaps even precisely because of this,
the impression is not correct. Josephus had the same idea: he, too,
was astonished that Herod laboured more for the good of the Gentiles
than for the good of his Jewish subjects.
Yet Josephus gives a clear reason for this. Herod's most con-
spicuous trait was his appetite for fame. He knew that whatever
he might do for the good of his subjects would be a thing taken for
granted and for which no fame would accrue. H e knew, too, that
the Jews would never forgive his foreign origin, his filching the crown
from the Maccabees, his unjustifiable bloodshed, his slavelike sub-
servience to the Romans and his disregard of many of the laws of
Israel. There remained but one means of satisfying his appetite for
fame, namely, a magnificent open-handedness to the Greek cities and
to those, generally, who were not his own subjects; he was under
no obligation to benefit them and he could count on their gratitude.
And so well was he served by the flattery prevalent in the Greek
cities and the multitude of professional rhetoricians, that his fame
became widespread and he obtained abroad what he could not obtain
in his own country. His calculations proved correct : it was his Greek
flatterers who hailed him as "Herod the Great ;" and all that we find
in Josephus concerning "all the works of his might and majesty"
is derived from the writings of the Hellenist Nicholas of Damascus;
whereas the people of Israel dubbed him "the Edomite slave." T o
his account of Herod's conceit Josephus adds the further explanatory
fact that "the Jews were not able to flatter his vanity by statues or
palaces, and the like ;" therefore he had no liking for this people and
turned to the Greeks who had all these means of honouring him. 80
W e find elsewhere in Josephus remarks which seem to be delib-
erately aimed against the view held by the author of "Doroth ha-
Rishonim," e.g., "On the whole, Herod's munificence could arouse no
39
Doroth ha-Rishonim Pt. I vol. 3. Frankfurt-a.-Main, 1906.
80
Antiq. XVI ν 4· <
suspicion that, in his generosity towards the Greek cities, which was
greater than that of their own rulers, he was moved by hidden
motives." 31
The most outstanding proof that he wished also to secure the
esteem of the Jews and to secure it in a place where he knew that
some such great act would most redound to his credit among the
Jews, regardless of the huge cost that it would entail, is the building
of the Temple, that "Herod's Building" so famed in Jewish literature.
This great and sacred building was the one edifice which he might
set up in the Land of Israel and gain thereby glory and honour from
among the Jews ; and upon this building he lavished enormous sums.
H e also looked upon himself as a Jew and king of the Jews in all
that bore on the protection of the Jews outside Palestine.
When, in the year 22, he came to meet Agrippa in the Greek
islands, Mitylene and Lesbos, the Jews living there came to com-
plain about their neighbours and officials who oppressed them and
hindered them in the practice of their religion; and Herod came
forward as their advocate and did all in his power on their behalf,
while the spokesman of these Jews on several occasions hailed Herod
as "our king." 32 It would also seem that the edicts issued by Au-
gustus in favour of the Jews of Asia and of Cyrene in Libya, though
of different dates, were also published through the efforts of Herod
since Josephus includes them amongst the events of Herod's reign. 33
Again, when the Arab Syllaeus, chief minister of Obodas, king
of the Arabs, sought from Herod his sister Salome to wife, he whom
Halevy would call "the king of the Gentiles" required him first to
become converted to Judaism (έγγραφήναι τοίς των , Ιουδαίων löeat) ;
and when the Arab prince refused these terms his request was re-
jected. 84 These facts are sufficient to contradict the idea that Herod
wished only to become a "king of the Gentiles."
And why should he have been so wroth with those who op-
posed him in Judaea if he had no wish at all to be a "king of the
Jews?" 3 5
All that can truthfully be said is that he sought honour and fame
wherever he might get it; and since he knew it was more easily
obtained abroad than at home, from the Greeks rather than from the
Jews; and since he required abundant wealth for the buildings and
statues and munificent acts which alone could ensure his fame and
spread his reputation, for this reason he forcibly raised the means
from his Jewish subjects and gave it to strangers, since the Romans
would never have allowed him to collect the money from those who
were not his subjects.
‫ ״‬Wars I xxi 12. <
* Antiq. X V I ii 3-5. A
"Ibid., vi ‫ ־‬ι7‫־‬. All that is alleged in this connexion by the author of
Doroth ha-Rishonim ( I iii 25-86) is pure casuistry. Â
M
Antiq. X V I vii 6. See also Schürer I 4 397, 406.
"Réville, Jésus de Nazareth, 2 ed. Paris, 1906, pp. 210-211. A
But however this may be, his friendliness to the Gentiles and
his oppression of his Jewish subjects embittered the people and
aroused their antagonism towards this half-Jew who ruled by virtue
of Roman favour. See, for example, how he is described by the
Jewish delegation which went to complain before Augustus against
Archelaus immediately after Herod's death: "He (Herod) committed
acts of tyranny which might have made an end of the Jews, and
also devised new things according to his own mind which were con-
trary to the spirit of the Jews ; and he killed many men with a cruelty
unparalleled in history.
"Worse still was the lot of those who still remained alive, f o r not
only did he oppress them but also threatened to confiscate their prop-
erty. The cities which were near by the Land of Israel he bedecked
and adorned without end at the expense of his plundered subjects.
H e reduced the people to abject poverty though he had found it, apart
from exceptional cases, in a condition of wealth. The property of
the higher families—whom he had condemned to death on the slightest
pretext—he confiscated, and those whom he suffered to remain alive
he deprived of their wealth. Not only were the taxes levied on all
the inhabitants year by year exacted mercilessly and by force, but
it was impossible to live without bribes to himself, and to his domes-
tics, and his friends and officers who were entrusted with the gather-
ing of the taxes.
"It was impossible to speak of his corruption of virgins and wives ;
after he had done these wicked things when drunk and without wit-
nesses, those who had suffered preferred to remain silent as though
nothing had happened rather than publish such things abroad. And
so Herod had behaved to the Jews with a cruelty as great as though
a wild beast had been given rule over mankind. Though the Jews
had before suffered many hardships and oppressions, their history
had never known so great an affliction as they had suffered at the
hands of Herod." 38
Such is the history of the works of Herod "the Great:" blood-
shed, confiscation of property, harsh taxation, debauchery and con-
tempt of the law. The loss of the best cultural elements, stern polit-
ical oppression, deprivation of freedom, suspicion, espionage, flattery
of the great, increase of want and poverty—these are the marks of
Herod's government which lasted close on to the time of the birth
"Antiq. XVII xi 2. Wars I I vi 2 repeats almost the same words but
in briefer and stronger f o r m : "He was not a king but the most barbarous
of tyrants who had ever sat on a throne. He had slain men innumerable,
but the lot of those which survived made them envy those that were slain.
He not only tortured his subjects individually but oppressed entire cities.
Foreign cities he adorned but his own he destroyed ; foreign peoples he
enriched with the blood of the Jews. So, in place of the former wealth
and good laws,‫ ־‬there came utter poverty and bad laws. In short, the Jews
suffered more in a few years from Herod than their fathers had suffered
since they left Babylon and returned in the reign of Xerxes."
of Jesus. Drop by drop Herod had drained the blood of the Jews
in the course of his thirty-three years' rule (37-4B.CE.). Scarce a
day passed but someone was put to death.
In the year 37 when he had just ascended the throne, he killed
forty-five of the noblest in Jerusalem who belonged to the Macca-
bsean family; their property he confiscated to his own use: it was
the "year of release" (Deut. 15, 1) and he needed money.37
At the close of the year 35, Aristobulus III, brother of the queen
Mariamne and Herod's brother-in-law, was by Herod's order
drowned when bathing at Jericho. 38
In the year 34, Joseph the husband of Salome, Herod's sister,
was put to death. 39
In the year 30, Hyrcanus I I was killed when he was eighty-two
years old, although, apart from his great age, he was possessed of a
physical defect and so ineligible for the high priesthood, and therefore
not dangerous to Herod (the self-same Hyrcanus who had raised
Antipater and his sons to power, saved Herod from death at the
hands of the Sanhédrin, and who was grandfather of Herod's beloved
wife Mariamne!). 4 0
At the close of the year 29, Sohcemus of Ituraea, Herod's wife
Mariamne, and shortly afterwards Alexandra, mother of Mariamne
and mother-in-law of Herod, were put to death. 41
The year 25 saw the murder of Costobarus (Kauzgeber), Salome's
second husband, and the sons of Baba, of Maccabaean descent, who
belonged to the Antigonus party and whom Costobarus had concealed
from Herod ; with them were also killed Lysimachus Gadius, known
as Antipater, and Dositheus. Shortly afterwards when the populace
had become enraged at the athletic games, the theatre and the amphi-
theatre conducted in Jerusalem by Herod, ten men conspired to kill
Herod, and among them was a blind man who urged them on ; and
although he could take no part in the assassination owing to his
defect he was prepared to share the penalty should they fail.
The conspirators were caught owing to information lodged by a
spy, and they boldly confessed that they had intended to kill Herod,
or at least those near to him, in order that their death might prove
to men how dangerous it was to treat lightly what the nation held
sacred. They were all put to death with atrocious cruelty, but the
people tore in pieces the spy who had betrayed them and threw his
body to the dogs. None would disclose the names of those who
had killed the traitor since all held him deserving of death. Herod
‫ ״‬Antiq. X V i 2 ; Wars I xviii 4. Λ
38
Ant. XV iii 3; Wars I xxii 2. A
88
Ant. XV iii 9; see Wars I xxii 4-5.^‫־‬
40
Ant. X V vii 1-4; Wars I xxii 1. Λ
41
Ant. XV vii 4-6, 8; Wars I xxii 3-5. ^
thereupon ordered certain women to be scourged and under torture
they divulged various names. All the suspects were immediately put
to death and their families as well.42
About the year 7 B.C.E., Alexander and Aristobulus, the sons of
Herod by his wife Mariamne, were strangled at Sebaste (Samaria)
by order of their father, together with three hundred men who were,
or were suspected of being, their supporters. 43
In the same or following year many Pharisees were put to death
for refusing to swear the oath of allegiance to the Emperor and to
Herod, having first been heavily fined. These fines had been paid
for them by the wife of Pherora, Herod's brother, and in return
for this benefit they had prophesied that Pherora or his sons should
sit on the throne of Herod. (It may be, however, that this "prophecy"
was invented by the calumnious-minded princess Salome.) The
eunuch Bagoas, the slave Carus, and all Herod's courtiers who gave
credence to this forecast were killed together with the Pharisees. 44
In the year of Herod's death, 4 B.C.E., two sages, Yehuda ben
Tzarifa (or Ben Sepphorai) and Mattathias ben Margaloth, incited
their many disciples to tear down, at the risk of their lives, the golden
eagle which Herod had set up on the Temple gate. The captain of
the army captured forty of the disciples and their two teachers. They
heroically confessed their act and that they did not regret it. Where-
upon Herod ordered them to be burnt alive after a mock trial which
he arranged in Jericho at a time when he was already mortally sick
and could not stand upright. 45
The same year, five days before his death, he ordered the death
of his son Antipater; and in the course of the few days which
preceded his loathesome end he was able to imprison in the hippo-
drome many of the chief people, one from every family of im-
portance, with instructions to his sister Salome and Alexas her
husband that as soon as he expired the army should put to death
all the arrested men, so that at his own death the mourning should
be great and every family from among the people of Jerusalem should
mourn its dead.46
Even if this order is not to be believed owing to its extraordinary
**Ant. X V vii 10, viii 3-4. It would seem that the Talmudic legend
about Baba ben Buta (that when Herod killed the sages he allowed him to
survive and only bored out his eyes: Bab. Bath. 3&4‫־‬a) is in some way
connected with the sons of Baba and also with the blind man who shared
in the conspiracy; they are distant and indistinct echoes of what happened
in the time of Herod and so names and facts are confused. Also all that
is told in the Talmud (Bab. Bath. 3&4‫־‬a) of Mariamne and her attitude to
Herod, is also only a late and vague echo. See Z'eb Ya'betz, Tol'doth Yisrael
V, Cracow, 1904, p. 5β η. 1. ^‫־‬
43
Ant. XVI xi 2-7; Wars I xxvii 2-6. •4
" 6 Ant. XVII ii 4. Λ
* Ant. XVII vi 2-4; Wars I xxxiii 1-4. ·^
"Ant. XVII vii 1, vi 5; Wars I xxxiii 6-7. ^
barbarity 47 just as doubt is cast on his order to kill the children of
Bethlehem 48 —and we regard both alike as legendary—still the very
existence of the legends is proof enough of how great was the "Edom-
ite slave's" cruelty and how strong was the fear of death which this
cruelty spread over the people during his life and even after his death.
We cannot wonder that, in early Jewish literature, it is said : "Now
the day on which Herod died was made a festival." 49
But worse even than the effect of this interminable bloodshed was
the effect of the political terror which Herod exercised on Judaea.
Here Herod rivals the terrorists of the French Revolution and of
Bolshevism. Josephus tells how "Herod watched most carefully over
his subjects that they should have no opportunity of voicing their
dissatisfaction against his rule." Citizens were forbidden to assemble
together or walk together or hold public meetings. Offenders were
heavily punished. Many were brought openly or secretly to the
citadel of Hyrcania and there put to death. Numerous spies patrolled
the city and the roads.
It is said that Herod himself did not despise this means of spying
and often disguised himself in simple clothes and mixed with the
crowds at night to know what they thought about his government.
"Those who entirely opposed his innovations were persecuted by
various methods, and the rest he compelled to swear an oath of
allegiance to him and to be subservient to all the acts of the govern-
ment. A great number obeyed these demands either to please him
or because they feared him, but all those who were dissatisfied or
complained at these abominations, he made away with by all possible
devices." 50
The Sanhédrin, the true supreme authority of the people, was in
Herod's time virtually non-existent: it was suffered to deal only
with unimportant religious matters, whereas in civil matters it was
compelled to submit to the dictation of the tyrant. The High Priests
he changed as he might change his clothes. After the death of Mat-
tathias-Antigonus II, he appointed as High Priest "Ananelus the
Babylonian" (according to Josephus) 5 1 or (according to the
Mishnah) "Hanamel the Egyptian." 5 2 Soon after, he appointed
47
Megr. Taanith (scholion), §9, relates this of Herod. But §11 says the
same thing of Jannseus, clearly wrongly. The truth may be as Salome
and her husband stated, that Herod ordered the release of these notables
who may have been imprisoned a short time prior to his death for political
reasons, and not just to raise a lamentation. The legend, however, explains
the arrest in a way consonant with the spirit of Herod. (The statements
of Salome and her husband are quoted in Josephus, Ant. XVII viii 2; Wars
I xxxiii 8.) 4
48
Matthew ii. 1-18.
*909Meg. Taanith (scholion) §9.·^
01
Ant. XV χ 4. <
Ant. XV ii 4, i" 1· <
" Para III 5. <4
Aristobulus whom, the same year, he ordered to be drowned in
Jericho.
Then he reappointed Hanamel, after whom followed a long sue-
cession of High Priests raised and deposed at will by Herod : Yeshua
ben Fiabi, Shimeon ben Bœthus, Mattathias ben Theophilus, Joseph
ben Ellem, Yoezer ben Bœthus. To carry out his tyranny Herod
depended on an army of mercenaries : Thracians, Germans and Gauls,
as if, says Josephus, "he needed such protection against his sub-
jects." 53 His principal officers were Greeks. The Greek Ptolemy
was, for example, the chief of the national treasury. And there
were three foreign eunuchs "who exercised a powerful influence over
affairs of state." 55
It is easy to imagine how hateful and detestable was such a rule
to people like the Jews, and what terror and fear such tyranny cast
upon them. The people gnashed their teeth in secret at the "Edomite
slave" who had risen over them ; and this impotent rage festered and
infected the youth and the pick of the nation, manifesting itself in
a conspiracy during his lifetime and in complete revolt immediately
after his death.
The more it becomes necessary to conceal dislike of any political
government, the deeper it penetrates and the more likely it is to
produce potential rebels who do but wait for a favourable moment to
raise the flag of open rebellion. Since the people saw in Herod
nothing but a Roman emissary, this same hatred attached itself both
to the "kingdom of Edom" and to the "wicked kingdom of Rome,"
the two titles becoming synonymous terms, so that in the Talmud and
Midrash "Edom" is used in the place of "Rome" (except in places
where the change has been made from fear of the censor).
To the afflictions which the people endured from a cruel king
were added many hardships from natural causes. In 31 B.C.E. oc-
curred an earthquake in Judaea killing about thirty thousand people
and a great number of cattle.55 And this calamity befell the Jews at
a time when they had suffered heavy losses in men in a defeat at the
hands of the Arabs. The years 25-24 were years of famine which,
in conjunction with the resulting starvation, brought in its train
plague and pestilence.56 And these appeared to the people to be the
veritable "pangs of the Messiah" which presaged the advent of the
redeemer.
Consequently there were aroused among the people of this time
strong messianic longings which found expression in many Apocry-
phal Books filled with messianic fantasies and apocalyptic visions.
The Sadducees, like the wealthy and aristocratic of all ages and
nations, were thorough realists and saw that there was no hope of
" Ant. X V i x 5· <
"Ant. XVI viii 1. ^
65
Ant. XV ν 2 ; Wars I xix 3. 4
68
Ant. XV ix ι. 4
freeing themselves from Roman rule, and that their own position was
not so bad as to be unendurable ; and even the Pharisees were wise
enough to recognize that "vain is the help of man" and that all that
they could look forward to was the mercy of heaven when in its
good time it should see fit to send the righteous redeemer to Israel.
But very different were the younger people, the hot-blooded and
enthusiastic, who collected together in parties of "zealots" whose
object was to hasten the redemption and "bring near the end." From
one end to the other Palestine was filled with malcontents and the
rebellious-minded, and especially was this the case in Galilee, the
cradle of "zealotism." This is a fact which should not go unobserved
in the history of Jesus. Also in Judaea and Jerusalem the great
majority were weary of the heavy burden of the "kingdom of Edom"
—in both of its meanings. And once a people is "weary of enduring"
we can expect considerable political changes, for in those conditions
the restless multitudes seize the first suitable moment for uprooting
the existing order.
Scarcely, indeed, had Herod closed his eyes than there immedi-
ately broke out such tumults and riots as the Jewish nation had never
before witnessed. Before Archelaus could mount his father's throne,
the people, who could not forget the horrible murder by Herod of the
heroic Yehuda ben Tzarifa and Mattathias ben Margaloth, gath-
ered themselves together and, instead of lamenting the dead king,
proclaimed a lamentation over those whom he had wrongfully put
to death. They demanded from Archelaus that he exact vengeance
for those martyrs—still unburied—from the advisers at whose insti-
gation the dying king had inflicted the sentences, and that, first of
all, he dismiss Joezer the Boethusean, the last High Priest appointed
by Herod.
Not having yet been confirmed as king by the Romans, Archelaus
did not wish to do this and tried to persuade the people not to press
their demands. But they were now beyond control and incapable of
listening to reason. Archelaus despatched a body of soldiers against
the people who had gathered together in the Temple courtyard, but
the people stoned them and put them to flight. Then Archelaus,
though he dared not punish Herod's advisers without the Emperor's
sanction, yet allowed himself to send his entire army against those
who had assembled in the Temple, and in one day killed three thou-
sand men.®7 The people were killed like sheep side by side with
their Temple offerings, and the Temple was filled with the dead. 58
This revealed the true character of Archelaus : he was a true son
of Herod; so far as cruelty and injustice were concerned, it was
"like father like son;" even while he was still being educated at
"Ant. X V I I ix 1-3; Wars II i 2-3. <
88
Ant. XVII ix 5; Wars II ii S; Perhaps Luke (xiii. 1), in speaking
of the "Galilasans whose blood mingled with their sacrifices," confused
Archelaus with Pilate. See below, p. 164, n. 86.
Rome, the Roman Jews had complained against him for seducing
their daughters and wives.59
The people could no longer expect any good from him ; and fifty
Jewish elders, joined and supported in Rome by more than eight
thousand Jews, formed a delegation to the Emperor Augustus and
petitioned to be set free from that "kingdom" which had been gov-
erned by such monsters as Herod and Archelaus. They and those
who sent them preferred to return to conditions as they were in the
pre-Maccabaean times, under the Persian and Greek empires, before
Antiochus came with his decrees ; let them be governed by the rep-
resentative of the Roman Empire, the Syrian procurator, rather than
by a king from among themselves—if only they might have autonomy
in internal affairs. 60 Not only was this the petition of the people's
delegates but even of the relatives of Archelaus themselves, who saw
clearly that their only hope of remaining in peace was that one of
the house of Herod should not hold the reins of government. 61 How
great must have been the sufferings endured by the people to make
them see freedom rather in the rule of a foreign power than in the
rule of one of their own faith ! It was only because they had drained
the cup of suffering to the dregs and their power of endurance had
failed.
That their power of endurance had failed is amply proved by
what happened in Judaea immediately after Herod's death, when
the outspoken protestations against the terrible villainy of the house
of Herod, protestations which had been choked down during Herod's
lifetime from fear of the Edomite, burst out like a flood and did
not shrink even in face of greater danger.
Having quenched the flames of the first rebellion with the blood
of three thousand men, Archelaus went to Rome to have his father's
last testament (which made Archelaus king of Judaea, Samaria and
Edom) confirmed by Augustus ; but while he was still occupied in
Rome, fresh outbreaks occurred in Judaea. Varus, governor of Syria
(the same Varus who afterwards in the year 9 C.E. fell at the hands
of Arminius Cheruscus in the forest of Teutoburg, and whom
Augustus apostrophized in the saying : "Varus, Varus, give me back
my legions !"), arrived and heavily punished the rebels, and returned
to Antioch leaving Sabinus and a legion behind in Jerusalem.
This Sabinus deliberately oppressed the people in order to pro-
voke it to further revolt that he might have the opportunity of
crushing it with the help of the army and so remove the reproach
of the charge alleged against him in Rome that, in his avarice, he had
tampered with the royal money-chests in the fortresses. The episode
occurred in the feast of Pentecost when Jerusalem was thronged by
W
A. Berliner, History of the Jews in Rome (Hebrew trans, published
in Bibleotheca ed. Ha-Zeman, Jan. 1913, Vol. 8, Wilna, 1913, p. 29).
80
Ant. XVII xi 1-2 ; Wars II vi 1-2. A
"Ant. ibid.; Wars ibid.; cf. Ant. X V I I ix 4. 4
pilgrims from Judaea and elsewhere, Edomites, people of Jericho and
from beyond Jordan, and especially Galilaeans.
These all joined with the Jerusalem Jews in exacting vengeance
from the tyrant Sabinus. They attacked the Romans simultaneously
from three quarters : from the north (by the Temple), from the south
(by the hippodrome), and from the west (by the royal palaces).
Fighting was severest in the Temple quarters. The Jews climbed on
the roofs of the galleries surrounding the Temple and, with slings or
by hand, hurled stones at the soldiers. The Romans adopted the ter-
rible plan of secretly setting fire to the galleries. . . .
The fine buildings were reduced to ruins and those fighting on the
roofs fell down and were burned in the fire or were buried alive in
the débris, while many put an end to their own lives so as not to fall
into the enemy's hands. Still worse, the Roman soldiery even pene-
trated the Temple itself and looted all they found. Not only did
Sabinus not prevent them but openly went himself and stole four
hundred talents from the Temple treasury. 62
Such deeds simply served to enrage the people the more, and
some even of Herod's own soldiers deserted to the side of the rebels,
and together they laid siege to the Palace of Herod, in which Sabinus
and his troops had fortified themselves, and demanded that the
Romans should leave the town. But because of the Jews Sabinus
was afraid to leave the palace, and waited for help from Varus. The
Great Rebellion, which was to end with the destruction of the
Second Temple, began immediately after the death of Herod : these
riots and revolts were the "beginning of the end."
All Judaea was, indeed, out of control. There was no ruler
whose position was confirmed and who was accepted by the people;
the smouldering hatred against the Edomite-Roman rule burst out
like a volcano, and from one end of the country to the other were
riots and disorders, tumult and confusion. Two of Herod's generals
who had completed their service with the army returned home to
Edom and there fought against those who had remained faithful to
Herod, and against Herod's kinsman, the governor Ahiab, who was
compelled to take refuge in the mountains.
Simeon of Transjordania, one of Herod's officers, a man of great
height, courage and comeliness, seized the throne and robbed the
royal palace in Jericho and burnt down many other palaces in the
country, until Gratus met him in battle and captured and beheaded
him. Again, at Beth-Ramtha 63 on the Jordan, one of the royal
palaces, was burnt by a crowd of rebels.
A certain shepherd, Athronges, whose only claim to distinction
was his height and courage, and four brothers similar to himself, tall
and strong, was minded to sit on the throne of Herod, and even he,
a
Ant. XVII χ 1-2; Wars I I iii 1-3· Λ
®3So the town is called in Wars II iv 2; in Ant. X V I I χ 6 it is called
"Hamath." <
at this abandoned time, found a crowd of supporters ; they attacked
the Romans, to whom they bore a deadly hatred because of the abora-
inations done in Judaea, and those soldiers of Herod who were in
league with the Romans ; but—as is usual with insurgents who depend
only on the support of the mob—Athronges and his following at-
tacked also such of their fellow-Jews as they suspected of a leaning
towards the Romans or simply of a preference for peace. . . .
Josephus tells us that "in those days Judaea was filled with bands
of marauders; wherever a malcontent crowd assembled they elected
them a king, to the harm of the entire nation. Indeed, these kings
inflicted but slight loss on the Romans, but they went about among
their own people like a pestilence that walketh in darkness." 64
But the most dangerous rebel of all, whose great strength lay in
his being inspired by a feeling of nationalism, was Judah the Gali-
laean, son of that same Hezekiah of Galilee whom Herod had put
to death before he became king and because of whose death Herod
was arraigned by the Sanhédrin. 65 The father, the great nationalist
and zealot, whom Herod and Josephus try to depict as a mere free-
booter, bequeathed to his son a bitter and undying hatred against those
who had enslaved and oppressed his people—Romans and Edomites
alike. By the son's efforts Galilee's mountains and fastnesses became
the centre for those who fanned into flame the fanaticism of the
nation and for the nationalist rebels and idealists.
Near Sepphoris, only an hour's journey from Jesus' birthplace,
Nazareth, Judah the Galilaean collected a large body of desperate
nationalists, attacked the king's armoury, seized the weapons and
with these armed his followers, and took away all the money he
found. Then the warrior-zealot fought against all those, Gentiles
or Jews, who opposed the idea of freedom ; and, as is usual in such
campaigns, he made little distinction between actual enemies and
traitors, and those who were merely peace-loving Jews. H e put the
fear of himself on the whole of Galilee.
Such was the state of Judaea, and especially Galilee, immediately
after the death of Herod. The revolt spread throughout all the
provinces, Judaea, Idumaea, Galilee and beyond Jordan; no quarter
was given to any Roman legion or to any Herodian soldiers or to
anybody who did not enroll himself as a member of some nationalist
party—complete anarchy prevailed : "In those days there was no king
in Israel ; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." And
all this, it should be emphasized, happened only three or four years
before the birth of Jesus.
Finally, after much effort, the tumults and rebellions were
crushed. Varus, with a strong Roman army, reinforced by divisions
from Beyrout and Arabia, came a second time against the Land of
Israel. He first despatched some portions of his army against Sep-
64
Ant. XVII χ 8. M
e5
See above, p. 141. •4
phoris. H e burnt Sepphoris and sold its inhabitants into slavery.
H e himself marched against Samaria and burnt the neighbouring
Emmaus. In the regions round about Samaria and Emmaus the
Arabs burned villages and looted everything in their hatred for Herod
and his friends the Romans. It was as though everyone had united
to destroy the Land of Israel and its inhabitants.
Varus next went up to Jerusalem, and when the Jews, who were
besieging the Romans who had fortified themselves within Herod's
castle, saw his large army, they raised the siege and began to excuse
themselves by saying that it was only the crowd of pilgrims, and
Sabinus, who had provoked them, that were guilty of the riots.
Sabinus saw fit to leave the town, and Varus sent his army in
pursuit of the rebels outside Jerusalem, and having commanded the
crucifixion of no less than two thousand men he returned to Antioch.
Those who had headed the revolt in Idumsea Varus sent to Rome.
There they were tried before the Emperor Augustus, and he, too,
commanded large numbers of them to be put to death. 66
But even this did not mark the end. In times of political anarchy
there arise another type of self-appointed rulers, different from
Simeon of Transjordania or Athronges the shepherd, namely, such
as pretend to be kings or princes who, it was supposed, had died or
been killed. Such pretenders endeavour to secure a following from
among those who adhered to the cause of those now dead ; and the
affection for the Maccabaeans was so strong and deeply rooted in
the hearts of the Jews that it only required the appearance of a
comely young man resembling the Alexander, son of Herod and
Mariamne the Maccabaean, who had been put to death, to spread the
rumour that he had been miraculously saved from death (he asserted
that the executioner had taken pity on him and his brother Aris-
tobulus and strangled in their stead two others who resembled them),
and all the Jews were stirred and accorded him royal honours and
ample wealth.
The Jews of Crete and Melos provided him generously with
money, and the Jews of Rome went out to greet him, and when "he
travelled abroad in a chariot they burst into tumultuous joy, more
especially because he was the son of Mariamne the Maccabaean." 67
H e adopted a wholly regal manner of life and crowds of people used
to surround him and raise joyful cheers in his honour. To such a
degree could even a doubtful descendant of the Maccabaeans inspire
the nation!
But it all came to nought : a servant of Augustus and Augustus
himself recognised that he was not of royal descent and persuaded
him to admit his fraud. He confessed to save his life. But to what
a state of confusion and excitement must the people have been
reduced for such frauds to have obtained a hearing!
",Ant.
87
XVII χ 8-10; Wars II i 4· <
Ant. XVII xii; Wars II vii 1-2 (with slight differences).
Then the kingdom of Herod was divided up into its component
parts. Many scholars have justly observed that there were, mutatis
mutandis, certain resemblances between the kingdom of Solomon
and the kingdom of Herod. As with the kingdom of Solomon, so
with the kingdom of Herod: it was glorious without and rotten
within. Like the kingdom of Solomon it seemed, in comparison with
its small neighbours, to be wealthy and powerful, yet the mass of
its population was ground down by taxation and harsh government,
and changes innumerable were introduced with a complete disregard
to the historical character of the nation.
Again, as in the days of Solomon, the small neighbouring states
were either subject to Judaea or feared it, while the great empires—
the Egypt of Psusennes I I and Shishak in Solomon's time and the
Rome of Antonius and Augustus in Herod's time—were well dis-
posed to the ruler of Judaea, permitting him a certain freedom of
government so long as he was a "faithful ally," i.e., such time as he
was subservient to them.
Thus the glory and liberty were only apparent, a fact which the
people realized; they were able to estimate at their true valuation
all the honour and glory and wealth and success accorded at the court
of the Pharaoh or the reigning Caesar. Like Solomon, Herod, too,
was addicted to glorious buildings, and like Solomon he built the
Temple. Even in his multiplicity of wives Herod bore some resem-
blanc'e to Solomon. The political fortune of the Land of Israel after
the death of Solomon was markedly like its political fortune after the
death of Herod.
As in the closing days of Solomon and immediately after his
death there broke out the revolts of Hadad the Edomite, Rezon the
son of Eliyada of Damascus, and Jeroboam the son of Nebat the
Ephraimite, so too in the closing days of Herod, and more especially
immediately after his death, there broke out riots and revolts. Just
as the "glorious" kingdom of Solomon was divided and Edom and
Syria severed from it, so too Herod's kingdom was divided and the
Palestinian Greek cities (Gaza, Gadara and Hyppos) severed from it.
And just as the breaking up of Solomon's kingdom marked the
beginning of the process which culminated in the destruction of the
First Temple, so too the breaking up of Herod's kingdom began the
series of events which ended in the destruction of the Second Temple.
Augustus did, indeed, confirm Herod's testamentary wishes but
with many alterations. Archelaus was granted Judaea, Samaria and
Idumaea, but not the title "king" bequeathed to him by Herod; he
was granted instead the title "Ethnarch" (leader of the people) ; the
Palestinian Greek cities already referred to were attached by the
Emperor to Syria. Furthermore, according to the will of Herod,
the towns of Jamnia, Ashdod and Phasaelis went to Salome.
Archelaus thus inherited only the half, or even less, of Herod's
kingdom. The rest was apportioned to Herod's other sons : Antipas
received Galilee and Peraea, while Batanaea, Argob (Trachonitis)
and the Hauran (including the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee)
went to Philip. These both were granted the title of "Tetrarch"
(lit. the chief of four—sc. cities or states, though later the term be-
came the title of a ruling noble, like the German "Herzog" or English
"Baron," one who is less than a king but, within his own domain, has
all the privileges of a king).
For ten years ( 4 B.C.E6-‫ ״‬C E . ) Archelaus ruled over Judaea,
Samaria and Idumasa. The same tyranny which he had shown im-
mediately after his father's death, he still showed after he had been
appointed Ethnarch. Like his father he made constant changes in
the High Priests: in the place of Joezer ben Bœthus he appointed
his brother, Eliezer ben Bœthus, who in his turn was replaced by
Jeshua ben Sie.
Archelaus, after divorcing his wife Mariamne, married the
daughter of Archelaus king of Cappadocia, Glaphyra, who had been
the wife of Alexander, his step-brother (by his father), and who,
after Alexander had been killed by his father, became the wife of
Juba king of Lybia, whom she survived. 68 This marriage of Arche-
laus with Glaphyra the people considered wrong since it was not a
fulfilling of the !evirate law, Glaphyra having had children by
Alexander and having been also married in the meantime to another.
Archelaus also put up magnificent buildings. H e rebuilt the palace
in Jericho which had been burnt down during the riots ; he built the
town Archelais and laid down aqueducts to provide water for the
palm forest which he planted near Na'aran, north of Jericho (a site
where there has recently been discovered the remains of an ancient
synagogue).
All this he carried out with the money drawn from a people who
had already been greatly impoverished by the past disturbances.
There is no doubt that he was guilty of atrocities against both Jews
and Samaritans, for emissaries of both races, in spite of their mutual
animosity, united in complaining against Archelaus before Augustus.
So enraged was the Emperor at his conduct that he summoned him
to Rome and exiled him to Gaul and confiscated all his possessions.69
Judaea, Samaria and Idumaea were attached to Syria and put in charge
of a Roman governor or commissioner (Procurator), thus fulfilling
the desire of the Jewish delegation which waited on Augustus im-
mediately after Herod's death.
But those who had asked for such a change certainly regretted it
before long. The era of the Persian and Ptolemaic empires did not
return. The days were for ever gone when Judaea could remain a
negligible quantity, hidden away in such a remote corner of Asia that
Herodotus could pass it by without any mention. Greater Palestine
68
It is truer to say that she was divorced by him. See Ant. XVII xiii 4 ;
Wars IV vii 4, where the statements are disputed by Schürer I * 451-2. ·^
90
Ant. XVII xiii 1-2; Wars II vii 34-‫׳‬
had become a very important part of Syria, which abutted on the
frontier of the Parthian empire, a foe with whom Rome was ever
at war but could never subdue. Again, Palestine had acquired an
increased importance as the religious and national centre of a wide-
spread and peculiar people, a people which was scattered throughout
the whole of the civilized world and which everywhere exercised con-
siderable influence, and, in Egypt and Babylon, almost a prédominât-
ing influence.
Such a country Rome could not leave in the hands of a High
Priest only nominally supervised by the Governor of Syria, as in the
time of the Persian and Greek empires. Hence, over the territory
formerly ruled by Archelaus was appointed a special governor (styled
Epitropos in Greek and Procurator in Latin ; the Hebrew equivalent
would be ‫משגיח‬, to distinguish him from the Governor [‫]נציב‬
of Syria). The High Priests were, apparently, still the leaders of
t h e people (τήν δέ χροστα<7(αν τοΰ έθνους 01 αρχιερείς έχεπιστεύοντο
—a remark which Josephus puts in the mouth of the Romans), and a
certain measure of autonomy was left to the Jews and administered
through the channel of the more important families. 70
In practice, however, no important step could be taken in Pales-
tine apart from the consent of the Roman Governor. Judaea lost the
right of conducting war, and only copper money could be minted in
Palestine. The Procurator resided in Caesarea but exercised a close
surveillance over Jerusalem, where a permanent Roman army was
stationed and where the Roman governor stayed at the time of the
three Great Feasts, especially during Passover, when Jerusalem was
crowded and when the people were most inclined to display their
dislike of foreign rule. At such a time the Romans placed sentinels
by the galleries surrounding the Temple. 71
Caesarea thus came to rival Jerusalem in importance ; in the words
of the Talmud, "Caesarea came not to fulness save only through the
destruction of Jerusalem." 72 Jewish judges might still decide in
cases relating to property, and the Sanhédrin still held jurisdiction
in religious matters and might even pass judgment in capital cases ;
but the Sanhédrin was only competent to pass sentence of death as
the result of its findings in a preliminary investigation: it could not
actually carry out the sentence ; every trial involving capital punish-
ment must come before the Roman Governor and the sentence must
be confirmed by him. H e had unrestricted powers of life and death
(the jus gladii or potestas gladii).
Customs and taxes were collected by "publicans" or "tax-farmers"
(73,(‫טמיוז‬ ‫גבאי‬ lit. tax-collectors to the royal treasury—ταμεϊον,
cally recruited. These men levied their dues by force, and so the
10
11
Ant. XX χ (end).
n
Ant. XX ν3, and viii i i ; Wars X I I ii 1 and V ν 8. ^
,9
Megilla 6a;
Pesahim 42b; Lam. R. s.v. Hayu tsareha. A
Gen. R. §42; Lev. R. SU.
name ‫" מוכס‬tax-gatherer" came almost to be synonymous with rob-
ber and brigand, 74 and the name ‫ גבאי‬sometimes synonymous with
thief. 75 These men transmitted all taxes, customs and dues to the
Procurator in whose charge were all the state finances. How such
taxes were collected and how the state finances were conducted is
well seen from Tiberius' epigram: "The officials of the Roman
provinces are like flies on a sore ; but those already sated with blood
do not suck so hard as the new-comers." 76
Also the Procurator exercised the same right that had been as-
sumed by Herod—of deposing and appointing the High Priests. The
high-priestly robes were under the Procurator's charge and deposited
in the care of the captain commanding the Fort of Antonia, being
sealed up by the High Priest and the Procurator and handed over to
the High Priest only on the occasions of the Day of Atonement and
the three Great Festivals. This was a most galling insult to the
people : a more marked symbol of subservience could scarcely be
found Î
With such rights exercised by the Procurator, what was left of
internal autonomy ? These "rights" were all backed by force, by five
cohorts and a squadron (alci) of cavalry, sometimes reinforced by
local troops recruited not from the Jews but from foreigners resident
in Palestine. 77 A people like the Jews, believing in the power of the
spirit, could not but see in such a government, exercised by the "god-
less kingdom" and dependent on force, the harsh visitation of God
which (popularly described as "the pangs of the Messiah" or "the
footmarks of the Messiah") was to precede the imminent redemption.
In the mind of the Jew the "Kingdom of Heaven" and the "King-
dom of Edom" were two great opposing conceptions, each of which
called up the picture of the other.
The visitation was the more severe since the ideas and beliefs of
the Jews were so completely different from those of the Romans.
The first Procurator was Coponius (c. 6-9 C.E.). Owing to the fact
that Judaea now passed from Jewish to Roman control, the governor
of Syria, Quirinius, Coponius's superior, saw fit to carry out a
census of the people of Judaea and their property, with a view to
fixing the taxation levied by Rome on the Jews (6 C.E.). The Jews,
however, looked upon such a census as contrary to the will of God,
for when David numbered the people a plague broke out ( I I Sam.
24) ; they also saw in this census the clearest mark of their servitude,
in that it enabled the tax-gatherers to oppress them to an unlimited
extent. They raised the strongest opposition and almost rose in
rebellion.
74
Nedarim I I I 4 ; Baba Qama X 1 and 2. 4
‫ ״‬Hagiga III 6; Tos. Toharoth V I I I $-6.4
‫״‬17 Ant. X V I I I vi 5. 4
For details of the political condition of Judaea under the Procurators,
see Schürer 1 4 454-485. •4
From that time onwards the Greek word κήνσος became in Hebrew
synonymous with fine or punishment (‫ קונסיז‬,Dip) Although the High
]Priest, Joezer ben Bcethus, succeeded in appeasing the people, and
although the census was actually carried out, one great result fol-
lowed: it had the effect of uniting all the more extreme nationalists,
who, as we have frequently noticed, had existed since the time of
Pompey, and made of them a new sect, the Zealots (‫)הסנאים‬. Judah
the Galilssan, who hailed from Gamala in the Jaulan (and who was
probably the same Judah ben Hezekiah mentioned in connexion with
the riots after Herod's death), 78 and Zadok the Pharisee (appar-
ently also a native of Galilee) founded the sect of the Zealots, a body
of men zealous for the Jewish Law and the national honour, men who,
in their zeal, were regardless of the political state of country and
people and demanded but the one thing—that the people rise up in
solid revolt against the Romans. It was, they held, an unheard of
indignity that the Jews should be enslaved by flesh and blood; the
King of Israel could be none other than God himself, and not an
idolatrous Roman Emperor. Thousands and tens of thousands fol-
lowed Judah the Galilsean and joined the Zealots. Right up to the
Destruction of the Temple it was they who everywhere led the
riots and revolts. 79
Coponius was succeeded in turn by Marcus Ambibulus (c. 9-12
C.E.) and Annius R u f u s (c. 12-15). Their period of office was too
short for them to accomplish much ; they may have been in fear of
Augustus and not have dared to do too much harm to the
Jews. Augustus died in the year 15, and his successor, the em-
peror Tiberius, appointed Valerius Gratus Procurator of Judaea (15-
26 C.E.).
Gratus was mainly noteworthy for the innumerable changes he
made in the holders of the high priesthood. He first deposed Ananus
ben Seth who had been appointed by Quirinius in place of Joezer ben
Bcethus (the same Ananus [Annas] who receives unfavorable men-
tion in the Gospels), and set up in his stead Ishmael ben Phiabi.
Shortly afterwards the latter also was deposed and replaced by
Eliezer ben Anan. Only a year later the Procurator appointed
Simeon ben Kamhith, who also did not hold office for more than a
year. He was succeeded by Joseph Kaïaphas (or Ben ha-Kayyaf), 8 °
who also receives unfavourable mention in the Gospels.
It is easy to imagine the dominating character of such a Roman
78
See above, p. 156.^‫־‬
78
On the character of the Zealots see the two articles of K. Kohler:
Wer waren die Zeloten oder Kannaimf (Memorial Volume to A. A. Harkavy,
Petersburg, 1909; German section pp. 6-18) ; and Zealots, / . Ε. X I I 639-643.
80
On this see Derenbourg Massa Eretz Yisrael (trans. Mibshan, Peters-
burg, 1896, p. 112. The Tosefta (Yeb. I 10) refers to the family of the
house of Kayyafa, and in the Talmud (Yeb. 15b) mention is made of the
"house of Kophai" some "of whom were High Priests" (see S. L. Rappo-
port in A. M. Luncz's Ha-Me'amar II 5 6 0 ) . ^
Procurator who could play about with the High Priests as a child
might play about with a ball ; he must also have been of a very mer-
cenary character, too ; for the aspirants to office could only contrive
their appointments by means of bribes. 81
Worse than Gratus, however, was Pontius Pilate (26-36), who
governed Judaea for ten years and in whose time Jesus was crucified.
Philo of Alexandria quotes the shrewd judgment which Agrippa I
passed on Pilate : "He was cruel by nature and in his hard-hearted-
ness entirely lacking in remorse." The Judaea of his day was
marked by "bribes, vainglorious and insolent conduct (ύβρεις), rob-
bery, oppression, humiliations (έτηρεΐαι), men often sent to death un-
tried, and incessant and unmitigated cruelty." 82
The moment he became Procurator he showed how he despised the
Jews and their religious laws. It was an accepted usage that Roman
troops never entered Jerusalem carrying standards or symbols con-
taining the image of the Emperor, out of respect for the Jewish
observance of "Thou shalt not make any graven image or likeness."
Yet Pilate ordered his troops to enter Jerusalem equipped with such
standards. At this the people flocked in crowds to Caesarea, where
the Procurator resided at a convenient distance from Jerusalem, and
begged him to have these emblems removed from the Holy City.
But he refused : he interpreted it as an insult to the honour of the
Emperor.
Then for five days and nights without a pause the Jewish crowds
stood before the tyrant's residence, weeping and beseeching him to
withdraw his order. Pilate found this wearying and the sixth day
he ordered the people to go away to the hippodrome where he had
placed troops in ambush. The people went there and still continued
their petitions that he take pity on the people and remove the
images. Pilate thereupon tried to frighten them. He bade the
soldiers draw swords while he raged at the crowd with a loud voice :
"Whoever will not cease his begging and does not return to his home,
shall be put to the sword !" But he was ignorant of the Jewish char-
acter. As one man the multitudes fell on their faces, bared their
necks and announced that they were prepared for death rather than
suffer their laws to be broken.
At last the tyrant was abashed at their display of moral courage
and gave way. 83 Yet even this episode did not deter him from put-
ting up ensigns (signa) dedicated to the Emperor and bearing the
M
T h e Talmud refers to this period in the following terms: "And since
they gave him money for the post of High Priest they used to change him
(the High Priest) every twelve months," etc. ( Y o m a 8b). And Josephus
also tells how Eliezer ben Anan and Simeon ben Kamhith only held office
f o r a year. That "they gave money for the post" needs no proof, for had
not the Roman rulers received money f r o m the would-be High Priests they
would not have changed them so often. ·^
82
JEmbassy to Caius §38.
**Ant. X V I I I iii 1; Wars I I ix 2-3. ^
Emperor's name, but without his image ; only at Tiberius' order were
they removed from Jerusalem to Caesarea.84
Pilate again aroused popular indignation by bringing aqueducts
to Jerusalem made at the expense of "the treasure of the Temple
known as 'Qorban.' " 85 When he came, at the same time, to Jerusa-
lem the people gathered together and began to complain that Pilate
had touched sacred funds. Apparently, however, he had spies who
warned him of the turbulent feeling among the people. H e com-
manded his soldiers to disguise themselves in civilian clothes and arm
themselves with whips and if they heard protests to beat the un-
armed protesters till they died. The soldiers actually did this and
killed many.86
But an atrocious act against the Samaritans finally brought about
his downfall. A Samaritan false prophet had promised his followers
to show them the sacred vessels (most probably the vessels belonging
to the Tabernacle) which Moses had hidden in Mount Gerizim.
Great crowds assembled and there would seem to have been some
messianic feeling connected with the movement since, according to
Josephus, the Samaritans were armed. 87
Pilate promptly sent an army, mounted and on foot, who killed a
great number and captured many others, and the more important
among them he condemned to death. The Samaritans complained to
Vitellius, the governor of Syria, who ordered Pilate to go to Rome
and there justify his actions. In the meantime Vitellius appointed
another Procurator.
This was the condition of Judaea (and of Samaria and Idumaea
also) at the time of Jesus. Conditions elsewhere in Palestine were
better, since the government was in the hands of a Jew, even though
he was not altogether independent. Of Philip, the son of Herod (4
B.C.E. to 34 C.E.), nothing much needs to be said. In the first
place, his domain (Batanaea, Trachonitis, the Hauran, Gaulanitis,
Panias and Ituraea) was not solely inhabited by Jews, but contained
many Greeks, Syrians and Arabs. And, in the second place, his
84
Embassy to Caius §38. 4
86
So Wars II ix 4. Apparently this was a special fund which it was
forbidden to touch, for there is an explicit Mishna to the effect that it is
permitted to use Temple funds for such public needs a saqueducts : "Water-
ways and city walls and towers and all municipal needs are to be supplied
from the funds of the Temple office" (Shek. IV 2). This is opposed by
Ya'betz, Tol'doth Yisrael V 83. It is difficult to suppose that such a thing
was forbidden at a time earlier than the Mishna. Λ
80
Luke xiii. 1 : "Now there were some present at that season which told
him of the Galilaeans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices,"
confuses Pilate with Archelaus who had killed three thousand men, includ-
ing many Galilaeans (Ant. XVII χ 2) in the Temple ; the delegation which
complained against him to the Emperor Augustus emphasized the fact that
"they had been slaughtered like sacrificial beasts." A similar confusion sur-
vives in Luke in connexion with the census of Quirinius. And also in the
Talmud it is very common. (See above, p. 153 n. 58).
87
Ant. XVIII iv ι 4
realm remained peaceful and his rule was in no way remarkable
either for good or for evil, except for the building of the town
Kesarion, or Cœsarea-Philippi (to distinguish it from Caesarea-
Palestinae built on the seacoast by Herod) on the site of the ancient
Panias, near the source of the Jordan ; and the building of the town
Beth Saida where the Jordan enters the Sea of Galilee : the same city
was called "Julias" in honour of the daughter of Augustus and is not
to be confused with the other Julias, south of the Valley of the
Jordan ("Beth-haram" in the Old Testament, "Beth-haramtha" in the
Talmud and Josephus, the present Tel er-Ramah). 8 8
The Tetrarch Philip was a just man and a man of peace, but a
friend of the Romans and an imitator of the Greeks. In this, as
also in his fondness for magnificent buildings, he was a true son of
Herod. In one thing he even surpassed his father and brothers : he
was the first to engrave on his copper coinage the image of the Em-
perors Augustus and Tiberius ; such a thing neither Herod his father,
nor Archelaus and Antipas his brothers had dared to do. He may
have done this because, as we have said, many if not the majority of
his subjects were Gentiles. But the fact that he tried to hide his
Jewishness from his foreign subjects sufficiently proves that, although
as a man and a ruler he was the most placable among the brothers,
as a Jew he was no better than they.
We have still to treat of Herod Antipas (4 B.C.E. to 39 C.E.)
who ruled Galilee and Transjordania and had, among his subjects,
Jesus of Nazareth. H e was a clever, subtle man and not without
reason did Jesus refer to him as "that fox" (Luke xiii. 32). There
were many Gentiles in Galilee as is attested by its name "Galilee of
the Gentiles;" yet from the time of John Hyrcanus and his son
Aristobulus I, many of these Gentiles had been compulsorily con-
verted to Judaism and more and more Jews had settled there. 89 An-
tipas knew how to lend an importance to Galilee.
Sepphoris, destroyed by Varus in order to crush the rebellion
of Judah the Galilasan,90 he fortified and surrounded with a great wall,
and, for the protection of Transjordania, he built Beth-haramtha,
which he at first named Livias, in honour of the wife of Augustus,
and afterwards Julias, after the name of the Emperor's daughter. 91
His special title to fame is the building of Tiberias, so called in
honour of the Emperor Tiberius. 92
88
On Beth Saida and its situation see B. Meistermann, Capharnaüm et
Bethsaïde, Paris, 1921, and see below, p. 260 ff. 4
80
What Dr. A. Kaminka (Studien sur Geschichte Galiläas, Berlin, 1889,
pp. 29-38) says on this subject is in part true but contains much that is
exaggerated. See above, p. 135 n. 2. 4
90
See above, p. 156. M
" 1 On this town see Ya'betz, Tol'doth Yisrael V 80-81 n. 6; Schürer I I 4
213-216. M
" T h i s was known to the Midrash: "Tiberias after the name of Tiberius,"
Çen. R, §23.^
But here again we notice the son of Herod : he paid no attention
to the fact of the city's being built on the site of an ancient cemetery
(probably that of Hamath or Rakkath), with the result that such
Jews as were scrupulous about the rules of clean and unclean, and
especially the priests, would not live in it; he was therefore com-
pelled to people it with Gentiles, beggars and Jewish vagabonds,
building houses for them and granting them many privileges.93
Similarly he had no hesitation in building a theatre and a royal
palace containing pictures of animals (for which reason it was de-
stroyed at the time of the great Jewish revolt) and conducting the mu-
nicipality along the lines of Greek cities. None the less he shared in
the Jewish protest against the ensigns dedicated to the Emperor which
Pilate set up in Jerusalem, and he never went so far as to engrave
the Emperor's image on his coinage. Here too we see how closely
allied in spirit was Antipas to his father, who while following the
ways of the Greeks and Romans still kept a hold on Judaism.
Antipas, again, in everything to do with the love of building, was a
true son of his father.
And just as he inherited from his father this love of building, so
too did he inherit his love for women. While in Rome Antipas be-
came enamoured of Herodias, the wife of his step-brother Herod
(son of king Herod and Miriam the daughter of the High Priest
Simeon ben Bcethus), the daughter of the murdered Aristobulus, and
mother of the Salome mentioned in the Gospels in connexion with
John the Baptist. But Antipas had already married the daughter of
Aretas king of Arabia. Her he decided to divorce and to take
Herodias, his brother's wife, contrary to the religious law. To
avenge his daughter, the king of Arabia made war on Antipas and
heavily defeated him. Antipas appealed to Tiberius who ordered
Vitellius, the governor of Syria, to punish Aretas.
But in the meantime Tiberius died 94 (37 C.E.). Antipas inter-
fered in the negotiations between the Romans and Parthians, and
this was one of the causes of his downfall. The principal reason was
that when Agrippa I received the throne of Judaea from Caius Cali-
gula, Antipas' wife, Herodias, incited him also to try to secure the
title of king. Agrippa, however, sent a special emissary to Rome to
prevent this, lest there should be two kings claiming the same crown ;
and the same emissary accused Antipas of having dealings with the
enemies of Rome, the Parthians, and with Sejanus, the object of
Galigula's special hatred, and also of preparing a large stock of arms.
Caligula was angry with Antipas, exiled him to Gaul and bestowed
his tetrarchy upon Agrippa. Caligula would have left Herodias her
03
Dr. A. Kaminka, op. cit. pp. 17 ff. tries to prove that this is only a
legend, but Ant. X V I I I ii 3 kirl μνημασω, & irôXXà τγ!δ6 ην is quite clear and
not easy to contradict ; Tiberias was built almost in Josephus' own days. 4
M
I n the next section of the present volume, in the chapter dealing with
John the Baptist, this subject will be dealt with in more detail. •4
private heritage, since she was the sister of his friend Agrippa ; but
she possessed a Maccabaean strain in her blood, and with a pride in
keeping with a grand-daughter of Mariamne she refused the Em-
peror's kindness and preferred to follow her husband into exile. She
and her daughter Salome were instrumental in the death of John the
Baptist at the hands of Antipas ; but this complicated matter will be
explained in the following section.
* * * * * * * * *
Such was the political condition of affairs during Jesus' lifetime

and during the generation that preceded him, from the outbreak of
the war between the brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus to the close
of the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate in Judaea and of the reign of
Herod Antipas in Galilee ( f r o m 67 B.C.E. to 39 C.E.). Scarcely a
year went by during this century without wars or other disturbances :
wars, rebellions, outbreaks and riots, and all of them with their
concomitant of incessant bloodshed ; and this state of things prevailed
in the Land of Israel throughout the whole epoch which preceded
Jesus and prevailed also during his lifetime, a period which can be
styled "the Edomite epoch"—from the rise of Antipater, the father
of Herod, till the rise of Agrippa I, the grandson of Herod.
Were we to count up one by one those who fell in the wars and
rebellions and those murdered by Herod and the Procurators during
this dreadful century, we should reach a total of not less than
two hundred thousand men—an appalling number for such a com-
paratively small country ; and it is even more terrible when we recall
that those who died in war were the pick of the nation physically,
and those murdered by Herod were the pick of the nation intellectu-
ally and culturally.
Most of the survivors were of the weaker and more vapid
type, those "not of this world," those who turned their eyes away
from current state events and occupied themselves only in religious
matters or in abstract speculation and mystical visions. Still more,
the Roman Procurators and Herod, by their cruelty and harshly
applied justice had sapped the courage of the Jews and laid their
terror upon the people. This is aptly described by the Talmud
when it records how Herod came disguised to Baba ben Buta and,
with malicious intent, began to speak ill of the government, while
Baba ben Buta feared to utter a word, for "the fowls of the air would
spread abroad whatever he might say." 95
At this time, therefore, near to the time when Jesus was born,
none dare take part in political matters or adopt a definite attitude
towards the fortunes of his miserable but beloved fatherland: he
might not even utter his ideas aloud. Spies were everywhere and
police held the population in subjection : all alike were downtrodden
and overcome by fear.
96
Baba Bathra 3b, 4a. Cf. Eccles. x. 20. ^
Such a condition, especially when accompanied by wars, endless
tumults, and even earthquakes and famine, ever begets vast numbers
of unbalanced men. Oppression, danger and fear, all combined,
upset the nerves, and added to the ranks of the excited and hysterical.
Those possessed of any strength and vitality joined the party of
the Zealots, whole-hearted antagonists of the government whether
with the tongue or with the sword, antagonists alike of the foreign
enemies and the Jewish traitors.
The half-hearted and the moderates became the "stay-at-homes,"
who studied "Torah for its own sake," a Torah which had no direct
connexion with political life, and comforted themselves by spreading
among the people the "knowledge of God," a higher moral and
ethical standard. The more weak and downtrodden and passive
among them cultivated secret, mystic doctrines which had but little to
do with this world and were given up entirely to the heavenly life.
From such soil as this sprang up the various sects prevalent in
Palestine in the time of Jesus.
All alike were dissatisfied with existing political conditions, with
perhaps the one exception of the Sadducees. These had more or less
come to terms with things as they were, firstly, because they were
"practical politicians" and saw that nothing could avail against the
Roman government which dominated nearly the entire known world ;
and, secondly, because they themselves were wealthy and so dreaded
any change which might disturb their peace and their enjoyment of
the pleasures of this life.
But the rest of the people could not so come to terms. Every
country which had fallen under Rome's iron yoke groaned under the
harsh bondage ; but none felt it so bitterly as did the Jews. Of the
nations subdued by Rome none was so peculiar and exceptional as
the Jews. The Romans failed utterly to comprehend them. Other
conquered peoples, too, had their own special ideas and habits, but
they all, in the end, came to an understanding with Roman usage,
while Rome, on her part, was tolerant in all matters affecting beliefs
and ideas.
But the Jews no more understood the spirit of the Romans than
did the Romans understand the spirit of those Jews who showed
themselves capable of rising in solid revolt over what, to the Romans,
seemed matters of the most trivial importance. Images of the
Emperor, for example, were not religious but only political emblems,
yet the Jews deafened the whole world with their protests against
them. The Olympian games and wrestling contests, again, had
nothing to do with religion, and were good in themselves, yet the
Jews raved against these also. And what had theatres and circuses
to do with religion ? Yet the Jews would bar them in Judaea. And
in the case of so useful a matter as aqueducts, why could not the
Temple "Qorban" funds be used to provide them? Yet the Jews
nearly raised a rebellion over it. It could be nothing but sheer
obstinacy and an innate rebellious nature.
Such was the conclusion arrived at by the Roman Procurators
who had not, nor could have, any clear conception of the singular
characteristics of the Jewish faith (we have a present-day parallel in
the Palestinian English officials). So they "behaved themselves
deviously with the perverse :" in every popular outburst of protest,
unpolitical in character, the Roman officials saw preliminaries to
revolt and therefore crushed the outburst without mercy. This but
served the more to enrage the people, who well knew how far they
were from revolt, and to strengthen their complaints anew and so
lead on to a further measure of suppression by the Roman execu-
tioner who only saw a second attempt at rebellion.
And so the misunderstanding continued.
The effect of this condition of things was to beget either utterly
fanatical seekers after freedom who turned into actual rebels, or
utterly despairing visionaries, extreme moralists and mystics, who
waited for nothing less than the mercy of heaven, for a freedom
which should come by miraculous means, a salvation which could be
hastened only by deep faith and good works, by a patient watching
for the "end" in a humble and lowly spirit, which forgave insults and
could forego material possessions : "hoping and quietly waiting for
the salvation of the Lord" (Lam. iii. 26).
To these two types of men can be traced, on the one hand, the
destruction of the state and, on the other hand, the rise of Christian-
ity—the destruction of the national religion ; they were the two sides
of the same .medal.
But these effects arose out of a still more fundamental reason—
the chasm that lay between the messianic ideal and the facts of
reality.
Those who returned from the Babylonian Exile brought with
them the promises of Jeremiah and Isaiah, especially those of the
Second Isaiah, who foretold for them such great things : "the riches
of the Gentiles" were to come to the new Judaea; "kings should be
their nursing fathers;" all nations "should bow down to them with
their faces to the ground ;" all nations "should lick the dust of their
feet;" Jerusalem's "foundations" should be "sapphires" and its
"windows carbuncles;" its "enemies should be cut off and great
should be the welfare of its children." Such was the Second Isaiah's
promise.
But what was the actual fact? Slavery to foreign governments,
wars, tumults and torrents of blood. Instead of all nations being
subject to Judah, Judah was subject to the nations. Instead of the
"riches of the Gentiles," godless Rome exacted taxes and tribute.
Instead of "kings being her nursing fathers," there comes Pompey
and his army. Instead of the Gentiles "bowing down with their faces
to the ground" and "licking the dust of their feet," comes a petty
Roman official with unlimited power over Judaea. Instead of Messiah
the son of David, comes Herod the Edomite. . . .
It was all beyond endurance. Josephus, 95a Tacitus, 95b and Sueto-
nius 950 reach the like conclusion that the chief cause of the great revolt
which culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple (and the
same applies to the other Jewish rebellions) was "an ambiguous
oracle found in their sacred writings to the effect that in those
days one of their race should rule over the whole world" (χρησμός
αμφίβολος δμοίως έν τοίς ιερείς εύρημένοις γράμμασιν, ώς κατά τον
χ,αιρον έκεϊνον άπδ της χώρας τις αυτών δρξει της οικουμένης).
Not even Herod himself, strange though this sounds at first, was
innocent of this belief. There is no truth in what the author of
"Doroth Rishonim" says of Herod's preference to be a "King of
Gentiles" rather than a "King of Jews," as we have already seen ;
yet with some measure of restatement the idea is quite true. Herod
wished to be both "King of Gentiles" and "King of Jews," king, in
fact, over the whole world.
Herod, the Edomite Jew, with his craving for endless glory, was,
despite his "healthy" understanding and ability to cope with facts,
none the less, replete with superstition. In his inmost heart
he hoped to be that universal ruler whose coming the Jews awaited
and whom they styled "King Messiah." His ideas about this may
have been vague but it ever appeared to him through the mists of the
future as a distant hope for which he must prepare the ground.
Tyrants of Herod's gloomy cast of mind are, at the same time, most
"practical politicians" and visionaries obsessed by dark, hidden hopes,
hopes which play just as great a part as their pursuit after glory,
and which are just as deep as their burning ambitions.
Only in such a sense as this can one agree with Albert Réville 96
that Herod hoped to become a supreme ruler once Rome had become
enfeebled through the collisions of its rulers. That such a thing was
not impossible he saw from the example of the Parthian Empire
which never became subject to Rome. A proof that Herod meditated
a kingdom as universal as that of King Messiah may be found in
Josephus' story about the eunuch Bagoas.97 Bagoas was assured by
the Pharisees that "the king who was to come," i.e. King Messiah,
would make him a father and benefactor, and restore to him the
ability to marry and beget children.®8 In his indignation Herod killed
this eunuch Bagoas, for he himself expected to be the "king who was
to come."
But if Herod desired a worldly kingdom only, the people looked
858
Wars, VI, v, 4· <
™Hist., V, 13.<
860
1)0
Vespasianus, 4.
See his Jésus de Nazareth, 2d ed. Paris, 1906, I 203-204, 209, 211-212. •4
87
Ant. X V I I ii end of 4. M
m
See Schürer, I I 4 599 and η. 18 ; he rightly corrects the faulty translation
here given by all translators of Josephus. ·^
forward both to a kingdom of this world and also to a kingdom of
heaven ; for a political stronghold and sovereignty over the Gentiles,
together with the recognition of the truth of Israel's religion. But,
as we have seen, political reality was a direct contradiction of this
hope; and the complete antithesis between the dark political reality
and the bright prophetic ideal, which lived in the heart of the people,
had a twofold effect.
On the one side, the antithesis provoked the healthy and cour-
ageous younger generation—especially those of simple Galilee, far
removed from the more sophisticated society of Jerusalem—to fight
for their nation, their country and their God: the ardour of the
Zealots recognized no sovereignty of flesh and blood : God alone was
King in Israel ; and (as is invariably the case with extreme enthusi-
asts) they found it necessary to add to their zeal a tyranny and
violence which only served to augment the prevailing confusion.
They failed to discriminate between actual traitors and Roman sym-
pathizers, and those who were simply peaceful-minded—who had
no love for Rome and remained faithful to their people, but were
not by nature men of war.
On the other side, the same antithesis between political reality
and the prophetic ideal moved most of the Pharisees, devotees of
the Τ or ah, to abandon all interest in temporal things, in the uncer-
tainties of politics and the incidents and changes of daily life: they
gave themselves up entirely to the "life eternal," to the explication
of the Τ orah in its minutest detail. It was not that the Pharisees
opposed political action on principle: they did not find the moment
propitious ; they fulfilled in themselves the injunction "Go, my people,
into your inner chambers . . . hide thyself for a little moment, until
the indignation be overpast" (Is. xxvi. 20).
Such was the party of the "quietist Pharisees" who confined
themselves within the narrow limits of Torah interpretation and made
"submission" the basis of their lives. Like Archimedes of Syracuse
their chief desire was that the Romans touch not their "zig-zags."
Quite distinct were the "Zealot Pharisees" (in essentials the
Zealots were but extremist and active Pharisees : one of their found-
ers was Zadok "the Pharisee ;" and Josephus 99 tells us that, apart
from their excessive devotion to freedom "they were in all things
akin to the Pharisees"). The Zealot Pharisees added to their devo-
tion to the Torah an obligation to defend it with the sword.
Distinct again were the "moderate Pharisees," men who did not
oppose intervention in political affairs but who realized that "there
was a time for all things" (Eccles. iii. 1). When Shemaiah and
Abtalion (or Hillel and Shammai) saw that the times favoured
Herod, they tried to persuade the people to open the gates of
Jerusalem to Herod ; 1 0 0 and when Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai saw
"Ant. X V I I I i 6. M
100
Ant. XIV ix 4; X V i
that the times favoured the Romans he recommended that peace be
made with them and that they should be tolerated "till indignation
be overpast." To the attitude of the "quietist Pharisees" conformed
"those that feared the Lord," "the meek upon earth," such as be-
longed to no party and who wholeheartedly loathed force, and were
unable to fight against the high-handed empire : the earth was given
into the hands of sinful men—therefore these lifted up their eyes
to heaven, waiting for the kingdom of heaven, for the coming of the
Messiah, for the time when God alone should be king of all the earth
and righteousness prevail throughout the world, when ungodliness
should be consumed like smoke and that proud kingdom should pass
away and the people of Israel be exalted above all the Gentiles.
Such people as these were the creators of a great part of the
"Pseudepigraphical Literature" (the Book of Enoch, the Book of
Jubilees, the Assumption of Moses, and the like), which is full to
repletion of the messianic hope in its widest sense. More will be
said of these books later.
This same antithesis between ideals and facts created yet other
parties. It increased the number of those visionaries and day-dream-
ers who, because of the evil of present things, allowed their minds
to wander in a world "where all was good," in the shining spheres
far removed from actualities. Such men became mystics and fore-
casters of the future. The sect of the Essenes, which was far re-
moved from political life, was largely comprised of such as knew the
future and performed miracles ; such as Menahem the Essene who
had prophesied to Herod that he should be king. 101
Such wonder-workers were not, however, to be found only among
the Essenes: Shemayah (or Shammai) the Pharisee also foresaw,
when Herod stood on trial before the Sanhédrin accused of the
murder of Hezekiah the Galilsean, that Herod would be king. 102
These visionaries altogether despaired of things as they were, because
political life was full of godlessness, violence and every abomina-
tion, and present conditions were the utter antithesis of the political
ideal of the prophets.
Since, however, they were too feeble and spiritually-minded to
fight against present evils and so effect tangible reforms, they turned
away and immersed themselves in problems of ethics and visions of
101
Ant. XV χ 5. It is very probable that Menahem the Essene was the
same as Menahem the colleague of Hillel who "went forth in the service
of the king" (Hagiga 16b; but see J. Hag. II 2) ; for the Essenes were not,
like the Sadducees, direct opponents of the Pharisees, and an Essene might
well be a "quietist Pharisee" who at first mingled in politics as "Father of
the Beth Din" in the Sanhédrin and afterwards gave this up to become an
Essene hermit. T o the Talmud the rumour that he prophesied good things
of Herod was sufficient to make them conclude that he "went forth in the
service of the king." The Mishna (Hag. II 2) says only "Menahem went
forth." See Graetz (Heb. trans.) I 495; and Derenbourg, Massa Eretz
Yisrael, pp. 243-244. •4
1<a
Ant X I V ix 4· 4
the future ; they turned towards the "meek upon earth," to the poor
and destitute, to the small and feeble, to the lost and the outcast, to
the miserable and penitent. T o them they preached comfort and
for them they spun the golden threads of the messianic idea in its
more spiritual and less political form, namely, the kingdom of
heaven: a glorious future life must needs be the reward for the
present gloomy life; they that now were little would then be great in
the days of the Messiah, and they that now were lowly would be
exalted in the kingdom of heaven. Thus did they save themselves
from desperation and God from the charge of injustice.
In Galilee Gentiles were numerous, and it had never been a centre
of the Law 103 or a place of resort for High Priests or the richer
classes ; it had no cities approaching the scale of Jerusalem nor, till the
time of Antipas, even towns of the scale of Jericho. In Galilee were
to be found neither Pharisees learned in the Law nor Sadduceans or
Bœthuseans, nor any of the richer and more powerful classes who
acquiesced in Roman domination ; there remained only the two dis-
similar types : Zealots of the party founded by Judah the Galilsean
and Zadok the Pharisee, numerous in Galilee (though not as a sect)
from the time of Hezekiah the Galilaean ; and the "meek upon earth"
and the many varieties of the mystic, visionary type—"quietist Phari-
sees," Essenes, and the like. All who had strength enough to take up
the sword joined themselves with the Zealots ; the rest were more or
less akin in spirit to the "meek upon earth" who abandoned interest
in temporal things to dream of a future life, a life based on the ethics
of the Prophets and the messianic idea. The Zealots, too, as well
as every type of Pharisee and the Essenes, held most strongly to
those same conceptions, but in the thoughts of the "meek" they
assumed a more imaginative and mystic form.
It was from these circles of the "meek" that Jesus and his new
teaching sprang.
108
Cf. the saying of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai : "O Galilee, Galilee ! thou
hast hated the Law : thou wilt in the end beget oppressors" ( / . Shabb. xvi~~8,
near end of section) ; and these "oppressors" were found in the marauding
zealots (see Baba Qama 116&). •4
II. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
[Literature : in Hebrew: Joseph Klausner, "Biy'me Bayith Sheni,"
Berlin, 1923, pp. 9-88; Abner, "Ha-Gor'mim ha-Kalkaliyim ha-Chebruthi-
yim shel M'ridath ha-C hasmonäim" (HarShiloach xxiv 40-44, 141-149,
77, 137-139, 144-145; I I I 44-89; S. Krauss, "Qadmoniyoth ha-Talmud," I

pt. i, Odessa, 1914; Zadok Kahn, "Ha-Abduth al-pi ha-Torah 1/ha-Tal-
mud" (trans. S. Fuchs), Cracow, 1892.
In German: Frants Buhl, "Die Sozialen Verhältnisse der Israeliten,"
Berlin, 1899; L. Herzfeld, "Handelsgeschichte der Juden des Altertums,"
2 Aufl. Braunschweig, 1894; S. Krauss, "Talmudische Archäologie," I-ÏII
Leipzig, 1910-1912; E. Schürer, "Geschichte d. Jüd. Volkes im Zeitalter
Jesu Christi," II * 67-82; D. Farbstein, "Das Recht der unfreien und
freien Arbeiter nach Jüdisch-Talmudischem Recht," Frankfurt a. Main,
1896; H. Weinheimer, "Geschichte des Volkes Israel," Vol. II, Berlin,
1911.
In French: R. P. Schwalm, "La vie privée du peuple juif à l'époque de
Jésus-Christ," Paris, 1910; E. Stapf er, "La Paléstine au temps de Jésus-
Christ," 8 ed.
In English: A. Edersheim, "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,"
12th ed. London, 1906; "Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of
Christ," London, 1896; A. Büchler, "The Economic Conditions of Judaea
after the Destruction of the Second Temple," London, 1912.]
( ι ) Though the Jews, in the time of Jesus, were no longer solely

an agricultural people, they were still essentially an agricultural
people ; especially was this the case in Galilee where Jesus was born
and where he began his ministry : Josephus 1 tells us that Galilee "was
wholly under cultivation and seemed to be one great garden." Par-
ticularly famous was the wheat from Galilee, from the valley of Arbel
and from Chorazim and Capernaum (places mentioned in conjunc-
tion with each other both in the Gospels and in the Talmud).2 A
good quality of wheat was also grown in Samaria (in the valley of
Ain Sokher) and in Judaea, at Michmash and Zanochah, and also at
Apharaim, famous for its large ears of corn and the abundance of
straw obtained after the threshing.
In the period of the Second Temple the Jew proved himself a
skilful agriculturalist ; he knew how to prepare the soil, manure it and
clear it of stones and thorns. H e was accustomed to terrace the
1
Wars I I I iii 2. <
"Matt. xi. 21-23; see Menahoth 55a where, for "Chorazim and Kefar-
Ahim," should be read "Chorazim and Kefarnahum" (or Kefar Tanhum),
the modern Korazi and Tel-Hum in Lower Galilee near the Sea of Galilee. ·^
1
74
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 17b
hills and valleys 3 so that the "sweeping rains" (Prov. xxviii. 3), so
violent in the Palestinian winter, should not wash away the thin
layer of soil off the rocks, and he knew how to practise irrigation
by means of cisterns, wells and canals.
In a normal season the Judaean farmer reaped fivefold from a
normal soil, while with good seasons and from fruitful soil he reaped
as much as a hundredfold; and Galilee was even more fruitful than
Judaea. In ordinary years, if we take no account of droughts, Pales-
tine produced bread enough not only for its population but even for
exportation.
Besides grain crops (wheat, barley, spelt, oats, rye, millet and
even rice, which had been brought from the east and acclimatised),
the country was rich in vegetables (cabbages, carrots, cucumbers,
gourds, onions, garlic, radishes, rape-seed, lettuce, lentils, beans, peas,
and acclimatised vegetables like melons, artichokes, orach, lupine,
asparagus, Egyptian beans, Egyptian and Greek gourd-fruit), which
provided the bulk of the ordinary food for the poorer classes ; while
Palestine was especially rich in fruit (grapes, olives, figs, pomegran-
ates, charobs, citrons, cherries, plums, nuts, almonds, dates, mul-
berries, apples, pears, apricots, quinces, and acclimatised fruits like
crustumenian pears, peaches and medlars).
The wine of Judaea and Samaria was plentiful and good; the
grapes were so plentiful that they were used for raisins, and so sweet
that they were used to make honey (dibs). From the sour wine,
vinegar was obtained. Oil too was plentiful and good, especially in
Galilee. The best came from Gush Halab, the very name of which
testifies to its luscious olives ; we can comprehend why it should be
just Yochanan of Gush Halab who, about the time of the Destruction,
received the monopoly for selling Galilœan oil to the merchants of
Caesarea or to the Syrian Jews. 4
Likewise famous for oil were the districts Netopha, Meron and
Thekoa in Galilee, and Shiphkon and Beth Shean in Samaria. 5 In
Judaea too the olive was plentiful as is evident from the names
"Mount of Olives," "Gethsemane," and the like. Palestinian olive
oil was exported to Tyre and Sidon and Syria and Egypt. Another
source of wealth was the date-palm which produced "date palm oil"
and "date honey ;" according to Pliny 6 Judaea was as famous for
dates as Egypt for spices, and he enumerates five varieties of Jericho
dates, famous for their fine flavour and delicate odour. H e also
extols the balm of Ain Gedi which, according to him, was sold for
twice its weight in gold.7
The Jews were also shepherds, cowherds and cattlemen, and
8
Shebi'ith I I I 8 . ^
*Wars I I xxi 2; Life of Josephus §13· ^
'Peah
6
V I I 1 and 2.4 *
See Hist Nat. X I I I 4, 44 ; and Wars I V viii 3· Λ
‫י‬Hist. Nat. X I I i i i , and Strabo, Geographica, XVII, 1, 1 5 . ^
Jerusalem had a special "cattle-market." 8 The name "Tyropaean"
(cheese-market) proves that they were dairymen too. The Jews of
Transjordania trafficked in wool, and in the new portion of Jerusalem
was a "Woollen-merchants' market," to the north of the city adjoin-
ing the markets of the ironworkers and carpenters, and the shops of
the dealers in cotton and clothes.9 As for poultry, the Jews had,
from very early times, reared doves and pigeons ; other species which
they began to breed at a later stage were those which bear a foreign
name : cocks and hens (‫ תרנגוא‬and ‫ תרגגואח‬which ousted the Hebrew
terms ‫גבר‬, and, apparently ,‫פמיר‬, respectively), geese (avis ‫ )אווז‬and
ducks (‫)בז האווז׳‬.
Hunters were few, but fishermen were numerous, especially in
Galilee. The Sea of Galilee contained all manner of fish, including
certain very choice varieties.10 Countless fishing-boats filled the lake
which was surrounded with villages inhabited wholly by fishermen.
So plentiful were the fish that they were salted and sold in Palestine
and abroad ; this accounts for the fact that a town on the lakeshore,
which apparently bore the Hebrew name Migdal or Migdal-Nunaya, 11
was in Greek called by the name "Tarichaea," from the word τάριχος
salted fish.12 The newly built Tiberias became the fishing centre and
fish market of Galilee.
Galilaean fishermen who became attached to Jesus play a promi-
nent part in the Gospels, and two of them, Simon Peter and Andrew
his brother, after having been fishers in the Sea of Galilee, were
called by Jesus to become "fishers of men." 1 3 In the Jordan and the
Mediterranean Sea fish were also plentiful, and as early as the time
of Nehemiah, when the Tyrians used to bring fish, probably salted,
to sell in Jerusalem (the coast-towns were then in the hands of the
Phoenicians and Philistines) there was a special gate called "the
fishgate."14
From the Dead Sea ("the sea of Sodom") came salt, bitumen,
8
Erubin V I I I g. That the reference is not to incense dealers appears
from the words of R. Yose (ibid.) that "it was the woollen market," and
not, as S. L. Rappoport supposed, the market of the pharmacists and spice-
dealers (see his article in Ha-Maggid, 1874, no. 17, reprinted in Ha-Me'ammer
ed. 9Luncz, II 556). <
Erubin ibid.; Wars V viii 1. A
10
Wars I I I χ 8. M
11
Pesahim 46a; / . Ma'as'roth I I I 1; Sank. II 1; such is the conclusion of
Klein, "Beitr. z. Geographie u. Geschichte Galiläas," Leipzig, 1909, pp. 76-84.
89-93, and Dalman, Orte und Wege Jesu, 2 Aufl. Gütersloh, 1921, pp. 114-116;
"Beth Yerah" or "Ariah" is the modern Hirbet el Kerakh, near the colony
Kinnereth. According to N. Slousch (Qobets I, Tel Aviv, 1921, p. 66 note
2 to the article Hor'both Tarichaia by R. Ashbel) Tarichasa was in Hebrew
called "M'laha" since, corresponding with the Greek name, the Arabs call
Kinnereth "Malaha." <
a
See Strabo, Geographica XVI. He also commends the mûries, the brine
of 19
preserved fish, from Tarichaea, ibid. 2. ·^
Matt. iv. 18-20 and parallels. ^‫־‬
14
Cf. Nehem. iii. 3 and xiii. 16.
17b
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
varieties of phosphorus and tar, for home-consumption or export. 15
Pliny 10 tells us that "Judsean pitch" was world-famous, and to this
day bitumen is known by the name of "Jewish pitch" (Judenpech,
Judenharz). The country also contained "Antipatris nitre." The
henna-flower (Song of Songs, 1, 14) produced a dye employed in
the female toilet, and from roses, to which entire gardens were
devoted, was made a precious "attar of roses." 17 Iron-mines were
to be found in the Lebanon and in the north of Edom, near the
town Pinon or Punon, and Josephus 18 mentions "the hill of iron"
which "extended as far as the land of Moab." There were cer-
tainly such mines in Transjordania since Ibrahim Pasha still used
to quarry iron near Jebel Ma'rad, about an hour and a half north of
the Jabbok (Wadi Zeraqa). 19
(2) The Jews were equally alert and practised in handicrafts.
Even though we were to regard the many Talmudic passages in praise
of handicrafts, and the dictum that a man must teach his son a
trade, 20 as nothing more than abstract, academic ideas, it is still ap-
parent from the actual lives of the greatest of the Tannaim at the
close of the period of the Second Temple and after the Destruction
that the Jews of that time were skilled in handicrafts: Hillel the
Elder was, for some time, employed as a wood-cutter; R. Yehoshua
ben Hananya was a smith ; R. Nehunya, in the latter days of the
Second Temple, was a well-digger. We hear too of R. Yehudah "the
baker," of R. Yochanan "the shoemaker," of R. Yehudah the "apothe-
cary," of R. Yehoshua the "miller," and so forth. 21 Jesus of Naza-
reth was a carpenter and maker of cattle-yokes,22 and Saul of Tarsus,
Paul the Apostle, was a tent-cloth weaver or tapestry-worker.
We find, almost contemporary with Jesus, mention of no less
than forty kinds of craftsmen in the Jewish literature : Tailors, shoe-
makers, builders, masons, carpenters, millers, bakers, tanners, spice-
merchants, apothecaries, cattlemen, butchers, slaughterers, dairymen,
cheesemakers, physicians and bloodletters, barbers, hairdressers, laun-
drymen, jewellers, smiths, weavers, dyers, embroiderers, workers in
gold brocade, carpet makers, matting makers, well-diggers, fishermen,
bee-keepers, potters and platemakers (who were also pottery deal-
ers), pitcher makers, coopers, pitch-refiners and glaze-makers, makers
of glass and glassware, armourers, copyists, painters and engravers.
Handicrafts were passed on from father to son, a fact indicated
by the expression in the Talmud: "a carpenter and son of a carpen-
ω
10
Wars IV viii 4. <
Hist. Nat. X I V 25. "Gardens of roses," Ma'as'roth I I 5 . ^
11
Shabbath XIV 4 · ^
18
M
Wars IV viii 2.
See Frants Buhl, Dû sozialen Verhältnisse der Israeliten, Berlin, p. 72;
G. Dalman, Pcdästina-3ahrbuch IX (1913), P· 68. on this iron mine.^|
20
Aboth I 9 (Shemayah) ; Kiddushin IV 14.-^(
21
See Büchler, Economic Conditions, p. 50.
23
Justin Martyr, Dial, cum Tryphone, §88. ·^
ter,‫ ״‬or "of carpenters," 23 or "Hananya the son of apothecaries," and,
in the Old Testament, "Malkhiya the son of metal-refiners." 24 And
Christian-Jewish tradition tells that both Jesus and his father Joseph
were carpenters. There were entire families, especially skilled in
some craft, who would not reveal their secret outside the family. 25
Whole cities were famous for one class of work : e.g. in Magd'la
(Migdal Sabo'aya in Transjordania) were numerous dyers, Beth
Saida had numerous fishermen (‫דייגים‬, and not ‫ציידים‬, hunters), in
Kefar Hananya and Kefar Sihin were jarmakers, and "to bring jars
to Kefar Hananya" was like "bringing straw to Apharaim ;" 2 6 Sep-
phoris had its weavers, 27 and the finest cotton came from Beth Shean,
while the commoner sort came from Arbel. 28 Nazareth was appar-
ently a town of carpenters and wood-sawyers. 29
At the time of R. Hoshayah the Great (first half of third century)
there were towns in the south where the people were mainly occupied
in purple dyeing, 39 and in the fourth century the author of Totius
Orbis Descriptio mentions Lydda, Samaria, Caesarea and Sarepta
("which pertaineth to Sidon") as "noted for purple." 31 Although
this is very much later than the time of Jesus we know that in the
East, and especially in earlier times, craftsmen did not so readily
change their trades as in present-day Europe.
Before, and most probably during, Jesus' time the Jews had some-
thing like factories giving employment to whole families, e.g., "the
families of the fine linen workship of the house of Ashbe'a," and "the
inhabitants of Netaim . . . which were potters." 3 2 There were
smaller workshops where a man worked by himself or with his sons
or one or two apprentices: "Beth kaddad" (house of the jar-maker)
and "Beth tsabba' " (house of the dyer) ;33 but "Beth y'tsirah," 34 with
the abstract "y'tsira" and not "Beth ha-yotser" (house of the potter,
as in the Old Testament), 35 refers apparently to an entire factory,
employing a larger or smaller number of hands.
(3) But in spite of the comparatively large number of artisans
33
M
Ab. Zar. 3b (beginning); / . Yeb. V I I I 2. 4
28
Nehem. iii. 8 and 31.-4
Yoma III 11. <4
28
•4
Gen. R. §86.
27
38
/. B. Bathra I I I 3· 4
/. Kiddushin I I 5; J- Kethuboth VII, 8; Gen. R. §19; Qoh. R. on
Ki b'robh hokhma; Mid. Tanhuma Bereskith §24, ed. Buber p. 9; Mid.
Shemuel VII 3, ed. Buber, p. 66. On this see Münk, Palästina (Hebrew
trans. M. Rabinson, Vilna, 1909) ; S. Klein, Beiträge, p. 53 n.
®See Joseph Halevy, Shemoth 'Are Erets Yisrael (in Yerushalayim ed.
Luncz,
30
IV 11-20). ^‫־‬
81
Tanhuma, Naso §8; ed. Buber p. 32 n. 7 0 . 4
32
See Büchler, Economic Conditions, p. 50 n. 1. ^
83
I Chron. iv. 21 and 23. Λ
8
Mo'ed Qatan 13b; Pesahim 55&. Λ
*T. Kelim: Β. Qama III 8; Siphre Zutta 35, " (ed. Horowitz, Qobets
Ma'aseh
38
ha-Tannaim, III 331 n. 3).·^
Jerem. xviii. 2-3. •4
17b
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
and the many and various handicrafts in Palestine, the bulk of the
people were not artisans but peasants possessed of small holdings.
The Mishna, the Baraitas and the Gospels have alike much to say
of the life of the peasant and comparatively little of that of the
Hebrew artisan. The reason f o r this is perhaps to be found in the
fact that Jewish craftsmen were not able to compete with foreign
goods; the foreign names borne even by such common articles as
stools (‫"—ספסל‬subsellium"), handkerchief (‫"—סודר‬sudarium"), san-
dais (‫—סנדל‬σανΒάλιον) and felt-hats (‫—פיציח‬πίλων), show that these
things were imported from abroad. 38 Therefore the part played
by native artisans was not so prominent.
It was quite otherwise, however, with the peasant class, and
especially with what we now call the "small-holder." He is the "ba'al
ha-bait," the "householder," of the Mishna. the exact Greek transla-
tion of which is given in the Gospels (οικοδεσπότης). These middle-
class peasants, whose land provided them with an adequate though
limited subsistence, were the bulk and the mainstay of the nation.
They populated most of the villages (of which there were, especially
in Galilee, hundreds) and also the small and medium sized towns,
such as retained the title "Kefar," village, even after they had ceased
to be villages in the ordinary sense (e.g., Kefar-Nahum, Kefar-Saba,
which were real towns).
These "small-holders" lived by the labour of their hands. They,
their wives and children, did their own ploughing and sowing, reaping
and sheaf-binding, threshing and winnowing. Most of their produce
they reserved for their own household needs, and the rest was brought
to the town and either bartered or sold for money to procure absolute
necessaries. Such a peasant was not able to lay by any wealth, and
one or two years of bad seasons or illness would be enough to deprive
him of his property and reduce him to the status of a hireling or
labourer, or even cause him to be sold into slavery to a richer land-
owner because of his debts. In any case some of his children would
be forced to become hirelings or labourers since the small-holding
sufficed only for the eldest son who received "a double share" of their
inheritance. The other sons, not having land enough for their needs,
were, in spite of themselves, turned into members of the "proletariat,"
the class which owns nothing but its powers of work. When no work
is forthcoming they are reduced to the level of "unemployed labour-
ers," and become beggars or—robbers and brigands.
In Judaea, however, and in a lesser degree also in Galilee, was a
class of wealthier peasants whose land earned for them more than
enough for their needs ; it was they who would lend money or seed
to the impoverished small-holders on the security of the latter's prop-
erty, and this property sometimes passed into the possession of the
lenders to enlarge still further their holdings.
38
See in detail R. P. Schwalm, La vie privée du peuple juif à l'époque
de Jésus-Christ, Paris, 1910, pp. 262-272. Â
These "wealthy proprietors" laid the foundation of a produce
market and of Hebrew trade generally. The middle-class landowner
traded with the money gained by the sale of such of his produce—
vegetables and fruit—as was left on his hands after satisfying the
needs of his own household. This class was fairly numerous com-
pared with the class of really wealthy landowners, of whom there
were but few.
There were "men of property" (‫ בעצי ננסין‬or ‫ )עתירי נכפין‬even in
the time of the Macabees and especially in Herodian times ; they were
mostly connections of the royal family and of the high-priestly
families, but the same class was to be found among the merchants
already in the time of Joseph ben Tobias. "Latifundiae," large
landed estates such as were to be found in Italy and which brought
about the downfall of Rome, were not a prominent feature of Pales-
tine ; but they did exist. The Gospels speak of the Oikonomos and
the Epitropos, the "steward" who supervised the numerous serv-
ants of a great property while the wealthy owner lived in the city
or was absent travelling in pursuit of business.37 The Mishna refers
to the fact that Rabban Gamaliel I I ("of Yabneh") had workmen
who tilled his land,38 and that he used to let his fields.39
Palestine thus possessed both the artisan and the hireling class.
The hireling hired himself out for a definite period, not exceeding
six years ; he could also hire out his services for a single day (hence
the term "daily hireling" ( ‫ · )שכיר יום‬H e was either an impoverished
small-holder or the son of a small-holder who, not having inherited
land enough to support him, allowed himself to be hired by a rich
land-owner for a certain length of time until he could improve his
position. His relations with the wealthier proprietor were those of
the "client" with the "patron" in Rome. 40
There were, again, in Judaea and Galilee peasants who had no
land and spent all their life in the position of hired workmen to rich
peasants and others; such were known as I'qutoth, and an entire
village in Palestine, "Kefar-L'qutaia" was named after them. 41 The
hireling lent himself for any kind of labour and was the counterpart
of the English "unskilled labourer." The artisan, po'el, on the con-
trary, was hired only for some definite craft or crafts.
The Talmud refers to the "unemployed Po'el" and the Gospels
contain a parable about a householder who went out to hire workmen
and found "workmen who had been idle all the day" because "no
man had hired them." 42 The householder or employer used to enter
into an agreement with the workman, usually by word of mouth
81
88
Luke xvi. 1-8; Matt. xx. 8, e t c . ^
Demai III 1. <
" B. Metzia V 8. On Rabban Gamaliel's wealth see Büchler, op. cit. pp.
37-38. <4
40
41
Krauss, Talmudische Archäologie, II 102. ^
Lam. R. on 'al eleh. 4
° Matt. xx. 1-7. •4
17b
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
though sometimes also in writing, and whoever should break the
agreement (‫ )חוזר בו‬had to pay a fine, whether employer or employed.
The sympathy shown in the Mishna and the Tosefta43 in favour of
the labourer redounds to the Talmud's credit ; but this sympathy dates
from a period later than the Second Temple and is mainly no more
than an academic view never widely held in real life.
Yet the position of the Hebrew labourer was better than that of
the Roman, Egyptian or Babylonian labourer, both by reason of the
simpler conditions and fewness of men of great wealth, and also
because of the democratic spirit infused into daily life by the Scribes
and their successors, the Pharisees and Tannaim.
The labourers mostly worked on the land, but the craftsmen also
employed labourers who were called ‫ חניכים‬or ‫שוליות‬, apprentices. 44
They worked ten hours a day and were paid anything from an as
to a se la, though the average was a drachma45 or a dinar46 a day
(about eightpence). This was the rate in Macabbaean times, about
the time of writing of the Book of Τ obit, and in the reign of Domitian
when the Gospel of Matthew was written. 47
Besides the peasant pure and simple, there were to be found in
the Palestine of Jesus' time varieties of the same class : (a) the con-
tractor or middle-man (‫לקבלן׳‬, who undertook to carry out the required
work and pay all taxes and, in return, received a half, third or quarter
of the produce.
(b) The tenant farmer (‫)אריס‬, corresponding to the Roman
"colonus," who received seed, implements and beasts of burden from
the owner of the land, but tilled the ground himself and, as pay,
received a half, third or quarter of the produce. Such "tenant farm-
ers" were numerous in Italy in the time of Jesus, and it was they
who, on the expropriation of this "foreign" land, brought about the
downfall of the Roman Empire. In Palestine they were not so
common since the "householder" and "small holder" predominated.
But even there the tenant farmers played an important part and,
as may be seen f r o m the Gospel parable of the "Wicked husband-
men," 4 8 there prevailed strife and enmity between them and the
propertied class.
(c) There was also the "lessee" who did not receive but gave
a fixed portion of the produce in lieu of rent, so that if the land
produced less than this portion the lessee was the loser, and if more
he stood to gain.
( d ) Finally there was the hirer, who differed from the lessee in
48
See Farbstein, op. cit. •4
44
Pesahim 108a; B. Qama 32b; Shabb. 96b (in the latter passage see the
reading of the " A r u c h " ) . ^
45
Tobit 5, 4· <
48
Matt. xx. 2, 9, 10, 13. ^
47
See L. Herzfeld, op. cit. pp. 195-196. ^
48
Matt. xxi. 33-42.•4
that he paid in money and not in produce, but was in other respects
identical with the lessee.
Besides the unattached labourers there were the "children of the
household," corresponding to the male and female domestics of today,
and the "ministers" (‫ שמשים ושמשות‬or ‫ »)משמשים ומשמשות‬usually
personal attendants, especially of aged people and students requiring
personal assistance and service, the valet and lady's maid of today. 49
Thus, apart from the comparatively few large landowners with
great estates ("fathers' houses";‫ בתי אבית‬is the Hebrew term), 5 0
and the more numerous well-to-do peasant class, we find a multitude
of small-holders and a complete "proletariat" of every kind: hire-
lings, artisans, landless peasants, tenants, lessees, renters (and, to a
certain extent, contractors), household servants and personal at-
tendants. These were all men and women who had no means of
subsistence beyond their ability to work. So long as they could
secure work, all was well with them ; but if not, they were reduced
to want and beggary—the passive victims of grievances and the
dreamers of dreams, or else imbued with violent rage and the spirit
of revolt.
All the proletariat so f a r enumerated were, however, independent
—at least from the legal standpoint: their labour might be sold to
others, but their bodies were not enslaved by strangers. But there
were, in Palestine, also slaves. It is true that the slave did not lack
work and so did not lack bread ; but he was not free : he could not
choose his work or his master. The Hebrew slave was a hireling
for six years, but he differed from the hireling in not having the
right to change his master or choose his work. It might be true
from the humanitarian standpoint of the Talmud that the body of
the Hebrew slave is not "a thing that can be bought," 51 and that
"whoso getteth a Hebrew slave is as he that getteth himself a
master," 52 but such humanitarian laws 53 were, so far as the time of
Jesus was concerned, merely academic expressions of opinion.
The Hebrew slave in his master's house was then an actual slave,
enslaved in body and mind to his master and feeding from the crumbs
off his master's table ; he was, however, spared the consciousness of
perpetual slavery and so his spirit was not wholly crushed. The
primitive relationship prevailing between master and slave in a coun-
try where the simple life was the rule and the democratic Pharisaic
spirit was much in evidence, largely removed the possibility of cruelty
®Krauss, Talrmdische Archäologie, I I 101-102.·^
60
T. Terumoth II 11; B. Bathra 46b. M
61
See Arakhim V I I I 5 against the opinion of Rabba in Qiddushin 16a
and 25a and Baba Qama 113b. 4
Ba
Qiddushin 20a, 216. 4
63
Collected in Zadok Kahn's Ha-Abduth al-pi ha-Torah 1/ha-Talmud,
translated into Hebrew from the French by J. S. Fuchs, with added notes,
Cracow, 1892. ^
17b
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
and persecution; none the less, a master could scourge an idle or
disobedient slave and treat him altogether as an inferior being.
It is true that Hebrew slaves were not so numerous in Palestine
as, for example, in contemporary Rome, and so could not play the
same decisive rôle, culturally and economically, as they did in Rome
(though Eduard Meyer combats the prevalent view of their evil
influence in the Roman Empire). 5 4 But they were, none the less, an
important factor in the political and spiritual upheavals in the time of
Jesus.
Without them we cannot account for the frequent rebellions and
the many religious movements from the time of Pompey till after
the time of Pontius Pilate. Where there are no crowds of destitute
men and impoverished small-property owners, it is not popular revolts
that mature but only political conspiracies among the army and the
ruling powers. The same holds good with regard to extremist re-
ligious movements: their leading figures are invariably the discon-
tented crowds seeking fresh paths to happiness because the present
is evil and affords no justification to the accepted religious beliefs.
Again, neither numerous nor an important social element in Pales-
tine were the "Canaanitish slaves" (so called because they came from
Tyre and Sidon, or because of the verse: "Cursed be Canaan, a slave
of slaves shall he be to his brethren . . . and Canaan shall be their
slave") 55 A hundred francs in present money was the average price
of a Canaanite slave (male or female ; the expression "Cushite female
slave" is also common) ; but the price might be as high as a hundred
mânë or as low as a gold dinar.™ The slaves acted as tailors or
barbers, bakers, butchers, pearl-stringers, and even tutors and teach-
ers ; female slaves were also hairdressers, singers, dancers and
the like,
Their sale was completed by a written contract as though they
had been goods or cattle ; they were "marked" so that in case of escape
they might be everywhere recognized : a seal was stamped on them
or else a bell was hung upon them, round their necks or on their
clothes, as is done with camels in the East or with cattle in the Swiss
mountains ; or they wore a special cap (‫לכביל‬: and sometimes their
flesh was branded just like cattle. Legally the Canaanite slave was
his master's chattel : he could have no private property ("what a slave
has acquired, his master has acquired") ; the work of his hands, his
finds, and even money accruing to him as compensation for harm
incurred, belonged not to himself but to his master. But in spite
of all this "the hand of a slave is as the hand of his master" 5 7 and
M
See his excellent Die Sklaverei im Altertum and Wirtschaftliche Ent-
Wickelung im Altertum, Jena, 1895. Λ
65
Gen. ix. 25-27. On slave traffic in Tyre and Sidon see II Macc. viii. 11. Λ
W
B. Qama IV 5· <
87
Ma'aser Sheni IV 4; Gittin 77b. 4
"a man's slave is as his own body" 58 —which was hardly the case
with the Roman slaves.
Canaanite slaves were not so well fed as Hebrew slaves,89 and
the former were deemed idle, dissolute, shameless and lewd : so little
respect did their masters feel for their presence that "some performed
the most private actions in front of them." 60 And there were some
masters and their sons who "considered all things lawful with the
female slaves." 61 The owners held their slaves in complete subjec-
tion, scourging them with whips and thongs, with the "fargel"
(flagellum) and "magleb" (some kind of knout, with a knob of metal
at the end), and inflicted on them "forty stripes save one," or "sixty
strokes" (pulsim). Only if the slaves suffered in consequence some
manner of deformity they used to be freed; and if they died as a
result of their injuries inflicted by their master, the master was put
to death (thus removing the slave from· the category of a chattel or
mere animal).
In all other respects they were treated like cattle : they had legally
no family relationships, no rights of marriage, divorce or widowhood,
and the incest laws did not hold in their case. In actual fact, how-
ever, it was different; if Herod's brother, Pherora, had a slave-
girl as paramour and the all-powerful Herod could not separate
them, 62 and if Rabban Gamaliel ha-Nasi suffered his slave Tabi to
fulfil the injunctions of the Law and mourned over him and received
consolation at his death (as enjoined in the Law), 6 3 and if in the
Nasi's house the eldest slave was styled (though this was at a late
period) Abba, father, and the eldest female slave, Amma, mother—
then the same human conditions probably held good in the time
of Jesus.
But in any case, "Canaanitish slavery" was then a horrible plague
affecting the national body of Israel as was also the case with other
nations in those early days. Even if the Canaanitish slaves took no
part in the subversive political and religious movements in Palestine,
by their very existence they unwittingly helped to bring them about.
Harsh slavery invariably produces a body of malcontents, and there
is no more readily available fuel for such movements than those men
who have been crushed and reduced to the level of brute beasts.
(4) Besides agriculture and handicrafts, commerce also flourished
in Palestine at the time of Jesus. During the time of the First
Temple and the beginning of the Second, in the Persian period, the
merchants were mainly Canaanites, and it was from them and in
company with them that the Jews learned the business of the mer-
88
Β. Qama 2ya. 4
‫ ״‬Gittin I 6.4
‫ ״‬Niddah 17a.
91
Lev. R. §9; see also Yeb. I I 5 · ^
β
Wars I xxiv 5. 4
63
See Sukka II 1 ; Berakhoth 16b; B. Qama 74b; J. Erubin X 1 ; J. Sukka
II ι ; / . Kethuboth III 10. ^
17b
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
chant and pedlar (‫ לסחור‬and ‫ לרבול‬i.e., to go round from place to
place "on foot" with the object of bartering various commodities),
and, later, to practise salesmanship in one fixed place (‫ חנות‬shop,
‫ חנוגי‬shopkeeper), to bargain and trade, and, finally, to practise
64
commerce (‫ ה׳‬Π .(‫מק‬
From the time of Alexander the Great, however, when Jerusalem
began to be surrounded by Greek cities, mainly trade-centres, the
Jews learnt commerce from the Greeks. This is apparent from the
many Greek mercantile terms: "Siton" (ΐ^Ο‫־‬σιτώνης) is the general
dealer in corn produce ; the dealer in only one variety of corn or other
goods is a "monopol" (^fîJD-μονοπώλης) ; and he who deals in various
articles, and especially in bread, is called "p'latar" (πρατήρ according
to Schürer and Krauss; πωλητή ptov according to Herzfeld). Even
the shopkeeper's account-book (‫ )המקיף‬had a Greek name, "pinaks"
(π(ναξ). The Hebrew word for mirror (‫ )מראה‬was changed for the
Latin aspeclaria (speculum) ; the cobbler (‫ )רצעז‬became the sandalar
(sandularius) ; the table (‫ )שצחן‬was called tabla (tabula) ; the seat
(‫ )כסא‬became Safsal (subsellium) ; the salver (‫ )קערה שטוחה‬became
escutela (scutella), and the curtain (‫ )יריעה‬became vilon (velum). A
robe of honour was given a specifically Greek name astala (στολή),
and even the cover of a sacred volume had a Greek name tik (θήκη).
When Hillel introduced an important reform in the interests of
Palestinian commerce, he gave it a Greek name prozbol (προσβολή).
Scores of other Greek and Latin words became naturalized in Hebrew
literature and are only accountable through the influence of Latin and
Greek commerce. 65 Such foreign words do not, however, prove that
Greeks only, and not Jews, practised trade in Palestine : they prove
only that the first impetus to trade came from the Greeks. "These
borrowings (from Greek)," says Schwalm, "do not indicate that the
articles in question came to the Jews from the Greeks : it was, simply,
that the language of national trade was filled with neologisms because
the language of trade was Greek.
It was precisely the same in the sixteenth century when the Flor-
entines, going through and about France, brought with them Tuscan
words which have now become naturalized : agio, bilan, banqueroute,
banque.66‫״‬ The Jews had, in fact, practised trade in Palestine from
the time of Simon Maccabaeus, when the coast towns gradually became
subject to him and his son, John Hyrcanus, and his grandson, Alex-
ander Jannasus. Palestine was greatly benefited by the economic
policy of the Maccabaeans. Simon Maccabaeus took measures to im-
prove agricultural conditions. His many efforts to secure an outlet to
the sea 6 7 and his harsh insistence that the coast dwellers should either
64
Nehem. x. 32. •4
"Collected in Schürer, op. cit. I I 4 67-82; Krauss, op. cit. I I 355-356;
Klausner, Biy'rnê Bayith Sheni, Berlin, 1923, pp. 42-43· 4
06
Schwalm, La vie privée du peuple juif, pp. 325-326. 4
87
Clearly shown in I Macc. xiv. 5. 4
turn Jews or leave, are best explained as the outcome of an economic
rather than a national policy or religious zeal. His example was
followed by his son and grandson who enlarged the Land of Israel till
it embraced the whole of Palestine.
The taxation of exports and imports brought the Maccabaeans,
from John Hyrcanus to Hyrcanus the Second, into important nego-
tiations with the Senate of Rome. 68 The Maccabaean monument at
Modin gives a picture of ships, and the anchor (together with ears
of corn, grape-clusters and pomegranates) is a symbol on the Jewish
coinage from Alexander Jannaeus till the Herods.
Internal trade, too, was also well developed. "Market-days
(‫ )ימי כניסה‬had long been in existence, and to these were added per-
manent markets (,‫[ )שווקים‬or streets devoted solely to trade], an old
Jewish institution, as opposed to the ‫" ידידים‬goings down" (i.e., to the
coast towns, in the lowlands by the sea : cf. "they that go down to the
sea," e8a and the Aramaic ‫)נחותי ימא‬, markets instituted by non-Jews. 69
The regular pilgrimages to Jerusalem at the great festivals served
also to develop internal trade. The Palestinian towns exchanged
their agricultural produce. Sharon in Judaea sold its wines and
bought bread. Jericho and the Jordan valley sold their famous fruits
for bread and wine. The Judaean Shefela had a superabundance of
bread and oil, and Galilee of corn and vegetables. Palestine also ex-
ported its surplus of oil, wine, wheat and fruit, while it imported a
considerable number of commodities.
Of the two hundred and forty articles of commerce mentioned in
the Talmud and Midrash in connexion with Palestine, enumerated by
Herzfeld, 70 one hundred and thirty, or more than a half, came from
abroad. Trade routes within the country were numerous, and many
important routes radiated towards neighbouring states. 71 Jewish
sailors were just as numerous as Jewish donkey-drivers and camel-
drivers, the companies of which brought into use the collective nouns
‫ חמרת‬a donkey-caravan, and ‫ גמלת‬a camel-caravan.
So prevalent was trade within the country that we actually find
in the High Priests' prayers on the Day of Atonement, a prayer f o r
"a year of trade." 7 2 Alike in Jerusalem and every considerable
Judaean and Galilaean town (Tiberias, Sepphoris, etc.), the mer-
chants and craftsmen had their markets and booths : the booth of the
cobblers, of the dyers, of the flax-dealers, of the spice-merchant, of
the cotton-dealers and of the clothiers ; the market of the bakers, of
the weavers, of the metal-workers, of the glass-makers, of the car-
"Ant. X I I I ix 2; X I V viii 5, x
Ma
Ps. cvii. 23. •4
‫י‬° See his Handelsgeschichte, pp. 129-130. ^
" K r a u s s , Qadmoniyoth ha-Talmud, Odessa, 1914, I 158-159; Herzfeld,
op. cit. 22-23, 141-142; Klausner, Biy'mê Bayith Sheni pp. 50-53; Buhl, op.
cit. pp. 7-8. •4
" / . Yoma V 3· <«
17b
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 188
penters, of the wool-merchants, of the cattle-breeders—the cattle
market, and so on.
There were also the maqotin (macellum), or meat-market; the
atliz (‫ ־ קטציז אטצין‬κατάλυσις) for the sale of meat, cattle and wine ;
the nahtomar and p'latar (see above) sold baked bread and sometimes
vegetables also. The ‫ גןבע‬and ‫ תרים‬were the stalls for the market-
women. The ‫( סטין‬στόα) was a hall of pillars, surmounted by a dome,
corresponding to the French "depot" or the German "Markthallen ;"
and the "dome of accounts" (‫ )כפת־החשבונות‬was, apparently, the
"stock-exchange" of those days. Pedlars (‫ )רובצים׳‬went about in the
smaller towns selling their wares to the country folk, and also spices
and embroidery to the town women ; and the "clothes dealers" ( ‫מוכרי‬
‫ )כסות‬used to "fold on a rod behind them" the garments which they
carried about for sale.73
Export and import dues were levied on merchandise, and paid to
tax-gatherers (‫ גבאים‬,‫ )גובים‬,‫ בצשים‬excise-officers and publicans
(‫)מוכסים‬, who farmed the tax from the Government or from other
publicans. We are not aware of the extent of taxation at the time of
the Maccabees but we know that the Seleucids took from the Jews
a poll-tax, a salt tax, a "crown" tax (crowns of the bride and bride-
groom), a land tax, a cattle tax, and a tax on fruit trees. 74 W e may
assume that, most probably, the Maccabees did not add to these
taxes but may even have reduced them, since we hear no complaints
against their method of taxation (e.g., from the popular delegates
who came to complain to Pompey against Hyrcanus and Aristo-
bulus). 75
On the other hand, the moment Herod died we hear an emphatic
demand from the nation to abolish the "annual tax" and the "tax
which was levied indiscriminately on everything bought and sold in
the market." 7 6 The inference is that Herod increased the burden of
taxes and duties (what the Romans called "tributum" and also "vec-
tigalia") beyond endurance. It was, apparently from that time—
that of the Romans and their agent Herod—that the name "publican"
became synonymous with robber, brigand, ruffian, murderer, and
reprobate ; 7 7 one whose evidence was invalid, whose money could
not be accepted as alms for the poor nor used in exchange, since it
was suspected of having been acquired by robbery. 78
In this the Gospels are in complete agreement with the Talmud,
and the collocation "publicans and sinners" (τελώναί %a\ αμαρτωλοί
commonly occurs. 79 The Procurators taxed far more heavily even
" Ketaim IX 5; Shab. 2gb; Pesahitn 26b. 4
T4
1 Macc. x. 28 and
33 ; xi. 34-36. •4
n
Ant. X I V iii 2. M
n
Ant. X V I I viii 4· 4
" Sifra, Kiddushim, ed. Weiss, gib; Shebuoth 39a; Hagiga III 6; T.
Tohar. V I I I 5; Nedarim I I I 4 ; J. Nedarim I I I 5; B. Qama 113a. 4
18
Sank. 25b; B. Qama X 1. <
79
Matt. ix. 10-11; Mark ii. 67‫ ;־‬Luke v. 3 0 . ^
than Herod. The Romans exacted from the Palestinians (to the
same extent as from the natives of other countries subject to Rome)
a water-tax, a city-tax, a tax on such necessities of life as meat and
salt, a road-tax and a house-tax. 80
The frontier-taxes proved a special hardship: every city was a
frontier in itself and Pliny tells how "that at every stopping place, by
land or sea, some tax was levied," 81 with the result that goods were
sold in the Roman market at a hundred times higher cost than at the
place of their origin or manufacture, in spite of the fact that the
fixed duty imposed by the general Roman administration in, for ex-
ample, the province of Asia (in which Palestine was included) was
only two and a half per cent of the value of the goods. Such taxes
impoverished the people and made them full of impotent rage against
the "despotic kingdom" which, through its many minions, drained
their blood.
When at last all power of endurance failed them, a part, the
healthiest and strongest, utterly rebelled against this government ; but
another part waited, in its helplessness, for the kingdom of heaven
which should make an end of this "kingdom of wickedness"—for the
King-Messiah and all his wondrous works.
But notwithstanding the many heavy taxes and customs dues,
home and foreign trade enriched a portion of the Jews. As we have
seen, they were much concerned in shipping and for this reason often
resorted to the "cities of the sea." This fact is apparent from the
innumerable names to be found in Talmudic and Midrashic literature
for the ship and all its fittings,82 and also from the figures of ships
and the anchor inscribed on the Maccabaean and Herodian coins,
and yet again from the coin, struck by Titus in commemoration of the
Fall of Jerusalem, on which are engraved a date-palm and the sym-
bolic figure of "Judaea" seated on the ground surrounded by discarded
shields, while on the reverse is the head of Titus with the Latin words
"Judaea Navalis" ! 8 3
Jewish ships, manned by Jewish crews and laden with Jewish
merchandise, sailed the Jordan, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the
Mediterranean, the Black sea, the Nile and the Euphrates, and
travelled as far as France, Spain, Cyrene, Carthage and even India.
As the result of this commerce and the great industry of the Jewish
peasantry, part of the Jews became wealthy. From the time of Alex-
80
Ant. XIX vi 3 · ^
61
Hist. Nat. XII 63-65. <
82
83
Collected in Krauss, op. cit. I 338-349. •4
S. Rafïaeli, Matbe'oth ha-Yehudim, p. 147 and Tab. 21, fig. 147.
Josephus seems to refer to this in Wars V I I ν 5, when he says that Titus
issued at the time of his triumphal procession "figures of ships in great
number." On the pirates of Aristobulus see Ant. XIV iii 2, and on the
Jewish pirates of Jaffa during the great revolt, who infested the whole
northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, see Wars I I I ix 2-4. See also
A. Zifroni, Pompeius be'Eretz-Yisrael in the Hebrew weekly Ha-Tor, Vol. I,
no. 31. 4
ander Jannaeus, Palestine contained not only retailers and ordinary
merchants (‫)תגרי־ירושלם יוערי־לור‬, but merchants on a considerable
scale.
Besides the greater land proprietors we find rich bankers who did
business not with the dinar merely, but with the talent (worth about
9,500 francs), i.e., with very large sums in comparison with the finan-
cial conditions of the time. Such bankers were not only occupied with
the business of exchange connected with the conversion of local and
foreign money, but also acted as money-lenders to the small-holder,
the shopkeeper, corn-merchant and caravan master. 84
"The notable men of Jerusalem " 8 5 and "the notable women that
were in Jerusalem " 8 6 were not only important, but wealthy people.
Kalba Shabua, Nicodemus ben Gorion, Tsitsith ha-Kassaf, 87 Eleazar
ben Harsum and Martha bath Bœthus are famous in the Talmud
for their vast wealth, which reached fabulous proportions. 88 Even
by the end of the Maccabaean and beginning of the Herodian period
the number of noted wealthy men, whom Herod accused of rebellion
and whose possessions he confiscated, reached many scores.89
The people of Jerusalem are described as being vainglorious folk
(90,(‫שחץ‬ ‫אנשי‬ given up to pleasure, finicking in their speech and
the wealthy of every age and place, priding themselves in their ex-
cesses. The source of such wealth was most probably commerce,
but it was just as probably acquired through the gradual accumulation
by the wealthier peasant class of the small holdings of the poorer
peasants in payment of debts.
Palestine thus came to possess a class of poor, destitute and unem-
ployed, and landless peasants, side by side with a class of wealthy
farmers, great landed proprietors and rich bankers. The former
waxed poorer and poorer, sinking into mendicancy, crushed and de-
pressed, hoping for miracles, filling the streets of town and village
with beggary and piety or (in the case of the more robust) with
brigandage, highway-robbery and revolt; outcasts, haunting the
caves and desert places and the rocks and crevices of the mountains. 01
Both alike sought a release from poverty and want. Some sought
it by natural means, civil and social, urging revolt against Rome and
social revolution with all that came in its train—murder and rapine
against the richer and upper class, which the poorer, exploited class
looked upon as its social, political and national enemy. The others
sought release by means of prayer, repentance, and submission to
844
8
As against Krauss II pp. 352-355» see Schwalm, op. cit. pp. 376-408.
85
85
Yoma VI 3 ; Sukka 37a. 4
M
Sank. 43a. •4
" T h u s J. N. Epstein reads in place of ‫" ה כ ס ח‬Monatsschrift," 1919
262-3.
88
4
88
Büchler, op. cit. 34-41. •4
90
Ant. XV i 2.4
91
Shab. 62b. 4
Büchler, op. cit. 55-7. ^
the will of God. And these brought into being the spiritual messianic
movements, the pedantically severe observance of the commandments,
separatism and asceticism ; and certain of this latter type, for whom
the fulfilling of the commandments brought no spiritual satisfaction,
were induced to look forward to a mystic redemption "not of this
world," a desire later embodied in Christianity. . . .
Why should it have been just after the death of Herod "the
Great" that there arose, contemporaneously, a most terrible rebellion
and a new sect—Christianity—which endeavoured to separate itself
from Israel?
The answer is that already given in the preceding section: the
Maccabaeans built up Palestine on a sound economic foundation, while
Herod destroyed it in the economic sense, for, like Solomon, he
placed too heavy a burden on the country and thereby hastened the
end.
With all their efforts to find a sea-outlet, to conquer the southern
ports and, as far as possible, the northern ones too, the Maccabaeans
still exercised a wise moderation in their economic demands. They,
too, constructed magnificent buildings : forts like the Citadel in Jeru-
salem, and Hyrcania, Alexandrion, Machaerus and Masada, buildings
of such artistic pretensions as the Palace of the Maccabees and the
Cave of Machpelah, and all the wonderful mausoleums in the Kidron
Valley near Jerusalem which, in the present writer's view, are cer-
tainly Maccabaean in origin. And it is possible that they, too, were
responsible for the fine tombs near the Bocharan Quarter north of
Jerusalem, and the tomb of "Simon the Just." 9 2 But all these
things they did gradually, in the course of some eighty years or more,
and from spoil derived from their enemies.
Herod, on the other hand, placed no limit to his ambition, and where
he failed to satisfy it owing to his subjection to Rome, he found other
means of acquiring fame and glory. Not only did he bedeck his own
country with magnificent buildings, but even Tyre and Sidon, Greece
and Asia Minor, Rhodes and Antioch, Athens, Lacedaemonia and
Pergamon.
Money was required for all this. Furthermore he was obliged to
placate the Romans, to give many presents to their politicians and
bribes to their generals. H e also kept a brilliant court, a great palace
and an army of mercenaries and spies and innumerable detectives:
there was no end to his expenses. The necessary funds could be got
only by confiscation of property, unbearable taxation, and an eco-
nomic policy beyond the powers of such a small country and con-
trary to the inclinations of the Jewish farming class who, after all,
were the backbone of the nation in those days. The remark of
Josephus that "the Jews showed no tendency towards commerce or
international trade" 93 may not be literally true but intended as a de-
"Klausner, Biy'mê Bayith Sheni, pp. 67-76, 117-149.
M
Contra Apionem I 12. ·^
fence only against the Greeks, 94 but it is partially true so far as the
time when it was written is concerned.
The present writer has elsewhere 95 tried to show that a fixed eco-
nomic policy dictated Herod's doings—his buildings outside Palestine
and even his solicitude for the Jews abroad and his great works in
Transjordania—though this policy was an outcome of his pursuit
after wealth which should establish his political position as king by
the grace of Rome, and satisfy his boundless lust for fame and
glory. And it was with this object in view that he instituted a reign
of terror hitherto unexampled in Jewish history. This is plainly in-
dicated in Josephus: "When he could no more refrain from his
oppressions since this would diminish his income, he made use of the
people's very hatred for his private enrichment." 96 Josephus fre^
quently emphasizes the fact 9 7 that Herod's disbursements were be-
yond the scale proper to so small a state.
T o increase his income he sought to establish in Palestine Greek
trade (and the Greek culture which was bound u p with it) beyond the
present capacity of the Jews. And side by side with this went an
unendurable increase in taxation, precisely as in the days of Solomon,
who served as a model to Herod for the spreading of commerce, for
erecting great buildings, and for encouraging a foreign culture. The
same results followed in both cases : rebellion and the disintegration
of the state. Just as, after the death of Solomon, the people desired
of Rehoboam that he would "make light the grievous service of his
father and his heavy yoke," so, immediately after the death of Herod,
the people demanded of his son Archelaus that he "lighten the annual
taxes and abolish the duties that were exacted mercilessly on every-
thing bought and sold in the markets."
But Solomon—at least in appearance—was an independent mon-
arch, whereas Herod was subject to the Roman Emperor. Hence
the elders of Israel complained against Herod not only before his son
but also before the Roman rulers. Among other charges they alleged
the outstanding fact that "He brought the people to a state of com-
plete poverty, though he had found it, with certain exceptions, in a
state of prosperity." 98 Or, differently expressed, "thus, in place of
the prosperity and virtue of the past, came complete poverty and
vice." 99
This is strong proof of economic welfare under the Maccabees and
of deterioration under Herod. This material deterioration brought
with it also a spiritual deterioration. As with every case of bad eco-
nomic conditions which multiply the number of the unemployed and
the "Lumpenproletariat," Herod increased the number of malcontents,
** Klausner, op. cit. p. 9·^‫־‬
‫א‬
Ibid.
pp. 77-88; Historia Yisraelith, I I I 81-89. ^
90
Ant.XVI v H
‫מ‬
See for example Ant. X V I I xi 2. .4
"‫ ״‬Wars V vi 2. <
m
On the moral decay see Ant. X V viii 1 ; Sotah IX 9. ^
both rebels and idealists. These two types effected, on the one hand,
the civil eruptions that began with Archelaus and reached a climax
in the revolt in the time of Nero and the consequent Destruction;
and, on the other, spiritual and messianic eruptions, which, receiving
a strong impetus in the time of Herod, came to a head with the rise
of Christianity.
Herod's economic policy, which hastened the natural process of
decay and led to the ultimate catastrophe, was followed by Archelaus
and, in a measure, by his other sons, Antipas and Philip, and also
attracted the Roman Procurators. All alike practised the policy of
Herod with all his defects but without any of his glamour.
Two results followed this policy: (a) by taking the Jews out of
their proper economic sphere and turning them into a cosmopolitan
rather than a national people, it served to create within Judaism a
desire for a world religion, a desire which later became embodied in
the shape of Christianity; and (b) by destroying nation and state,
through constant rebellions resulting from the unnumerable class of
malcontents brought into being through Herod's civil and economic
policy, this same policy brought about the rise of Christianity and its
adoption in certain Jewish circles. The Jews no longer possessed a
national-civil vitality, rooted in their own territory, enabling them to
stand firm in the face of the new denationalizing Creed.
None is so conservative or tenacious of ancient customs as the
peasant associated with the soil ; and Herod's policy, which increased
both the number of traders and of destitute, increased also the class
which had no stake in the country. Such a class, with no stable posi-
tion and nothing to lose, served as the foundation of the enthusiasm
for the new political and religious movements. It was not specially
from this class that Jesus and his disciples arose (they were all arti-
sans and fishermen living by the labours of their hands) ; but if Jesus
successfully taught of the kingdom of heaven, it was simply and
solely because of the disordered condition of life in the country, and
the bad economic conditions generally. The humble and simple and
the downtrodden from among the uprooted and discontented class
sought a release from their sufferings and a firmer basis of life, both
in the material and spiritual sense ; and this they found in the "king-
dom of heaven" (in its moral and abstract sense) as taught by the
carpenter and son of a carpenter from Galilee.
III. RELIGIOUS AND INTELLECTUAL CONDITIONS
[The literature on the religious and intellectual conditions in the time

of the Second Temple is boundless: an entire volume would be taken up
by their titles alone. Here it will be enough to refer to the books men-
tioned in the note to page 129. Graetz (5th ed. vol. I l l pt. 1) and
Schürer (4th ed. vols. 2 and 3) give most of the literature. We would
only add Weiss, "Dor Dor v'Dor'shav," pt. 1; Frankel, "Dar'kê ha-
Mishna"; Chwolsohn, "Das Letzte Passamahl," Leipzig, 1908; J. Elbogen,
"Die Religionsanschauungen der Pharisäer," Berlin, 1904; W. Bousset,
"Die Religion des Judentums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter," Berlin,
1903; M. Friedländer, "Die religiösen Bewegungen innerhalb des Juden-
turns in Zeitalter Jesu," Berlin, 1905; H. Graetz, "Sinai et Golgotha,"
Paris, 1867.]
The centuries of work carried out by the "Scribes," and the Phari-
sees who succeeded them, were not without effect. There was
gradually created in Palestine an educated class, comprising not only
the priestly families and the upper classes but the common people as
well. Those able to read and write became more numerous, especially
from the time of Shimeon ben Shetah, since it was he, and not Ye-
hoshua ben Gamala, who laid the foundation of the Hebrew school
system.1 Josephus, a contemporary of Yehoshua ben Gamala, men-
tions as a generally known fact that the Torah makes it incumbent to
teach children to read and write (γράμματα), that they should know
the laws (δόμους) and be told of the deeds of their forefathers,
"that they might follow in their ways and, having been brought up
on the laws, become accustomed to observe them and have no excuse
for not knowing them." 2
According to him, Moses had already enjoined "that they teach
1
S o / . Kethuboth V I I I 11: "Shimeon ben Shetah ordained . . . that
children go to the Beth ha-Sefer (school)." But the Talmud Babli (B.
Bathra 21 a) says that Yehoshua ben Gamala "decreed that they station
teachers of children in every city and town." Derenbourg has already ob-
served (op. cit. p. 132 n. 1) that "it is difficult to suppose that at the time
of this High Priest the Jews were able to attend to such matters." It may
be added that Yehoshua ben Gamala was High Priest near to the time of the
Destruction and held the office hardly more than a year (63-65 C.E.). It
would seem that Shimeon ben Shetah founded the school system in Jerusalem
and that Yehoshua ben Gamala ordained that there be teachers in every
town. The term 'Έείΐι ha-Sefer" is not found in the Old Testament and
was certainly the creation of the Maccabaean period, when the Hebrew
language was revived in its entirety (Graetz, Hebr. trans. I 419-425; E. Ben
Yehudah 'Ad emathai dibb'ru 'Ibrith, New York, 1919, pp. 60-71, 108-124).
'Con. Apion. 2, 25.^‫־‬
193
the children first of all the laws, the most seemly knowledge and the
source of happiness." 3 Elsewhere Josephus emphatically says :
"Most of all we are mindful of the education of children
(παιδοτροφία);4 so that if anyone ask us concerning the laws, we can
tell them all more easily than our own name. Having learnt them
straightway with our earliest perception (άπδ της ‫׳‬πρώτης εόθυς
α(σθήσεως), they become engraven in our souls." 5
Such words, even though they be somewhat exaggerated, indi-
cate the wide extent of the school system by the time of Jesus, some
fifty years before Josephus wrote. Philo also, the exact contemporary
of Jesus, testifies how the Jews learn the laws "from their earliest
youth" (έκ πρώτης ηλικίας). 6 Such a result could be secured only
by the school system : fathers, according to the Torah, were bound by
the precept "thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children ;" but
they themselves were too busy to do this at the close of the period of
the Second Temple, when the old, simple patriarchal life had grown
into one more complicated and hard.
Besides the elementary school (bet h ha-se fer) there was the more
advanced school or college (beth ha-Midrash). Such colleges, in-
tended for the expounding of Torah to specially selected students
(‫)תצמידי חכמים‬, certainly existed in the time of the "Scribes" pre-
vious to the Maccabaean period ; and from the Maccabaean period,
and specially from the time of Hillel and Shammai, the colleges as-
sumed a more popular guise. There they read the Torah, and where
the people no longer spoke Hebrew they translated into Aramaic,
and as a rule they expounded (‫ )דורשים‬it to the common people on
the Sabbaths, and also, possibly, on the market-days, 7 so that the
villagers (i.e., the bulk of the people) when they came to town ac-
quired some notion of the Torah.
In spite of this, however, most of the village peasants were
Ammë ha-aretz (ignorant of the Torah), as were also the innumer-
able proselytes, voluntary and involuntary, who embraced Judaism in
the time of John Hyrcanus, Judas Aristobulus and Alexander Jan-
nasus. But in the larger and smaller towns, and specially in Jeru-
salem, there could be found many who were instructed in the Torah
among the artisans, merchants, priests and officials ; and though the
"sages" (‫ )חכמים‬were as yet few, the "students of the sages" (‫מאמידי‬
‫ )החכמים‬were numerous. 8
It is, however, a mistake to suppose that the learning of the time
was confined to the Torah. There was secular learning also in Israel.
The poetical and narrative literatures which have been preserved as
'Ant.
4
I V viii 12. ^
β
Con. A pion. 1, 12. Λ
lb. 2, 18. Λ
*Del. ad Caium 31 (ed. Mangey I I 5 7 7 ) . ^
7
Though such may not have been the case until a later period. ^
8
Perhaps for this reason the phrase "student of the wise" came in course
of time to be used instead of simply "the wise."-*!
RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS 195
Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphas in foreign languages, and which pos-
sess a wonderful beauty and variety, mostly emanated from a time a
little earlier and a little later than the time of Jesus. And contem-
porary Jewish art, especially architecture, the mausoleums and
ceramic ware, has a notable beauty and grandeur, and exhibits con-
siderable national peculiarity.®
In the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jubilees and, later, in the
Mishna and Baraita, we find much knowledge of the calendar, of
astronomy in general (combined with much superstition), of geogra-
phy, general and Hebrew history (mingled with many strange
legends), physiology, human and animal, geometry and land-survey-
ing and the like.
Such studies could not, of course, be compared in importance with
the religious study of the Torah. But the "Jewish religion" has a
wide scope : it comprises all the "wisdom of life," all the knowledge
that satisfies the needs of an entire nation ; it does not isolate religion
from learning and life. In essence it is not so much a religion as a
national world-outlook based on religion. It includes philosophy,
jurisprudence, science, and rules of seemly behaviour to the same ex-
tent as matters of belief and ceremonial practice such as are usually
classed under religion.
The crucial test of a nation's civilization at any specified epoch, is
the position of its women. And this position from the Maccabaean
period is a tolerably high one. The Kethubah, the text of the mar-
riage contract, was certainly earlier than the time of Simeon ben
Shetah since similar contracts occur in the Aramaic documents of
Elephantine dating from the time of E z r a ; 1 0 it is not, therefore,
drawn up in Hebrew as would have been more proper during the
Maccabaean revival.
But all the amendments introduced by Simeon ben Shetah were
in favour of the woman. And there is strong ground for supposing
that the technical terms ‫( נכסי מלוג‬usufruct, lit. "property of pluck-
ing") and ‫( נכסי צאן טליג‬mortmain, lit. "property of the sheep of
iron") used in the contract, which are so original and so stamped with
the features of a living language, have also come down to us from
the Maccabaean period, a period near the time of Jesus when the
Hebrew language was still prevalent in the free or semi-free Hebrew
state.
The story of Hanna and her seven sons and that of Judith, where
the woman holds the most important possible place as defender of the
faith and saviour of her country and nation, both show the high
status of the women of the time. The pious and wise queen
" For details see Klausner, Biy'mê Bayith Sheni, pp. 115-149 and illus-
trations. 4
10
See S. Daiches, K'thaboth Aramiyoth miy'mê Ezra, Ha-Shiloach X V I I
511-5; and E. Ben Yehudah, op. cit. pp. 121-124, where further proof is given
that the Kethubah was earlier than Simeon ben Shetah.
Shelom-Zion is highly venerated among the Pharisees; while the
wicked Shelomith, sister of Herod, holds a position in the story of
that great tyrant possible only in a condition of things in which
women had the freest rights. Such a status for women in Judasa
shows that Hebrew civilization had, by the time of Jesus, reached a
considerably high general level.
As in most countries of some degree of culture where many of
the inhabitants have attained to means and even to wealth, so also
in Palestine there were the superior "breakers of the yoke," scoffers
and doubters, seeking only after pleasure and dissipation. Of such
a type especially were the great landed proprietors, the rich men and
merchants, certain members of the high priestly families, and most of
the royal families who were in contact with the Greeks and Romans.
It was in Jerusalem, the centre of culture and the home of the
richer and ruling classes, where were to be found the greatest number
of these "wicked" and "ungodly," who "kicked" owing to excessive
prosperity and oppressed the poorer and weaker classes. They were
called by the apt title of ‫אנשי שחץ‬, the insolent and vainglorious. 11
Likewise among the Am ha-arets were to be found "breakers of the
yoke" who were such owing to their boorishness, ignorance and disso-
luteness, and these were known by the name ‫" עבריינים‬transgres-
sors." 12 But the majority—the peasants on the one side and the
"students of the wise" (who were also occupied with some handi-
craft) on the other, were pious, God-fearing people.
There was a lofty and noble conception of God. In Jesus' time a
pure form of belief in the divine unity was everywhere current. The
Jews had even ceased to pronounce the "Honourable Name" or the
"Express Name" (‫ י)שם המפורד‬and it was pronounced by none ex-
cept the High Priest and by him on the Day of Atonement only.
Where "Jehovah" was written, they read ‫אדוני‬, "my Lord ;" and they
soon made sparing use even of this name. "Heaven" took the place
of "Jehovah" and even of "Adonai" and "Elohim" (compare the use
of "the kingdom of heaven—which induced the strange plural in
Greek βασιλεία των οόρανών, "the fear of heaven," "to sanctify the
name of heaven," and similar expressions), which induced the Ro-
mans to call the Jews coelicolae, worshippers of heaven.13
A more abstract title for the Godhead was "the Holy One," to
which was invariably added "Blessed be He." This is found as early
as the Book of Enoch.1* More abstract, even philosophical, is the
designation "The Place" (‫ ;)המסום‬its meaning according to the Mid-
51
Shabbath 62b; see the Talmudic sentence ( / . Shek. I V 3) : "There was
great arrogance ( ‫ ) ש ח צ י ת‬among the mem
12
Shabbath 40a; the name, the present writer holds, seems to be earlier
than might be supposed from its place in the Talmud. Cf. παραβάτηs του,
νόμου quoted above, p. 69, from an early Gospel gloss, Luke vi. 4.·^(
" S e e Wellhausen, israelitische u. Jüdische Geschichte, 7 Aufl., Berlin.
1914, p. 212. Λ
" See especially the Ethiopie Book of Enoch, X X V 3.
rash is "because the Holy One, blessed be He, is the 'place' of the
world." 15 But this is certainly a later explanation, and that of Philo
is to be preferred, that the divine essence is in every place.16 Another
early title is "power" (‫)כבורה‬, and Onkelos translates "the hand of
the Lord" as "the power of God." In the Gospels also we find "And
ye shall see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power"
(έχ. δεξιών τ η ς δυνάμεως). 1 7
More distinctive and imaginative is the title "Shekina," or divine
presence; a title apparently borrowed from the Temple where the
Lord chose "to cause his name to dwell7' (cf.‫משכן‬, ‫ושכנתי בתוכם‬, Ex.
xxv.8). The Shekina was, as it were, a light reflected from the God-
head ; it had no existence apart from the Godhead yet could be seen
of man apart from the Godhead, like the sun which itself cannot be
seen but only the light poured from it for the benefit of mankind. So
though the Godhead cannot approach man, the Shekina may approach
him, shed its rays over him, just as its rays are shed over the Temple
(‫ בית המקדש‬is transplated in Aramaic by ‫)בית שבינחא‬.
The Shekina even goes into exile with the nation. Though this
is a late conception it could not have developed except for the earlier
conception of the Shekina. The Shekina is the first "hypostasis" of
the Godhead : it is not yet thought of as an emanation, but the God-
head itself revealed in such a form as is seemly for it to be revealed.
In spite of its complete abstractness the idea became possible owing to
the poetic grace and tenderness inherent in it—it was a first step
towards an incarnation.
A further stage is reached with "the voice of God," such as is
heard by man and more than which even the prophets did not hear :
for material speech cannot be imagined in connexion with God. The
phrase ‫" כביכול‬as if such a thing were possible," must, as its lin-
guistic form shows, be ancient, although we first find it in a saying of
R. Yochanan ben Zakkai (7*. Bab. Qama, VII, 2). Closely resem-
bling the "voice" (to which must also be added the bath qol, echo, or
voice from heaven, parallel in thought to the "reflected light" of the
Shekina), is the conception of the "word" (‫מאמר‬,, Aramaic ‫)סימרא‬
by which the world was created.
The "Ma'mar" has something in common with the Greek "Logos"
as taught by Heraelitus and Philo ; but while for Heraclitus the
"Logos" means "the idea of the world" and for Philo "the intelli-
gence of the world," and for both of them it includes the notion of
an emanation from the Godhead (such is the Philonic idea of "the
first-born of God" rather than the more involved Christian idea)—
the "Ma'mar," on the other hand, is only as it were the "working in-
strument" of the Deity, and serves only to mediate between the
wholly spiritual and the sensual, material world. God needed not to
18
Gen. R. §68 (quoted by the Amora R. Huna in the name of R. Ammi). 4
1e
See Philo On the Confusion of Tongues §27, On the Offspnng of
Cain
11
§5- 4
Matt. xxvi. 64 and parallels. •4
make the world and its fulness, it was enough for him to say the
word, and through the "Ma'mar" all things came into existence.
The angels, too, are a medium between the spiritual and material
worlds. Though themselves wholly spiritual they are not an original,
independent power ; in this they resemble men, but they differ in that
they have neither the semblance nor the needs of the body, and, there-
fore, possess neither desires nor vices. It is they who carry out the
"word" of the Godhead : they are his emissaries (la'aka, the root of
mal'ak, angel, means in Ethiopie "to send"). The angels are divided
into "ministering angels" and "destroying angels." Both ideas are
comparatively old and are mentioned as early as the Book of Enoch
and the Book of Jubilees, before the period of the Talmud.
Among the "ministering angels" are included the "angels of the
presence," which, seven in number, are referred to in the Book of
Τ obit (xii.15), a work apparently written in the Maccabaean period.
In the Talmud, and especially in the earlier Book of Enoch, occur in-
numerable names of angels—and names of strange formation. It
may be that most of these names were known to a select few, such as
the Essenes (see below). Of those mentioned in the Talmud may be
noted: Metatron and Suriel, the prince of the Presence, 18 Michael,
Gabriel, Uriel (perhaps identical with Suriel) and Raphael, the first
two of which are mentioned in the Book of Daniel. Later we hear
of Sandalfon, 19 Domah the angel of the winds,20 and Yurqami the
prince of hail ; 2 1 popular imaginative creations of various periods ;
while "Rahab" prince of the sea,22 and "Laila" the angel of concep-
tion,23 are only academic creations based on some Scriptural passage.
Among the "angels of destruction" an important place is held by
Ashmodai (an old Persian name) and Samael, the personal name of
Satan, which in post-Biblical times became his general title, and
Lilith, the flying night-demon,24 taken from the name of a terrifying
night-bird (Isaiah xxxiv.14).
Belief in harmful spirits is ancient and widespread: primitive
heathen gods later became devils and evil spirits; and so real were
they supposed to be even by the most enlightened of that time that
even the Mishna takes them into account, although it is in general free
from superstitions and even makes no mention of angels. Even
Josephus, a learned Pharisee with a Greek education, has strange
things to say about a familiar spirit, about Eliezer who drove out
unclean demons in the time of Vespasian, and about the root of rue
18
Sank. 35b; Berachoth 51a. M
"Hagiga 13b. M
™
21
Sank. 94b. 4
Pes. 118a.^
22
B. Bath. 74b (though there are Biblical passages mentioning Rahab
these may be an echo of the fight between the Babylonian Marduk and
Tiamat). 4
23
Niddah 15b. M
34
Shabb. 121 b; Niddah 24a. 4
which has supernatural qualities ("if one but touch a sick man there-
with it drives away the demons, namely the evil spirits which enter
living‫ ״‬men and kill all who continue without help"). 25
The Gospels also speak much of devils and evil spirits which Jesus
expelled from the sick; and one of the reasons for his success was
certainly a widespread belief in devils and harmful spirits which a
holy man and miracle-worker could drive away and so heal diseases
brought about by such "possession." As in Babylon the antidote to
evil spirits was whisperings, conjurations and all manner of sorceries
and incantations.
Sorceries and incantations were forbidden by the Torah, but the
people (and especially women) paid no regard to such prohibition;
and although the Mishna rose up against these "whisperings over a
wound," 26 even the "sages" sometimes practised such conjurations,
whisperings and spittings. Men, however, such as Eliyahu and
Mashiach could cure simply by prayer or a touch of the hand ; and
Jesus was regarded as such a one as these by his disciples, and es-
pecially by his women followers.
From the time of the Book of Daniel most of the people, taught
by the Pharisees, more and more believed in the Divine Providence, in
rewards and punishment after death and in the resurrection of the
dead. These were not fundamental articles of faith, yet we find them
in most of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha dating from the close
of the Second Temple period.
The older belief of Scripture—that prosperity should befall the
righteous and misfortune the ungodly in this present world, however
belated—still prevailed, mingled with a confusion of newer ideas, and
the more recent beliefs in the survival of the soul, and in Paradise,
and Gehenna, had already spread, though not in its later and more
developed form. The individual had already a place in the Jewish
religion of this time, as well as the nation. The individual had
greater need for individual reward and punishment, and when he saw
that this did not come to him during his lifetime he was compelled to
look for it after death.
But the individual did not oust the nation. The nation had its
own "survival of the soul," its own reward and punishment. This
is the belief in the persistence of the nation, in the day of judgment
or the days of the "pangs of the Messiah," and in the messianic age.
The Prophet Jeremiah taught that the nation should not die (xxxi.
35-6), a belief of necessity enforced by the belief in the day of judg-
ment (the "pangs of the Messiah") and the "Day of the Lord," also
preached by the Prophets, a day when the nations who had oppressed
and persecuted Israel and who had not known God and his moral law
and had filled the world with violence, should suffer the punishment
due to them.
*Ant.
38
V I I I ii 5; Wars V I I vi 3· Λ
Sank. Χ ι. See L. Blau, Das alt jüdische Zauberwesen, Strassburg,
1898. <«
This punishment was to be universal: on that day the whole
world would be judged ; there would be an increase of drought, fam-
ine and war, of individual moral corruption, and of the punishments
which should befall the people individually or as a whole. This is the
view of the Mishna or an ancient Baraita27 containing a very old
conception found also both in the Gospels and in the writings of the
early Christian fathers. 28 The Destruction of the Second Temple, the
fall of Bittir and the defeat of Bar-Kokhbah unquestionably influ-
enced the terrible pictures of the "pangs of the Messiah," 29 though
most of these pictures are to be found in the Book of Enoch and the
Assumption of Moses which were written before the Destruction,
and in the Book of Baruch and in Fourth Esdras, before the defeat
of Bar-Kokhba. 30
The "pangs of the Messiah" introduce the messianic age when
there shall be a gathering together of the dispersed Jews after Elijah
shall have appeared. Of him Ben Sira wrote that "he is ready for
the time" not only to "turn the hearts of the fathers to the children"
but also "to restore the tribes of Israel." 31 Elijah shall blow the
trumpet of the Messiah and the scattered Jews shall be assembled
together from the four corners of the earth.
Then shall come the Messiah, the "Saviour" full of the spirit of
God, who shall overwhelm the heathen and restore the kingdom of
Israel to its full power, rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple, and make
them a spiritual centre for the whole world. Such nations as have
not been destroyed, since they did not oppress Israel, shall become
proselytes, and the world shall be reformed by the "kingdom of
heaven," or, "the kingdom of the Almighty:" the Lord shall be the
God of the whole earth, and righteousness, justice and brotherliness
shall prevail. The Messiah will be the son of David.
This was not, however, altogether taken for granted at the time,
since the Book of Daniel makes no mention of a human Messiah and
Bar Kokhbah was not of the lineage of David—in spite of which,
Rabbi Akiba saw in him the actual Messiah. But we find, from
the Psalms of Solomon (composed soon after the death of Pompey,
c.45 B.C.E.), that most of the Pharisees thought of the Messiah as
the son of David, and so rejected even the Maccabaean royal house,
which was of the seed of Aaron. Also in the Gospels the regular title
of the Messiah is "Son of David" (as in the Talmudic Messianic
Baraita) together with "Son of Man."
Such are the outstanding ideas in the messianic belief as it had
grown out of the visions of the Prophets and the Book of Daniel. It
had reached this form as early as the "Shemoneh EsreH' blessings,
‫מ‬
Sotah (end of Mishna) and Sanh. 9 y a . A
® See J. Klausner, Die messianischen Forstellungen, pp. 4 9 4 .50‫־‬
»Ibid. 8-12. ^
80
See Klausner, Ha-Ra'yon ha-Meshihi, pt. 2, Jerusalem, 1921.^
81
Ben Sira 48, 10; cf. Malachi iii. 23-24. ^
and, judging from the Hebrew text of the Book of Ben Sira (ch.51),
these blessings contained the main features of the messianic belief
prior to the Maccabaean revolt (Praise be to the Saviour of Israel,"
"praise be to him that gathereth the dispersed of Israel," "praise be to
him that buildeth his city and his Temple," "praise be to him that
maketh to spring up a horn for the house of David," "praise be to
him that hath made choice of Zion").
Such ideas as we find elsewhere (e.g. Messiah ben Joseph, the
suffering Messiah, etc.) are popular accretions dating after the De-
struction of the Temple and the fall of Bittir, when the sore affiic-
tions and the defeat of Bar Kokhbah served to provide the colouring
for the lurid descriptions or visions of vengeance, together with the
vivid and multicoloured pictures of redemption. But by the time of
Jesus the content of the messianic belief was no more than what has
here been described. Yet even that sufficed to stir popular imagina-
tion with the hope of release from the foreign yoke and of dominion
over those nations which now enslaved Israel; and having been
brought up on the "popular prophets" (the authors of those Pseud-
épigraphe*, replete with Messianic apocalypses), the popular masses
were accustomed to see in every wonder-worker and preacher a pros-
pective saviour and ruler, a king and messiah, a supernatural political
saviour and a spiritual saviour filled with the divine spirit.
And such a king-messiah, a saviour both political and spiritual, the
people at first saw also in Jesus, till such time as it became manifest to
them that the kingdom was "not of this world."
* * * * * * *
The whole nation looked forward to the coming of the Messiah :
but the degree of expectation was not the same with all.
The sect of the Zealots was the most enthusiastic : they even tried
to hasten his coming by force.
Least bound up with the belief were the Sadducees. They did
not go so far as to deny belief in the Messiah altogether since such a
belief was found in Scripture, whose sanctity the Sadducees ac-
knowledged. But they disbelieved in all the post-Biblical accretions
and took pains to belittle an idea which was politically dangerous.
For the Essenes the idea of the Messiah had become an entirely
mystical idea: it was bound up with a supernatural idea of social
equality, of purity, of righteousness and of perfect worship.
A central position was held by the sect of the Pharisees who rep-
resented the bulk of the people; they did not allow belief in the
Messiah to evaporate into a species of visionariness far removed from
practical possibilities ; yet they believed in it with all their heart and
made it a political and a spiritual ideal. To them and their followers
its fulfilment was unquestionable; none the less they taught that it
was not their part "to hasten the end" nor to abandon themselves to
any miracle-worker, whereby they might bring disaster upon the
nation.
Of these four parties the mystical and moral messianic belief of
the Essenes was nearest that of Jesus, who, in the end, abolished its
political aspect and made it purely mystical and ethical. Farthest
removed from him were the Sadducees for whom the messianic
idea was hardly more than an empty name. As we shall see later the
more definitely political messianic idea of the Zealots was nearer
the heart of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry. But, on the
whole he rather favoured the political-spiritual messianism of the
Pharisees despite its lack of mysticism and its being too much "of
this world" for his liking during the later period of his career, when
his "kingdom" became definitely "not of this world."
Properly to understand the reason of Jesus' success and his cruci-
fixion, a clear idea of the general teaching of these four sects is neces-
sary, for it was these sects which influenced the political and spiritual
life of the Jews in the time of Jesus. Much has been written about
them, and the present writer has dealt with them at length in the sec-
ond volume of his "History of Israel" (Historiya Israelith, Vol. II,
Jerusalem, 1924, pp. 89-118). Here it is possible to give only a
brief summary and the final conclusions.
First of all it should be observed that all four sects originated, in
the time of the Maccabaeans, from two parties which existed prior to
the Maccabaean revolt: the "Hasidim," Assidaeans ("the pious" or
"saints"), and the Hellenists. From the Hasidim sprang the Essenes,
who were, in fact, the actual "Hasidim" (‫ חסיא‬,‫ חסין‬in Syriac,
‫ חסידים‬in Hebrew, and Έσσαίοι Έσσηνοϊ in Greek) ; hence they are
only referred to in the Talmud by the name "the first Hasidim," and
are not specially mentioned in the Gospels. Only Josephus, Philo
and Pliny have preserved any mention of them.
The Essenes were the extreme Hasidim who would not consent
to fight together with Judas Maccabasus on behalf of political free-
dom once religious freedom had been secured, and so were prevented
from taking part in the political life in the time of the Maccabaeans
and Herod. Only in the moment of danger, in the days of the great
revolt, do we find their warriors fighting in the rebels' camp against
ungodly Rome.
The Pharisees likewise owed their origin to the pre-Maccabasan
Hasidim: they are the Hasidim who supported the Maccabaeans in all
their wars, whether for religion or for the State, and they sided with
them from the days of Jonathan the son of Mattathias till the end of
the time of John Hyrcanus. They fought in the fiercest possible way
against the Sadducaean king Alexander Jannasus, but again supported
the Maccabaean house in the time of Shelom-Zion. From the time of
the conquest by Pompey, through the Herodian period and the rule of
the Procurators, they played the part of a popular party adopting a
policy of passive resistance towards the Herods and the Romans.
The Zealots also were derived from the same Hasidim: they were
the Hasidim for whom politics became an actual religion—"whoso
marries an Aramaean woman, the Zealots lynch him." 32 In Mac-
cabaean times this Mishna was modified to "the Maccabaean court of
law issued decrees against any who had connexion with a heathen
woman." 33 Josephus 84 attributes the founding of the sect to Judah
the Galilaean (the Gaulanite) from the town of Gamala in the Jaulan,
and to Zadok the Pharisee, at the time of the Census of Quirinius
(c.6 B.C.E.). But the whole of Josephus's description of Judah's
father, Hezekiah, whom Herod, when governor of Galilee, had put to
death with his followers—a deed which resulted in Herod's being
summoned by Hyrcanus II for trial before the Sanhédrin 35 —shows
clearly that we have here not simply the chief of a band of murderers
but the leader of an important national party. 36
The sect of the Zealots must, therefore, have had its origin as
early as the Maccabaean period, but it only became a powerful political
force at the beginning of the Roman-Edomite rule (in the time of
Hyrcanus I I ) . It was they who opposed Herod by conspiracies and
revolts, and, immediately after Herod's death, in the time of Qui-
rinius, they were joined by the Pharisees, headed by Zadok, the
disciple of Shammai.37
The fourth of these parties, the Sadducees, came from the pre-
Maccabaean Hellenists and their leaders were the highly born priests
of the Sons of Zadok (hence the name Zadokites). After the de-
struction of the Hellenists, and after the Hasidim (and their succès-
sors, the Pharisees) had been reconciled to the Maccabees, the
Zadokite aristocracy was from the first wholly opposed to the Mac-
cabaean rulers. But this condition of things did not endure for long.
The new dynasty found itself compelled to negotiate with foreign
rulers, the Seleucids and Romans, and it began to hanker after
power and glory and the good things of life which were not always
in accord with the religious restrictions of Pharisaic Judaism.
Hence their sympathies tended towards the old ruling body, the house
of Zadok, especially now that the Zadokites had given up hopes of
securing the high-priesthood.
It needed only the Pharisaic opposition to John Hyrcanus (or
Jannaeus) 38 for the Maccabaean dynasty to pass over to the Saddu-
cees and extend the highest favour to the Zadokite aristocracy. To
82
Sank. IX 6. Λ
a
Sanh. 82a; Ab. Zar. 36a.
84
Ant. X V I I I i ι and 6; Wars II viii 1,
cf. I I iv \ . <
*6Ant. XIV ix 2-5; xv 5; Wars 1 x 5 7 ‫; ־‬ xvi 4. Cf. Graetz, III I 5 178-9. ^
86
On the Zealots see K. Kohler, I.E. "Zealots" XII 639-43; "Wer waren
die Zeloten oder Kannaim?" (German section of the Memorial Volume to
A. A. Harkavy, Petersburg, 1909, pp. 6-18).
‫ ״‬Graetz III I e 258; Weiss, "Dor Dor i/DoSshav," I 168; Kohler, J.E.
XII 642. <
38
Such is the view of I. Friedländer—that the breach was between king
Jannaeus and the Pharisees as recorded in the Talmud (Kidd. 66a), and not
between them and John Hyrcanus, and that Josephus (Ant. X I I I χ 5-6)
erred in attributing the breach to John Hyrcanus (See J.Q.R. I V 443-448).
these latter, in the time of Herod, were added the priests of the
house of Bcethus; so that "the Sadducees and Bœthusaeans" be-
came synonymous terms in the Talmudic literature, though the Gos-
pels speak only of the Sadducees.
What did these four parties teach?
(a) The Zealots: These were the young enthusiasts who were
unable to endure the yoke of the "kingdom of Edom" (the rule of
Herod the Edomite) which with them was synonymous with the
"kingdom of Rome:" for both alike they had a deadly hatred. In
speaking of the Zealots Josephus 39 explicitly mentions "the young
men" rols veols and in the time of Hezekiah the Galilsean, father
of the Zealots, the women came crying, and wailing, and seeking ven-
geance for the blood of their children shed by the young Herod when
governor of Galilee.40 It was these young people, therefore, whose
mothers bewailed them, who were the "licentious ones," the "out-
laws" and "sicarii" at the time of the Destruction—the "Bolsheviki"
of the time, who hated the rich, powerful and ruling classes.
And yet they were the finest patriots Israel knew from the rise of
the Maccabaeans to the defeat of Bar Kokhba. The times proved
favourable for the Maccabaeans and they achieved success, but the
Zealots found themselves arrayed against a power which was not
only stronger than they, but stronger than the whole of the rest of
the world : so they fell in battle. Their one crime was that they acted
according to their conscience. They were ready to lay down their
lives for national freedom and with such a goal they never hesitated
to measure their own forces against those of the Herods or the
Roman emperors.
They rebelled against Herod the Edomite when he was not yet
king, and they rebelled against him in the worse days after he had
become king. During the Census of Quirinius, realizing that its
motive was to enslave them and drain fresh taxation out of them for
the good of the Roman leech, they appealed to the Jews to rise unani-
mously against the Romans. How could a Jew serve flesh and blood !
God alone was king of Israel and not any idolatrous Roman Emperor.
It would certainly seem to be of one of these that we read in the
Mishna: "A Galilasan sectary said, Τ protest against you, Ο Phari-
sees, that ye write the name of the Governor together with that of
Moses on the divorce decree.' The Pharisees answered, 'We protest
against thee, Ο Galilasan sectary, that ye write the name of the
Governor together with the Sacred Name on a [single] page ; and
what is worse, ye write the name of the Governor above and the
Sacred Name below, as it is written, And Pharaoh said, Who is the
Lord that I should hearken to his voice?' " 41 But there is no explicit
reference to them by name (with the exception of the Mishna, Sanh.
‫ ״‬Ant. X V I I vi 3· M
40
Ant. X I V ix· 4· M
41
Yadaim I V 8, 4
IX.6, quoted above) except in Aboth d'Rabbi Nathan: 42 "And when
the Emperor Vespasian came to destroy Jerusalem, the Zealots tried
to burn the whole of that good thing with fire."
The Zealots were, in fact, simply active and extremist Pharisees
(who like them had their origin in the Hasidim). One of their
founders was the Pharisee Zadok, of the School of Shammai, and Jo-
sephus says of them that save only for their excessive love for free-
dom "they tend in all other things to the Pharisees." 43 They merely
added to their love for the written and oral law of God the duty of
protecting it with the sword. Thousands and tens of thousands fol-
lowed Judah of Galilee and joined the Zealots, and right up to the
Destruction of the Temple it was the family of Hezekiah the Gali-
laean (Judah and his three sons, Jacob, Shimeon and Menahem, and
their kinsman Eliezer ben Jair of Masada) who everywhere headed
the insurgents and rebels.
Through their zeal for the ideals of freedom and equality they
became extremists, and treated the peaceful and wealthy among the
nation as did the fanatics of the French Revolution the aristocrats
and Royalists, and as the present-day Bolsheviki have treated the
"counter-revolutionists" and the bourgeoisie. Therefore the best of
the Tannaim and the enlightened of that generation opposed them
and dubbed them "sicarii" and "licentious," and Josephus loads them
with all manner of derogatory epithets.
Yet for all this the Midrash44 still retains some words of com-
mendation for "the Hasidim and sons of the Torah, like Judah the
son (‫ )ב״ר‬of Hezekiah," of whom it is said, "in the time to come, the
Holy One, blessed be He, shall appoint for him a company of his own
righteous ones and seat them by him in a great congregation." And
Josephus, although he cannot blame them sufficiently for their cruelty,
cannot praise them sufficiently for their heroism, courage and devo-
tion for all that the nation held sacred : "They possess unbounded love
for liberty and look upon God as their only leader and ruler ; it was a
light thing for them to go forth to meet death, nor did they regard
the death of their companions and kinsfolk, if only they might save
themselves from the burden of a human ruler. Since all may find
proof of this by the facts themselves I do not find it necessary to say
more. It is not that I fear that credence will not be given to my
words : on the contrary, what I have said has not told all the great-
ness of their soul and their readiness to endure sufferings." 45
These were the most wonderful warriors of Israel, inflamed alike
by a political and religious idea, and even by a great social-economic
idea ; but they arrived at an extremist position and wished to realize
43
Aboth d'R. Nathan, §6 near end, Version I (in version II "sicarii" comes
instead of "Zealots"). See Schechter's edition, p. 32 (p. xvi).·^
4
*Ant. X V I I I i 6. ^
44
48
Qoh. R. on En zikkaron la-rishonim. M
Ant. XVIII end of i. 4
what was not yet possible for that generation: the time was not
fitting for them that they should go forth as conquerors in a war
against mighty Rome.
It is almost certain that they are referred to in the Gospels in the
following passages : "And from the days of John the Baptist (when
the Zealots were most numerous) and till now, the kingdom of
heaven suffereth violence (is seized by a strong hand, βιάζεται ) and
the violent (βιασταί) take it by force." 48 This is an expression of
opposition to the political fanaticism which recognized only a divine
sovereignty (the kingdom of heaven) and sought to bring it forcibly
into effect by the sword. But being fundamentally Pharisees, the
Zealots preserved the messianic idea and gave their enthusiastic
adherence to any wonder-worker who might "hasten the end."
Thus it was possible for a Zealot to be a disciple of Jesus, for
during the earlier stage of his ministry it seemed as if he, too, were
a political-spiritual messiah like the other messiahs of the same age ;
and we find among his disciples one "Simon the Zealot" 47 whose
name was later (when the kingdom of Jesus became "not of this
world" and it was difficult to understand why a Zealot, a Jewish na-
tionalist, and a fighting patriot, was numbered among the disciples)
corrupted to "the Canaanite." 48
(b) The Essenes: These formed a society which, in the time of
Philo and Josephus, contained about four thousand members. They
lived only in Palestine, mostly in villages but also, to a certain extent,
in the towns, since we find in Jerusalem a "Gate of the Essenes ;" 49
in Pliny's time they were to be found chiefly in the wilderness of En
Gedi, by the Dead Sea. In their villages they had common dwelling
places and, in any case, ate their meals at the same table. None was
received into the community until he had undergone a year's proba-
tion, after which he was allowed to perform the lustrations.
There followed two more years of probation, and only then was
he received as a full member after taking a solemn oath to conceal
nothing from his fellow Essenes, to reveal no secrets of the com-
munity to non-Essenes, and also not to reveal the names of the
angels. A member could be dismissed by the authority of a court
consisting of a hundred other members if that member had trans-
gressed community laws, and such dismissal, if he held to his oath,
amounted to Kareth, a species of social death. In charge of each
community was a "treasurer" whom the members must obey unhesi-
tatingly. There was a common fund, the treasurers supervised the
common property brought in by the new members, and any new in-
come or agricultural produce was handed over to special officials.
All shared alike in the fruit of their labours. Besides food, even
" Matt. xi. 12. M

43
Matt. x. 4; Mark iii. 18.
• Wars V iv 2. 4
their clothes were possessed in common, summer clothes and winter
clothes ; and in their travels from town to town some member of the
community was appointed to see to the needs of the travellers.
Every Essene might give alms from the common fund, but he must
have the permission of the superintendent to assist a poor kinsman.
Trade was altogether barred as a harmful occupation. The majority
were occupied in agriculture and so lived in the villages ; they also
practised handicrafts but never engaged in the making of harmful
weapons.
Their fundamental rule was to live on the results of their own
labours, to live in peace and to abjure all things that might injure
others. Their needs were small and they refrained from all the
joys of the flesh and the pleasures of life ; they ate and drank suf-
ficient only to keep them alive ; they never anointed themselves with
oil ; they wore but simple clothing and only discarded it when it was
worn out. These clothes were white, and a white garment was be-
stowed on every new member, together with an apron with which he
girt himself when bathing or washing, for decency's sake. He re-
ceived also a kind of hoe (άξινάριον) with which to dig a hole in the
ground when satisfying the needs of nature, being at the same time
covered by his cloak "that he shame not the glory of the sun" (cf. the
Talmudic expressions, "dull the orb of the sun," "restrict the goings
of the Shekinah," and the like, where there is no Persian or Pytha-
gorean influence). This is a fulfilment of the plain rule of the
Torah, "and thou shalt have a trowel on thy girdle, etc." (Deut.
xxiii.14-15). On the Sabbath, when it was not allowable to dig a
hole, they used not to satisfy their needs.50
They held no possessions in gold, silver, or slaves, nor were they
slaves to any one. They did not take oaths, even on the truth, but
held that yea is yea, and nay nay. The majority did not marry that
they might be kept free from uncleanness and undisturbed in the wor-
ship of God. Some of them, however, married, but held no connex-
ion with their wives once they were pregnant, since they married only
to maintain the numbers of their sect and not for their private grati-
fication—just as Tolstoy has required in modern times. That the
abstention from marriage should not too seriously reduce their num-
bers they also brought up children of parents sympathetic to Essenism,
or orphans, and trained them according to their system.
They sent gifts to the Temple (what Josephus says in this con-
nexion perhaps means that they brought the MinJiah, the meal-
offering of flour mingled with oil), but not offerings of beasts or
birds ; in other words, they recognized the importance of the Temple
80
This is the simple reason for the non-performance of natural needs on
the Sabbath, and it is not necessary to deduce from this that the Essenes
were akin to the Parsis or sun-worshippers. Josephus' words may also mean
(see Derenbourg, op. cit. p. go) that no man left his place on the Sabbath,
according to Scripture, and thus has nothing to do with the non-performance
of natural needs. A
but not the efficacy of blood-offerings. This same tendency was also
apparent in other Jewish circles and sprang from the aversion of the
Prophets and Psalmists to sacrifices; otherwise the Jews would not
have accepted so readily the cessation of the sacrifices after the De-
struction of the Second Temple.
The Essenes observed a fixed daily routine. They began with
prayer before dawn (‫קודם הנץ החמה‬, which is the Hebrew rendering
of the Greek xplv άνασχεϊν τδν ηλιον,51 to which Josephus adds "as
though they were asking the sun to rise/' a pleasant poetic fancy to
appeal to Greek taste). Following this prayer they proceeded to
their work. They first of all bathed together, and then began the
common meal. This was prepared by selected priests (obviously in
order that the food should be ritually clean). No stranger shared
this meal. The priest began by blessing the bread. Before each
Essene was placed a single piece of bread and only a single dish. The
meal was carried through in silence, or the elders of the community
engaged in conversation on the Torah. The meal finished, they all
returned to their work.
At evening they had a second and last meal of the day. They
bathed before this also. It is highly probable that in this washing
before meals we have nothing more than the usual ritual "washing
of hands," which Josephus and Philo have called "lustrations" or
"bathings" just to impress the Greeks. Even if we allow that the
"washing" referred to is a washing of the whole body, it need be no
more than an act of supererogation, an aiming at a higher ritual holi-
ness than was incumbent (‫מ חוציז עצ טהרת־הקודש‬5‫אכי‬/, just as after
the Destruction there were Pharisees who, like these Essenes, aimed
at the same ritual standard of purity as the priests and avoided all
defilement.
The Essenes did no more than pay excessive observance to the
custom of washing : "They that wash at dawn (obviously an epithet
applied to the Essenes) say: We protest against you, Ο Pharisees,
that ye mention the Name at dawn without washing. The Pharisees
say : We protest against you, Ο washers at dawn, that ye mention the
Name out of a body wherein is defilement." 52
Besides the name of God, the Essenes reverenced the name of
Moses also, and whoever cursed him was put to death. 53 They be-
lieved in unrestricted divine providence, i.e., in predestination, limit-
ing the power of free choice, a belief in keeping with solitaries and
semi-monastics. They believed, too, in the survival of the soul but
not in the resurrection of our actual bodies. They held a theory that
61
Wars II viii 5. Derenbourg has pointed out that this is the repetition
of the Shema, of which a Baraita (Berach. 9b) says, "and the worthy ones
finished it ‫ עם ה נ ץ ה ח מ ה‬with the rising of the sun" (op. cit. p. 88 n. 5 ) . ^
M
Tosefta, end of Yadaim (following the corrected version of the Mishna
text). -4
68
See S. Krauss (quoting Graetz) in Ha-Qesar Hadrianos, ha-rishon
1
'hôq'rê ha-Aretz (Ha-Shiloach, X X X I X 429-430). ^
souls were attracted by sensual love from the thin ether to this lower
world where they were shut up as in a prison ; on leaving the body,
their place of captivity, they rejoiced greatly and were raised on high.
Good souls lived beyond the eternal ocean, where was no snow,
rain nor excessive heat, and where only a light, pleasing breeze blew.
Evil souls were tormented in a dark, cold corner. Josephus cer-
tainly "adapted‫ ״‬this belief in Paradise and Hell to suit the taste
and spirit of the Greeks, and the same reason may account for his
statement about the Essene's belief that the body is but a prison of
the soul.
According to the Pharisees this world is but an antechamber to
the world to come, a distinctly ascetic view. The Essenes carried this
belief much further and Josephus supplemented it with a view to
approximate Jewish ideas to the Greek mind habituated to Pytha-
goraean and Platonic ideas.
The Essenes likewise had their own sacred writings (τά τε της
αίρέσεως βιβλία) 54 and "from the books of the ancients they learned
the medicinal power of roots and the quality of stones." 55 Whoever
entered their community must swear not to divulge the writings of
the sect nor the names of the angels.56 By means of their piety, ex-
clusiveness and extreme purity, and by means of the concentrated
study of the sacred writings and angelic names, the Essenes were
vouchsafed the vision of the Shekinah and, like the prophets, were
enabled to see into the future—as Josephus records of Judah the
Essene (in the days of Aristobulus I ) , Menahem the Essene (in the
days of Herod) and Shimeon the Essene (in the time of Archelaus).
There is, therefore, some foundation for the theory that the
whole or part of the Book of Enoch, which has so much to say
about angels, secret remedies and hidden wisdom, is of Essene ori-
gin.57 At all events they were the source of the "secrets of the Law,"
and the ultimate source of both "Practical" and "Theoretical Kab-
bala," which, as "hidden wisdom," has left traces in the Pharisaic
Talmud.
If, however, we remove from the teaching of the Essenes the phil-
osophic veneer with which it was overlaid by Philo and Josephus in
their attempts to approximate it to Greek ideas, there is nothing in it,
so far as we know, to force us to the conclusion that it contains any-
thing derived from the Pythagorean philosophy, as Joseph indicates
and as Eduard Zeller, in his history of Greek Philosophy, tries to
insist; nor is there much point in the elaborate arguments put
forward by Schürer, 58 who found it difficult to arrive at any definite
conclusion. What there is in Essenism of Persian teaching was, at an
M
55
Wars V I I I ii 7. 4
68
Ibid, viii 6. <
Ibid, viii 7> ‫׳‬
5T
88
See E. Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israël, V 64-65.
See Schürer I I 4 675-680. ^
earlier stage, accepted in considerable measure by Pharisaic Judaism.·
the Essenes merely exaggerated it.
Joseph Derenbourg 59 has shown that there is nothing in Essenism
which cannot be paralleled among the stricter Pharisees (Haberim) ;
and even Schürer and Renan hold the same view that "Essenism is
primarily nothing but a more emphatic Pharisaism" (Der Essenismus
ist also zunächst der Pharisaismus im Superlativ"—so Schürer;
Renan's words are "Uessenisme est ainsi le Superlativ du Phar‫׳‬
isaisme).60
Such would be perfectly true if we were to say that Pharisaism
and Essenism both sprang from a common source, the teaching of the
first Hasidim (of the time of the Maccabaeans, Mattathias and Judas.
and the early days of Jonathan) ; but whereas Pharisaism was Has-
idism living at large among the people, trying to subjugate politics to
religion and adapting religion to life, Essenism was Hasidism iso‫׳‬
lated, set apart from the world.
Essenism might be described as a great human-national vision‫׳‬
It embodied in a remarkable way the moral socialism of the Proph-
ets: it was the first social Utopia. Whereas the system of the
Zealots was a socialism imposed by violence, a species of Bolshevism
on its negative sides, Essenism embraced all the positive character-
istics of socialism : equality, community of possessions, opposition to
bloodshed even in sacrifices, and, above all, labour and manual work.
They taught a Tolstoyan morality, yet it was a Tolstoyism Jewish and
not Christian. They taught an asceticism, but it was not exagger-
ated, and they practised monasticism, but did not go to extremes.
Though the Essene monasteries may have provided the model for
the Christian monasteries, Essenism still remained so far nationalist
and Jewish that those who practised it were never able altogether to
separate themselves from ordinary life nor shut themselves up alto*
gether in their cells as did the Christian monks. They at times took
part in the ordinary life of the time and took an interest in national
affairs; thus they never became complete "universalists" but con-
tinued to be Jews and nationalists.
Josephus, as though quite forgetting what he had previously said
about their isolation from the world and their absence of nationalist
feelings, suddenly says : "The war with the Romans demonstrated of
what manner of spirit they were. They (the Romans) stretched and
lacerated their bodies and cut and broke their limbs, tormented them
with all manner of instruments of torture in order to compel them to
revile the Lawgiver or eat forbidden foods ; but it was impossible to
force them to do either." 61
"60 Op. cit. 86-92.
Compare Schürer I I 4 673 with Renan V 69, though Schürer may have
anticipated Renan in his first edition of Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen
Zeitgeschichte (Leipzig, 1874). The fifth volume of Renan's history was
published in 1891. 4‫־‬
61
Wars II viii 10. 4
The Essenes, therefore, took part in the Jewish wars with the
Romans, which would have been impossible if they were a party of
philosophers or a company of monks. And not only did they take a
part but they stood in the van of the fighters : when officers were
chosen to lead the rebellion against Vespasian we find that, for the
district of Timnah, Jonathan the Essene was appointed, and all
Ludd, Jaffa and Emmaus were placed under him.62 If, therefore,
such important places like Jaffa and Ludd were put under the com-
mand of an Essene officer, there can be no doubt that this Jewish
community of Essenes was in truth Jewish.
They suffered with the nation and shared its deeds, and, despite
their repugnance, they were perfectly prepared to shed blood for the
sake of country and nation if the times demanded it—as in the
struggle with the Romans—just as was the case with the "early
Hasidim" in the wars with the Syrians.
Many scholars, and especially Graetz, have wished to see in Chris-
tianity a purely Essene movement. This is not true. Jesus' object
was not to "form a community of solitaries, nor, as we shall see later,
did he consistently practise monasticism and asceticism. Further-
more, even the early Nazarenes were no Jewish nationalists as were
the Essenes, for whereas the latter played their part in the war be-
tween Judaea and Rome, the former fled from Jerusalem to Pella,
beyond Jordan.
The Christians seek to save the soul of the individual : the Essenes
sought to save the community by social means. Yet there is in Chris-
tianity much of Essenism : John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus,
approached far more than did Jesus the Essenes in his whole manner
of life ; and James "the brother of the Lord," the closest kinsman
to Jesus, lived, like a veritable Essene, the life of a monk and ascetic.
Christianity, therefore, drew from Essenism for a short time before
Jesus and immediately after the death of Jesus.
And, in a certain measure, Jesus had points of resemblance with
Essenism. The effort to save the soul by complete abnegation, some-
thing of asceticism (less than among the Essenes), abstention from
political and national affairs (more than among the Essenes), the
obsession of mysticism and eschatology, Paradise and Gehenna, the
"pangs of the Messiah," and the messianic age, and the personality
of the Messiah (forcibly recalling the Essene portions of the Book
of Enoch), and, above all, the far-reaching sociological ideals which
attracted the people to Jesus and created the idea of the Millennium
—all these are, more or less, an inheritance from the Essenes which
Jesus drew from them directly or indirectly, bequeathing them to his
disciples who developed or modified them to fashion a complete
system—Chr i stianity.
We may almost go to the length of saying, with some confidence,
M
Ibid. χ 4.^
that whatever of primitive Christianity is not derivable from Phari-
saism may be sought for in Essenism.
(c) The Pharisees: These were the popular party, the represen-
tatives of the middle classes in the towns and to some extent in the
villages as well (though the majority of the village folk were
,
ammê ha-aretz), and of the enlightened nationalists whose educa-
tion consisted of the national Torah and its interpretations, and of
the numerous "disciples of the wise," whose object was to develop
and enlarge the national Torah and adapt it to the needs of everyday
life; they represented the national democracy in Maccabaean times
and in the time of Jesus, a fact often pointed out by Josephus. 03
Josephus gives the following account of the fundamental precepts
of the Pharisees :
Contrary to the Essenes the Pharisees held that all was not pre-
destined : though divine providence governed all things man still had
freedom of choice in which also might be seen a divine decree. And
this is the view to which R. Akiba, the heir of the Pharisees, gave
permanence at a later stage in his apophthegm, "All is foreseen but
the right (of choice) is permitted." 64 The Pharisees preserved and
developed the tradition of the Fathers, and with this tradition as their
basis they gave many rules to the nation not to be found in the Law of
Moses. They followed the more stringent interpretations of the
rules of the Torah, but adopted more lenient interpretations in all
pertaining to punishments.
They were remarkable also for their high ethical standards and
their aloofness from the pleasures of life, and for this reason Jose-
phus likens them to the Greek Stoics.65 They believed in the survival
of the soul, in post-mortem rewards and punishments, that the souls
of the righteous are transferred to other bodies and that the souls
of the wicked are reserved for perpetual tortures (in Gehenna).
This is all that Josephus, himself a Pharisee, tells us of the be-
lief s of the Pharisees ; but brief as are his words, they comprise all
the views of the Pharisees as they may be perceived in the Mishna
and the earliest Talmud Barait as. The Tannaim and Amoraim and
Jews as a whole are all of them no more than the successive genera-
tions of the disciples of the Pharisees who perpetuated the work of
the "Scribes" and laid the foundation of the Talmud and all later
Jewish literature. 60
83
See, e.g., Ant. X I I I χ 5-6; XVII ii 4; X V I I I i 3 and elsewhere.^
**
06
Aboth III 12. See also Sifre, on Deut. §53, ed. Friedmann 86a and b.A
Josephus, Vita §2. 4
68
Their beliefs are given by Dr. Isaac Moses (Ismar) Elbogen in his
Hebrew article P'rushim, in Ο tsar ha-Yahaduth, specimen volume, Warsaw,
1906, pp. 85-94, and in his German pamphlet Die Religionsanschauungen der
Pharisäer, Berlin, 1904; but in the latter there is too much apologetic, and
both works utilize passages too late for the period under discussion. The
most objective studies by Christians on the Pharisees are O. Holtzmann,
Jüdische Schriftgelehrsamkeit zur Zeit Jesu, Glessen, 1901 ; T. Herford,
Pharisaism, London, 1912; The Pharisees, London, 1924. 4
Much of what Josephus and the Talmud tell us of the Pharisees
is to be found also in the New Testament. But the Gospels are also
a severe attack on the Pharisees. Jesus included them together with
the Scribes, rightly, and condemned them for preaching the good but
not practising it, for priding themselves in the carrying out of the
commandments, for enlarging their phylacteries and wearing long
tassels, for seeking after honour, sitting in the chief places at table
and seizing the chief seats in the synagogue, loving to be styled
"rabbi."
He charged them with being hypocrites, tithing mint and anise
and cummin, cleansing the cup and platter, such time as they swal-
lowed up widows' houses and left undone the graver commands of the
Law—justice and mercy and faith. He described them as "blind
leaders of the blind," "straining out the gnat and swallowing the
camel," as "whited sepulchres," fair without but full of rottenness
and uncleanness within. Though they adorned the tombs of the dead
prophets, if prophets like them were to come to life they would stone
them.67
It is not worth while to deny all these things and, like most Jewish
scholars with an apologetic bias, assert that they are nothing but in-
vendons. One of the principal passages in Josephus says of the
Pharisees that "they take a pride in the scrupulous observance
(εξακριβώσει) of the religion of the Fathers and think to themselves
that God loves them more than others." 68 But it should not be for-
gotten that such charges may be urged against the world's best and
most honest sectaries. It never yet happened that there were parties
and teachings or systems where in course of time they did not deteri-
orate, and their teachings become corrupted by certain of their ad-
herents, who had no higher motive than honour, power or gain.
In every system, as time goes on, the secondary comes to be re-
garded as primary and the primary as secondary; the most exalted
idea has associated with it disciples who distort it and transform it,
and so there is aroused the indignation of the better against the worse
disciples and the dispute is not with the system or the teaching but
with fellow partisans who have greatly damaged the system to which
they adhere. This happened to the Law of Moses in the time of
Jeremiah, to Christianity not long after Jesus, and to the teaching of
the Buddha two hundred years after its promulgation.
And the same certainly happened to the teaching of the Pharisees.
The Mishna and the Baraita say hard things about the many types
of hypocritical or extremist Pharisees. "A stupid hasid, and a cun-
ning knave, and a female devotee, and the plagues of the Pharisees"
are they who (in the opinion of the Tannaim, themselves the heirs
87
Matt, xxiii, and parallels. M
m
Ant. XVII ii 4; according to Derenbourg, op. cit. 92 η. 1, Josephus is
here quoting Nikolaus of Damascus, since he himself could never praise the
Pharisees sufficiently. 4
of the Pharisees) "destroy the world." 69 When one of the disciples
of R. Yehudah ha-Nasi had been victimized by some sharper, Rabbi
sorrowfully replied, "As for this man, he is afflicted by the Pharisaic
plague." 70
Furthermore, in an ancient Baraita, so ancient that the interpréta-
tion of most of its epithets has been lost, the Talmud enumerates
seven types of Pharisee, of which only two (and perhaps only one)
find favour in the eyes of the Tannaim: "There are seven kinds of
Pharisee:—the " s h i k h m i ( h u n c h b a c k ) Pharisee, the "qizzai"
(bookkeeping) Pharisee, the "niqpi" (knocker or borrower) Phari-
see, the "m'dokhya" (pestle-like) Pharisee, the "what is my obliga-
tion and I will do it" Pharisee, the Pharisee who is one from fear,
and the Pharisee who is one from love." 71
It is difficult to know the exact meaning of these ancient and popu-
lar epithets "shikhmi " "nikpi," "qizzai• ' and "mdokhya " since there
is already a marked difference between the explanations given in the
Talmud Babli and those of the Talmud Yerushalmi; but it is obvious
that we have here extremist Pharisees and ascetics who carry out
their piety to such an excessive extent as to become deformed. The
"what is my obligation and I will do it" Pharisee is the type who
prides himself in the keeping of the commandments, and who says " I
have already fulfilled all of the commandments, but perhaps you know
of some commandment which I have not fulfilled : I will fulfil it at
once" (like the young man in Matt. xix. 20 who says, "All these
things have I performed from my youth up; what lack I yet?").
Other Pharisees there are who serve God only out of fear.
The Talmud dislikes them all (with perhaps the one exception of
the "Pharisee who is one from love" who may have overdone his
Pharisaic piety with a perfectly good intention), and dubs their ex-
tremist, ascetic and self-complacent ways "the Pharisaic plague." It
regards their extreme Pharisaism as the conduct of "a stupid hasid'f
and their hypocrisy and pride as that of "a cunning knave," and "a
female devotee ;" and their cant and pietisticism as that of "a. fasting
virgin or a giddy widow." 72
That the Pharisees lauded it over the common people is due to
the bad relations between the "haber" (Pharisee) or "disciple of the
wise" and the "am ha-aretz;"73 but the Talmud allows that every
®Mishna Sota I I I 4 ; see also J. Peak V I I I 8 . ^
10
J. Sota I I I 4. There is a similar story told by R. Eliezer worth notic-
ing: "And the plague of the Pharisees—that is he who gives advice to
orphans to compel maintenance f r o m the widow," closely corresponding to
Mark xii. 40, Luke xx. 47. Λ
71
Sota 22b; also / . Sota V 7, J. Berachoth I X 7, where, f o r "Parush
m'dokhya" is read "Parush m'nakhaya" or "Ma ha-n'khiya," and for "what
is my obligation and I will fulfil it," "I know my obligation and I fulfil it."-^
74
Sota 22a ( / . Sota I I I end of 4 : "Bethulah tzaimanith," fasting girl,
where the expression is Hebrew and not Aramaic).·^
73
See A. Büchler, Der Galiläische Αηι-haaretz des Zeiten Jahrhunderts,
Wien, 1906, pp. 180-185, who holds that all the passages in the Baraita about
"am hararets" may become a "disciple of the wise," a haber" and a
Pharisee, once he learns Torah and scrupulously observes the com-
mandments (R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, R. Akiba). Even Jesus, like
the Talmud, becomes indignant at the spoiling of the teaching of the
Pharisees by cant and hypocrisy, by the pursuing of honour, power
and gain, such as was certainly often the case in the Pharisaic party ;
but it does not follow that Pharisaism as a whole was made up of
such defects. That this was not the case may be shown from an
ancient passage attributing to Alexander Jannseus—the great enemy
of the Pharisees, who embittered his life and struggled against him
for many years—the following : "King Jannaeus said to his wife,
Fear not the Pharisees nor them that are not Pharisees, but fear
rather the hypocrites which are like unto the Pharisees, whose deeds
are as the deeds of Zimri and who seek the reward like Phineas ;" 74
—showing that Pharisaism and hypocrisy were not the same thing,
but that there were hypocrites among the Pharisees and also among
the Sadducees, just as there were, and are, and will be, in every re-
ligion and sect and party the world over.
What would be thought by Christian scholars were we to judge
Christianity not by its Founder, nor its early fathers and saints who
died a martyr's death, but by the many hypocritical and canting
Christians who have flourished in every generation? A religion
and a sect should be judged by the principles it expounds and
by the best of its teachers rather than by its unworthy mem-
bers : it should be judged by the best that it contains and not by the
worst.
It must, however, be admitted that Pharisaism did, in truth, con-
tain one serious defect which enabled the more hypocritical to pride
themselves in the mere performance of the commandments, and which
justified Jesus' fighting against it qua Jew, and even qua Pharisee;
for though Jesus may not have been wholly a Pharisee he was, like
any "Rab" or teacher of those days, much more of a Pharisee than
a Sadducee (the Essenes and Zealots were, as we have seen, but the
exponents of certain extreme aspects of Pharisaism).
This defect was that the Pharisees attached almost as much im-
portance to those commandments dealing with the relations be-
tween man and God as to those dealing with the relations between
man and his fellow-man (though they insisted that nothing could
atone for the breach of the latter, and that if a man had not performed
good deeds, his observance of Torah would not avail him nor would
ample observance of the ceremonial laws). Hence the Pharisees
were far more concerned with the discussion of Halakha, with those
commandments dealing with man's relations to God, than with the
the "am ha-aretz" (Pesahim 49&) come from the Usha Academy, after the
destruction of Bittir. See on the contrary H. P. Chajes, Am ha-Aretz e
Min, Rivista Israelitica, III 83-06.
1
*Sota 22h, <4
others, because the latter seemed to them far more self-evident and
simple.
Yet the casuistry and immense theoretical care devoted to every
one of the slightest religious ordinances ieft them open to *,he mis-
conception that the ceremonial laws were the main principle and the
ethical laws only secondary. To the orthodox Pharisee (and to the
modern orthodox Jew) the violation of the Sabbath and the oppres-
sion of the hireling were alike crimes deserving of death (and to the
average Jew of all times the former seems the worse crime) ; and
it almost inevitably followed from such an attitude that, despite the
efforts of the best Pharisees, the common people of that day should
assume that the value of morality was less than that of religion—
just as in the time of the Prophets the people assumed that the
Temple and sacrifices were more important than "to do judgment and
to love mercy."
This it was which stirred up Jesus, the Pharisee, to war with
Pharisaism, just as it was this also which stirred up Saul (though
he could say of himself that he was a Pharisee and son of a Phari-
see) 75 to abrogate the ceremonial laws. How far such a struggle was
opportune and restricted within suitable bounds will become clear when
we deal with this particular aspect of Jesus' ministry ; here it is suf-
ficient to say that without Pharisaism the career of Jesus is incom-
prehensible and even impossible, and that despite all the Christian
antagonism to the Pharisees, the teaching of the Pharisees remained
the basis of early Christian teaching until such time as it gathered
within itself elements from non-Jewish sources.
(d) The Sadducees: These were the priestly party, the Zadokite
families, to whom were allied the Bœthuseans and other well-born
families and those with priestly connexions, the wealthy and official
classes. This party was the spiritual heir of the Hellenists. They
at first opposed the Maccabaeans who took from them the high-priestly
office, but by the end of the reign of John Hyrcanus they became rec-
onciled to the ruling house which, more or less unconsciously, became
Hellenised. In the time of Antigonus Mattathias, the Sadducees were
in good odour with the Maccabaean claimants and were therefore the
object of Herod's persecution; but once the Bœthuseans, through
Herod's favour, secured the high-priesthood, the Bœthuseans and
Sadducaeans (now identical) became more friendly with Herod's
court and even accepted peacefully the Roman Procurators ; and such
internal autonomy as was permitted the Jews was exercised by the
Sadducees.
Whatever information we have of them comes from their oppo-
nents—Josephus, himself a Pharisee, the Talmud, the literary off-
spring of the Pharisaic spirit, and the New Testament, which, if not
Pharisaic, is still less Sadducaean. But the very fact that no indu-
,
®Açts xxiii. A
bitably Sadducsean document survives in Judaism 76 is proof enough
that this party had no deep roots in the nation : a party deeply rooted
in the life of the nation cannot but leave behind it deep traces.
The single Sadducsean document of any note (surviving in a
Greek translation) is, apparently, the First Book of Maccabees (and
even this is not wholly Sadducsean). It redounds to the praise and
glory of the Sadducees. The document found in the Geniza and
entitled by its discoverer, S. Schechter, "The Book of the House of
Zadok," 77 (a Zadokite and not a "Sadducsean" work), is most prob-
ably the product of some sect akin to the Sadducees but not an actual
Sadducsean document. But for all that, even this book indicates that
what our early authorities have said of the Sadducees needs some
revision and modification.
We learn from Josephus that the Sadducees denied prédestina-
tion and any divine influence on men's doings, good or bad ; everything
is in man's hands and he is responsible for his happiness or misfor-
tune. That they denied the tradition of the Fathers (the Oral Law)
and recognized the Written Law alone. That they taught that the
soul died with the body and so there was no survival of the soul, no
resurrection of the dead and no rewards and punishments after
death. That in the administration of justice they were noted for their
harsh punishments. That, unlike the Pharisees who lived on friendly
and brotherly terms one with another, they treated even their own
partisans as strangers, while their manners were severe and crude.
And, finally, that the teaching of the Sadducees was accepted only
among the few, though these were found among the principal officials
(τρώτοι τοίς άξιώμασι) and the wealthy (euxopot).
Yet they were never responsible for any outstandingly important
action since, on acquiring office, they acted (certainly not of their own
will) according to the ideas of the Pharisees in everything: otherwise
the mind of the crowd would not suffer them. 78
With the exception of the first point, the disbelief in divine pro vi-
dence, all that is alleged by Josephus (who, it should be noted, mani-
fests the true partisan hatred) is confirmed by the Talmud and Mid-
rash. The Talmudic literature tells us that "the Sadducees used ves-
sels of silver and gold ; not because their spirit was gross ; but they
used to say, It is a tradition among the Pharisees to deprive them-
selves in this life though in the world to come they shall have noth-
"Rudolf Leszynsky (Die Sadduzäer, Berlin, 1912) regards as Sadducsean

the books of Qoheleth, Ben Sira, I Maccabees, the Book of Enoch, the
Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Assumption
of Moses, and the Book of the House of Zadok. Against him see B. Revel,
J.Q.R. (New Series) VII 429-438. A
"Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Oxford, 1913, I I 785-834
(Fragments of a Zadokite Work). It is published with a commentary in
Hebrew by M. H. Segal under the title The Book of the Covenant of Damas-
eus in Ha-Shiloach X X V I 399, 406, 483-506. A
13
Ant. X I I I ν 9, χ 6; X V Ï I I i 4; XX ix 1; Wars II ν 14. 4
ing." 79 And a Haggada tells how Zadok and Bœthus learnt from
the words of their Rabbi, Antigonus Ish Sokho ("Be not like slaves
who serve their master for the sake of a reward"), to deny rewards
and punishments in the world to come.80
The New Testament also tells of this denial of the resurrection of
the dead and of the existence of angels and spirits. 81 Again, the
Scroll of Taanith (or at least the later "scholion") reports the harsh
judgments of the Sadducees : "On the 14th of Tammuz was issued a
decree not to mourn," on which comment of the "scholion" is : "be‫־‬
cause the Sadducees had drawn up and decreed a book of laws how
these are to be burnt, these beheaded, these stoned and these choked ;
and when they were decreeing (sentence) a man would consult this
book, etc." Yet again we find in the Tosefta that a certain Bœthus-
ean High Priest said to his father after the service in the Temple:
"All your days have you been preaching and not practising until I
stood up and practised (according to your preaching)." The father
said to him: "Although we preach we do not practise, and we are
obedient (in practice) to the words of the wise." 82
The one thing that provokes doubt is Josephus' assertion that the
Sadducees disbelieved in divine providence. If the Sadducees
acknowledged the authority of nothing beyond the Pentateuch
(though they certainly acknowledged also the Prophets and Hagi-
ographa), how could they deny divine providence, since the Scrip-
tures are full of it? It would seem rather that the remark of
Josephus should be understood in the following manner:
The Scriptures strongly emphasize God's guidance of the world
and rewards and punishments to the nation and society; but the
private indimdual is not so definitely the object of divine providence.
Therefore the Sadducees denied divine providence so far as it con-
cerned the individual, just as it was denied by some in the Middle
Ages ; but they did not deny a general providence—that God super-
vises his world and his people. Such a view was natural : if they
denied post-mortem reward and punishment, they must also deny
individual providence, else how could they account for "the righteous
that suffer evil and the godless that prosper?"
If there is no recompense in the world to come, there remains
but one of three solutions. That of the Book of Job, that man can
understand nothing and must trust that God is surely just. Or that
of Qoheleth (emanating from the same source from which came the
Sadducees), that "one event happens alike to the righteous and the
ungodly, to the clean and the unclean." Or, finally, that man governs
his own destiny, that if he is happy his happiness comes from his own
acts, and that if he is miserable he alone is responsible for his misery.
‫ ״‬Aboth <?R. Nathan §5 (Vers. I, ed. Schechter p. 26). 4
80
Idem (in both versions). ·^
81
Matt.xxii. 23 and parallels ; Acts xxiii. 8. 4
62
T. Yom ha-Kippurim I 8 ed. Zuckermandel, p. 181 ; see also / . Yomah
i, 5, B. Yoma 19«··^
According to Josephus the Sadducees adopted the last solution,
which is the most "practical" and the most "political." Yet God
guides the nation and humanity and rewards them according to their
deeds. The First Book of Maccabees is permeated by this spirit and
this idea. The casuistical arguments brought by Derenbourg 83 and
Schürer 84 to bear on the subject have no sound basis.
Both the Mishna and Baraita preserve details of decisions wherein
Pharisees and Sadducees differed. They deal with cases of clean
and unclean, with Temple ritual, the dating of festivals and with
capital and non-capital cases in law. We need only touch briefly
on these.
The Pharisees were more stringent than the Sadducees in the
matter of the purity of the High Priest who burnt the Red Heifer, 85
the purity of the Temple vessels 86 and the "uncleanness" of the
Scriptures. 87 The Sadducees, on the other hand, were the more
stringent in the question of "Nitstsoq" (the pouring of liquid from
an unclean into a clean vessel), 88 the uncleanness of a woman in child-
birth, and the Halitsah ceremony ( requiring actual spitting in the face
and not spitting in front) ; but they were less stringent as to the
Levirate laws (which, according to the Sadducees applied only to the
affianced bride of the dead brother and not to his actual wife), the
proofs of virginity (that they should spread out the garment and
show the actual blood, instead of the clearer proofs required by the
Pharisees).
The Pharisees held that the Tamid sacrifice should be offered at
the public cost; the Sadducees, by private payment. The former
held that the meal-offering should be wholly sacrificed ; but according
to the latter, it should be consumed by the priest. According to the
Pharisees, the High Priest should arrange the incense within the Holy
of Holies on the Day of Atonement and burn it outside ; whereas the
Sadducees held to a contrary ruling. The Sadducees were against
the beating of the willow and the water libations at Sukkoth ; where-
upon the Pharisees gave much publicity to this practice and made
the "Joy of the Water Drawing" a great popular festival. In the
matter of the "Sanctifying the New Moon" there was also a diverg-
ence of opinion, the Sadducees and Bœthuseans trying to lead the
Sanhédrin into error by false witnesses.
Specially marked was the dispute as to the fixing of the time for
the Feast of Pentecost which is not precisely laid down in the
Scriptures. The Pharisees expounded "on the morrow of the
Sabbath" (Lev. xxiii. 21) as "on the morrow of the feast when
MOp. cit. p. 33· <

Op. cit. I I 4 460-463. ^
*'Parah HI 7. <
86
/. Hagiga I I I « ; T. Hag. I I I 35. ed. Zuckermandel p. 128 (a smart gibe
of the Sadducees as against the Pharisees). ^
8T
Yadairn IV 6. <
88
Ibid. IV 7. 4
men ceased from work," i.e., on the second day of Passover. Whereas
the Sadducees ruled that "on the morrow of the Sabbath" referred
to the actual Sabbath ("Sabbath B'reshith," the Sabbath of the Créa-
tion) ; therefore, like the Samaritans and the Karaites, the Sadducees
observed the Feast of Pentecost on the first day of the week.89
To us these differences seem trivial, but they were not so regarded
in the time of the Second Temple. Because Alexander Jannaeus
showed his contempt for the custom of the Water Libation and
poured it over his feet, the nation rebelled against their king, and the
outbreak lasted several years. The dispute as to whether or not the
"Laying on of Hands" (upon the sacrificial victim as a mark of
ownership, or, it may be, as some hold, in reference to the ordination
of disciples of the wise!) could be practised on a Festival, was
prolonged for generations—throughout the age of the "Zugoth" and
the "Eshkoloth" from Yose ben Yoezer and Yose ben Yochanan, till
Hillel and Shammai, and even longer.
Perhaps nothing could have so aroused the opposition of Jesus
toward the Pharisees as this importance attached to such trivial
religious details which to the Pharisees and Sadducees had come to
be the primary elements of the religious life.
Of more importance were the disputes which the two parties
waged over capital and non-capital cases. According to the Pharisees,
if an ox or an ass have done any damage the owner is liable, though
if a slave have done any damage the owner is not liable. According
to the Sadducees, the owner is liable in both cases. In the mind of
the Pharisees slaves are not to be treated like cattle since "they pos-
sess knowledge." 90 In cases of personal injuries the Sadducees en-
joined "eye for eye" in the most literal sense as laid down in the Law.
Whereas the Pharisees laid down "eye for eye" in money value, lest
there be "both eye and life for the eye." There is no need to point
out that the latter is the more humane view. On the other hand,
it might appear that the Pharisees held more stringent views in the
matter of "false witnesses" ( ‫)עדים זוממים‬. They held that "false
witnesses are not put to death until the trial is completed and the
sentence carried into effect," so that if the accused is put to death,
the false witnesses are not put to death. Only if the case is actually
decided and the accused not yet put to death can the witnesses be
put to death. Whereas the Sadducees held that "false witnesses are
not put to death until the accused is put to death" (the Pharisees
expounded "in accordance with the evil that they had intended" and
not "in accordance with what they had performed").
"Since the Samaritans (the "Cuthites"), like the later Karaim, in many
respects resembled the Sadducees, we often find "Cuthite" in place of
Sadducee, and vice versa. From fear of the Censor, "Saddoki" sometimes
occurs instead of "Min" (e.g., "Galilsean Sadducee" for "Galilsean Min," at
the close the Tractate Yadaim, where Kannaite is meant; or Sanh. 930 "to
the Sadduaean teaching" for "to Minuth"). 4
90
Yadaim I V 7. <
They held further that false witnesses must be two, and not one
in number. Schürer 91 supposes that in this the Pharisees showed
themselves the more stringent. Actually, however, even here the
Pharisees are the less stringent. Just as their treatment of the "eye
for eye" law came from their fear lest there be two blemished people
instead of one (or even "an eye and a life for an eye," B. Bathra
84a), so here they do not wish two (or even three) to suffer death
instead of the one who is put to death. So also they required that the
false witnesses be actually two, so as to make such cases less frequent :
it was easier to find one false witness than to find two whose testi-
mony agreed in all points.
Thus even here the words of Josephus are confirmed, that "the
Pharisees were by nature more lenient in all that concerned pun-
ishments" 92 and that the "Sadducees were the harshest of all the
Jews in their judgments." 98
The Pharisees tried to adapt religion to life: it was immaterial
whether this induced new stringencies or new leniencies. For both
Pharisee and Sadducee the Law was most holy and all must decide
matters of everyday life in accordance with the Law: but while the
Sadducees insisted on the letter of the Law, the Pharisees interpreted
the words of the Law in accordance with the needs of daily life.
In this consisted the merit of the Pharisees: they thus introduced
the spirit of development into the Jewish religion.
The Sadducees also had their merits: where the Law was silent
they allowed themselves freedom, and so could be liberated from
stringencies just as the Pharisees permitted themselves leni-
encies. Wherever the Law did not lay down a definite ruling, the
Sadducees permitted scope for private inclinations. In this they
approached closer to the attitude of "Let us become like all the
nations, Ο house of Israel" (Ezek. xx. 32). Thus their political life
was less shackled by religion and they could more easily serve as
leaders for the more prominent members of the state, for the
aristocracy and governing classes, the more powerful and wealthy
element.
Hence it came about that when the Maccabaeans became more
secularized and the high-priesthood became of secondary importance
compared with the crown and civil rule, they were compelled to
desert their former supporters, the Pharisees (in the same way as
their earliest supporters, the Hasidim, had deserted the Maccabaeans) ;
and from the death of John Hyrcanus till the reign of Shelom Zion
the Sadducees were the country's rulers. The same held good in
the reign of Herod—so far, that is, as he could share his rulership
with anybody—and the reign of his sons and the age of the Pro-
curators. The Sadducees were not popular leaders but they consorted
n
98
Ant. XIII χ 6 . 4
Ant. XX ix 1 . 4
with "the great ones of this world" and so, to some extent, themselves
became "great ones."
Jesus and his disciples, who came not from the ruling and wealthy
classes but from the common people, were but slightly affected by the
Sadducees. There is a theory 9 4 that much of the opposition shown
in the Gospels to Pharisaism and Judaism generally, was directed
against the Sadducees ; while another theory holds that Jesus himself
was a Sadducee.95
Though there may be some truth in the first theory so far as it
concerns some isolated passages, the second is quite baseless. The
Galilaean carpenter and son of a carpenter, and the simple fishermen
who accompanied him, may, from the stress of the cares of everyday
life or from their superficial knowledge of Pharisaic teaching, have
lightly regarded the regulations of the Pharisees ; but they were as
far removed from Sadducasanism as were the highly connected priests
from the simple-minded common people.
The bare fact that the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the
dead and did not develop the messianic idea must have alienated Jesus
and his disciples. What had, unconsciously, the strongest influence
on Jesus was Essenism, while the most conscious influence was that
same Pharisaism through opposition to which Christianity came into
being. Those we struggle with must be nearest to u s ; and though
the struggle estranges us it is the best evidence of the affinity between
the recent combatants.
The Zealots were a party of hot-headed enthusiasts ; the Essenes

were a group of semi-anchorites, while the Sadducees were only an
aristocratic minority. The ordinary people, the average citizen, and
a fair proportion of the village-folk (though among these the "ammê
ha-aret2" predominated) were Pharisees. And to what an extent
these were capable of being moved by a living faith, by a devotion
to their sacred beliefs, may be seen from what happened but a few
years after the crucifixion, when Caius Caligula wished to set up an
image in the Temple (39-40 C.E.).
Jews from towns and villages, in thousands and tens of thousands,
flocked to the plain of Acre where the Legatus Petronius and his
army were stationed ; they fell down before him, with their faces to
the ground in all humility, and, with a courage unparalleled in history
informed him that he must do one of two things : either refrain from
setting up the image or destroy the Jews to the last man. When the
Legatus left for Tiberias thousands and ten thousands of Jews
followed him there, forsaking their fields even in the seed-time, and
remaining out in the open for forty or fifty days regardless of rain
and dew, regardless of the famine which threatened them from
neglecting their fields. After they had told Petronius, "Better for us
‫ *״‬Chwolsohn, op. cit. 118-120; 124-125. ·^
M
Leszynsky, op. cit. 228, 2Q1.M
to die than to transgress our Law," they fell to the ground, bared
their necks and declared themselves prepared to die at once.96
Such was the religious feeling which moved the people of Judasa
and Galilee but a few years after the time of Jesus, when, according
to Christian scholars, Judaism was petrified and Pharisaic hypocrisy
prevailed, when the Jewish religion was nothing but the observance
of the ceremonial laws in hope of future reward. Humanity has
never known the like of such moral heroism and devotion. Every
monotheistic religion has had its isolated heroes who accepted mar-
tyrdom ; but the Jews alone have played that rôle as an entire people,
and precisely in the days of Jesus.
Such a people moved by such magnificent heroism could not but
raise up great men, religious and moral heroes, in whom the nation's
faith found its strongest expression. And such a great man, com-
prising in himself the national characteristics in their most potent
form, was the Elder Hillel, an earlier contemporary of Jesus.
This is not the place to treat in detail the biography and principal
labours of this greatest of Pharisees ; we must be content here with
general characteristics based on researches published elsewhere by the
present writer (see his "Historia Israelith," Vol. I I I ) . Hillel was
not a great reproving or pugnacious prophet, nor a political révolu-
tionary. He lived in the reign of Herod and therefore held aloof
from politics, which was a dangerous pursuit in the time of that great
tyrant. He did not possess the sweeping vision nor the wide per-
spective demanded in one who would accomplish a world-wide work.
His interests did not embrace general humanity nor did he declare
war on political evils.
Yet he was an original force in the world of ethics and in the
inner life of the Jews. The saying "what is hateful to thyself do not
unto thy neighbour" may not have been his own invention: it was
current in Palestine from the time of the Book of Tobit; but Hillel
proclaimed it and promulgated it in the language of the day, and
from him it came to Jesus who transformed it into its positive form.
But that is not the main point. The main point is, rather, the
popular and delicate impression of his entire mental and intellectual
outlook : a moral optimism which became the main support of Judaism
in bitter exile, a deep faith in divine justice and a complete trust in
divine providence, an amiability to his fellow creatures, an affinity
with his nation and a belief in it, humility, unfailing kind-heartedness,
a joy in life, a confidence in the power of the individual, and, above
all things, tenderness, simplicity and love of mankind—these consti-
tute a crown of noble qualities not often paralleled among the highest
specimens of mankind, among the greatest preachers and reformers.
In him, it would seem, all the power of popular appeal of the Scribes
and Pharisees was concentrated and became a life-giving system.
‫ ״‬, See J. Klausner, Rega' gadol b'hayye-ha-Ummah (Ha-Shiloach, XXI
108-114).
For him Judaism was the Law of life and not the Law of death,
it was the Law of the people and not the Law of the "disciples of the
wise" alone. All could, and must, learn : all must be brought near
to the Law; strangers, even, must not be turned away from Israel
and the simplest labouring classes should draw near to the Law. 97
There is nothing to be gained by bad temper and rage, nor by con-
temptuousness, nor by gloominess. To do well to mankind is the
main thing; yet man must also do well to himself. Man must not
cultivate the joys of the flesh, for if he multiply luxury, riches,
women and slaves, he injures himself ; yet it is a charitable act to care
for the bodily needs and a religious duty to· have resort to the bath,
for the body of man was made in the image of God and man must
needs preserve this image in cleanliness and purity. 98
In all this we have a post-Biblical Jewish ethic together with all
Judaism's easy popular appeal, its popular affinity, right-mindedness
and cheerfulness. This appeal is very different from that of the
Prophets; the Prophets protected the nation and saved it from
oppressors, but the Prophets were too exalted in ideals to live a
common life with the people whose defects provoked them to anger
and rebuke. The peculiarity of Hillel's appeal is that it is not so
exacting : he was in all things the sympathetic friend of human kind
and a fellow-man. The Prophet played the rôle of apologist and
mighty defender of his nation : Hillel is simply the elder brother who
shares the nation's life and struggles.
But for the popular appeal of this model, with its amiability and
tenderness, Judaism could not, bereft of leadership, survive as it did
the exile with its terrible persecutions. Only a people who had,
consciously or unconsciously, inherited the same attitude of life as
was exemplified in Hillel, could have borne through the ages the
Jewish faith, torn from its own land, and preserved it alive ; for this
faith was to become to the bulk of the nation bone of its bone and
flesh of its flesh.
We may see from this how far Hillel and Jesus resembled each
other and how far they differed. 99 Jesus, so far as he held aloof from
politics and laid the main stress on love to mankind and on well-
doing, followed in the steps of Hillel. But Jesus, more even than
the Prophets, made exacting claims on the people in general. He
required of men that they should strip themselves of themselves and
abjure all personal possessions, since the poor and oppressed alone
might enter the kingdom of heaven ; and he went even so far as to
abrogate the importance of those religious customs, f o r which the
" S e e the attractive story in Aboth d'R. Nathan, 2nd vers., §26 end. ed.
Schechter, p. 54. 4
08
Lev. R. §34· 4
" Franz Delitzsch ( Jesus und Hillel, 3rd ed. Leipzig, 1879) has attempted
to deal with the fundamental differences between them, but for him, a
Christian believer, an unbiassed attitude was impossible.
nation lived, in favour of abstract morality and good works. By
such means Jesus, though he attracted many, repelled still more.
Hillel drew around him the simple folk, the pious and the un-
sophisticated, but repelled the boorish "am ha-aretz" who remained
obstinate in his boorishness, and such as indulged in exaggerated
piety and foolish pietisticism. Jesus, on the other hand, took pleasure
in the boorish and every type of the "am hcD-aretz" Jesus also
lacked Hillel's joy in life and his optimistic ethical outlook. "Serve
the nation with gladness" was a sentiment with which Hillel could
wholeheartedly agree, though Jesus would have doubted it. "And
when I am for myself, what am I ?" might have been said by Hillel
but not by Jesus : the rest of mankind was everything to Jesus, but
his own people, the national group, was nothing at all to him.
There is yet another fundamental difference which is, again, in a
sense the same difference as between Hillel and the Prophets. Hillel,
like all the redactors of the Pentateuch and all the Scribes and Phar-
isees from the time of Ezra, and like their many generations of dis-
ciples up to the present day, draws no distinction between ethics and
religion on the one side, and between theory and practice on the other.
For him all is religion, be it "And thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself," or the problem about laying on of hands, or devotion to the
welfare of the righteous poor, or rules about Nidda and Halla, or
reservoirs or diseases. The same Hillel who popularised the principle
"what is hateful to thyself do not to thy neighbour" was likewise the
author of the "Seven rules of hermeneutics" ("a fortiori" "gezera
shawa" etc.) 100 by which he laid the basis for the whole of Pharisaic
Judaism.
He was the first to practise this lack of distinction. Just as the
Torah gives us decrees about sacrifices and prohibited foods side by
side with decrees about kindness to strangers, the law "thou shalt
not avenge thyself or retain anger," the return of the pledge and the
rule that a man help his enemy's ass that is fallen under its load—
so also we find in the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees rules
about morals and justice all mixed up with rules about "diseases"
and "tents."
And though there is reason for supposing that, till Maccabaean
times, the Pentateuch only concerned judges and lawyers, while the
Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Qoheleth and Daniel, the literary products of
the early Scribes, were concerned only with theoretical matters and
had no bearing on legal affairs, most of them (Proverbs, Tob and
Ooheleth) having a general human interest and the rest (Psalms and
Daniel) being concerned with Jewish problems—yet, from the time
of the Maccabees onwards, there began, as a reaction against the
100
Baraita of R. Ishmael §7 (at the beginning of the book according to
the text given by R. Abraham Ibn Daud) ; T. Sank. V I I 11 (see A. Schwarz,
Die hermcneutische Induction in der talmudischen Litteratur, Vienna, 1909, p.
5 n. 2 ) . ^
Hellenizing decrees, this confusion of morality and religion, of which
we already find traces in the Book of Jubilees.
The tyranny of Herod and the Procurators in forcibly preventing
the nation from taking a part in politics, still further increased this
tendency. But none went so far as Hillel in placing both religious
rulings and ceremonial laws in the first rank of importance. In his
mind there was no difference between them. "What is hateful to thy-
self do not to thy neighbour : this is the whole Law, the rest is com-
mentary : go and learn it." The Torah includes matters bearing on the
relations between God and Man, also cases of "diseases" and "reser-
voirs" and rules as to the Passover sacrifice, and it gives them equal
importance with matters of the highest morality : all alike came forth
from the mouth of the Almighty and there was no difference between
them.
This fact, already felt by the disciples of Ezra, from the
earliest days of the Second Temple, reached its most emphatic ex-
pression with the Elder Hillel and became an unbreakable rule for
the whole of Judaism. The Scribes, the Pharisees, the Tannaim and
Amoraim, men like Maimonides and the Jewish Rabbi of the present
day, have all been alike teachers, lawmakers, judges, scribes, physi-
cians (as to unclean food and Nidda), lawyers (divorce decrees and
marriage contracts), priests and preachers instructing their congrega-
tions in righteousness. The one man included all these things in
himself in that he was conversant with Torah, for Torah is not solely
concerned with matters of faith but also with matters of law and
justice and science and every aspect of civil life. Religion and state,
religious and civil life are not held apart but gathered together in one.
Hillel could both be the teacher of "thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself : this is the whole Torah," as well as the reformer who intro-
duced the "Prozbol" and determined the measure of "the drawn
water."
Herein lay the weakness of Judaism and the reason why it did not
develop civil science, scientific jurisprudence and secular learning
as independent subjects. Hence it was difficult for the Jewish polit-
ical government to persist side by side with the strong religious gov-
ernment: the priest-kings of the Maccabaean dynasty necessarily
became Sadducees, and the Arabian, Abyssinian and Cuzarite kings,
who embraced Judaism in the Middle Ages, found themselves unable
to survive. Yet it has also proved the strength of Judaism : it thus
became "of a single piece" with all that concerns the moral and intel-
lectual life and penetrated into every corner of the workaday life.
By this means it broke down the dividing wall between religion and
daily life, making daily life an essential part of religion, and religion
an essential part of daily life. That which was holy was not thereby
profaned but was brought down to earth, while the secular life was
transformed into the sacredness of a religious duty.
This served to make Judaism at once national and popular: the
daily life of the whole nation was permeated by Judaism and the
people saw it both as a heritage from their fathers and a popular
system of daily life. Hence the Jewish people have fought des-
perately and heroically for their existence, cultivated carefully the
corporate life, and promulgated their knowledge and the manner of
life consequent on this knowledge among every class of the people.
3§C ‫^נ‬ ^c
At a time when popular national enthusiasm could rise to such
heights, as at the attempt to set up an image in the Temple, and at
such a time of economic weakness and political decay, there must
needs have been among the crowds of people many men, with a hot
and living sense of faith, who were not able to appreciate the two
sides of Pharisaism. They were revolted by the fact that there
were many Pharisees who could attach more importance to the cere-
monial than to the moral laws.
The Talmud itself refers to the "Pharisaic plague" and to the
"what is my duty and I will fulfil it" type of Pharisee; and a
Pharisaic document (or if not Pharisaic, at least Essene or Zealot,
i.e. extreme Pharisaic) such as the Assumption of Moses speaks of
hypocrites and canting men who ruled over the people, swallowing
up the inheritance of the poor by pretending to do them a kindness,
men whose "hands and hearts were busy with uncleanness and whose
mouth did speak proud things, and who said, Draw not nigh me lest
ye defile me!" 1 0 1 It is even told of Shammai, the founder of the
great Beth ha-Midrash in Israel, that when his daughter-in-law bore
a son during or near the Feast of Tabernacles, and while she was
still in bed (and, being a woman, not bound by the Tabernacle laws),
"he broke the roof and built a booth over the bed for the sake of the
child," i.e. so that the child, though but a few days old, might keep
the Law and sit (or lie) in a tabernacle. 102
It was such extremism as this which evoked the idea that such
pedantry in important or unimportant religious duties swallowed up
the purer faith and true morality. And just as the Prophets, though
they never opposed the ceremonial laws in themselves, cried out,
"What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me, if ye judge not a
righteous judgment for the orphan and plead not the cause of the
widow ?"—so too the more ardent in Jesus' time could not but see in
the excessive devotion to the ceremonial laws a danger to pureminded-
ness and spirituality.
These men found their leaders not only in the early Prophets of
the nation but in the "popular prophets," the writers of the Pseud‫־‬
epigrapha, Pharisees and Essenes who concerned themselves com-
paratively little with the ceremonial laws and gave most of their atten-
tion to moral problems, questions about the world to come, future
** Assumption of Moses V I I I 9-10. Cf. Klausner, I Farisei nella Assump-
tio Mösts, Rivista Israelitica I I I 222-223 (and the notes of H. P. Chajes). ·^
™Sota II S.<4
recompense, Paradise and Gehenna, the day of judgment, the "pangs
of the Messiah," the gathering together of the dispersed Jews, and
the messianic age. These "meek upon earth" could not fight f o r their
country's freedom against the might of Rome, but the messianic
promise served them instead. The popular imagination found its
satisfaction in these promises: it looked for their fulfilment at the
hands of some great human figure who should work marvels and
redeem the Jews and the entire world from slavery and misfortune
by his supernatural power. This imaginative nationalism was all
that survived in the hearts of these simple people, the "meek upon
earth," great in faith but small in deed.
The degraded political conditions, slavery at home, dispersion
abroad, made a breach in the messianic hope (a hope which was
essentially nationalistic) : the morality which was bound u p with it
("the kingdom of heaven" in the sense of the decisive rule of right)
acquired, on the one hand, a universalistic tendency, and, on the other,
an individualistic tendency—in the direction of the human hope that
the individual should, in the world to come, receive a recompense
for his good or evil deeds. Such recompense for the nation in this
world was an idea which, unconsciously and gradually, became more
and more distant, and almost disappeared into the realm of vision
and mysticism.
From this circle of "the meek upon earth" came Jesus of Nazareth,
and in him all this confused ferment of views received powerful and
unique expression.
T H I R D BOOK
T H E EARLY L I F E O F J E S U S :
JOHN T H E BAPTIST
I. T H E CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF JESUS
Jesus (‫ יהושע׳‬,‫ ישוע‬or, in its abbreviated form 1(‫ ישו‬was born in

the reign of Augustus two to four years before the Christian era 2
in the small town of Galilee called Nazareth (‫ ·)נצרת‬The Talmud
only mentions this place in an adjectival form ‫ נוצרי‬or ‫ נצרי‬applied
(as also in Arabic Nasräni, pl. Nasäri)3 to the disciples of Jesus ; but
the name itself is mentioned in an ancient "Lament‫ ״‬for the Ninth
of Ab, composed by R. Eliezer ha-Kalir (who flourished, according
to recent authorities, in the 7th century), 4 entitled ‫איכה ישבה חבציצת‬
‫ »!השרו‬and based on an ancient Baraita treating of the "Twenty
Courses of the Priests," 5 and going back as far as the third century.
Verse 18 reads : "And in the uttermost parts of the earth Natzrâth
was scattered (‫ נזרית‬: a‫ ׳‬variant reading gives ‫ ·)גזירת‬The vo-
calization "Natzrâth" is demanded by the rhyme of the verse and
also occurs in the Peshitta. According to this Baraita there was in
Nazareth a "course" of priests of the House of Happitzetz (1 Chron.
1
T h e common idea that "Yeshu" is a nickname used instead of ‫י ש ו ע‬
or ‫ י ה ו ש ע‬, and made up of the initials of ‫ ו ז כ ר ו‬,‫"( י מ ח שמו‬May his name
and memory be blotted out") is wrong, and arises from such attempts at
"Gematria" as are found in the later versions of the Tol'doth Yeshu, accord-
ing to which ‫( יזוש‬adopting the German pronunciation of Jesus!) is derived
from the initials of ‫( י מ ח יזכרו ו י מ ה ש מ ו‬see S. Krauss, The Name Yeshu
among the Hebrews, R.EJ. LX, and the additional note by Poznanski, p.
160). Compare the names Ruth ‫ ר ע י ת ־ ־ ר ו ת‬, ‫רעה‬, Simon = ‫ ש מ ע י ז‬,
Shammai ( ‫ ) ש מ ע י ה = ש מ א י‬, and the like (Derenbourg, op. cit. 46 η. 2) ;
Oshaia ( ‫ ) א ו ש ע י ה = א ו ש י א‬, in J. Mann, The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine,
Oxford, 1920, I 15 n. 4. A similar abbreviation is Yose ( ‫ ) י ו פ י‬from Joseph
( 4 .(‫יוסף‬
3
T h e calculation of this era is not absolutely accurate and was not fixed
until the sixth century by Dionysius Exiguus. See R. W. Husband, The
Prosecution of Jesus, Princeton, 1916, pp. 34-69. •4
3
T h e theory put forward by Graetz (M.G.W.J. X X I X 483) and Neubauer
(Géographie de Talmud, pp. 189-190) that "Beth-Lehem Tzarayah" (in J.
Megillah 1 1 ) stands for "Bethlehem Natzaraya" ( = o f Nazareth), is refuted
by S. Klein, Beiträge zur Geographie und Geschichte Galiläas, 48-9. •4
4
Since his teacher Rabbi Yannai flourished "not later than the second
half of the seventh century" (Israel Davidson, Mahzor Yannai, New York,
1919, English introduction, p. xii). 4
6
Klein, op. cit. 8-20. •4
229
24, 15).® Some have held that there was no such place as Nazareth
and that Jesus was a god worshipped by the Nazarite sect—hence
the name "Nazarenos, Naziraios," for Matthew (ii. 3) says, "And
he (Joseph with Jesus) came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth to
fulfil the word spoken by the Prophet, For he shall be called a
Nazarene (Ναζωραΐος)." Thus it is assumed that the Gospels have
already confused "Nazareth" with "Nazir." 7
But such a theory is contradicted by the "Lament" of Ha‫־‬Kalir
containing the name "Natzräth" and based on an ancient Baraita,
and the adjectival form Notzri and Natzari in the Talmud and in
Arabic. Dalman 8 maintains that the Hebrew name was "Notzereth"
and not "Natzräth"—hence the adjective "Notzri;" and that the
Aramaic name was "Natzira" (as in modern Arabic) or "Natzirath"
—hence "Naziraios" and not "Nazoraios." But to the present writer
it would seem that the evangelist was laying no pedantic stress on the
fact that he could derive the word "Nazir" from "Nazareth" (Natz-
rath) or from "Natzirah;" the point for him was that there was a
certain similarity in sound between the two words, just as we find
the authorities of the Talmud basing derivations on like similar-
ities.
"Nazir" had a double importance for the evangelist: (1) Samson
the Nazirite was a saviour of Israel, just as Jesus was a saviour,
and (2) Jesus, as ‫"( גזיר אחיו‬the prince among his brethren"), was
to bear the ‫נזר‬, crown, and so was King-Messiah. It may also be that
"Nazoraios" comes from ‫נצר‬, branch, and so Matthew ii. 23 is a
reference to "And a branch from his roots shall blossom." 9
The present Nazareth does not stand on the precise site of ancient
Nazareth which was destroyed at an early date and, in the 12th or
13th century, rebuilt on a site below the old town. Its wonderful
beauty has already been described by many scholars and writers 10 and
the present writer was deeply impressed by it when he visited the
tov/n one May night in 1912.11 Jerome long ago described it as "the
flower of Galilee," 12 and though he supports this title from the pas-
sage "A branch from his roots shall blossom," occurring in the
fl
Ibid. pp. 74, 95, 102, 107. Λ
* See Cheyne, Encyclopedia Biblica, s.v. Nazareth; Smith, The Pre-Chns-
tian Jesus, 1906; Brückner, Nazareth als Heimath Jesu, Palästina-Jahrbuch,
VII, 1911, 74-84· < . .
8
See his Grammatik des Jüdisch-Palästmischen Aramäisch, 2 Aufl. p. 162;
Orte und Wege Jesu, 2 Aufl. Gütesloh, 1921, pp. 50-52; Ε. Meyer, Ursprung
und Anfänge des Christentums, 1921, II 423-5; G. F. Moore, Nazarene and
Nazareth (The Beginnings of Christianity, ed. Foakes-Jackson and Kirsopp
Lake, London, 1920, I 426-432). •4
β
Isa. xi. ι. •4
10
See E. Renan, La vie de Jésus, Paris, 1863, pp. 25-29; C. Furrer, Leben
Jesu Christi, 3 Aufl. 1905, pp. 27-29; Dalman, Orte und Wege Jesu, pp.
57, 73-4· <
11
J. Klausner, Olam Mithhaveh, Odessa, 1915, pp. 174-178.^
" Epistola XLVI, Ad Marcellam, 4
THE CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF JESUS 231
description of the "Shoot from the stock of Jesse," 13 the natural
beauty of the spot itself must also have called forth the title.
Nazareth, like Jerusalem, is surrounded by hills; but unlike
the Judsean mountains which overawe by their majesty, the hills of
Lower Galilee, the hills of Zebulum and Naphtali, have an indescrib-
ably tender beauty. Around Nazareth there still grow forests of
palm-trees, fig-trees and pomegranates, and fields of high-growing
though thin-eared crops of wheat and barley; and this must have
been also the case in older times to an even greater and more prepos-
sessing extent. The view from the crest of the hill on which
Nazareth rests is one of the finest in the world. The town was cut
off from the rest of the world, far removed from the great "highway
to the sea" and the caravan routes.
It was a peaceful Galilaean town, cultivating its own fields and
orchards, busying itself in all manner of handicrafts; it was, as it
were, sunk into its own self, seeing visions and dreaming dreams.
This was indeed a fitting place for the birthplace of the moralist and
world-reformer, and for his childish visions and youthful dreams.
Until the fourth century Nazareth was exclusively Jewish, 14 and
as late as the 6th century, Antoninus (570) extols the beauty of the
Jewesses of Nazareth who were remarkable for their peaceful rela-
tions with the Christians. 15 According to other accounts, the town
had a bad reputation and a common saying was "Can anything good
come out of Nazareth?" 18
But it is a common habit in small countries to pour scorn on every
small town and to ascribe some general drawback to its people ; and
we hear in the Talmud how the Galilaeans as a whole were regarded
by Judceans as deficient in their knowledge of Torah, stupid, having
a curious pronunciation and given to uncouth habits. 17 It may be
that the author of the late Fourth Gospel argued from the general
to the particular and did not reproduce the report accurately.
The statements in Matthew and Luke to the effect that Jesus was
born in Bethlehem, have their origin in the theory that, as the Messiah,
Jesus must be a son of David and a Bethlehemite and must fulfil the
prophecy of Micah, "And thou, Bethlehem Ephratah . . . from thee
shall come forth a ruler over Israel." 18 The Bethlehem of Galilee,
referred to in the Old Testament, 19 and explained in the Talmud as
" I s . xi. ι. <
14
So Epiphanius, Adv. Haeres06 30. That there were Jews in Nazareth
in the 3rd century is apparent from the Hebrew inscription found there:
‫ס ו ע ם ב ר מ נ ח ם נ ו ח ־נפש‬ (Klein, Jüdisch-Paläst. Corpus Inscriptionum,
Vienna, 1920, pp. 56-57)· A
"Dalman, Orte u. Wege, 6 4 . ^
" J o h n i. 47· A
Erubin 53a and b; Shab. 153a; Megillah 24b; Nedarim 18b, 48a; Pes.
I V 5, 55a; Kethuboth 12a; J. Shab. XVI 5 (near end of section) ; J. Sanh.
1 2 ω; / . Kethuboth I 1 ; T. Kethuboth 1 4 and elsewhere. ^
Micah v. ι. A ^
19
Joshua xix. 15.
being "Bethlehem Tsaraya," 20 which Graetz and Neubauer supposed
to be "Bethlehem of ( = n e a r ) Nazareth," and Klein supposes to
mean "Bethlehem the Less," 21 has by many scholars been identified
with the Bethlehem of the Gospels.22
This Bethlehem of Galilee (a German colony in pre-war times)
is in the Valley of Esdraelon, two hours' journey from Nazareth.
According to these scholars, Jesus was born there and not in
Bethlehem of Judaea; the writers of the Gospels placed the event
in the latter Bethlehem as being the better known. But there
is no sound basis for such a hypothesis. The evangelists were com-
pelled to prove that Jesus, whom they called "Christ," Messiah, and
"Son of David," hailed from the same Bethlehem in which David
was born.
The two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, which give Bethlehem as
the birthplace of Jesus, state that his mother, Mary, conceived by
the Holy Spirit. If therefore he had no human father what con-
nexion could he have with the house of David ? According both to
the Talmud and the Gospels, the Messiah is the Son of David ; hence
Jesus must at least be born in Bethlehem, the home of the house
of David.
Jesus' father was Joseph and his mother Mary. Such is the
explicit statement in an old Syriac manuscript of the Gospels found
in the monastery of Mount Sinai by Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson.
It is there written (Matt. i. 16), "And Joseph, to whom was espoused
the virgin Mary, begot Jesus who was called the Messiah." 23 The
accounts in Matthew and Luke about the birth of Jesus by the Holy
Spirit are lacking in Mark; they stand on the same footing as the
stories of Celsus' Jew, and of the Tol'doth Yeshu and the Talmud,
which regard Jesus as illegitimate and the son of Pandera or Pantera,
and both alike came into existence only after Christian dogma had
determined that not only was Jesus the Messiah but also the Son of
God. So long as Jesus was regarded only as the Messiah it was
necessary to show that his father, Joseph, was of the stock of Jesse ;
but as Son of God it was not possible for him to have a human father :
therefore he was born of the Holy Spirit by whom his mother con-
ceived in a fashion incomprehensible to mortal beings. This became
a matter of dispute amongst the earliest Christian sects. And the
Jews, who also lacked the critical faculty and the historic sense (but
remained strictly monotheistic), confirmed the fact that Jesus had not
a legitimate father, but, instead of the Holy Spirit, introduced into
their legends the notion of an illicit union. The truth is that Jesus
was as legitimate as any other Jewish child in Galilee, where strict
30
/. Megillah I 1. <
a1
23
See above, p. 229 n.
3.
de Nazareth, I a 330. 4
See A. Réville, Jesus
33
See Agnes Smith Lewis, The Old Syriac Gospels, London, 1910, p. 2
(Syriac Text, p. B). See above, p. 69 n. 6,
supervision was exercised over espoused maidens, though perhaps
to a less degree than in Judaea.24
So too there is scant support for the theory of Haupt, Chamber-
lain and Kaminka, that Jesus may have been of Gentile origin 25
because Galilee was a "Galilee of the Gentiles" and, such a short time
back as early Maccabaean days, contained only a minority of Jews :
(1) There were numerous Jews in Galilee as early as Jonathan
Maccabaeus, since Demetrius remitted the taxes of the Jews of Gali-
lee; 2 6 (2) the Talmud (which, as we saw, indulges in frequent gibes
against the Galilaeans) never charges them with being proselytes and
of non-Israelitish stock; 2 7 (3) there is not the slightest hint in the
Gospels that Gentile blood flowed in Jesus' veins, which, for Luke
and Paul, would not have been regarded as a defect. It is, therefore,
manifest that Jesus was a true Jew of Jewish family, for Galilee was,
in his time, mainly populated by Jews; while there could be no
stronger proof of his Jewishness than his essentially Jewish charac-
ter and manner of life. 28
Jesus' father, Joseph, was an artisan, a carpenter (‫ נגר‬or ‫חרש‬
in the language of the Old Testament) ; and, as was the custom then
and in much later times in Palestine and the universal rule even in
the Middle Ages, the son learnt the father's trade. A happy chance
has preserved the Talmudic expression, "a carpenter and son of a
carpenter." 29 Justin Martyr records how Joseph and Jesus made
goads and ploughs which were still extant in his day.30 Jesus thus
came from the ranks of the simple classes, from among those who
laboured with the sweat of their brow: he had experienced their
troubles, their poverty and their labour.
He had at least four brothers : James, Jose, Judah and Simeon.
W e have further information of certain of these. Josephus 31 men-
tions James as "the brother of Jesus who is called the Messiah;"
James is also referred to in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle
* S e e Kethuboth 12a; T. Kethuboth I 4 ; / . Kethuboth I 1 ; A. S. Hirsch-
berg, Minhagë ha-Erusin ifha-Nissu'in biz'man ha-Talmud, He-Atid, V,
95-96; H. J. Nordin, Die eheliche Ethik der Juden zur Zeit Jesu (Beiwerke
zum Studium der Anthropophyteia, Band I V ) , Ethnologischer Verlag, Leip-
zig, 1911, p. 47. •4
" A . Müller, Jesus ein Arier, Leipzig, 1904.
28
1 Macc. 10, 30 (Kautzsch wrongly considers "of Galilee" a gloss; the
words are found in all the MSS. of 1 Macc.). See Kautzsch, Apocryphen
und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments, I 62, Anm. g. 4
27
See B. Meistermann, Capharnaüm et Bethsdide, Paris, 1921, pp. 256-
257 n.; see also above, p. 133. n. 4, P· 135» «· 1· 4‫־‬
28
See also L. Sofer, Welcher Rasse gehörte Jesus an f (Zeits ehr. für
Demographie u. Statistik der Juden, 1909, pp. 81-87). ‫^־‬
n
Ab. Zar. 3b (beginning); / . Yebam. VIII 2.4
90
Dialogus cum Tryphone Judceo, §88. J. Halevy (Luncz's Jerusalem,
4th year, 1892, 11-20) holds that "Natzrath" is simply the word ‫ ס ר ת‬:
while ‫ גיניסר‬is ‫ " ג י א נסרי־‬, and refers to the carpentry and "wood-sawing"
there practised. 4
‫מ‬
Ant. XX ix ι ; see above, pp. 58 ff. 4
to the Galatians 32 as "the brother of the Lord," and according to
Clement of Alexandria, was known as "James the Righteous," 33 and
was an orthodox follower of Judaism, observed the ceremonial laws
and was also a member of the party of Ebionites and ascetics.
It would seem that he was not at first a believer in Jesus; only
after the crucifixion and the success of the early Christian Church
did he join the Church and become its leader ; but he still remained
an orthodox Jew, and when he, together with his fellow Nazarenes,
was put to death by the Sadducaean High Priest, Annas ben Annas,
charged with deserting the faith, the Pharisees and their followers,
knowing James' piety, protested. 34 As for Jesus' brother Judah, we
know that his grandsons were persecuted by Domitian, who had heard
that the Messiah would remove the yoke of Rome from the neck of
Israel and that the Messiah was to be of the house of David.
The Christians at the close of the first century regarded Jesus
as the Son of David, therefore all members of his family must be
members of the house of David. 35 As is apparent from one passage
in the Gospels 36 and another in St. Paul, 37 Jesus was "the firstborn
among many brethren." He had, furthermore, at least two sisters
who, it would seem, were married to natives of Nazareth. 38
Following the custom of the time, in fulfilment of the command
"And thou shalt teach them to thy children," Joseph would, in addi-
tion to craftsmanship, teach his son Torah. In Jerusalem there had
been a boys' school since the time of Simeon ben Shetah, but it was
not till thirty years after the crucifixion that a system of schools in
every town was organised by the High Priest, Jehoshua ben Gamala.39
It may be that Joseph, a Galilaean workingman, was one of those
"deficient in the Torah" and unable to teach his son, and that Jesus
learnt from the minister of the synagogue whose incidental duty it
was, even before the organization set up by Jehoshua ben Gamala, to
teach children.
Jesus certainly knew the Law and the Prophets and the Book of
Psalms, and had, also, some knowledge of the Book of Daniel and
also, perhaps, of the Book of Enoch. It may be, however, that he
had only heard the Law read in Hebrew and translated into Aramaic,
his spoken language, in the synagogue of Nazareth (there was then
83
Acts xii. 17; xxi. 18; Galatians i. 19; ii, 9, 12. •4
83
Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. II 1.<4
84
The theory that James was but a step-brother or relative is due to the
supposed difficulty that Mary, having once been accounted worthy of bearing
a son by the Holy Spirit, should have given birth naturally to other sons.
άδελρφος in the language of Jewish writers of Greek at that period meant
brother in the literal sense. 4
85
So Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ill 19-20, quoting Hegesippus (2nd century).
88
Luke ii. 7 (and in a variant form Matt. 1. 2$). •4
n
Romans viii. 29. 4
88
Mk. vi. 3. 4
88
See above, p. 193, n. 1. ^
practically no Jewish town without its synagogue), for all the sayings
of Jesus which have been preserved in the Gospels in his actual
language are in Aramaic ; e.g. "Talitha kumi," "Ephphatha," "Reka,"
"Rabboni " etc. ; and during his crucifixion he expresses his agony by
a verse from the Psalms in Aramaic, "Elohi, Elohi, lama sabachtani"
( ‫הי אאהי אטא מ מ ת נ י‬$‫א‬, and not the Hebrew40.(‫עזבתני‬.‫י אמר‬5‫יא‬5‫א‬
Both the Talmud41 and the Gospels 42 tell us that, in Judaea, Gali-
laeans were recognizable by their language (Aramaic).
It would seem that Jesus' father died while Jesus was still young,
for though his mother, Mary, is mentioned in connexion with various
incidents during his life and even after the crucifixion, and his
brothers and sisters are also referred to alone or in conjunction with
her, the only reference to the father is at the time of Jesus' birth.
It is difficult to suppose that the father is deliberately ignored as a
stumbling-block in the way of the story of Jesus' birth by the Holy
Spirit, since (though to a smaller extent) the reference to the
brothers and sisters is a similar stumbling-block ; so we must conclude
that Joseph died while Jesus was still young.
On the other hand he has much to say of a father's love for his
children, but nothing of a mother's love. It is true that the father
in question is God, but even the "prodigal son" is not welcomed by
his mother. We must conclude, therefore, that his father's memory
was more precious to him than his living mother, who did not under-
stand him and whom he turned away when she and his brothers
came to take possession of him (see later). Being the eldest child
he was compelled to support his widowed mother and his younger
orphaned brothers and sisters by means of manual labour, carpentry. 43
So labouring and studying he passed his childhood and youth in
that small town hidden away in the Galilaean hills. He was uncon-
sciously influenced by the natural beauty of Nazareth. In after-life
he speaks of the "lilies of the field" with their gorgeous garb, and
how Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them. 44
Most of his charming parables turn on such subjects as sowers and
planters, the fig-tree and mustard-tree, the wheat and the tares ; and
all this proves how devoted he was to the pleasant fields and vine-
yards and the beautiful natural scenery with its wealth of many-
coloured flowers which characterized his home country.
Certainly, the sight that unfolds itself to-day as one climbs the
40
Ps. xxii. 2 = Mark xv. 34. On this subject see Arnold Meyer, Jesu
Muttersprache, Leipzig, 1896; Schulthess, Problem der Sprache Jesu, 1913;
G. Dalman, Jesus-Yeschua, Leipzig, 1922, pp. 6-15. A
41
43
Erubin 53b. M
Mark xiv. 79; Matt. xxvi. 73. 4
4
‫ י‬See Mark vi. 3, where Jesus is called "the carpenter" ; and Matt. xiii.
55, where he is called "the son of the carpenter."
44
Matt. vi. 28-29. On the "lilies of the field," see Dalman, Orte und
Wege Jesu, pp. 139-140, 208. 4
hills around Nazareth is one of the most wonderful in Palestine.
To the west are the low-lying hills stretching towards the Med-
iterranean, whose blue waters turn to silver under the bright sunlight.
To the south is seen the Valley of Jezreel, framed in bare mountains,
with its profusion of fresh vegetation and trees looking like a sea of
green bordered by yellow shores, the whole valley being crowned by
the hill of Moreh, the battle-field of Gideon, and the mountains of
Gilboa, where king Saul was slain. To the east is the rounded Mount
Tabor, green with sparse forests. T o the southwest is the thickly
wooded Carmel falling away to the Mediterranean. Further east, in
Transjordania, are seen the steep, yellow mountains of Gilead,
ploughed it would seem into furrows, owing to the deluges of sand
blown by the desert winds. To the north are the mountains of
Napthali, the mountains of Upper Galilee; while on the northern
horizon is the hoary peak of Hermon, and in the far distance the
peaks of Lebanon.
Its majestic beauty was an awe-inspiring sight and must, even
without his knowledge, have exerted an influence on Jesus. The
ancients, and particularly the Jews, did not, as we do, deliberately
contemplate nature in order to enjoy its beauty: but later accounts
tell how Jesus remained alone in the mountains, under the star-
strewn canopy of heaven, spending the night in prayer, prayer cer-
tainly accompanied by self-examination and meditations on the world
and mankind. 45 It was then that his young mind, searching his
heavenly Father, fashioned itself.
There, cut off by mountains from the great world, wrapped up in
natural beauty, a beauty tender and peaceful, sorrowful in its peace-
fulness, surrounded by peasants who tilled the soil, with few necessi-
ties in life—there, Jesus could not help being a dreamer, a visionary,
whose thoughts turned not on his people's future (he was far re-
moved from their political conflicts), nor on the heavy Roman yoke
(which had scarcely touched him) ; his thoughts turned, rather,
on the sorrows of the individual soul and on the "Kingdom of
Heaven," a kingdom not of this world. . . .
The mountains of Jud32a, overwhelming in their magnificence, the
bare, terrible surroundings of Jerusalem—these might beget the
prophet-dreamer, the man of might, who could oppose his will
against the will of the entire world and rage against the perversion
of justice in the social sphere, preaching vengeance against the nations
and reproving the peoples of the world. But the attractive and
charming hills of Galilee, the surroundings of Nazareth, which, with
all their glory, are still stamped with a tenderness, beauty and peace
—this Nazareth, tightly enclosed within its hills, hearing but a faint,
distant echo of wars and conflicts, a charming corner, hidden away
and forgotten, could create only the dreamer, one who would reform
the world not by revolt against the power of Rome, not by national
4
"Luke vi. 1 2 . ^
insurrection, but by the kingdom of heaven, by the inner reformation
of the individual.46
Besides this natural influence, Jesus was moved by two other
powerful factors, the Law and life. His was an active mind and a
fervid imagination, and the study (by his own reading or from the
lips of others) of the books of the Prophets set his spirit aflame. The
stern reproofs of the "First Isaiah," the divine consolations of the
"Second Isaiah," the sorrows of Jeremiah, the soaring vision and
stern wrath of Ezekiel, the sighs and laments of the Psalms, the
promises foreseen in Daniel (and, perhaps, the Book of Enoch),
together with those portions of the Pentateuch, full of the love of
God and the love of man—all moved him to rapture and enthusiasm,
penetrated his soul and enriched his spirit.
During Jesus' earlier years, soon after the outbreaks which fol-
lowed the death of Herod, and about the time of the Census of
Quirinius (which called into being, or rather renewed, the party of
the Zealots founded by Judah the Galilasan), the whole of Galilee
was a boiling cauldron of rebels, malcontents and ardent "seekers
after God." The worst storms may not have reached the little town
of Nazareth, but echoes of them were constantly heard. Heavy
taxation had made life hard, and disease and destitution, widowed
and bereaved women, orphaned children, and forsaken fields—all
these abounded in consequence of wars and rebellions.
The majority groaned in silence under the heavy burden. They
had but one hope: yet a little while and the "day of consolation"
(whether in a political, economic or spiritual sense) would come ; the
messianic age would draw near and King-Messiah would appear in
all the might of his sovereignty and moral grandeur and make an end
of all sorrows and pains, all servitude and ungodliness. Jesus, who
was one of the people and lived among them, knew their distress and
believed too in the prophetic promises and consolations, certainly
meditated much on present conditions, and his imagination pictured
for him in glowing colours the redemption, both political and spiritual.
As one of the "meek upon earth," the prevailing element with
him was the spiritual side of the messianic idea, that of redemption.
There may already have flashed through his mind faint glimmerings
of the thought that even he (like many other Galileans) was capable
of being the redeemer of Israel, a spiritual redeemer who, by such
spiritual redemption, should automatically effect the political redemp-
tion. Such an assumption is likely in view of what happened later
when Jesus was thirty years old, though we have no exact knowledge
of his life and doings until John the Baptist revealed himself. Luke's
story 4 7 that Jesus, when twelve years old, went with his parents to
Jerusalem and disputed in the Temple with the Pharisees who mar-
veiled at his wisdom, is confined to Luke's Gospel. Luke may have
"47 See J. Klausner, Olam Mithhaveh, p. 174. •4
Luke ii. 41-52. 4
heard something about the Jewish Bar-Mitzvak rite, applicable to
boys of thirteen and girls of twelve, and thought that Jesus must
have distinguished himself on such an occasion. Mark tells nothing
about the life of Jesus until his baptism by John.
Such a silence is of a piece with the usage of the early Jews.
They were interested in a great man's life only after he had appeared
on the stage of history: the earlier years did not matter, he was then
simply an individual no different from others, and the details of his
life were not any concern of others. At the most the Bible takes an
interest only in a hero's birth and earliest days; e.g., the story of
Moses. Legend tells many pleasant stories of the great man's birth,
and then leaves him altogether till he has reached maturity ; another
story is then told, and again he is left till the day when he mounts
the stage of history and his life becomes wrapped up with the life
of his people, and then only does his history become detailed.
It may be urged that Moses is a legendary figure; yet what do
we know of Isaiah before he intervened in the wars of Ahaz and
Hezekiah? And what do we know of his later life when he no longer
influenced the state ? And what do we know of his death beyond a
few legends? The same applies to Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Ezra and
Nehemiah.
It is even the same with Hillel the Elder, almost a contemporary
of Jesus: we know nothing of his birth, his early life in Babylon
or his life in Jerusalem until he became famous by his disputations
with the Sons of Bethira and took his place in the spiritual history
of his nation. And so it is with Jesus. The Jews, even when they
became Nazarenes and Christians ("Messianists" in the newly ac-
quired sense), were interested in Jesus' life only after he became an
active factor in history, after his meeting with John the Baptist, and
when he gathered together disciples.
With what went before neither the Jews nor Jesus himself were
interested; for what had a man's private life and family and home
to do with sacred history which, for the Jews (and also the early
Christians) was purely an aspect of religion and but served to mani-
fest the workings of God in the life of mankind ! In this we notice
the greatness of Judaism from the philosophic and social side, but
its insignificance from the scientific side; for the latter regards the-
oretical knowledge as the foundation and argues from cause to
effect, finding an importance in every detail, and regarding the
child as "father of the man."
II. JOHN THE BAPTIST
As with Jesus, so with John the Baptist : history showed no in-
terest in his origin or his life before he came to the front and became
an historic figure. What Luke 1 tells of his birth and origin is pe-
culiar to Luke and purely legendary; in substance it is in part an
imitation of the Bible stories of the births of Isaac, Samson and
Samuel, 2 and the rest is derived from a patent wish to prove that
Jesus was greater than John. 3 The utmost that we can draw from
Luke is that John's father was called Zechariah and his mother
Elisabeth.
Besides the record of the work of John the Baptist given in the
four Gospels, which agree in the main, we have also an account from
a certain historical source, the principal work of Josephus. 4 This
account, however, deals only with the close of John the Baptist's life.
Josephus, for obvious reasons, says nothing of the earlier stages:
he was chary of speaking of Messianic movements for fear of Roman
disapproval; thus he generally refers to messianic movements as
simple revolts, or else ignores them. Consequently he says but little
of Jesus and deals very briefly with John the Baptist. There is, there-
fore, no ground for suspecting the evangelists of deliberately invent-
ing facts : in the story of Salome alone is there a legendary element.
After recounting the victory of Aretas IV, king of Arabia, over
Herod Antipas in the war arising from the latter's desire to divorce
his first wife, Aretas* daughter, 5 Josephus adds: "But many Jews
saw in the destruction of Herod's army a just punishment from God
for the killing of John who was called 'the Baptist' ('Ιωάννου του
Επικαλουμένου Βαχτιστοΰ ) ; Herod had slain this just man (άγαθόν)
who had called upon the Jews to follow the way of righteousness,
for every man to deal equitably with his neighbour, to walk in piety
before God and to come for baptism; for baptism only availed in his
(God's) sight if it were done not to free from sins but for bodily
purity (έφ' άγνείςκ του σώματος) after the soul had been already
cleansed by righteousness. And when many others also turned
towards J o h n 6 (for at the hearing of his words their souls were
1
Luke i. 5-25, 55-80. A
*The Magnificat (Luke i. 46-54) contains whole verses from the prayer
of Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Sam. ii. 1-10). A
'E.g., the passage relating how John leapt in the womb of his mother
before Jesus, who was.not yet born (Luke i. 4 1 - 4 4 ) . ^
*Ant. X V I I I ν 2.<
"Above, p. 166. A
* In addition to his earlier and more intimate disciples. A
239
uplifted) Herod feared lest his great influence over men cause them
to rebel, for it seemed as though they would do anything in accord-
ance with his advice. Wherefore he found it better to anticipate any-
thing new which might come to his mind (πρίν τι νεώτερον έξ αυτοϋ
γενέσθαι) and to kill him, rather than endure regret for the change
(μεταβολή) when once it had happened. So John was sent bound
in fetters to the fortress of Machasrus, already mentioned, and there
put to death." 7
This paragraph like that on Jesus is also regarded as spurious;
Graetz especially is quite convinced of this and dubs everything said
of John the Baptist in the "Antiquities" as a "shameless interpola-
tion:" how, in the first place, could Josephus, writing for Greeks,
have written the word "Baptist" (Βαπτιστής) without any explana-
tion? and, secondly, since the death of John occurred after the ap-
pearance of Jesus (c.29-30), and Herod's war with Aretas only
happened six years later (c.36), how could Josephus connect Anti-
pas's defeat with the execution which happened many years earlier? 8
·Yet it is difficult to support this view. Firstly, Josephus explains
the word "Baptist" a few lines later, telling how John summoned the
people to baptism and explaining the kind of baptism which John
intended. And secondly, while the early Christian Father Origen
did not know (or, rather, attached no importance to) the paragraph
about Jesus, he knew of this paragraph about John. 9 Thirdly, no
Christian interpolator would have forgotten to associate the death
of John with his rebuke to Herod Antipas about his wife Herodias. 10
And fourthly, Josephus, who says of himself 1 1 that he served three
years Banus the Nazarite who "lived in the wilderness, was clothed
with leaves of a tree and ate only wild fruits, and baptized night and
day many times in cold water for the sake of purity" (χρδς άγνείαν
—the identical word which he employs for the baptism of John),
may well have been friendly to John and, with "many Jews," have re-
garded the defeat of Antipas as a divine punishment for killing a
recluse who was moved by no selfish motive.
And, finally, all that Josephus says of John the Baptist is in
accordance with Josephus' principle of not emphasizing anything to
do with the messianic idea and messianic movements, but referring
to them only lightly in such a way that they would be understood by
his Jewish readers but not by Roman and Greek readers, to whom
such statements would be both strange and objectionable as implying
a desire for earthly sovereignty at the hands of the "king-messiah"
—a world kingdom already held by the Romans on the political side
and by the Greeks on the cultural side.
,
Ant. X V I I I ν 2. <
8
Giaetz, op. dt. III, 1 5 277 η. 4
‫ ״‬Contra Celsum I 47. .4
10
See A. Réville, Jésus de Nazareth, I s 251-259.^
u
Vita §2. 4
JOHN THE BAPTIST 241
Josephus simply makes John a philosopher in search of justice
and piety, just as Jesus is made a "wise man," and the politico-
religious sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes, were made
into philosophical sects. Josephus was chary of referring to John's
main idea just as he was chary of mentioning the central position held
by the messianic idea in the minds of the Pharisees and Essenes. Yet
he hints at the main point of John's ministry in the words, "the new
things which he thought," and "the change" which he was about to
make. And he also stresses the idea of the baptism as "purification of
the body" after that the "soul was already purified by righteousness,"
i.e., by repentance. In the present writer's opinion, therefore, the
entire paragraph (with, perhaps, the exception of isolated words
coloured by Christianity) is genuine.
Furthermore, there is no contradiction between the Gospels and
the Josephus paragraph : they supplement one another. The Antiqui-
ties still preserves a trace of the politico-national side in the Bap-
tist's preaching which alarmed Herod, while the Gospels preserve a
trace of the politico-religious side. As for Josephus' connecting the
death of John with the defeat of Herod, which did not happen till the
year 36, even this need cause no difficulty. John the Baptist may
have been killed in the year 29 (as we shall shortly see) and the
people would still be able to recall the slaying of the "popular
prophet" and attribute the defeat to a divine punishment for the
death of a righteous man whose only fault was that he drew the mul-
titude after him and so excited a fear of a popular outbreak; or
Josephus himself may, some time afterwards, have conceived this
process of historical cause and effect.
In the Gospels the death of John is connected with Herodias, who
was unable to forgive him for rebuking Antipas, obviously publicly,
for marrying the wife of his brother, Philip. This is an error.
Herodias was not the wife of Philip 1 2 but of his step-brother, Herod,
son of the second Mariamne, the daughter of the High Priest, Simon
ben Boethus. By this husband she had a daughter named Salome.
Such is the evidence of Josephus. This Salome, as Guttschmidt has
shown, was born in 10 C.E., married (about 37-30) the Tetrarch
Philip (who was twenty years her senior), and, after Philip's death
in the year 34, married again to Aristobulus, son of Herod (the
second), king of Chalcis and grandson of Herod "the Great." Nero
gave to this same Aristobulus the kingdom of Lesser Armenia, and a
coin still survives on which are engraved the heads of Aristobulus and
his wife Salome, and containing on the reverse the inscription:
ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΡΙΣΤΟ B O T A O T Β Α Σ Ι Λ Ι Σ Σ Η Σ Σ Α Λ Ω Μ Η Σ
("Of the king Aristobulus: of the queen Salome").
Therefore, in the years 28-29, when John was killed, Salome
could still be a "damsel" (xopaatov),13 i.e., a young girl and not yet
13
a
Mark vi. 22-28. 4
married to Philip. 14 If Antipas' first wife, the Arab king's daughter,
demanded that she be sent to the fortress of Machœrus (built by
Alexander Jannœus on the Jordan frontier, east of the Dead Sea,
Greek Μαχοκρούς, Hebrew ‫ מכור‬or ‫מחכר‬, the modern Mekawar), 15
τ;· · τ—:
this is not because the fortress belonged to her father 16 (for it would
be very difficult to imagine how Herod could imprison John there),
but simply because it was near the frontier of Arabia, her native
country; the idea that Machserus belonged to Aretas arises from a
faulty reading in the Antiquities.17 Thus the Gospels do not contra-
diet Josephus nor contain any historical improbability; and the re-
marks about John in Josephus are not a Christian interpolation. But
there is a definitely legendary colour about the Gospel story which tells
how, at a feast given by Herod Antipas on his birthday to his cap-
tains and officers, Salome danced so well that Herod vowed that he
would give whatever she should ask up to "the half of his kingdom"
(vividly recalling Ahasuerus and his words to Esther at the drink-
ing banquet), and she, advised by her mother, asked for the head of
John the Baptist on a charger, and this Herod gave her against his
will but feeling bound by the oath which he had sworn to her. 18 It
is most improbable that Josephus, who knew Salome and enjoyed
recounting court intrigues, would have refrained from telling such a
wonderful event if it had any historical foundation.
It is worth adding that in the Slavonic translation of the Wars of
the Jews (the Moscow MS.) containing many passages not in the
present Greek text (but whose primitive character is apparent from
their Hebrew style still perceptible through the double translation—
since the Slavonic version is obviously translated from the Greek), it
is stated that ITerodias was not married to Antipas until after the
death of her first husband ; and that the reproof provoked by her mar-
riage was due to the fact that she had a daughter by this husband.
This second marriage was, therefore, from the Pharisaic point of
view, "a !evirate marriage not according to the Law," since the
Pharisees expounded "having no son" (in Deuteronomy xxv.5) as
referring not to an actual "son," but to offspring of either sex ; and
in this case there was a child born by the first marriage, viz., the
daughter Salome.
" S e e in detail, Schürer I, 441-445; 723-725, n. 64. A
" Τ amid III 8; J.R.ha-Sh. II 2; Yoma 39 b ("Mikhmar" for ‫ ©כיור‬or
‫ ; ) מ נ מ ר‬R.ha-Sh. 23b; T.R.ha-Sk. 2 (1), 2 ‫ ח ר י ם וכייר וגרר‬instead of
‫ ; ) הרי מ כ ו ו ר‬Wars VII vi 2 ; Ant. XVIII ν 2. The Jews used to light
fires on the hill of Machœrus to announce the first of the month ( J.R.ha-Sh.
ibid.). On Machaerus see S. Krauss, M'sudath Mikhwar 7/divre Nißeötheha
("Jerusalem," ed. Luncz, VII 1894, pp. 287-292) ; A. Musil, Arabia Petrœa,
Vienna, 1907, I 237-239; Dalman, Orte u. Wege, pp. 16-17; J· Klausner,
Biy'me bayit Sheni, p. 127.
" S e e below 247-8; Ant. XVIII ν 1 - 2 . ^
" See Schürer, I \ 436 n. 20, 4
" Mark vi. 17-29. 4
Like Josephus, John was, as we shall see shortly, a thoroughgoing
Pharisee with Nazarite and Essaean tendencies; therefore he, too,
regarded the marriage as contrary to the Law, and reproved Antipas.
Yet the reason for his death was not, as the Gospels tell us, the wish
of Salome, but, as stated by Josephus, Antipas' fear of rebellion.19
What was John's mission in life? What did he teach and what
was his aim ?
In the 15th year of Tiberius, 20 the year 28-29 O.E., in southern
Transjordania (hence John's arrest by Antipas and not by Philip or
Pilate) near the border of Antipas' realm (where was the fortress
Macheérus) not far from Judaea, in the steppe-country along the side
of the Jordan (ερεμος is not quite the same as ‫" מדבר‬wilderness"),
close to the place where, according to the Old Testament story, Elijah
concealed himself, south of Jericho, 21 and probably at the place which
still retains a reference to the Jews—the modern "Kasr el-Yahud"
(now a Greek monastery)—at this time and place there appeared a
remarkable man, clothed in a cloak of camel's hair, with a leathern
girdle about his loins, who fed only on clean locusts 22 and honey-
combs.28 A late Gospel preserves the name of the place as "Beth
Abara" (another reading is "Beth Araba," "Beth Anya,") 2 4 but this
is simply a ford of the Jordan.
The name of this man was John, and, according to legend, he was
the son of Zechariah. Because of his chief activity the people styled
him "the Baptist." From his clothing of camel's hair it would seem
that he looked upon himself as a prophet, for it is said of the prophets
that they "wore camel's hair ;" 2 5 and, from his wearing a leathern
girdle, that he supposed himself to be Elijah. 26 Furthermore, the
"mantle of Elijah" plays a great part in the legend and this, appar-
18
On this see Simon Bernfeld, Shelomith bath Herodias, in Ha-Boker,
ed. D. Frischman, Warsaw, 1899, No. 121 (Siwan 21). See also Ed. Meyer,
Ursprung u. Anfänge des Christentums, 1921, I 208 η. 1. •4
See the laboured detail in Luke iii. 1-2, and cf. Husband, The Prosecution
of nJesus, pp. 34-69. •4
2 Kings ii. 13-21. For detailed discussion on the site of John's solitary
sojourning and of the place where he baptised and where Jesus was baptised,
see Dalman, Orte u. wege, pp. 75-87. Λ
""Unclean locusts pickled with clean locusts" (Terumoth X 9 ) ; the be-
ginning of Lam. R. on the verse "Al he-H!arim" makes the exaggerated
statement: "There are 800 species of clean locusts" (in Palestine before the
First Destruction). Dalman, op. cit. p. 78, tells how the Bedouin boil or
roast the locusts and eat them with salt; and during the last plague of
locusts in Palestine (1917) the Yemenites caught and ate the locusts. See
Joseph Schwartz, Tebhuoth ha-Aretz, ed. Luncz, p. 379, and the monograph
"Ha-Arbeh" of A. Aharoni, ed. Zionist Commission, Jaffa 1920. A
®Such ( ‫ ) י ע ר ו ת ד ב ש‬, in the present writer's opinion, was the Hebrew origi-
nal 24in the Gospels; this became ‫רבש היער‬, and so μίλι άγριοι‫( ׳‬Mark i. 6). A
John i. 28. Mrs. Lewis put forward the theory that this is "Beth
Aniah" (House of the Ship).**
"Zech. xiii. 4. •4
* 2 Kings i. 8. 4
ently, was also a "cloak of hair." 27 John, therefore, thought of him-
self as Elijah ; and as Elijah hid himself in the wilderness 28 by the
banks of the Jordan, near Jericho,29 so John also lived in the Arabah
(the wilderness) near the Jordan, not far from Jericho.
Also what John taught was what was, in his time, attributed to
the Prophet Elijah. The last of the books of the Prophets is
"Malachi," whose very name is strange, and, in early times, was
regarded as synonymous with Elijah, because it is said in that book :
"Behold I send 'my messenger' ("Malachi") who shall prepare the
way before me, and suddenly shall the Lord whom ye seek come unto
his temple, and the 'messenger of the covenant' whom ye desire, be-
hold he cometh." 30 "The Lord whom ye (i.e. the people of Israel)
seek" who "shall come suddenly," was then supposed to be the
"king-messiah," who should come unexpectedly, and "my messenger"
who was to prepare the way before "the Lord," and who was "the
messenger of the covenant" (hence the connexion of Elijah with the
covenant of Abraham: cf. "the throne of Elijah" in the circumcision
rite, in Hebrew ‫" בריתו של אברהם אבינו‬the Covenant of Abraham
our father"), was Elijah, for, at the end of the book of Malachi it is
explicitly recorded : "Behold I send to you Elijah the prophet before
the coming of the day of the Lord (the "pangs of the Messiah"), the
great and terrible day." 31
Elijah, who went alive to heaven and did not taste of death, is,
therefore, the forerunner of the Messiah. He was so regarded by
Ben Sira.32 And in those hard times, when Palestine was so op-
pressed and disturbances were so rife, and when false messiahs (the
Samaritan Messiah, Theudas, the Egyptian Messiah) arose one after
the other, Israel, in spite of disappointments, awaited the Messiah in
the near future. The Apocalypses of the "popular prophets" written
then, and shortly before and after that time (viz. the Book of Enoch,
the Ascension of Moses, Fourth Esdras, Baruch and the like), are
filled with descriptions of the Messiah and the messianic age.
If the Messiah was, indeed, soon to come, then his great fore-
runner, the Prophet Elijah, must come before him ; and so a certain
enthusiast saw himself as the Forerunner, and revealed himself as
Elijah by his clothing and much of his manner of life.
John was a Nazarite and ascetic, as he imagined Elijah to have
been, who hid himself from men in the wildernesses and in caves.
Herein John resembled the Essenes who, as we have seen, avoided
the company of mankind and supported themselves on scanty supplies
" Cf. 2 Kings i. 8 and 1 Kings xix. !3 and 19, 2 Kings ii. 2, 8, 13, 14. •4
" ι Kings xix. 4; Josephus (Ant. XX viii 6; Wars I I xiii 4; cf. Wars
VII xi 1) points out that "deceivers and magicians" (false prophets) used
to summon the people to the wilderness. 4
" 2 Kings ii. 4-15. 4
"n Malachi iii. 1. 4
Mai. iii. 33. 4
83
Ben Sira 48, 10-11. 4
of food and drink. Banus the Essene, the teacher of Josephus, lived
in the wilderness, clothed himself in a garment made of leaves, ate
only wild fruit, and bathed often day and night in cold water "for
the purpose of purification." John also bathed and baptized in the
Jordan, and so got the name "John the Baptist."
But there is a great difference between John and the Essenes.
The latter were a society of Nazarites, accepting as "brethren" only
a few men tested and chosen after a period of probation. John, how-
ever, summoned all alike to baptism. The Essenes lived apart in their
desert places and abjured the work-a-day outside world : they looked
for the coming of the Messiah apart from any efforts of theirs. John
gathered around him large numbers, apart from his own disciples,
and taught them to "bring nearer" the coming of the Messiah. The
Essenes did not mix in political matters except as revealers of the
future (Judah the Essene in the time of Aristobulus I, and Menahem
the Essene in the time of Herod), and not till the great revolt did they
take sword in hand. John the Baptist rose up against Antipas, like
Elijah against Ahab, as a preacher and reprover.
Hence we may not regard John as altogether an Essene, as did
Graetz, who compared the "Baptist" with the "bathers at dawn,"
mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud. John thought of himself as
Elijah, even though he did not openly proclaim this ; and since Elijah
was allied in spirit with the Sons of the Rechabites, who abjured
town-life, so John the Baptist was akin, in his manner of life, to the
Essenes, the successors of the Rechabites. Since he did not eat
bread nor drink wine he was regarded by the ordinary people as a
holy man; but the Pharisees and Scribes, and the educated classes
generally, thought him mad. 33
John, as the Messiah's forerunner, must prepare the way for him
by teaching the need for repentance and good works. So he pro-
claimed his great message : "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven
is at hand !"
The expression "kingdom of heaven" (‫ )מצבות שמים‬is typically
Hebrew, and this Hebrew character is apparent in its Greek form
which employs the plural (Βασιλεία των ουρανών) to translate the
Hebrew dual form in 6‫ ·?מים‬The Jews of the time habitually used
"heaven" to avoid having to pronounce the name of God; so "the
kingdom of heaven" meant "the kingdom of God," or "the kingdom
of the Almighty," i.e., the messianic age.34 There is a common idea
in the Talmud that King-Messiah's kingdom would come, or be has-
tened, as a result of repentance : "If Israel were to repent, they would
straightway be redeemed," and "Great is repentance which hastens
88
Matt. xi. 18 ; Luke vii. 33· A
84
Berachoth II 2 and s (the Law and the Commandments); Sifre on
Deut. 323 ed. Friedmann 1396; Pesiqta d'Rab Kahana, IHa-Hodesh, ed.
Buber 3a; Gen. R. §9; Cant. R. on ' ha-Te'enah han'ta pageha" (the "days
of the Messiah"). 4
the redemption." 35 From the Book of Malachi (the source of the
idea of Elijah as the messianic forerunner) John drew the powerful
descriptions of the Day of Judgment and the lot of those who will
not repent.
Malachi says, "Behold the day cometh, burning like a furnace,
and all the proud and they that do wickedly are stubble and the day
shall come shall set them aflame, said the Lord of Hosts, and shall
not leave them root or branch ;" 36 and John announces, "The axe is
already laid to the root of the tree and every tree that bringeth not
forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the midst of the fire . . .
and his fan is in his hand and he shall winnow his threshing-floor and
gather his wheat into his garner and the chaff he shall burn with
unquenchable fire."37 Yet John supplements the words of the
prophets : to them 37a who would maintain that they have nothing to
fear from the Day of Judgment since they are the children of Abra-
ham, Isaac and Jacob, John retorts (with a play on words), "Think
not in yourselves saying, We have Abraham to our father ; for I say
unto you that God is able from these stones (abanim) to raise up chil-
dren (banim) unto Abraham." 38 This is an anti-nationalist touch
omitted by Mark, yet it is, none the less, genuine : had not the move-
ment from the very beginning been impregnated with some seed, no
matter how minute, of anti-Jewish nationalism, there never could
have arisen, the religion which so definitely tears away national bar-
riers. Ex nihilo nihil Ht.
Yet there is no reason to suppose that John thought of himself as
preaching a new faith or teaching the Jews to turn away from their
Torah; he sought but the one thing—repentance ; and as a symbol of
repentance he baptised in the Jordan. Baptism which had before
been the symbol of purity of body now also became the symbol of
purity of soul, of a new birth in a certain sense. This symbolic sense
was especially prevalent among the Essenes. But the same sense
was also to be found among the Pharisees in so far as they required
proselytes to be baptised as well as circumcised ; and there is a state-
ment from an early Tanna that baptism is more important than cir-
cumcision.39
Baptism alone sufficed with female proselytes. The circumcised
and baptised male proselyte, and the baptised female proselyte, were
86
Sank. 97&98‫־‬a; Yoma 86b, etc. A
·" Malachi iv. 1. 4
87
Matt. iii. 10 ana 12. Luke iii. 9 and 17. Ά
be baptized, and John called them "offspring of vipers," but Luke says that
they were "the multitude of people who came to be baptized by him," which
is more likely to be true. 4 ^
38
Matt. iii. 10, 12; Luke iii. 9, 17; see H. P. Chajes, La lingua ebraica nel
Christianesimo primitivo, Firenze, 1905, p. 11; C. Furrer, Leben Jesu Christi,
p. 63. <
88
See Yebamoth 46a and b. 4
"as children newly born 40 thus baptism was, as it were, a new birth
and wiped out pre-baptismal sins. The statement quoted above from
Josephus to the effect that John employed baptism for purifying both
body and soul, can be accepted as true. Mark, of course, lays stress
only on the spiritual aspect: "John was baptising in the wilderness
and preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,"
and adds that those who were baptised in Jordan by John the Baptist
"confessed their sins." 41
The inference is that John held that an essential condition for the
coming of the shortly-expected Messiah was individual repentance and
confession (‫ ודר‬as in present-day Judaism and, to a certain extent, in
the Judaism of the Second Temple and the Talmud period) ; whereas
the Prophets (and the Talmud, as a rule) regarded national and
social repentance as the essential principle, considering that this also
covered individual conduct.
John did not regard himself as the Messiah. He believed that
after him "one mightier than he" should come, and that he himself
was not worthy to stoop down and loose the latchet of his shoes"
(or, to use the more Hebraic form, he was too small to carry his
shoes after him (from the Aramaic metaphor ‫אבתריה‬ ‫מאניה‬
‫; )מובילנא‬42 and that if he, John, baptised with water, he that was
mightier than John (the Messiah), should baptise with fire (such is
the correct reading, and not "baptise with the Holy Spirit," which is
not a Hebrew form of expression). 43
This idea again is taken from the Book of Malachi where, of
"the Lord who shall come suddenly," it is said; "And who may
abide the day of his coming ? and who can stand when he appeareth ?
for he is like a reßne/s fire." 44 This was a very pregnant saying and
greatly influenced John the Baptist. Since "the Lord" should refine
by fire, then he, the forerunner, the "messenger" who was to pre-
pare the way before "the Lord," must refine by water. Furthermore
John, the incarnation of Elijah, must warn Israel that "the day of
the Lord" (the Day of Judgment, the "pangs of the Messiah") was
near at hand, the time that was to precede the coming of the Mes-
siah, i.e., the kingdom of heaven. They must by no means trust that
because they were descended from Abraham, Abraham would stand
up for them on the Day of Judgment (at New Year, the "Day of
Judgment" for the individual, the Jews make mention of the Cove-
40
Ibid. 22 a. A
41
Mark i. 4-5. 4
β
Erubin. 27b; Baba Metzia 41 a; Sank. 62b; I. Baba Metzia VII 9
‫בנדייתא‬
43
‫ אנא נסיב‬,‫ מ א ז דמר לי הדא מ?חא‬. ^
But S. Schechter (Studies in Judaism, 2nd series, Philadelphia, 1908,
pp. 109-110) supports it by the Amoraitic expression, "Who draw the Holy
Spirit ( ‫ ש ו א ב י ! רוח ה ק ו ד ש‬/ . Sukka V 1). Cf. Gen. R. §90; Joel iii. 2; Ezek.
xlix. 29.
44
Mal. iii. 2. 4
nant of Abraham and the Sacrifice of Isaac), but they themselves
must make repentance.
This constitutes the whole function and mission of John and his
new teaching in the desert of Jericho. As for the rest, he observed
the ceremonial laws precisely like the Pharisees and Essenes. Like
the disciples of the Pharisees, the disciples of John also fasted much, 45
but Jesus, who neither himself fasted nor his disciples, when rebuked
on this point, answered that "you cannot sew a piece of new cloth
on an old garment" nor "put new wine in old bottles," but "new wine
must be put in new bottles." 46 In other words, John the Baptist,
like the Pharisees, thought it possible to keep the old "bottle" in its
old form and even fill it with new wine, repentance and good works,
and so hasten the coming of the Messiah. But this is not possible:
the new wine will burst the old bottles and the wine will be spilled
on the ground. A new teaching, the preparation for the coming of
the Messiah by means of baptism and repentance, demands the
breaking up of the old external forms; otherwise the new teaching
itself will be lost.
We shall see later that although Jesus never ventured wholly to
contradict the Law of Moses and the teaching of the Pharisees, there
yet was in his teaching the nucleus of such a contradiction. But in
the teaching of John there was no trace whatever of such a contra‫־‬
diction : at the most there was only some opposition to Jewish
nationalism. Luke 4 7 still preserves sayings which confirm this.
When the multitude asked, "What shall we do to escape the
'pangs of the Messiah' " ? John answered, "Let him that hath two
coats give to him that hath none, and let him that hath food do in
like manner."
Here again we have a hint of Essene teaching—on the community
of goods ; but the rest of his answer is not at all Essenic. When the
publicans ask the same question he answers, "Take not more than
is your due," and to the mercenary soldiers he says, "Do violence to
no man, neither exact anything wrongfully, but be content with your
wages." That is to say, John did not require that men forsake their
ordinary occupation and go out into the wilderness as he and the
Essenes had done ; like a true Jew he recommended them to remain
in the social world and continue their daily work, but to abstain from
wrong and violence. So John continued a true Jew, imitating the
Prophets and showing himself akin to them in spirit.
John the Baptist exercised a great influence upon the people.
Both Josephus and the Gospels show that Herod Antipas feared him
lest he stir up rebellion like the many messiahs who came to the fore
about that time. John did not hesitate to rebuke him for unlawfully
marrying Herodias, for John, imitating Elijah in all things, imitated
48
M a r k ii. 18. M
4,
M a r k ii. 21-22. 4
47
L u k e iii. 10-14.
him also in this that he, too, entered into political matters ; as Elijah
reproved Ahab and Jezebel for Baal worship and their conduct in the
matter of Naboth's vineyard, so John rebuked Antipas and Herodias
for their unlawful levirate union.
The two things, fear of rebellion and John's rebuke, caused
Herod to arrest him and imprison him in the fortress nearest the
scene of his preaching—the fortress of Machserus, and there put him
to death. This last was most probably through the instigation of his
wife, Herodias, whom we know to have been proud and ambitious (a
quality which ultimately brought about her husband's downfall) ; she
could not rest quiet under the revilings of this Transjordanian Naza-
rite who was stirring up the people against her and against her
husband.
So great was John's influence that even his death did not see the
end of the movement stirred up by the "voice crying in the wilder-
ness." Josephus tells how, nearly seven years later, the people at-
tributed Antipas's defeat to his murder of John. Again, as we saw,
in the time of Jesus there were disciples of John who differed in
their customs from the disciples of Jesus. Yet again, even in the
time of the Apostles, considerably after the crucifixion, there were
to be found some who accepted John's teaching in such fashion as not
to acknowledge Jesus' messiahship (and still less his divinity), and
thought that that generation still needed preparation for the Messiah
who was not yet come. Such a one was Apollos of Alexandria who
came to Ephesus in the time of Paul and "knew only the baptism of
John ;" 48 and Paul found there at the same time twelve other disciples
of John who had been baptised "by the baptism of John" only—
purely Jewish baptism—and it remained for Paul to teach them to
believe in Jesus as the Messiah. 49 It is obvious, therefore, that John
had no personal acquaintance with Jesus and did not recognize his
messiahship; hence there can be no historical foundation for the
account, given by Matthew and Luke 50 but absent in Mark, which
tells how John heard in prison (at Machasrus) of the wonderful
works of Jesus, and sent to ask him whether he was the Messiah or
not, and, in reply, Jesus pointed to the wonders that he was doing as
a genuine proof of his messiahship. It can be accepted as a historical
fact that Jesus was baptised by John, and also that Jesus, speaking
to his disciples after the death of John the Baptist, said of him that
he was a prophet and greater even than a prophet, that he was Elijah,
the greatest of the prophets, and, therefore, the precurser of the
Messiah, since contemporary Judaism could not conceive of the Mes-
siah without Elijah the Forerunner. 51 Yet to this, Jesus added that
* , A c t s xviii. 24-25.
4
*Ibid. xix. ι-7. •4
60
M a t t . xi. 2-15; L u k e vii, 18-35. •4
01
J. Klausner, Die Messianischen Vorstellungen des Jüdischen Volkes im
Zeitalter der Tannaitcn, pp. 58-63. 4
"the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he ( E l i j a h ) " ; f o r
John was still but "a reed shaken by the wind," i.e., a man who had
not sufficient power to break away from what was outworn, who
saw himself not as an independent force but as one who served a
greater power that was to come a f t e r him. Jesus opposed those who·
continued to follow the teaching of John the Baptist after he,
Jesus, had manifested himself, since "the least in the kingdom
of heaven" was greater than John, 52 and Jesus was the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven, the Messiah himself, and so immeasurably
greater than was John the Baptist.
It was, however, only after the Baptist's death, after Jesus himself
was become a "Rab" with a large following, that Jesus thus spoke
and thought of John. When the Baptist first came on the scene,
Jesus saw in him the opener of the kingdom of heaven to all men,
including Jesus himself.
0,
M a t t . xi. 7-15; L u k e vii. 24-28. ^
III. T H E B A P T I S M O F J E S U S : H I S T E M P T A T I O N S
AND HIS FIRST MANIFESTATION
According to the four Gospels the ministry of Jesus began with

his baptism by John. L u k e 1 definitely says that John began to preach
in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, and that Jesus, when he came to
be baptised of John, was "about thirty years old" (and so must have
been born about the year 2 to 4 B.C.). According to the Canonical
Gospels Jesus came of his own will to be baptised ; but the Gospel
to the Hebrews (of which only fragments survive) 2 asserts that he
was urged by his mother and brethren.
In any case Jesus of Nazareth came with multitudes from other
towns to be baptised by John in the Jordan. John did not recognize
him nor pay any regard to his presence : what Matthew has to say 3
about John's not wishing to baptise him and saying that he, John,
needed rather to be baptised by Jesus, and how Jesus answered,
"Suffer it to be so now, for thus it behoves us both to fulfil all
righteousness" (i.e., all the religious duties)—all this is lacking in
Mark and Luke, and it only comes as an attempt to explain the
anomaly that Jesus, who was greater than John, should yet have been
baptised by him, and why Jesus, who was sinless, should have been
baptised for the remission of sins.
Yet, on the other hand, all the Synoptists tell how, as Jesus arose
from the water, "he looked and beheld the heavens opened and the
Spirit like a dove descending upon him and a voice from heaven:
"Thou art my beloved son in whom I shall be blessed" (so we ought
to translate h φ ευδόκησα, generally rendered "in whom I am
well pleased"), or, according to the more exact form given in Luke,
"This day have I begotten thee." 4 Although the actual words are
legendary, an important historical fact underlies them. Jesus' bap-
tism in the presence of John was the most decisive event in his life.
Gifted with a strong imagination, given u p to day-dreams about the
redemption of his people during his early life in Nazareth (which,
like all Galilee, contained many who looked to the advent of the
Messiah and were ready to hasten his coming by the sword, such as
1
L u k e iii. 1 a n d 23. 4
8
Collected in Nestle's Novi Testamenti Graeci Supplementum, Leipzig,
1896. <
8
M a t t . iii. 13-15.^‫־‬
4
P s . ii. 7 ; such is the reading in L u k e iii. 22, according t o C o d e x D a n d
t h e Old Latin, supported by m a n y of t h e ancient F a t h e r s (see Resch,
Agrapha, pp. 223, 344-347)
251
the zealots of Galilee), well versed in the prophetic literature and the
Psalms (already attributed to David, and explained in many cases as
referring to the Messiah), filled with the spirit of the visions of
Daniel (and also, perhaps, of the Apocalyptic literature, the fruit of
the spirit of the popular prophets)—Jesus came before the Fore-
runner of the Messiah, the new Elijah, who had now appeared and
who preached that the kingdom of the Messiah was at hand, and that
nothing now was wanting except baptism and good works. This rite
of baptism Jesus now observed.
But if the kingdom of the Messiah was "at hand," then the Mes-
siah must be in the world : and was there any reason why he, great
and imaginative dreamer that he was, he who felt himself so near to
God, he who was so filled with the spirit of the prophets, he who felt
with his every instinct that what above all things was wanted was
repentance and good works—was there any reason why he should not
be the imminent Messiah? Perhaps his very name "Jesus"(yt?1îV ‫־‬
‫ישוע‬-‫" »)ישו ־ י‬he shall save," may have moved this simple villager to
believe that he was the redeemer, just as Shabbethai Ζ vi was influ-
enced by the fact that he was born on the 9th of Ab, the day when,
according to a legend, the Messiah was to be born. Dazzled by the
blinding light of the Judaean sun, it seemed to him as though the
heavens were opened and that the Shekinah shed its light upon him.
An indication is preserved in the Gospel to the Hebrews that by
the descent of the Holy Spirit is meant the radiance of the Shekinah ;
that Gospel treats it as a bath qot, a voice from heaven, which said
that the Spirit had awaited the coming of Jesus "that it might shine
upon him." This bath qol is the same phenomenon familiar to us in
the Talmud, and the "dove," the form taken by the Holy Spirit, re-
minds us both of the dove which Noah sent from the ark and which
fluttered on the face of the waters (in that case the waters of the
flood, and in the present case, the waters of the Jordan), and of the
Talmudic exposition of : "And the spirit of God moved on the face
of the waters" 5—like a dove that flutters over her young without
touching them.6 Suddenly there flashed through Jesus' mind, like
blinding lightning, the idea that he was the hoped-for Messiah. This
was the voice which he heard within him and for which he had been
prepared by his thirty years of rich, cloistered, inner life at Nazareth.
His dream acquired its utmost realization at this great moment in his
life, the solemn moment of his baptism.
John the Baptist was the Prophet Elijah, the Forerunner of the
Messiah, the "angel of the covenant," who should "prepare the way"
before "the Lord," the "voice crying in the wilderness, Make ready
"Genesis i. 2. Λ
β
Hagiga 15a; T. Hagiga I I 5 ( w h e r e "eagle" occurs instead of "dove").
See S. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 2nd series, 110-116; c f . also Berachoth
3 a , Bath-qol "which coos like a dove." ^
THE BAPTISM OF JESUS 253
the way, make straight in the desert a highway for our God and the
newly baptised Jesus was the Messiah himself.
Men nourish in secret their greatest and loftiest ideas, and so
Jesus preserved his great idea sealed tightly within the treasure-
chamber of his heart. For who would believe him if he were to re-
veal it ? Would he not be a subject of ridicule ? A carpenter and son
of a carpenter from Nazareth, the Messiah and Son of David!
Could anything sound more foolish ? So Jesus hides away his great
idea ; he begins to doubt it even himself and goes away for a period
of solitude in the same deserted place where John the Baptist was
preaching. From Moses in Mount Horeb to R. Israel "Besht" in the
Carpathian Mountains, such a period of privacy with the object
of reaching conviction about some great idea which hovers between
the regions of the possible and the impossible, has often been the
prelude to public manifestation.
Mark 7 gives a brief record of such a time of solitude imme-
diately after Jesus' baptism : "And straightway the spirit sent him
forth into the wilderness and he was there in the wilderness forty
days tempted of Satan." Matthew 8 and Luke 9 treat the devil's
temptation at great length. They would seem to have preserved a
tradition, derived from Peter or some other disciple, in which Jesus
describes this temptation parabolically, in a metaphorical and cryptic
fashion. From this wonder-story we may deduce the following
historical features:
Obsessed by his idea that he was the Messiah, Jesus meditated on
the three methods by which, according to the current view, the
Messiah would declare himself (the order is here taken from the
Gospel to the Hebrews and not from the Synoptic Gospels). Pri-
marily the Messiah is the King-Messiah who overcomes the Gentiles
by force and rules over them and their kingdoms ("from a high
mountain Satan showed him all the kingdoms of the earth and the
glory of them").
But there is but one way to reach such an end : rebellion against
the Romans. Jesus the Galilasan, nursed in the cradle of the revo-
lutionary ideas of the Zealots, must, like every Jewish messiah, have
had such thoughts. But, in the end, he rejected such an idea: his
dreamy, spiritual nature was not fitted for such methods; the con-
temporary conditions rendered them impossible : had he not witnessed
the fate of John the Baptist? Secondly, the Jewish Messiah must be
mighty in the Torah, since there rested upon him "the spirit of wis-
dom and understanding, the spirit of council and might, the spirit
of knowledge and the fear of the Lord" 10 ("the devil bringeth him
1
M a r k i. 12-13.
8
M a t t . iv. 1 - 1 1 . 4
®Luke iv. 1-13. 4
10
Isaiah xi. 2. 4
to Jerusalem and setteth him on a pinnacle of the Temple"—the site
of the Hewn Chamber, where the Law was expounded by the priests
and scribes) ; and, as we shall see shortly, Jesus was, for a short space,
a "Rab" and teacher akin in spirit to the Pharisees and Scribes.
But, in the end, Jesus rejected this idea also : he saw the defects
of the Pharisees and Scribes and, later, found fault with them, some-
times rightly and sometimes wrongly; and what, again, could a
Galilaean carpenter do towards introducing anything new into the
substance of the Law and of knowledge generally?
Lastly, the Jewish Messiah must bestow upon his people material
welfare ("He afterward hungered, and the devil came and said unto
him, If thou art the son of God command that these stones become
bread"). We have already seen,11 and shall refer later to the subject
in more detail, that Jesus promised a wonderful fruitfulness for the
world in the millennium, a statement preserved in the tradition re-
corded by Papias, and agreeing almost word for word with the ma-
terial descriptions given in the Book of Baruch, in an early Tawnaitic
Midrash ( Sif re), and in several Talmudic Baratt oth. But, in the
end, Jesus rejected this also as a principle of his Messiahship, since
it seemed to him too gross: was it not written, "Man shall not live
by bread alone?"
What then was left of the messianic idea? How was his messiah-
ship to be disclosed ?
Nothing was left but to conceal his claim, and until John the
Baptist was arrested finally by Herod Antipas Jesus did nothing.
But once the "Forerunner" had been put in prison Jesus thought
that the time had come for him to take his place and "to preach the
gospel of the kingdom of heaven." His message closely resembled
that of John the Baptist; there was in it only one small addition
from which none but the most discerning could perceive any change
of principle. Instead of "Repent ! for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand," Jesus proclaimed, "The days are fulfilled, and the kingdom
of heaven is at hand ; repent and believe in the Gospel " "The days
are fulfilled," i.e., the kingdom of heaven must needs come, no matter
what befall ; and "believe in the Gospels," i.e., believe that the fore-
runner of the Messiah has already come, and therefore the Messiah
himself has come.
Who or where was the Messiah, Jesus did not say. He did not
proclaim himself nor allow himself to be proclaimed as Messiah till
comparatively much later. Even to his disciples he did not at first
divulge the fact; and when they had realized it for themselves he
did not deny it, yet desired them not to make the matter known. H e
resisted the temptation and only disclosed himself as a "Rab" and
simple Galilaean preacher, as nothing more than one of the Pharisees
or Scribes. A wandering Galilaean "Rab" and preacher was a common
u
See above, p. 66.
sight and specially known by the title of "Galilaean itinerant"
(‫)עובר גאיצאה‬. 12
Yet between him and the usual Pharisees, Rabbis and homilists
there were certain fundamental differences, (a) The main purport of
his teaching was the near approach of the Messiah and, in conse-
quence, of the kingdom of heaven. Though the Pharisees and Scribes
also taught this, it was, with them, only secondary, (b) The ordi-
nary Pharisees and homilists taught the observance of the ceremonial
laws side by side with the moral law, whereas Jesus taught scarcely
anything beyond the moral law: though he did not abolish the cere-
monial laws he laid but little stress on them, (c) For all the teach-
ing of the Scribes and Pharisees the one basic principle was exposi-
tion of Scripture and the derivative teaching of the Torah, whereas
Jesus relied but slightly on Scripture, wrapping up his teaching alto-
gether in parable form. This, again, was a practice of the Phari-
sees and it was from them that Jesus learnt the practice; but they
never used it to the same extent. 13 (d) Jesus was a worker of
miracles. He healed the sick and drove out evil spirits, for it was
impossible that the Messiah should not work miracles. Even in this
Jesus did not differ from the Scribes and sages of the time except in
degree. The early Tannaim were also miracle-workers, and Jesus
grants 14 that the Pharisees could perform miracles and that, there-
fore, miracles afforded no clear proof of Jesus' messianic claims in
the eyes of the Galikeans: though the Messiah must work miracles
not every one who worked miracles was the Messiah.
But here again Jesus differed from the Pharisees. With them the
teaching was primary and the miracles only secondary, while with
Jesus teaching and miracles possessed equal importance. He was
aware that through the working of miracles he could attract the
people, yet he knew, as we shall see later, of the danger inherent in a
faith based on miracles and often avoided those "who sought for
signs."
A theory has been put forward 15 that Jesus never regarded him-
self as the Messiah and only after his death was he acclaimed as Mes-
siah by his disciples. But had this been true it would never have oc-
curred to his disciples (simple-minded Jews) that one who had suf-
fered crucifixion ("a curse of God is he that is hanged") could be the
Messiah ; and the messianic idea meant nothing whatever to the
Gentile converts. Ex nihilo nihil Ht: when we see that Jesus' mes-
sianic claims became a fundamental principle of Christianity soon
after his crucifixion, this is a standing proof that even in his lifetime
13
Sank. 70a; Huiin 27b ( ^ . ( ‫ ׳‬, ‫ג א י א א ר‬ ‫דרש עובר‬
13
See P. Fiebig, Alt jüdische Gleichnisse und die Gleichnisse Jesu, Tüb-
ingen, 1904. 4
14
Matt. xii. 27. •4
" S e e W. Wrede, Das Messias g eheimniss in den Evangelien, Göttingen,
1901. Λ
Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah. Yet in the earlier stages
he did not make this claim: he was, at first, only a "Rab" and
preacher, a "Galilaean itinerant/' differing from others of that type
only in certain peculiarities.
Like every other "Rab" or preacher he had a following of
régulai4 and casual disciples: the regular ones were those who
had left all and followed him and remained constantly with him;
the casual ones were the ordinary folk who, from time to time,
came to listen to him and to be healed by him. They styled him
"Rabbi" 1 6 or, according to the later Aramaic form, "Rabboni"
(ραββουνι, cf. ‫עואם‬ ‫ )רבונו‬Jesus always called himself "the Son
of man" (‫)ב! אדם‬, i.e., simple flesh and blood. This usage survived
in Hebrew till a much later period: "Son of man" signifies mere
"man" ("sons of men," ‫בני אדם‬, is the plural of ‫" אדם‬man"), and
has the same implication as ‫ איש‬i n the Old Testament. Such, too, is
the usage of ‫( בד־אנש‬pronounced ‫בד־נש‬, by the elision of ‫ )א‬in Ara-
maic and the Talmud; it signifies "man" as distinct from brute beasts,
and as distinct from the angels (cf.17·(‫צית דיןבד־נש‬
But in the Book of Daniel, in the vision of the four beasts,18
Israel is likened to a ‫בר־אנש‬, who comes "with the clouds of heaven,"
while the other nations are likened to beasts. From an early period
it was supposed that this "Son of man" was a title of the King-
Messiah since the Book of Daniel says : "He came near to the Ancient
of days and was brought nigh unto him, and to him was given might
and honour and authority, and all peoples, nations and tongues shall
serve him, and his sovereignty is an everlasting sovereignty which
shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be cast down."
Whole chapters of the Book of Enoch 19 prove beyond doubt that
walda b'esi, bar-naslia, "Son of Man," or, in its Hebrew guise, ‫ב? אדם‬
was a regular title given to the Messiah before the time of Jesus. 20
Jesus, who spoke Aramaic, made much use of this word. It occurs
eighty-one times in the Gospels. The writers of the Gospels (espe-
daily Matthew) have introduced it on many occasions into the actual
sayings of Jesus. He did not, however, use it in its technical sense
18
A word which also occurs in the Gospels and induced Graetz (III, 2",
n. 20, p. 759; I V s , note 9, pp. 399-400) to date them late, since Hillel and
Shammai and Yonathan ben Uzziel were known by their bare names without
prefix. Yet even though, as an official title for a "disciple of the wise,"
"Rabbi" had not become a fixed title in the time of Jesus, it was already
in use in current speech as an unofficial title of honour (see above, p. 43
n. 92). See also T. Eduyoth, end. 4
11
Shabbath 112 b.<4
18
Daniel vii 2-14. 4
,
‫ ״‬T h e Ethiopie Enoch, 46, 1-6; 66, 1-16; 99, 5-35. See also 9, 10; 68, 2;
60, 2027; 67, 6 ; 71, 14. M
In the Talmud and the Targum there are also hints as to the messianic
significance of "son of man"; e.g., Sanh. 98b; Targum to 1 Giron. iii. 24;
but these passages are considerably later than the time of Jesus.
but instead of "I." Its significance is often simply "man," without
any qualification or specific intention. 21
But even after passing over all the passages where it means " I " or
"man," there still remain many instances where Jesus used the word
deliberately; and he used it expressly for the reason that while in
Aramaic, which Jesus spoke, it had no exceptional meaning in the ears
of the ordinary people, it had, for the more enlightened hearers, an
added significance, as in Ezekiel and Daniel. By means of this title
he partially divulged his messiahship but more frequently concealed it.
On the one hand, he hinted that he was a simple, ordinary man (the
sense conveyed by the word in everyday Aramaic speech) ; and on
the other hand, he hinted that he too was a prophet like Ezekiel, who
also had used the word. And, still further, he hinted that he was the
"Son of man" in the sense in which his contemporaries understood
the expression in the Book of Daniel, and as it was explained in the
Book of Enoch—the "Son of Man" who was to come "with the
clouds of heaven" and approach "the Ancient of days," and who was
to possess the kingdom of the King-Messiah, the everlasting king-
dom.
Thus, by such hints, he prepared the minds of his regular dis-
ciples to accept his messianic claims, while as for the simple multi-
tude, they saw nothing peculiar in the expression and went after the
"Galilean itinerant" because he taught a high ideal of ethics through
the medium of attractive parables, and because he performed mir-
acles and healed the sick.
31
See H . Lietzmann, Der Menschensohn, Leipzig, 1896, w h o denies alto-
g e t h e r the messianic significance in " S o n of m a n . " See on t h e other side
P . Fiebig, Der Menschensohn, Tübingen, 1901 ; G. Dalman, Die Worte Jesu,
1898, 191-219; W . Bousset, Die Religion des Judentums in Neutestament-
liehen Zeitalter, pp. 248-255. 4
FOURTH BOOK
T H E BEGINNING O F JESUS' MINISTRY
I. J E S U S ' E A R L Y M I N I S T R Y :
T H E PREACHER O F PARABLES AND T H E PERFORMER

OF MIRACLES
The writers of the first Gospels were Jews in spirit. As Jews

they aimed not at writing a history of Christianity or a biography
of Jesus, but at showing how the will of God showed itself in certain
events. Hence we must not expect a chronological account of the
ministry of Jesus in Mark or Matthew, or even in Luke (whose aim
was to connect the life of Jesus with historical personages and
events), and we cannot, therefore, compose a scientific biography
of Jesus according to modern methods. We have defined for us only
the opening point of his ministry (his baptism by John in the Jordan),
and the closing point (his crucifixion by Pontius Pilate at Jerusalem).
There is a difficulty in fixing the intervening points. Mark's
purpose being religious and not historical or biographical, he strings
events together according to the parables and sayings of Jesus, and
places together in conjunction events (and even sayings and parables),
however distant in time, if only they possess an inner, logical con-
nexion.
But between the baptism and the crucifixion it is possible to fix
a few points which provide, more or less, a correct guide to the course
of Jesus' life. It is scarcely necessary to do more than this, since,
according to the Synoptic Gospels, his ministry was not prolonged
more than a single year (29-30 C.E.). The Fourth Gospel makes it
last three years, and this was the opinion of the early Fathers,
Origen, Irenaeus, Eusebius and Epiphanius; but Clement of Alex-
andria and Julius Africanus considered that it lasted one year only,
and Irenaeus, contrary to the rest of his writings, says in one place 1
that the ministry of Jesus lasted "only one year and a few months,"
and this is the view of most modern scholars.2 In so short a period
it would be difficult to find a gradual development in activities and
teaching : a few landmarks here and there are all we may expect.
1
S e e Irenaeus, De Principiis, I V 5. 4
" H u s b a n d , Prosecution of fesust Princeton, 1916, pp. 34-69, denies t h i s . 4
259
After the baptism, the first landmark is found in Jesus' resolve,
after the Temptation and after John's imprisonment and after Jesus'
return to Galilee, to do no more than take the place of John the
Baptist and preach repentance in connexion with the approach of the
kingdom of heaven. He finally abandoned his work as carpenter, by
which he had earned his living, and his family which he had hitherto
supported. For his first audience he had four men, two pairs of
brothers whose ardent faith he must have known in earlier times when
he laboured as a carpenter in Nazareth. 3
The first pair were Simon and Andrew (Netzer?—it is curious
that a simple Galilaean fisherman should have a Greek name), 4 the
sons of Jonas. Jesus encountered them as they were spreading their
nets in the Sea of Galilee, near their home town, Capernaum : he sum-
moned them to follow him, saying that he would make them into
"fishers of men." Near by he saw other fishermen, James and John
the sons of Zebedee, sitting in a boat with their father and hired
servants, mending their nets.5 James and John were energetic and
passionate men, and Jesus styled them "Boanerges" (from the Ara-
maic ‫ בני רעש‬or ‫)בני דגש‬, "sons of wrath." 6 He must have known
them also previously and considered them fit to form part of his
following.
All four forsook their work, and, later, their families, and, with-
out looking back, followed Jesus as Elisha followed Elijah. After-
wards, Simon, James and John became his chief disciples, "pillars"
of the new "church" or community; and Simon, their leader, became
the "rock" on which the "church" was founded.
Simon, who was married, had a home in Capernaum where he
lived with his wife's mother; therefore in Capernaum Jesus began his
ministry.
Capernaum was, as we have seen, a town of moderate size noted
for its wheat.7 References to it may be found in the Tosefta and
Talmud, in the Midrash 8 and in writings of Jewish travellers, by the
name of "Kefar Tanhum," 9 and also in Josephus ("a most fertile
fountain" called by the inhabitants Καφαρναούμ., also Κεφαρνωμών
' A c c o r d i n g to J o h n i. 41-43, J e s u s already k n e w Simon a n d A n d r e w w h e n
he w a s with J o h n t h e Baptist. ^‫־‬
4
B u t in the J e r u s a l e m Talmud (Berachoth I 1) it occurs as t h e n a m e
of the f a t h e r of an A m o r a . •4
6
O n the fishing i n d u s t r y of Galilee and the fish f o u n d there, see D a l m a n ,
Orte und Wege Jesu, 1921, pp. 122-124. •4
" O n this n a m e see H . P . C h a j e s , Marcus-Studien, Berlin, 1899, pp. 2 1 - 2 2 . ^
1
Menahoth 85a; T. Menahoth I X 2: "Chorazim and Kefar-Ahim" (where
" K e f a r - N a h u m " should be r e a d ) , " B a r c h a i m a n d K e f a r - A h u s " (read C h o r a -
zim a n d K e f a r N a h u m " ) . See D a l m a n , op. cit. pp. 121-135; Graetz I I I 1B,
290 n. 2. See above p. 174 n. 2. Λ
8
Qoh. R. on "U-motze ani"; and, perhaps, also Cant. R. o n "Yonathi";
J. Terumoth X I 7 ; / . Taanith I 7 ( b e g i n n i n g ) ; / . Shabbath I I 1 ( ‫ב פ ר ־ ת נ ח ו ם‬
‫חחמיז‬ ,‫)תחומיז‬. 4.
" I s h t o r i h a - P a r h i ' s Kaphtor wa-Perah, ed. Luncz, p. 286.
JESUS' EARLY MINISTRY 261
or Κεφαρνωκών, "pertaining to the people of Kefar Nahum"). 1 0
The town was stretched along the western shore of the lake near
where the Jordan enters, and is most probably represented today by
"Tel-Hum" (corrupted from Tel-Nahum or Tanhum), a ruin near
Hirbet Chorazi (the Chorazin mentioned side by side with Kefar-
naum both in the Gospels and Talmud) ; in both sites are remains of
ancient synagogues remarkable for massive stonework and fine carv-
ings and ornamentation. 11 On the shore, not far away, was Migdal
(Migdal-Nunaya 12 or Magdala, 13 the GreekTapt^at—and not "Hir-
bet-el-Kerak," on the site of the Jewish colony Kinnereth, the ancient
Beth-Yerah and Greek Philoteria, which was conquered in 218 B.C.
by Antiochus the Great and apparently reached its zenith during the
reign of Alexander Jannaeus). 14 This was the native town of Mary
Magdalene, as also of the early Amora R. Yitzhaq Magdala'ah 15
and R. Judan (Yehuda) Magdala'ah. 16
As was to be expected in a town on the banks of a sea well stocked
with fish, the inhabitants of Capernaum were mostly fishermen. But
before Tiberias (founded about 18 C.E.) came to be important,
Capernaum was also a great commercial city with its own customs
station,17 and this was the reason, according to Meistermann, why
it was also called "Kefar Tehumim [lit. border village],) 18 since,
on the other side of the lake was Decapolis and the realm of Philip.
The name "Kefar-Nahum" dated back to the time when it was actu-
ally still a village.
Josephus 10 cannot find words strong enough to describe the
beauty, fertility, wealth and numerous population of the district ad-
joining the lake of Galilee (the Sea of Kinnereth or Genesareth,20 or,
as it was also called, the Lake of Tiberias), the district known to the
Talmud as "the lowland (or vale) of Genesar" (the modern el-
Ghuayr) or the "Valley of Galilee" 21 or, simply, "the Valley." 22
The Midrash explains the name "Genesar" fancifully as meaning
10
Wars I I I χ 8 ; Vita §72, and Dalman's emendation, op. cit., p. 133, n. 3. 4
u
O n C a p e r n a u m a n d Chorazin a n d their synagogues, see K o h l and W a t -
zinger, Antike Synagogen in Galilcea, Leipzig, 1915; B. Meistermann, Caphar-
naüm et Bethsdide, Paris, 1921 ; D a l m a n , ot>. cit., 2 Aufl. pp. 121-137; Y.
Schwartz, T'buoth ha-Aretz, ed. Luncz, p. 220; J. Klausner, Ο lam Mithhaveh,
Odessa, 1915, pp. 198-200. ·^
12
Ρesahim 46a.
13
/. Maaseroth I I I 1; J. Sank. II 1.
" S e e D a l m a n , pp. 114-116, 160; S. Klein, Beiträge, pp. 76, 8 4 . ^ ‫־‬
18
Sank. 98a; Baba Metzia 25b; Gen. R. §5, 9 etc. •4
19
/. Taanith I 3; / . Berachoth IX 2 ; Gen. R. §13. ^
" M a r k ii. 14; L u k e v. 27. 4
18
Meistermann, op. cit. •4
19
Wars III χ 7-8· A
,9
W r i t t e n with yodh and not ‫ ג י נ ו ס ר‬, with waw; see Dalman, p. 109-110.·^
21
See Berachoth 44a; Erubin 30a; Gen. R. §99 end, and elsewhere.
33
Shebiith IX 2. 4
"the gardens of p r i n c e s , 2 3 ‫ ״‬and curiously enough Jerome translates
it in the same way, Hortus principis.24
The "fruits of Genesar" were famous. 25 Capernaum traded in
fish and fruit, and through it passed the trade of the Jaulan and
Bashan, the Greek Decapolis and Galilee. "And thou, Capernaum,
which art exalted [or, which hast exalted thyself] to heaven," 28
may be the exaggerated expression of a simple villager for whom
every petty town is a. great city compared to his own village ; yet,
compared to Nazareth, Capernaum was really "exalted to heaven."
Of all the towns of Lower Galilee in the neighbourhood of Naza-
reth, Capernaum was best suited for Jesus' ministry. It may not
have been so great a city as Sepphoris, which was, before the building
of Tiberias, the chief city of Galilee. But in the greater cities people
were too sceptical and, what was dangerous for Jesus, the Govern-
ment kept a careful supervision. Still, Jesus' object was to make
himself known and to propagate his teaching, and, therefore, he must
not make choice of too small a town or village : hence this medium-
sized town of Capernaum became his centre in Galilee. His choice
may also have been determined by the fact that his first followers
Simon and Andrew lived there and that he was warmly received
as a guest in the house of Simon. He made preaching tours through
the towns of Galilee, always returning to Capernaum.
His labours were not extended over a very large area—between
Chorazin and Migdal (Nunaia) on the west, and between Beth Saida
(Julias) and Gadara on the east shore of the Sea of Galilee and the
Jordan; while apart from some cities of the "Decapolis" and the
unknown Dalmanutha a Magordan (see below), only Nazareth,
Capernaum, Beth-Saida, Migdal, Nain and Kefar-Cana (in the
Fourth Gospel only) are referred to, all of them being in the neigh-
bourhood of Nazareth. The more distant regions—Tyre and Sidon
and Caesarea Philippi in the north, and Jericho and Jerusalem in the
south—are only mentioned towards the close of his life.
He made his first public appearance in Capernaum, when, on a
certain Sabbath, he came and preached in the synagogue. Meister-
mann 27 may be incorrect in thinking that the fine ruins of a syna-
gogue recently found in Capernaum are those of the synagogue of
Jesus' time, but there have been found still more recently (by Père
Orfali) the remains of an older synagogue on the foundations of
which the present ruined synagogue was built. The present custom
33
Gen. R. §98. 4
34
Dalman, pp. 109-110; and, f o r a good description of the surroundings
of Genesar, see pp. 110-114.^
35
Pesahim 8 b ; Berachoth 4 4 a ; cf. " ' F u l l of the blessing of t h e L o r d ' —
this is the vale of Genesar" ( S i f r e on Deut. §355, ed. F r i e d m a n n 14yb) ;
Ruth R. on Lint poh ha-Iaylah. 4
2
®Matt. xi. 23; Luke x. 14. 4
27
Meistermann, Capharnaüm et Bethsaide, suivi d'une étude sur l'âge
de ta Synagogue de Tell-Hum, Paris, 1921. ^
of preaching in the synagogues on the Sabbath was in vogue nineteen
hundred years ago, as may be seen from the Talmud and Midrash and
also from a remarkable passage in the New Testament: "For from
generations of old Moses hath in every city them that preach him,
being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.28
From this it follows both that there were readers of the Law of
Moses in the synagogues in every city and on every Sabbath, and that
this reading was regarded as an ancient rite even at the end of the
first or the beginning of the second Christian century (when the Acts
of the Apostles was composed).
The reading of the Law followed a known order ; it was not our
present order, according to which the Law is divided into fifty-four
sections, the number of the Sabbaths in the year (two sections being
combined in an ordinary year and read separately in an intercalated
year), but, until the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Jews of
Palestine (as opposed to the use in Babylon) read through the Law
in three and a half years.29 After the reading of the Pentateuch they
"concluded" (‫ )מפטירץ‬with the reading of the Prophets (though the
Haphtarah as a fixed use and in its present form is also late), trans-
lating (orally and not from a written version) to the people in
Aramaic (this was specially the case in Galilee where the unlearned
were more than in Judaea, and where few people spoke Hebrew),
and expounding the subject matter of all that was read on that
Sabbath.
The readers and expounders were almost always Pharisees and
Scribes. Judaism in those days was democratic enough to allow
anyone to read and expound the Scriptures, but those who could
read well enough to do this were not many in number, particularly
in Galilee, and were confined to the Scribes and Pharisees, the repre-
sentatives of the democracy and the opponents of the aristocratic,
ruling priesthood. Jesus, in the Capernaum synagogue, read from
the Prophets and expounded, and so conducted himself like a Scribe
or Pharisee and was regarded as such by the people. He behaved
similarly until he came to Jerusalem where, as we shall see later,
he revealed himself as the Messiah. His earlier methods enabled
him to draw around him disciples and hearers and saved him from
persecution almost to the last.
It was a common sight then in Palestine to see teachers
("Rabbis") attracting disciples in large numbers and publicly ex-
pounding the Law, and all who were so minded, be they "disciples
of the wise" or ordinary people, listened to them, treating them with
honour and regarding them as holy men and near to God and his
Law, and, in consequence, able to perform miracles. Those responsi-
28
A c t s of t h e Apostles xv. 21. •4
29
See S. Asaf, Babel 1/Eretz-Yisrael bi-t'qufath ha-G'onim (Hashiloach,
X X X I V 291, n. 3) ; A. Biichler, The Reading of the Law and the Prophets
in a Triennial Cycle, J.Q.R. 1893, V 420-468 ; V I 1 ff. <
ble for public order—Herod Antipas's officials or the chief men of
the city—would not pay any attention to this new Galilsean "Rabbi" ;
and although, as we shall soon see, the Pharisees began to realize
after a time that Jesus did not altogether follow the beaten track of
Pharisaic teachings, it seemed at first only a case of one Pharisee
differing from others in certain details, just as a follower of the
Shammai School differed from a follower of the Hillel School.
The same thing happened to Jesus at the beginning of his career
as happened to Socrates at the end of his career : Socrates who had
fought against the Sophists was, in the end, condemned to death as a
Sophist; and Jesus, who fought against the Pharisees, was at the
outset of his career regarded as a Pharisee in every respect.
But the people saw instinctively that there was in him a certain
difference from the Pharisees. The three Synoptics all preserve one
noteworthy saying: "And they were all amazed at his teaching, for
he taught them as one that had authority and not as the Scribes."30
The words "as one that had authority" ( ώς έξουσίαν £χων, in Luke
ένέξουσίςε) show clearly that Jesus differed from the Scribes in that
they taught nothing of themselves but based themselves wholly on
Scripture, while he uttered just what arose out of his own heart
without this constant reference to the Scriptures.
We shall see shortly that Jesus, too, could expound Scripture
like a veritable Pharisee, but this he did less frequently than the
Scribes and Pharisees ; as a rule he spoke like the Prophets of old—
not basing himself on any "it is said," or "it is written." But while
the Prophets proclaimed "Thus saith the Lord," instilling upon the
people that what was spoken came from God himself and that they,
the prophets, were but the channel and instrument of the Deity,
Jesus, on the other hand, made no such qualification and even empha-
sized his own personality: "But I say unto you"—as opposed to all
who had spoken before him. 31
This seems to constitute the difference between the methods of
the Scribes and that of Jesus and to be the import of the remark :
"for he taught them as one having authority." Worth noting, how-
ever, is the theory offered by H. P. Chajes, that the words
ώς Ιξουσέα εχων or έν έξουσία are due to the more ordinary sense of
the Hebrew ‫מושא‬, used in the primitive Hebrew version of the
Gospels. The meaning of ‫ מושא‬was "a preacher in parable," as in
‫"( עצ כז יאמרו המושאים‬wherefore they which use parables say—") 32 or
‫"( אנשי יצצוז מושאי העם הזה‬ye scornful men which speak parables
about this people") 33 o r ; ‫"( כא המושא עציר ימשוא אאמר כאמה ב ת ה‬Every
one that useth parables shall utter this parable against thee, As is the
mother so is the daughter" ) .34
80
M a r k i. 22 ; M a t t . vii. 2g ; Luke iv. 32. M
,1
S e e A h a d h a - A m , Al sh'të ha-s'ippim (Collected W o r k s , I V 42-44).
M
Num. xxi. 27. 4
33
Isaiah xxviii. 15. 4
n
Ezek. xvi. 44. 4
Therefore the actual meaning of the remark recorded in the
Gospels is : "For he taught them as a 0(‫של‬, one using parables (or,
according to Luke, (?‫ש‬Ώ‫ >ב‬hy a parable) and not as the Scribes,"
but the Greek translator (or someone using Hebrew material for
an oral statement in Greek) changed the sense of ‫ " >מושצ‬o n e who
preaches in parable," to ‫ מושיצ‬, "one having rule or authority," thus
giving in his translation (or oral statement) an expression difficult
to understand. 35
However this may be, Jesus was, in popular opinion, different
from the Pharisees and Scribes in that he used allegory and parable
instead of Scriptural exposition. Yet the Tannaim and their sue-
cessors, the Amoraim, also made much use of the parable. Compare
the formulae ,‫משיצ צמצך‬,..‫משצו משצ‬...‫ משא צמה •הדבר דומה‬etc. ; 3 6 so in
this respect, also, Jesus was a Pharisee and followed the usage of
the Scribes and early Tannaim. But while they mainly practised
Scriptural exposition and made comparatively little use of parables,
the reverse was the case with Jesus. His parables had a double object.
In the first place, he wished to interest the simpler-minded folk
who formed his usual audience, and, like every teacher of a new
ethical system and every creator of new ideas, Jesus was a poet and
skilful story-teller and, therefore, he made use of poetical descrip-
tions drawn from every-day life, and, like the best story-tellers and
moral preachers of all times and races, he unconsciously raised such
descriptions to the level of ethical symbolism.
In the second place, he often endeavoured, by these parables and
metaphorical sayings, to wrap up an esoteric significance which could
not yet be openly proclaimed or which men could not yet comprehend,
and which he revealed only to the more discreet; as he explicitly
stated: "to you (the inner circle of the disciples) it is given to know
the secret of the kingdom (of heaven), but for them that are without,
everything is told in parable." 37 A further instance of the same idea
is contained in : "Give not that which is holy to the dogs and cast not
your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot and turn
and rend you." 38 He taught in parable because he feared that the
people could not understand the inner significance of his message.
But he knew that, in the end, both himself and his teachings would
be openly known and that the parabolic wrapping would and must
" S e e H . P . C h a j e s , Markus-Studien, pp. 10-12; b u t see also Schechter,
Studies in Judaism, 2ndseries, 117, 1 2 3 . ^
86
On the parables in the Talmud and Midrash, see Giuseppe Levi,
Parabeln, Legenden und Gedanken mis Talmud und Midrasch, übertragen
von L. Seligmann, 4 A u f l . W i e n , 1921 ; P . Fiebig, Altjüdische Gleichnisse
und die Gleichnisse Jesu, Tübingen, 1904; Die Gleichnissreden Jesu im Lichte
der rabbinischen Gleichnisse, 1912; T. Ziegler, Die Königsgleichnisse des
Midrasch, Breslau, 1903 ; I s r a e l A b r a h a m s , Studies in Pharisaism, First
Series, Cambridge, 1917, pp. 90-107; H . W e i n e l , Die Gleichnisse Jesu, 4 Aufl.,
1918. A
37
‫׳‬Mark iv. 11-12. 4
' 8 M a t t . vii. 6. A
be removed : the lamp cannot remain "under the bushel or under the
bed," but is ultimately placed upon the bushel or upon the bed
(i.e., that kind of bed which was and still is used in the East instead
of a table) ; there is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed for
"nothing is concealed except that it may be brought to the light." 39
Jesus, as we have already pointed out, was notable in another
matter: he healed many that were sick. The people looked upon
the Pharisees and Scribes as holy men and therefore miracle-workers.
Both the Talmud and Midrash give accounts of miracles performed
by Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus his
disciple, who lived in the time of Jesus. 40 But with the Pharisees
miracles were only a secondary interest. The Talmud says almost
nothing about them in connexion with Hillel and Shammai (it is
Josephus alone who records that Shammai, or Shemayah, forecasted
Herod's future). With Jesus, however, miracles were a primary
factor since, without them, he could not have attracted the simple
folk of Galilee.
We have seen how, owing to protracted wars and tumults and
the terrible oppression of Herod and the Romans, Palestine, and
especially Galilee, was filled with the sick and suffering and with
those pathological types which we now label neurasthenics and
psychasthenics. The disturbances had multiplied the poor, the im-
poverished and the unemployed, with the result that in Palestine and,
again, particularly in Galilee (since it was far removed both from
the centre of civil rule and from saner spiritual influences), such
neurasthenics, and especially hysterical women and all manner of
"nerve cases"—dumb, epileptics, and the semi-insane—were numer-
ous.41 At that time even educated people and those who had imbibed
Greek culture (such as Josephus) regarded such nerve cases and
cases of insanity as cases of "possession" by some devil or evil or
unclean spirit, and believed in "cures," and that certain men could
perform miracles. And even in the earlier portions of the Talmud
there are many accounts of illnesses attributed to the influence of
devils and "harmful spirits" (‫·ומזיקים‬
This last, and very apt, title is found in the Mishnah,42 and cases
of miraculous healing commonly occur in the early Bar aitoth.43 It is,
therefore, no matter of surprise that Jesus should practise miraculous
cures like a Pharisee, or to an even greater extent than the ordinary
Pharisee, since, in his inmost thoughts, he regarded himself as the
Messiah, and contemporary belief endowed the Messiah with super-
88
Matt. iv. 21-23. A
40
Yoma 39b; Hagiga 17b; Taanith 25b; Baba Metzia 5Φ.4
‫ ״‬Aboth V 8. <
4,
T h e m o s t recent a n d f u l l e s t t r e a t m e n t of Talmudic medicine is J .
P r e u s s , Biblisch-Talmudische Medicin, Berlin, 1911; see also W . Ebstein,
Die Medizin im Neuen Testament und im Talmud, Stuttgart, 1903; L. Blau,
Das Altjüdische Zauberwesen, Strassburg, 1898. 4
natural powers. All four Gospels are filled with such miracles, and
so numerous are they that they almost hide the actual teaching of
Jesus ; this is especially the case in Mark who gives but little space
to the sayings of Jesus.
The problem of miracles in Jesus' ministry is difficult and com-
plicated, and every treatment of the Life of Jesus, from Reimarus
by way of Friedrich Strauss to the most recent writers, devotes
considerable space to the subject. 44 Since modern science cannot
imagine an effect without an external or internal cause, it is unable
to rest content with the simple answers offered in the age of the
Encyclopaedists—that all the miracles attributed to Jesus, as well as
to other great men in the world, are mere inventions deliberately
contrived by "cunning priests." The miracles of Jesus can be divided
into five types :
(1) Miracles due to a wish to fulfil some statement in the Old
Testament or to imitate some Prophet:
Jesus took the place of John the Baptist, who was regarded as
Elijah : Jesus must needs, therefore, perform miracles as did Elijah
and his disciple Elisha. He must resemble Elijah not only in being
the forerunner of the Messiah ( f o r so many supposed him until
Caesarea Philippi), but also in his miracles. Excepting Moses (who
was, primarily, the dispenser of the Law), Elijah and Elisha were
the only Hebrew Prophets whose power was manifested by miracles
alone and who left us no written prophecy. Most of their miracles
were performed for the benefit of individuals and had no value for
the people as a whole. If Elijah and Elisha raised children from the
dead, then Jesus must raise the daughter of Jairus (Mark knows but
this single case of raising from the dead; 4 5 Luke adds that of the
young man of Nain 46 and the Fourth Gospel describes at length the
raising of Lazarus [Eleazer] who, in the Gospel of Luke, is a poor
man depicted as dead and mentioned in a parable where it is said
that, after his death, he was taken to Paradise) .47
Again, if Elisha, the disciple of Elijah, increased the oil of the
cruse so as to fill many vessels and so pay off the debt of the wife
of one of the "sons of the prophets," and, with twenty loaves of
barley, satisfy a hundred men with bread to spare,45 then Jesus must
satisfy five thousand men with five barley loaves and two fishes, with
twelve baskets-full to spare, according to the number of the tribes of
Israel : for Jesus was greater than Elisha.
This episode is even duplicated through the imagination of the
disciples of the first or second generation: in the second occurrence
Jesus satisfies four thousand men with seven loaves and a few fishes
" F o r details see F r . Nippold, Die Psychiatrische Seite der Heilstätigkeit
Jesu, 1899; H . S c h ä f e r , Jesus in psychiatrischer Beleuchtung, 1910. Λ
M a r k v. 22-43; see M a t t . ix. 18-26.
* , L u k e vii. 11-17; N a i n ( N a i r n ) is mentioned in Gen. R. §98. ·^
* 1 Cf. L u k e xvi. 19-31 with J o h n xi. 1 - 4 6 . ^
48
1 Kings iv. 1-37, 42-44. 4
and seven baskets of fragments remained over.49 We have obviously
here an imitation of the greatest of the wonder-working prophets.
Jesus, who was, in the opinion of his disciples, the greatest of the
prophets or even greater than a prophet (as was John the Baptist,
according to Jesus), must do wonders like them and also surpass
them.
But it is not only a case of imitating the deeds of the prophets :
whatever of the marvellous was comprised in their sayings was, in
the time of Jesus, understood to refer to the Messianic Age. When,
therefore, it had been said of the Messianic Age: "then shall the
eyes of the blind see, and the ears of the deaf be opened ; then shall
the lame man leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing" 50 —
it behoved Jesus to heal the blind and the dumb, to strengthen the
lame, give hearing to the deaf and heal every kind of sickness. For
he taught the people that "the kingdom· of heaven is at hand," and
the "signs of the Messiah" must, therefore, come upon the earth and
be seen of men.
(2) Poetical descriptions which, in the minds of the disciples,
were transformed into miracles:
Jesus' disciples were mainly simple folk drawn from the humble
classes ; their imagination was strong and miracles had a powerful
attraction for them. Such men, quite unintentionally and uncon-
sciously, transformed an imaginative description into an actual deed
which stirred the imagination. We have a clear case of this preserved
for us. Mark and Matthew 51 record the following strange incident :
When Jesus was in Jerusalem, during the week preceding Pass-
over, he was hungry, and, passing by a fig-tree, looked for fruit to
satisfy his hunger. He did not find any because it was not the season
for tigs. Mark clearly emphasizes this fact, and, indeed, the episode
occurred, according to Mark and Matthew, before the feast of
Passover when figs are not in season. Yet despite the natural fact
that there were no figs on the tree at a time when no figs could be
expected, Jesus curses the tree and condemned it to perpetual fruit-
lessness : and the fig-tree withered at once, or by the following day !
Luke, however, makes no reference to this curious event; he
simply records a typical parable by Jesus : "And he spake a parable
and said, There was a man who had a fig-tree planted in his vineyard
and he went to seek fruit in it and found it not. And he said unto
the keeper of his vineyard, Lo, these three years have I come seeking
fruit in this fig-tree and have found it not ; cut it down." 52
It is clear that the subject of the parable is the people of Israel
(or else the party of the Pharisees or Sadducees) who would not
listen to Jesus' teachings and, therefore, ought rightly to be cut down
49
Mark vi. 34-44 viii. 1-9. M
00
Isa. xxxv. 5-6.
51
M k . xi. 13-14, 20, 2 1 ; Matt. xxi. 19-21. 4
B2
L u k e xiii. 6-9: <
or withered. And Mark himself actually quotes elsewhere 53 these
words : "And from the fig-tree learn this parable," where Luke has :
"See now the fig-tree and all the trees, when ye see them bringing
forth their blossom (not their fruit, since the fig-tree was not in fruit
at that season), do ye not know that summer is nigh at hand ? So ye
also . . . know that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." 54 This
apt parable was, therefore, transformed in the circle of the disciples
or by the evangelists into a strange miracle inflicting a gross injustice
on a tree which was guilty of no wrong and had but performed its
natural function.
(3) Illusions:
The next type of miracles recorded of Jesus were imaginary
visions, "hallucinations" of simple, oriental village-folk and fishermen,
for whom the whole world was full of marvels. Such a case is the
account of how the disciples were on the Sea of Galilee by night, in
a small boat, while Jesus was left alone on shore; the wind was
against them and they found it difficult to row. In the fourth watch
of the night (when they would be weary and overpowered by sleep)
they suddenly saw Jesus walking on the sea as though it were dry
land.55 Mark actually says 56 that they thought that it was "an
apparition" (έ'δοξαν φάντασμα eîvai), which is what it really was.
But the appetite for miracles gradually implanted within them the
belief that they had really seen Jesus and rowed together with him
in the boat. And this is one example out of many.
(4) Acts only apparently miraculous:
Under this head come events which happen in fact, but which
have in them nothing of the miraculous and only appear so to the
disciples. Such, for example, is the story of the storm 57 which fell
upon the Sea of Galilee while Jesus and his disciples were in a boat ;
the waves broke over them and the disciples grew afraid, but Jesus
was peacefully sleeping in the stern. Owing to their fear they
awakened him, but he appeased them, telling them to trust in God
and not to be "of little faith ;" and the wind fell and the sea became
calm. This is unquestionably what happened : the Sea of Galilee
frequently becomes rough suddenly and as suddenly becomes calm
again. The present writer witnessed such a change while sailing on
the Sea in the spring of 1912. Yet for the Galilaean fishermen, with
their craving for marvels, it was a miracle which Jesus had performed.
Such has ever been the way with simple-minded people. Fanatical
piety knows many such miracles, and this was commonly the case in
the days of Besht and his early disciples ; it is not possible to treat as
fraudulent all the accounts of miracles attributed to the "Saints" of
the Hasidim, since many of them were truly honest and devout.
On a similar basis of unquestioning faith rest the miracles of the
S3 00
" Markxiii. 28-29. A Mark vi. 49.
·664 Luke
xxi. 29-31.•4 " M a r k iv. 35-41..4
Mark vi. 47-51. ^
other founders of religions and the saints pertaining to the various
faiths. And how many miracles does the author of "Aliyath-Eliyahu"
attribute to the Gaon of Wilna, who flourished but 150 years ago,
and who held the Hasidim in the profoundest contempt !
(5) The curing of numerous "nerve-cases":
The fifth and last type of miracles were the wonderful cures
effected in many kinds of nervous disorders. Jesus obviously had
a power of "suggestion," of influencing others, to an unusual extent.
Had not this been the case his disciples could never have held him
in such veneration, remembering and teaching every word he spoke ;
nor could his memory have so persisted and so influenced their
spiritual and earthly life; nor could they, in their turn, have so
influenced thousands and tens of thousands by the power which they
had derived from him. This force which Jesus had, comprises some
secret, some mystical element, still not properly studied by the
ordinary psychologists and physicians and scientists, who are con-
versant only with the laws of nature so far determined by science.
It is the same gift, differing, however, in degree, in form and
tendency, which was possessed by Mohammed the Arabian Prophet,
and by Napoleon.58 The enlightened Roman, Tacitus, records a
similar case of how Vespasian healed a blind man at Alexandria. 59
Certain men, gifted with a peculiar will-power and an inner life of
especial strength, can, by their exceptionally penetrating or tender
glance or by their inner faith in their own spiritual power, influence
many kinds of nervous cases and even cases of complete insanity.
Whether such influence effects a complete or only temporary cure is
a question which cannot be answered offhand.
Among the many parables recorded by Matthew occur three
verses 60 which speak of an unclean spirit which having left a man
afterwards returned to him, and his condition became worse than at
the first; and may not Jesus have come to know this from his own
experience, and turned this experience into a cryptic parable ?
Yet it is clear that many nervous cases and hysterical women
were completely cured through Jesus' amazing, hypnotic personal
influence ; 6 1 though it is noteworthy how Mark points out again
and again that Jesus disliked his miracles to be made public. After
his effective sermon in the Capernaum synagogue Jesus began to
heal the sick with much success, and among them he cured of fever
Peter's wife's mother, with whom he was lodging. More and more
sick people, and especially "those that were possessed of devils"
88
O. Holtzman, War Jesus Ekstatiker? Tübingen, 1903. An extreme view
is taken by Binet-Sanglé, La folie de Jésus, 3me ed. 4 vols. Paris, 1911-1915. ^
00
See Tacitus, Historia IV 81, Caeco reluxit ( Vespasianus) dies. 4
80
Matt. xii. 43-5· < .
81
See P. W . Schmidt, Die Geschichte Jesu, erläutert, Tübingen, 1904,
pp. 258-265; Ed. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, 1921, I
Ï53-155· 4
(i.e., nervous and hysterical cases) were brought to Jesus, and he
healed many of them; but instead of rejoicing at his success and
making use of it, "he would not suffer the devils to speak" (i.e., he
would not allow the nervous cases whom he had cured to publish
the fact).
The first night after these cures he escaped from Capernaum and
went to a desert place "to pray," that is to say, to take thought with
himself as to his doings and to seek help from God. When Simon
and his fellow-disciples followed him and tried to bring him back
to the sick people, Jesus refused to return: he preferred to go to
the "villages (κωμοπόλεις) that were round about." 6 2 The leper
whom he healed, he commands to tell no man. 63 The same command
he lays upon the blind man,64 and upon the deaf and dumb.65 On an-
other occasion he will not permit the unclean spirits to praise him.66
Only in the Decapolis, in a foreign country and among strangers,
where he was an exile and a fugitive, does he allow his wonders to
be published.67
When the Pharisees demanded from him a convincing sign he
refuses to give such a sign to that generation. 68 Matthew and Luke 6 9
supplement this by saying, "except the sign of Jonah," which Mat-
thew expounds by the resurrection of Jesus after three days, just as
Jonah was three days within the whale. But the real object of the
words is as told in Luke, that the men of Nineveh repented although
the prophet Jonah wrought no miracles and gave no signs; they
responded to his appeal only.
In Nazareth, his native town, Jesus failed to perform any mira-
cles, because he did not find there any faith. It follows from all
this that his successful cures (most of which were, perhaps, only
temporary) were those effected on neurasthenics and the like, where
a man with special powers of suggestion can really instil a revived
bodily and spiritual sensibility. Jesus knew this when he said to
one woman whom he healed, "My daughter, thy faith hath made thee
whole" ; 7 0 in other words, this was a case of auto-suggestion. Jesus
often tried to make his acts seem less marvellous to the surrounding
people, all agog for "wonders." In the case of the daughter of Jairus,
which may have been a fainting attack though all thought her dead,
he says, "Why make ye this ado and weep? The child is not dead
but sleepeth ;" 71 and when she was recovered he bids them "give
her to eat," and again requires "that no man should know this." 7 2
Again, after the miracle of the "transfiguration" at Caesarea Philipp!
63
*,Mark viii. 11. •4 M
63
Mark i. 4 4 . ^ ® 9 Matt. xii. 3 9 - 4 0 ; L u k e xi. 2g.-4
64 10
88
Mark viii. 26. ‫יי‬ Mark v. 34. 4
n
M
Mark vii. 30. Λ Mark v. 39. 4
Mark iii. 12. •4 " Mark v. 43. 4
m
M a r k v. 19-20. ^
(which we shall refer to later) "he charged them that they should tell
no man what things they had seen." 73
This dislike of publicity (so strongly emphasized in Mark and
undoubtedly historical) is, by the majority of Christian scholars,
accounted for by Jesus' unwillingness to be looked upon as a mere
"wonder-worker," whose works counted for more than his teaching
and ethical injunctions. But a simpler explanation is possible: his
miracles were not always successful and he was afraid to attempt
them too often ; he even disliked publicity for the successful miracles
lest the people insist on more. On one occasion when a member of
the crowd brought a son who "had a dumb spirit" (i.e., a madman
who raved but was incapable of coherent speech), 74 Jesus was angry
with them that brought him and rebuked them. Although, therefore,
he found some difficulty in working these cures, it was incumbent
upon him to practise them since he wished to influence the people
and be reckoned as at least a prophet, or as Elijah, the forerunner of
the Messiah. The Scribes never denied that he performed miracles :
they simply attributed them to an unclean spirit, 75 precisely as did
the Talmud ("he practised sorcery") and the Tol'doth Yeshu, or
else they asserted that "he hath Beelzebub and by the prince of the
devils casteth he out devils." 76
This "Beelzebub" was not, as most Christian scholars suppose,77
a god of the Upper World, who among the Jews had become a demon
like other heathen deities, such as "Ba'al Me'on" (the god of the
dwelling) ; because "Zebul," in the Talmudic literature, is either the
Temple ("who sent forth their hands against Zebul") 78 or one of
the seven heavens.79 The theory, that "Baal Zebul" is used as a
derogatory title in place of "Baal-Zebub" and that "Zebul" is derived
from "zebel," "dung," is unnecessary.80 It is easier to suppose
that "Beelzebub" is a corrupt reading of "Baalzebub," just as "Beliar"
(in the Sibylline Oracles and elsewhere) comes from Belial." Since
the miracles and behaviour of Jesus, during the interval between the
arrest of John the Baptist and Caesarea Philippi, all conform with
the details told of the prophet Elijah, we are forced to conclude that
"Beelzebub" referred to in the Gospels is to be identified with the
same "Beelzebub" mentioned in connexion with Elijah. 81
78
14
Mark ix. 9 · ^
Mark ix. 19. <
" Mark iii. 30.
" M a r k iii. 22. 4
"78 Especially Movers, Die Phönizier, Bonn 1841, I 266.
n
Rosh ha-Shanah 17a. ^
Hagigah 12b. A
80
On this see H. P. Chajes, Markus-Studien, pp. 24-26. ·^
" 2 Kings i. 2, 6, 16. ·^
II. JESUS AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS SUCCESS:
HIS ENCOUNTER WITH THE PHARISEES
After his first success, Jesus all but fled from Capernaum for fear
of fresh demands for miracles, and passed "through the villages that
were round about." He would then have taught in Chorazin (whose
traces survive in the ruins of Choraze), a village near the Jordan, an
hour's journey north of Capernaum, 1 and preached in the synagogue
(fine ruins of a later synagogue built on the same site still survive), 2
and healed the sick with the same success as before. But here, again,
he found a danger in the large numbers who still followed after him
and was afraid lest he draw too much attention to himself.
The earliest of the Synoptic Gospels says that "he went out and
began to publish it much and to spread abroad the matter [the king-
dom of heaven], insomuch that he could no more openly enter into
a city, but was without in desert places." 3 The fate of John the
Baptist hovered before his eyes; but outside the larger towns, in
desert places, away from the civil authorities, government officials
and the more important town notables, the danger was not so great.
From these adjacent villages Jesus returned to Capernaum, where,
for reasons already given, he had fixed his home. Capernaum was a
frontier town with a customs-house. The customs-official was a
Jew, Levi ben Halphai by name. Being a tax-gatherer he was, for
that time, comparatively well educated. He would seem to have had
an additional name, Matthew (abbreviated from Mattathiyahu), the
name by which he is known in the Gospel According to Matthew ; 4
or his name may have been Matthew (Mattithiah) ben Halphai and
he himself of Levitic descent, which name was, in Mark and Luke,
changed from "Mattithiah ben Halphai the Levite" to "Levi ben
Halphai (Alphasus)."
It was this disciple who, according to Papias, made a record of
the "discourses" (Logia) of Jesus which form the groundwork of
all three Gospels, but which are more particularly collected together
in orderly fashion in the Gospel called ( f o r this very reason) after
his name : "The Gospel According to Matthew." 5 Jesus became
1
Dalman, op. cit. pp. 135-7; see above p. 260 ff. 4
' K o h l u. Watzinger, Antike Synagogen in Galiläa, pp. 198-202; Meister-
mann, Capharnaüm et Bethsa'ide, p. 268. M
"Mark
4
i. 45.
Matt. ix. 9. 4
' See above p. 74. A
273
friendly with this tax-gatherer and visited his house; and in the house
of this tax-gatherer (whom, as we have seen, the whole nation, from
the "sages‫ ״‬downwards, loathed as representing the Roman-Edomite
government, so intensely as to place the tax-gatherer in the same
category as thieves, murderers and brigands) Jesus and his disciples
consorted with "publicans [ = taxgatherers] and sinners," the friends
of Matthew.
Matthew was affected by Graeco-Roman culture and was, there-
fore, lax in his attitude towards the Jewish Law (like the Jewish
"Aczisniks," tax-officials, in the time of Nicholas I in Russia). The
Pharisees were indignant : Jesus was himself regarded as a Pharisee,
so what had he to do with publicans and robbers and ignorant
sinners? Jesus defended his conduct by a shrewd proverb: "They
that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick." 8
He recognized that the publicans and sinners were "sick," i.e.,
their conduct was unseemly; but this was the very reason why he
must become intimate with them. This answer must have satisfied
the Pharisees since the Gospels nowhere hint that they were angry
at the retort; still, in the opinion of the stricter Pharisees, it was
improper that this wonderful "Rabbi," with his ethical teaching and
miracles, should have anything to do with these dregs of Jewish
society.
There was another point which they disliked. Jesus preached the
advent of the Messiah, in whose footsteps were to follow the "pangs
of the Messiah," sorrows and afflictions, affecting (not the Messiah
himself, according to the later belief, but) the entire nation and the
entire world. Hence one must intercede for the nation and the
world, one must fast and abstain from the pleasures of this life.
Hence the Pharisees, who prayed for the coming of the Messiah, and
the disciples of John the Baptist, who awaited the Messiah whose
forerunner he was, all practised fasting and abstention from earthly
joys.
But it was otherwise with Jesus and his disciples : they followed
the example neither of the Pharisees nor of John and his disciples ;
they did not fast, nor go out into the wilderness, nor feed on pure
locusts and honey-combs, nor abstain from wine; they even fre-
quented the banquets of the publicans. The Pharisees and John's
followers were indignant : they called Jesus "glutton and wine-bibber"
(φάγος %<x\ οίνο πότη ς), 7 and asked why it was that he and his disciples
so conducted themselves. He defended himself in the cryptic reply,
"How can the children of the bride-chamber (wot του νυμφώνος)
fast while the bridegroom is with them?" 8 This defence is entirely
in accord with the Pharisaic ruling: "The companions of the bride-
groom and all the 'children of the bridechamber' are exempt from
' M a r k ii. 15-17.
*Matt. xi. 19; Luke vii. 3 4 . ^
8
M a r k ii. 19. 4
JESUS AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS SUCCESS 275
the obligation of prayer and the use of phylacteries (still more of
fasting) during the seven days (of the wedding feast). R. Shila
(an individual opinion) held: "The bridegroom is exempt but not
the children of the bridechamber." 9
Jesus also hints at his messianic claim : "The bridegroom is like
unto a king" 10 —and he was the King-Messiah ; but it is a very
slight hint. The words that follow 11 are patently a later addition
since at that time Jesus had not, even to his disciples, revealed him-
self as the Messiah, and had not, at that time, any idea of affliction
and the death on the cross. The exact point of his remark is that
the kingdom of heaven is at hand, a time of joy and gladness, like
a wedding-feast; the bridegroom is the king-messiah, who is already
come (but who he is he does not yet divulge) ; hence the present is
no time for fasting ; the seven days of the feast exempt from many
of the religious obligations, fasting included.
H e likewise hints that, like all their religious observances, the
fasting of the disciples of John is but the grafting of the new upon
the old, the sewing of new cloth on an old, outworn garment, the
putting of new wine in old, out-worn bottles : 1 2 a new content re-
quires a new garb: Pharisaic Judaism must be transformed from the
root, and, to the Pharisaic ceremonial laws, one should not add yet
another in the guise of repentance and good works to hasten the
coming of the Messiah.
Though we have here a hint towards abolishing the ceremonial
laws, it was not a hint understood by his disciples, still less by the
disciples of John and the Pharisees. Jesus himself would never,
during his lifetime, have dared to explain his metaphor of "the piece
of new cloth" and "the old bottles" as pointing to the need for a
new Torah—although it is probable that the saying, "The command-
ments shall be abrogated in the time to come," 13 is earlier than the
Amora Rab Joseph (through whom the saying is transmitted) and
does not refer merely to life in the next world, as may be seen from
the Gemara where the saying is quoted.
Jesus remained steadfast to the old Torah: till his dying day he
continued to observe the ceremonial laws like a true Pharisaic Jew.
Even Wellhausen is forced to admit that "Jesus was not a Christian :
he was a Jew." Were this not the case we could never understand
why James, the brother of Jesus, and Simon Peter, the leading
disciple, should have argued in favour of retaining the ceremonial
laws as against Paul (who had never seen Jesus), who determined to
abrogate the ceremonial laws in order that non-Jews might be accepted
within the Christian faith. Yet, on the other hand, had not Jesus'
T . Berachoth I I 10; cf. Berachoth 11 a, 16a; Sukkah 2$b-26a; J. Sukkah
115. <
M
Pirke d'R. Eliezer, §16 end; see also J. Bikkurim I I I 3 . ^
11
Mark ii. 19-20. •4
" M a r k ii. 21-22; Matt. ix. 16-17; Luke v. 36-39. ·^
"Niddah 61b.<4
teaching contained suggestions of such a line of action, the idea would
never have occurred to "Saul the Pharisee,‫ ״‬nor would he have sue-
ceeded in making it a rule of Christianity. But to‫ ׳‬this question we
shall return later.
Hitherto there had been no open breach between Jesus and the
Pharisees. The people flocked after the Pharisaic "Rabbi" whose
parables were so attractive and who did not insist that men observe all
the laws in every detail. Here was a "Rabbi" whose "yoke was easy
and whose burden was light." 14 Multitudes followed after him from
all the surrounding towns and villages. They consisted of the class
of "untaught Jew," the Am-ha-aretz, simple fisher folk and peasants
and, perhaps, inferior tax-gatherers and officials, labourers and jour-
neymen. There were certainly many "unemployed," whom Jesus
refers to in one of his parables. 15 Here and there a rich man was
to be found and sometimes a Pharisee or student of the Law. One
of Jesus' disciples was a Zealot who, as we have seen,16 was nothing
more than a Pharisee minded to "hasten the end," Messiah's coming,
by an active display of force.
The majority, however, were "ignorant of the Law," Ammê ha-
aretz in the Talmudic sense, yet, at the same time, seekers after God,
humble in character and ardent in faith. They were not deliberate
"sinners," heretics or dissolute, but they failed in that they did not
observe the minutiae of the religious laws as did the Pharisees (com-
pare the case of the Am-ha-aretz and tithable property, when the
Am-ha-aretz is suspect not because of evil intent but through igno-
ranee ; and Hillel's axiom : "No Am-ha-aretz can be a pious man" ) .17
There were women also, both old and young, women hysterically
inclined and women kind-hearted, women who craved after both
miracles and good works. Among these was Mary Magdalen, Mary
from Migdal, out of whom Jesus had expelled "seven devils." In
other words, she was a woman who had suffered from nerve trouble
to the extent of madness. Others were Susanna, Mary, the mother of
James the Less and of Joses, Salome,18 a woman of the name of
Johanna (the feminine form of Yochanan and identical with the name
"Yachne," still preserved among the Lithuanian and Polish Jews but
with no knowledge of its Hebrew origin), and Chuza, the wife of
Herod's steward (i.e., the wife of one of Herod Antipas's treasury
officials and, therefore, a well-to-do woman). And Luke tells us
that these women "and many others supported him out of their pos-
sessions." 19 Not only Jesus but his disciples also must have been
supported by such means ; this may have formed a certain attraction
(like the "tables" of the Hasidic "Tzaddikim" in these days), but,
needless to say, it was not the chief attraction for the disciples.
Apart from these more intimate disciples of both sexes, there also
14 17
15
Matt.
xi. 30. " Aboth II 5• A
Matt. xx. 2-7. 4 " M a r k xv. 41.•4
u π 1 - , M
Luke viii. 2-3. 4
See above p. 206. 4
followed him "much people from Galilee." 20 Of this there can be
no doubt; and though the words which follow ("and from Judaea,
and from Jerusalem, and Idumaea, and beyond Jordan, and the neigh-
bourhood of Tyre and Sidon") 2 1 obviously constitute a later addition,
it is obvious that his followers (who must have included individuals
from outside Galilee since the disciple Judas Iscariot [Ish Kerioth]
came from Judaea) formed a considerable body and that there was
always a throng in his vicinity.
To escape them, Jesus used to put off from shore in a boat, and
the people stood at a distance to listen to his parables and his teach-
ings. Or sometimes, when a string of boats was crossing the Sea of
Galilee, Jesus, with his more intimate disciples, would be in one boat
while the rest of his disciples and others sat in other boats, Jesus
teaching them by apt parables and shrewd sayings out in the sea
itself, surrounded by the charming blue water in sight of the flowery
shores of Lower Galilee. It would be an exaggeration to say that
his hearers reached a total of four, and even five, thousand (as
implied in the tale of the five thousand and the seven loaves), 22 but
there can be no question that, in the early days of his ministry in
Galilee, the thronging crowds were so great that "there was no longer
room for them, even about the door," 23 and that the crowds
"thronged" the "Rabbi ;" 2 4 and (as now happens to the Hasidic
"Rabbis") so persistent were the people with their requests that
"they (Jesus and his disciples) had no leisure so much as to eat." 2 5
Sometimes in trying to avoid the multitude they used to go by boat
to some deserted spot where they could sit down and rest in private ;
but the people followed after them.26 This was the most successful
period in his ministry, if a few weeks, or at most two or three months,
can be called a period. H e then reached the height of popularity:
then he really was like a bridegroom during the seven days of the
wedding feast; and it was the pleasant memory which the disciples
retained of these few but prosperous days that knit them to Jesus,
so that when the evil days came they still kept closely to him.
Gradually the clouds gathered. The Pharisees and the local au-
thorities were already displeased by his consorting with "publicans
and sinners," and by his disciples' abstention from fasting and their
frequenting the publicans' banquets. On the other hand, most of
the common people, though generally the devoted followers of the
Pharisees, preferred this "Rabbi," who made the yoke of the Law
so light. Jesus and the Pharisees became more and more estranged :
once he told a paralyzed man that his sins were forgiven (obviously
owing to his sufferings, since "sufferings cleanse a man from all
20
Markiii. 7. •4 * M a r k iii. 9; v. 24 and 31. 4
‫מ‬
Markiii. 8. 4 * Mark iii. 20 ; vi. 31. 4
82
Markvi. 45; viii. 9 . " M a r k vi. 31-33·•4
23
Mark ii. 2. 4
his sins"), 27 and this was, by the Pharisees, looked upon as blasphemy,
"for who can forgive sins but God alone?" 28 The details that follow
(the miraculous healing of the sick of the palsy, and his carrying
away his bed) are legendary accretions to the actual incident, which
was primarily a contest between Jesus and the Pharisees.
On another occasion his disciples were passing through a field
(according to Luke 29 this happened on the second Sabbath after
Passover and, therefore, about a year before the crucifixion and
shortly after the beginning of Jesus' ministry), and, as they went,
they plucked the ears of corn, either to clear themselves a path
through the standing corn or else to satisfy their hunger with the
raw wheat (according to Jesus' answer the latter was the real
reason). The Pharisees (or the priests) reproved Jesus for his
disciples' act, but, like a true Pharisee, he retorts by a defence based
on Scripture, on the account of D&vid and his men who, at Nob, ate
of the altar-bread (which was permitted only to the priests) because
they were hungry. Incidentally, Jesus (or rather the authors of the
Gospel) here confuses Ahimelech with Abiathar, just as words and
phrases are sometimes confused in the verses which quote (apparently
orally) Scripture. 30 It was on this occasion that Jesus made use of
the striking utterance: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the Sabbath." 31
This is quite in accordance with the Pharisaic point of view.
One of the Tannaim, R. Jonathan ben Yoseph, a disciple of R. Akiba,
says : "The Sabbath was given into your hand, and ye were not given
into its hand ;" 3 2 and R. Shimeon ben Menassia, the disciple of
R. Akiba's disciple, R. Meir, says : "The Sabbath is delivered to
you, and ye are not delivered to the Sabbath." 33 Yet no Pharisee
would consent to the conclusion that it was permissible to pluck corn
on the Sabbath.
What, however, mainly aroused the indignation of the Pharisees
was that Jesus should, on the Sabbath, heal a man suffering from
a withered hand. The Talmud, it is true, concludes that not only "the
saving of human life sets aside the laws of the Sabbath," but that
the same applied in cases where doubt arises as to imminent danger
to life; and R. Shimeon ben Menassia who said that "the Sabbath
is delivered to you, and ye are not delivered to the Sabbath," also
laid down the reasonable rule: "A man may profane one Sabbath
in order that he may observe many Sabbaths." 34
27
38
Berachoth 5a. <
Mark ii. 3-7. 4
29
Luke vi. 1. ^
30
See D. Chwalsohn, Das letzte Passamahl Christi, pp. 64-67 ; I. Abrahams,
Studies in Pharisaism Cambridge, 1917, pp. 133-134· •4
31
Mark ii. 23-28. 4
‫ ״‬Yoma VIII 6; Yoma 85b; J. Yoma V I I I 5· 4
" Mechilta, Ki tissa, §1, ed. Friedmann 1036. 4
"Yoma 85b.4
But it is wholly forbidden to heal an illness which is in no sense
dangerous ; and the Mishna lays it down that if, for example, "a man
is suffering from toothache, he may not soak them in vinegar, but may
dip them in the usual way, and if he is cured—then he is cured." 35
There was no reason for Jesus (or the author of the Gospel) to ask
the Pharisees, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to save life or to destroy
it ?" 3 6 since the saving of life most certainly abrogates the Sabbath
laws, as we have seen ; but the reason for the Pharisees' indignation
was, undoubtedly, that Jesus healed on the Sabbath regardless of the
nature of the illness, whether it was dangerous or not. From this
stage they began to see that the man whom they had so far considered
as nothing more than a Pharisaic "Rab," with his own views on
certain religious questions (not a remarkable thing in the time of
the Hillel and Shammai controversies), was, in real truth, a danger to
religion and to ancestral tradition. The local authorities also began
to look upon him with disfavour.
Mark records how, after the argument about healing on the
Sabbath, "the Pharisees went out and hastened to take council with
the Herodians (μετά των Ήρωδιανών) how they might destroy him." 37
Capernaum was quite close to Herod's capital, Tiberias, and, since
religion and politics in those days were not separate entities, the
currently accepted idea was that whatever was opposed to the accepted
opinion of the nation was, therefore, opposed also to the civil order :
if a man opposed the "tradition of the elders" he must, in the end,
incite people against the ruling authority; and particularly was this
the case in Lower Galilee, then a hotbed of political and religious
factions.
This furnishes an important landmark in Jesus' career. Not only
was he viewed with disfavour by the Pharisees and the civil authori-
ties, but the people, also, began to cool towards him. The people
venerated the Pharisees, the leaders of Jewish democracy, and it was
as a Pharisee that they had venerated Jesus also (howbeit a
Pharisaic "Rabbi" who interpreted the obligations of the Law leni-
ently, a preacher of parables and a healer of the sick, and one who
appealed to the popular taste).
The Pharisees instilled into the people a dislike of Jesus: they
said that he was a transgressor and a friend of transgressors—pub-
licans, sinners, hysterical women—and that his cures were due to
unholy powers; that he was possessed by Beelzebub the prince of
devils, and was therefore able to heal the sick—by the same Beelzebub
on account of whom Elijah so bitterly rebuked Ahaziah, king of
Judah, when the latter sought to be healed by him. These comments
by the Pharisees influenced the mother and brethren of Jesus (his
father, apparently, was already dead). They heard all that was said
M
Shabbath X I V 4. 4
" M a r k iii. 4. Λ
" Mark iii. 6. 4
of this member of their family and decided that he must be prevented
from leading this curious life. Perhaps they may have suffered
through Jesus forsaking his work as carpenter, by which he had
hitherto lived and supported them ; or it may have been unpleasant
for them to hear all his enemies scoff at him and describe him as mad.
Mark preserves a brief but most important passage : "And his kindred
(οί ‫!׳‬cap' αυτού) heard and went out to lay hold on him(κρατησα! αυτόν)
for they said, H e is beside himself (οτι έξέστη)." 38 This throws a
flood of light on Jesus' conduct and the attitude of his closest rela-
tions. His miracles did not inspire them with a belief in him : they
simply looked upon them as the tricks of an eccentric and "wonder-
worker," familiar to the Galilee of that time and in the East generally.
His behaviour in the matter of the publicans, the more ignorant class
of Jews, and women, seemed to them extraordinary and not far re-
moved from madness, as also did the fact that this simple carpenter
should oppose the accepted view of the most learned men of the
nation.
Hence his mother and his brethren were minded to take him back
home, if necessary by force; they wanted to get him back again to
his ordinary business and to his family circle: let him forget his
"foolishness" and be again a good son and brother and a capable
craftsman, supporting himself and his family. But because of the
thronging and seething crowds, his family could not get near him ;
so they remained at a distance and sent to summon him. Respect for
his mother (a prominent trait among the Jews, ranked in the Ten
Commandments on the same level as respect for the father) required
that he should go to her at once ; but he seems to have understood the
feelings of his family and why they had come. He refused, there-
fore, to go to them and, with a brusqueness unlike the tenderness
normally attributed to him by the Evangelists and especially in rela-
tion to his mother—he pointed to those before him and said, "Behold
my mother and my brethren ! for everyone that doeth the will of God,
the same is my brother and sister and mother." 3 9
This saying, harsh and brusque from one aspect, great and
sublime from another, is found in the Old Testament. In the
"Blessing of Moses" it is said of the tribe of Levi : "Who saith of
his father and his mother, I have seen them not! and he regarded
not his brethren and knew not his children, for they have preserved
thy commandment and kept thy covenant." 40 Jesus does not show
any particular tenderness to his mother. We have already pointed out
that Jesus had much to say of a father's love, but never once refers
to a mother's love. However this may be, Jesus parted with his
family for ever: the Fourth Gospel alone refers to the mother at
the time of the crucifixion; but the Synoptics, from this point on-
88
Mark iii. 21. •4
80
Mark iii. 21-35. 4
40
Deut, xxxiii. 9. 4
wards, never again make any reference to dealings between Jesus
and his family. Not until the "Church" had been founded, some
time after the crucifixion, did they come forward, and two of them,
James and Simon, were among the first heads of the Church. We
may here repeat the fact that the "brethren of Jesus" were actual
brothers and not cousins or step-brothers, as many Christian scholars
have tried to maintain out of a desire, conscious or unconscious, to
avoid the fact, unpalatable to the early Church, that after the miracu-
lous birth of Jesus Mary bore other children in normal fashion.
After this, from fear of the Pharisees and "Herodians," Jesus
left for the Sea of Galilee. He no more taught by the sea-shore but
from the sea itself, from a boat, making it difficult for the police of
the time to capture him. The crowds listened to him from the
shore. 41 He remained outside towns, in some deserted spot or quiet
district, where he was not likely to be observed. Those who heard
of his fame still resorted to him in considerable numbers, but no
longer so numerous as at first; he taught them in parables, but
carefully, well knowing that it was still dangerous openly to refer
to the Messiah, and, still more, to his own messianic claims. ·Yet he
persisted, strong in the hope that, at last, the lamp would not remain
"under the bushel or under the bed," but would be set up on the
stand and give light to the whole house, and that, ere long, the hidden
things would be revealed and understood of all.
Then he attempts a bold experiment. H e goes to Nazareth, his
native town (εις τήν πατρίδα αυτού),42 where, it would seem, he
had never been since he went away to be baptised by John. After
his family had tried to "lay hold on him," thinking that he "was
beside himself," he was minded to demonstrate his powers over the
people of his native town ; or, it may be, he hoped to strengthen his
influence (which, after his encounter with the Pharisees, had some-
what waned) in a place where he possessed relations and friends;
or, yet again, he may have found it impossible to avoid Nazareth in
his tour through the villages around Capernaum. It is difficult to
determine the order of events as recorded in the Gospels, and Jesus
may have been in Nazareth before his family tried to restrain him.
It is, however, clear that he went to Nazareth after he had opened
his ministry in Capernaum, a fact confirmed by Luke, who recounts
the visit to Capernaum at the very outset of the ministry. 43
Jesus preached one Sabbath in the synagogue of Nazareth. Ac-
cording to Luke 44 he read from Isaiah, chapter 61 : "The spirit of
God is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to
the poor, he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach de-
liverance to the captives . . . to proclaim the acceptable year of the
"4 3M a r k iv. 1.·^
Mark vi. 1. 4
4
44
"Luke iv. 16-30; and especially verse 33. ^
Luke iv. 17-21. ^
Lord." These verses are admirably suited to the forerunner of the
Messiah : he "proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord" 4 5 and
preaches redemption to the common people (to the "meek" and the
"broken-hearted").
But the people of Nazareth, who had known him as a simple
carpenter, who had known his father and mother, his brothers and
sisters (who, as is the way with relations in a small town given to
backbiting and scandal, would certainly have told disagreeable things
about each other), could not imagine how one from their town
could be so wise and capable as to perform miracles or, still more,
preach the coming of the Messiah! "Is not this the carpenter
[Matt. xiii. 54 reads "the son of the carpenter"], the son of Mary
[Luke iv. 22 reads "the son of Joseph"] and the brother of James
and Joses and Judah and Simeon, and are not his sisters here with
us ?" 46 Luke 47 reports that they said to him, "Physician, heal thy-
self !" (or, rather, that Jesus said that his native townsfolk would
certainly say this of him). 48 The two older Gospels add, "And he
was a cause of offence to them." 49 This is further explained in the
following verses: "And Jesus said to them, There is no prophet
without honour save in his own country and among his own kin and
in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work" (i.e.,
miracles)—further explained by "because of their unbelief." 50 This
last fact is one the importance of which it is impossible to exaggerate :
from it we recognize the nature of his miracles and the attitude
towards him of those who had known him from childhood and during
his ordinary life. They did not perceive the transformation that had
been effected in him, and he could not give them signs and proofs
testifying to the fundamental change in his spiritual powers. He left
Nazareth in despair never to return.
45
It was on the basis of this passage that the early Christian Fathers
concluded that the ministry lasted only a single year: but the contrary is
possible—that for such a single year's ministry they found a proof-text in
Scripture. ^‫־‬
40
Mark vi. 3. 4
47
Luke iv. 23. M
48
Cf. Gen. R. §23. Λ
49
Mark vi. 4 ; Matt. xiii. 57. •4
Compare Mark vi. 5-6 and Matt. xiii. 57-58. M
III. THE TWELVE APOSTLES: FRESH ENCOUNTERS
WITH THE PHARISEES
After his failure in Nazareth, Jesus went out to teach in the

villages where the easily impressed peasants and simple-minded fish-
ermen were more numerous. But this alone was not enough: he
required permanent disciples who should assist him and spread his
teaching. He saw that the ordinary people who came to listen to
him were like a funnel, taking in at one and letting out at the other,
with him one day and with the Pharisees the next. Hence he found
it better to choose out from among his many hearers a few who
should be more closely attached to him and more sympathetic. The
Gospel tradition tells how he chose twelve men, according to the
number of the twelve tribes of Israel; Luke adds seventy more, 1
according to the number of the nations of the world (as given in
the "table of nations" in Genesis, chapter 10, and in the Talmud and
Midrash).
It is difficult to determine whether Jesus himself chose the
number twelve, or whether it was fixed at a later time, since the list
of the "Apostles" (as the chosen disciples were called, because they
were "sent" [apostello] forth among the Jews) is given four times
differently. 2 The probability is that, despite such differences, Jesus
himself determined on this number.
In the first place, the differences are almost entirely differences in
order only, the names in all four lists being identical with but one
exception ( f o r Thaddseus or Lebbseus, Luke and the Acts read
"Judah ben Jacob," and in Matthew's Gospel the tax-gatherer Levi is
called "Matthew." It has already been suggested that his name was
"Matthew the Levite"). 3
In the second place, the names, in all four lists, are mostly those
of men who were not afterwards remarkable, and there would have
been no point in inventing them.
Thirdly, Jesus himself promised his Apostles that "in the new
creation when the son of man should sit on his throne in glory,
they too should sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel." * There is no reason to suppose that this is a later accretion
in Matthew, since Jesus must have believed that, as "son of man," he
would come "with the clouds of heaven" and draw near to "the
1
Luke χ. ι. •4
a
M a r k iii. 16-19; Matt. x. 2-4; Luke vi. 14-16; Acts i. 13. 4
9
See above, p. 273. 4
4
Matt. xix. 28. 4
283
ancient of days" at the Day of Judgment, and, in reference to his
messianic claims, Jesus bore in mind the twelve tribes of Israel and
therefore made choice of the number twelve. In the course of time,
however, one of them, Thaddaeus or Lebbseus 5 (Aramaic terms of
kindred meaning, the former meaning "breasts" and the second
"heart"), was replaced by another, Judah ben Jacob, either because
he had not proved a success or because his name was forgotten ; or,
again, it may be that Judah ben Jacob was the genuine name and
"Thaddäus" or "Lebbaeus" a nickname (seil. "ben Thaddai," which,
being deemed unseemly for the Apostle, was later changed to "Leb,"
heart).
The principal disciple, and one who was to play a foremost rôle
in the history of Christianity, was Simon bar Jonah (later called
"Kepha" or "Petros"). The Gospels no more spare him than the
Books of Samuel spare David, the nation's beloved hero. Immediately
after hailing him as the "rock" (kepha in Aramaic — petros, rock, in
Greek) on which belief in Jesus' messianic claim was to be founded
(see later), Jesus calls him "Satan;" and at the time of the crucifixion
Simon-Peter denied knowledge of Jesus to save himself. Paul also
attacked him, accusing him of hypocrisy and weakness and dubbing
him a "lying brother." 6
He seems to have been enthusiastic and imaginative, energetic and
warm-hearted, but thoughtless and not profound, lacking the stamina
of a real reformer and one who must endure to the end ; he and John
are expressly described as "ignorant and of no understanding." T
The other Apostles were similar in type. James and John, the sons
of Zebedee, were passionate by nature, and Jesus styled them "sons
of wrath" or "sons of thunder" ( ‫ בני מ ש‬or ‫)בני רעש‬. They once
wished to burn down a Samaritan village which had refused to re-
ceive Jesus ; but he forbade them : 8 on another occasion John was
minded to forbid one who drove out devils in the name of Jesus ; but
again Jesus forbade him, saying that "he that is not against us is for
us" 9 (contradicting what Jesus says elsewhere : " H e that is not with
me is against me"). 10
Of the other Apostles, mention may be made of Simon the Zea-
lot who, in various versions of Mark and Luke, is wrongly called
"Simon the Canaanite." 11 As we have seen, a Zealot might well at-
tach himself to a forerunner of the Messiah, since the Zealots only
differed from the Pharisees in believing in the possibility of hasten-
5
A Galilaean Hebrew name : "This question asked R. Jose, son of Thaddai
of Tiberias, from Rabban Gamaliel" (Derekh Erets Rabbah §1). 4
"Galatians ii. 4, 11-14. ·^
‫ י‬Acts iv. 13. •4
"Luke ix. 51 4 .56‫־‬
"Luke ix. 49-50. •4
10
Matt. xii. 30; Luke xi. 23.-4
u
The correct version ΚαναναΊοs may come from ‫ ק נ א נ י‬in Hebrew, ‫ק נ א נ י א‬
in Aramaic; cf. ‫( ) נ ש י ם ( ס נ א נ י ו ת‬Gen. R. § 4 5 ) . ^
THE TWELVE APOSTLES 285
ing the end by force. Another Apostle worthy of note is Thomas
(‫ תומא‬or ‫)תימא‬, in Greek "Didymus," the twin, who afterwards be-
came a type of unbelief. Matthew the Levite has already been re-
ferred to. W e shall deal later with Judas Iscariot, though it may
be observed here that he was, apparently, the only disciple-Apostle
who came from Judœa, namely from Kerioth, south of Hebron (the
present Karyeten or Kratiyah, east of Gaza), all the others being
Galilasans.12 Legend gives to Jesus a foreknowledge of what Judas
Iscariot was to do, though it is clear that had Jesus known that he
was capable of betraying him, he would never have given him a
place among the disciples. Jesus, therefore, in spite of his keen per-
ception, could not have been a "discerner of hearts" in the highest
sense. Judas came to Jesus from a distant part of the country, a
proof that he was an exceptional man and attracted strongly by the
new teaching. This alone persuaded Jesus to receive him as one of
his most intimate Apostle-disciples ; not till the very last did Jesus
recognize in him that base character which made him a traitor.
Jesus felt the fatigue of constant teaching, and after his enemies
had become numerous, he sent out these twelve disciples that they, too,
might preach the speedy coming of the kingdom of heaven and the
need for repentance and good works. H e expressly tells them, "Go
not the way of the Gentiles, nor to any city of the Samaritans ! Go
only unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 13 Nowhere else is
Jesus' Judaism so strongly shown as here: like every other Jew he
was a Jewish nationalist; the kingdom of heaven was for Israel
alone ; only afterwards should the Gentiles "be added to the house of
Jacob" and "proselytes pressing forward in the days of the
Messiah." 14
H e sent out his Apostles in pairs to the villages. They must take
with them for the journey "neither scrip nor bread nor money
(χαλκόν= small bronze coins) in their girdle" (i.e., in their purse ;
c f . 1 5 ; ( ‫ב א י פ ו נ ד ת י‬ ‫רי מאתים זוז קשורים‬
They might not even carry two cloaks. Into whatever place they
went they must enquire who was worthy to receive them, and where
they were not hospitably received they must not linger : "shake off its
dust from the soles of your feet," i.e., leave it and get away as from
a perverted city.
13
As against the theory of Schulthess (Problem der Sprache Jesu, p. 54)
that "Iskariota" in the Syriac translation ( ‫ ז ס ר י ו ט א‬, ‫ )סכר י ו מ א‬is "Sicarius,"
brigand, see Dalman, Orte und Wege Jesu, p. 265, η. 3· See also S. Krauss,
Judas Iskariot, J.Q.R. IV, 199-207, London, 1913·^‫־‬
13
Matt. x. 5-6. Λ
1
*Ab. Zar. 3b.<4
U
J. Rosh ha-Shana I I 1.4
" M a t t . x. 10 reads "and not" for Mark's (vi. 8) "only" and Luke ix. 3
gives "nor staves." The correct text is that given in Mark: the two later
Gospels wished to magnify the confidence which the Apostles had in Jesus:
they needed not even a staff, for, even from far, Jesus was their helper
and defender. 4
Matthew further adds to Jesus' words, that "since they were as
sheep among wolves" they must be "both subtle as serpents and
simple as doves."17 Here we have a trait in Jesus' character that
should not be ignored : we shall see later, and more than once, that
Jesus was by no means the tender, placable, unworldly character which
his apologists, even among the "Liberal" Christians, describe.
So, two by two, the Apostles preached repentance throughout the
neighbouring small towns and villages. They were successful and
overjoyed to find that they, too, could "expel spirits," i.e., that they,
too. could exercise suggestion in nervous cases; and the Talmudic
literature informs us that, at the end of the first or the beginning
of the second century, one Jacob of Kefar-Sekanya (or Kefar Sama)
wished to heal of snake-bite Ben Dama, nephew of the Tanna R.
Ishmael, "by the name of Jesus." 18 But the Apostles cured also by
natural means : "they anointed with oil many that were sick and
healed them," as the Evangelist simply puts it.19
Jesus rejoiced at their success,20 but this success caused Jesus and
his disciples to be much discussed. Some thought he was "a
prophet" or "one of the prophets" (ώς είς τών τροφετών), that is, not
an actual prophet, but like a prophet (much as the Hasidim look upon
their Tzaddikim) ; others thought that he was the Prophet Elijah, the
Messiah's forerunner. The latter idea led Herod Antipas to think
that here was John the Baptist again, in a new guise: just as the
latter attracted large crowds by proclaiming the nearness of the
"end," and so constituted a danger to the Roman-Edomite govern-
ment, so it was with Jesus.
It is this idea which the evangelist conveys in the words : "And
Herod heard and said, It is John whom I beheaded : he is risen from
the dead." 21 That so clever and enlightened an Hellenist as Herod
Antipas, whom Jesus dubbed "that fox," did not mean this literally,
is obvious : his remark was meant metaphorically, just as in these days
any violent antisemite is called "Eisenmenger redivivus" (an Eisen-
menger risen from the dead), because his efforts resemble those of
" M a t t . x. 16; the many efforts of Christian scholars to translate φρόνιμοι
as something less pungent than "subtle," do not take into account the plain
simile "like serpents" cos 01 5<pets, and the antithesis implied by "simple
as doves." See Cant. R. on "Yonathi bi-hag'we ha-sela'." 4
W
T. Hulin II 22-23; Ab. Zar. 27b; J. Shabbath, near end of I V ; / . Ab.
Zar. II 2; see above, p. 40. ·^
ω
Mark vi. 13. 4
30
Most critics conclude that though Jesus chose twelve disciples he did
not send them as "Apostles" to other towns, and that the account of the
"Apostles" is but a reflection of the doings of the leaders of the Christian
Church, and not of Jesus' Apostles (see Ed. Meyer, Ursprung und Anfänge
des Christentums I 278-280) ; but in that case we should have to ignore such
sayings as "the way of the Gentiles" and "ye shall not have gone through
the cities of Israel," etc. Critics cannot have it both ways; and since the
influence of Jesus was so great it is absurd to reduce his recorded actions
to nothing.
31
Mark vi. 16.4
Eisenmenger. Jesus became aware of Herod's suspicion and "has-
tened with his disciples to embark and cross the sea to Beth-Saïda." 22
"The village of Bethsaida by Genesareth" was (about the year
3 B.C.) transformed by Herod Philip into a "city of very many
inhabitants" and "called Julias after the name of the emperor's
daughter." 23 (There was another Julias further south in the Jordan
valley, the Beth Haram of the Bible, the Beth Haramta of Josephus
and the Talmud, and the modern Tel-er-Rama) .24 Philip made this
Bethsaida his capital, since it was near important roads from Cilicia
in the northeast and from Gamala in the south-east. It was four kil-
ometres distance by sea from Capernaum, according to Dalman, 25 if
we identify Capernaum with the site of the present "Hirbet Arija"
or "el‫־‬Araj." Southeast of these ruins is a site, resembling a fort-
ress, still known as "el-Yehudiya." 26
Since it stood on the seashore and on important trade routes,
Bethsaida served as the customs-town for the east of Jordan, just as
Capernaum served as the customs-town for the west. Its Hebrew
name was Saidan ( 2 7 (‫ ציידן‬or, less correctly, Sidan (‫ )צירן‬or Sidon
( 2 8 ;(‫ צידה‬this name provides the adjectival form ,‫" רבי צי ידני יד‬the
Saidan Rabbi," "R. Jose the Saidanite," 29 or, inaccurately, "R.
Joseph the Sidonian." 30 It is possible that this is the ‫ צי י רתה‬which
the Jerusalem Talmud81 describes as being near ‫ הנקב‬of the Bible,
near Yabniel-Yamma. 32 Because of Antipas's hostility, Jesus turned
to the frontier of the territory belonging to Antipas's brother, Philip
making for the town nearest to Capernaum and Nazareth and not be‫׳‬
longing to Antipas. This Bethsaida may be the native town of Jesus'
disciple Philip, even if it is not that of Peter and Andrew. 33 The
"Mark
M
vi. 45.-4
Ant. X V I I I ii 1; cf. Wars I I ix 1. <
**Ant. XX viii 4 ; Wars II ix 1. On the passages in the Talmud and
Midrash see the Arukh ha-Shalem of A. Kohut, II 87-88, s.v. Beth Rametha.
* Dalman, op. cit. 142-148. A
"Op. cit. 146-147. <
"T. Ab. Zar. 1 8 ; / . (Mishnah) Kiddushin I V 11 (Kidd. I V 14: ‫ צ ד י י ן‬,
and also in Babli Kidd. 52a) ; Gittin I V 7 (Gittin IV 17 ‫ ; ) צ י ד ו ן‬/ . Ab. Zar.
v 5 (‫;)אסטרטיא דצייח‬ Qoh. R. on Konasti u ( ‫; ) פ ו ס י א נ י ן מ ן צ י י ד ן‬
Semahoth (Abel Rabbati) I V 26 (‫ י ו ס י בציידי{׳‬, ‫ ) י‬. Λ
" J . Berachoth III !·,Erubin 47b;Ab. Zar. 13a;Esther R. §9(‫א ב א אוריין‬
‫צירן‬ ‫;)איש‬ ‫ — צ י ד ה‬/ . Shek. VI 2. See also Midrash of Abba Gorion,
ed. Buber (Aggaaic Books on Meg. Esther, Wilna, 1886), η. ι at the begin-
ning of the book. Wellhausen (Einleitung, 1905, pp. 378‫ )־‬may be right
in saying that in Mark vii. 31, "Saidan" has been changed to "Sidon." 4
" / . Nazir V I I 3, and near end of section (twice) : / . Kethuboth X I I 7
. ( ‫ ) ר ״ יוגזי צ י ד ו נ י י א‬4
Kethuboth 46a (see A. Hyman, Tol'doth Tannaim w/Amoraim, London,
1910, p. 741). S. Klein, Monatschrift, L I X (1915) 167-168. •4
n
J. Meg. I ι (see J. Schwartz, T'buoth ha-aretz, ed. Luncz, p. 2 1 9 ) . ^
88
83
Josh. xix. 33; J. Meg. loc. cit. •4
John i. 45; xii. 21-24. 4
name Julias was still new and not yet naturalized, and the Galilaean
Jews continued to call the town by its earlier Hebrew‫־‬Aramaic name
"Bethsaida" or "Saidan," as is the habit with the lower classes,
especially among the Jews, in towns whose names are changed by the
whim of some king or ruler.
It may be, however, that Jesus and his disciples did not come to
the new Greek city, but to the older Hebrew village.34 The notion
that Galilee and Transjordania contained two cities of the name Beth-
saida, arises from the mistake of the Fourth Gospel 35 which instead
of "Bethsaida beyond Jordan," says, inadvertently, "Bethsaida
that is in the land of Galilee." 36 Jesus did not allow the people to
accompany him but sent them away. 37 Since the ruler of Galilee,
the Tetrarch Antipas, suspected him, it was preferable that many
people should not come with him into the district of the new ruler.
Jesus did not stay long in Bethsaida, it was too important a city
and there were too many observant eyes. The inference from the
reproach and curse which Jesus levelled at this city in conjunction
with Chorazim and Capernaum, 38 is that he was not too successful
even there.
Jesus went about "the land of Genesareth" (έτ\ τήν γήν Γενησαρέτ),
i.e. "the valley of Genesar." 39 There many people believed in
him. This displeased the Pharisees who regarded him as a "sinner."
To the Galilaean Pharisees were now added Scribes from Jerusalem
who either came to Galilee by chance or were specially summoned
thither by the less learned Galilaean Pharisees, in order to discuss
the position of this unorthodox Galilaean "Rab." These Scribes at
once see something wrong in Jesus and his disciples. These Ammë
ha-aretz were lacking in orthodox piety. They ate with "unwashen
hands," i.e., they neglected the religious obligations of washing of
hands. The Scribes and Pharisees were indignant with Jesus that
"his disciples did not follow the traditions of the elders," namely,
the accepted customs of the Scribes.
A. Büchler shows that, up to the age of the Amoraim, the rite of
"washing of hands" was not widespread among the nation, that it
only applied to the ceremony of eating the offering (‫ )אכי^ת תרומה‬and
" S e e F . Buhl, Handbuch der Geographie des Alten Palästina, Freiburg,

1896, p. 242. 4 ‫י‬
a w a y ) . •4
* M a t t . xi. 20-22; L u k e x. 13-16.
" O n this, see above, p. 260 ff. Dalman, op. cit. pp. 109-110 suggests t h a t
t h e f o r m Γήνησαρίτ w h i c h occurs neither in the Talmud nor in Josephus,
w a s m a d e on t h e analogy of N a z a r e t h (‫)•נצרת‬. B u t it m a y be t h a t this is
t h e feminine adjectival f o r m ‫ ה א ר ץ ה נ י נ י ס ר י ת‬, a n d t h a t t h e lowland w a s
t h u s called by t h e people in H e b r e w or A r a m a i c . T h e m o r e correct reading
as given in Nestle is (éiri τήν yrjv ή\90ν• eis Γ6ννηaaper). 4
was practised by the Pharisaic Priests alone.40 But it is difficult to
place all three Synoptics so late, or to suppose that all or even some
of Jesus' disciples were priests. Jesus denounced heavily this in-
dignation of the Pharisees. He calls them "hypocrites" and their
piety "a law of men that has been learned" (after Isaiah xxix.13,
quoted in Mark according to the Septuagint version). Instead of
defending himself he alleges against them that "they have forsaken
the commandments of God to hold to the tradition of men." He
gives as an example the fact that Moses said : "Honour thy father
and thy mother," but the Pharisees argue that if a man say : "Korban
(that is, a gift) 4 1 is that by which thou shouldest have profited by
me," then he may no longer benefit his father or mother therewith
and observe the divine law as given in the Ten Commandments.
Jesus (or the authors of the Gospel) knew that oaths were in-
troduced by the formula "Korban," and we read in the first section of
the Talmud tractate Nedarim, "Oath formulae are ‫ נזיר‬,‫קרח‬, and
42
;"‫ שבועה‬and we read later that "Konem, Koneah
other names for Korban." 43 The Mishna and Talmud make far
more use of the word "Konem" than of " K o r b a n e i t h e r because
they were written long after "Korbans" (sacrifices) came to an end,
or because they had some scruples against using a word with such
sacred associations. We still find such discussions as the following :
"Korban, whole-offering (‫ה‬5‫)עו‬, meal-offering (‫)!טנחה‬, sin-offering
(‫)חטאת‬, thank-offering (‫)חודה‬, which I eat to thee" (i.e. that of thine
which I eat is forbidden as a Korban)—such is forbidden; but R.
Yehudah permits. "Ha-Korban, k'Korban, Korban which I eat to
thee"—such is forbidden ; but R. Yehudah permits. tlU Korban, I do
not eat to thee"—R. Meir forbids. 44 We also find : "Korban, I do
not eat to thee, Korban that I eat to thee. It is not Korban, I do not
eat to thee"—such is permitted. 45 Korban is also used in the
Tosefta in many places with the sense of oath or vow. 48 Of interest
as explaining Jesus' argument is the following Mishnah: "He saw
them (certain men) eating figs, and said: It is Korban for you (i.e.
his father and brother and certain others). The School of Shammai
say, They (the father and brother) were permitted, but not the
40
A. Büchler, Der Galiläische Am-Haarez des zweiten Jahrhunderts,
Wien, 1906, pp. 114, 126-130. See also his Die Priester und der Cultus, Wien,
1895, pp. 82-3. The question is more accurately explained by H. P. Chajes,
Rivista Israelitica, I (1904) p. 5 0 . 4
41
The word is given in Mark vii, 11, in its Hebrew form, Kopßäv
together with its explanation in Greek & ίση δωρον. Josephus, Contra
Apionem I 22, explains "Korban" in exactly the same way; but see Wars
IX iv. where the Temple treasury is likewise called Korban" κορβανά*
cf. a J.Q.R. XIX 615-659· M
Nedarim 1 1 . 4
*3Ned. I 2.4
**Ned. I 4. <4
48
Ned. II 2. 4
49
T. Ned. I 1-3; II 3; IV 5. 4
others; the School of Hillel say, All were permitted." 47 Hence the
father and brother (and therefore, of course, the mother) were not
included within the scope of the "Korban" oath even according to the
stricter interpretations of the Shammai School.
But there is another, more explicit, Mishnah, with a direct bearing
on the charge brought by Jesus (or the Evangelists) : R. Eliezer
says : They open a way for a man (if he have vowed by "Korban" or
"Konem," so that he shall not assume the vows too lightly) because of
the honour due to his father and mother. The Sages forbid. R.
Tzadok says: Before they open a way for a man, because of the
honour due to his father and mother, they open a way for him be-
cause of the honour due to God (for God ordered men to beware of
vows) ; and consequently there can be no vows (since they were not
generally pleasing to God).
The Sages agree with R. Eliezer that when the matter is one be-
tween a man and his father and mother ("e.g., when a man, by a
vow, deprives his father of his property"—so R. Obadiah of Berti-
nora; "when he vows things required by his father and mother"—
so Rabbi Gershom, "the Light of the Exile"), they open a door for
the honour due to his father and mother. 48
Thus both R. Eliezer and the Sages as a whole are agreed that 1f
a man makes a vow that harmfully affects his father and mother,
"they open a door for him," that he may be able to give them the
honour required in the Law of Moses, and so they release him from
his vow. This is quite contrary to the charge brought by Jesus.
There are three possible explanations of the difference : the rule in the
time of Jesus may have been otherwise, or Jesus may have been
bringing an unjustifiable charge against the Pharisees, or else the
authors of the Gospels had heard something about the rules con-
cerning vows among contemporary Tannaim (R. Eliezer lived imme-
diately after the Destruction), and confused permission with pro-
hibition.
However this may be, Jesus' remarks on this occasion were over-
severe. He turned to all the people, saying, with the strongest em-
phasis : 4 9 "Hear me all of you and understand : there is nothing from
without the man that going into him can defile him : but the things
which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man. If any
man hath ears to hear, let him hear." 50 The solemn introduction
("Hear me all of you and understand") and the still more solemn
conclusion "If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear," which
Jesus always employs when he lays down something new or some-
thing not generally known), plainly show that he referred on this oc-
47
Ned. II 2. M
8
* Ned. IX ι. Cf. J. Mann, Oaths and Vows in the Synoptic Gospels (A.
J. Th. 1917, XXI 260-274). M
48
Mark vii. 14-16. ·^
80
Matt. xv. 11 (see Dalman, op. cit. p. 120). -4
casion to something most important for Judaism as a whole, and not
merely for the Pharisees alone.
H e dared not explain the subject before the crowd; but to his
disciples he explained that what enter a man are the various foods,
which themselves cannot defile a man (Jesus' words are primitively
plain : "Because it goeth not into his heart but into his belly, and
goeth out into the draught which maketh all foods clean") ; whereas
what issue from a man are the bad qualities—"deceit, envyings, love
of gain, wickedness, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, evil deeds, adul-
tery, fornication, murder, theft, and gluttony"—which are the things
which defile the man. 51 Thus Jesus would abrogate not only fasting,
and decry the value of washing of hands in the "tradition of the
elders" or in current traditional teaching, but would even permit
(though he does this warily and only by hints) the foods forbidden
in the Law of Moses.
The breach between Jesus and the Pharisees was complete.
®Mark vii. 17-23; Matt. xv. 12-20.•4
F I F T H BOOK
J E S U S R E V E A L S H I M S E L F AS M E S S I A H
I. J E S U S I N T H E BORDERS O F T Y R E A N D SIDON
A N D IN D E C A P O L I S
The strong expressions used by Jesus against the Pharisees show

him again as very different from the "tender" and "placable" person
depicted by Christians ("The Lamb of God;" "as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb"). He was a combatant preacher and spoke as
harshly to the Pharisees as ever Jeremiah did to the priests. In his
preaching he was thus akin to the Prophets, while in his parables he
was more akin to the Haggadist Pharisees. But despite this, the
Pharisees could not forgive his attitude to the tradition of the elders
and to the rules affecting the Sabbath and forbidden foods. The spirit
of the age made them look upon his miraculous healing as the work of
Satan: he "had Beelzebub" and by an unclean spirit he drove out
unclean spirits; therefore he was a sorcerer, a false prophet, a be-
guiler and one who led men astray (as the Talmud describes him),
and it was a religious duty to put him to death. He was compelled
to escape.
After the dispute about the washing of hands, Jesus, as Mark
expresses it, "arose from thence (from 'the land of Genesareth') and
went to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and when he came to a house
he did not wish to be made known to any man." 1 Shortly before this,
Jesus had ordered his disciples not to go "by the way of the Gentiles,"
and now, suddenly, he himself goes to the gentile Tyre and Sidon.2
The reason was that he was escaping from his enemies, and this sup-
position is supported by the words, "And he did not wish to be made
known to any man" (ούδένα ^θελε γνώναι).
It would be an over-emphasis to treat this foreign sojourn as an
1
Mark vii. 24 (cf. Matt. xv. 21).
8
T h e statement in Mark v. 1 that Jesus was in the land of the Gadarenes
or Geresenes even earlier than this, is, even if it‫ ־‬is historical, certainly
misplaced. Theodor Reinach (Revue des Etudes Juives, X L V I I 177) holds
that the name "Legion" given to the unclean spirit, and the swine into which
the unclean spirits entered, arose from an ignorant confusion with the
"Tenth Legion," stationed in Palestine 70-135 C.E., on whose standard was
depicted a wild boar. This would then be a late accretion; and so Jesus
was not in the Decapolis till after the dispute about washing of hands,
293
entire period within Jesus' ministry and, like Oscar Holtzmann, de-
vote a special section to it.3 It certainly, however, constitutes a with-
drawal from his customary haunts and an effort to avoid the minions
of Herod Antipas, who‫׳‬, as Jesus knew, had shown himself capable
of putting John the Baptist to death.
An impression is unconsciously formed that the Evangelists make
Jesus depart to the borders of Tyre and Sidon from fear of the
Pharisees and Antipas, just because the Prophet Elijah went to Sar-
epta of Sidon from fear of Ahab and Jezebel and the Prophets of
Baal ; 4 but in this case we have not an attempt by the Evangelists to
approximate Jesus to Elijah; Jesus himself imitated Elijah in that he
was in the same plight—persecuted by both the civil and the religious
authorities.
Jesus went north, accompanied by the Twelve and a few of his
decreasing number of followers, including a few women, to a place
no longer counted within the bounds of the Land of Israel. Many
Jews lived there 5 but the Evangelists record but one act of Jesus—
done for the sake of a foreign woman. A Canaanitish woman β
begged him to drive out a devil from her little daughter. But his
answer was so brusque and chauvinistic that if any other Jewish
teacher of the time had said such a thing Christians would never
have forgiven Judaism for it: "It is not right to take the bread from
the children and cast it to the little dogs" (0 5 καλόν έστι λαβείν τδν
δρτον των τέκνων κα\ βαλείν τοις κυναρ(οις). 7 According to Matthew,
Jesus added, " I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of
Israel" 8 —the same remark which he made to the Apostles when he
sent them out to the cities of Israel alone. Only after the stranger
had cast herself down before him, saying: "Yea, Lord, but even the
little dogs eat under the table the fragments of the children's bread,"
did Jesus tell her that the devil was gone out of her daughter, "and
she went away unto her house, and found the child laid upon the bed,"
i.e., passive after an attack of frenzy.
This is the first and only time when Jesus (and even then, against
his will) dealt with strangers. Other such accounts (i.e. that of the
foreign centurion in Capernaum who was "a friend of Israel" and
built them a synagogue 9 and especially that of the Samaritan
woman) 10 are lacking in Mark and therefore unhistorical. Jesus, in
all his sayings and doings, was an utter Jew : he regarded himself as
sent to the Jews alone, and he regarded his people as the "chosen
people" since they were the "sons of God." Therefore it was not
"4 Leben Jesu, Tübingen, 1901, pp. 233-270. 4
Cf. Luke iv. 25-26 and 1 Kings xvii. 8-24. 4
β
See J. Klausner, Biy'mê Bayith Sheni, p. 45. 4
· F o r details see H. P. Chajes, Markus-Studien, pp. 43-44.4‫־‬
* Mark vii. 27. 4
" Matt. xv. 24. 4
"Matt.
10
viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 1-9. 4
John iv. 4-42. 4
JESUS IN TYRE AND SIDON 295
right to throw away "the children's bread" to non-Jews, who were
little dogs and not children.
Were it not for this rough answer (which the Evangelists had no
reason to invent) it might have been supposed that this Canaanitish
woman in the borders of Tyre and Sidon was but an imitation of the
foreign widow (Canaanite) of Sarepta of Sidon. The Gospels were,
however, written at a time when the disciples of Jesus included many
non-Jews, and when no one would have put in Jesus' mouth so harsh
a sentiment. The episode must, therefore, have been historical.
A f t e r leaving his native town and the scenes of his early ministry,
Jesus was filled with indignation against those places which had
finally rejected him after he had taught and healed there ; he speaks
bitterly : "Woe unto thee, Chorasin, Woe unto thee, Bethsaida ! For if
the mighty works (the miracles) which were wrought in you had been
done in Tyre and Sidon (where he was now living), they would have
repented in sackcloth and ashes ! But I say unto you (the disciples),
that in the day of judgment it shall be more tolerable f o r Tyre and
Sidon than for you (Chorazin and Bethsaida). And thou, Caper-
naum, that wast exalted to heaven, shalt go down to Sheol. For
if the mighty works had been done in Sodom which were done in
thee, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, that
on the day of judgment it shall be more tolerable for the land of
Sodom than for thee." 11
Such bitterness shows clearly that his condition was becoming
worse ; he saw no progress in his work : he is indignant and curses.
Such words have in them something of the severity and the arraign-
ments of an Isaiah or an Ezekiel : they show not the least trace of
that peculiar "tenderness" and "unconditional forgiveness." Jesus
was a Jew, educated on the severe indictments of the Prophets, and
at times he follows their lead: he is by no means that type which
the Christians have depicted for themselves—one who forgives all,
who, when offended, offends not again.
This may have been the time when Jesus taught the parable of
those bidden to the feast or wedding. The important guests who
had been invited did not come; therefore the wayfarers, the poor
and indigent, the blind and the lame, evil and good alike, were sum-
moned. 12 In other words : the Pharisees and Scribes, the pick of the
nation, those nearest the kingdom of heaven, refused to come ; there-
fore Jesus was forced to gather around him the publicans and sinners
and harlots.
From Tyre and Sidon, Jesus returned to the Sea of Galilee ; but
this time he does not come back to Capernaum and the district west
of the lake, but to the east of Jordan : he traverses the region of "The
Ten Cities," or Decapolis. 13 These cities were all inhabited by non-
" M a t t . xi. 20, 24; Luke x. 13-15· 4
M
Matt. xxii. 1-14; Luke xiv. 16-24.^(
" M a r k vii. 3 1 . ^
Jews, and all (except Beth-Shean) in Transjordania ; their names
(from north to south) were: (1) Hyppos (Susitha), (2) Gadara,
(3) Abilene (not Abel beth Ma'kha), (4) Raphon or Raphana (near
Ashteroth-Karnaim), (5) Kanatha (the modern Qanawat), (6)
Scythopolis (Beth Shean), (7) Pella (Pehal), (8) Dion, (9) Gerasa,
(10) Philadelphia (Rabbath b'ne Ammon). 1 4
At this time Jesus may have visited Gadara or Gerasa, more
probably Gadara, the modern Um‫־‬Kais, one of the most important
towns of the Decapolis and noted for its hot-water curative springs
,(‫ ) מ ד ר הכזתף‬, often referred to in Josephus and the Talmul;14a it is
recorded that Jesus here performed the miracle of driving out devils
"whose name was Legion, because they were many," from a man suf-
fering from "delirium tremens."
In the same place comes the account of the swine into which the
unclean spirits entered and which fell into the water and were
drowned. Swine would be natural in a town inhabited mainly by non-
Jews ; but, as we have already hinted, 15 the story may be only a later
legend. One feature, however, is of interest : in the borders of Tyre
and Sidon, and in Gadara (or Gerasa), Jesus did not find it necessary
to forbid his wonders to be made public.
At Gadara (unless the episode is unhistorical) he commands him
who had been healed of the "Legion" of unclean spirits "to return to
his home and family and tell them all the great things which God
had done for him." 1 6 In a foreign country where, though there might
be many Jews, the main population was constituted of Greeks and
Syrians, he is not afraid that the Pharisees will investigate his doings,
nor is he afraid by reason of the crowds of believers ; none the less
he is afraid, even there, to enter the cities themselves. It was cer-
tainly then that there escaped from him that sad, heart-rending saying
(which Byron has metaphorically applied to the whole race of Israel),
"The foxes 17 have holes and the birds have nests, but the Son of man
hath no place to lay his head." 18 No saying could be more pathetically
apt or more human. . . .
Nor could Jesus find any respite in the Decapolis and he did not
long remain there ; for what could he, a Jew to his finger-tips, do there
among the Gentiles ? What interest had foreigners in the Gospel of
the Messiah, or in the kingdom of heaven (which was to contain none
14
Contrary to the evidence of Pliny and the view of Schürer, we exclude
the distant Damascus from the Ten Cities; see Schürer, I I 4 148-195. 4
148
Shab. 109a; Erubin 61 a; Sanh. 108a; Meg. 6a; Rosh ha-Shana 23b
(where possibly Gador and not Gadara is meant) ; T. Rosh ha-Shana II (1)
2; T. Erubin VI ( V ) 13 (end of section) ; / . Erubin V 7 (XXII end of p.
4 ) ; / . Kiddushin I I I 14; / . Shabbath I I I 1; / . Ab. Zar. V 15 (near end of
section). 4
* See above, p. 293, n. 2. 4
M
Mark v. 19. 4
"According to the Hebrew proverb, "no fox dies in its den" (Kethuboth
71b; Nedarim 81 b; J. Kethuboth VII 3). ^
‫״‬
Matt. viii. 20 ; Luke ix. 59. 4
JESUS IN TYRE AND SIDON 297
but those proselytes who should "press forward" in the Days of the
Messiah) ? From there he goes to "the regions of Dalmanutha," 19
or "the border of Magadan" (or, according to another reading,
"Magdala"). 20 As for Dalmanutha, Furrer 2 1 thinks it lies north
of Capernaum on the way to Migdal, the modern Minin ; while Joseph
Schwartz reads "Talmanutha" from "Talimon." 22 There is more
truth in Dalman's theory that "Dalmanutha" is a corruption of
"Migdal Nunaia" (the name given to Magdala), or of "[ar'a] Mag-
dalayatha" (the Magdalene land). 23
Jesus no longer enters this town of the "valley of Genesar" but
remains outside in its purlieus (ε(ς τά μέρη according to Mark,
εις τά 8pta according to Matthew). In the town were to be found
Pharisees who demanded a sign from him, and this he would not give
them. He feared to put his powers to the proof in their presence.
Jesus held that signs were not essential : the men of Nineveh repented
through the preaching of Jonah, and Jonah wrought no signs before
them. This refusal to offer a sign in proof of his claim to be a
prophet or the forerunner of the Messiah, gave the Scribes a weapon
whereby to decry Jesus' value ; and the officials of Herod also began
to look upon him as a deceiver and beguiler.
Consequently Jesus warns his discipless : "See that ye beware of
the leaven of the Pharisees and of the leaven of the Herodians" 24—
i.e., of the evil men among these two parties (cf. the Talmudic ex-
pression : "Who is the thwarter ? the leaven that is in the dough and
the servitude inflicted by the Gentile powers"). 25 Matthew who failed
to see a reference to an actual event, here writes : 2 6 "Of the leaven of
the Pharisees and Sadducees," and assumes that both Pharisees and
Sadducees demanded a sign ; 2 7 Luke speaks only of the leaven of the
Pharisees. 28 The disciples misunderstood the reference and thought
that Jesus spoke simply about bread ("dough" and "leaven"), where-
upon Jesus reproved them for their obtuseness.
It proved necessary to escape from the sphere of influence of the
Pharisees and Herod Antipas, and once more we find Jesus crossing
over from Antipas' into Philip's territory. H e reaches Bethsaida
(Julias) a second time (though this account may only be a further
reference to the first visit) 29 and after staying there (apparently in
the Jewish quarter near the recently Hellenised town) he removed
" M a r k viii. 10.^
80
Matt. xv. 39. 4
81
Quoted by P. \V. Schmidt, Die Geschichte Jesu, erläutert ( I I ) 1904,
Ρ· 3 > ·4‫ז‬
23
Tbuoth ha-arets, ed. Luncz, p. 228 (see / . Demai II
* , Dalman, op. cit. ρ. 116.
34
Mark viii. 15. 4
x
Berachoth 17a. 4
* Matt. xvi. 7. Λ
‫ ״‬M a t t . xvi. ι . A
* , Luke xii.
M
Compare Mark viii. 22-26 and Mark vi. 45. 4
further north, to the second greatest city in Philip's Tetrarchy, "the
villages of Caesarea Philippi." 30 It should be observed that Jesus
does not enter the city itself, but remains with his disciples in "the
villages" near by. Caesarea Philippi is the present Banyas, the
Pamias of the Talmud, the Greek Πανείας, and the ancient Baal-Gad,
the northern boundary of Palestine, where the Jordan leaves "the
cave of Pamias." 31 Philip rebuilt it in honour of Augustus, and,
to distinguish it from the Caesarea in Judsea, built by Herod his
father (the Talmudic "Caesarea, daughter of Edem"). 3 2 and, later,
made the capital of the Roman Procurator, it was called "Caesarea of
Philip," Caesarea Philippi. In the Talmud it is still called Pamias,
Apamaea, or Aspamiya, and sometimes Caesarion, to distinguish it
from Caesarea.33 Here occurred the event which, next to the Bap-
tism by John the Baptist, is probably the most important in the his-
tory of Jesus and Christianity.
80
Mark viii. 27. •4
81
Bekhoroth 55a; Baba Bathra 74b. 4
"Meg.
83
6a; Lam. R. on Hayu tsareha I'rosh. 4
Targum Yerushalmi"Βamidbar," 34, 14;Sukka 27b ‫ בקיסרי‬...‫כגליל העליון‬
‫ ו א מ ר ו ל ה בקיסריזו‬...‫ ב ק ס ר י ו ז העילי וז‬MechUta, ‫״‬Beshaiiah," § Amaiek, 2 (ed.
Friedmann 55b); ‫פמייס‬£ ‫בימה^ת קיסריוז ש ה ו א מ ת חת‬ (cf. ‫״‬T'buoth ha-
aretz," 239, 505-7; Derenbourg, Massa Eretz Yisrael, p. 134 n. 5 ) . ^
I I . A T CAESAREA P H I L I P P I : J E S U S R E V E A L S
H I M S E L F T O HIS DISCIPLES AS T H E MESSIAH
The "Son of man" was a homeless wayfarer in a foreign land.

No longer is he surrounded, as in Lower Galilee, with crowds of
enthusiastic believers and admirers within reach of his native town.
No longer are miracles performed by him or for him. He cannot
overcome or convert his enemies. What power has he left? How
can his disciples continue to believe in him ? Despair begins to steal
into their hearts. Even he, too, has lost the old buoyancy. Do his
disciples still believe in him ? and, if so, what kind of a belief is theirs ?
He had often remarked their obtuseness : were these the stones with
which he must build, and the foundations on which he must establish
the kingdom of heaven?
These gloomy thoughts oppressed him as he stood there at the
foot of snowcapped Hermon, in those picturesque surroundings
close to the half-Gentile town of the Herodian ruler, in one of the
northernmost villages of Palestine ; and he turns to his disciples with
the question:
"What do men say of me ? Who do men say that I am ?"
The disciples reply: "John the Baptist. Some say, Elijah; and
others, One of the prophets."
And Jesus' teaching and manner of life did, in great measure,
conform with that of John the Baptist, or Elijah whom John had
imitated, or with that of a prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah who had
rebuked the nation and preached goodness and righteousness.
Jesus asks f u r t h e r : "But ye yourselves, who do ye say that I
am?"
Whereupon Simon the fisherman, the first of the disciples both
in time and worth, comes forward and says : "Thou art the Messiah !"
Such is Mark's brief account. 1 To "the Messiah" Matthew adds
the words, "the son of the living God," 2 but Luke writes simply "the
Messiah of God." 3 "The living God" is quite an Hebraic expression,
and to term the Messiah "son of the living God" is justifiable from
the verse in the Psalm : "Thou art my son : this day have I begotten
thee," 4 since, a few verses earlier, it is said, "Against the Lord and
against his anointed (his Messiah)." 5 But the words are lacking in
Mark and Luke.
Matthew then adds: "And Jesus answered and said unto him,
1
Mark viii. 27-9. 4 * Ps. 2. 7. 4
' Matt. xvi. 6. 4 " Ps. 2. 2. ^
*Luke ix. 20. 4
299
Blessed art thou, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not
revealed this to thee, but my Father in heaven. And I say unto thee,
Thou art Peter ("rock" in Greek ; Aramaic Kepha), and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against thee (the words "and on this rock I
will build my Church" are absent in the early version of the Gospel
used by Ephrem Syrus, a patristic writer of the fourth century) ; and
I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatsoever
thou shalt bind (forbid) on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what-
soever thou shalt loose (permit) on earth shall be loosed in heaven." 6
Whereupon Simon bar Jonah was ever afterwards called "Ke-
phas" (Aramaic for "stone"), or, in Greek, "Petros" (rock). All
this is, however, lacking in Mark and Luke. The subsequent verses,
where Jesus calls Peter "Satan," also contradict what is given in
Matthew. But even in Mark's brief version there is a certain solem-
nity showing that apostolic circles retained the strong impression
which the recognition of the messianic claims at Caesarea Philippi
made both upon Jesus and the disciples.
A great event clearly happened then. Jesus was deeply affected to
find that, even in his present evil plight, his disciples had not despaired
and that, despite their obtuseness, some of them recognized him as the
Messiah. It may have been then that, in his happiness, Jesus uttered
those wonderful words: "I thank thee, Ο Father, Lord of heaven
and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and
prudent and hast revealed them to babes (in understanding)." 7
The three Synoptics are, however, unanimous in recording that Jesus
forbade his disciples to tell any one what they had learned : place and
time were yet unsuitable.
They are also unanimous in saying that immediately after this
episode Jesus began to teach his disciples that "the son of man must
needs suffer many things," and that the elders and chief priests and
scribes would reject him and that he should be killed and after
three days rise again.8
And it is most probable that, immediately after his disciples' rec-
ognition of his messianic claims, he spoke of the sufferings which he
must undergo. To deny this would make the whole history of Chris-
tianity incomprehensible. If, after the crucifixion, the disciples be-
lieved in a suffering Messiah, then Jesus must, while still alive, have
spoken of such sufferings : (a) he had seen the fate of John the
Baptist; (b) he was, at the time, persecuted and suffering in a
foreign land; (c) the coming of the Messiah was impossible without
"the pangs of the Messiah." It is true that the "pangs of the Mes-
siah" are not, in the Talmud, explained as sufferings affecting the
• Matt, χ vi. 17-19· •4
*Matt. xi. 25; Luke χ. 21; see the saying of the early Amora, R.
Yochanan: Since the Temple was destroyed prophecy was taken from the
prophets and given to the foolish and to babes (Β. Bathra 12b). Cf., Ed.
Meyer, op. cit. I 280-91. M
8
Mark viii. 31 ; Matt. xvi. 21 ; Luke ix. 22. 4
AT CAESAREA PHILIPPI 301
Messiah himself, but as the sufferings of the messianic age : 9 but this
"Son of man" who found himself persecuted by the Pharisees and
Herodians and who did not expect to realize his claims by victorious
warfare, must have begun to imagine that, before his victory, such
sufferings must befall him, himself. And these sufferings must come
about in Jerusalem. H e says that "the elders and chief priests and
scribes would reject him," and where were these except in Jerusalem?
Therefore after Peter had confirmed Jesus' own belief and hope,
Jesus announces that he would now go, as the Messiah, to Jerusalem.
No other place was better fitted for the Messiah's revelation, nor
was any other time better fitted than the feast of Passover, the feast
of the national Redemption (and, therefore, the feast of the Mes-
siah), when tens and hundreds of thousands of people flocked to
Jerusalem.
This Jesus certainly divulged to his disciples, but no more than
this. To say that he told his disciples that "he should be killed and
after three days rise again," is to go beyond the bounds of proba-
bility. Some Christian scholars hold that "after three days" sig-
nifies "after a short time," following the Scriptural verse. He shall
revive us after two days, and on the third day he shall raise us up
and we shall live before him.10 But the Gospels nowhere quote such
a passage in explanation of this "prophecy ;" and, again, it would be
a coincidence, amounting to a miracle, had he spoken of the death and
revival after three days on the basis of Scripture, and then been
actually killed and, after three days, been found, by his disciples, to
have risen again.
Furthermore, as we shall see, Jesus feared the prospect of death ;
and if he foresaw this as early as Caesarea Philippi and, in the in-
tervening weeks or even months, had become accustomed to the pros-
pect, why did such "human frailty" attack him suddenly? Or why
were the disciples so alarmed at the crucifixion escaping in every
direction ? Mark felt the difficulty and points out that "they did not
understand the matter (Jesus' death and resurrection) and feared to
ask him." 11 Yet Jesus reverted to the subject several times after-
wards, and how could they have forgotten it at the time of the arrest
and crucifixion?
The whole idea of a Messiah who should be put to death was one
which, in Jesus' time, was impossible of comprehension both to the
Jews and to Jesus himself. Isaiah liii was then interpreted in its
literal sense as referring to the nation of Israel and not to a human
Messiah. "Messiah ben Joseph who should be put to death" 12 was a
conception which, as the present writer has elsewhere shown,13 came
• J. Klausner, Die messianischen Vorstellungen, pp. 46-49. 4

10
Hosea vi. 2. 4
11
Mark ix. 3 2 . 4
3
* Sukka 52a. 4
"Klausner, op. cit. 86-103. ^
into being not till after Bar Kokhbah. We must, therefore, conclude
that the words "and shall be killed and rise again after three days"
(και άποκτανθήναι καΐ μετά τρεις ήμ,έρας άναστήνα‫ )׳‬are a later addi-
tion by Jesus' disciples, who told or wrote his story after his shame-
ful death was itself a convincing proof of his messianic claims ; but
for the conviction that Jesus foresaw his dreadful death, no Jewish
disciples could have accepted a "crucified Messiah," a "curse of God
that was hanged."
At Caesarea Philippi, therefore, Jesus told his disciples that he
was about to go to Jerusalem where he should suffer greatly but
would, in the end, be victorious and be recognized by the crowds
of people who had come to celebrate the Passover, as the Messiah.
Simon Peter disliked this : he took Jesus aside and began to reprove
him for thinking of such a procedure. If Jesus and his disciples had
been so persecuted and had run such danger in Galilee, how could
he dare to go to Jerusalem, the centre of civil and religious authority,
where the danger which threatened them, simple Galilaeans, was seven
times greater!
But Jesus, totally wrapped up in his great idea, feared these
beguiling persuasions of his favourite disciple, the more so because
they were but reasonable ; he forcibly turned away from him and, in
the presence of the others, said : "Get thee behind me, Satan ! For
thou carest not for the things of God, but for the things of men."
That is to say, Peter had more respect for ordinary things than for
the great messianic destiny which God had in store for Jesus and his
followers. He emphasizes to his disciples that they, too, must suffer
because of him, but that to lose their life for his sake and the Gospel's
was to save it, "for what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his soul ?"
The words recorded at this stage : "let him deny himself and take
up his cross," 1 4 must be regarded as a later addition : crucifixion was
not a Jewish mode ot death, and Jesus, the Galilaean, could not have
used such a figure of speech since Galilee did not then possess a
Roman Procurator and Jewish legal processes were still in force
there. Peter hinted to Jesus that in Jerusalem, the simple Galilaeans
—Jesus and his followers and disciples—would furnish a subject of
derision to the Jerusalem city-folk. Jesus replies : "Whosoever shall
be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful gen-
eration, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him when he
cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
And this coming of the Son of man is now no longer a thing of the
distant future : "Verily I say unto you, that there be some here of
them that stand by, which shall in no wise taste of death till they see
the kingdom of God come with power." 15 Such is the consoling
recompense for the sufferings which the disciples will be called upon
14
M a r k viii. 34.
18
Mark viii. 33 ; ix· 1. A
AT CAESAREA PHILIPPI 303
to endure for the Son of man's sake : he is now manifested to them
as the Messiah himself, ranking with the holy angels, and bringing
about the "end" in their days. And so long as even one of Jesus'
generation survived, this mystic belief persisted in Christianity.
Conviction such as this stirred the ardour of the more intimate of
his disciples. Jesus' vision, a supernatural vision, of a Messiah soon
to come, brought visions to them also.
Peter, and James and John the sons of Zebedee, three enthusi-
asts, including the two "sons of thunder," saw Jesus in a new
guise three days later when he went up with them to the summit of
a high mountain (hardly Tabor, according to the groundless Chris-
tian tradition, 16 but Hermon, which is comparatively near to Caesarea
Philippi, and whose summit is covered with perpetual snow). He
was transfigured before them and his garments became "glistering,"
exceeding white—like the snow which was on Hermon. As the Mes-
siah he became for them very different from what he was as a Phari-
saic "Rab" or "Galilaean itinerant."
In their daylight vision they seemed to see Moses and Elijah
speaking with him. Peter's imagination led him to propose that they
set up "three tabernacles," one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for
Elijah. Obviously, to the simple Galilaean Jew, Jesus was no more
than the successor of Moses and Elijah : Moses was the great Law-
giver and greatest of the prophets, Elijah was the great wonder-
worker and the forerunner of the Messiah, and Jesus was the Mes-
siah who was to come and promulgate the Law of Moses throughout
the world by the aid of miracles, like to the deeds of Elijah. . . .
On this occasion, too, Jesus warns his three disciples that they tell
no man what they had witnessed ; 1 7 only in Jerusalem was his final
revelation, in its entirety, to be made before the people. To the hesi-
tation of the disciples—since before the Messiah could appear, Elijah,
the forerunner, must first come—he replies that Elijah had already
come, in the likeness of John the Baptist. 18
All was ready, therefore, for the Messiah's revelation ; but it must
be done in Jerusalem, the Holy City, where the greatest publicity was
possible, and not in an out-of-the-way corner such as Upper Galilee.
18
See Dalman, op. cit. pp. 176-169, 176, who suggests that the high moun-
tain is Tel Abu'l-Nada (1257 metres), or Tel Abu'l Hanzir, or Tel el-Ahmar
(1238 metres), all of them near Caesarea Philippi (op. cit. 176-179). •4
" M a r k ix. 9. •4
" M a r k ix. 11-13; Matt. xvii. 13. M
III. THE JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM: AT JERICHO
Jesus and his disciples then began the journey to Jerusalem.
From Caesarea Philippi they went to Lower Galilee, either to allow
the disciples to bid farewell to their kinsfolk or sell their possessions,
or because the easiest route to Jerusalem was by way of Lower Gali-
lee. Here again Mark states that Jesus did not wish to be made
known to anyone.1 They come to Capernaum for the last time, and
there, as a good Jew, Jesus pays the half-shekel to the Temple fund.
This was shortly before Passover, in the month Adar, and, according
to the Mishna, "On the first of Adar they call for the shekels," "011
the fifteenth of the month the money-changers (required owing to
the various current coinages) dwelt in the town, and on the twenty-
fifth, they took their place in the Temple." 2 It was, then, about the
middle of the month Adar, when Palestine is at its best, when the
rains are over and flowers are everywhere.
Jesus does not consider that he and his followers are bound to
pay the half-shekel : the Messiah and his disciples are the sons of God
and therefore need pay no taxes ; but he does not wish, in his present
plight, to arouse opposition ("to be a stumbling-block unto them"),
and so, "for the sake of peace," he bids his disciples pay the tax. 3
While in Capernaum he hears the Twelve disputing among them-
selves which of them shall be greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
Whereupon Jesus takes a little child, embraces him and says, This
child and whosoever is simple as a child and demeans himself as a
child, the same shall be greatest in the kingdom of heaven. This is
paralleled by the Baraita: "Little ones receive the presence of the
Shekinah." 4 The greatest shall not be the ruler, as among the great
ones of this world, but the one who is servant of all: the first shall
be last.
And he reproves the disciples for striving after honour ; if they
are at fault on whom can he rely for the spreading of his teaching?
Are not they now the salt of the earth? The purpose of salt is to
preserve from decay, but if the salt itself lose its savour how can
decay be stayed ? So far be it from them to seek for honour.
1
M a r k ix. 30. ^
' M . Shek. I ι and 3. <
*Matt. xvii. 24-27. ·^
4
Tractate Kallah Rabbati §2 Baraita 8; cf. Ekha R. on Wa-yetze mi-bath
Tzion (ed. Buber 70) ; Midrash Ps. 22, 32, ed. Buber 99 (and n. 164). Cf.
also "See that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you
that their angels in heaven see always the face of my Father in heaven"
(Matt, xviii. 10). 4
304
AT JERICHO 305
Yet he promises them the greatest honour of all : "Verily I say
unto you, Ye which have followed after me, in the new creation
(‫׳‬παλιγγενεσία, "the new world" of the apocalyptic literature and the
Hebrew Midrashim), when the Son of man shall sit on his throne of
glory, ye too shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel. And every man that hath forsaken houses and brethren and
sisters and father and mother and wife and children and fields for my
sake shall receive a hundred-fold (έκατονταπλασίονα λήψεται) and
shall inherit eternal life." 5
The ideal of Jesus is not, therefore, solely spiritual : it is a truly
Jewish messianic ideal, material and worldly. This point we will
touch upon later. In spite of Jesus' reproofs, the disciples continue
to seek their own honour and glory: James and John, the sons of
Zebedee, ask of him that, after he shall sit on "his throne of glory"
as Son of man, he grant them to sit the one on his right hand and the
other on his left. Matthew is ashamed to report this of the chief
Apostles and records that it was their mother who asked this honour
for her sons.6
But Jesus warns them that before he comes in his great glory he
must drink the cup of affliction : are they also able to drink it ? They
say that they are able. Whereupon he continues : "To sit on my
right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it is for them for
whom it hath been prepared of my Father." 7 Jesus does not look
upon himself as all-powerful : the Jewish Messiah is also "a man of
the sons of men" (such is the expression of Trypho the Jew in the
Dialogue of Justin Martyr). 8 In the messianic age the true re-
deemer and the final power is God himself : the Messiah is but his
most important medium.
According to Luke, 9 Jesus attempted to reach Jerusalem by way
of Samaria (what the Talmud describes as the "interrupting strip of
the Cuthites"). 10 The Pharisees, who still considered him a Phari-
saic "Rab," warned him 11 against Herod Antipas, but he no longer
fears "that fox," 12 since he is merely passing through his territory
and would soon have left it. He determines to go by way of Samaria,
which was no longer in the possession of Herod but under the Roman
Procurator who controlled it after Archelaus was sent in exile.
Since the Samaritans were enemies of the Jews it was doubtful
whether they would permit a large company of Galilaeans to pass
through them, therefore Jesus despatched the bolder James and John
"Matt. xix. 28-29. <
e
Matt. xx. 2 0 . 4
1
So Matt. xx. 23.
* Dialogus cum Try phone Judceo, beginning of §49. ^
·Luke ix. 51-3. 4
"Hagiga 25a; cf. / . Hagiga I I I 4 ; Ekha R. on "Gadar ba'adΓ; Scholion
to Meg.
11
Taanith III.
Luke xiii. 31-3. ^
" L u k e xiii. 32. ^
to find whether the route were passable. But the Samaritans would
not allow them to pass through and Jesus and his disciples went
"unto the borders of Judaea beyond Jordan," 1 3 i.e., east through the
Jordan Valley. This valley is referred to in the Mishna in conjunc-
tion with "Upper Galilee" and "Lower Galilee," and the "mountain
and plain" in Judsea.14 The party would pass through the forests
near the Jordan, the Arabic "Zur," known as "The Pride of the
Jordan" because of the luxurious growth of white poplars, tamarisks,
large castors, liquorice and mallow trees. 15
Here was no danger : the district was but sparsely populated owing
to the heat prevalent during nine months in the year. People from
the neighbouring towns and villages came to see this "wonder-
worker." They brought children with them that they might be
blessed by the Saint, but the disciples rebuked those who brought
the children : the Messiah must not be troubled. Jesus, however, was
indignant : "Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them
not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you:
Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he
shall in no wise enter therein. And he took them in his arms and
blessed them." 18
Here is a further characteristic, both attractive and significant, to
be added to what has already been told about "the greatest in the
kingdom of heaven." 17 Similarly in the Talmud we find : "Touch
not my Messiahs" 18—i.e. my anointed ones, the children at school.19
We have already referred to a similar Baraita, "Children receive the
presence of the Shekinah." 20
As Jesus drew nearer to Jerusalem the nervousness, already re-
marked in Peter, became greater among the disciples; according to
Mark : "And it came to pass when they were in the way, going up to
Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them, they were amazed ; and
they that followed were afraid." 21 They were afraid of the great
city with its Roman and Jewish authorities, its Scribes, and its aris-
tocratic priests. But Jesus encouraged them and led the way: the
great day of his public manifestation as Messiah before the myriads
of pilgrims, was drawing nearer and nearer.
Jesus crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho where a large crowd
gathered. Luke 22 has preserved an account of the wealthy Zacchaeus,
the chief tax-gatherer (άρχπτελώνης). H e was a man of short stature
u
Mark x.
6-77·^
118
"Mark x. 13-16; Matt. xix. 13-15; Luke xviii. 15-17.
‫מ‬17
See above, p. 304. 4
18
18
M
Ps. ·acv. 15; * I -Chron. xvi. 22.4
19
.A ‫> י ׳‬ .
Shabb. 119 b.A
20
30
Tractate Kallah Rabbati §2 Baraita 8. 4
21
21
Mark x. 32. A
2
*Luke xix. 1-10.^
AT JERICHO 307
and in order to see Jesus climbed u p a sycamore tree. Jesus recog-
nized him (and therefore must have known him previously) and
asked to be allowed to spend the night at his house (most probably
because he hoped to be out of danger as the guest of such a rich
and important person). The onlookers were indignant that Jesus
should choose to be the guest of a sinner (as was every tax-gatherer).
Whereupon Zacchasus vowed repentance and that he would give the
half of his wealth to the poor and restore fourfold what he had
wrongly exacted. Jesus rejoiced, declaring "that he, the tax-
gatherer, was also a son of Abraham."
Characteristic and outstanding though this story is, it is lacking
in Mark and Matthew. On the other hand, all three Synoptists 23
record an episode which serves, in a way, as an introduction to the
revelation of the Messiah. On the road from Jericho to Jerusalem,
Bartimasus υ?δς Τιμαίου, or, in Hebrew, ‫ טימי‬D), a blind beggar who
had been told that "Jesus of Nazareth" was passing (such is the
story as told in Mark and Luke, but in Matthew "Jesus of Nazareth"
is lacking, and there are two beggars, not one), cried out : "Jesus, Son
of David, have mercy on me !" This is the first occasion that Jesus
is hailed by the title "Son of David," the most customary title of the
Messiah. 24 Many of Jesus' circle would have silenced him, for Jesus
was not yet publicly manifested as the Messiah, and excepting the
disciples, all still regarded him as a Pharisaic "Rab" or, at most, a
prophet. But the blind man persisted in crying out, "Son of David,
have mercy on me !"
Jesus, however, approved : this was the prelude to his manifesta-
tion. Therefore he calls the blind man to him and comforts him ; and
this, with the Evangelists, was changed into a miracle : Jesus healed
the man of his blindness. What, however, we may infer from the
story is, that Jesus, having prepared himself to declare himself in
Jerusalem publicly as the Messiah, saw in the blind beggar the fore-
runner of the coming revelation.
" Mark x. 46-52 ; Matt. xx. 29-34 ; Luke xviii. 35-43. •4
* J . Klausner, Die Messianischen Vorstellungen, p. 67; see also pp. 39-44.
IV. I N B E T H P H A G E : J E S U S R E V E A L S H I M S E L F
P U B L I C L Y AS M E S S I A H
Five days before Passover, on the second day of a week of which

the sixth day was the eve of Passover as well as of Sabbath, Jesus
and the Twelve drew near to Jerusalem. H e reached the outermost
quarter of Jerusalem, Bethphage, often referred to in the Talmud
in the expression "Outside the wall of Bethphage," meaning entirely
outside of Jerusalem. 1 Some suppose that Bethphage is the modern
"Et-Tur" on the top of the Mount of Olives, wrongly called " T u r
Malka" by the Jews. 2 More probably it is the extreme district of the
city itself which could only doubtfully be included within the bounds
of Jerusalem.® "Bethphage" is generally translated "House of
Figs," from the verse ‫׳התאנה חנטה פגיה‬, "the fig-tree hath ripened her
figs," 4 and the Mishna passage 5,‫יצטל‬, £‫ בוה‬.‫ פגר‬three names of the
fig in its various degrees of maturity ; 3‫ גה‬indicates an unripe fig as
opposed to the ‫חצ‬1‫ב‬, which is a fig already filled with juice but not
quite ripe, and as opposed to the ‫ צטל‬which has become too ripe ; there
is the further distinction of the ‫ביכורה‬, the firstfruits of which are
ready in June, and the ‫תאנה‬, which ripens in August, and the ‫פגה‬,
the fig as it first appears on the tree. Since, however, the word is
almost always written with an aleph (‫ בית פאגי‬and not ‫ )פגי‬Dalman
holds that ‫ פאגי‬is not connected with6,‫!גיה‬3‫ו‬but is the Latin pagus, a
district ; hence Bethphage would mean "house of the district," i.e. the
boundary house of Jerusalem. 7 Yet despite the occurrence of ‫פגן‬
in the Midrash, we never find, in the entire Talmudic and Midrashic
literature, the word 3‫ אגוס‬or ‫ פאגי‬in the suggested sense. It is prefer-
able, therefore, to follow the older explanation that "Bethphage"
means "the house of figs," a place where the ‫פגים‬, unripe figs (or,
perhaps, "wild figs") were plentiful.
1
Menahoth XI 2; 78b; Pesahim 63b, 91 a: Baba Metzia 90a; Sank. 14b;
Sota 45a; T. Menahoth VIII 18; T. Pesahim VIII 8; Sifre to Numbers,
151 (ed. Friedmann 55a) ; Sifre Zutta, "Naso" §17, ed. Horowitz, p. 245.
See also S. Klein in Schwartz' Jubilee Volume, Vienna, 1917, p. 396 n. 2. 4
*See A. Neubauer, La Géographie du Talmud, Paris, 1868, p. 149. 4
'Against Neubauer see Dalman, op. cit. pp. 215-217; against his view
that Bethphage was outside the wall, see Baba Metzia 99a ("within the wall
of Bethphage") ; T. Menahoth V I I I 18, and Sifre Zutta, I.e. 4
4
B
Song of Songs, ii. 13.‫^־‬
Nidda V 7• <
·Plural ‫ פגים‬,‫ פגיה‬in the Old Testament and ‫ פגים‬in the Mishnah
(Shebiith VII 4 ) - . <
‫ז‬
Dalman, op. cit. 217. 4
308
IN BETHPHAGE 309
It may be that this name induced the Evangelists (or their sources,
the disciples of Jesus) to recount here the miracle of the withered
fig-tree.8 Near Bethphage was the village of Bethany (Beth-Aniya
or Beth-Th'ena), the present El'azariya (in memory of the miracle
of the raising of Lazarus [Eliezer]). In spite of the dissension of
Dalman 9 and Klein 10 (in whose opinion Bethany is Beth-Th'ena,
while the Beth-Hine of T. Shebiith V I I 14, Erubin 28b, Pesahim 53a
is apparently near 'Anin, east of Caesarea) it is probable that Βηθαν(α
is "Beth-Hini" or "Bethoani" (Beth-Aniya), "Beth-Anya," men-
tioned in the Talmud precisely in a place where reference is also made
to "ripe and unripe figs." 11 In any case it is diffcult to agree with
the view that the "booths of the House of Annas" is the Beth-Anya of
the Gospels, though "The booths of the house of Hino" once occurs
for "The Booths of the house of Annas." 12
However this may be, Jesus and his disciples stopped at Beth-
phage; two of them were sent to a village in front to procure an
ass's colt on which no man had yet ridden, such as was befitting the
Messiah (for "on his throne no stranger shall sit"; and the "red
heifer" must also be such as had not borne the yoke).
The point is clear: Jesus was minded to enter Jerusalem as the
Messiah. The poor, persecuted Galilaean "Rab" could not enter the
Holy City, which was ruled over by strangers, in the capacity of
conquerer; he chooses, therefore, to enter it "poor and riding on
an ass," thereby fulfilling the Scripture : 1 3
"Rejoice greatly, Ο daughter of Zion: Shout, Ο daughter of
Jerusalem :
Behold thy king cometh unto thee: He is just and having salvation:
Lowly and riding upon an ass : and upon a colt, the foal of an ass."
The verse is quite in accord with Jesus' mental and social condition :
he had come to Jerusalem as the King-Messiah, and he was a Tzaddiq,
a "just one," for he did not preach war and conquest but repentance
and good works; and he "had salvation"—from his persecutors in
Galilee; and he was "poor" (meek), to all appearances a simple
Galilaean. Hence he did not, like a hero and man of war, ride upon
a horse, but "upon an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an ass."
On the colt being brought, Jesus' many followers used their gar-
ments in place of a saddle (as did the officers of Jehu when they
8
See above, pp. 268 ff. 4
9
Op. cit. 214 η. 4. 4
10
u
In Schwartz' Jubilee Volume, p. 296 n. 2 and p. 398. 4
Hulin 53a; Pesahim 53a; Erubin 28b; T. Shebiith VII 14. For the
variants see Arukh ha-Shalem II 70-71 s.v. "Bethoane," "Beth Aniya";
cf. also J. Ma'aseroth IV 6; Derenbourg, op. cit. pp. 244-246; Klein, M.G.ÏV.J.
1910, 18-22; J.Q.R. New series, II 545. M
u
Baba Metzia 88a (where also fig-trees have previously been referred
t o ) ; J. Peah I 6; Sifre to Deut. 105 (ed. Friedmann 95b). See also Dal-
man, op. cit. 214, η. 4, and on the point as a whole pp. 211-214. 4
"Zech. ix. 9. 4
made him king of Israel). 14 Surrounded by his disciples and fol-
lowers and the many onlookers, Jesus mounted upon the ass. As
they went, they spread garments before him, as before kings, and
many cut down branches of trees (or green grass) and spread them
on the path, and cried before him: "Hosanna! Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord ! Hosanna in the highest !" (The
last two words are quoted by Jerome from the Gospel to the Hebrews
in the form "Osanna barrama," Heb. ‫ )·הושענא ברמה‬According to
Mark they also cried: "Blessed be the kingdom of David our
father;" 15 not "David his father" but "David our father" (i.e., the
father of the children of Israel)—the kingdom of the Messiah.
According to Matthew, they cried: "Hosanna to the Son of
David." 16 Thus the populace, like the beggar on the way from
Jericho, looked upon him as the Messianic king. We shall soon see
that not all the people, nor even the majority, regarded Jesus as the
son of David, and, what is more, even Jesus did not consider it
essential that the Messiah should be of the house of David.
According to Matthew : "When he entered Jerusalem all the city
was stirred, saying, Who is this? And the multitudes said, This is
the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee." 17 Therefore, for
most of the crowd he was neither the Messiah nor the son of David,
but only a Galilsean prophet. But attention was drawn to Jesus.
Owing to the fact that at the Feast of Tabernacles the Jews used
to call out "Hosanna !" when they beat with the willow-boughs and
took up the palm-branches (at certain stages of the popular cere-
monies which mark the festival), the author of the Fourth Gospel 18
adds the further detail that the people met Jesus with palm-branches.
Hence the widespread Christian custom, on the Sunday before Easter,
of carrying palm-branches in warmer countries and, in colder coun-
tries (where no palms are to be found), willows—though this Jewish
custom belongs not to Passover but to Tabernacles. However this
may be, this Monday before Passover was a great event in the life
of Jesus: there occurred near Jerusalem, almost at its gates, some-
thing which compelled attention. Before crowds of people, at the
gates of the Holy City, Jerusalem, Jesus publicly revealed himself
as the Messiah. All was now in readiness for proclaiming his Mes-
siahship within Jerusalem itself.
M
2 Kings ix. 13. 4 " M a t t . xxi. io-ll. 4
" M a r k xi. 10.4 " J o h n xii. 1 3 . ^
‫ ״‬Matt. xxi. 9· 4
SIXTH BOOK
JESUS IN JERUSALEM
I. T H E CLEANSING O F T H E TEMPLE
Jesus, at last, entered Jerusalem itself—probably after midday.

Luke tells us that when Jesus "drew near and beheld the city he
wept over it" and over the bitter fate that was to befall it. 1 This
was certainly not his first visit to Jerusalem. Although the religious
duty, "three time? a year shall every male appear [in Jerusalem]," 2
was not scrupulously observed, it is difficult to suppose that so ortho-
dox a Galilaean as Jesus had not once fulfilled the duty before he was
thirty years of age. Yet notwithstanding what is recorded to the
contrary in Luke and the Fourth Gospel, Jesus had never before
visited Jerusalem with any degree of display, or surrounded by
disciples and followers. It may well be that the wonderful vision
of the Holy City, beloved by every Jew, as it suddenly appeared to
his sight among the surrounding, imposing mountains, brought tears
to his eyes.
H e went at once to the Temple. This was the first duty of every
Jew, from no matter what country, when he came to the Feast of
the Passover; we have a parallel in the visit to the "Wailing Wall"
at the present day. He watched what went on in the Temple, and he
did this, as we shall shortly see, in no spirit of mere curiosity. "When
evening drew nigh he went with the Twelve to Bethany." 3 He felt
that both he and his disciples would incur danger by spending the
night in Jerusalem. H e was aware that he had many enemies and
that it was perilous for one who had quarrelled with the Pharisees
and proclaimed himself Messiah to stay for the night in a great city
like Jerusalem, the centre of Roman and Jewish authority ; therefore
throughout his visit, and until the "Last Supper," he followed the
programme of his first day: "every day he was teaching in the
Temple ; and every night he went out and lodged in the mount that
is called the Mount of Olives." 4
According to Matthew and Mark he stayed in Bethany at the
house of Simon the Leper. It is somewhat strange that Jesus should
1
L u k e xix. 41-44.
2
E x . xxiii. 17‫ ־‬Deut. xvi. 16. Cf. Hagiga I
8
Mark xi. 11. 4‫־‬
4
Luke xxi. 37; this supports Neubauer's theory that "Beth-Anya" was
on the Mount of Olives, though Luke's account may not be absolutely exact. ^
311
sit at the same table as a leper, and that a leper should live in an
inhabited village like Bethany, and not "without the camp." H . P.
Chajes 5 may be correct in surmising that the original Hebrew Gospel
spoke of ‫ ע&מעוז הצנוע‬, "Simon the Lowly" (perhaps an Essene),
and that this was turned into ‫ שמעו! הצרוע‬, "Simon the Leper."
While Jesus sat at meat, there came in a woman bearing a cruse of
spikenard (or, perhaps, rose-water, assuming an original ‫מי ורדים‬
or ‫ שמז ורד‬in Hebrew instead of ‫נרדים‬. ‫)מי‬, pure and precious ; this
she poured over his head. Those sitting by were indignant and
rebuked the woman: the valuable scent was worth three hundred
dinars which might have been distributed among the poor ; but Jesus
said, "Suffer her to do so ! she hath wrought a good work on me ;
for ye have the poor always with you and whensoever ye will ye
can do them good : but me ye have not always" (the words, "she hath
anointed my body a forehand for the burying," must be a later addi-
tion, since they do not fit in well with the reference to the poor).
The messianic king must be "anointed"(!WD) in fact. Besides,
Jesus was, after all, a Jew, and did not always abstain from the world
and its joys. Already we have seen him oppose fasting since he
regarded himself as the bridegroom and his followers as the "children
of the bridechamber." 6
Luke, who omits this episode, tells another story of a woman.
When Jesus was at meat in the house of "Simon the Pharisee" (here
no mention is made of the "leper"—the original "Simon the Essene"
is become a Pharisee, since neither the Talmud nor the Gospels
mention the Essenes as a special sect), a "woman that was a sinner,"
i.e., a harlot, came and anointed his feet with myrrh, moistened his
feet with her tears, dried them with her hair and kissed them. And
Jesus told her that her many sins were forgiven "because she loved
m u c h " 7 — a story of moving pathos and precious beauty. Yet the
uncourteous remarks of Jesus to his host, Simon,8 lead us to suppose
that we have here only a parable that has been converted into an
actual event.
The night before the third day of the week was spent in Bethany,
and on the third day they went to Jerusalem, where Jesus did a great
deed, the greatest public deed which he performed during his lifetime.
When he determined to manifest himself as the Messiah he must have
had some plan of action. There is no reason to suppose that, like
contemporary false Messiahs, he wished to arouse a revolt against
Rome. Had such been the case he would have met the same fate as
they, and with his execution by the Romans his ideal would have
perished. Yet we cannot suppose that he expected to be recognized
as Messiah without achieving something great. Most Christian
scholars conclude that Jesus deliberately went up to Jerusalem to die,
and that this premeditated death was "his greatest work."
B
Markus-Studien, pp. 7AS4 ‫׳‬ *Luke vii. 36-59·^
6 8
P. 274. 4 Luke vii. 44-46. ^
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 313
This, however, is quite improbable. His prayer in Gethsemane
and the behaviour of his disciples at his arrest and crucifixion are
proof positive that the calamity was not expected. What form, then,
did Jesus imagine that popular recognition of his claims would take,
and how was the kingdom of heaven to be realized through him?
There is but one answer to this fundamental problem. In Jerusa-
lem, the greatest and most holy city of his people, and at the feast
of Passover, the "Day of Redemption," "the Salvation of the soul"
(see the "Blessing of R. Akiba," Pesahim X 6), when Jewish pil-
grims from all the corners of the earth flocked to Jerusalem—there
and then Jesus would proclaim his call to repentance and good works,
announcing that the Messiah was come . . . and that he was the
Messiah, and that the forerunner, Elijah, had already come in the
person of John the Baptist. His words were to produce the requisite
effect : all people would repent. Then would come difficult times, the
days of "the pangs of the Messiah," which would befall Messiah and
people alike. But God would bring to pass signs and wonders : Rome
would be overthrown "and that without hands," 9 by help from on
high; and Jesus should be the "Son of man," "the Son of man coming
with the clouds of heaven," who was to sit on the right hand of God,
and, with his twelve disciples, judge the twelve tribes of Israel.
With our Western, twentieth-century education it is hard for us
to grasp and believe in such an idea; but for Jesus, a son of the
Orient, nineteen hundred years ago, for Jesus the visionary and
steadfast believer in God, the idea was no more impossible of belief
than it was for the author of the Book of Daniel or the Book of
Enoch.
Still, to bring men to repentance, to draw all eyes to the Messiah
and to the kingdom of heaven, which was bound up with the mani-
festation of the Messiah, Jesus must achieve some great deed, some
great public deed, performed with the utmost display and gaining
the utmost renown. It must be a public-religious deed ; it might not
be a political action since Jesus was neither willing nor competent to
declare war against Rome : he had seen the fate of John the Baptist
and the end of the many political rebels. And what public-religious
deed could better secure publicity than some great deed in the Temple,
the most sacred of places, which now, in the days immediately before
the Passover, was crammed with Jews from every part of the world?
Jesus resolves, therefore, to purify the Temple. There were
things which called for such purifying. Besides the "Holy of
Holies," only the inner courts into which none but the priests and
Levites might enter, were actually "holy ;" the outer courts, the halls
and chambers and galleries, were accessible to all Jews. So orthodox
a Christian scholar as Dalman is forced to admit that "there is no-
where any mention that the priests trafficked with sacrificial ani-
"Dan. ii. 34; I V Esdras xiii. 2-13. See Klausner, Ha-Ra'yon• ha-Meshihi
b'Yisrael, Pt. II (Jerusalem, 1921), p. 65. •4
mais." 10 The solemn warnings against entering even the "Temple-
Mount with sticks or bags or dusty feet" and against spitting there, 11
to which the Tosefta adds a warning against entering "with coins tied
up in handkerchiefs" 12 (the Jerusalem Talmud says "our Rabbis
took off their shoes under the outer gate of the Temple-Mount") 13
—all this excludes any idea that the Pharisees permitted any traf-
ficking in animals or money-changing in the Temple or even in the
outer courts (since, according to the Tosefta, it was forbidden to
bring money even within the Temple-Mount).
The fact is that, according to the Talmud,14 the booths for the
sale of pigeons and doves were not in the Temple at all, but in "the
hill of anointing," i.e., the Mount of Olives.15 But in Jesus' time the
Sadducee-Bcethuseans controlled the Temple, and they may not
have treated the outer court as too holy to permit of the sale of doves
and pigeons or of money-changing for the purchase of seals for the
various Temple offerings ; 1 6 and such may have been allowed in the
Herodian basilica to the south of the outer court, the site of the
present Mosque el-Aksa.
The price of doves varied from time to time as is apparent from
a passage in the Mishna17 describing how Rabban Shimeon ben
Gamaliel, soon after the time of Jesus, protested against the dearness
of the kinim (bird offerings). The Romans allowed only small
copper coins to be minted in Palestine and the silver and gold coins
of the time were stamped with the figure of the Emperor, making
their use impossible in the Temple ; and Jewish pilgrims from foreign
parts brought all manner of coinage. For these two reasons, money-
changers were necessary near the Temple. It was inevitable. Even
to this day there are Jews who sell "Aliyoth" (the privilege of reading
the blessings before and after the reading of the Law or the Prophets
in the synagogues), and Christians who‫ ׳‬sell candles in their churches ;
though such behaviour arouses indignation in the truly devout.
The people of Jerusalem must have accustomed themselves to
the Temple trading: townsfolk do not, as a rule, excite themselves
over such matters. But for those coming from outlying towns and
villages it was a subject for indignation: and Jesus, above all, was
provoked to anger. He recalled Jeremiah's bitter reproach : "Is this
10
Dalman, op. cit. 236-7. 4
11
Berachoth IX 5.4
13
T. Ber. VII 19. <4
‫״‬U / . Pes. V I I 11 ( 3 5 b ) . <
14
J. Taan. I V 8. M
Derenbourg, op. cit. II 244-6, η. 8, suggests that these are the "booths
of the house of Annas" mentioned previously (p. 309). H e supposes that it
was the bridge over the Kidron which connected the Temple with the Mount
of Anointing which was considered within the Temple bounds, since the
Red Heifer was burnt there (Para I I I 6; Midd. II 4 ) ; there were "four
booths of dealers in Taharoth"—pigeons and doves ( / . Taan. I V 8).·^
M
Dalman, op. cit., I.e. 4
‫ ״‬Kerithoth I 7‫< ׳‬
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 315
house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your
eyes ?" 18
On the third day, in the morning, Jesus and his disciples and many
followers, came to Jerusalem; they entered the Temple and there
Jesus, with the help of his followers and some of the people, drove
out the traders from the Temple-Mount, threw down the tables of
the money-changers (from these "tables" comes the Talmudic ‫שלחני‬
and the Greek τραπεζίτης, as the title of the money-changers), and
the seats of those who sold doves, and "suffered no man to carry any
vessel through the Temple." 19
In other words, he forbade what the Mishna also forbade : "they
may not make it (the Temple) a short-cut." 20 Here, too, and here
most of all, do we miss Jesus "the gentle," "the meek," which Chris-
tianity has endeavoured to portray. What Jesus does he does by
sheer force; the Fourth Gospel records that, on this occasion, he
wielded a "scourge of cords." 21 In contradiction to his familiar
law 2 2 which Tolstoy made the foundation of his teaching, Jesus
"resisted evil" in active and violent fashion. He taught the people
that hitherto the Temple had suffered profanation : "Is it not written,
My house shall be called the house of prayer for all people? but ye
have made it a den of thieves." 23
Both the act and the sentiment gained the approbation of the
people; but the priests were enraged. The Levitic "porters," the
Temple attendants under the charge of the "Segens" (lieutenants)
headed by the "Segen" of the Priests (an official who ranked close
to the High Priest) 24 —these dared offer no resistance owing to the
crowd present; even the Roman garrison stationed in the "Baris,"
the Tower of Antonius (or rather in the Palace of Herod, the tower
of Phasael), was unable to interfere. The struggle lasted but a few
minutes. There must have been many such outbursts in the stormy
days preceding the annual celebration of Passover: with the myriads
of pilgrims it was impossible to avoid quarrels and even acts of
violence; we can well understand why the Roman Procurator used
to come up from Caesarea to Jerusalem especially to be present for
the feast of the Passover.
The act of Jesus drew popular notice and also the notice of the
priests and the Scribes. They could not, however, examine into the
matter until evening. But Jesus again, as was his custom, "went forth
out of the city" 25 —presumably to Bethany—out of reach of those
" J e r . vii. 11. 4
" M a r k xi. 15-16. A
"Berachoth IX 8; T. Berachoth V I I 19 (ed. Zuckermandel, p. 17, n. to
line 2). 4
21
John ii. 15. <
32
Matt. v. 39. <
* 3 Mark xi. 17. À
**For details, see Schürer, op. cit. I I 4 , 320-322, 328-331. ^
‫ע‬
Mark xi. 19. •4
in authority. Jesus and his disciples were satisfied with what they
had accomplished in, or near, the Temple : they had aroused popular
indignation against their leaders, they had won popular approval
and created an impression.
II. THE DISPUTES IN THE TEMPLE-COURT
The next day Jesus and his disciples returned to Jerusalem and,
as usual, entered the Temple. The "chief priests" (i.e., the "Segens,"
or those "on duty") and scribes and elders turned and asked him;
by what authority he had so acted on the previous day. Jesus an-
swered : By the same authority with which John the Baptist acted,
viz. the authority of the people who followed him. Then, in a parable
closely modelled on Isaiah's, " I will sing to my beloved a song of my
love touching his vineyard" 1 (which served as a common model for
the parables of the Pharisees), Jesus explained that, as Messiah, what
he did he did by right, and that it was forbidden to kill him.
Such is the main point of the parable which the Evangelists have
modified in their own fashion : otherwise there would be no point in
the two verses which follow.2 Jesus goes on to explain : as for your
marvelling that the Messiah should come in the person of a simple
Galilaean carpenter-builder, "have ye not read in the Scriptures : The
stone which the builders refused is become the headstone in the
corner; this was from the Lord and it is marvellous in our eyes." 3
Priests and scribes were indignant at the parable and at the
importance which the Galilaean carpenter was attributing to himself.
They were minded to arrest him, but, fearing the people, left him
alone and went their way. His remarks left it clear that he had set
himself up to be the Messiah. If so—he was Israel's saviour from
slavery to the Romans and "Edomites." This was a matter affecting
not only the Pharisees, but the "Herodians," whom we saw, on an
earlier occasion, combining with the Pharisees where their authority
was affected.
Since they might not take hold of him and arrest him, the two
parties endeavoured, at least, to "take hold of him" in his
speech (Vva αύτδν άγρεύσωσι λόγφ), and so damage his popularity or
have him destroyed as a rebel and conspirator. The mass of people
thirsted for redemption, for freedom from the bonds of the Roman
Emperor. If Jesus was the Messiah he must needs be the enemy
of the Emperor. So they turn to him quietly, respecting his amour
propre. So far he had proved that he feared nothing, neither the
Temple authorities when he drove out the money-changers and the
traffickers, nor the most honoured of the nation when he attacked
1
Isa.
v. 1-7. 4
a
Cf.
Mark xii. 1-11. A
3
Mark xii. 1-10; cf. Ps. cxviii. 21-22.
317
the Scribes and Pharisees; therefore let him now declare, without
any fear or respect of persons, whether they should pay tribute to
Caesar.
Jesus saw that it would be dangerous to say that tribute should
not be paid : he would have been promptly arrested as a rebel. H e
asks them to bring him a dinar. The dinar was a Roman silver coin,
stamped with the figure of Caesar and inscribed with Latin characters
telling the name of the Emperor.
Jesus asks: "Whose image and superscription are these?"
They answer : "Caesar's."
So Jesus replies : "Give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,
and unto God the things which are God's."
It was a clever rejoinder: he did not oppose the payment of
tribute and so was no rebel against the Government; and he dis-
tinguished "the things which are Caesar's" from "the things which
are God's," thereby hinting that, for him, the foreign Emperor was
the antithesis of God.
But the answer convinced the people that Jesus was not thei·
redeemer, and that he was not come to free them from the Roman ·
Edomite yoke. He thus lost some of his popularity. All that the
Gospels say is that his examiners "were amazed at him." 4 Yet when
we notice that the people supported him when he entered Jerusalem
as the Messiah and purified the Temple, but did nothing to save
him three days later when he was crucified—the change is hard to
explain unless we assume that his answer about the tribute money
proved to the people that not from this Galilaean Messiah could they
hope for national freedom and political redemption.
Thus in Jerusalem, too, the position of Jesus grew worse: the
majority of the people were against him, the Pharisees opposed him
and the Herodians were his enemies. Only the Sadducees remained :
an enemy of the Pharisees might be their friend. The messianic
belief was, with Jesus as well as the Pharisees, bound up with the
belief in the resurrection from the dead, which the Sadducees denied.
The Sadducees turn, therefore, to Jesus with the riddle (which seems
to have been a commonplace at the time and intended as a gibe
against the Pharisees) : "If a man die without children, his eldest
brother must marry the widow. Now a man died who had seven
brothers. The eldest surviving brother first married the widow, but
he died without issue ; then the next brother married her and he, too,
died childless. The same happened to the third and to all the other
brothers. When all the brothers come to‫ ׳‬life again at the resurrection
of the dead, whose wife will she be? One must admit in answer that
the resurrection of the dead is mere imagination." Jesus, however,
gives the Sadducees the answer which any Pharisee would have given :
"Men, when they rise from the dead, neither marry nor are given
4,
Mark xii. 17; Matt. xxii. 22; Luke xx. 25. A
THE DISPUTES IN T H E TEMPLE-COURT 319
in marriage, but are as the angels of God." 5 We find the same view
in the Talmud: "The world to come consists not in eating and drink-
ing, but the righteous sit with crowns on their heads and enjoy the
brightness of the Shekinah," 6 "like the ministering angels." 7
And Jesus continues with a most typical Pharisaic exposition : "God
spake to Moses from the bush, saying, I am the God of Abraham and
the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the
dead but the God of the living ; therefore there must be a resurrection
of the dead in the world to come by which resurrection Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob shall come to life." 8
The Talmud is full of this type of Scriptural support, and we find
one Tanna, with almost the same "exposition," proving that the resur-
rection of the dead is taught in the Law : "It is written, 'And I also
kept my covenant with them (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) to give
them the land of Canaan ; 9 " ‫י‬ it says not "to you" but "to them ;"
therefore we must deduce the resurrection of the dead from the
L a w 1 0 —i.e. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob shall come to life again and
to them shall be given the land of Canaan in the world to come.
How far, even to the last, Jesus remained a true Pharisaic Jew is
to be seen from another episode. When one of the Scribes put the
question, "Which is the first of all the commandments ?" Jesus an-
swered, "Hear, Ο Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord, is one, and
thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul and with all thy might:" that is the first commandment, and
the second is like unto it, namely, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself." The Scribe supports Jesus : "Rabbi, thou hast well said,
for God is one and there is none beside him, and to love him with
all the heart ("and with all the mind" is an addition not in the
Old Testament) and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour
as himself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacri-
fices." And Jesus turns to him with the remark, "Thou art not far
from the kingdom of God." 11
Jesus is thus still a Pharisee, and he finds himself in agreement
with a Scribe. Still more, the answer of Jesus is so like that of
Hillel to would-be proselytes that it is difficult to suppose that only
once and only casually did Jesus speak well of the Pharisees. The
fact is that Jesus, more than once, stood on the side of the Pharisees,
but the Evangelists (who flourished during the struggle between
Christianity and Pharisaic Judaism) only preserved isolated passages
in favour of the Pharisees, and (according to Chwolsohn) often
' Mark xii. 25. •4
•Berachoth 17a; Kallah Rabbati II. 4
*This addition is found in Aboth dfk. Nathan, I 8 (ed. Schechter, vers.
I end of p. 3a). 4
" Mark xii. 26-7. 4
•10Ex. vi. 4. 4
u
Sank. 90b. 4
Mark xii. 28-34. 4
changed "Scribes and Sadducees" to "Scribes and Pharisees," be-
cause, by the time of writing, the Sadducees were no longer important.
The Gospels preserve yet another typical Pharisaic exposition
given by Jesus during his visit to Jerusalem—an exposition which
has a great value.
Jesus had already declared himself Messiah. But the Messiah
was to be the Son of David, whereas Jesus was a Galilsean and the
son of Joseph the carpenter! How could he be Messiah?
To evade this serious difficulty Jesus must find a passage of
Scripture according to which the Messiah need not necessarily be the
Son of David ; and like an expert Pharisee he finds it. In the Psalter
is "A Psalm of David" which Jesus, like every Jew of the time,
accepted without question as written by David and referring to the
Messiah. The Psalm runs: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on
my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool." Jesus asks :
If David himself calleth him (the Messiah) "Lord," how then can
he be his son? 1 2 The Messiah need not, therefore, be the son of
David, and may be the son of Joseph the Galilaean, from the out-of-
the-way village of Nazareth.
That the Pharisees admitted the principle that the Messiah need
not be the son of David only (though "Son of David" has come to
be the regular title of the Messiah in the Talmud) is obvious from
the fact that Bar Kokhbah was accepted as Messiah by R. Akiba, in
spite of the fact that it is nowhere claimed for Bar Kokhbah that he
was of the house of David. What, however, arouses surprise is that,
while Mark quotes the exposition as proof that Jesus need not be of
the house of David, Matthew and Luke also quote it,13 although they
adduce the genealogy of Jesus, tracing his descent from the house of
David through his father Joseph, who was not his father at all,
since, according to them, he was born of the Holy Spirit. Thus
naïve were the ancients with their traditions. Modern students can
hardly trust to their writings for the same accuracy and consistency
called for in modern historical writings.
Although in all these disputes Jesus had argued wholly like a
Pharisee he now turns and attacks the Pharisees in the strongest
fashion. This fact in itself is not a cause for surprise. When a
man comes to attack others of his own nation he invariably does so
in the most violent terms: "Ah! sinful nation, a people laden with
" M a r k xii. 35-37. The Midrash (Tanhuma, Ps. 18, end of 29, ed. Buber,
p. 79) also gives a messianic interpretation of Ps. ex. : "In the time to come
God will seat the King-Messiah on his right hand, as it is written, The
Lord said to my Lord, Sit on my right hand (Ps. ex. 1) ; and Abraham
on his left hand. And the face of Abraham darkened and he said, Shall
one of my progeny sit on the right hand and I on the left? But God
comforted him, saying, Thy progeny will be on my right hand, and I will
be on thy right hand (so to speak), as it is written , The Lord on thy right
h a n d ‫( ' ״‬Ps. ex. 5).Λ
" M a t t . xxii. 41-47; Luke xx. 41-44. 4
THE DISPUTES IN THE TEMPLE-COURT 321
iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that deal corruptly, they have
forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel"—thus
does Isaiah (i. 4) harangue the whole nation because part of them
have done wrong. Similarly, when a member of a sect finds fault
with others of his sect his abuse knows no limit and he is looked upon
by the rest as the worst enemy of the sect. And such men, however
good their intentions, certainly wrong their nation or sect by their
generalizations.
And so it was with Jesus and the Pharisees. The powerful
arraignment of Matthew xxiii is no more than a collection of isolated
sayings gathered together in the same way as the "Sermon on the
Mount" (Matt, v-vii) ; but Mark and Luke also tell how Jesus bitterly
attacked the Pharisees in Jerusalem. He warned the people against
"the Scribes who love to go about in long 'shawls' (tallithoth),
to receive salutations in the market-places, to occupy the chief seats
in the synagogues and sit in the chief seats at feasts ; who swallow
up widow's houses and make long prayers and let themselves be
seen of all men." 1 4
The collected denunciatory passages in Matthew contain much
that is piercing and cutting in the extreme: "blind leaders of the
blind;" "those which strain out the gnat and swallow the camel;"
"ye cleanse the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are
full of extortion and excess ;" "ye are like unto whited sepulchres,15
which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are full of dead
men's bones and of all uncleanness." 16
Much of this criticism was certainly justified. "The cleansing
of vessels was a matter more serious than the shedding of blood" 1 7
(though this remark is aimed by the Tanna, R. Zadoq, in criticism of
specific acts of certain priests in connexion with an occurrence in
R. Zadoq's presence) ; and the Elder Shammai took vast pains over
the question of vetches in the Second Tithe. 18 The Talmud, also,
finds cause for blame in "the seven kinds of Pharisees," and speaks
of "the plague of Pharisees . . . who advise orphans to deprive the
widow of her maintenance." 19 Yet Jesus (or the Gospels) errs by
unfair generalization, by attributing to all Pharisees the defects of
the few. Many of the Pharisees and their leaders acted exactly in
accordance with Jesus' views : "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees,
14
Mark xii. 38-40; Luke xx. 45-47. Λ
" T h e opposite of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai's remark, praising R.
Eliezer ben Hyrcanus by calling him "a whitened well" ( ‫ »)בור ס ו ד‬Aboth
II 8. <
19
Matt, xxiii. 24-28. 4
" Yoma 23a; T. Yotn Kippur I 12; but cf. / . Yoma I I end of 2 (where
"in blame" is expressly stated) and Sifre to Numbers, §161 ed. Friedmann
626 ed. Horowitz, p. 222. 4
" Ma'aser Sheni II 4; Eduyoth I 8; cf. Eduyoth V 3, recording a dis-
pute between the Shammaites and the Hillelites on the tithing of black
cummin. 4
‫ ״‬/ . Sota I I I 4. See above, pp, 213 if.4
hypocrites, for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin and leave undone
the weightier matters of the Law, judgment and mercy and faith:
but these ye ought to have done and not to have left the other
undone ." 20 The entire Pharisaic teaching was to instil the observ-
ance of the laws affecting the relations between God and man, while
not leaving undone those laws affecting the relations between man
and man. Jesus, however, by his generalizations and abuse, pro-
voked the indignation of the Pharisees and their followers.
Pharisees and Sadducees alike resented Jesus' attitude towards
the Temple. One of his disciples, unused to such splendour, grew
enthusiastic at the sight of the huge, massive stones of the Temple,
the surviving fragments of which still astonish people to this day;
and said to Jesus, "Master, behold what manner of stones and what
manner of buildings !" But Jesus answered, "Seest thou these great
buildings ? there shall not be left here one stone upon another, which
shall not be thrown down." 21
To the same time may be attributed the saying, " I will pull down
this temple, the work of men's hands, and after three days I will
build another temple, not the work of men's hands." 22 According
to Mark 23 this was the false evidence alleged against Jesus ; according
to the Fourth Gospel 24 Jesus uttered the remark with a spiritual
significance at the time of the cleansing of the Temple; and in the
Acts of the Apostles Stephen is accused of saying, "Jesus of Nazareth
shall destroy this place (the Temple)." 25
As Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, facing the Temple, with
Peter, James and John, the three leading and most favoured disciples,
they asked, "When shall these things be?" He gives in reply a de-
scription of "the pangs of the Messiah" which he (or the author of
the Gospel) calls "the beginning of woes" (άρχαΐ ώδίνων). The
description is very like that of the "pangs of the Messiah" in various
Talmudic Baraitas—wars and rumours- of wars (άκοάς πολέμων),
nation rising against nation and kingdom against kingdom, earth-
quakes, famines and tumults. 26 A Talmudic Baraita speaking of
"the week when the Son of David comes" 27 speaks also of famines,
wars and "noises" (‫קואלה‬, rumours of wars).
Jesus next speaks of the afflictions which will befall those who
believe in the Messiah, and the entire generation of "the days of
the Messiah." 28 The majority of scholars incline to the opinion that
20
Matt, xxiii. 23. Λ
31
Mark xiii. 2. 4
23
Mark xiv. 58. 4
33
Mark xiii. 5 7 . ^
84
35
John ii. 19. 4
Acts vi. 14, and cf. Husband, op. cit. 190-3, who considers the charge
justified. •4
M
Mark xiii. 3-8. 4
37
Sank. 97a; Derek Eretz Zutta, beginning of X. 4
28
Mark xiii. 9-27. 4
THE DISPUTES IN THE TEMPLE-COURT 323
these nineteen verses are an apocalyptic document not earlier than the
Destruction of the Temple ; this apocalyptic character is plainly shown
by the words, "Let him that readeth understand." 29 The section
contains many details derived from the Old Testament and from the
apocryphal writings concerning the "pangs of the Messiah"—"the sun
shall be darkened and the moon shall not give forth its light, the stars
shall fall from their courses and the hosts of heaven shall totter,"
"brother shall betray brother to death, and the father his son, and
children shall rise against their parents ;" and in the end "God shall
gather together his chosen from the four winds, from the ends of
earth to the ends of the heavens."
This apocalypse also recalls the Mishna (or, rather, the Baraita)
at the close of Sota, about the "footsteps of the Messiah." 30 Another
interesting point is that, in addition to clear descriptions of the perse-
cutions which Jesus' disciples suffered and the statement that the
Gospel must first be preached "to all nations," 31 there are also very
obvious traces of primitive Judaistic Christianity ( Nazarenism ).
Reference is made to "the flight of the men of Juclsea to the moun-
tains" (as happened to the Nazarenes at the time of the Destruction,
when they fled to Pella, beyond Jordan, a city of the Decapolis),
and when Mark writes, "Only pray that your flight be not in the
winter," 32 Matthew adds, "nor on the Sabbath." 33 This shows that
though the "Apocalypse" is much later than Jesus, it is still Nazarene,
i.e., Jewish Christian. It was impossible in Jesus' mouth : Jesus only
foresaw the "pangs of the Messiah" without which there could be
no "Days of the Messiah," and he saw the kingdom of heaven "nigh,
even at the doors," and that "this generation should not pass away
till all these things come to pass ;" "but of the time of the coming
of that day and that hour, no man knoweth, not even the angels of
heaven, nor the son (i.e., the Son of man), but only the Father." The
disciples must, therefore, prepare themselves to meet the great day,
the day of redemption, which was to come, as the Talmud also de-
clares, "without the knowledge of men." 34
M
Mark xiii. 14. A
®0For a detailed treatment see Klausner, Ha-Ra'yon ha-Meshihi be'Yisrael,
pts. I and II, Die Messianischen Vorstellungen, pp. 47-52. 4
81
Mark xiii. 9-13. A
82
83
Mark xiii. 18. ^
Matt. xxiv. 20.
84
Sank. 97a. A
III. JUDAS ISCARIOT: THE LAST SUPPER
The self same day, the fourth day of the week ("two days before
the feast of Passover, and the feast of unleavened bread") 1 the
Sadducees and "chief priests" and scribes took council "how they
might take him with subtilty, and kill him : for they said, Not during
the feast, lest haply there shall be a tumult of the people." So, at
least, records Mark. 2 Therefore they postponed the arrest of Jesus
until after the feast. But meanwhile something happened which
hastened Jesus' arrest and death.
Among the Twelve, otherwise all Galilaeans, was one from Judaea,
from the town of Kriyoth. 3 This disciple, Judas Iscariot, was at first
as devoted a follower of Jesus as the best of the disciples since he
was chosen to be one of the twelve Apostles who should preach the
kingdom of heaven. Gradually his enthusiasm cooled and he began
to look askance at his master's words and deeds.
H e was gradually convinced that Jesus was not always successful
in healing the sick; that Jesus feared his enemies and persecutors,
and sought to escape and evade them ; that there were marked con-
traductions in Jesus' teaching. One time he taught the observance of
the Law in its minutest detail, ordaining the offering of sacri-
fices and submitting to priestly examination, and so forth; while at
other times he permitted forbidden foods, paid little respect to
Sabbath observance and the washing of hands, and hinted that "the
new wine must be put in new bottles." One time he deferred to
public opinion and paid the Temple half-shekel, and refused to coun-
tenance or discountenance the payment of tribute to Caesar; while
another time he inveighs against the Temple and the best of the nation
and the nation's rulers. One time he says, "Whosoever is not against
us is for us," and another time, "Every one who is not with me is
against me." One time he ordains, "Strive not against evil," while
another time he himself rises up against the traffickers and money-
changers in the Temple and takes the law into his own hands. One
time he says that a man must give all his goods to the poor, and
another time he allows himself to be anointed with oil of myrrh,
worth three hundred dinars.
What was more, this "Messiah" neither would nor could deliver
his nation, yet he arrogated to himself the rôle of "the Son of man
coming with the clouds of heaven," asserting that he should sit at
the right hand of God in the Day of Judgment, daring to say of the
1
Mark xiv. I. 4 * See above, p. 285. 4‫־‬
3
Mark xiv. 1-2.
324
JUDAS ISCARIOT 325
Temple, the most sacred place in the world, that not one stone of it
should remain upon another and, actually, that he would destroy it
and in its place raise up another a f t e r three days !
Judas Iscariot became convinced that here was a false Messiah
or a false prophet, erring and making to err, a beguiler and one who
led astray, one whom the Law commanded to be killed, one to whom
the Law forbade pity or compassion or forgiveness. Till such time
as Jesus divulged his messianic claims to the disciples at Caesarea
Philippi, Judas had not thought to find in Jesus more than might be
found in any Pharisaic Rabbi or, at the most, in a Jewish prophet.
But after this revelation to the disciples at Caesarea, and to the entire
people at Jerusalem, Judas expected that in the Holy City, the centre
of the religion and the race, Jesus would demonstrate his claims by
mighty works, that he would destroy the Romans and bring the
Pharisees and Sadducees to naught ; then all would acknowledge his
messianic claims and all would see him in his pomp and majesty as
the "final saviour."
But what, in fact, did Judas see? No miracles (Matthew alone 4
tells how Jesus healed the blind and lame in the Temple, matters
unknown to Mark), no mighty deeds, no one is subdued by him,
the mighty Messiah escapes nightly to Bethany; except for "bold"
remarks against the tradition of the elders and vain arrogance, Jesus
reveals no plan by which he will effect the redemption. Was it not,
then, a "religious duty" to deliver up such a "deceiver" to the gov-
eminent and so fulfil the law : Thou shalt exterminate the evil from
thy midst? 5
This must have been Judas Iscariot's train of reasoning. The
Gospels all say that he received payment for betraying his lord and
Messiah ; Matthew tells the exact amount, 6 "thirty pieces of silver"—
a number obviously derived from the passage in Zechariah. 7 Yet it
is hard to think that one who came to Jesus from afar and who
followed him closely and proved himself of such merit that Jesus
made him a leading disciple and sent him to preach the kingdom of
heaven—that such a one as this could sell his master for gain. This
could not have been the psychological cause for his action; rather
was it the desperation which Judas endured because of his very prox-
imity to Jesus and his knowledge of the human frailties of Jesus.
Judas was an educated Judaean with a keen intellect but a cold
and calculating heart, accustomed to criticise and scrutinise; his
knowledge of the frailties blinded him to the many virtues of Jesus,
virtues which at first had so impressed him and aroused his enthusi-
asm. It was otherwise with the other disciples, all alike uneducated
Galilasans, dull of intellect but warm-hearted; for them the virtues
covered up all the defects, and till the hour of danger they remained
faithful to their master, and when the short interval of doubt was
4
Matt. xxi. 14. •4 ·Matt.
1
xxvi. 15.4
B
Deut. xiii. 2-12.^ Zech. xi. 12-13. 4
past they returned to his holy memory and so cherished the knowledge
of his words and deeds that they survive to this day.
On the fifth day of the week (or in Mark's words, "on the first
day of unleavened bread when they sacrificed the Passover") 8 it
was necessary to prepare for the Passover. The first day of the feast
of unleavened bread (15th Nisan) fell that year (30 C.E.) on the
Sabbath, therefore the Feast of Passover (14th Nisan) fell on the
eve of the Sabbath. Astronomical calculations make the 15th of
Nisan fall on a Friday in the year 30, and it was not till the year
33 that the 14th fell on a Friday. But we have no certain knowl-
edge of the arrangement of the years among the Jews in Jesus' time,
during the time when there was Bœthusean-Sadducaean control of
the Temple. An error of a day was easily possible before the Jews
finally fixed the system of calculating the New Moon.
According to the ruling which was newly promulgated by the
Pharisees in Hillel's time, the Passover was regarded as a public
sacrifice ; if, therefore, the 15th of Nisan fell on a Sabbath and the
14th on the eve of Sabbath, the Passover was sacrificed on the eve
of Sabbath (the 14th of Nisan) at the moment "between the two
days" (‫)בין הערבים‬,even if this profaned the Sabbath; they used to
argue that, like every public sacrifice, "the Passover abrogates the
Sabbath rules." According, however, to an earlier ruling, which held
good among the priestly party almost to the close of the period of
the Second Temple, the Passover was regarded as a private sacrifice
and one which might not abrogate the Sabbath rules; if, there-
fore, the 14th of Nisan fell on the eve of Sabbath, they sacrifiecd
on the 13th instead of the 14th, so as not to profane the Sabbath
(since they must sacrifice9,‫" ביןהערבים‬in the evening at the moment
of sunset.") 10 Hence Jesus and his disciples celebrated Passover on
the Thursday, the 13th of Nisan, and during the ensuing night of
the 14th of Nisan (the night before Friday) they had to celebrate the
"Seder," the Passover meal, with its unleavened bread and bitter
herbs,11 instead of on the night of the 15th Nisan.12
Galilseans followed the stricter rulings dealing with the eve of
Passover : "In Judaea they worked on Passover eve till midday ; but
in Galilee they did not work at all on the eve :" according to the
Shammai school no work may be done even during the night before
the eve.13 Since the disciples were, most of them, Galilaeans, they
bestirred themselves and on the morning of Thursday asked Jesus
"Mark xiv. 12. Ά

‫״‬Numbers
10
ix. 11. 4
Deut. xvi. ζ-6.<
" N u m . ix. 11; Ex. xii. 8.
M
F o r details see D. Chwolsohn, Das letzte Passamahl Christi und der
Tag seines Todes, 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1908, pp. 10-13, 20-44 (for the opposite
view,
13
see pp. S455‫־‬, and the added supplementary notes in the 2nd edition)..4
Pesahim IV 5; cf. IV
JUDAS ISCARIOT 327
where they were to eat the Passover and prepare the "Seder." This
might not be done in Bethany since the rule was that in Jerusalem
alone were the ceremonies to be performed. 14 Furthermore the Pass-
over "could be consumed only in the night" and "only by them for
whom it had been prepared." 15
For privacy's sake, Jesus had already made the necessary arrange-
ments with a simple Jerusalem water-carrier 16 in whose upper cham-
ber everything was made ready f o r Jesus and the disciples. All,
apparently, was done in secret f o r the same reason which compelled
Jesus to lodge outside the city during that week—fear of his perse-
cutors ; and but for Judas Iscariot, Jesus and the Twelve would not
have been discovered.·
In the evening Jesus "and the Twelve" (including Judas Iscariot)
came to the upper chamber, "and they sat down and did eat" accord-
ing to the Jewish Passover rule. 17 From this state post-Pauline
Christianity begins to elaborate the various episodes. A f t e r betray-
ing Jesus, Judas Iscariot sat with him at table. Was it conceivable
that Jesus the wonder-worker, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Son of
God, was unaware of the treachery ? Such is the problem raised by
the uncritical belief in Jesus the Messiah.
The only possible answer was that Jesus knew of the treachery
from the beginning, indicated Judas as the traitor 1 8 and actually
referred to him as such by name. 19 Yet again, since the rest of the
Twelve, and even Peter their leader, were terrified at the time of the
arrest and escaped in every direction, was it possible that Jesus the
wonder-worker, Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Son of God, did not
foresee this also? Again uncritical belief makes a like answer:
Jesus prophesied to Peter that the same night before the cock should
crow twice, he, Peter, should deny him thrice ; 2 0 and so, of course,
did it happen exactly.
Jesus broke the bread ("Mazzoth," the unleavened bread, "the
bread of affliction"), gave it to the disciples 21 and said to them that
they should take and eat it, for "this is my body ;" he also gave them
to drink from his cup, saying, "this is my blood, the blood of the
new covenant, which is shed for many ;" 2 2 and he may have added :
"for the forgiveness of sins," 23 and also : "Do this in remembrance
" D e u t . xvi. 5-7; cf. Pesahim V I I 9 (and the explanation of Tos'photh
Yom Tob). A
" Zebahim V 8. 4
" C f . Matt. xxvi. 18, with Mark xiv. 13-15.4
17
Mark xiv. 18. 4
"Following Mark xiv. 18-21. 4
19
20
So Matt. xxvi. 25. 4
Mark xiv. 30. 4
21
On the breaking of bread and "the cup of blessing" and the "Seder"
as a whole, see Dalman, op. cit. 201-204, 254-255; Jesus-Jeschua, Leipzig,
1922,
22
pp. 80-166. Λ
23
Mark xiv. 22-24 4
Matt. xxvi. 2 8 . ^
of me," 2 4 though this last occurs in neither Mark nor
Matthew.
This was the origin of the rite of the "!Lord's Supper" and the
mystical theory of "Transubstantiation" (the conversion of the bread
into the body of the Messiah, and the conversion of the wine into his
blood), which induced the heathen of those days to believe that the
Christians used blood for their Passover. And when, in their turn,
the heathen became Christians they accused the Jews, on the basis
of this Christian belief, of kneading their unleavened bread in Chris-
tian blood. But the rite arose much later than the time of Jesus.
He, as an observant Jew, celebrated the Passover "Seder" on the
night before the 14th of Nisan, since the 14th fell on the eve of the
Sabbath and it was therefore not possible to kill the victim and roast
it at the moment of sunset. Hillel's ruling, that the Passover was a
public sacrifice abrogating the Sabbath laws, did not yet hold good
among the priests who had charge over the sacrifices.25
Scripture says of the Passover : "With unleavened bread and bitter
herbs shall they eat it;" therefore Jesus also ate unleavened bread
with the Passover, and this is the "bread" which the Gospels refer to.
He said over it the prescribed liturgical blessings ("Blessed art thou,
Ο Lord our God! King of the universe; who bringest forth bread
from the earth." "Blessed art thou, Ο Lord our God ! King of the
universe, who has sanctified us with thy commandments, and com-
manded us to eat unleavened bread") ; he "brake it" (the usual Jew-
ish way with the bread and "Mazzoth," which then, as with the
Arabs today, was not cut with a knife ; the verb has been preserved
in the Gospels (εχ,λασε),and gave it to his disciples, and they all ate it
as they sat.26 Jesus and the Twelve "dipped" into the dish,27 and
drank the first of the four cups, which he had blessed (ευχαριστήσαε)
and given them all to drink (as is also the custom of the Jews today).
According to the Law they would eat bitter herbs, and these
brought to Jesus' mind the "pangs of the Messiah ;" they may also
have drunk the four cups, following the usage laid down in the
Mishna,26 which would seem to be fairly old. Finally they sang the
Hallel (ύμνήσαντες),29 likewise an ancient use 30 and one which gave
rise to an early proverb: "The Passover is like an olive, and the
Hallel splits the roofs" (the point being, to make much ado about
34
Luke xxii. 19. 4
25
T. Pesahim I V 1-2 ( f o r other references and variant readings see
Chwolsohn, op. cit. I.e.) ; cf. the arguments of R. Eliezer, R. Yehoshua and
R. Akiba as to what extent the Passover sacrifices abrogated the Sabbath,
M. Pesahim VI 1-3; Pesahim 70b; Sifre on Numbers §65 (ed. Friedman?
17a; ed. Horowitz, p. 61) ; Sifre Zutta, "B'ha'alothekha," 2-3 (ed. Horowitz,
pp. 257-8). ^
Mark xiv. 15-18.
‫ ״‬Mark xiv. 20.
28
Pesahim X 1-4, 7 • 4
30
Mark xiv. 26. •4
80
Pesahim X 5-7. 4
JUDAS ISCARIOT 329
nothing). 31 AU was in line with the religious practices of the
Jews.
Jesus may have urged the disciples to remember this solemn meal
(the most ceremonious of all meals among the Jews), the first
"Seder" which he had celebrated in Jerusalem in their company. 32 H e
may have said : "Verily I say unto you, I shall in no wise drink of
the fruit of the vine till that day when I shall drink it new in the
kingdom of God," 33 since he considered the kingdom of heaven as
very near, and the disciples, still less the authors of the Gospels,
would not have attributed such a material sentiment to Jesus at a later
stage.
But it is quite impossible to admit that Jesus would have said to
his disciples that they should eat of his body and drink of his
blood, "the blood of the new covenant which was shed for many."
The drinking of blood, even if it was meant symbolically, could only
have aroused horror in the minds of such simple Galilasan Jews ; and
had he expected to die within a short space of time he would not have
been so disturbed when death proved imminent.
81
/ . Pes. VI ι ; Pes. 85b gives the same proverb as a saying of Amora,
in the f o r m : ‫ ? ע א ג ר א‬0 ‫ כ ז י ת א פ ס ח א וה>י>א‬: the proverb also occurs in
Cant. R, "Yonathi b'hag-we ha-sela," but in a corrupt form 03‫ח א כביחא‬
( f o r ‫< והאימא מ ת ב ר א א ב ר י י א ה )!אגרייאה( ) ט י ת א‬
" E d u a r d Meyer, Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, 1921, I 177,
concludes with Wellhausen that we have here not the Passover "Seder,"
but an ordinary meal, the last meal which Jesus ate with his disciples, not
with unleavened bread and the paschal lamb, but ordinary wheaten bread
and meat and rape-seed ; and so he falls into the gross error : "as is well
known the Hallet follows the end of a meal," as though the Jews sang the
Hallel after every meal and not only after the passover-night "Seder"! A
great scholar who so often attacks Jews and Judaism (see II 32, 129, 146,
256, 281 and elsewhere) ought to know more of Judaism. 4
" M a r k xiv. 25. The reference is probably to the wine "stored up" for
the messianic age from the days of Creation (Berach. 34b). .
IV. GETHSEMANE: THE GREAT TRAGEDY
Jesus did not know that death was imminent ; but the fear of death
was upon him. From his first day in Jerusalem he feared arrest by
the authorities. This alone explains why every night he went to
Bethany, and why he made secret arrangements with a mere water-
carrier to celebrate the "Seder" in his upper room. After the
"Seder" he could not, as on the other nights, return to Bethany. The
verse, "And thou shalt boil it and eat it (the Passover lamb) in the
place which the Lord thy God shall choose, and thou shalt return in
the morning to thy tents," 1 was interpreted to mean that the Pass-
over compelled the spending of the night in Jerusalem itself ; 2 one
might not even "eat" in Jerusalem and spend the night in Beth-
phage ; 3 though one might change places within Jerusalem : "they
may eat in one place and spend the night in another." 4
Therefore immediately after Jesus and the disciples had sung the
Hallel they went to the Mount of Olives, the furthermost district
within the limits of Jerusalem. Jesus felt depressed : he felt that he
had failed in Jerusalem : he had made many powerful enemies but not
many friends. He did not even trust his disciples. He found them
too simple : they had not entered into the spirit of his teaching and of
his ideas, and showed nothing beyond a blind veneration. They
quarrelled for the honour of sitting first in the kingdom of heaven,
they were afraid of the inevitable persecutions and sufferings.
They were narrow-minded—attaching importance to mere oil of
myrrh, when the "Messiah," the anointed one, must needs be
"anointed." He felt, too, that his enemies, the Pharisees and Saddu-
cees, lay in wait for his life. Hence his deep depression.
The tragedy opened. Jesus went away to a garden called Geth-
semane.5 He parted from his disciples, telling them that he was going
1
8
Deut. xvi. 17.4
Sifre to Deut. 134, ed. Friedmann iorb; Pes. 98b; Hag. 17a; Rosh
ha-Sh. 5a (beginning). 4
8
Sifre to Numbers, 151, ed. Friedmann 55a. 4
4
Τ. Pes. V I I I 17.4
'Aramaic ‫גת״׳עמגי‬, Greek (Γεθσημανη, Γεθσεμανεΐ, etc). The name
is strange: for pressing olives a ‫בית ה ב ד‬, press (Arabic ‫ מ ע צ ח ח‬, also *D#
τ:: —
with doubled "d" as in Hebrew) was used; the 1‫נו‬, vat, was used f o r
grapes, and we find the word "gath" used only twice in Talmudic literature
in connexion with olives (Peah VII 1; T. Terumoth I I I 6 ) ; but we find
"Ge-shemanim" in the Old Testament (Isa. xxviii. 1), and, a fact hitherto
unnoticed, the Talmud tells us that Abba Shaul called the "hall of wine and
oil" in the Temple by the name "Beth-Shemanaya" ( Γ . Yom Kippur I 3
ed. Zuckermandel p. 180). The present writer would suggest that the name
‫ ג י ת ש מ נ י‬was originally written with the first vowel "e" and not "a," and
330
GETHSEMANE 331
to pray, and took with him only Peter and James and John, his
favourite disciples. According to Mark, "he began to be greatly
amazed and sore troubled (έχ,θαμβείσθαι y,al άδημονεΐν), and he saith
unto them (the three disciples), My soul is exceedingly sorrowful
even unto death : abide ye here, and watch." 6 On this night he was
afraid to be alone in the city that was full of enemies. It is all very
human and very tragic, and very different from what the Gospels
wish to convey as to Jesus' foreknowledge of what awaited him, as
well as from what most Christian scholars try to prove—that Jesus,
knowingly, went up to Jerusalem to die.
Jesus had no foreknowledge of his impending death. H e did not:
know that he would soon be arrested and put to death. But he did
know that his enemies among the Pharisees and Sadducees were many
and powerful while his own followers were few and his disciples
weak : "their spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak." Therefore
the fear of death crept over him.
Luke preserves the curious fact that Jesus told his disciples to sell
their garments and buy swords; they replied, "Lord, here are two
swords," and he said to them, "It is enough." 7 He seemed to
imagine that he needed armed protection against his enemies. The
other Gospels omit this ; but Luke could hardly have added it himself
if he had not found it in old and reliable records. Jesus, therefore,
prepared himself and his disciples for armed opposition in the time of
need. There is also a covert hint that Jesus promised his disciples tbat
he would leave Jerusalem (naturally in secret) "and go before them
to Galilee." 8 The words "after I am risen from the dead," were
necessarily added by the Evangelist, since the next day Jesus was
crucified.
This hint shows that Jesus did not anticipate his imminent death.
Yet he dreaded sufferings and persecution and like everyone of
delicate susceptibilities he had a deeply disturbing premonition of im-
pending trouble : "My soul is bitter even unto death." He went a
little way apart from his disciples, fell on his face, and prayed that
"if it were possible" (an obvious addition by the Evangelist) "the
hour might pass away from him," or, in the common Hebrew idiom,
"an evil hour which was speedily coming upon him." 9
is derived either from "Ge-Shemanim" or the name "Beth-Shemanaya" (the
Greek beta having been changed to the following letter in the Greek alpha-
bet, gamma). Dalman's theory (op. cit. p. 257) that the name is ‫ג ת ה ס י מ נ י ם‬
"the vat of signs," will not bear criticism. 4
"Mark xiv. 33‫־‬34·‫^־‬
' L u k e xxii. 36, 38. 4
8
Mark xiv. 28. That these words are lacking in some of the earliest
MSS. only confirms the obvious fact that at an early stage this statement
proved a difficulty to the Christians.^
8
See / . Berachoth V 1 (most versions of Babli Berachoth 17a lack the
word "hours") and the prayer before taking out the Scroll of the Law at
the three great Feasts; cf. also (Sanh. 102a): "a time fitted for troubles—
a time fitted for good."^
The disciples must have heard in the distance (for none would
afterwards have invented such words, so contradictory to the Chris-
tian belief) as Jesus prayed, "Abba, Father! (a Hebrew-Aramaic
diminutive of affection, reproduced in the Greek, (Άββα δ πατήρ) all
things are possible unto thee ; remove this cup from me" (the fol-
lowing words, "but not what I will, but what thou wilt," are an
addition by the Evangelist, who could not think that a prayer of the
Messiah could be refused, or that the Messiah need plead to God like a
child appealing to its parents). His prayer is wonderful in its
brevity and truly human !
Meanwhile the three disciples slept: they were tired after their
Passover preparations and had eaten and drunk heavily (the flesh of
the Passover lamb and the "four cups"). Jesus found them sleeping.
H e was chiefly indignant with Peter, his favourite and foremost dis-
ciple, and reproves him sadly: "Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not
thou have watched with me one hour?"
Then he turns to the three, saying, "Watch and pray, lest ye too
enter into temptation" (i.e. ye, too, may be arrested as my disciples),
"for the spirit is willing (to withstand temptation), but the flesh
is weak." 1 0 There is both tender indignation and kindly forgiveness :
man, in spite of all his good-will to subdue his weakness, is weak,
"flesh and blood," as he is typically termed in Hebrew. Jesus turns
away and prays a second time to be saved from ill.
He returns to them and finds them still sleeping . . . and when
he awakened them "their eyes were very heavy and they wist not
what to answer him." 11 So he allows them to sleep : he could not
rely on them. . . .
The whole story bears the hallmark of human truth : only a few
details are dubious. It must have been transmitted to the Evangelists
(or their sources) direct from Peter, James or John, with such sim-
plicity and conviction that even the ideas or tendencies of Pauline
times could not obscure their memories. The sorrow and sufferings
of the solitary Son of man, profound as they are, leave on every
sympathetic heart, be it the heart of the believer or unbeliever, such
an impression as may never be wiped out.
M
Mark xiv. 35-38 ; Matt. xxvi. 36-41. M
" M a r k xiv. 10; Matt. xxvi. 42-48. Luke (xxii. 39-46) abbreviates, but
gives the verse : "and being in an agony he prayed more earnestly : and his
sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling down upon the
ground." •4
SEVENTH BOOK
T H E TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION O F JESUS
I. T H E A R R E S T I N T H E GARDEN O F G E T H S E M A N E
A voluminous literature has grown round the subject of Jesus'

trial. 1 Most writers see in it a perversion of justice, especially the
trial before the Sanhédrin, and nothing more than a "judicial mur-
der." 2 The first attempt by a Jew to justify the condemnation of
Jesus came from Joseph Salvador, the enthusiastic nationalist and
forerunner of Zionism, an attempt which, besides literary onslaughts
from all sides, subjected him to French prosecution.3 It is true that if
we compare the judicial procedure detailed in the Mishna and
Tosefta of the Tractate Sanhédrin, with what we learn, particularly
in Mark and Matthew, of the trial of Jesus, we are bound to conclude
that the Sanhédrin broke every prescribed law of procedure. Jewish
apologists have, therefore, been forced to lay the blame on a Saddu-
caean Sanhédrin 4 or else to cast doubt on the Gospel narratives, and
to show that Pontius Pilate, the cruel Roman Procurator, was alone
responsible for Jesus' death, since at that time the right to conduct
criminal trials had been taken from the Jews, and crucifixion was not
a Jewish but a Roman death penalty. 5
But a truer view is gradually beginning to prevail. From numer-
ous papyri discovered in Egypt, dating from the Roman period, and
containing records of important trials conducted by or under the
supervision of the Roman Government, 6 it transpires that the Roman
Governors (who conducted all important trials) used to entrust
preliminary investigations to the local Egyptian government. 7 This
1
Given at the end of W . R. Husband's The Prosecution of Jesus, Prince-
ton, 1916. ·^
3
T h e most violent and prejudiced is G. Rosadi, Il Processo di Gesù,
Florence, 1904. See H. P. Chajes' criticism in "Note Marginali," Rivista
Israelitica, I (1904)» 4 1 4.105-106‫־‬57‫י‬
*]. Salvador, Histoire des institutions de Moise et du peuple hébreu,
Paris, 1828; Jesus Christ et sa doctrine, Paris, 1838, II 520-570.
4
5
Emphasized by D. Chwolsohn, Das letst e Passamahl, pp. 118-125.
See L. Philippsohn, Haben die Juden wirklich Jesus gekreuzigt? Bonn,
1866; E, G. Hirsch, The Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View, Chicago,
1892. <
* See Wilcken, Griechische Ostraka aus Aegypten und Nubien, I T I , Leip-
zig, 1899; Wenger, Rechtshistorische Papyrusstudien, Graz, 1902; Mitteis-
Wilcken, Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde, II Leipzig, 1912. 4
‫ י‬Husband, op. cit. pp. 137, 181. 4
333
affords a basis for assuming that the Jerusalem Sanhédrin, also,
possessed the right to make such preliminary investigation, in order
to submit the results to the Roman Procurator.
Such procedure was natural: without it, it was not possible to
know whether the culprit were liable to scourging or imprisonment
or death, or whether he were innocent. Only after legal enquiry had
shown that some capital crime (and especially insurrection or rob-
bery) 8 was involved, was the whole conduct of the trial handed over
to the Roman Governor. There is no parallel to support the nor-
mally accepted view that the Sanhédrin might conduct the actual
trial and even pass sentence of death, but might not carry out the
sentence.9 On the contrary, there is a Baraita to the effect that,
"forty years before the Destruction of the Temple (and therefore
probably before the time of Jesus' trial) the trial of capital cases was
taken away from Israel," 10 and according to the Fourth Gospel: "It
is not lawful for us (the Jews) to put any man to death." 11 Mark,3*
and the genuine part of Josephus' paragraph about Jesus (of which
the bulk is spurious), 13 assert that Jesus was delivered "to the Gen-
tiles" or "to Pilate" by the "chiefs of the priests and the scribes" or
by "the principal men among us." These statements are all of them
comprehensible if we assume that the Sanhédrin only carried out a
preliminary enquiry and, when the charge was proved against Jesus,
delivered him to Pilate, who alone conducted the trial proper and
passed sentence. Thus we see why the procedure of the "trial" as
conducted by the Sanhédrin does not conform with the details of
procedure laid down in the Mishna; it was not a trial but only a
preliminary judicial investigation, and, as such, it was altogether fair
and legal.14
It is gradually being recognized,15 however, that the real reason
why the Mishna rules are at variance with the system in vogue in the
time of Jesus, is that, between the two periods (the time of Jesus and
the time of Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi) there intervened two hundred
years and many and great changes.16 We have already pointed out
the fact that, in the time of Jesus, the Temple and all local govern-
ment was in the hands of the Sadducasan-Bœthusean priests ; hence
" T . Juster, Les Juifs dans Γ Empire Romain, Paris, 1914, II 139-149. ·^
9
Husband, pp. 102-136. But cf. Juster, I.e. 4
" / . Sank. I 1; V I I 2; Shab. 15a. 4
"‫ ט‬J o h n xviii. 31. ·^
Mark x. 33· 4
" Ant. X V I I I iii 3 ; see above, pp. 55 ff. 4
"Husband, pp. 182-208.
" T h e view was urged as early as 1913 by the present writer in He-Atid
( V o l . V e n d ) , pp. 89-91. ^
" S e e H. Danby, "The Bearing of the Rabbinical Criminal Code on the
Jewish Trial Narratives in the Gospels," Journal of Theological Studies,
1919, XXI 51-76; see also his Tractate Sanhédrin, Mishna and Tosefta,
London, 1919, pp. ix-xii. 4
THE ARREST IN GETHSEMANE 335
"the chiefs of the priests and the Scribes and the elders" mentioned
in the Gospels were, almost entirely, Sadducees.
The Sadducees as well as the Pharisees had their "elders" and
"Scribes ;" but since the "Scribes" preceded the Tannaim, and since,
when the Gospels were written, the Sadducees had lost power and
importance, the Gospels use (in place of ‫כהניא־ספריא‬, "priests-
scribes"), the terms "Scribes and Pharisees" in the same breath, as
though they were synonymous terms. 17 Bearing these points in mind
we shall better comprehend the arrest and trial of Jesus, which
culminated in his shameful and cruel death.
When, after the "Seder," Jesus and the Twelve went to the Mount
of Olives and Judas Iscariot saw where Jesus proposed to conceal
himself, Judas at once reported the place to the High Priest or the
local Jewish authorities. Therefore during the time when Jesus was
praying earnestly, reproving his disciples, and encouraging them to
watch at their master's side in the hour of danger, Judas Iscariot ap-
proached, and "with him a great multitude with swords and staves"
sent by "the chief priests (the "Seganim") and the Scribes and the
elders"—who were mostly of the Sadducaean party.
The Pharisees, hitherto Jesus' main opponents, cease now to play
a prominent part; their place is taken by the Sadducees and the
priestly class whom Jesus had irritated by the "cleansing of the
Temple" and by his reply concerning the Law of Moses and the
resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees objected to Jesus' behaviour
—his disparagement of many ceremonial laws, his contempt of the
words of the "sages" and his consorting with publicans and ignorant
folk and doubtful women. They considered his miracles sorcery and
his messianic claims effrontery. Yet for all that, he was one of them-
selves: his convinced belief in the Day of Judgment and the resurrec-
tion of the dead, the messianic age and the kingdom of heaven, was
a distinctively Pharisaic belief; he taught nothing which, by the
rules of the Pharisees, rendered him criminally guilty.
Although there was not yet in existence the Tractate Sanhédrin,
with its humane rules of legal procedure, which made the death
penalty impossible except in the rarest cases and only retained the
penalty lest some principle of the Torah be abrogated—even so it is
inconceivable that the disciples of Hillel and Shammai could condemn
anyone to death for scoffing at the words of the wise, or for dis-
paraging certain of the ceremonial laws, or even for alleging himself
to be the Messiah.18
n
A . Büchler, Die Priester und der Cultus im letzten Jahrzehnt des Jeru-
salemischen Tempels, Vienna, 1895, pp. 84-88; Chwolsohn, p. 113.
" T h i s is proved by the fact that during the reign of John Hyrcanus
(or Alexander Jannaeus) the Pharisees did not condemn to death Eliezer
(or Yehuda ben Gedidiah) who had defamed the king's (or prince's) mother
and the High Priest, but were content to scourge and imprison him. This
brought it about that John (or Jannaeus) deserted the Pharisees in favour
of the Sadducees (Ant. X I I I χ 5-6; Kiddushin 6 6 a ) . ^
The trial of Jesus was not in accordance with the spirit of the
Pharisees, but of the Sadducees and Bœthuseans (then the majority
in the Sanhédrin), to which party the High Priest, the president of
the Sanhédrin, belonged (descendants of the house of Hillel did not
become presidents of the Sanhédrin till after the Destruction).
As "practical politicians" the Sadducees could not calmly suffer
a Galilaean visionary to proclaim himself Messiah and incite the people
to riot within the Temple area, and to abuse the national leaders—
particularly the Sadducees. They knew how easy it would be, during
the feast of Passover, for a prophet and wonder-worker to stir the
people to‫ ׳‬revolt against the Romans: the Galilaeans ( f r o m whom
emanated the Zealots) were specially to be distrusted. It is probable
that, at that very time, there had happened some rising in Jerusalem
led by a certain Barabbas, leading to the death of many. 19
The High-Priestly party, the supreme Jerusalem Jewish authority,
did not, like all shortsighted officials, enquire into the case very
deeply, nor could they discriminate between a Messiah who was only
a teacher and a Messiah who was a political rebel. To them Jesus
seemed as great a danger to the peace of the city during Passover as
was Barabbas. They must get rid of him—before the feast if pos-
sible ; and though they had regarded this as not feasible owing to the
likelihood of provoking an uproar.
Judas Iscariot gave them their opportunity. H e informed them
secretly where Jesus had gone after the "Seder," and when none
would be with him except his weary disciples. Judas had nothing
against his fellow-disciples (whom he looked upon as led astray by
Jesus), and in order that none of them should be arrested in place
of Jesus, he himself accompanied the Jewish police and their officer
(the "Segen") and indicated Jesus by turning towards him and
saluting him with "Rabbi ! Rabbi !" The Gospels give many supple-
mentary details, few of which are true. According to Mark, Judas
kissed Jesus to signify that it was he who was to be arrested : 2 0
according to Matthew, Jesus replied with "Friend, wherefore art thou
come ?" 21 and, according to Luke, he said, "Judas, betrayest thou the
Son of man with a kiss ?" 22—all of which are imaginary additions.
W e have seen that Luke alone preserves the account of how Jesus
wished the disciples to secure swords and found that they already had
two ; yet all the Gospels record that, at the moment of Jesus' arrest
one of the disciples (Mark writes "One of those who stood by him
and Matthew, "One of the men that were with Jesus") drew his
sword and cut off the ear of one of the police ("a servant of the
High Priest").
Mark 2 3 adds nothing beyond this, but Matthew preserves a tradi-
19
30
Mark xv. 7 ; see below, p. 347, Wendland's theory. 4
Mark xv. 44-45. Λ
‫מ‬
23
Matt. xxvi. 50. •4
83
Luke xxii. 48. 4
Mark xiv. 47.^
THE ARREST IN GETHSEMANE 337
tion to the effect that Jesus rebuked him who used the sword, ordering
him to return it to its sheath, "for all they that take the sword shall
perish by the sword," explaining that if he wished, he could appeal
to his Father "and he shall even now send me more than twelve
legions of angels," but "how then should the scriptures be fulfilled
that thus it must be ?" 2 4 Luke adds further that Jesus touched the
wounded ear and healed it : 2 5 Jesus did not wish acts of violence to be
done for his sake in his presence.
Thus the story grew from Gospel to Gospel. But we may take
as historical the unsuccessful attempt to oppose the arrest by force
and Jesus' remark, "Are ye come out as against a robber with swords
and staves to seize me ? I was daily with you in the temple teaching
and ye took me not," 26 though the following "but this is done that the
scriptures might be fulfilled" is a later accretion.
It is interesting to note that the Talmud also complains of the
"staves" and "clubs" of the Bœthusean High Priests, including all
the infamous High Priests (among them the Annas of the Gospels)
from the time of Herod onwards. It preserves a short street-ballad
written about them, the first line of which mentions their "clubs"
and the last their "staves;" we find reference to their secret de-
nouncements, written or by word of mouth, and to their hard "fist,"
and complaints of their servants and their staves :
"Woe is me, for the house of Bœthus : woe is me, for their club !
"Woe is me, for the house of Annas : woe is me, for their whisper-
ings !
"Woe is me, for the house of Kathros (Kantheras) : woe is me, for
their pen!
"Woe is me, for the house of Ishmael (ben Phiabi) : woe is me for
their fist !
"For they are the High Priests, and their sons the treasurers : their
sons-in-law are Temple-officers, and their servants beat the
people with their staves." 27
There could scarcely be a more dreadful and hateful picture of the

High Priests and their families. Their outstanding features were their
"clubs" (something like an English policeman's truncheon), staves,
fists and secret denouncements. These were those who ordered Jesus'
arrest and who conducted his preliminary examination. The Talmud
hates them and regards them as the enemies of the people, whom
"they beat with their staves." The Gospels, which are as full as the
Talmud of suppressed hate against them, try to depict them as the
,4
Matt. xxvi. 51-54.4
x
Luke xxii. 49-51. 4
" Mark xiv. 48. M
37
Pesahim 57a; T. Menahoth X I I I 21. The two closing lines may not
belong to the song. ^
agents of the Jewish people and so blame the entire people for their
acts. "Hatred spoils sound judgment."
A f t e r the attempt at armed resistance had failed to do more than
wound one of the police, the disciples were seized with fear and fled,
leaving Jesus by himself. So great was the alarm that one of Jesus'
followers, a young man (νεανίσκος) roused from sleep fled naked as
he was (it is already warm in Palestine by Passover, and it was the
custom to sleep naked), 28 wrapping a sheet round him; when the po-
lice seized hold of him he left the sheet in their hands and escaped 29
This is so vivid a detail that it is unlikely that it was invented later.
This young man is supposed (though for no real reason) to have been
John-Mark, the disciple of Peter; to him is attributed the detailed
knowledge of the prayer of Jesus ; he heard it before going to sleep
and afterwards recorded it in his Gospel.
38
As is apparent from the Mishna, Kiddushin I V 12; cf. Sukkah 10b.-4
®Mark xiv. 50-52.^
II. THE TRIAL
From Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives, the police took Jesus

to the High Priest. In the time of the great rebellion the house of
the High Priest, Annas, was, according to Josephus, in the Upper
City ; 1 but we do not know if this was the house allocated to all the
High Priests or merely Annas' private residence. Josephus tells us l a
that the "Council" β ουλή, i.e., the Sanhédrin) was below the Temple,
near the bridge leading to the Upper City, and thus on the site of
the present "Mehkemeh." 2 The Talmud, however, says plainly,
"Forty years before the Destruction, the Sanhédrin left (the Chamber
3
of Hewn Stone) and took its abode in the Booths ( ".(‫בחנויות‬In
another place the Talmud refers to ten changes in the meeting-place
of the Sanhédrin, the first being "from the Chamber of Hewn Stone
to the Booth"(‫חנות‬, or Booths,‫)חנויות‬/ W e have seen that the "Booths
of the House of Annas" (which Derenbourg regards as identical with
this same "Booth" or "Booths") were in the "Hill of Anointing," 5
and the time (forty years before the Destruction) fits in with the time
of Jesus, since "forty years" is just a round number. Therefore the
place ("the hill of anointing") was quite near to Gethsemane.
The High Priest at the time was of the house of Annas, whose
secret denunciations are complained about in the popular song. Jesus,
therefore, may have been brought as a prisoner to the "Booths of
the house of Annas" close by, to the nearest available place for
trial (or preliminary examination). There may, also, have been a
temporary prison there, for we find, in Jeremiah, "booths" (‫)תנומת‬
mentioned together with a dungeon ( 6 . ( ‫ה ב ו ר‬ ‫בית‬
The High Priest's name was Joseph, the son of Caiaphas
(*‫* ב! חקיין‬1‫ \וס‬Greek Καϊάφας, Aramaic 7:(‫ סייפא‬the Talmud refers
to "the family of the house of Kaiapha," 8 sometimes corrupted to
"Beth Kophai" 9 and even "Beth Neqiphi." 10 H e was appointed by
1
Wars I I xvii 6. <
‫ג‬
* Wars II xvii 6; V I vi 3.
See Dalman, op. cit. p. 264, who concludes that it is impossible to fix
the exact site where the Jews condemned Jesus.
3
4
Shab. 15a (end) ; Ab. Zar. 8b ( e n d ) . ^
Rosh ha-Sh.ßia (end) ; for the variants, see 'Arukh he-Shalem, III 400
(under ‫}חנות‬, j
‫ ״‬Op. cit. η. ö in appendix, p. 244-246. See above, p. 309 and 314.
*Jer. xxxvii. 15.·^
*Derenbourg, op. cit. p. 112, n. 2. •4
" T. Yebam. I 10. Λ
9
Yeb. 156. <
‫ ״‬/ . Yebam. I 6 ; see "Sh'ir" in Ha-Maggid XVIII 17 (reprinted in Luncz's
339
the Procurator Valerius Gratus, remained in office under Pontius
Pilate, and was finally deposed by Vitellius after the latter had de-
posed Pontius Pilate. 11 That he continued High Priest for nearly
eighteen years (c.18-36 C.E.), whereas his predecessors in the time
of Gratus each held office for barely a year, proves that he was a wily
diplomatist and knew how to conduct himself towards people and
Roman governor alike.
Such a man might well dread a new "Messiah," and, as a whole,
the Sadducees had no sympathy for messianic ideas owing to their
disturbing effect on political conditions. They were especially op-
posed to the post-Biblical form of the messianic idea. When Kai-
aphas heard that a new Messiah had appeared in Jerusalem, and that
he was from Galilee (a district ripe for insurrection), he feared for
the consequences and ordered him to be arrested and brought to
him, or to the "Booths of the house of Annas."
The Fourth Gospel 12 describes Kaiaphas as the son-in-law of
Annas, son of Seth (‫״‬Αννας or ‫״‬Αννας; according to Josephus "Ανάνος)
who had been appointed by Quirinius and deposed by Valerius Gratus
(6-15 C.E.), and states that Jesus, previous to being sent to Kaiaphas,
was brought before Annas (the doyen of the High Priests, five of
whose sons had risen to high-priestly rank) and first examined by
him. There is nothing improbable in this: a High Priest who had
held the office only for a day retained the title and also sat in the
Sanhédrin. 13 But the other Gospels make no mention of this exami-
nation before Annas.
According to Mark 14 and Matthew 15 the Sanhédrin held a ses-
sion that same night, which was illegal since capital cases could be
tried by day only.16 But, as we have seen, the Sanhédrin was mainly
composed of Sadducees and the Sadducees may have recognized no
such rule. Furthermore we have assumed that this was not a trial
proper, but only a preliminary investigation for which there was no
rule that its work should be carried out by day only. These explana-
tions are, however, uncalled for, since Luke knows nothing whatever
of a night session : according to him there was but one session of the
Sanhédrin, and that in the morning. 17
But the Sadducees themselves would not have conducted even a
Ha-Me'ammer, II 559-560) ; Biichler's objections (Die Priester und der
Cultus, pp. 85-87) are groundless since the Hiigh Priests are explicitly re-
ferred t o . 4
n
Ant. X V I I I ii 2, and iv 3.4
" J o h n xviii. 13-24.‫^־‬
™Ant. IV xviii 2; Horayoth I I I 4; Megillah I 9; Makkoth II 6; T. Yoma
I 4; Acts of the Apostles iv. 6. See also Büchler, Priester u. Cultus, p. 26;
Schürer,
14
op. cit. I I 4 274-5 ; Ed. Meyer, op. cit. I 50.^
18
Mark xiv. 54.^
19
Matt. xxvi. 57.^‫־‬
Sank. IV 11. 4
" L u k e xxii. 54, 66. 4
THE TRIAL 341
simple judicial enquiry either on the night of Passover or on the first
day of Passover ("the feast of unleavened bread") ; the Mishna lays
it down that capital cases may not be judged on the eve of a Sabbath
or on the eve of a Festival, to avoid delay should the case not be
finished that day, and all tnals were forbidden on a Sabbath or
Festival. 18
We must, therefore, follow the Fourth Gospel (which is sup-
ported by a Talmudic Baraita) 19 and suppose that Jesus was crucified
on the eve of the Sabbath and on the eve of Passover, and not
(according to the Synoptic Gospels) on the Passover itself which fell
on the eve of the Sabbath. We thus escape the impossible supposition
that the Sanhédrin examined Jesus during the night of a Festival or
(according to Luke) on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened
Bread.
In one respect Luke is more accurate than Mark or Matthew:
Jesus was not tried at all by night; he was only imprisoned in the
"Booths," to await trial, during the remaining hours of that night of
the Last Supper and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Not
till the next morning, the eve of Passover, did the members of the
Sanhédrin assemble. They were, most of them, Sadducees and
Boethuseans and so had no regard for the rule (which did not, per-
haps, come into force until a later date) that cases might not be
tried on the eves of Sabbaths or Festivals. 20 In any case, this was
only a preliminary enquiry and was concerned with a matter of public
danger.
They summoned witnesses against Jesus. According to M a r k 2 1
their evidence did not agree. It is, however, more probable (since
Jesus had, before large numbers of people, said things that were not
lawful) that their evidence did not prove anything serious enough to
render him liable to death. 22 The incident of the "cleansing of the
Temple" would certainly be brought up again. The Evangelists do
not, however, make any further mention of it since it was an act of
unauthorised violence and, from a purely legal point of view, it was
the priests who were in the right. But it was not enough to justify
a sentence of death: the Temple itself was not affected, and it was
not a case of profaning what was sacred.
At last there came two witnesses (according to the Gospels they
were "false witnesses") who testified: "We heard him say, I will
destroy this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will
build another made without hands." 2 3 Mark, 24 though not Mat-
u
Sank. I V ι (end) ; Sifre on Deut. §221 (ed. Friedmann 114b) ; Mechilta
Va-yaqhel
w
1, ed. Friedmann 105a: Sanh. 35b. 4
30
Sank. 44a; see above, p. 27, n. 28. ^
‫מ‬
Betzah V 2, T. Betzah I 2. ^ ^
Mark xiv. 56. 4
33
Such is the implication of Matthew xxvi. 59-60. •4
" M a r k xiv. 58; Matt. xxvi. 61,4
34
Mark xiv. 5 9 . 4
thew, 25 adds : "and not even so did their witness agree together." W e
saw how the Fourth Gospel confirmed this charge and how the same
charge was brought against Stephen. 26
Throughout the entire enquiry Jesus remained silent. At the
moment such silence was best suited to his frame of mind. Jesus
did not resemble in his preaching those other rebel-messiahs of the
time, and it was difficult to get at the truth as to his real character.
The High Priest therefore put the direct question to Jesus himself :
"Art thou the Messiah?" Mark 27 here adds the words, "the Son
of the Blessed." This is not a Hebrew expression and must be a
later addition : it is scarcely an abbreviation of the habitual "the Holy
One, blessed be he." Matthew records the question in more solemn
form: "I adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether
thou be the Messiah, the son of God !"
The oath is possible, but the words "Son of God" (which become
a separate question in Luke) 2 8 from the mouth of a Jewish High
Priest, and particularly from a Sadducee, are inconceivable.
Jesus was convinced of his messiahship: of this there is no
doubt ; were it not so he would have been nothing more than a mere
deceiver and imposter—and such men do not make history : they do
not found new religions which persist for two thousand years and
hold sway among five hundred millions of civilised people. When
this challenge came from the High Priest, a challenge which he had
already answered affirmatively at Caesarea Philippi and Bethphage,
it was impossible but that the soul and feelings of Jesus—a mystic,
a dreamer and an enthusiast—should be stirred to their depths. There
is no doubt that he returned a positive answer.
According to Mark's version, he answered: 2 9 " I am he;" and
according to Matthew : 3 0 "Thou sayest" derived from the answer
of Jesus to Pilate) ; then, according to all the Synoptic Gospels,
Jesus added : "And ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right
hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven." 31 Could
his enthusiastic belief in himself have led him to such lengths as to
make use of this startling reference to himself? With an oriental
possessed of such a conviction, it was by no means impossible. The
two expressions "Son of man" (frequently on his lips) and "at thç
right hand of power" (Ικ, δεξιών της δυνάμεως, a peculiar Hebrew
* Matt. xxvi. 61. ·^

M
‫מ‬
Mark xiv. 61 ; Matt. xxvi. 63. 4
* Luke xxii. 66-70. •4
‫מ‬
80
Mark xiv. 62. 4
Matt. xxvi. 64. 4
31
Mark xiv. 62; Matt. xxvi. 64; Luke xxii. 70 ("the power of God"—
an attempt to explain the unusual expression which in his time was not
understood by non-Jews). 4
THE TRIAL 343
expression for the Deity), 32 show that the answer is perfectly in
accord with Jesus' spirit and manner of speech.
To the High Priest the answer was sheer blasphemy—a Galilean
carpenter styling himself "Son of man" in the sense of the Book of
Daniel and saying that he should sit on the right hand of God and
come "with the clouds of heaven" ! The High Priest rent his gar-
ments—the custom of the judge who heard blasphemous words. 33
According to the ruling of the Mishna** Jesus was not worthy of
death since "the blasphemer is not guilty till he have expressly pro-
nounced the Name;" and Jesus, like a scrupulous Jew, said "Power"
instead of "Yahweh." W e have, however, already pointed out, (a)
that this was a court of law mainly composed of Sadducees whose
president, the High Priest, was a Bcethusean; and (b) that, even in
Jesus' time, the Pharisees had not yet laid down the rules of pro-
cedure in the precise form which they receive in the Mishna.
Thus, for example, as opposed to what the Mishna decrees touch-
ing the mode of death by burning (thrusting a burning wick down
the throat of the condemned), R. Eliezer ben R. Zadok, records how,
during the Second Temple period, they burnt a priest's daughter,
guilty of adultery, with bundles of faggots. 35 To this it was an-
swered, "The court in those days was not skilled"—showing that
many of the prescriptions of the Mishna (whose criminal law reached
an unexampled degree of humanitarianism) were not in vogue prior
to the Destruction, and that even the Pharisees had not then at-
tained their later level of humanitarianism, still less the Sadducees.
Josephus lays great emphasis on the fact that the Sadducees were
"more cruel and harsh than any of the Jews in applying the laws," 36
which must mean, primarily, that they were more cruel and harsh than
the Pharisees.
After rending his garments, the Bœthusean High Priest turned
to the members of the Sanhédrin and asked : "What further need
have we of witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think
ye?" And the Gospels add: "And they all condemned him to be
worthy of death." 37 But since there had not been actual blasphemy
it is difficult to believe that, even in the opinion of the Sadducees,
Jesus was worthy of death. The Pharisees, at least, who were in the
Sanhédrin would not declare him liable to death since they would see
in his words nothing more than a rash fantasy ( , ‫ מ י א ׳‬6 ‫> צ‬
‫מ‬
"From the mouth of Power" (‫הגבורה‬- ‫ ) מ פ י‬, Baba Met2ia 58&; Shabb.
88b; Horayoth 8a; Makk. 24a; Megillah 31 b; J. Sanh. X 1 (p. 28 end of a) ;
Ex. R. §33; see also Shabb. 8γα; Ex. R. §24 Cant. R. on Zoth Qomathekh. 4
83
Sanh. VI 5. 4
* Ibid. <
**Sanh. VI 2; J. Sanh. V I I 2 ; T. Sanh. IX 11. <
",Ant. XX ix I. •4
87
Mark xiv. 64; Matt. xxvi. 65-66; Luke makes no mention of the death
sentence; in his account of the judicial enquiry there is only a charge of
general wrong-doing. •4
"impertinence against heaven"). H e had not "pronounced the
Name" and he had not beguiled others into worshipping other gods.
At this stage there begins a long series of statements by the
Evangelists, having as their object to make all the Jews—leaders,
priests, scribes, and the entire Jewish populace—responsible for the
death and torture of Jesus. Therefore they emphasize the fact that
not even one of the members of the Sanhédrin took the part of Jesus,
though there was certainly one of them, Joseph of Arimathaea, who
was not opposed to Jesus. To pile up the Jewish guilt all the Syn-
optists record how, even in the presence of the judges, the servants
or attendants (the judges too, according to Mark and Matthew) 38
spat in the face of Jesus, covered his eyes and struck him with their
fists, and said, "Prophesy unto us : who is he that struck thee?"—and
they buffeted him on the cheek.
All of this (despite the "fist" of the High Priests spoken of in
the street-ballad) would be impossible in the house of the High Priest
and in the presence of the Sanhédrin. But we shall soon hear
worse charges than these.
But who was present during the trial and heard what the witnesses
said, the challenge of the High Priest and Jesus' answer ? According
to all three Synoptists it was Simon Peter (the Fourth Gospel reports
that the disciple John was also with him), who came into the court
of the High Priest together with the guards and sat with the attend-
ants, warming himself by the fire during the cold night. In Jerusalem
the warm spring nights grow cold towards the later hours. One of the
High Priest's female servants (or the gatekeeper) identified him as
having consorted "with Jesus of Nazareth," but Peter denied it and
pretended that he did not know of what she was speaking; and
when other bystanders recognized him owing to his Galilaean dialect,
he swore that he did not know Jesus.
Legend declares that this painful but quite human incident was
foretold by Jesus, with the detail of a threefold denial before cock-
crow, so making the event not so unseemly. There is no reason to
doubt the story as a whole. Peter finally recalled to mind his
beloved lord and Messiah and all his intimate friendship: he was
seized with remorse at having denied him, and wept bitterly.39 It is all
human, excessively human : the story has a peculiarly sad, attractive
beauty, and does not spare the disciple.
The Law enacted 40 that the blasphemer, the false prophet, the be-
guiler and seducer, were to be stoned. It was also held that "every-
one that is stoned is also hanged," and all alike held that the bias-
phemer who had been stoned was (after death by stoning) also
hanged. 41 The Mishna goes into detail: "How do they hang him?
" Mark xiv. 65 ; Matt. xxvi. 67. 4
*‫ ׳‬Mark xiv. 66-72 ; Matt. xxvi. 69, 75 ; Luke xxii. 55-63. 4
40
Deut. xiii. 7-12; xvii. 2-7. •4
41
Sanh, VI 4. 4
THE TRIAL 345
They fix a beam in the ground and a piece of wood branches from
it (R. Obadiah of Bertenora explains : "Like a peg coming out of the
beam near the top") and the two hands are fastened together, and
so they hang him." 42
This is very like the form of the Roman cross which was not of
the present conventional shape, but resembled the Latin and Greek
capital T. The hanged victim suffered no pain since the hanging or
crucifixion only took place after death had resulted from stoning;
and the hanging only served to impress the onlookers during the
body's short time of exposure : "They took it down at once, for if
they suffered it to stay till night-time a negative commandment would
thereby be broken, for it is written : 4 3 His corpse shall not remain
[‫ תאין‬, lit. spend the night] on the tree, but thou shalt surely bury it,
for a curse of God is that which is hanged." 44 This verse proved a
"stumbling-block" to Christianity and Paul found difficulty in suit-
ably expounding it.
We have seen that at that time the Jews could not pass sentence
of death, at least not in a case affecting a Messiah, i.e., a political
question. Since, therefore, it was the eve of Passover and the eve
of Sabbath, the High Priest and leaders of the Sanhédrin hastened
to give up Jesus to Pilate, the Procurator, in order that the case could
be finished while it was still day, and so avoid the delay which would
occur through the seven days of Passover (or to avoid political out-
breaks at a time when Galilaean Zealots were in Jerusalem in large
numbers).
It is certain that the priests did not see in Jesus anything more
than an ordinary rebel: they did not recognize his special spiritual
nature; what they did they did, in all simplicity, in order to save
the people from the cruel vengeance of Pilate, who was on the watch
for some possible excuse to demonstrate the power of Rome and the
nugatory nature of Jewish autonomy in any matter of political im-
portance.45
They, therefore, bound Jesus (from which it is to be presumed
that he was not bound during the judicial enquiry) and brought him
to Pilate. Certain of the priestly party went with him and ex-
plained to Pilate that the Sanhédrin had condemned Jesus for assum-
ing the rôle of Messiah, i.e. King of the Jews: such was all the
meaning that "Messiah" would convey to Pilate the Roman.
When Pilate came to Jerusalem to be present during the time of
Passover he did not live in the Citadel of Antonia, but, according to
43
4
Sank. VI 4; Sifre on Deut. §221, ed. Friedmann 114b. M
‫״‬Deut. xxi. 23.
44
Sank. I.e.; T. Sank. IX 6-7. See Sifre, I.e.: "Could they hang him
alive as did the Gentile powers? Scripture says: And he shall be slain";
see also Sank. 46b. 4
4
®Ed. Meyer, op. cit. I 164-165, I I 451, admits the political danger threat-
ening people and country from Jesus' presence, even if at first there was
no idea of rebellion. 4
the evidence of Josephus, in the Palace of Herod (one of the three
towers, one of which survives under the title of "Tower of David,"
though it is really the "Tower of Phasael") where was a "garrison"
or large barracks. 46 Jesus was tried before Pilate in a place called
the Praetorium (the Fourth Gospel calls Pilate's judgment-seat by the
Aramaic term "Gabbatha," (Γαβ^αθα, Λιθόστρωτος), in Greek meaning
"stone pavement"). 47
The Procurator asked, "Art thou the king of the Jews?" Ac-
cording to all three Synoptists Jesus answered, "Thou hast said"
(Σ6 είπας). Such an answer was characteristic of Jesus who was
given to brief, pointed and enigmatic remarks. The Talmud and
Midrash48 use the same answer, "Ye say" (‫אתון אמריחוז׳‬, i.e., but not
I ) , when it is unsafe or unseemly to say the truth. Thus, Jesus' an-
swer: what else could he answer to the foreign tyrant? H e said not
the least word more and this silence astonished Pilate. 49 Jesus'
speech and his argument with Pilate, given in detail by the Fourth
Gospel, cannot be accepted as historical.50 The words attributed to
Jesus : "My kingdom is not of this world," 51 however suited to and
characteristic of Christianity, are quite impossible from Jesus the Jew.
The Evangelists elaborate the unhistorical element still further.
According to Luke,52 Pilate said that he found no fault in Jesus, and
on hearing that Jesus was a Galilœan sent him to Herod Antipas, who
was present in Jerusalem for the feast; and although Pilate and
Antipas had been enemies they became friends again that day.
Antipas welcomed this opportunity of seeing Jesus and asked for a
sign from him, but Jesus remained silent. Antipas treated him with
mockery, decked him with a scarlet robe and sent him back to Pilate.
Again Pilate declared that he found no fault in him, as neither did
Herod ; therefore he, Pilate, was minded to scourge him, only, and let
him go. Mark and Matthew are ignorant of this episode ; nor was
it possible for Pilate simply to scourge Jesus and liberate him, since
scourging was an essential and inseparable part of the crucifixion
sentence.53
48
Dalman, op. cit. pp. 268-272. 4
47
John xix. 13. H. M. Michlin (Doar ha-Yom, 1921, n. 274) suggests that
"Gabatha" is corrupted from "Gazitha," the Fourth Gospel wrongly supposing
that Pilate sat in judgment in the "Hall of Hewn Stone." A
48
/. Kelaim IX 4 ; Eccles. R. on Tobhah Hokhmah 'im nahalah; Kethu‫־‬
both, 104a; T. Kelim: Baba Kama I 6 ^
48
Mark xv. 1-5; Matt, xxvii. 1-14. .
00
John xviii. 28-38. 4 ^
81
John xviii. 30. <4
M
Luke xxiii. 4-16. 4
88
Such is the conclusion of Husband, op. cit. pp. 273-4 ; but Josephus
(Wars VI ν 3) says that the leading people delivered up Yeshu Ben Hannan,
who had prophesied evil things against Jerusalem, to the Governor Albinus,
who scourged him cruelly and set him free, after that it was proved that he
was mad. The Chiliarch wished to do the same thing to Paul (Acts xxii.
24-25). Λ
THE TRIAL 347
Matthew, again, relates that when Pilate was sitting in judgment
his wife sent to him, saying, "Have thou nothing to do with this
righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him this night
in a dream." 5 4 Both Mark and Luke lack this incident ; such a
remark from a Roman matron, the wife of the Procurator, is quite
unlikely.
But all four Gospels are unanimous in relating how, at every
festival, Pilate used to liberate to the Jews any one prisoner whom
they desired. On the present occasion another rebel, a Zealot, Barab-
bas by name, who had committed murder, was waiting to be crucified.
Pilate wished to liberate the "King of the Jews," Jesus, since he
knew "that only from envy had the chief priests betrayed him" (but
how did he know it?). The chief priests (as though they did not
have more urgent business on the eve of Passover and the eve of
Sabbath) incited the people to demand that Barabbas, and none
other, be set free.
And this the people did. On Pilate's asking : "And what, then, do
ye wish that I shall do to him whom ye (and not Pilate, or even
Jesus himself) call King of the Jews ?" they cried out, "Crucify him !"
and when the "compassionate" Pilate asked, "Why? what evil hath he
done ?" they continued to cry out, "Crucify him !" Then the help-
less Pilate was "compelled" to do the people's will and to free Barab-
bas. Jesus he scourged and gave up to be crucified.55
To Mark's account Matthew B5a adds that Pilate "took water and
washed his hands in the presence of the people, and said: I am
innocent of the blood of this righteous man, see ye to it. And all
the people answered and said : His blood be upon us and upon our
children!" Neither Mark nor Luke records this last point. Wash-
ing the hands as a sign that those hands are free of blood is a
specifically Jewish custom used in the ceremony of "the heifer whose
neck is to be broken ;" 5 6 and how could a Roman official perform
it? A more important point, however, is the fact that the right to
free a criminal after condemnation belonged only to the Emperor, 57
and it is, on the whole, most unlikely that in all his four books
Josephus found no opportunity of mentioning such a noteworthy
custom as that of liberating a prisoner before the Passover.
In view of these difficulties Wendland supposes that the entire
story about Barabbas is drawn from the account given by Philo of
Alexandria about the crucifixion of a certain Carabbas, whose name,
by the interchange of c and b, has been converted into Barabbas. 58
Furthermore, all that we learn of Pilate from the writings of
" 4 Matt, xxvii. 19. 4
65
Mark xv. 6-16.
66
*Matt. xxvii. 24-25.^
" Deut. xxi. 6-9.^
" S e e Husband, op. cit. p. 270. 4 _
68
"Hermes," 1898, p. 178; see also G. Friedlander, The Jewish Sources of
the Sermon on the Mount, London, 1911, pp. xi-xii. 4
Josephus and Philo proves that he was a "man of blood," cruel and
tyrannical, to whom the killing of a single Galilaean Jew was no more
than the killing of a fly, and who was always ready to provoke the
Jews in every possible way ; 5 9 while here he is suddenly turned into
a tender, pacific being, sparing of bloodshed and anxious to save a
"just man perishing through his righteousness"—all of which is
particularly unlikely after he had learnt that the condemned man
called himself the Messiah (which for him could only mean the
"king of the Jews"), a fact which the condemned man, by his en-
thusiastic conviction, had in part confirmed.
The truth of the matter is that all the stories of Pilate's opposi-
tion to the crucifixion of Jesus are wholly unhistorical, emanating
from the end of the first Christian century, when large numbers of
Gentiles had embraced Christianity and it had become clear to Paul
that the future of Christianity depended upon the Gentiles and not
upon the Jews, who "remained steadfast in their unbelief" and
would not recognize "the curse of God that was hanged."
Also, the Roman empire was then all-powerful and it was im-
politic to irritate it ; whereas the Jews were feeble, poor and perse-
cuted. Therefore the Evangelists found it better not to place the
blame for the murder of Jesus upon the powerful Romans, who were
"near to the way of truth," but to place it upon the heads of the per-
verse Jews, who were then (immediately after the Second Destruc-
tion) dirt under the feet of their Gentile conquerors.
A few only of the priestly caste had condemned Jesus to death and
given him up to Pilate, primarily because of their dread of this same
Pilate, and only incidentally because of their annoyance at the
"cleansing of the Temple," and because Jesus mocked "at the words
of the wise," and spoke ill of the Temple ; and, what was more seri-
ous, because of his blasphemy in thinking himself "the Son of man
coming with the clouds of heaven," who should sit at the right hand
of God.
Through fear of the Roman tyrant, those who were then the
chief men among the Jews delivered up Jesus to this tyrant. No
Jews took any further part in the actual trial and crucifixion : Pilate,
the "man of blood" was responsible for the rest. The Jews, as a
nation, were far less guilty of the death of Jesus than the Greeks, as a
nation, were guilty of the death of Socrates ; but who now would
think of avenging the blood of Socrates the Greek upon his country-
men, the present Greek race ? Yet these nineteen hundred years past
the world has gone on avenging the blood of Jesus the Jew upon his
countrymen, the Jews, who have already paid the penalty, and still go
on paying the penalty in rivers and torrents of blood.
" S e e Philo, Delegation to Cains §38; Ant. X V I I I iii 1, iv 1; Wars II
ix 2. See above, pp. 163 1f. •4
III. THE CRUCIFIXION
Crucifixion is the most terrible and cruel death which man has
ever devised for taking vengeance on his fellow man. Cicero 1
describes it as crudelissimum teterrimumque supplicium (the most
cruel and horrifying death), and Tacitus 2 refers to it as supplicium
servile (a despicable death). It came from Persia where, appar-
ently it arose out of the desire not to suffer the condemned victim to
defile the earth, which was sacrosanct to Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd) ;
thence it passed to Carthage and so to the Romans, who employed it
as a punishment for rebels, renegade slaves and the lowest types of
criminal. Josephus, 3 an eye-witness, tells how that "joy of human
kind," Titus (who read Josephus' work), crucified so many Jewish
captives and fugitives during the siege of Jerusalem, that there was
not sufficient room for the crosses nor sufficient crosses for the con-
demned !
Crucifixion was, therefore, a penalty characteristic of the Romans.
It is true that Josephus 4 relates how Alexander Jannaeus commanded
eight-hundred rebel Pharisees to be crucified (άνασταυροΰν); but he
points out that this was an act of barbarous cruelty in which Alex-
ander was imitating Gentile usage. And it is also possible that the
punishment was not crucifixion but hanging, and that Josephus was
drawing from a foreign source which exaggerated the incident (800
crucified and 8000 exiled are round numbers open to suspicion) and
so copied the term customary among Greeks and Romans.
On the other hand, it is well known that the Roman officials fre-
quently crucified Jews: Varus on one occasion crucified two thou-
sand,5 and Quadratus and Felix crucified many others.6 But to say
that the Jews crucified Jesus or that they were even responsible for his
death by crucifixion, is grossly untrue. At the worst, only a section
of the aristocratic Sadducees had some part in his arrest and pre-
liminary examination and in handing him over to Pilate. 7 But with
Judaea in its then grievous plight, anyone claiming to be the Messiah
could not fail to bring disaster on nation and country alike: "prac-
1
In Verrem, V 64. 4
* Annales, IV 3, 11. 4
'4 Wars V xi 1. <
Ant. X I I I xiv 2. Λ
'Ant. X I I I xvii 10; Wars I I ν 2 ( e n d ) . ^
T
'Wars II xii 6, xv 2. ·^
L. Philippsohn, Haben die Juden wirklich Jesum gekreuzigt ? Bonn, 1866;
E. G. Hirsch, Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View, Chicago, 1892.^
349
tical politicians" like the Sadducees must needs take into account such
a national danger. 8
There was no real justice in the case : neither the Sanhédrin nor
Pilate probed deeply enough to discover that Jesus was no rebel ; and a
Sadducasan court of law would not pay scrupulous regard to the fact
whether or not Jesus was a "blasphemer," or "false prophet," or an
inciter to idolatry, in the Biblical or Mishnaic sense. But when or
where has ideal justice prevailed !
Of the two charges which the Sanhédrin brought against Jesus—
blasphemy and Messianic pretensions—Pilate took account of the
second only. Jesus was the "King-Messiah" and so, from Pilate's
standpoint (since he could have no notion of the spiritual side to the
Hebrew messianic idea), he was "king of the Jews." This was
treason against the Roman Emperor for which the Lex Juliana knew
but one punishment—death ; 9 and the prescribed death of rebel trai-
tors was—crucifixion.10
Scourging always preceded crucifixion : so Josephus twice informs
us. 11 This was a horrible punishment, reducing the naked body to
strips of raw flesh, and inflamed and bleeding weals. And when
afterwards the victim's hands were nailed to the crosspiece and his
feet tied (or nailed) to the base of the beam, leaving the sufferer
unable to drive away the gnats and flies which settled on his naked
body and on his wounds, and unable to abstain from publicly ful-
filling natural needs—nothing could have been more horrible and
appalling. None but the Romans, whose cruelty surpassed that of
ravening beasts, could have made choice of this revolting means of
death : it never could have been devised by the Jews, by the Pharisees
(whose axiom was, "choose for him an easy death"), nor by their
harsher contemporaries, the Sadducees.12
After the scourging Jesus was handed over to the Roman soldiers.
The Gospels describe how the coarse Roman soldiers ridiculed him :
they dressed him in purple and put on him a crown woven of ak-
kabith (Arabic 'akkub, Gundelia Tournefortii)13 or "Jewish thorn"
(άκάνθινον στέφανον);14 it was not "a crown of thorns," since the in-
"Husband (op. cit. 182-233), a Christian scholar, admits that neither the
Sanhedrin's judicial enquiry nor Pilate's sentence was contrary to the law;
and we have already mentioned that Ed. Meyer (op. cit. I 164-5) recognized
that Jesus' appearance was a political danger, and that those who gave him
up to Pilate feared an actual revolution and did not merely take this oppor-
tunity of getting rid of a dangerous religious rival (see also, op. cit. II 451)·
·Husband, 231-2.^ ‫״‬
10
Suetonius, Vespasianus, §IV; Claudius, §XXV.4‫־‬
" Wars II xiv 9 ; V xi ι ; see also Titus Livius, X X X I V 2 6 . 4
1a
T. Sanh. IX ii; Sanh. 45a, 52a; Sota 8b; Pesahim 75a; Kethuboth 37b;
B. Qama 51 a. Λ
"Dalman, op. cit. 210-211; he thinks it possible that it was the common
Palestine thorn, which has round flowers and a thick bluish calyx. ·^
u
So A. Mazié of Jerusalem explains the Hebrew name "Akanthus"
(which the Septuagint renders by άκανθαι a common ornament in the
Galilaean synagogues (see his Sokah Yehudith in Qobets ha-Hebrah ha-
THE CRUCIFIXION 351
tention was not to pierce his head with thorns but to scoff at him in
his character of "king," decked with a "crown." They mockingly
saluted him : "Hail ! King of the Jews," beat him on the head with
a reed (the royal sceptre), spat in his face and bowed the knee and
prostrated themselves before him. After this mockery they removed
the purple raiment, replaced it by his own clothes and led him away
to be crucified.15
There is no doubt that the rough Roman soldiery were capable of
such cruel horseplay and thought it fitting to make a mock of the
whole Jewish nation in the person of the "king of the Jews," 1e
though it is questionable whether the facts were as the Gospels report :
the time was too limited, and the strict Roman discipline would
certainly not allow the soldiers to do more than obey orders—espe-
daily in the case of an important political prisoner.
The Romans, in their cruelty, usually insisted that those "which
went forth to be crucified" 17 should carry on their shoulder the cross
on which they were about to die 18 —yet another considered piece of
cruelty. But Jesus' strength, after the long night and the scourging,
failed him completely: like most of the "Rabbis" he was probably
thin and emaciated. So when the soldiers who escorted Jesus en-
countered Simon of Cyrene (Cyrenaica in Africa), a resident of
Jerusalem (whose sons Alexander and Rufus seem later to have
joined the Christians), 19 "coming from the country" (a detail showing
that this was not a feast-day, although it is not said whether he was
working or only walking), they compelled him to carry the cross.
From Pilate's Praetorium in the Phasael Tower, they went to Gol-
gotha (so-called because it was a skull-shaped hill, not because it was
the place of execution and filled with human skulls). General Gor-
don placed the site near the "Cave of Jeremiah," a hundred yards
north-west of Herod's gate, on the mound known to the Jews as "The
Place of Stoning," 20 near the so-called "Garden Tomb."
There are difficulties in the way of identifying the site of the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre with the actual site of the crucifixion,
for a place of execution, still more a burial place, could not possibly
exist within the city, owing to the regulations affecting clean and
unclean. Thus we learn that "they do not suffer the dead to remain
Ibrith la'haqirath Er ets Yisrael w'atiqotheha I 40-42; an illustration of the
"Jewish thorn" is given on p. 39). 4
" M a r k xv. 17-20. ^‫־‬
16
See Wars, V χ 1. <
11
An expression found in the Midrash; see Sifre on Deut. §308, ed. Fried-
mann 133b; Mechilta, Yithro, "Ba-hodesh" §86, ed. Friedmann 68b, Midrash
Tehillim (Shoher tob) 45, 8, ed. Buber, p. 270; Esther R. (beginning) and
elsewhere. A
" A l s o referred to in the Midrash: "Like one who bears his cross on his
shoulder" (Gen. R. §56) ; Midrash Sekhel Tob, "Breshith," 22, 6, ed. Buber,
p. 61 ; Pesikta Rabbati 31, ed. Friedmann, 143b. 4
" Acts xix. 33 ; Romans xvi. 13. M
‫ ״‬Sanh. V I ι ; T. Sanh. I X 5-6. ^
in Jerusalem nor do they leave therein the bones of men . . . nor
build there sepulchres, except only the tombs of the house of David
and the tomb of Hulda the Prophetess 21 and, still more definitely,22
"they do not bury the dead therein." 23
Dalman,24 however, holds that Golgotha was on the present site
of the Holy Sepulchre, and that, at the end of the period of the
Second Temple, it stood by the mainroad. He considers that
‫ גייצגצתא‬is ‫ ג^־גועתה‬, "The mound of Goa" a place south of Jerusa‫־‬
lem.25 The latter theory is, however, improbable, and the former
theory arises from an attempt to justify accepted tradition. Accord-
ing to an ancient Baraita, "when a man is going out to be killed they
suffer him to drink a grain of frankincense in a cup of wine to deaden
his senses . . . wealthy women of Jerusalem used to contribute these
things and bring them." 28 Mark points to the same custom when he
says, "And they gave him wine to drink mingled with myrrh
(έσμυρνισμένον οίνον), but he received it not." 27
Owing to this compassion which the "wealthy women of Jerusa-
lem" used to show for the condemned, a tradition has developed in
Luke to the effect that there went after Jesus "a multitude of women
weeping and bewailing him," and Jesus is made to address a whole
discourse to "the daughters of Jerusalem," which, for one in his
condition, is inconceivable." 28
Equally inconceivable is the noble saying which Luke attributes to
Jesus : "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 29
This has become classical ; it comes fittingly from the mouth of Jesus
—but not in such terrible circumstances ; it is lacking both in Mark
and Matthew.
The further incidents related by all three Synoptists—that the
soldiers divided Jesus' garments among themselves by lot, that two
thieves were crucified together with him, the one on the right and the
other on the left, that the two thieves (so Matthew) 30 joined with
the priests and scribes and passers-by in reviling Jesus (though ac-
cording to Luke 31 one only of the thieves reviled Jesus while the
second, "the penitent thief," spoke kindly with him and asked that
n
T. Negaim VI 2 ; see B. Qama 82b. -4
B
Ab. cTR. Nathan, ed. Schechter, version II, 39, 54a; see also version I,
35, 5 2 b . # ‫י‬
3
*On this subject see the additional section in Krauss's Qadmoniyoth ha-
Talmud (the Hebrew version, Odessa, 1914) I 92-113, replying to the views
of A. Büchler, REJ, LXII 30-50, L X I I I 201-215. ^
u
See his article, Golgotha und das Grab Christi (Palästina-Jahrbuch,
1913,
28
IX 98-122) and his Orte und Wege Jesu, pp. 276-305. •4
Jer. xxxi. 38. ‫^־‬
"Sanh. 43a; Abel Rabbati (Semahoth) II 9. •4
21
Mark xv. 23. •4
" L u k e xxiii. 27-31.
29
Luke xxiii. 34·‫^־‬
" M a t t , xxvii. 44. •4
" L u k e xxiii. 3 9 4 -43‫־‬
THE CRUCIFIXION 353
Jesus remember him when he came "into his kingdom," receiving the
promise: "This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise") and that
one of the soldiers stretched u p to him a reed bearing a sponge filled
with vinegar (Matthew 32 has "vinegar mingled with myrrh")—these
are everyone incidents introduced to fulfil certain passages from the
Psalms ; 3 3 "They parted my garments among them and on my vesture
they cast lots" . . . "they gave me gall to eat and vinegar to drink ;"
and a verse in Isaiah : 3 4 "Because he poured out his soul unto death
and was numbered with the transgressors : yet he bare the sin of many
and made intercession for the transgressors."
On the cross-beam (patibulum) above, was an inscription written,
according to Luke and the Fourth Gospel, in three languages, Hebrew
(or Aramaic), Greek and Latin—"The King of the Jews" (so
Mark) ; "This is Jesus, King of the Jews" (so Matthew) ; "This is
the King of the Jews" (so Luke) ; or, according to the Fourth Gospel,
"Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." The words "King of the
Jews" are common to all the Gospels. The inference is clear that
Jesus was crucified as "King-Messiah," which, for non-Jews, could
only mean "King of the Jews."
This renders untenable any hypothesis to the effect that Jesus
never declared himself as Messiah even at the last, and that he re-
mained no more than a Pharisaic "Rab," an "apocalyptic prophet,"
or a "forerunner of the Messiah." He was delivered up to Pilate
as a false Messiah, and as such he was crucified by Pilate. The sly
tyrant could not resist the pleasure of gibing at the Jewish nation by
means of an inscription above the cross : Behold how we, the Romans,
inflict the most ignominious of deaths on this so-called King of
the Jews !
By eastern reckoning the crucifixion began at "the third hour"
of the day, i.e., nine o'clock in the morning; it was continued until
"the ninth hour," i.e., three in the afternoon. Death by crucifixion
did not usually follow so quickly : from many quarters we learn that
death sometimes did not follow till after two days or more. It serves
to show that Jesus was very feeble. The horrible physical sufferings
were beyond his power of endurance; and the spiritual sufferings
were hardly less than the physical.
The Messiah crucified ! the "Son of Man" hanged (and so become
"a curse of God") by uncircumcised heathen—and yet no help from
on high ! The great and gracious God, Father of all men, his own
heavenly Father, especially near to him, his beloved Son and Messiah
—his heavenly Father came not to his help nor released him from
his agony nor saved him by a miracle! The dream of his life had
vanished : his life's work had perished ! The thought was unbearable
. . . in his terrible anguish of heart he summoned up all his remaining
" M a t t , xxvii. 48 (in the best versions).
®3Ps. xxii. 19; Ixix. 22. 4
" I s a . liii. 12. 4
strength and cried out, in his mother-tongue, in the language of the
book he loved most : "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Matthew and Mark 3 5 preserve in Greek transliteration the very
words almost in their Hebrew-Aramaic pronunciation: "Eloi, Eloi,
lama sabachthani ?" 3 6 It has been remarked (by Wilhelm Brandt)
that a man suffering terrible tortures on the cross "does not affect
quotations ;" and, that the single verse from the Psalm from which
the cry was drawn, served as the source of the legend about the
soldiers casting lots for his garments. Jesus, however, was so
permeated with the spirit of the Scriptures that he both began (at
his baptism) and ended (at his crucifixion) his career with quo-
tations from the Scriptures. It is, on the whole, unlikely that
the Church would have put such a verse in the mouth of Jesus
if he had not uttered it: the verse is at variance with the
Christian belief concerning Jesus and his sufferings. Both Mark
and Matthew relate that those standing around the cross thought,
as they heard Jesus pronounce Elohi or Eli, that he was calling for
Elijah; but they said, "Let be, let us see if Elijah will come and take
him down."
Luke, however, who did not find the verse in keeping with
Jesus, the Son of God, replaced it with another, more suitable
verse : 3 7 "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." The Fourth
Gospel makes no mention of any appeal to God : that would be out of
keeping with the nature of the Logos.
At last, overcome by his sufferings, Jesus cried out with a loud
voice . . . and gave up the ghost. When he died there were standing
some distance away, Mary Magdalen, Mary the mother of James the
Less and of Joses, Salome, and other women followers who had
accompanied him from Galilee. The menfolk among the disciples
were afraid to stand near the cross lest they be suspected of having
been among the associates of the crucified Jesus.
The women had no such fear : no one in the East would pay any
regard to a woman-disciple. We can imagine what they thought and
what they suffered, and what was the state of mind of all Jesus'
disciples and followers. Their dream of a kingdom where they
should sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel, had
come to naught; the dreamer-king, the king-Messiah . . . was
"hanged: a curse of God;" he had died an ignominious death at the
hands of the Gentiles. . . .
The hour was late and "it was the eve of the Sabbath" (so Mark
and Luke) ; 3 8 it was also the eve of Passover. It was necessary,
therefore, to hasten the burial of the crucified Jesus. The custom
in Persia, Carthage and Rome was to leave the body on the cross,
food for the fowls of the air. It is doubtful whether even the
85
M
Mark xv. 34 ; Matt, xxvii. 46. A 8887MLuke xxiii. 46.·^
a r k xv
Ps. xxii. 2. 4 - 42 ; Luke xxiii. 54· ^
T H E CRUCIFIXION 355
Romans followed this custom in Judaea ; 3 9 they gave some respect
to the Torah injunction: "His body shall not remain all night,"
especially when, as in this case, a person of importance intervened.
One of the elders of the Sanhédrin, Joseph of Arimathaea, who,
according to the Gospels,40 "also himself was looking for the kingdom
of God," approached Pilate (probably at the request of the disciples)
and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised that he was
so soon dead and desired that the death be confirmed by the centurion
who supervised the crucifixion. The centurion confirmed the death
and Pilate gave the body to Joseph of Arimathaea, who was, it would
seem, an important person in Jerusalem.
Joseph bought the grave-clothes, wrapped up the body and placed
it in a tomb hewn in the rock, a tomb similar to many which remain
to the present day. According to the Mishna rule 4 1 those put to
death by order of the court were not buried in private tombs but in
tombs specially set apart by the court; but Jesus was executed not
by the Jewish court, but by the Roman authorities, 42 and this was,
furthermore, a case of emergency. At the mouth of the tomb a heavy
stone was rolled, such as we find now with many Palestinian cave-
tombs (e.g., the "Tombs of the Kings," ‫מערת מאבי־בית־חדייב‬, by the
Jews wrongly styled ‫)מערת כאבא שבוע‬. And so the burial ended. 43
Here ends the life of Jesus, and here begins the history of
Christianity.
• See Wars I V v. 2. 4
40
S o M a r k ( x v . 43) and L u k e (xxiii. 50-51). According to M a t t h e w
( x x v i i . 57) he was "one of J e s u s ' disciples," a f a c t difficult to believe.
"Sanh.VIs.<
48
" T h o s e killed by the R o m a n authority—no privilege is withheld f r o m
t h e m " ( A b e l Rabbati, or Semahoth, I I 11 ) . 4
43
Mo'ed Qatan 27a; Shabbath 152b. I m p o r t a n t in this connexion is t h e
Baraita: " I t happened to one in Beth D a g a n in Judaea w h o died on t h e eve
of Passover, that they went and buried him, a n d men went in and tied a
rope about the rolling s t o n e ; f r o m the outside t h e men pulled and the
women went in a n d buried h i m ; and the men went and p e r f o r m e d the rites
f o r the E v e of P a s s o v e r " (T. Ahiloth I I I 9 ; Sifre Zutta, Hukkath X X 16,
ed. Horowitz, Kobetz ma'asê Tannaim, Leipzig, 1917, I I I 313).·^
IV. THE ACCOUNT OF THE RESURRECTION
The tragedy had an "epilogue:" Christianity would, otherwise,

never have been possible.
The two Marys (also, according to Luke, 1 Johanna the wife of
Chuza the Steward) followed Joseph of Arimathaea to find where
was the tomb ; the tender feelings of these ardent women could not
rest: duties still remained to be fulfilled to the poor crucified body
of their lord and master. They looked upon the tomb from a dis-
tance, thinking that the moment the Sabbath was over they would
purchase aromatic spices and anoint the wounded body. This seems
to have been the Jewish custom : "they may anoint and unwrap the
dead on the Sabbath." 2 By this means they thought to show their
love for the dead.
It was impossible to carry out this plan on the Sabbath: there
was the difficulty of rolling away the stone, which would have con-
stituted work on the Sabbath, and buying or selling was not done on
a Sabbath or festival (therefore Luke says that they prepared the
spices on the Sabbath eve). 3 Therefore they came to the tomb early
on the first day of the week (according to M a r k 4 the two Marys
were accompanied by Salome, or, according to Luke, by Johanna).
They feared they might not be able to roll away the stone, but, to
their amazement, they found it already rolled away and the tomb
empty. A young man arrayed in white (an angel) was sitting by,
and he said to them : "Jesus is risen ; he is not here . . . go, tell his
disciples and Peter. H e goeth before you into Galilee: there shall
ye see him, as he said unto you."
The women were startled beyond measure: "for trembling and
astonishment (τρόμος καΐ εκστασις) had come upon them." They
escaped hurriedly "and said nothing to any one; for they were
afraid." Such is Mark's version, and, with slight variants, that of
Matthew and Luke also. From this point (from xvi. 9 to the end
of the chapter) Mark has what is only a later addition: just as Mark
says little of the wonders attendant on Jesus' birth, so he has nothing
marvellous to tell in his account of Jesus' resurrection.
Matthew, 5 however, relates how Mary Magdalene and the other
Mary ran "with great joy" to tell the disciples that the tomb was
empty and that an angel had appeared to them, and that on the way
they had seen Jesus himself, who repeated to them the words of the
1
Luke xxiv. 10. A Mark xvi. 1.·^
6
'Shabb. X X I I I 5. A Matt, xxviii. 8. <«
8
Luke xxiii. 54-56.^
350
THE ACCOUNT OF THE RESURRECTION 357
angel. In explanation of the empty tomb Matthew tells a whole
story, occurring in no other Gospel, of how "the chief priests and
Pharisees" informed Pilate on the Sabbath that Jesus, "that deceiver,"
while he was yet alive had said, After three days I shall rise again.
They proposed to Pilate that a guard be set over the tomb and
that the opening of the tomb be sealed with their seal, lest the disciples
"come and steal him away and say unto the people, He is risen from
the dead ; and the last error be worse than the first."
To this Pilate had consented. On the first day of the week "some
of the guard came into the city and told unto the chief priests all
the things that were come to pass. And when they were assembled
with the elders and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto
the soldiers, saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night and stole
him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor's ears,
we will persuade him, and rid you of care. So they took the money
and did as they were taught: and this saying was spread abroad
among the Jews, and continueth until this day." 6
The Tol'doth Yeshu actually gives such a report, and, however
late we place Matthew, the report must be early. Some Christian
scholars have supposed that the Jews removed the body by night and
buried it in some unknown place, in order that the rock-hewn tomb
might not become a holy place. Such a fear as that, however, was
not likely to arise at that time; "a crucified Messiah," "a curse of
God that was hanged," was such a repellent idea to the Jews that
they could never have supposed that anyone existed who would
venerate the tomb. It is equally difficult to suppose that the disciples
themselves would steal the body : during the first few days they were
too terrified by the frightful death of their Messiah. Had they done
so during the night, intending to announce the following day that
Jesus had come to life again, we should then have been forced to
admit that their belief in the days that followed was utter trickery
and fraud.
That is impossible: deliberate imposture is not the substance out
of which the religion of millions of mankind is created. We must
assume that the owner of the tomb, Joseph of Arimathaea, thought it
unfitting that one who had been crucified should remain in his own
ancestral tomb. Matthew alone tells us that the tomb was new, hewn
out of the rock specially for Jesus the Messiah (just as the ass's colt
on which Jesus rode was one on which none other had ever sat).
Joseph of Arimathaea, therefore, secretly removed the body at the
close of Sabbath and buried it in an unknown grave; and since he
was, according to the Gospels, "one of the disciples of Jesus," or
"one who was looking for the kingdom of God," there was some
measure of truth in the report spread by the Jews, though it was, in
the main, only the malicious invention of enemies unable to explain
the "miracle."
®Matt, xxvii. 62-66; and xxviii. 11-15.‫^־‬
The fact of the women going to anoint the body is proof that
neither they nor the other disciples expected the resurrection, and
that Jesus had not told them beforehand that he would rise again.
Mark, the oldest of the Gospels, says that the women were afraid
to say that they had found the tomb empty and that an angel had
appeared to them. It should also be remembered that one of those
who saw the angel was Mary Magdalene "from whom Jesus cast
out seven devils," 7 i.e., a woman who had suffered from hysterics
to the verge of madness.8 In the end she could not restrain herself
and told what she had seen.
Then the Apostles, with Peter at their head, remembered Jesus'
words, that "he would go before them to Galilee." Judas Iscariot,
of course, had left them. Matthew 9 reports that he repented his
treachery, returned the thirty pieces of silver, and, like Ahitophel,
hanged himself. Another account tells how he did not commit suicide
but died a horrible death "at the hands of heaven." 10
The other disciples went to Galilee, "unto the mountain where
Jesus had appointed them ;" 1 1 Jesus had, therefore, appointed a pre-
arranged meeting place (of course, during his lifetime), telling them
that now, as distinct from the time when he had sent them forth
from Capernaum as his Apostles, they would need purse and wallet
and even a sword.12
After his death, and after the women had, at last, related the
vision which they had seen, first Peter and then the other disciples
also saw Jesus in a vision (as did Paul later), when they went to
the appointed mountain in Galilee. The discourse of Jesus, given
at the end of Matthew, is very late and replete with the Pauline spirit.
Luke (together with the Fourth Gospel) knows nothing of the ap-
pearances in Galilee; but he tells how Peter hastened to the tomb
and found there only the grave-clothes.
He gives also an attractive account of how two of the disciples
went from Jerusalem to Emmaus and met on the way one who ex-
plained and proved to them from the Law of Moses and the Prophets
that the sufferings of Jesus were a mark of his messiahship; and
when they reached Emmaus and their new companion had, at their
request, gone with them to their home to take food, they perceived
by the breaking of the bread that this was Jesus : and he straightway
vanished.
Jesus appeared again to the disciples and "they were amazed and
supposed that they had seen a spirit," but he asked them to feel his
hands and his feet, "for a spirit hath not flesh and bones." He ate
with them "a piece of broiled fish" and even "led them outside the
city to Bethany." 13
‫י‬β Luke viii. 2. ‫^־‬ u Matt, xxviii. 16. ^
11
Cf. Matt. xii. 45· < " L u k e xxii. 35-38.-^

‫ ״‬Matt,:. xxvii.
xxvll. 3-10. A " L u k e xxiv. 12 to end. A
10
Acts i. 18.
T H E ACCOUNT OF THE RESURRECTION 359
The Fourth Gospel 14 adds further similar incidents, chiefly the
story about "Thomas (Didymus) the unbelieving," who had de-
clared that he would not believe "except I shall see in his hands the
print of the nails and put my finger into the print of the nails." 15
This shows that even among the Apostles were some who at first
were not convinced of Jesus' resurrection; Matthew explicitly says,
"But some doubted." 1 8
Here again it is impossible to suppose that there was any con-
scious deception: the nineteen hundred years' faith of millions is
not founded on deception. There can be no question but that some
of the ardent Galilaeans saw their lord and Messiah in a vision. That
the vision was spiritual and not material is evident from the way
Paul compares his own vision with those seen by Peter and James
and the other apostles.17 As to his own vision we know from the
description in the Acts of the Apostles 18 and from his own account 19
that what he saw was no vision of flesh and blood but a vision "born
of the light," "an heavenly vision (ουράνιος όπτασία), in which God
"had revealed in me his Son" (άποκαλύψαι τον υίον αάτου εν εμοί). 20
Consequently the vision seen by the disciples, a vision which Paul
deliberately compares with his own, was a spiritual vision and no
more. This vision became the basis of Christianity: it was treated
as faithful proof of the Resurrection of Jesus, of his Messiahship, and
of the near approach of the kingdom of heaven. But for this vision
the memory of Jesus might have been wholly forgotten or preserved
only in a collection of lofty ethical precepts and miracle stories.
Could the bulk of the Jewish nation found its belief on such a
corner-stone ?
14
John xx. and the added ch. xxi. •4
18
John xx. 24, 29. 4
" Matt, xxviii. 17. 4
‫ ״‬I Corinthians xv. 5-8.‫^־‬
" A c t s ix. 3.
" A c t s xxvi. 19. 4
" Galatians i. 16. Cf. J. Klausner, Historia Israelith I V 81-84. •4
EIGHTH BOOK
T H E TEACHING OF JESUS
I. GENERAL NOTE
Jesus was not a philosopher who devised a new theoretical system

of thought. Like the Hebrew Prophets, and like the Jewish sages
from Talmud times till the close of the Spanish period, he put for-
ward religious and ethical ideas which closely concerned the conduct
of ordinary, daily life; and he did this whenever the occasion war-
ranted it. Something might happen: Jesus utilizes the opportunity
to draw some religious or moral lesson. Only rarely did he practise
instruction for instruction's sake and piece together thoughts, sayings
and proverbs, unconnected with any specific incident, like the
"Proverbs of Ben Sira" or the incidental homilies given in the
Talmud and Midrash.
Mark, for example, gives scarcely any sayings except those bound
up with specific events. Yet there existed, prior to the Gospel of
Matthew, a collection of sayings (Logia) which this Gospel transmits,
in longer or shorter selections, as items of independent interest
(e.g., the Sermon on the Mount, and the harangue against the
Pharisees). Luke follows in part the usage of Mark, and in part the
usage of Matthew. It follows from this that where we have treated
the life of Jesus in detail in the course of the present work, we have,
necessarily, introduced the bulk of his teaching as well.
It is not necessary, therefore, to include in the present section all
that Jesus taught: it will be enough to make a brief study of the
principles of the teaching already given and to supplement it with
points not hitherto dealt with. It need, then, be no matter of sur-
prise if our treatment of Jesus' teaching appears scanty as compared
with the detailed biography, or if it repeats many matters already
touched upon. This is inevitable in view of the nature of the subject
and of Jesus' manner of instruction, and the same fact has com-
pelled most of those who have written on the life of Jesus to dove-
tail the teaching into the life, and not allot to it a special section.
The aim of this book (which is not only to give the life of Jesus
but also to explain why his teaching has not proved acceptable to
the nation from which he sprang) necessitates a special section de-
voted to this teaching ; but this need not be lengthy after our minute
treatment of the life which has included most of the teaching. It is,
361
unfortunately, impossible in this section to keep within the limits of
pure, objective scholarship (as has been the aim in the preceding
pages) ; argument and theorizing is inevitable—not from love of
argument but from the very nature of the case.
II. T H E JEWISHNESS OF JESUS
Despite the animus which Julius Wellhausen usually showed in
treating of Pharisaic, Tannaitic and even Prophetic Judaism, he was
responsible for the following bold estimate : Jesus was not a Chris-
tian: he was a Jew. H e did not preach a new faith, but taught men
to do the will of God ; and, in his opinion, as also in that of the Jews,
the will of God was to be found in the Law of Moses and in the
other books of Scripture." 1 How could it have been otherwise?
Jesus derived his entire knowledge and point of view from the Scrip-
tures and from a few, at most, of the Palestinian apocryphal and
pseudepigraphical writings and from the Palestinian Hag gada and
Midrash in the primitive form in which they were then current among
the Jews. Christianity, it must always be remembered, is the result
of a combination of Jewish religion and Greek philosophy ; it cannot
be understood without a knowledge of Jewish-Greek (Alexandrine)
literature and of contemporary Graeco-Roman culture.
Jesus of Nazareth, however, was a product of Palestine alone, a
product of Judaism unaffected by any foreign admixture. There
were many Gentiles in Galilee, but Jesus was in no way influenced
by them. In his days Galilee was the stronghold of the most enthusi-
astic Jewish patriotism. Jesus spoke Aramaic and there is no hint
that he knew Greek—none of his sayings shows any clear mark of
Greek literary influence. Without any exception he is wholly explain-
able by the scriptural and Pharisaic Judaism of his time.
Although our present Gospels, even the earliest of them, were
composed at a time when the Christian Church was replete with
religious ideas derived from the neighbouring races, the fact never-
theless emerges that Jesus never even dreamed of being a Prophet
or a Messiah to the non-Jews. H e has the same national pride and
aloofness ( T h o u hast chosen us)2 for which many Christians now
and in the Middle Ages have blamed the Jews. Jesus commands the
leper whom he cleansed to show himself to the priest and bring the
offering to the Temple as Moses ordained. 3 He also enjoins that a
man should bring the offering due from him, but that if he have
offended his fellow he may not offer his gift until he first become
reconciled.4
*Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien, Berlin, 1905, p. 113.
3
See the Authorised [Jewish] Daily Prayer Book, ed. Singer, London,
1908, p. 4 : "Blessed art thou, Ο Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast
chosen us from all nations." 4
' Mark i. 44 ; Matt. viii. 4 ; Luke v. 4. 4
4
Matt. v. 23-4. 4
363
He does not oppose fasting and prayer : he only requires that it be
done without pride or display.5 When he opposes divorce in general
and his disciples ask, "Why did Moses command them to give the
woman a bill of divorcement and put her away?"—he did not reply
that he was come to take aught away from the Law of Moses, but,
"Because of the hardness of your heart Moses wrote you this com-
mandment" 6 (precisely as Maimonides interpreted the sacrificial
system). He keeps the ceremonial laws like an observing Jew: he
wears "fringes;" 7 he goes up to Jerusalem to keep the feast of
Unleavened Bread, he celebrates the "Seder," blesses the bread and
the unleavened cakes and breaks them and says the blessing over the
wine; he dips the various herbs into the haroseth, drinks the "four
cups" of wine and concludes with the Hallet.
It was against his disciples that the complaint was made that
they did not strictly observe the Sabbath and despised the washing
of hands : he himself appears to have been observant in these matters.
When he sends out the disciples to preach the coming of the Messiah
and the near approach of the kingdom of heaven, he tells them:
"Go not the way of the Gentiles, neither enter into any city of the
Samaritans ; but go unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." 8
Once only does he heal a non-Jew—the daughter of the Canaan-
itish woman ; 9 but to the Canaanitish woman he uses such harsh
words that the ears of the most chauvinistic Jew must burn at them :
"It is wrong to take the children's bread and throw it to the little
dogs"—adding, according to Matthew, 10 words which he elsewhere
addresses to the Apostles: " I was not sent except to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel." "As a Gentile and as a publican" is with
him the strongest term of contempt,11 and he speaks of the Gentiles
as not praying but as using "vain repetitions" ("babbling"). 12 So
"chauvinistic" was Jesus the Jew !
So far was Jesus from teaching the dogma which later arose—
that he was the Son of God and one of the three Persons in the God-
head—that when someone hailed him as "Good master," Jesus replied,
"Why callest thou me good ? There is none good save one : God." 13
Matthew alone perceived the contradiction between this and the
‫פ‬
Matt. vi. 5-7, 16-18. ^
8
Mark x. 5 ; Matt. xix. 8. A
7
T h e woman with the issue of blood takes hold of the "kraspedon"
(hem) of his garment (Mark vi. 56; Matt. ix. 20; Luke viii. 44), but in
Aramaic and Greek "kraspedon" is a stereotyped rendering of both "tsitsith"
and "kanaf" (see Kohut, Arukh ha-Shalem, IV 364, s.v. "Kraspeda").^
8
Matt. x. 5-6. <
8
M a r k vii. 24-30. The healing of the centurion's servant at Capernaum
(Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 2-10) does not occur in Mark and is therefore
of dubious authenticity.
10
Matt. xv. 24. ^
11
12
Matt, xviii. 17.
Matt. vi. 7· <
" M a r k x. 18; Luke xvii. 19. ‫י‬
THE JEWISHNESS OF JESUS 365
Christian doctrine of his own time: he changed the question and
answer to : "Master, what good thing shall I do ? . . . and he said
unto him, Why askest thou me concerning what is good ? There is
none good save one: God." The end of the answer does not here
correspond with the beginning.
When the same man asks how he shall inherit eternal life, Jesus
answers : "Thou knowest the commandments : Thou shalt not commit
adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not
bear false witness, Thou shalt not defraud, and, Honour thy father
and thy mother."
It is noticeable that Jesus here omits the commandments dealing
with man's duty to God (the first four of the Ten Commandments)
and introduces a further one dealing with man's duty to his neigh-
bour: Thou shalt not defraud (unless this represents the last com-
mandment, Thou shalt not covet). When the enquirer replies : "All
these things have I done from my youth up," Jesus "looked upon him
and loved him" 1 4 —in other words, the outlook of Jesus conformed
with that of the most observant of his fellow Jews and was based
on the Law.
Yet again, one of the Scnbes asked Jesus : "What is the first of
all the commandments?" and Jesus replies: "Hear, Ο Israel, the
Lord our God, the Lord, is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul . . . this is the first com-
mandment, and the second is like unto it : Thou shalt love thy neigh-
bour as thyself. There is no commandment greater than these."
Thus Jesus gives virtually the same answer as Hillel and Rabbi
Akiba to a similar question. The Scribe replies to Jesus : "Of a
truth, master, thou sayest well, for God is one and there is none
else save he ; and to love him with all the heart and with all the soul
. . . and to love thy neighbour as thyself is greater than all the burnt
offerings and sacrifices." Whereupon Jesus said to him—to the
Scribe whom the Gospels treat, together with the Pharisee, as the
very symbol of hypocrisy and cant—"Thou art not far from the
kingdom of heaven." 15
The Scribes and Pharisees were not, therefore, so very far
removed from Jesus' standards, although he attacked them generally
(though not nearly to the same extent as we find recorded in the
Gospels) ; and even the great attack on the Pharisees (which Mat-
thew, chapter xxiii, compiled out of isolated sayings, uttered at
various times and on various occasions, which, however justifiable
in so far as they apply to the worst of the Pharisees, referred to in the
Talmud as the "Pharisaic plague," are unjustifiable as applied to the
Pharisees in general)—even that attack Jesus prefaces by the fine
words : "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat (i.e., continue
14
Mark x. 17-21. •4
" Mark xii. 18-34. 4
the teaching of Moses and adapt it to present needs) ; 1 8 all things
therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe : but do not
ye after their works ; for they say, and do not." 17
The last words can be applied to the best of religious bodies and
to the best of people. The Talmud also severely condemns those
"who require what is good but do not practise it ;" 1 8 "Seemly are
the words when they come from the mouth of them which practise
them ; some there be which require what is good and also practise it :
Ben Azzai requires what is good but does not practise it." 19 It was
even complained against Tolstoy, the moral giant of our generation,
that he "required good" in the way of abolition of property, but did
not "practise the good," in that he lived on his own country estate.
Yet this did not render his teaching valueless. Is there any system
of teaching in the world (that of Christianity first and foremost)
which in course of time is not corrupted by its adherents and does not,
to a large extent, deteriorate into a condition of "requiring good but
not practising it ?"
But the positive attitude of Jesus towards Judaism, both Prophetic
and Pharisaic, is made clear in the famous passage from the so-called
"Sermon on the Mount" (which, as has already been explained, is
really a collection of isolated sayings which are, in Mark and Luke,
distributed throughout the entire Gospel, but in Matthew artificially
collected into a single discourse) : "Think not that I came to destroy
the Law or the Prophets : I came not to destroy but to fulfil ; 2 0 for
verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot
or one tittle 21 shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things
be accomplished.22 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these
least commandments and shall teach men so, shall be called least in
the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and teach them, he
shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." 23
Then follow the words which are an additioii to the Law of Moses
and the Prophets : "Except your righteousness shall exceed the
righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter
" S . Krauss ( T h e Emperor Hadrian: the first explorer of Palestine,

Ha-Shiloach, X X X I X p. 430) supposes that in the synagogues there actually
was a "Seat of Moses" upon which the Scribes and Pharisees used to sit;
and this theory receives apparent confirmation from the seat which Dr. N.
Slouschz discovered in his excavation of the synagogue at Tiberias. See
Q0bet2 ha-Hebhra I'haqirat Eretz-Yisrael, Vol. I, Tel Aviv, 1921, p. 30. A
" M a t t , xxiii. 2-3.^‫־‬
18
ω
Hagiga 14a (R. Yochanan ben Zakkai); Yebamoth 63b. 4
T. Yebamoth V I I I 4 (near end) : 4
"Almost the same phrase occurs in Aramaic in the Talmud (see above,
p. 45 f f . ) : "I came not to lessen the Law of Moses nor [but] to add to the
Law of Moses" (Shabb. 116b). 4
21
Menahoth 29a, 340; cf. Ex. R. §6; Lev. R. §19; Cant. R. on Rosho
kethem paz. 4
M
38
Cf. Luke xvi. 17. ^
Matt. v. 17-19. ^
THE JEWISHNESS OF JESUS 367
into the kingdom of heaven." 24 Jesus' displeasure is directed only
against those who regard the ceremonial laws as of greater im-
portance than the moral laws : he is far from annulling the former :
"Woe unto you Pharisees ! for ye tithe mint and rue and every herb
and pass over judgment and the love of God : but these ought ye to
have done, and not to leave the other undone." 25 This verse (also
occurring in Matthew with slight differences ) 26 proves in the strong-
est possible fashion that never did Jesus think of annulling the Law
(or even the ceremonial laws which it contained) and setting up a
new law of his own.
But not only from the Gospels is it manifest that Jesus remained
a Jew in his positive attitude to the Law generally: there is other
tangible and irrefutable evidence. It is only necessary to read care-
fully the "Acts of the Apostles" to be convinced that all the Apostles
observed the ceremonial laws, visited the Temple, there paid their
vows, and generally conducted themselves as true Jews. Simon
Peter, the "rock" of the society which Jesus created (see above,
p. 300/f), long resisted the permitting of forbidden foods and the
reception of non-Jews into the first body of Christians ; Paul opposed
his opinion, calling the stricter "Judaeo-Christians" "false brethren ;"27
while James, the "brother of the Lord," who did not join the Apostles
until after the crucifixion, and who remained a Jew and an orthodox
believer in the Jewish religion, changing but one element in it (in
place of a future Messiah he believed that the Messiah had already
come in the person of Jesus)—this same James writes in the Epistle
attributed to him (which Joseph Halevy has said might have been
written by a Tamm) : "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and
yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all" 28 —thus advo-
eating a severer standard than did the Pharisees.
It is likewise apparent that the earliest Christians, generally, con-
sidered that the Gospel of the kingdom of heaven was to be preached
for the benefit of the Jews alone : during the first seventeen years
after the Crucifixion they made no attempt to spread the teaching of
Jesus among the Gentiles.29 If, in truth, Jesus had said : "Many shall
come from the east and from the west and shall sit with the children
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, but the
children of the kingdom (the Jews) shall be cast out in outer dark-
ness : there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" 30 —it is incon-
ceivable that for seventeen years nothing should have been done to
evangelize the Gentiles, or that Paul should have been compelled to
contend with Simon Peter and James, the brother of the Lord, on
u
Matt. v. 20-28. A
" L u k e xi. 4 2 . ^
" M a t t , xxiii. 23. 4
" A c t s x. 11 and 16; Galatians, ch. ii and elsewhere.
"Epistle of James ii. 10. •4
" Galatians i. 13; ii. 10. 4
" 0 Matt. viii. 11-12. 4
the question of abolishing the ceremonial law and of baptising the
uncircumcised.
Jesus was a Jew and a Jew he remained till his last breath.
His one idea was to implant within his nation the idea of the coming
of the Messiah and, by repentance and good works, hasten the
‫'״‬end." 81
" S e e B. Jacob, Jesu Stellung sum Mosaischen Gesetz, Göttingen, 1893· •4
III. P O I N T S O F O P P O S I T I O N B E T W E E N J U D A I S M A N D
THE TEACHING OF JESUS
Ex nihil ο nihil fit: had not Jesus' teaching contained a kernel of

opposition to Judaism, Paul could never in the name of Jesus have
set aside the ceremonial laws, and broken through the barriers of
national Judaism. There can be no doubt that in Jesus Paul found
justifying support. In detailing the life of Jesus we have already
come across various opposing points of view between the teaching
of Jesus and that of the Pharisees (the latter representing traditional
and also Scriptural Judaism).
Jesus eats and drinks with publicans and sinners, thereby disre-
garding ritual separatism and the principles of clean and unclean
even to the extent to which they were accepted by the "sages" at
the close of the Second Temple period. Jesus, on the Sabbath, heals
diseases which are not dangerous. Jesus justifies his disciples when
they pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, thereby lightly esteeming
the laws of Sabbath observance.
Jesus attaches little importance to the "washing of hands," and,
in the subsequent argument, permits the eating of forbidden foods.
Jesus, unlike the Pharisees and the disciples of John, does not fast
often, and in answer to protests points out the impossibility of com-
bining the old and the new: "No man seweth a piece of new cloth
on an old garment, else that which should fill it up taketh from it,
the new from the old, and a worse rent is made ; and no man putteth
new wine into old wine-skins, else the wine will burst the skins, and
the wine perisheth and the skins : but they put new wine into fresh
wine-skins." 1
In other words, whatever change there is must be fundamental
and not gradual or partial—not as with the Pharisees, who used to
read forced new interpretations into the old Scriptures, changes never
intended, in order that such new explanations demanded by daily
life might not seem to set aside any principle in the Law. In the
opinion of Jesus, such cautious changes, such combining of the old
and the new, are nothing more than sewing patch upon patch, patch-
ing up an old, out-worn garment which can no longer adhere to the
new patches and will, in the end, tear away completely : New matter
must take on a completely new form.
As opposed to the Tannaim who taught, "Look not at the vessel
but at what is contained therein: a new vessel may be full of old
1
Mark ii. 21-22.^
369
wine," 2 Jesus taught that new wine must be contained in a new
bottle. Matthew 3 preserves a noteworthy passage to the same effect.
After likening the kingdom of heaven to treasure hidden in a field,
and telling how, when a man knew of it, he sells all that he has and
buys that field ; or to a merchant in search of fine pearls who, when
he has found a pearl of great price, sells all that he has and buys
that pearl; and, finally, to a fishing-net which, spread in the sea,
brings up fish of many kinds of which the bad are thrown aside and
the good gathered into vessels—after these simple metaphors Jesus
asks his hearers : "Do ye understand these things ?" and they answer,
"Yea, Lord ;" whereupon he utters these weighty words : "Therefore
every scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven
(μαθητευθείς ε?ς τήν βασιλεία τών ουρανών) is like unto a man that is
a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new
and old." 4
The point is clear. The Scribes and Pharisees also believe in the
kingdom of heaven. But in it they are no more than householders :
they are not strong enough to clear away the old for the sake of the
new, but overlay the one with the other, the useless and the useful
together—just like a householder with his store of possessions. But
Jesus, the king in the kingdom of heaven, the King-Messiah, is
minded to separate the new from the old: the new he would gather
into his vessels and the rest he would cast aside.
We saw above how, when one asked Jesus how to attain eternal
life, Jesus enumerates six only of the Ten Commandments, pre-
cisely those which embody plain, human, ethical principles, but makes
no mention of the four which comprise the known ceremonial re-
ligious duties (the first four of the Ten Commandments). 5 Not
without reason was there attributed to Jesus the apocryphal saying
according to which, on seeing a man working on the Sabbath, he
said: "If thou knowest what thou doest thou art blessed, but
if thou knowest not thou art accursed and a transgressor of the
Law." 6
Such is the subconscious attitude of Jesus towards traditional
Judaism. It is instinctive rather than conscious: by his parables
and by certain acts of his disciples which he leaves unrebuked, some-
times also by his own doings (such as healing on the Sabbath when
the disease was not dangerous), by that juxtaposition of "It was
said to you of old time (in the written or oral L a w ) " and "But I
say unto you," and, above all, by his indiscriminate attack on the
Pharisees—by these means he so decries the value of the ceremonial
* Aboth IV 20.4
*Matt.
4
xiii. 4452‫־‬. Λ
β
Matt. xiii. 52. 4
See above, p. 365 f f . Λ
®Added in Codex Bezae to Luke vi. 4; see A. Resch, Agrapha, 2 Aufl.,
Leipzig, 1906, pp. 45-48; R Pick, Paralifiomcna, Chicago, 1908, pp. 61-62;
and see above, p. 69. 4
JUDAISM AND THE TEACHING OF JESUS 371
laws as to make them of secondary importance compared to the
moral laws, and almost to nullify them.
But only "almost:" Jesus never carried his teaching to its final
conclusion. H e himself observed the ceremonial laws (though
not with the scrupulousness and pedantry of the Pharisees) till the
last night of his life. Such a final conclusion—the abolition of the
ceremonial laws and the consequent opening of the doors to the
uncircumcised Gentiles—it was left for another, a Pharisee also, to
reach—namely, Saul of Tarsus after he was become Paul the Apostle.
But had not Jesus lent some support towards this negative attitude
to the ceremonial law and to the body of traditional belief trans-
mitted, generation by generation, from Moses to the Pharisees, Paul
would never have supported himself on Jesus in his efforts to over-
come the "Christian-Judaism" founded by Simon Peter and James
the brother of the Lord.
But Judaism could not agree with such an attitude. For the Jews
their religion was more than simple belief and more than simple
moral guidance : it was a way of life—all life was embraced in their
religion. A people does not endure on a foundation of general
human faith and morality; it needs a "practical religiousness," a
ceremonial form of religion which shall embody religious ideas and
also crown every-day life with a halo of sanctity.
Jesus did not give any new ceremonial law to replace the old
(except, perhaps, the brief form of prayer, "Our Father, which art
in heaven . . ."), and so he taught no new national ways of life
in spite of abolishing, or hinting at the abolition of the old ways.
By this very fact he raised the nation out of its national confines :
for is there not but one moral law for all nations alike ? The Prophets,
too, found cause for indignation in that the commandments had be-
come a "law of men which could be taught," and that the external,
ceremonial laws, such as sacrifices, were made the first principle, and
righteousness, judgment and mercy matters of secondary importance.
Yet the Prophets could insist on the observance of the ceremonial
laws when they served to fulfil a national-religious need (e.g., the
Sabbath in Jeremiah and "Second Isaiah," and circumcision in
Ezekiel). Furthermore, even in their stern reprobation we feel a
strong air of nationalist, Jewish history in its close connexion with
the great events of universal human history. Hence the Prophets
brought it to pass that other nations "were joined unto the house of
Jacob" (as actually happened from the time of the Babylonian Exile
till the time of Jesus and the conversion of the royal house of
Adiabene). The Pharisees and the Tannaim—even the earliest of
them—did, indeed, "pile u p the measure" of the ceremonial laws,
and they so overlaid the original nucleus with a multiplicity of detail
and minutiae as unwittingly to obscure the divine purpose of these
laws.
This habit Jesus rightly opposes : but he fails to see the national
aspect of the ceremonial laws. He never actually sets them aside,
but he adopts towards them an attitude as to outworn scraps in
the new "messianic garment," and depreciates their religious and
moral worth ; he does not recognize the connexion which exists be-
tween national and human history, and he entirely lacks the wider
political perspective shown by the Prophets, whose sweeping vision
embraced kingdoms and nations the world over. Hence, all unwit-
tingly, he brought it to pass that part of the "House of Jacob" was
swallowed up by those other nations who, at the first, had joined
themselves to that part. . . .
The problem is a very wide one and turns on fundamental
principles.
All arts and sciences have their root in religion. From religion
there developed the early stages of mathematics and indirectly
astronomy, music as well as poetry, history in connexion with
drama. In course of time the Greeks succeeded in separating art
and science from religion and the Romans and European nations
followed their example; but with the oriental nations—the Egyp-
tians, the Assyrians and Babylonians, Tyre and Sidon—arts and
sciences remained inseparable from religion.
In the East the learned were found only among the priests and
higher officials (who also came from the priestly caste). The Jews,
likewise, did not succeed in creating sciences and arts independent
of religion. In one thing only did they differ from other orientals
—they wrested religion from the monopoly of priests and placed
its development and exegesis in the hands of laymen; thus they
made religion more democratic and, in general, more nationalistic.
We have seen 7 that the "Scribe" (and his successor the Tanna)
was not only a "Rab" and teacher, but also a lawyer, a judge, a
notary (in matters of divorces and contracts), a law-maker, a
physician (expert in questions touching the fitness of cattle for food,
and menses), a botanist, an agriculturalist (in matters of tithes and
mixed crops), and so forth. Similarly Jewish religious literature
touches on such topics as algebra, surveying, medicine and
astronomy (e.g., in the Book of Enoch), zoology and botany, law
and politics, history and geography, (e.g., in the Book of Jubilees).
These did not approach the status of "science" in the Greek or
in the modern sense, but they served as a substitute. They served
to widen the horizon, increase the interests in life and enlarge
material and spiritual culture. They preserved the national life from
concentrating on a confined circle of ethico-religious ideas, and
gave it a wider, more vital and more universal scope. As to the
excessive meticulousness, reaching to such an extremity of far-
fetched definition, hair-splitting, sophistry and casuistry, usually
alleged against the Tannaim—this lay in the nature of the case : in
the wish to embrace the whole of life in all its incidental forms
* See above p. 224. 4
(casus), the Jewish "sages" were forced to concern themselves even
with abnormal and unseemly cases.
For this Jesus, sometimes rightly, found fault with them ; but they
were right in their fundamental principle, namely, in their desire to
bring religion and life together into a higher synthesis, to make re-
ligion life, and sanctify life with the sanctity of religion. This
does not fit in with the needs of the present time, a time of narrow
specialization in the sciences, when politics and culture are kept apart
from religion. But in those early days, and in that Eastern world
saturated with simple and all-embracing faith, this association of
science and art with religion was a great boon to the nation : religion
escaped the danger of exclusiveness and one-sidedness, and national
life, the danger of stagnation and dryness. If it be a fact that
Christianity has endured throughout nineteen hundred and twenty
years and attracted thousands of millions of believers, it is equally
a fact that Talmudic Judaism endures, alive and active, capable of
rising superior to the most difficult conditions that human imagination
can conceive, and that it possesses the ability of taking a lead in
every new movement, both itself creating new things and also absorb-
ing and digesting the best and newest things of others' creation—
and this, too, throughout a period of some eighteen hundred and
fifty years.
What did Jesus do?
Had he come and said : Instead of religion alone, I give you here
science and art as national possessions independent of religion; in-
stead of scripture commentaries—learning and poetry, likewise inde-
pendent of religion ; instead of ceremonial laws—grown so oppressive
as to crush the warmer religious feelings—a practical and theoretical
secular culture, national and humanistic. Had Jesus come with such
a Gospel his name would have endured as a blessing among his
nation.
But he did not come and enlarge his nation's knowledge, and art,
and culture, but to abolish even such culture as it possessed, bound
up with religion, a culture which the Scribes and Pharisees (unlike
the Prophets who, though they ignored it in their wider political
purview, did not annul it) seized upon and held tightly, as though
it were the single anchor of safety left to the nation—a nation not
minded to be only a religious community, but a real nation, possessed
of a land, a state and authority in every sense.
Civil power!—that is naught: "Give unto Caesar that which is
Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's ;" it is not worth while
to fight against the political oppression of Rome, for the political
freedom of the nation. What does it matter if you do pay tribute
to Caesar, if only you are at peace with the Lord your God !
Civil justice, state efforts at reform of debased social conditions,
would be impossible when one must "resist not evil" and when, if
struck on the left cheek, the only response is to stretch out the right
cheek also ! How can the state endure if Jesus requires that a man
"swear not at all (δλως) " ? 8 What culture can there be in the world
when Jesus ordains that man shall share all his goods with the poor
and teaches that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven ?" 9
Even family life must break down for one who would be a true
disciple of Jesus, since the Messiah accounts praiseworthy those
"which make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's
sake." 10
How can family affairs be righted if Jesus forbids the divorce of
the wife on any ground whatsoever 11 ["save only for fornication" 12
—conforming with the School of Shammai : "except he have found
in her a matter of lewdness" 13 —being only a later interpolation] ?
What interest has he in labour, in culture, in economic or political
achievements, who recommends us to be as "the lilies of the field
which toil not neither do they spin" but whose apparel is more
glorious than that of king Solomon, or like the ravens whose mother
birds are careless of their young, but the Holy One, blessed be He,
supplies them with food without their labour or care (a thought
drawn from, "Who giveth food to the cattle and to the ravens that call
upon him," 14 and paralleled by the Talmudic passage,15 " I have never
seen a gazelle a fruit gatherer, a lion a porter, or a fox a shop-
keeper [nor a wolf a jar-seller] but they get their food without
care)"?
In all this Jesus is the most Jewish of Jews, more Jewish than
Simeon ben Shetah, more Jewish even than Hillel. Yet nothing is
more dangerous to national Judaism than this exaggerated Judaism ;
it is the ruin of national culture, the national state, and national
life. Where there is no call for the enactment of laws, for justice,
for national statecraft, where belief in God and the practice of an
extreme and one-sided ethic is in itself enough—there we have the
negation of national life and of the national state.
To take one example: Jesus said, "Judge not that ye be not
judged." 18 This recurs with greater emphasis in Luke and becomes
a lofty ethical rule. 17 In the same Gospel occurs this brief incident :
"And one of the people said to Jesus, Master, speak, I pray thee,
8
M a t t . v. 34·
" T h e many far fetched explanations of "the eye of a needle" and "the
camel" ("small door of courtyard" or "rope") are uncalled f o r in view of
the Talmudic expression "the elephant that enters the eye of a needle,"
Berachoth 5$b; Bab. Metz. 38b. A
10
Matt. xix. 12.-4
11
Mark x. 9, 12. -4
" M a t t . v. 32.·^
"Gitt. I X 19 ( e n d ) . •4
14
Ps. cxlvii. 9. 4
‫ע‬
Qidd. 2b; T. Qidd. V 15, ed. Zuckermandel, p. 343» note on line 13. 4
18
Matt. vii. I. 4
11
Luke vi. 37. 4
unto my brother that he divide the inheritance with me. And Jesus
said unto him : Man, who made me a judge or a divider over you ?" 18
Jesus thus disregards justice generally, even when it is a case of
natural civil interest, free of any ill motive ; he thus ignores anything
concerned with material civilisation : in this sense he does not belong
to civilisation.
Many scholars have concluded that the Gospel of Luke is akin
in spirit to the Ebionites, the earliest Christian heresy, and that con-
sequently whatever Luke contains that is not contained in Matthew
has been revised in a "Communist-Ebionite" spirit. 19 But had not
the teaching of Jesus contained a clear communist tendency, com-
munity of goods would never have been the first step taken by the
first Christian brotherhood, 20 nor would James, the brother of the
Lord, the first head of this brotherhood, have been so pronounced an
Ebionite and ascetic.
Again, Clement of Alexandria 2 1 also tells us that this tendency
towards the abolition of private property and abstention from ma-
terial pleasures was closely connected with the beginnings of Chris-
tianity, and that those who held such views regarded Jesus as their
teacher and exemplar.
Yet again, the beatitude in Luke, "Blessed are ye poor, for yours
is the kingdom of heaven," is the natural form, and corresponds with
the later, "Blessed are ye that hunger," and the corresponding
" W o e s : " " W o e unto you that are rich, for ye have received your
consolation ; and woe unto you that are filled, for ye shall hunger ;" 22
whereas, on the contrary, the forms, "Blessed are the poor in spirit
(‫ עניי הרות‬or ‫ עניים ברוח‬in the sense 'thirst after the Spirit,'
·πτωχοί τ φ χνεύματΟ" and "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst
after righteousness" 23 are by no means natural. They are artificial
expressions which Matthew fashioned after Christianity had ab-
sorbed many adherents from the non-Jewish world and some from
the richer classes.
The parable of the rich man and Lazarus, occurring only in
Luke 23a is not, therefore, an addition by Luke, but it has been omitted
by Matthew (such parables and sayings are on the whole rare in
Mark) for his own purpose. In this parable the rich man commits
no wrong: he inherits Gehenna simply and solely because he was
rich and derived pleasure f r o m this world; and the poor man,
Lazarus, sits "in the bosom" of our "father Abraham" (a common
Hebrew figure of speech) 23b not because he is righteous nor because
18
Luke xii. 13-14.
ω
On the Gospel of Luke and its character, see Ed. Meyer, op. cit. I 1-51. Λ
39
31
Acts iv. 32. 36. 4
32
Stromata III 6.4
Luke vi. 20-25. 1^‫־‬
‫ ״‬M a t t . v. 4 and 7. A
283
Luke xvi. 19-31. •4
m
4 9 Qidd. 72b; Pesiqta Rabbati §43 (ed. Friedmann 180b) ; see
he had done good, but simply and solely because he was poor and had
had no joy in this world.
There is certainly no systematic teaching of communism, for
Jesus, in the selfsame Gospel, promises his disciples 24 that "there is
no man that hath left house, or wife, or brethren, or parents, or
children, for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive
manifold more in this time, and in the world to come eternal life."
There is no conviction here that private property will disappear,
together with poverty, from this earth: at Bethany Jesus plainly says,
"The poor ye have always with you." 25 This negative attitude to
property arises, rather, from the non-political and non-cultural stand-
point which was apparent in the beginnings of Christianity in the
Ebionite-Communistic movement.
This negative attitude led the Jacobins, during the French Revo-
lution, to hail Jesus as "le bon sansculotte," and the Bolshevists to
style him "the great communist ;" though it is very doubtful whether
Jesus, who opposed the struggle against evil, would have consented
to the terrible murders during the great French, and the still greater
Russian Revolution. But it is unquestionable that throughout his
entire teaching there is nothing that can serve to the upkeep of the
state or serve towards the maintenance of order in the existing
world.
The Judaism of that time, however, had no other aim than to save
the tiny nation, the guardian of great ideals, from sinking into the
broad sea of heathen culture and enable it, slowly and gradually, to
realize the moral teaching of the Prophets in civil life and in the
present world of the Jewish state and nation.
Hence the nation as a whole could only see in such public ideals
as those of Jesus, an abnormal and even dangerous phantasy; the
majority, who followed the Pharisees and Scribes (Tannaim), the
leaders of the popular party in the nation, could on no account
accept Jesus' teaching. This teaching Jesus had imbibed from the
breast of Prophetic and, to a certain extent, Pharisaic Judaism ; yet it
became, on one hand, the negation of everything that had vitalized
Judaism; and, on the other hand, it brought Judaism to such
an extreme that it became, in a sense, non-Judaism. Hence the
strange sight:—Judaism brought forth Christianity in its first form
(the teaching of Jesus), but it thrust aside its daughter when it saw
that she would slay the mother with a deadly kiss.
also A. Geiger, Elieser u. Lazarus bei Lucas u. Johannes (Jüdische
Zeitschrift, 1868, V I 196-201) ; H. P. Chajes, Adda bar Ahaba e Rabbi
(Rivista Israelitica, 1907, IV 137-139) ; and see also W. Bacher's notes and
the reply of Chajes, op. cit. 1907, I V 175-182; R.EJ. 1907, L I V 138 n. 1 ) ;
cf. Abel Rabbati (Semahoth) §8: "When R. Ishmael wept when he was
going out to be killed, R. Shimeon said to him, Thou art but two steps from
the bosom of the righteous ones, and dost thou weep !"
M
L u k e xviii. 29-30. M
76
Mark xiv. 7; Matt. xxvi. 11.
IV. JESUS' IDEA OF GOD
That Jesus never regarded himself as God is most obvious from

his reply when hailed as "Good master :" "Why callest thou me good ?
There is none good but one, God." 1 When the disciples would know
the exact time of the coming of the kingdom of heaven, he tells them :
That day and that hour no man knoweth, not even the angels of
heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.2 Jesus is thus not om-
niscient : he and the Father are not equal in knowledge. When we
remember that, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he begs the Father to
let the cup pass from him ; and that, during the crucifixion, he cries
out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!—it is perfectly
manifest that in no sense did he look upon himself as God. Like
every Pharisaic Jew he believed in the absolute unity of God, and
he turned to God in time of trouble.
Nor did he regard himself as Son of God in the later Trinitarian
sense; for a Jew to believe such a thing during the period of the
Second Temple is quite inconceivable : it is wholly contradictory to
the belief in the absolute unity.
Jesus may have made great use of the terms "Father," "My
Father," "My heavenly Father," and perhaps also "Son;" but the
last is no more than the Biblical "Israel is my first-born" 3 —other
nations are sons of God, but Israel is God's first-born. W e likewise
find : "Ye are sons of the Lord your God." 4 "I have said, Ye are gods,
and ye are all sons of the Highest," 5 "And God shall call thee, Son ;" 6
"I will exalt the Lord, (saying) Thou art my Father," 7 "Beloved
are Israel, for they are called 'Sons of the H i g h e s t ; ' " 8 and, most
noteworthy, the striking passage: "Even if they are foolish, even if
they transgress, even if they are full of blemishes, they are still
called 'Sons.' " 9
The phrase "Our Father, who art in heaven" is so common in the
Talmudic literature as to render quotation superfluous for those
1
Mark x. 18; Luke xviii. 19; on Matthew's version, see above, p. 3 6 4 . ^
1
Matt, xxi v. 36. 4
* Ex. iv. 22. -A
4
Deut. xiv. i. •4
6
Ps. 82, 6.<
" Ben Sira 4, 10.
7
Ben Sira 51, 10. In Fourth Esdras, a wholly Pharisaic production, the
Messiah is called "My Son" (7, 28-29; 13, vv. 25, 34, 37, 52; 14, 9). See
Klausner, Ha-Ra'yon ha-Meshihi II 64. •4
8
Aboth I I I 3. <4
0
Sifre on Deut. §308 (ed. Friedmann, 133a and b ) . ^
377
with some knowledge of Hebrew. 10 Less common, however, is the
use of the singular pronoun, "My heavenly Father," though it is
somewhat frequent in such expressions as : "What shall I do, when
my heavenly Father hath so commanded me?" 1 1 or "These buffet-
tings have made me to love my heavenly Father ;" 12 and we also find
the "diminutive of affection:" "Abba who is in heaven," "Since I
have done the will of Abba who is in heaven." 13 Jesus undoubtedly
used the term "Abba who is in heaven" mainly in the same sense in
which it is used in the Talmudic literature : God is a merciful father,
father of all created things, and like a father he is indulgent and for-
giving, good and beneficent to all, from the flowers of the field and
fowls of the air, to the sinful wrongdoer, in whose death God finds
no pleasure, but only in his repentance.
In this also Jesus is a genuine Jew.
Jesus, however, makes far more use of such expressions as
"Father," "My Father," "My Father in heaven," than do the
Pharisees and Tannaim; and often when he employs it, it receives an
excessive emphasis. The reason is plain. From the day when he
was baptised by John, Jesus looked upon himself as the Messiah,
and as the Messiah he was closer to God than was any other human
being. On the one hand, as Messiah he is "the Son of man coming
with the clouds of heaven" and "drawing near to the Ancient of
days ;" 1 4 thus, literally, he is near to the Godhead.
On the other hand, it is he, the Messiah, who is spoken of in the
Psalms : "Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee." 15 In
Jesus' time it was never doubted that these words referred to the
Messiah, for earlier the Psalm says definitely: "And the rulers take
counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed." 16 The
Messiah is, therefore, the nearest to God: God is his father in a
closer sense than to the rest of mankind.
It was this excessive emphasis which made Kaiaphas, the High
Priest, rend his clothes at the trial of Jesus, though Jesus did not
then call himself "Son of God ;" it was enough that he did not deny
that he was the Messiah who was to come "with the clouds of
heaven" and "be brought near to the ancient of days" and sit at his
right hand ("at the right hand of Power"). Such words were more
terrible in the ears of this Sadducœan High Priest, for whom the
Messiah was only a great earthly king, than they were to a Pharisee,
whose idea of the Messiah was more spiritual.
Arising out of this exaggerated sense of nearness to God is Jesus'
1
'See, e.g., Yoma V I I I 9\ Sota IX 15 (Baraita) ; Aboth V 20, etc. -4
u
Sifra on Levit. "Qedoshim" (end), 20, 26 (ed. Weiss 93b). 4
‫ע‬
Mechilta, "Behodesh," Yithro, §6 (end), ed. Friedmann 68b); Midrash
Tehillim ("Shoher Tob") X I I 5 (end) (ed. Buber 55a). <
™Lev. R. §32 (a little before "My Father who is in heaven"). •4
*‫ ״‬Dan. vii. 13. 4
16
Ps. ii. 7. <
" Ps. ii. 2. 4
JESUS' IDEA OF GOD 379
constant emphasis and insistence in "But I say unto you," as op-
posed to "them of old time," i.e., the Law of Moses, the Prophets,
and also the Pharisees. 17 A danger lurked in this exaggeration: it
unwittingly confused Jesus' pure monotheism ; it gave the impression
that there was one man in the world with whom God was excep-
tionately intimate and for whom God bore especial love. Judaism
knows this "God-nearness" in connexion with the Tzaddiq (the
leader among the eighteenth and nineteenth century Hasidim) ; but
such nearness was shared by many Tzaddiqim, and not claimed by one
alone.
This preference of one man over the rest of mankind showed a
species of favouritism on the part of God, which might induce (and
after the time of Paul did, in fact, induce) a more or less idolatrous
belief in Jesus as the "Paraclete," the advocate for man before God.
Such a conception of the messianic title "son of God," signifying
that he is nearest to God of all men (a fundamentally Jewish con-
ception), Judaism was unable to accept. Jesus' own teaching is
poles apart from the Trinitarian dogma; but it contained the germ
which, fostered by gentilic Christians, developed into the doctrine of
the Trinity.
There was yet another element in Jesus' idea of God which
Judaism could not accept.
Jesus tells his disciples that they must love their enemies as well as
their friends, since their "Father in heaven makes his sun to rise
on the evil and on the good, and sends his rain upon the righteous
and upon the ungodly." 18 Here it is no case of Jesus' justifying
himself against the Pharisees who blamed him for eating with publi-
cans and sinners—"they that are whole need not the physician but
they that are sick ;" the "sick" are no longer under consideration :
both publicans and sinners are "whole" in the sight of God : sinners
and non-sinners, evil and good, ungodly and righteous, all alike are of
the same worth in God's sight. It follows, therefore, that God
is not absolute righteousness, but the good before whom is no evil
("There is none good save one, and he—is God"). He is not the God
of justice, in spite of his Day of Judgment : in other words, he is not
the God of History.
With this, Jesus introduces something new into the idea of God.
The Talmud also tells how "the rain falls equally for the righteous
and for the sinful ;19 as to the sun's rising upon both good and evil
(a thought also occurring in Seneca) 20 the Talmud relates a re-
markable story concerning Alexander the Great and the King of
Katsia : 2 1 when Alexander said to the king of Katsia that in his
‫ ״‬See Ahad ha‫־‬Am, Collected Works, I V 42-44. 4
M
Matt. v. 45. Λ
M
Taanith 7a. •4
x
De beneticiis, IV 26, 1. Λ
‫מ‬
Gen. R. §33; Lev. R. §27; / . Baba Metzia I I 6; TanJiuma, "Emor,"
§9 (ed. Buber p. 88 f.) ; Pesiqta d'R. Kahana, §9 (‫'׳‬Shor ο keseb"), ed. Buber,
country they would have put to death those two scrupulous men (who
had both refused the ownership of certain hidden treasure since they
did not, at the time of buying the land where the treasure was found,
know of its existence) and confiscated the treasure, the African king
asked Alexander : Does the sun rise in your country ? and are there
lean cattle in it? When Alexander answered in the affirmative, the
other remarked: Then the sun rises in your country through the
merit of the lean cattle ; you wicked rulers are not worthy of it.
Such is the Jewish conception of God: the wicked are not
worthy that God's sun should rise upon them.22 Not that Judaism
does not also rate highly the repentant sinners ; none say more about
the value of repentance than do the authorities of the Talmud; it is
they who said, "Where the repentant stand, the wholly righteous do
not (i.e. are not worthy to) stand." 23 But the unrepentant destroy
the world, they break down the moral order, and therefore destroy
the natural order too. If there is no righteousness in the world, it is
not worth while that this world, with its sun and moon and stars and
fixed laws of nature, should continue (hence the "Flood").
God is good; but he also requires justice. He is "merciful and
compassionate, long-suffering and of great kindness ;" but, none the
less, "he will by no means acquit the guilty." It is for this reason
that the Jews acclaim their God, in the same breath, "Our Father ;
our King:" he is not only "Father of mercies" but "King of
Judgment," the God of the social order, the God of the nation, the
God of history. Jesus' idea of God is the very reverse. However
lofty a conception it may represent for the individual moral con-
science, it stands for ruin and catastrophe for the general conscience,
for the public, social, national and universal conscience, that con-
science for which "Weltgeschichte ist Weltgericht;" and such an
idea of God Judaism could by no means accept.
pp. 4-5. It is noteworthy that this story of a Greek character is repeated
throughout the Jewish Midrashic literature but is not found at all in Greek
literature ; it was not in accordance with the Greek spirit. A
M
See Joseph Klausner, Torath ha-Middoth ha-Q'dumah b'Yisrael, Vol. I
Odessa, 1918, p. 57. ‫י י‬
M
Berachoth 34b; Sanh. 99a.
THE ETHICAL TEACHING OF JESUS 3S3
The main strength of Jesus lay in his ethical teaching. If we

omitted the miracles and a few mystical sayings which tend to deify
the Son of man, and preserved only the moral precepts and parables,
the Gospels would count as one of the most wonderful collections of
ethical teaching in the world. These sayings and parables are to be
found chiefly in Matthew and are mainly grouped together in what
is called "The Sermon on the Mount." 1 Such sayings are compara-
tively few in Mark, and those which occur in Luke and are lacking
in Mark and Matthew, are open to suspicion as emanating from a
period later than Jesus. An attempt will here be made to give the
moral principles as we find them in Matthew, using in addition what is
common to Mark and Luke, 2 but drawing, in the main, from the
Sermon on the Mount.
The "blessed," they whose "reward is great in heaven," are the
poor, they that hunger and thirst, the meek, the mourners, the
merciful, the pure in heart, the peace-makers, the persecuted, and
those who are reviled and blasphemed. A man may not be angry with
his brother ; 3 he may not call his fellow "rascal" or "fool." Before
making a religious offering a man should be reconciled with any
whom he may have offended. He who looks on a woman and lusts
after her, commits adultery in his heart. H e who divorces his wife
(and marries another) commits adultery, and a divorced woman
who is married to another also commits adultery; for "whom God
hath joined together let not man put asunder." Better is it not
to marry at all.4
"If thy right eye" or "thy right hand offend thee," "pull out thine
eye" and "cut off thine hand : it is better that one of thy members
perish than that thy whole body go down to Gehenna." 5 It is for-
bidden to swear any oath, even on the truth. It is forbidden to fight
1
Matt. chh. v-vii.·^
3
No treatment of the ethics of Jesus along the lines of objective scholar-
ship yet exists in any language. The best is Ehrhardt, Der Grundcharacter
der Ethik Jesu, Freiburg, 1895. Christian apologetic works containing un-
biassed treatment are: E. Grimm, Die Ethik Jesu, 2 Aufl. Leipzig, 1917; F.
Peabody, Jésus-Christ et la question morale (trad. H. Anet), Paris, 1909; H .
Monnier, La Mission historique de Jésus, Paris, 1906. 4 _
3
T h e words "without a cause" are added in the Syriac text translated by
A. Merx, Die 4 kanon. Ew. nach ihrem ältesten bekannten Texte, Berlin,
1897. p. 9· <
4
B
Matt. viii. 21-22; also xix. 3-10. •4
Matt. v. 29-30, and more explicitly Matt, xviii. 8-9. 4
381
against evil, and "whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to
him the other also. And if any . . . would take away thy coat let
him have thy cloke also. . . . Give to him that asketh thee, and from
him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." "Love your
enemies and pray for them that persecute you . . . for if ye love
them that love you, what reward have ye ? Do not even the publicans
the same ? . . . Ye therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father
is perfect."
Almsgiving should be in secret so that the left hand may not
know what the right hand is doing : "When thou doest alms sound
not a trumpet before thee . . . in the synagogues and in the streets."
Display in prayer is likewise forbidden, or "much speaking as do the
Gentiles ;" but prayer should be brief, in secret, behind closed doors.
When men pray they must forgive the sins which others have
committed against them, that God may forgive them that pray, the
sins which they have committed against God. Not once only, nor
seven times only, must a man forgive his neighbour who has sinned
against him—but seventy times seven.6 When a man fasts he must
not make display of the fact nor change his appearance that men may
know that he is fasting ; it is enough that his heavenly Father alone
knows it. Therefore Jesus, contrary to the accepted Pharisaic usage, 7
allows washing and anointing during a period of fasting. 8
One should lay up treasure in heaven, by means of almsgiving
and good works, and not on earth where "moth and rust doth corrupt
and thieves break through and steal." "The lamp of the body is
the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of
light; . . . if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the
darkness !"
No man can serve two masters, God and Mammon (the world).
So let him take no thought for the morrow : "sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof." "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ;
they toil not, neither do they spin, . . . yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these; but if God doth so clothe the grass
of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall
he not much more clothe you, Ο ye of little faith?"
"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what measure ye
mete it shall be measured unto you." Let not a man look on the
mote that is in his brother's eye and ignore the beam that is in his
own eye. "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto
you, even so do ye also unto them: f o r this is the law and the
prophets." T o enter into the kingdom of heaven it is not enough to
call Jesus, "Lord, IordL" Rather let a man do the will of his
heavenly Father.
• Cf. Matt. vi. 14-15 with xviii. 21-35· 4
1
During an ordinary fast the Mishnah, too, permits washing and anointing
(Taanith I 4 and 5 ) ; but both are forbidden during exceptional fasts
(Taanith I 6) and on the Day of Atonement ( Y o m a V I I I 1).-^
8
Matt. vi. 16-18 4
Such are the ethical principles contained in the "Sermon of the
Mount." The other ethical injunctions, which may with scarcely any
doubt be accepted as genuine, can be summarized as follows :
He that would follow after Jesus may not even go to bury his
father : "Let the dead bury their dead." 9 H e that loves father,
mother or son or daughter more than Jesus, is not worthy of him,10
"for he that findeth his soul shall lose it, and he that loseth his soul
for Jesus's sake shall find it." 11 "Everyone that doeth the will of my
heavenly Father, he is my brother and sister and mother." 12 "Be
ye hated of all men for my name's sake." 13 "Fear not them that
can kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear
him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell," 14 for "what
shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?" 15
"Man is lord of the Sabbath" and "It is lawful to do good on the Sab-
bath," and therefore it is permitted to pluck ears of corn on the Sab-
bath and, on the Sabbath, to heal even in cases where life is not
endangered.
"Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account
thereof in the day of judgment." 16 Foolish vows do not bind a
man, and unwashen hands do not defile him ; what defile a man are
evil thoughts and evil deeds—murder, theft, violence, adultery, false-
witness and blasphemy.17 Let none despise or offend children or the
innocent or the ignorant, or even sinners ; for if a man have a hundred
sheep and lose one of them, when he have found the one "he re-
joiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine which have not
gone astray." 18
"The first shall be last and the last shall be first."
It is like a king who made a marriage feast for his son and in-
vited the chief people of the city and they did not come ; then said he
to his servant ; Since these came not, summon from the market place
and from the way side the wicked and the maimed, that they may
fill the places of the guests.19 "If thy brother sin against thee" re-
prove him, and if he hearken unto thee, well ; if he hearken not, warn
him in the presence of two or three witnesses, "and if he refuse to
hear them, tell it unto the church (ekktesùzi), and if he refuse to
hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the
publican." 20
®Matt. viii. 21-22.4
* , Matt. x. 37. A stronger form is given in Luke xiv. 26.4
Ά
u
M?tt. x. 39· ^
Matt. xii. 50. 4
u
Matt. x. 22. 4
"MM a t t . x. 28. 4
Matt. xvi. 26. 4
19
Matt. xii. 36. 4
17
18
Matt. xv. 1-20. 4
Matt, xviii. 1-14. A
1
"Matt. xx. 16; xxii. 1-14, ^
30
Matt, xviii. 15-17. 4
The greatest commandment is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul," and the second is like
unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself : on these two hang
all the Law and the Prophets." 21 He that would win everlasting
life and follow after Jesus, must not only keep the commandments—
Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not
steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt honour thy
father and thy mother, and Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself
—but he must also sell all that he has and give to the poor, for
"it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." 22
In the kingdom of heaven the great ones will not be like the great
ones in this world whom others serve; but they shall serve others
as does the Son of man. 23 The sin of the Scribes and Pharisees is
twofold : What is of primary importance they make secondary, and
what is secondary they make of primary importance; and they pay
more regard to the letter of Scripture than to the spirit.24 He who
performs a good work for the humblest of creatures is as though he
performed a good work for Jesus' sake.25 They who take up the
sword shall perish by the sword.26
The two mites that the widow gives to the Temple treasury are
of more worth than the rich offering of the wealthy man : the latter
gives of his superfluity, but she of her lack.27 Let him who feels
himself free from sin throw the first stone at the harlot. 28 "It is
better to give than to receive." 29
These are the underlying principles of Jesus' ethical teaching.30
Not all of these sayings may have been uttered by Jesus, but they are
all in accordance with his spirit and they are all of distinct originality.
Yet, with Geiger and Graetz, we can aver, without laying ourselves
open to the charge of subjectivity and without any desire to argue in
defence of Judaism, that throughout the Gospels there is not one item
of ethical teaching which can not be paralleled either in the Old Testa-
ment, the Apocrypha, or in the Talmudic and Midrashic literature of
the period near to the time of Jesus.31
Ά
Matt. xxii. 35^‫־‬40.‫־‬
33
Matt. xix. 16-26. Λ
38
Matt. xx. 45-48.
34
38
Matt, xxiii (the entire chapter).
Matt. xxv. 34-45; cf. χ . 42 (end).-^
36
27
Matt. xxvi. 52. 4
28
Mark xii. 41-44; Luke xxi. 1-4.·^
An apocryphal saying, included in the Fourth Gospel, viii. 7, and, in
certain versions, in Luke xxi. 38; but actually belonging to Mark xii. 18
or xii. 35.^‫־‬
29
80
Acts xx. 35 (Paul in the name of Jesus).
They are collected in a Hebrew translation in Dibhrê Yeshua, Leipzig,
1898, a supplement to the two works of A, Resch, Aussercanonische Parallel-
texte su den Evangelien, Theile 1-5, 1893-1897, and
,
Agrapha 2. Aufl., 1906;
and81 also separately in Dibhrë Yeshua: Τά λόγια! Ιησού 18g8.4‫־‬
See above, pp. 110 and 114. Λ
Furthermore, sayings similar to those in the Gospels, though
found in literature later than the time of Jesus, must have been cur-
rent orally among the Jews many scores of years before they were
fixed in writing in the Mishna, Talmud or Midrash, because there are
no grounds whatever for assuming that the Gospels influenced the
authorities of the Talmud and Midrash. There are ethical sayings
attributed to Jesus which recur word for word in Talmud or Midrash.
For example, the saying, "With what measure ye mete it shall be
measured unto you," in the Sermon on the Mount 3 2 occurs in ex-
3 3
actly the same form in the Mishna ( .(‫ו‬
The parable of the mote and the beam, in the same chapter, 34 is ut-
tered by the early Tamm and enemy of the Gillayonim and Books of
the Minim, R. Tarphon: "If he (the reprover) say to him, Take the
mote from thine eyes (or, according to another reading, Thy teeth),
the other replies, Take the beam from thine eyes." 35 Sufficient for
the day is the evil thereof, 36 is a typical Talmudic expression.37
The bulk of the rest of the sayings are to be found in the Talmud
in a slightly different shape. For example, the saying, "He who looks
on a woman to lust after her hath already committed adultery with
her in his heart," 38 is found in the Talmud in the form, "He who
deliberately looks on a woman is as though he had connexion with
her;" 39 or, stated by the early Amora, R. Shimeon ben Lakish, "For
thou mayest not say that everyone that committeth adultery with his
body is called an adulterer ; he that committeth adultery with his eyes
is also to be called an adulterer." 40
Jesus' saying, "It is better that one of thy members perish than
that thy whole body go down to hell," 41 is also uttered by R. Tarphon,
"Better that his belly burst that he go not down to the pit of destruc-
tion." 42 As to the forbidding of oaths, the Talmud requires "a right-
eous yea and a righteous nay," 43 and R. Eliezer says, "Yea is an
oath and nay is an oath."44‫ ־‬As a parallel to the requirement that
almsgiving should be in secret, and that the left hand shall not know
what the right hand does,45 we have the saying of the early Tanna, R.
Eliezer: "He who giveth alms in secret is greater than Moses our
master;" 4 6 and that that is the most excellent form of almsgiving
when "he gives and knows not to whom he gives, or takes and
knows not from whom he takes," 47 while "he who ostentatiously
gives alms to the poor—for this, God will bring him to judgment." 48
The Greek translators have probably made a mistake in the passage
41
‫ ״‬M a t t . vii. 2.-4 Matt. v. 29-30; xviii. 8, 9. Λ
83
Sota I 7· < "Nidda 13b. 4
M 48
Matt. vii. 3-5. A 44
Baba Bathra 4Φ; J. Shebi'ith X 9. -4
85
Baba Bathra 15b; Arakhin Ijb.-4 Shebuoth 36a. 4
M 46
Matt. vi. 38. ^ ^ Matt. vi. 3. -4
‫״‬Berakhoth "Baba Bathra gb. -4
88
Matt. v. 28. A "Ibid. 10b (beginning). •4
88 48
Massekheth Kallah. 4 Hagiga 5a. 4
40
Lev. R. §23. 4
where Jesus is made to forbid "the blowing of a trumpet" (when
giving alms) in the streets and synagogues; 49 the original reference
may have been to the ‫שופד של צרמה‬. the horn-shaped receptacle for
alms, which stood in the Temple and synagogues, and, possibly, in the
streets also.50
As a parallel to the "treasure in heaven" where "neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt nor thieves break through and steal," we may quote
the Talmudic Baraita: "It happened with Monobaz that he squan-
dered his wealth and the wealth of his fathers (in alms) during a
time of famine. His brethren and his father's house gathered around
him and said: Thy fathers laid up treasure and added to their
fathers' store, and dost thou waste it all ! He answered : My fathers
laid up treasure below ; I have laid it up above. My fathers laid up
treasure where the hand (of man) controlleth it; but I have laid it
up where no hand controlleth it. . . . My fathers laid up treasure of
Mammon ; I have laid up treasure of souls. . . . My fathers laid up
treasure for this world; I have laid up treasure for the world to
come." 51 Here we have Jesus' ideas repeated almost word for word.
Again, those "who are anxious for the morrow" Jesus calls "of
little faith," 52 exactly as does the early Tanna, R. Eliezer ben Hyr-
canus : "R. Eliezer the Great said, He who has a morsel of bread in
his vessel and yet says, What shall I eat to-morrow ?is of those of little
5 3
faith ( ";(‫מקטניאמנה‬ and in the same way R. Eliezer Moda
"He who created the day, created also food for the day. Thus R.
Eliezer Modai used to say, He who hath ought to eat to-day and says,
What shall I eat to-morrow, such a one is lacking in faith" { 1 ‫מחוסר‬
‫)אימנה‬.54
Within the Sermon on the Mount is to be found the "Lord's
Prayer," perhaps the single religious ceremony or institution (ex-
cept for the appointment of the "Twelve" Apostles, or disciples)
which Jesus authorized during his lifetime. He requires of his dis-
ciples and followers that "they use not vain repetitions as to the
Gentiles, who say in their heart, that they shall be heard by their
much speaking." 55 The same thing was said by the author of
Ecclesiastes : "For God is in heaven, and thou upon earth : therefore
let thy words be few." 57
Like a real Jew, Jesus regards the prayers of the heathen as
"vain repetition," "babbling." He therefore composed this brief
prayer : "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.
49
Matt.
vi. 2. 4
00
Shek.VI ι ;Erubin $2a; Gittin 60 b; Pes. gob. M
D
Baba Bathra 11 α. Λ
68
M
Sota 48&. A
Mechilta, Exodus, "Way'hi b'shallach," §2 (ed. Friedmann 47b). 4
65
Matt. vi. 7· ^
•? Eccles. v. 1-2. A
Give us this day our daily bread (the Gospel to the Hebrews reads,
"our bread for to-morrow"). And forgive us our debts as we also
have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but
deliver us from the evil one." 57
It is a remarkable prayer, universal in its appeal, earnest, brief
and full of devotion. Every single clause in it is, however, to be
found in Jewish prayers and sayings in the Talmud. "Our Father
which art in heaven" is a Jewish expression found in many prayers ;
one ancient prayer, said on Mondays and Thursdays before returning
the Scroll of the Law to the Ark, begins four times with the intro-
ductory clause: "May it be thy will, Ο our Father which art in
heaven." 58 "May thy name be hallowed and may thy kingdom come"
occurs in the "Kaddish/‫ ׳־‬so widespread among the Jews, and con-
taining many very ancient elements : "Exalted and sanctified be his
great name in the world which he created according to his will, and
may he bring about his kingdom (or 'rule in his kingdom')" 59
"Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth" occurs in the
"Short Prayer" (precisely as with Jesus) of the early Tanna already
referred to, R. Eliezer : "What is the short prayer ? R. Eliezer said :
Do thy will in heaven, and on earth give comfort to them that fear
thee, and do what is right in thy sight." 60 The phrase "Give us
this day our daily bread" is found not only in the Old Testament
("Give me the bread that is needful for me") 61 but also in a variant
of R. Eliezer's "Short Prayer" : "May it be thy will, Ο our God, to
give to every one his needs and to every being sufficient for his
lack." 62 "Forgive us our debts" is the Sixth Blessing in the
"Shemoneh-Esreh" prayer ; and in Ben Sira we also find, "Forgive
thy neighbour's sin and then, when thou prayest, thy sins will be
forgiven ; man cherisheth anger against man, and doth he seek heal-
ing (or, forgiveness) from the Lord?" 6 3 Finally, the clause "bring
us not into temptation" comes in a Talmudic prayer : "Lead us not
into sin or iniquity or temptation," 64 a prayer that has been included
among the "First Blessings" of the Book of Prayer used throughout
Jewry to the present day.
We see, therefore, that the "Lord's Prayer" can be divided up
®7Matt. vi. 9-12; Luke xi. 1-4. We disagree with some modern scholars
who would regard this prayer, also, as late; in such a case virtually nothing
at all would be left to Jesus: and from nothing we cannot get anything but
nothing. 4
œ
Siddur Rab Amram Gaott, ed. Frumkin, Jerusalem, 1012, p. 158.^
69
See Zvi Karl, Ha-Kaddish, Ha-Shdloach, X X X V 45·*
‫ ״‬T. Berachoth I I I 11; Berachoth 29b; cf. "Peace among men," Luke
ii. 14· Λ
‫ ״‬Prov. xxx. S. •4
" Γ . Berachoth I I I 11; Berachoth 2φ.4
03
Ben Sira 28, 2-5 ; cf. in Talmud, Rosh ha-Shana 1 ‫ך‬a and b; Yoma 23a,
87b; Meg. 28a; J. Baba Qama V I I I 10. <
M
Berachoth 60b; cf. "He will never lead men into temptation," Sanh.
107a. A
into separate elements every one of which is Hebraic in form and
occurs in either the Old Testament or the Talmud. The same ap-
plies to virtually everything which Jesus uttered. If we remember
that Hillel also said that the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself," or the ethical law, "What is hateful to thy-
self do not unto thy neighbour," was the whole Law and the rest but
commentary ; 0 5 and that the Talmud says : "They who are insulted
yet insult not again, who hear themselves reproached yet answer not
again, who act out of love and rejoice in afflictions . . . of them
Scripture says, They that love him are as the going forth of the
sun in his might ;" 6 6 and that Scripture enjoins that a man restore
his enemy's ox or his ass and "help the ass of his enemy when it
croucheth under its burden—" 6 7 : then how much more should he
aid his enemy himself; and that God compels Jonah the Prophet to
save Nineveh, the city of his enemies who have destroyed (or were
about to destroy) his native country; and that it is said in a Midrash,
"How doth it affect the Holy One, blessed be he, whether a man slay
a beast according to Halakha or not, and eat it ? doth it profit Him or
harm Him ? or how doth it affect Him whether a man eat food unclean
or clean ? . . . the commandments were not given save as a means to
purify mankind ;" 6 8 and the wonderful saying, "Almsgiving and
good works outweigh all the commandments in the Law;" 6 9 —if we
call to mind all these high ethical ideals (and there are very many
more like them) we are inevitably led to the conclusion that Jesus
scarcely introduced any ethical teaching which was fundamentally
foreign to Judaism. 70 So extraordinary is the similarity that it might
w
Shab. 31 a. A
M
Judges vi. 31; Yoma 23a; Shab. 88b; Gitt. 36b. A
67
Ex. 23. 4S-A
88
Tanhuma, Shemini, 12 (ed. Buber p. 30) ; Gen. R. §44 (beginning) ;
Lev. R. §13. <
" T. Peah I V 19. A
,0
The book giving all the Hebrew passages illustrating the Synoptic Gos-
pels is Shack-Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und
Midrasch, Vol. I-II, München, 1922-4. The following give important material :
J. Eshelbacher, Ha-Yahaduth u-mahuth ha-Natzriyuth (Hebrew translation,
ed. Ha-Zeman, Wilna, 1911) ; B. Balzac, Torath ha-Adam, vol. 2, Warsaw,
1910; F. N. Nork (S. Korn), Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen zu Neu-
testamentlischen Schriften, Leipzig, 1839; A. Wünsche, Neue Beiträge zur
Erläuterung der Evangelien aus Talmud und Midrasch, Göttingen, 1878; G.
Friedlander, The Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount, London, 1911;
H. P. Chajes, Riznsta Israelitica, 1904 ( I ) 4 ! 1 9 0 6;214-2 5;105-6;57‫ (־‬I I I )
83-96; 1907 ( I V ) 52-58; 132-136, 209-213 and e l s e w h e r e ; H . P . Chajes, Ben
Stada (Ha-Goren, I V 33-37). See also "Ahad ha-Am," Al sh'te ha-S'ippim
(Collected works, I V 38-58) ; G. Dalman, Christentum und Judentum, Leipzig,
1898 ; H. G. Enelow, A Jewish View of Jesus, New York, 1920 ; Z'eb Markon,
Ha-Talmud w'ha-Natzruth (Ha-Shiloach X X X I I I 20-32, 170-176, 469-481).
See also L. Bäck, Das Wesen des Judentums, 3. Aufl. Frankfort a. M., 1923 ;
M. Güdemann, Jüdische Apologetik, Glogau, 1906; Die Grundlagen der Jü-
dischen Ethik (Die Lehren des Judentums nach den Quellen, herausgegeben
vom Verband der Deutschen Juden) bearbeitet von S. Bernfeld, Th. I-II,
almost seem as though the Gospels were composed simply and solely
out of matter contained in the Talmud and Midrash.
But there is a new thing in the Gospels. Jesus, who con-
cerned himself with neither Halakha nor the secular knowledge requi-
site for Halakha, nor (except to a limited extent) with scriptural
exposition—Jesus gathered together and, so to speak, condensed and
concentrated ethical teachings in such a fashion as to make them
more prominent than in the Talmudic Haggada and the Midrashim,
where they are interspersed among more commonplace discussions
and worthless matter. Even in the Old Testament, and particularly
in the Pentateuch, where moral teaching is so prominent, and so
purged and so lofty, this teaching is yet mingled with ceremonial
laws or matters of civil and communal interest which also include
ideas of vengeance and harshest reproval.
Although there is, in the Mishna, an entire tractate devoted ex-
clusively to ethical teaching, viz., Pirke Aboth, it is but a compilation
drawing on the sayings of many scores of Tannaim and even (in the
supplementary sixth chapter, "Kinyan Torah•') of Amoraim; but the
ethical teachings of the Gospel, on the contrary, came from one man
only, and are, every one, stamped with the same peculiar hall-mark.
A man like Jesus, for whom the ethical ideal was everything, was
something hitherto unheard of in the Judaism of the day. "Jesus
ben Sira" lived at least two hundred years earlier. Hillel the Elder
reached an ethical standard no lower than that of Jesus ; but while
Jesus left behind him (taking no count of the recorded miracles)
almost nothing but ethical sayings and hortatory parables, Hillel was
equally, if not more, interested in Halakha.
Everything, from leprosy signs, Nidda and H alia, to lending on
usury, comes within the scope of Hillel's teaching. He introduces
amendments in civil law and marriage disputes (the Prozbol, Bate
Homah [Lev. xxv. 31], the drafting of the marriage-settlement, and
the like). He sits in the Sanhédrin. Not only is he teacher and
Rabbi, but he likewise serves his nation as judge, lawgiver and
administrator.
In Jesus there is nothing of this. In its place there is a far
greater preoccupation in questions of ethics, and the laying down of
virtually nothing but ethical rules (not, as with Hillel, religious and
legal injunctions too). Hillel was all for peace and quietness and the
avoiding of quarrels, and was prepared to compromise with his op-
ponents to this end (as in the matter of Ordination on a Feast Day) .70a
Jesus, on the contrary, was, as the preacher of a moral standard, a
man of contention, saying harsh things of the Pharisees and Sad-
ducsean priests, opposing by force the traffickers in the Temple, and
even suffering martyrdom for his opinions.
Berlin, 1920-1921 ; Irsael Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels,
First Series, Cambridge, 1917 ; Second Series, Cambridge, 1924. ^
** Betza 20a. 4
In this he is more like Jeremiah than Hillel, but while Jeremiah
intervenes in the political life of his nation, contending not only
with priests and the popular teachers, but also with kings and princes,
prophesying not only against Judah and Jerusalem, but also against
the Gentiles and foreign powers, and the whole of the then known
world, enfolding them all in his all-embracing grip, and scrutinizing
them with the acute vision of the eagle—Jesus, on the contrary, con-
fines his exhortations within the limits of Palestine and against the
Pharisees and priests of Jerusalem ; as for the rest. . . . "Give unto
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are
God.'s."
Thus, his ethical teaching, apparently goes beyond that of Pirkê
Aboth and of other Talmudic and Midrashic literature. It is not
lost in a sea of legal prescriptions and items of secular information.
From among the overwhelming mass accumulated by the Scribes and
Pharisees Jesus sought out for himself the "one pearl." But we
have already pointed out that, in the interest of Judaism (and, there-
fore, of humanity as a whole through the medium of Judaism) this
is not an advantage but a drawback.
Judaism is not only religion and it is not only ethics: it is the
sum-total of all the needs of the nation, placed on a religious basis.
It is a national world-outlook with an ethico-religious basis.
Thus like life itself, Judaism has its heights and its depths, and
this is its glory. Judaism is a national life, a life which the national
religion and human ethical principles (the ultimate object of every
religion) embrace without engulfing. Jesus came and thrust aside all
the requirements of the national life ; it was not that he set them
apart and relegated them to their separate sphere in the life of the
nation : he ignored them completely ; in their stead he set up nothing
but an ethico-religious system bound up with his conception of the
Godhead.
In the self-same moment he both annulled Judaism as the life-
force of the Jewish nation, and also the nation itself as a nation.
For a religion which possesses only a certain conception of God and
a morality acceptable to all mankind, does not belong to any special
nation, and, consciously or unconsciously, breaks down the barriers
of nationality. This inevitably brought it to pass that his people,
Israel, rejected him. In its deeper consciousness the nation felt that
then, more than at any other time, they must not be swallowed up in
the great cauldron of nations in the Roman Empire, which were de-
caying for lack of God and of social morality.
Israel's Prophets had taught that man was created in the image
of God ; they had proclaimed their message to all nations and king-
doms and looked forward to a time when they would all call on the
name of the Lord and worship him with one accord.
Israel's spiritual leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees, also looked
for the time when "all creatures should fall down before one God"
and all be made "one society (a League of Nations) to do his will
with a perfect heart." 70b And the people knew, if once they compro-
mised their nationality, that that ideal would be left with none to
uphold it, and that the vision would never be fulfilled. Religion
would be turned to mere visionariness, and morality would be torn
and severed from life; while the manner of life of the Gentiles who
were not yet capable of realizing such an ethical standard nor of
being raised to the heights of the great ideal, would remain more
barbarous and unholy than before.
Two thousand years of non-Jewish Christianity have proved that
the Jewish people did not err. Both the instinct for national self-
preservation and the cleaving to the great humanitarian ideal, em-
phatically demanded that Judaism reject this ethical teaching, severed,
as it became, from the national life : the breach which, all uninten-
tionally, Jesus would have made in the defences of Judaism, must
needs have brought this Judaism to an end.
Yet another cause brought about this rejection: the "self-abnega-
tion" taught by Jesus.
It is difficult to suppose that Jesus was, like John the Baptist, an
ascetic. W e have seen 71 how the Pharisees and the disciples of
John reproved Jesus for not fasting like them, and for sitting at meat
with publicans and sinners ; and we have seen how he used to defend
himself on the grounds that he is "the bridegroom" (and "the bride-
groom is like unto a king," 72 and he, Jesus, is the "King-Messiah"),
while his disciples are the "children of the bride-chamber," and
neither "bridegroom" nor "children of the bridechamber" fast during
the seven days of the wedding-feast. Jesus is not, therefore, the com-
plete ascetic; he was, frequently, not averse to the pleasures of life
(e.g. when the woman at Bethany poured the cruse of spikenard over
his head). 73
Yet after he had failed to arouse a great, popular movement, and
after he had realized the severe opposition to his life-work, and
also, perhaps, after he had begun to be persecuted by the Herodians
and Pharisees, he began to adopt a "negative" attitude towards the
life of this present world.
Like all who have become immersed in ethics and nothing
else, he became a "pessimist;" life, the life as it is lived in this world,
is valueless; nothing is to be gained by resisting evil or fighting
against Roman oppression ("Give unto Ca?sar the things that are
Caesar's"). Let possessions be divided amongst the poor; no rich
man can be worthy of the "days of the Messiah" ("It is easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
,ob
n
The Shemoneh-Esreh Prayer for New Year and the Day of Atonement. M
Ta
Pirke d'R. Eliezer, §16 (end).-*
" M a r k xiv. 2-9; Matt. xxvi. 6-13.
the kingdom of heaven"). Let swearing be forbidden altogether,
even swearing by the truth. It is preferable not to marry at all.
It is forbidden to divorce a wife even though it be impossible to live
with her owing to her unfaithfulness. For the sake of the kingdom
of heaven, let a man forsake father and mother, brother and sister,
wife and children. Let him desist from all litigation, even when it
is a legal matter affecting inheritance.
Let him stretch out the left cheek to one who strikes him on the
right cheek, and let him give his cloak to the one who would take
away his coat. Let him take no thought for the morrow, nor amass
wealth or material for the furthering of culture. H e need not
labour for the sake of food or raiment, but let him be like the
"lilies of the field" or the "fowls of the air" which labour not, but
receive everything from God.
As ethical rules for the individual, these may stand for the highest
form of morality. We find similar sentiments in isolated sayings
from the Tannaim and mediaeval Jewish thinkers. On the theoreti-
cal side Judaism possesses everything that is to be found in Chris-
tianity. Judaism has also its ascetic tendencies—the Essenes, systems
of thought such as are to be found in works like "The Duties of the
Heart," the "Testament of R. Yehudah the Pious;" and a lofty in-
dividualistic morality has been a feature in Judaism from the time
of Ezekiel ("The soul that sinneth it shall die") till the time of
Hillel ("If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" and "If I
am here, all is here").
But as a sole and self-sufficient national code of teaching,
Judaism could by no means agree to it. The most ascetic remark
to be found in the Mishna is that of R. Jacob (the teacher of R.
Yehudah ha-Nasi) : "This world is as it were an ante-chamber to
the world to come ;" 74 yet the same R. Jacob also says : "Better is a
single hour of repentance and good works in this world than all the
life of the world to come." 75 Thus this world is the main thing, and
the moral life is to be realised here. The same thing happened with
Jesus' ethical teaching as happened with his teaching concerning
God. Jesus made himself neither God nor the Son of God, and,
in his view of the Godhead, he remained a true Jew; yet by over-
emphasis of the divine Fatherhood in relation to himself, he caused
Paul and his contemporaries to attribute to him a conception which
was both foreign to his own mind and little removed from idolatry.
So too with regard to his ethical teaching.
Judaism also knows the ideal of love for the enemy, and exempli-
fies it in the law dealing with an enemy's ox or ass and in the ethical
teaching of the Book of Jonah; but Judaism never emphasized it to
such a degree that it ultimately became too high an ideal for ordinary
mankind, and even too high for the man of more than average moral
, n
*Aboth I V 16. 4 Aboth IV 17· A
calibre.76 The same applies to the ideal of "stretching the other
cheek." Judaism also praised them "who when affronted affront not
again," but it never emphasized the idea unduly, for it would be
difficult for human society to exist with such a basic principle.
Judaism did not forbid swearing and litigation, but enjoined "a
righteous yea or nay" 77 and, in the person of Hillel, laid down the
principle, "Judge not thy neighbour till thou art come into his place." 78
Everything which Jesus ever uttered of this nature is Jewish
ethical teaching, too ; but his overemphasis was not Judaism, and, in
fact, brought about wo«‫־‬Judaism. When these extreme ethical stand-
ards are severed from the facts of daily life and taught as religious
rules, while, at the same time, everyday life is conducted along
completely different lines, defined in the prevailing legal codes
(which are not concerned with religion) or in accordance with im-
proved scientific knowledge (which again is not concerned with re-
ligion)—it is inevitable that such ethical standards can make their
appeal only to priests and recluses and the more spiritually minded
among individuals, whose only interest is religion ; while the rest of
mankind all pursue a manner of life that is wholly secular or even
pagan.
Such has been the case with Christianity from the time of Con-
stantine till the present day: the religion has stood for what is
highest ethically and ideally, while the political and social life has
remained at the other extreme of barbarity and paganism. The
Spanish Inquisition was not thought to be incompatible with Qiris-
tianity. The Inquisition was concerned with everyday life, it was
political religiousness, whereas Christianity was pure religion and
ethics lifted above the calls of everyday life. This, however, can
never be the case when, as with Judaism, the national religion em-
braces every aspect of the national life, when nation and belief are
inseparable ; then it is impossible to‫ ׳‬use an extreme ethical standard
as a foundation.
The nation desires freedom : therefore it must fight for it. As
"possessor of the state" it must ensure the security of life and
property and, therefore, it must resist evil. A national community
of to-day cannot endure without civil legislation—therefore the com-
munity must legislate. Swearing on oath cannot always be dis-
pensed with. The national community of today cannot exist without
private property—therefore there must be private property ; the point
is, rather, in what manner the rich man makes use of his property.
The social system is based on the family, therefore there is no
" It is worth noticing to what extremes apologists for the ethical teaching
of Jesus are reduced, e.g., E. Grimm, Die Ethik Jesu, 2 Aufl., Leipzig, 1917,
pp. 122-134, 104, in order to be convinced how contrary to nature this teach-
ing is. 4
n
Baba Metzia 49«; /· Shebi'ith X 9 . 4
n
Aboth II 4· 4
place for teaching "celibacy for the kingdom of heaven's sake" as
the most exalted virtue in those who would fit themselves for the
kingdom of heaven. As to freedom of divorce, now, nineteen hun-
dred years after Jesus, "enlightened" Christianity the world over is
fighting for it.
What room is there in the world for justice if we must extend
both cheeks to our assailants and give the thief both coat and cloak ?
Human civilisation is wholly based on the difference between man and
nature, between human society and the brute beast and vegetable
world; it is, therefore, neither possible nor seemly for man to be-
come as "the lilies of the field" or "the fowls of the air."
But when, in reality, did Christianity ever conduct itself in ac-
cordance with these ethical standards of Jesus? In the small fel-
lowship of his disciples community of goods was practised ; but even
so, the system was adopted only in part and temporarily. The earliest
of Jesus' disciples married; they indulged in litigation, they hated
and reviled not only their enemies but all who opposed them. Did
Jesus himself abide by his own teaching? Did he love the Pharisees
—who were not his enemies but simply his theoretical opponents?
Did he not call them "Hypocrites," "Serpents," "Offspring of
vipers ?" and did he not threaten that "upon them would come all the
innocent blood that was shed in the land ?" 7 9 Did he not condemn
the ungodly to hell where there would be "weeping and gnashing of
teeth?"
Did he not resist evil with acts of violence—by expelling the
money-changers and them that sold doves in the Temple ?
Did he not promise houses and fields and even judgment thrones
in the future to those who followed him? When he sent out the
Twelve as his messengers to the cities of Israel did he not warn
them to be "subtil as serpents and simple as doves," 80 and at the
same time say that, for the city which would not receive them, it
"would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of
judgment than for that city." 81 And did he not say to his disciples
that "whosoever denied him (Jesus) before men, Jesus would deny
him also before his Father in heaven ?" 82 and in this is there not
vengeance, bearing of malice, unforgiveness and hatred of enemies?
And what of those words: 4 Think not that I came to bring peace
upon earth : I came not to bring peace but a sword," 83 "not peace,
but dissension ?" 84
And what of those harsh, definite words : " I came to cast fire on
the earth, and what will I if it is already kindled !" 85 And what of
his injunction "to sell the cloak and buy a sword ?" 86 And what of
83
80
Matt, xxiii. 35· Λ M
Matt. x. 34· ^
81
Matt. x. 16. <4 8 5
Luke xii. 51. 4
Matt. x. 1 5 . L u k e xii. 49. 4
ω
Matt. x. 33·^ "Luke xxii. 36. ^
those cruelest of words, "Give not what is holy to the dogs and cast
not your pearls before swine ?" 87
Where in all this do we find tenderness, pardon "till seventy times
seven," love of the enemy and putting forth the other cheek ? This
is not an arraignment against Jesus: he maintained a high moral
standard in all his doings, and his stern words and the expulsion of
the traffickers and money-changers were in themselves a lofty moral
protest; but such contradiction between precept and practice cannot
but prove that this extreme ethical teaching cannot possibly be carried
out in practice in everyday life, even by so exceptional a man for
whom society was naught and the individual soul everything. Then
how much more impossible must it be in the sphere of political and
national life?
This it was left for Judaism to perceive. W e have before us
two facts. In the first place, "Christian morality" was embodied in
daily life by—Judaism: it is Judaism, and Judaism only, which has
never produced murderers and pogrom-mongers, whereas indulgence
and forgiveness have become the prime feature in its being, with the
result that the Jews have been made moral (not in theory but in living
fact) to the verge of abject flaccidity. In the second place, monas-
ticism is typical not of Judaism but of Christianity, in the same way
as it is typical of Buddhism. Had there been no ascetic and monastic
element in Jesus' teaching, monasticism would not have become d
peculiarity of Roman and Orthodox Christianity.
The Protestant Reformation which abolished monasticism and the
celibacy of the clergy was a reversion to Judaism. Christianity is
the halfway station between Judaism and Buddhism. Pharisaic
Judaism as a whole (as distinct from certain individual moralists,
from the time of the Essenes till the time of the writer of the Shebet
Musar, who educed from Pharisaic Judaism an extremist ethical
code) was alive to the fact that the Law "was not given to the
ministering angels," 88 and it endeavoured to take account of existing
conditions, but to raise them and to sanctify them. It did not teach
the abolition of marriage, of oaths or of property: it sought rather
to bridle sexual desire, to limit the use of oaths and lessen the evils
of wealth.
By embracing life as a whole Judaism rendered an extremist
morality impossible; but it hallowed the secular side of life by the
help of the idea of sanctity, while rendering the idea of sanctity real
and strong and palpable by contact with actual reality. Judaism is
an all-embracing, all-inclusive political-national social culture; there-
fore together with the noblest abstract ethic, it comprises both cere-
monial rules of purely religious interest and entirely secular human
points of view.
w
J
Matt. vii. 6 . ^
Berachoth 25b; Yoma 30a; Kiddushin 54a; Me'ila 14b. A
Thus in the Levitical "Code of Holiness" 89 we find, side by side,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," and rulings about "un-
clean foods" and the "sacrificial remnants ;" "Thou shalt not take
vengeance nor bear any grudge," side by side with rulings about
"mixed materials" and "cross-breeding;" "The stranger that sojourn-
eth with you shall be as the home-born among you, and thou shalt
love him as thyself," side by side with rulings about "the acquired
bondmaid" (Lev. xix. 20) ; alongside of the lofty thought, "Ye are
the sons of the Lord your God," comes the ceremonial rule, "Ye shall
not cut yourselves."
"Thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear any grudge" can occur
in the same book in which it is written, "Remember what Amalek did
unto thee," and "Harass the Midianites ;" the command to help "the
ass of thine enemy that is fallen under its load" does not exclude from
the Law of Moses the command, "Thou shalt not leave a soul alive,"
and "of the foreigner shalt thou exact usury," and "of the stranger
shalt thou exact it" (Deut. xv. 2—in whatever sense this is taken).
Within the same Old Testament is included the Book of Jonah,
teaching in unrivalled fashion the duty of forgiveness to enemies and
preserving the destroyer of the fatherland; and also the Book of
Esther describing in most garish colours the vengeance wreaked on
the enemy.
All such feelings and attitudes exist within a people and must
find place in its literature: they are all human, deeply implanted in
man's nature and they may not be changed in a moment at will. A
proof of this is before us in the fact that even Christianity, in addi-
tion to the New Testament, was forced to accept unchanged the whole
of the Old Testament as Canonical Scripture, a sign that the New
Testament alone did not suffice.
It did not suffice because it did not embrace the whole of life,
whether civil or national, communal or private, religious or ethical,
theoretical or practical.
The Talmud also, like the Old Testament, is all-embracing and all-
inclusive. The Old Testament ideal is the Prophet Jeremiah : he is a
moralist, but he is also a political worker and a great fighter on his
nation's behalf.
The Talmud ideal is Hillel the Elder ; he, no less than Jesus, was
a moralist of high degree, humble, a peace-maker, and a lover of
his fellow men; but he was no fighter nor politician; instead his
teaching embraced the whole of the social and national life. Hillel
took up his position in the centre of affairs, laboured together with
the community (his favourite saying was, "Do not keep yourself
apart from the community"), took within his purview all the re-
quirements of life from every possible point of view, embodied just
such ethical standards as were possible in practice, and thus sanctified
and raised the tone of ordinary, every-day life, and made his ethical
89
Lev. xix. •4
teaching popular and widespread. He rendered it possible of practice
to any man, and not merely to the chosen few who could withdraw
from the affairs of everyday life.
Jesus surpassed Hillel in his ethical ideals: he changed Hillel's
"Golden Rule" from the negative form ("What thou thyself hatest
do not unto thy neighbour"—in which the Book of Tobit90 anticipates
Hillel) to the positive form ("What thou wouldest that men should
do unto thee, do thou also unto them"—in which the "Letter of
Aristeas" 9 1 anticipates Jesus), and concerned himself more with
ethical teaching than did Hillel; but his teaching has not proved
possible in practice.92
Therefore he left the course of ordinary life untouched—wicked,
cruel, pagan ; and his exalted ethical ideal was relegated to a book or,
at most, became a possession of monastics and recluses who lived
far apart from the paths of ordinary life.
Beyond this ethical teaching Jesus gave nothing to his nation.
He cared not for reforming the world or civilisation: therefore to
adopt the teaching of Jesus is to remove oneself from the whole
sphere of ordered national and human existence—from law, learning
and civics (all three of which were absorbed into the codes of the
Tannaim-Pharisees), from life within the State, and from wealth in
virtually all its forms. How could Judaism accede to such an ethical
ideal?—that Judaism to which the monastic ideal had ever been
foreign !
The ethic of Jesus is, however, founded on the special character
of his belief in the Day of Judgment and the kingdom of heaven
(the "Days of the Messiah"). Only after we have understood the
nature of this belief can we comprehend how Jesus the Jew attained
to such an extreme in his ethical teaching.
90
Tobit iv. 15; the R u l e is also f o u n d in Philo, as quoted b y Eusebius,
Praeparatio Evangelica, V I I I 7, 6 ; a n d also in w h a t is, in the main, a J e w i s h
work, t h e Didache, I. 2. •4
81
E d . W e n d l a n d , p. 207; see K a u t z s c h , Apocryphen und Pseudepigraphen
des Alten Testaments I I 22, η. a. See t h e Slavonic Enoch L X I 1. 4
02
See " A h a d h a - A m , " Collected W o r k s , I V 45-50; G. F r i e d l a n d e r , The
Jewish Sources of the Sermon on the Mount, London, 1911, pp. 230-238.
Maimonides, however, in his Sefer ha-Mitzvoth, Mitzvoth 'Asëh §206 ( e d .
H . Heller, Petrokoff 1914, p. 6 4 ) , gives positive and negative f o r m s t o g e t h e r
a n d r e g a r d s t h e m b o t h as equally J u d a i s m . •4
VI. T H E DAY O F J U D G M E N T A N D T H E KINGDOM O F
HEAVEN
When dealing with the life of Jesus we saw how, at the moment
of his baptism by John in the Jordan, the idea flashed upon his mind
that he was the Messiah, but that he concealed the fact from his
disciples until Cassarea-Philippi, since he shrank from the danger
of stirring up a political movement against Rome (cf. the Temptation
immediately after the Baptism), and took the imprisonment of John
the Baptist as a warning against mixing in matters of politics. But
it followed, none the less, that since there was a Messiah in the
world, the "kingdom of heaven was nigh," and this news Jesus, from
the outset, published and proclaimed in his teaching.
What was the nature of this kingdom of heaven, and how was it
to be revealed in the world ?
We have already observed 1 that the "kingdom of heaven" (the
usual title in Matthew) or the "kingdom of God" (usual in Mark
and Luke) 2 or the "kingdom of the Almighty" (as in the "Alenu"
prayer [ Singer, "Authorised Prayer Book," p. 76], "When the world
shall be perfected under the kingdom of the Almighty") or the
"Theokrateia" of Josephus, 3 is so entirely a Hebrew form of speech
as to retain in its Greek translation the original Hebrew construction
(βασιλεία των ο δρανών, with "heaven" in the plural as always in
Hebrew), and that it was widely used in Israel in Jesus' time, and
generally understood without further explanations.
Jesus never explained it to any extent : in the Canonical Gospels,
at least, he speaks far more of its coming than of its nature. Yet
he gives sufficient indication to leave it quite clear that his notion of
the kingdom of heaven and all that it involved differed but little from
that of his fellow Jews in the early Tannaitic period.
The kingdom of heaven is the sovereignty of good—worldly,
material good as well as higher, spiritual good, for "there is none
good but one, and that is God." 4 In those days, before the "Days
of the Messiah," Israel was in evil plight, ruled over by strangers
and heathen; and the world as a whole was in like plight since it
was ruled over by ungodly tyrants. There prevailed sore poverty
and great tribulations, and the righteous and the godly were perse-
cuted and afflicted.
1
See p. 245. <
' T h a t their m e a n i n g is identical is a p p a r e n t f r o m t h e use of ‫ש מ י ם‬ ‫יראת‬
and ‫ ש מ י ם‬0‫ ש‬as interchangeable t e r m s f o r ‫ י ר א ת א ל י ה י ם‬a n d ' ‫ה‬
3
Contra Apionem II, 16.^‫־‬
4
M a r k x . 18; M a t t x i x . 17\ L u k e xviii. 1 9 . ^
398
THE DAY OF JUDGMENT 399
All this came about because men were given up to sin : they did
not practise kindness one to another nor give alms to the poor ; they
robbed and oppressed and lived in luxury by despoiling the poor.
They did not even observe the main commandments, but profaned
the Sabbath and committed other like sins. But when once men shall
practise repentance, when men shall turn from their evil ways and
strive to do well one towards another, to abstain from oppression and
wrong, to follow after righteousness and to call upon the Lord—then
shall the God of their fathers send to them Elijah the Prophet, who
shall bring the glad tidings of the coming of the redeemer, the King-
Messiah, who shall redeem them from all evil, overcome their foreign
enslavers by "the breath of his lips," i.e., by the help of God (accord-
ing to the earliest and most popular forms of the belief, the Messiah
will wage war with them until he defeat them utterly, and this victory
will be accomplished by divine help).
Then shall the kingdom be restored to the house of Israel under
the righteous sceptre of the Messiah (hence the title "Kïw^-MessÎah"),
and God shall judge all the nations and also the tribes of Israel ; and
on the Judgment Day, the Messiah shall stand at the right hand of
God. The transgressors who refused to repent, whether they be of
the Gentiles or of Israel (though the numbers will be far greater
among the Gentiles), them shall God consume in the fire of hell.
Then shall there be on the Day of Judgment a time of distress in
the world, the like of which had never been known since God created
the world. Dearth and famine shall wax sore, fierce and bitter wars
shall wage, contempt shall increase, internal quarrels shall ·reach
such a pitch that the son will revile his father and the daughter rise
up against her mother. Whole cities shall be destroyed. The Law
shall be forgotten. False prophets shall be many, and sorrow after
sorrow shall come upon the world, until the few good and righteous
are purified and cleansed out of the midst of the numerous godless
and unrighteous.
After the stern Day of Judgment a new world shall come into
being, and with it shall come the "messianic age," days of happiness
and prosperity, both material and spiritual. At the sound of the
trumpet of the Messiah (or, rather, the trumpet that hails the coming
of the messianic age) there shall be a gathering together of the exiles,
of all the Jews scattered to the four corners of the earth. Those
Gentiles who survive the Day of Judgment shall all become proselytes
and call on the name of the one and only God, and "all the nations
shall be made one society to do the will of God with a perfect heart,"
and the righteous and the pious shall draw near to God and enjoy
all manner of good.
In the Land of Israel shall be set up a glorious kingdom of the
saints of the. Most High, with the King-Messiah at their head. The
Temple shall be rebuilt, and all nations, still persisting according to
their races and states (Judaism does not envisage the abolition of
nationality in the world but the brotherhood of the nations), shall
stream unto the Mountain of God and serve the God of Israel together
with the chosen people. The very fruitfulness of the land shall
increase greatly and evil beasts shall no longer harm mankind.
Sorrow shall cease with oppression and pride, slavery and inequality,
and mankind shall become a kingdom of brothers, sons of one father
—their Father in heaven.
Finally shall come to pass the resurrection of the dead (a thor-
oughly Jewish conception, arising from a combination of the foreign,
Grasco-Persian, idea of the survival of the soul with the Jewish idea
of the messianic age). The righteous shall come to life and (accord-
ing to another view) the ungodly also, after they have been purified
in the fire of hell; and the righteous shall sit in the company of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of Moses, the First Redeemer, and
of the rest of the saints of the world, and all shall shelter under the
shadow of the Messiah.
Then and only then shall come the tvorld to come, wherein is
neither eating nor drinking, nor fruitfulness nor begetting of chil-
dren, nor trafficking nor jealousy nor strife, but "the righteous shall
sit with crowns on their heads and enjoy the brightness of the
Shekina." 5
This was the ideal of the kingdom of heaven, or "the Days of the
Messiah," at the time when Jesus lived ; and it was this ideal which
he saw in his mind when he made his great pronouncement: "The
kingdom of heaven is at hand." To him also the root principle was
righteousness and well-doing, abstention from revenge and the feeling
of malice, from oppression and deeds of violence, from ruthlessness
and lust, and the practising of good, of pardon and forgiveness,
humility and piety, and, above all, the avoidance of hypocrisy and
cant, i.e., regarding ceremonial laws like the washing of hands, the
cleansing of vessels, tithing of herbs, as the primary element of the
devout life, and treating as of secondary importance only those vital
commandments bearing on a man's relations with his fellow men.
B u t t h e p o o r a n d d o w n t r o d d e n a n d afflicted, t h e lost a n d s t r a y e d ,
t h e i g n o r a n t a n d social o u t c a s t s w h o m J e s u s g a t h e r e d a r o u n d h i m —
t h e s e h e could n o t a t t r a c t n o r s a t i s f y w i t h spiritual p r o m i s e s only : he
w a s compelled t o hold o u t a n e a r t h l y ideal also, m o r e p a r t i c u l a r l y since
he, too, w a s a d d i c t e d t o t h e beliefs a n d ideas of his race a n d age. W e
h a v e a l r e a d y seen h o w he describes t h e D a y of J u d g m e n t in c o l o u r s
closely r e s e m b l i n g t h o s e in t h e a n c i e n t Baraitas s p e a k i n g of " t h e
p a n g s of t h e M e s s i a h " a n d in old H e b r e w A p o c a l y p s e s ; t h u s he says :
" V e r i l y I say u n t o you t h a t I shall n o t d r i n k a g a i n of t h e f r u i t of
5
This is a very brief abstract of three books by the present writer: Ha-
Ra'yon ha-Meshihi b'Yisrael, Vol. I : The Period of the Prophets (Cracow,
1909) ; Vol. II ; The Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical Books (Jerusalem,
1921) ; Vol. I l l : Period of the Tannaim (Jerusalem, 1923)^ also in German,
Die Messianischen Vorstellungen des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter der
Tannaiten, Berlin, 1904. A
the vine till the day when I shall drink it new in the kingdom of
heaven," 6 where the reference is, without doubt, to "the wine pre-
served in the grape from the six days of creation." 7
To those who forsake house and fields he promises "houses and
fields a hundredfold," 8 and to his disciples he says, "Therefore will
I make you to inherit the kingdom of heaven . . . that ye may eat
and drink of my table in my kingdom,9 and ye shall sit on thrones
and judge the twelve tribes of Israel." 10
And, again, in different words, "In the new creation ('the new
world') when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory,
ye too shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel." 1 1
As for the increased fruitfulness of the earth, Papias, one of
the earliest Church Fathers, speaking in the name of John of Asia
Minor, has left us these words of Jesus: "The days will come in
which vines shall spring up, each bearing ten thousand stocks, and
on each stock ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand
shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand bunches, and on each bunch
ten thousand grapes, and each grape when pressed shall yield five
and twenty measures (lit. baths; one bath = 36 litres) of wine. And
when any one of the saints shall have caught hold of one grape
another shall cry, 'Better grape am I : take me; by me bless the
Lord.' Likewise also a grain of wheat shall cause to spring up ten
thousand ears of corn, and each ear shall hold ten thousand grains,
and each grain ten pounds of fine, pure flour. And so shall it be
with the rest of the fruits and seeds and every herb after its kind.
And all animals which shall use those foods that are got from the
ground shall live in peace and concord, in all things subject to man." 1 2
This description tallies in almost every detail with the corre-
sponding description found in the Apocalypse of Baruch,13 with
another in an ancient Talmudic Baraita,1* and still more with an
expansion of this Baraita found in the old Tannaitic Midrash
Sifre.15 Later, when Christianity moved farther and farther away
from Judaism, and hopes of a speedy coming of the kingdom of
heaven were disappointed, such earthly and material promises were
omitted from the teaching of Christianity.
‫ י‬M a r k xiv. 25. 4
7
Berachoth 34b. 4
8
M a r k x. 20.4
9
Cf. " T h e H'oly One, blessed be H e , will prepare a banquet f o r the right-
eous f r o m the flesh of L e v i a t h a n " ( B a b a Bathra 75a). 4
w
Luke xxii. 29-30. M
u
Matt. x i x . 28. ^
u
See Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V 33. 4
13
Baruch 29, 5-8. F o r a comparison of B a r u c h and Papias, see Klausner,
Ha-Ra'yon ha-Meshihi b'Yisrael, I I 54-56. 4
14
Kethuboth i i i b. A
15
Sifre on Deut. xv and xvii (ed. F r i e d m a n n 135-6). F o r f u r t h e r detail
see Klausner, Die Mess. Vorstellungen pp. 108-112, .4
But there is no doubt that Jesus could never have attracted the
simple and somewhat grossly minded fishermen and peasants without
the promises of worldly and material happiness, and we have noticed
how, even in the Canonical Gospels, he looks forward to the banquet
of the Messiah, "the table of the kingdom of heaven," and the "new
wine," and also "fields and houses" in the "Days of the Messiah."
Again, in the first and second centuries of the Christian era, belief
in the earthly kingdom of the Messiah was very strong, and for many
centuries after, Christians believed in a Millennium (Chiliasmus),
which included also this material belief recorded in Papias, and kin-
dred ideas, a belief which has some foundation in the Prophets and the
subsequent Hebrew literature ("the banquet of Leviathan," "Levi-
athan and the wild ox," "the wine laid up since the days of Creation,"
and the like).
In this respect too Jesus did not differ from the rest of his people ;
and, furthermore, we have reason to believe that Jesus expected the
kingdom to be restored to the Jews in the political sense. In the
first verses of the Acts of the Apostles, without any preparation or
warning from the context, there suddenly comes the passage : 1 6 "And
when they (the disciples) were gathered together they asked him,
Lord, dost thou at this time (έν τ φ χρονφ τούτφ) restore the kingdom
to Israel ?" The verse does not raise any doubt but that Jesus would
restore the kingdom to Israel : it was only a question of "when."
Jesus was, therefore, truly Jewish in everything pertaining to the
belief in a worldly and even a political Messiah ; the only difference
was that, as against the believers in a political Messiah, he supposed
that only with the help of God, without the help of armed force, he
should restore the kingdom of Israel to the Jews when once they
should repent.
Yet despite the Judaistic character of this messianic belief, there
was in it, in the form in which Jesus conceived it, a danger to
the Jews.
The Jews expected the Messiah at any time. Every day there
arose false Messiahs, visionary patriots, stout-hearted but feeble-
handed, who passed away like a shadow once the Romans or the
Herodians had made an end of them and their deeds. Sometimes
the Pharisees and Tannaim supported them, as Rabbi Akiba sup-
ported Bar Kokhbah ; but, as a rule, the Pharisees dreaded the diffi-
cult consequences of the Messianic belief in practice.17
Hence, in the older Talmudic literature, we find an ambiguous
attitude towards the Messianic promises : these is a certain wariness
as touching the persons of the Messiahs, but a deep and enthusiastic
belief in the Messianic hope itself. When the appointed hour should
strike, God would himself redeem his people by miracles and wonders,
"Acts i. 6.<
" S e e J. M. Elbogen, Ph'rushim (Otzar ha-Yahaduth, Specimen Volume,
W a r s a w , 1906) pp. 93-4. M
and the Messiah would be no more than an instrument of God. Jesus,
from the moment of his baptism, looked upon himself as the Messiah ;
the Messiah was, therefore, already in the world, and so the kingdom
of heaven, the kingdom of the Messiah, was likewise in existence in
the world.
Jesus definitely stated that the kingdom of heaven began with
John the Baptist, "for he is Elijah that was to come," "the Law and
the Prophets were until John, and from that time the kingdom of
God is preached." 18 The kingdom of God was, at least, already
drawing near, it was "nigh, even at the door," and nothing was
lacking save repentance and good works (according to R. Eliezer). 19
Jesus, therefore, with the utmost insistence, preached repentance and
good works and supposed that there was no necessity for rebellion
nor even any reason why, at the moment, he should reveal himself
as the Messiah. The real necessity was to stir up a great popular
movement of penitents and well-doers ; thus the kingdom of heaven
would be brought still nearer and with it the occasion of Jesus' mani-
festation as Messiah.
If only the people of Galilee and Judasa and beyond Jordan
would wholly repent and reach the highest level of moral conduct
humanly possible, so that a man should love his enemies, forgive
transgressors, associate with publicans and sinners, and extend the
cheek to the smiter—then would God perform a miracle and the
kingdom would be restored to Israel, nature would be brought to
perfection and the whole world become an earthly Paradise.
Elijah was already come in the person of John the Baptist, and
now came Jesus: and it was he who should be the "Son of Man"
and sit on "the right hand of Power," and with him his twelve dis-
ciples, on the Day of Judgment when God should judge the twelve
tribes of Israel. This Day of Judgment and this kingdom of heaven
which was bound up with it, would not long delay; but of the day
or the hour none knew save God.20 It would come suddenly : as in the
days of Noah when the floods came suddenly upon the earth, so
should be the coming of the Son of man ; 2 1 the great day of the
Lord would come "like a thief in the night" ; 2 2 "as the lightning
that lighteneth from one part under the heaven and shineth unto
the other part under heaven, so shall the Son of man be in his
day." 23
And, in real fact, the kingdom of heaven had already begun : in a
certain sense it had come : "It cometh not with observation ; nor shall
they say, Lo here, or Lo there ; for the kingdom of heaven is within
18
M a t t x i . 12-15; L u k e vii. 2 8 ; xvi. 16. 4
™Sanh. 97b. <
3
‫ ״‬M a r k xiii. 32. I t is interesting t o notice t h a t in A c t s i. 7, " t h e d a y "
becomes " t h e times."·^
® M a t t . x x i v . 37-39· •4
73
Matt. x x i v . 42-44; c f . I T h e s s . v. 2-3. 4
" L u k e xvii. 24. 4
you ; 2 ‫ * ״‬in other words, the Messiah is already among you—not, as
Tolstoy interpreted the saying, "within man," but among such men
as acted aright. Repentance was already at work among certain of
the people: therefore the kingdom of heaven had already begun in
actual fact; all that was now awaited was that the whole people
should repent and act aright (‫"—כואר זכאי‬all be free from blame"
as the Talmud expresses it), 25 or, at least, the majority of them.
Then, by the help of God and his Messiah, the kingdom of heaven
should become an actuality.
But it was, even now, in process of coming into being. Some
might not see it, just as ignorant folk fail to understand how, from
a small acorn, grows a great oak. The kingdom of heaven is like a
grain of mustard seed which grows into a great plant ; or like leaven
in the dough which, little though it be, leavens the whole ; or like a
seed which a man casts into the ground while the world sleeps, and
which springs up and grows of itself.26
It is true that some of the seed perishes, but what falls on good
ground brings forth thirty, or even sixty or a hundredfold. It is
true that among the wheat may spring up tares ; but after awhile the
corn in the field ripens, and the wheat and the tares are separated:
the wheat is gathered to the threshing floor and the tares thrown
into the furnace. 27 Jesus was convinced that "this generation shall
not pass away till all be fulfilled," 28 and definitely asserted : "There
are some standing here that shall not taste of death till they see the
kingdom of God coming with power," 29 and again to his Apostles :
"Verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone through the cities
of Israel till the Son of man be come." 30
During the first century and until the beginning of the second,
from Stephen until the last of Jesus' contemporaries, all awaited the
coming of the Messiah in their days. This is the "Parousia" (the
Second Coming) which filled the thoughts of Paul, and to which he
looked forward to the end of his days and about which he spoke
with the utmost conviction in his epistles.31 The watch-word of the
early Christians was "Maran Atha," our Lord cometh ; 3 2 "the days
are fulfilled," the world "is waxen old" 33 and drawing to a close ;
but little time remains before the "end" of this world, the Day of
Judgment and the kingdom of heaven.
94
K
Luke xvii. 20-21. ·^
Sanh. 9&a.<
M
Mark iv. 26-32 ; Matt. xiii. 3-34· 4
‫״‬M Matt. xiii. 3-52. 4
Mark xiii. 30. •4
" M a r k ix. 1. 4
80
Matt. x. 23. ^
81
3
See O. Holtzmann, War Jesu Ekstatikerf 1903, pp. 66-69M
83
' I Cor. xvi. 22. More correctly: Marana ta! "Come, Ο our L o r d ! " ^
A terrifying picture of the end of "the youth of the world" and the
"consummation of life" may be found in the Apocalypse of Baruch, Ixxxv
10 (J. Klausner, Ha-Ra'yon ha-Meshihi b'Yisrael, II 57)· ·^
This same conviction explains the extremist ascetic ethical system
of Jesus. If this world is so soon to cease and God is to create a
"new creation," a man may distribute his possessions among the poor,
he may refrain from marrying, may forsake his family, may refrain
from swearing and from resisting evil. Such extremist morality is
accountable as a morality of "the end of the world :" it is necessarily
gloomy and pessimistic. It does not, however, follow that Jesus did
not regard such morality as also an end in itself—he was a Jew and
brought up on the Hebrew prophetic writings. Yet had it not been
for this conviction of the nearness of the "Days of the Messiah" and
the "fulfilment of the days," he could not have put forward that
extremist ethic and self-abnegation which he taught in many of his
parables and sayings.
If the kingdom of heaven is at hand it is worth while to sell
all and buy the one precious pearl—the kingdom of God. Nor need
there be any scruple in receiving publicans and sinners and harlots,
since the Day of Judgment would sift out the good from the evil—
just as the fisherman gathers into his net good fish and bad, and only
afterwards picks out the good and discards the bad.34
This two-fold misapprehension of Jesus—the nearness of the
kingdom of heaven and his Messiahship—perpetuated his memory and
created Christianity. Had not the disciples expected his second
coming Christianity could never have come into being : even as a Jew-
ish sect, comprising the disciples and Paul, it could only have persisted
through a belief that Jesus was the Messiah who was to come at
God's right hand in the Day of Judgment and not suffer his
followers to see corruption. But for this conviction Jesus, the
Pharisaic Jew, could never have taught that extremist and indi-
vidualistic ethic which neither society, state nor nation could endure,
however much it might be in accord with the spirit and the needs of
the afflicted and the downtrodden among the Jews and the other
nations during that dreadful period of world-wide servitude, when
all the nations were writhing in the claws of the cruel and voracious
Roman eagle. The Jews as a whole could not, however, follow after
a belief based on so slight a foundation. By this belief of Jesus his
kingdom did, in reality, become "not of this world." 35 Through the
overstressing of the divine Fatherhood, Jesus, in the thought of the
next Christian generation, became, in spite of himself, the Son of
God ; and, later, to those converted from paganism, he became God
himself. Yet again, through the preaching of his messianic claims,
after he had failed to manifest himself to the world again, in his
power and glory, he became, in spite of himself, a "sacrifice," a
"ransom for many." 88
Judaism, on the other hand, is definitely "of this world :" it seeks
(cf., the "Alenu" prayer) "to amend this world by the kingdom of
M m
‫מ‬
Matt. xiii. 4 4 4 • .52‫־‬ Mark x. 45. A
John xviii. 36. ^
God" and not only isolated individuals. Judaism does not associate
the Messiah with the Godhead, nor attribute to the Messiah a deciding
rôle in the day of redemption : Judaism knows nothing of redemption
through an intermediary or intercessor between God and man.
The Jews as a whole could not, therefore, accept Jesus ; howbeit
Jesus himself, being as he was a Jew, did not regard himself as
God nor think of himself as a sacrificial ransom—but by his sayings
and works he gave occasion for others so to regard him after but a
short lapse of time.
At that time Pharisaic Judaism was too mature, its purpose too
fixed to endure change. Its leaders were fighting for their national
existence and grappling with foreign oppressors and with those semi-
foreigners who sought to crush it, and with a decadent idolatry which
sought to absorb it. In such days of stress and affliction, they were
themselves far removed—and would remove also their fellow-Jews—
from dangerous fantasies and an extremism which most of the race
could not endure.
They saw at the outset what the end would be: the result of a
vain vision is semi-idolatry and an extreme morality ends in demoral-
ization; and thus it was. It is true that, for the pagan world, there
was a great gain in the belief in the one God and in the prophetic
ethical teaching which was perpetuated in Christianity owing to the
teaching of Jesus the Jew ; in such a sense as this Judaism, through
the medium of Christianity, became "a light to the Gentiles."
The Jews themselves, however, could not compromise that Phari-
saic teaching which had its mainspring in Judaism and developed
with Judaism, which embraced all things in its daily life and realized
the ethical demands and the messianic promises of the Prophets in
the national life; the Jews could not compromise this for the sake
of a messianic vision and an extremist ethical code which were both
alike founded on a hope which was never fulfilled.37
The kingdom of heaven, according to Jesus, is in the present.
The kingdom of heaven, according to Judaism, is to be "in the latter
days." The former is to come suddenly "like a thief in the night ;"
the latter will be the fruit of long development and hard work. True
socialism is Jewish and not Christian. How, then, could Judaism
regard Jesus as the Messiah?
And so we find the correct answer to the twofold question : Why
" E v e n so a r d e n t a Christian apologist as E d u a r d G r i m m is f o r c e d t o
a d m i t t h i s : " T h e kingdom of heaven as it lived in the hopes of the people
of Israel could not be otherwise t h a n something actual a n d tangible, like
o t h e r kingdoms. A n d J e s u s himself w a s not f a r removed f r o m such an
idea. W e find ourselves, t h e r e f o r e , in an unusual position; if t h e idea of
t h e k i n g d o m of heaven is t o rule u s t o - d a y as a living power, w e m u s t
inevitably spiritualize it to such an e x t e n t t h a t the g r e a t e r p a r t of its original
c h a r a c t e r is taken f r o m it. ‫ ־‬I f , however, we would preserve the historic
t r u t h , the idea will be f o r e i g n t o us and will no longer occupy a central
position" ( D i e Ethik Jesu, 2 Aufl., Leipzig, 1917, p. 2 6 5 ) . ^
did Jesus arise among the people of Israel ? and why, in spite of that,
did the people of Israel repudiate his teaching? Both things were
natural, and both were inevitable in the process of human history—
a history which is governed by a higher reason and whose only way
is truth and justice.
VII. T H E CHARACTER O F JESUS A N D T H E SECRET
OF HIS INFLUENCE
The influence of Jesus upon his disciples and followers was excep-
tional. In Galilee masses of people followed him: for his sake his
disciples forsook all and followed him to the danger zone, to Jerusa-
lem; they remained faithful to him both during his life and after
his terrible death. Every word he spoke—even parables which they
did not understand and the more enigmatic figures of speech—they
treasured like a precious pearl. As time went on his spiritual image
grew ever more and more exalted till, at length, it reached the measure
of the divine. Never has such a thing happened to any other human
creature in enlightened, historic times and among a people claiming
a two thousand years old civilisation.
What is the secret of this astonishing influence ?
In the opinion of the present writer the answer should be looked
for in the complex nature of his personality and also in his methods
of teaching.
The great man is not recognizable as such by virtues alone, but
by defects which can themselves, in certain combinations, be trans-
formed into virtues. Like every great man Jesus was a complex
of many and amazing contradictions; it was these which compelled
astonishment, enthusiasm and admiration. 1
On the one hand, Jesus was humble and lowly-minded, tender
and placable, and tolerant to an unprecedented degree. H e says of
himself that he came not to rule but to serve. In a moment of deepest
sorrow he tells how that the foxes have holes and the birds have
nests, but that the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head. There
were things of which he knew nothing, things known only to his
heavenly Father. H e could not award "thrones" in the kingdom
of the Messiah : this God alone could do. If a man sin against him,
the Son of man, all can be forgiven—if only the man sin not against
the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand, Jesus possesses a belief in his mission which
verges on the extreme of self-veneration. H e is the nearest to God,
and the day will come when he will sit at the right hand of God.
He is greater than king Solomon, greater than the prophet Jonah,
1
O n J e s u s ' c h a r a c t e r see J . Ninck, Jesus als Charakter, Leipzig, 1906;
W . Bousset, Jesus (Religionsgesch. Volksbücher, herausg. v. F. M. Schiele),
3 Aufl. Tübingen, 1907; Ο. H o l t z m a n n , War Jesus Ekstatiker? T ü b i n g e n u.
Leipzig, 1903; F . Peabody, Jésus-Christ et la question morale, Paris, 1909,
pp. 47-80. 4
408
THE CHARACTER OF JESUS 409
and greater than the Temple. John the Baptist was greater than
any who had yet lived, yet Jesus was immeasurably greater than
John.
So strong was Jesus' belief in himself that he came to rely upon
himself more than upon any of Israel's great ones, even Moses;
this characteristic is summed up in the formula : "It was said to you
by them of old time . . . but I, Jesus, say unto you . . ." We must
remember that nothing is more conducive to conviction in others than
a man's belief in his own self : once a man believes absolutely in
himself, others, too, come to believe in him almost as they would
in God. And though exaggerated self-confidence can at times be
repellent, yet Jesus was so often tender, gentle and humble as to
mask his intense self-confidence.
Looked upon from one side, Jesus is "one of the people." His
parables have a most popular appeal. They are, almost every one
of them, drawn from life in the village or small town. As a rule
he conducted himself as an ordinary, simple man, a Galilaean artisan.
His attraction was his simplicity, his very ordinariness, his homeliness
in whatever he did or said. He loved the wild flowers with their
multiplicity of colouring, and the birds which could be sold two for
a farthing; he liked little children to be brought to him, "for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven ;" the cock-crow, the hen with her chickens,
the flush of the skies at evening and their overcast look in the morn-
ing—all these find place in his sayings and parables.
But looked at from another side, he is by no means an illiterate,
an "am ha-aretz:" he is as expert in the Scriptures as the best of the
Pharisees, and he is quite at home with the Pharisee's expository
devices. He is saturated with the great ideas of the Prophets and
the Psalms ; he can employ them for his own spiritual needs, he can
expound them and adapt them and supplement them. He knows also
the "tradition of the elders," the rulings of the Pharisees, and the
"words of the Scribes."
And this, too, had its effect on his followers. In the eyes of
the simple Galilaeans, the "ammê ha-aretz," his women admirers, the
fishermen, the peasants and the petty officials, he appeared to be a
great teacher of the Law—a "Rab." The Pharisees themselves could
not ignore his teaching. He could dispute with them and confute
them, no matter whether the argument turned on Scriptural proofs
or post-Scriptural traditions.
Without doubt this aroused enthusiasm among his disciples, for
among them were also to be found students of the Law—otherwise
they could never have preserved his arguments and parables and say-
ings, which, at times, were of a depth which the ordinary person
could not have fathomed.
Again, on the one hand, Jesus is a teacher, a "Rab," of the
Pharisaic school—not a "Ba'al-Halakha" (one concerned only in
the more legalistic interpretations of Scripture) but η "Pa'al-Hag-
gada" (one whose interest lay rather in the popular, edifying appli-
cation of Scripture). He called around him the afflicted and the
downtrodden, and he tells them how "his yoke is easy and his burden
light ; " 2 he takes compassion on the simpler folk who were "like
sheep without a shepherd ;" 3 and he stood aside from the three parties
of his days—the Sadducees, Pharisees and Essenes.
On the other hand, he demands that a man forsake all for his
sake, family, home and possessions, and even his very self ("let him
hate even his own soul"), for such a one only can be his disciple
and enter the kingdom of heaven and be accounted worthy of the
"Days of the Messiah." Gentleness and charm on the one side, the
extremest moral demands on the other . . . nothing can more influ-
ence and attract people to something new, no matter whether that
something be of the smallest or the gravest importance.
Yet again, one time we see Jesus indulgent and forgiving and
easily appeased; he pardons his disciples when they commit light or
grave offences; he does not play the pedant with the sinner; he
knows that "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." But another
time we find him utterly unbending, pedantic and passionate, protest-
ing and reproving in the severest terms. To his most favoured
disciple, Simon Peter—whom but a little while ago he had named
an enduring "rock"—he calls out, "Get thee behind me, Satan !" He
threatens transgressors with the fire of hell, with "outer darkness,"
with "weeping and gnashing of teeth." He curses Capernaum,
Chorazin and Bethsaida. He applies the harshest possible terms of
rebuke to the Pharisees, terms which, in their general application,
are by no means justified. H e is capable even of acts of violence,
of expelling the money-changers and dove-dealers from the Temple.
These two extremes, extreme kindliness of heart and the most
violent passion, show in him a character akin to that of the Prophet—
save only that he had not the wide political perspective of the
Prophets nor their gift of divine consolation to the nation. However
this may be, these two contradictory attributes are the sign of the
great man. Only such a man, mighty in forgiveness and equally
mighty in reproof, could exert so ineffaceable an influence on all
who came in contact with him.
Finally, Jesus is, on the one hand, "a man of the world." To a
great extent he has a sense of realities. His parables and sayings
prove amply that he knew life and the world as they really are. He
can avoid his enemies and persecutors when such action is necessary ;
he can be evasive in his answers (e.g., the payment of tribute to
Caesar, or the authority he claimed for his action in the Temple) ;
"Matt. xi. 28-30. ^

"Mark vi. 34; Matt. ix. 35; xv. 32. References are not here given to
every quotation, since most of them have already been given in the earlier
portions of the book.
THE CHARACTER OF JESUS 411
and sometimes he parries in argument with a delicate though crushing

sarcasm, unequalled in acuteness and pungency.
On the other hand, he shows himself a most unworldly visionary
in his belief in the supernatural. He considers himself the Messiah
and retains this belief to the end in the face of every disappointment.
He believes that he performs miracles ; he believes that he will sit
"on the right hand of Power;‫ ״‬he believes that "heaven and earth
shall pass away but that his words will not pass away." 4 Even
when he is awaiting his trial before the High Priest and before
Pontius Pilate he is still convinced of his Messiahship in a super-
natural sense. Not unreasonably did his mother and his brethren
think that "he was beside himself." The simpler folk were unable
to understand the source of this strange power of faith. The Scribes
attributed his power to Beelzebub, while the people of Nazareth
scoffed at the miracles of this carpenter and son of a carpenter,
whose brothers and sisters were men and women like themselves.
But with another type of men nothing exerts a greater influence on
their minds than this mystic faith in one who is otherwise perfectly
normal, and even promptly alert in everyday matters.
The complete visionary and mystic exerts an influence only upon
other visionaries like himself, and his influence soon passes. The
man of practical wisdom, alert in worldly matters only, merely influ-
ences the brain while leaving the heart untouched ; and never in this
world was anything great achieved unless the heart, deeply stirred,
has played its part. Only where mystic faith is yoked with practical
prudence does there follow a strong, enduring result. And of such
a nature was the influence exerted by Jesus of Nazareth upon his
followers, and, through them, upon succeeding generations.
Such is the secret of Jesus' influence. The contradictory traits
in his character, its positive and negative aspects, his harshness and
his gentleness, his clear vision combined with his cloudy visionariness
—all these united to make him a force and an influence, for which
history has never yet afforded a parallel.
His method of teaching tended to the same end. Just like the
Prophet, he invested himself with the greatest authority and depended
but little on the Scriptures. Like a Pharisaic "Scribe," he spoke in
parables and pregnant sayings. He was a great artist in parable. His
parables are attractive, short, popular, drawn from everyday life, full
of "instruction in wise conduct" (Prov. i. 3), simple and profound
at the same time—simple in form and profound in substance.
And this (even the difficulty in grasping the point of the parable)
certainly served to interest the simple Galilseans who, while they
could not understand the whole, instinctively felt that this attractive
covering hid beneath it a kernel of great value.
Besides the parables, there are the striking proverbs of Jesus.
They are short, sharp and shrewd, hitting their mark like pointed
4
M a r k xiii. 31; Matt. xxiv. 35; Luke xxi. 33. Λ
darts, and, in the manner of homely epigrams and proverbs, im-
possible to be forgotten. Herein lies the secret why his disciples
could preserve the bulk of his proverbs, almost unchanged, precisely
as he uttered them. Almost all are stamped with the seal of one
great, single personality, the seal of Jesus, and not the several seals
of many and various disciples. To quote a few :
"They that are whole have no need of the physician but they that
are sick."
"Let the dead bury their dead."
"Blind leaders of the blind."
"Who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel."
"Whited sepulchres."
"It is easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
"The rich man giveth alms of his superfluity, and the widow—of
her lack."
"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
"Let him that is free from sin cast the first stone."
"It is better to give than to receive."
And there are very many more of the same type. We cannot fail
to recognize in them a single, remarkable personality, showing excep-
tional ability to grasp the innermost principle and to voice it in a
short, shrewd proverb, grasping the idea in its fulness and drawing
from it some conclusion which can never again be forgotten.
This device of teaching, combined with his own complex char-
acter, explains why Jesus' teaching was never forgotten, and why
it became the basis of a new faith, though there is in it nothing that
is new (i.e., not already contained in Judaism) except its arrangement
and construction. The personality of the teacher was taken and
mingled with the teaching, for most of what he taught had its origin
not in theory but in practical fact, arising out of some event, some
chance encounter or question, for which there promptly came the
apt and penetrating rejoinder.
The tragedy of the dreadful death which came upon Jesus wrongly
(though in accordance with the justice of the time), added a crown
of divine glory both to the personality and to the teaching. Later
arose the legend of the resurrection, heightening every value, obscur-
ing every defect and exalting every virtue—and Jesus the Jew became
half-Jew, half-Gentile, and began to hold that supernatural rank
which is his today among hundreds and millions of mankind.
VIII. CONCLUSION: WHAT IS JESUS TO THE JEWS?
There is no page in this volume, no step in the life-story of Jesus,
and no line in his teaching on which is not stamped the seal of
Prophetic and Pharisaic Judaism and the Palestine of his day, the
close of the period of the Second Temple. Hence it is somewhat
strange to ask, What is Jesus to the Jews ? "Jesus," says Wellhausen,
"was not a Christian : he was a Jew," and, as a Jew, his life-story is
that of one of the prominent men of the Jews of his time, while his
teaching is Jewish teaching of a kind remarkable in its truth and its
imaginativeness.
"Jesus was not a Christian," but he became a Christian. His
teaching and his history have been severed from Israel. To this day
the Jews have never accepted him, while his disciples and his fol-
lowers of every generation have scoffed at and persecuted the Jews
and Judaism. But even so, we cannot imagine a work of any value
touching upon the history of the Jews in the time of the Second
Temple which does not also include the history of Jesus and an
estimate of his teaching. What, therefore, does Jesus stand for in
the eyes of the Jews at the present time?
From the standpoint of general humanity ne is, indeed, "a light to
the Gentiles." His disciples have raised the lighted torch of the Law
of Israel (even though that Law has been put forward in a mutilated
and incomplete form) among the heathen of the four quarters of
the world. No Jew can, therefore, overlook the value of Jesus and
his teaching from the point of view of universal history. This was
a fact which neither Maimonides nor Yehudah ha‫־‬Levi ignored.
But from the national Hebrew standpoint it is more difficult to
appraise the value of Jesus. In spite of the fact that he himself was
undoubtedly a "nationalist" Jew by instinct and even an extreme
nationalist—as we may see from his retort to the Canaanitish woman,
from his depreciatory way of referring to "the heathen and the pub-
lican," from the terms "Son of Abraham," "Daughter of Abraham"
(which he uses as terms of the highest possible commendation), 1
from his deep love for Jerusalem and from his devoting himself so
entirely to the cause of "the lost sheep of the house of Israel"—in
spite of all this, there was in him something out of which arose
"non-Judaism."
What is Jesus to the Jewish nation at the present day?
To the Jewish nation he can be neither God nor the Son of God,
1
Luke xix. 9; xiii. 16. Cf. "Son of Abraham our father" ( Γ . Hag. II
1) ; "Daughter of Abraham our father" ( Β . Hag. 3a). 4
413
in the sense conveyed by belief in the Trinity. Either conception is
to the Jew not only impious and blasphemous, but incomprehensible.
Neither can he, to the Jewish nation, be the Messiah: the kingdom of
heaven (the "Days of the Messiah") is not yet come. Neither can
they regard him as a Prophet: he lacks the Prophet's political per-
ception and the Prophet's spirit of national consolation in the political-
national sense.
Neither can they regard him as a lawgiver or the founder of a
new religion: he did not even desire to be such. Neither is he a
"Tanna," or Pharisaic rabbi: he nearly always ranged himself in
opposition to the Pharisees and did not apprehend the positive side
in their work, the endeavour to take within their scope the entire
national life and to strengthen the national existence.
But Jesus is, for the Jewish nation, a great teacher of morality
and an artist in parable. He is the moralist for whom, in the religious
life, morality counts as—everything. Indeed, as a consequence of this
extremist standpoint his ethical code has become simply an ideal for
the isolated few, a "Zukunfts-Musik," an ideal for "the days of the
Messiah," when an "end" shall have been made of this "old world,"
this present social order. It is no ethical code for the nations and
the social order of to-day, when men are still trying to find the way
to that future of the Messiah and the Prophets, and to the "kingdom
of the Almighty" spoken of by the Talmud, an ideal which is of
"this world" and which, gradually and in the course of generations,
is to take shape in this world.
But in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and
originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code;
neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables.
The shrewdness and sharpness of his proverbs and his forceful
epigrams serve, in an exceptional degree, to make ethical ideas a pop-
ular possession. If ever the day should come and this ethical code be
stripped of its wrappings of miracles and mysticism, the Book of the
Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature
of Israel for all time.
Jerusalem,
16 Marcheswan, 1922
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
GENERAL INDEX
Baring-Gould, S 67
Bar, Kokhbah 30
Abbahu, Rabbi 35 Barnabas 41
Abner 174 Bartimasus 307
Abrahams, Israel 265, 278 Bauer, Bruno 70, 86
Agobard, Bishop of Lyons 51 Baur, F. C 84
Agrapha 66ff Beelzebub 272
Agrippa 39 Ben Pandera (Pantere, Pan-
Agrippa I 166 theras) . . 20, 23-24, 38, 40, 48, 232
"Ahad ha-Am" (Asher Ginsberg) Ben Stada 20-22, 26, 48
113, u t f f , 264, 379, 388, 397 Ben Yehuda ( h ) , Eliezer.. 193, 195
Aharoni, A 243 Bernfeld, Simon 243
Ahitophel 32 "Besht," R. Israel 253
Akiba, Rabbi . . . 22-23, 30, 37, 52 Bethany 309, 311-312
Alexander Jann2eus 136 Beth ha-Midrash 194
Alexander the Great 379 Beth ha-Sefer 193
Alexandra, Queen, see Shelom- Bethlehem 299, 231ft
Zion Bethphage 308/?
Am ha-Ar et2 196, 215, 276 Beth-Saida (Bethsaida) 165,
Andrew 176, 260 286, 295
Angels, contemporary Jewish Beyschlag, Wilibald 90
teaching on 198 Bezae, Codex 68
Annas I I 41 Bibi bar Abayi, Rabbi 23
Annas the High Priest . . . 162, 399ff Binet-Sanglé 270
Annet, Peter 75 Bischoff, Ε 48
Annius R u f u s 162 Blau, L 28, 199, 266
Antigonus I I 142/? Β leek 24
Antipater the Edomite 137 "Boanerges" 260
Apocalyptic Literature 117 Bœthuseans 204, 216, 337
Apocryphal Gospels &7ff Bosc, Ernst 100
Archelaus 153, 154^, 1580e Bousset, Wilhelm 17, 55, 61, 63,
Aretas 137, 166 71, 93, 193, 257, 408
Aristobulus I I 137 Brandt, Wilhelm 43, 92
Asaf, S 263 Büchler, Α. 37, 106, 131, 133,
"As Others Saw H i m " 112 174, 177, 214, 263, 288, 335,
Athronges 155 340, 352
Augustine 73 Buhl, Frants 174, 177, 288
Buni 28
Β
Bacher, W 22, 376
Bäck, L 388
Bader, Gershom 48, 124 Caesarea Philippi . .39, 165, 298, 299ÎÏ
Bahedt, K. F 81 Caiaphas the High Priest 162,
Balaam 32 339-340
Baldensperger, Wilhelm 90 Caligula 166
Balzac, Β 388 Capernaum 174, 260if, 273
Baptism, Jewish 246-247 Castelli, David 132
Bar Mitzvah 238 Celsus 19, 23, 26, 31, 36
Barabbas 113, 336, 347 ff Ceremonial laws, value of 369ft
415
416 GENERAL INDEX
Chajes, H. P. . . 21, 27, 32, 35, Ehrhardt 381
44, 72, 102, 106, 215, 246, 260, Eichhorn 82
264, 272, 289, 294, 312, 333, Elbogen, J . M 193, 212, 402
376, 388 Eliezer, Rabbi . . 21, 22, 26, 30,
Chamberlain, Houston Stuart 36, 44
100, 233 Eliezer ben Dama, Rabbi 40
Charles, R. Η 217 Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi
Chastand, G 71 21, 23, 36, 37ff, 70
Chorazin 174,273295 ‫׳‬Eliezer ha-Kalir, Rabbi 229
Chrestus 60 ft Eliezer h a - K a p p a r , Rabbi 34
Christianity and Judaism 9-12 Elijah the Prophet . . 243ft, 294, 303
Chronicle of Yerachmeel 52 Emmans 358
Chronic on Pasc hale 59 Enelow, H . G 114, 388
Chwolsohn, Daniel . . 18, 27, 37, Enoch, Ethiopie Book of 256
42, 55, 121, 131, 222, 278, 326, Ephrem Syrus 300
328, 333, 335 Epiphanius 23, 67, 231
Cicero 349 Epitropos 140, 160
Claudius C2esar 60-61 Eschatology . . 9 0 f f , 92ft, 397-405
Clement of Alexandria 375 Eschatology, contemporary J e w -
Cohen, Zadole, see Kahn ish ideas on !99 ft
Coponius 161 Eschelbacher, J 114, 388
Credner 85 Essenes . . 81, n o , 201if, 206-
Crucifixion, date of 341 212, 244ft
Crucifixion, site of the 351ft Eusebius 41, 58-59, 65, 234
Evangelion 44, 72
D Evil spirits 198
Daiches, S 195
Dalman, Gustav . . 18, 24, 30, 35,
102, 176, 177, 230, 231, 235, Farbstein, D 174
242, 243, 257, 260, 261, 262, "Father," Jesus' use of 377
273, 285, 287, 288, 290, 297, Feine, Ρ 63
303, 306, 308, 309, 313,
327, Felix 21
331, 339, 346, 350, 388 Fiebig, Ρ 255, 257, 265
Dalmanutha 297 Flavius Clemens 34
Danby, H 134, 334 Frankel, Ζ 193
Decapolis, the 295ft Friedlander, Gerald . . 114, 347,
Deissmann, Adolf 23 388, 397
Deists, the English 75 Friedländer, M. . . 27, 32, 38, 43,
De Jonge 123 72, 116, 193
Delitzsch, Franz 115, 224 Furrer, C 230, 246, 297
Derenbourg, J. . . 21, 22, 34,
39, 42, 106, 193, 210, 219, 298,
314
Devils, possession by 266 Gadara 296
Dionysius Exiguus 229 Galilee . . 141, 143, 153, 156, 173,
Disciples of Jesus, the 28 174, 233
Doeg 32 Galilee, lake of 261
Drews, Arthur 70, 101, 115 Gamaliel II, Rabban 44ft
Gehazi 32
Geiger, Abraham 32, 115, 376
Genealogical roll of Jesus 36
Ebionites 41, 67, 375 Gershom, Rabbi 290
Ebionites, Gospel of the 67 Gethsemane 330ft
Ebstein, W 266 Gfrörer, A. F. 86
Edersheim, Alfred 118/F, 174 Ghillany, Friedrich Wilhelm,
Education 193ft see "Vonder Aim, Richard"
Education, secular 194ft Gieseler 83
GENERAL INDEX 417
Gilyonim 72 Hrabanus Maurus 51
Ginsberg, Asher, see "Ahad ha- Huck, A 71
Am" Husband, R. W 101, 229,
Glaphyra 159 243, 259, 322, 333, 346, 347, 350
God, contemporary Jewish doc- Hyrcanus II 137
trine of 1g6ff
Godet, F 71
Gospel, see Evangelion
Graetz . . 30, 34, 37, 42, 43, 60, Ibn, Hazm 52
61, 109, 129, 193, 211, 229, 240, Imma, Shalom 44
245, 256, 260 "Interimsethik" 93
Griesbach 80 Irenseus 259, 401
Grimm, Eduard . . 99, 381, 393, 406 Ishmael, Rabbi 40, 72
Güdemann, M 45, 106, 388
H
Jacob of K e f a r Sama 40
Häckel, Ernst 100 Jacob of Kefar Sekanya . 38/F, 286
Halevy, Joseph 178, 233, 367 Jacob, B 368
Halevy, Yitzhaq Isaac . . 129, Jacobs, Joseph 112
133, 137, 146^ James, son of Zebedee 260, 284
Harnack, Adolf 68, 96 James "the Lord's brother" . .
Hartmann, Edward von 96 41, 58, 67, 233, 275, 367, 375
"Hasidim" 202 Jannaeus 24
Haupt, Paul 100, 233 Jericho 306
Hebrews, Gospel according to Jerome 67, 230, 310
the 67 Jesus, alleged illegitimate birth
Hegesippus 41, 59 of 22, 2 3 f f , 36
Helena, Queen 49 Jesus and Hillel 224
Hellenistic Judaism 117 Jesus and property 376
Hennecke, Ε 67 Jeus, "chauvinism" of 364
Herder, J. G 80 Jesus, date of birth 229
Herford, R. Travers . . 18, 21, Jesus, divine claims of 364, 377
22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 35, 45, Jesus, education of 234
47, 212 Jesus exaggerates Judaism . .
Hermon 303 373-374
Herod Antipas .. 158, 16$ff, Jesus, his attitude to the Law
239/F, 286, 294, 305, 346 366 ff
Herod "the Great" . . . 140, 141-153 Jesus, his manner of teaching . . 263
Herodians 279 Jesus in Talmud and Midrash 18-54
Herodias 166-167, 240 Jesus, "non-existence" of . . 86, 100ff
Herzfeld, L 174, 186 Jesus, parentage of 232
Hesronoth ha-Sha's 18 Jesus, supposed Gentile origin
Hesronoth ha-Sha's, Kuntres of 233
I'malloth 18 Jesus, the messianic conscious-
Hezekiah the Galilaean 141 ness of 237, 251/F, 253-257
Hillel 185 Jesus, the name 229
Hillel, School of 18 Jesus, trial of 101, 123
Hillel the Elder . . i i i , 223-227, Jesus, use of miracles by 266ff
238, 276, 365, 389/F, 396ff Joel, Manuel 21, 106
Hirsch, E. G 333 John Hyrcanus 135
Hirschberg, A. S 233 John, son of Zebedee . . . . 260, 284
Hisda, Rabbi 20, 22, 24, 133 John the Baptist . . 57, n o , 166,
Hoffmann, R 67 239-250, 303
Holtzmann, H. J 89 John the Elder 6$ff
Holtzmann, Oscar . . 17, 55, 65, Jonathan Maccabseus 135
67, 71, 212, 270, 294, 404, 408 Jonathan the Essene 211
Horodetski, S. A 21 Joseph 23, 233
418 GENERAL INDEX
Joseph ben Gorion 52 "Legion" 293
Joseph of Arimathea 82, 355 Lessing 79
Josephus . . 19, 21, 42, 52, 55-60 Leszynsky, Rudolf 217, 222
143, 144, 146, 151, 163, 191‫־‬192, Levertoff, Paul 11, 63, 124
193-194, 198, 210, 239, 289, 349 Levi, Giuseppe 265
Judah ben Jacob 28$ff Lewis, Agnes Smith 232, 243
Judah, brother of Jesus 233 Lichtenstein 11
Judah "the Galilaean" . . 156, Lietzmann, H 257
162, 203 Lilienblum, M. L 133
Judaism, character of 226 Logia 46, 273
Judaism, nature of 37*if> 376 Logos 197
Judas Aristobulus 136 "Lord's Prayer‫״‬ 384^, 386
Judas Iscariot . . 49, 2 77, 285, Luke the Apostle 79, 81-82
324/F, 327, 358 Luzzatto, S. D 43
Judas Maccabaeus 19
Jülicher 66 M
Juster, J 129, 334
Justin, Martyr . . 28, 30, 65, 78, 233 Ma'aseh Tatui . i l , 47
Maccabaean conquests 135/f
Κ Magadan 297
Magdala 261
Käbbala 209 Maimonides 397
Kahn, Zadok 174, 182 Ma'mar 197
Kaïaphas, see Caiaphas Mann, J. 229
Kallah, Tractate 31, 52 Marcus Ambibulus 162
Kalthoff, Albert 63, 70, 100, 115 Mariamne 143
Kaminka, Aaron 100, 165, 233 Mark the Apostle 79
Karl, Ζ vi 387 Markon, Z'eb 388
Keim, Theodor 17, 88 Mary Magdalene . . 23, 261, 276,
Kellerman, Β ιοί 356, 358
Kingdom of heaven . . 173, 245, 398if Massekheth Kallah 385
Klausner, J. . . 66, 135, 174, 185, Mattai 28
190, 195, 200, 223, 230, 237, Matthew, Gospel according t o . .
242, 249, 261, 294, 301, 307, 67-68
313, 323, 377, 380, 401, 404 Matthew, the Apostle 79, 273
Klein, G 115 Mazie, A 350
Klein, S. . . 178, 229, 231, 261, Mead, G. R. S 26
287, 308, 309 "Meek upon earth, the" 172if
Kohl and Watzinger 261, 273 Me'ir, Rabbi 23, 72
Kohler, Kaufmann 162, 203 Meistermann, Β. . . 135, 165,
Kohut, A. 287 233, 261, 273
Kolischer, Michael 109 Messiah "ben Joseph" . . 87, 201,
Koppe 80 301
Koppelmann 71 "Messiah, Days of the" 398ff
Korban 289ff Messianic ideal 169ff
Korn, S 388 Messianic ideas, contemporary
Krauss, Samuel . . 18, 23, 24, Jewish 199ff
26, 30, 32, 47, 51, 53, 174, 185, Meyer, Arnold 235
208, 229, 242, 285, 352, 366 Meyer, Eduard . . 102, 183, 243,
270, 286, 300, 329, 340, 345,
L 350, 375
Michlin, Η. M 346
Laible, Heinrich . . 18, 23, 24, Midrashic literature, Jesus in . . 18
26, 28, 30, 32 Millennium 400ff
Landsman, J . Ε. 66, 71 Minim 36, 37, 47, 72
Lazarus 267 Minuth 37, 38, 44
Lebbœus 30, 283/F Miracles of Jesus 77, 84, i i i
Lechler, G. von 75 Miracles, use of 266
GENERAL INDEX 419
Miracles, varieties of 266-272 Peter, see Simon Peter
Miriam bath Bilgah 24 Pfleiderer, Otto 100
Miriam M'gadd'la Neshaya .. Pharisees . . 28, 34, 41, 43, 92,
22-23, 48 94-95, 113, 117, 120-121, 150,
Miriam, mother of Jesus 48ff 153, 170, 201 f f , 212, 219-222,
Mohammed 270 2 2 6 f f , 2 6 3 f f , 2 7 7 f t , 288, 290,
Monnier, H 381 -291, 319, 321, 335-336, 365, 369
Montefiore, C. G 114 Phasael 140
Moore, G. F 230 Philip, son of Herod 159, 164/F
Morel, Ε 71 Philippsohn, L 333, 349
Müller, A 233 Philo 86, 197, 397
Musil, A 242 Pick, Β 370
Pirke Aboth 389
Ν Pliny the Younger 60ff
Pompey 138
Nain (Nairn) 267 Pontius Pilate . . 60, 16$ff, 340,
Nakdimon ben Gorion 30 345-348
Napoleon 270 Preuschen, Ε 60, 67
Naqai 28 Preuss, J 266
Naumann, Friedrich 99 Procurator, see Epitropos
Nasarenes, Gospel of the 67 Publicans 160ff
Nazareth 178, 2ggff, 2z$ff, 281
Nestle, Ε 67 Q
Netser 28
Neubauer, A 52, 229, 308, 311 "Quietists" 171
Nicholas of Damascus 146 Quirinius 161, 203, 204
Nicholson, Ε. Β 45 Qorban 164
Nietsch 24
Nietzsche, Friedrich 97 R
Ninck, J 408
Nippold, F. R 267 Rabbenu Tarn, see Tarn
Nordin, H. J 233 Rabbi, use of title 43, 256
Nork, F. Ν 388 Rabinovitz, R 18, 38
Raffaeli, S 188
Ο Rafia 136
Reimarus, H. S 77
Obadiah of Bertinora, Rabbi . . 290 Reinach, Theodor 293
Onkelos ben Kalonymos 33 Renan, Ernest 87, 129, 209, 230
Orfali, Gaudence 262 Resch, Α. . . 63, 65, 66, 67, 370, 384
Origen 23, 56, 59, 65, 240 Reuss 85
Orosius 61 Revel, Β 217
Réville, Albert . . 55, 58, 59-60,
Ρ 232, 240
Rodriguez, Hippolite 109
"Pangs of the Messiah" . . 322- Ropes, J. H 66
323 Rosadi, G 102, 333
Papias 65, 74 Rousseau, J. J 70, 76
Pappeport, Ε 109
Pappus ben Yehuda 22-23, 27, S
31,48
Parable, use of 264-265 Sabbath, the 69, 278
Parousia 35, 78, 90 Sadducees . . 152, 168, 201 ff,
Passover, date of 326 215-222, 318, 333/f, 335-336
Paul . . 25, 28, 41, 63/F, 84-85, Saidan 287
275, 367, 371 Salome 241
Paulus, Η. Ε 82 Salvador, Joseph . . 55, 70, 106,
Peabody, F 381, 408 129, 333
Pesahim 56 a 36 Samaritans 305
420 GENERAL INDEX
Sanhédrin, the 28, 141, 151, 160 "Son of man" 256if
Sanhédrin, powers of 333 Stada, see Ben Stada
Schäfer, H 267 Stapfer, Ε 174
Schechter, S. . . 217-218, 247, Stephen, Leslie 75
252, 265 Storr 80
Schlatter, A 129 Strabo 145
Schleiermacher, F 82-83 Strack, Hermann 18
Schmidt, P. W . . . 55, 59,60‫־‬ Strauss, D. F 79, 83, 88
63, 270, 297 Suetonius 60ff
Schmiedel, P. W 71 "Suggestion," healing by . . . . . . 270
School System 193# Survival of the soul, Jewish
Schürer, Emil . . 42, 55, 56, 59‫־‬ belief in 199if
60, 129, 135, 161, 174, 185, 209, Synagogue service 262ff
219, 221, 242, 296, 315, 340 Synoptic Problem 73, 7gif, 82-83,
Schwalm, R. Ρ 174, 179, 185 84if, 87-88, 89, 95, n o , 123,
Schwartz, J 243, 261, 297 125
Schwegler 85
Schweitzer, Albert . . 26, 71, 91, 92
Scribes 334335‫־‬
Sea
o f of Galilee, see Galile, lake Tabernacle, Feast of 310
Tabor 303
"Seat of Moses" . . . . 366 Tacitus 6 0 f f , 270, 349
Second Coming, see Parousia Talmud, Jesus in 18
Seder, the 326, 329 Tam, Rabbenu 20
Segal, M. Η •217 Tanchuma, Rabbi 50
Seneca 86, 379 Tarphon, Rabbi 65, 72
Sepphoris 42 Taxation 18 7ff
Seydel, R 99 Tel-er-Rama 287
Shabbathai Zevi 111, 252 Tel-Hum 261
Shabbethai Zvi, see Shabbathai Thaddaeus 30, 283ff
Zevi Thomas "Didymus" 284
Shammai 141, 227 Tiberias 165
Shammai, School of 18 Todah 28
Shekina ( h ) 197 Toland, John 75
Shelom-Zion 137 Tol'doth Yeshu 11, 20, 26, 31,
Shimeon ben 'Azzai, Rabbi 35 32, 47, 229, 357
Shimeon ben Shetah . . . 24, 49, 193 Tolstoy, Leo 98, 315, 366
Shimeon Kepha, see Simon Transfiguration, the 303
Peter Tribute 317ff
Shor, J. Η 22 "Tübingen School" 84
Sidon 287 Tyre 294
Simon of Cyrene 35! Tyropaean 176
Simon Maccabaeus 135, 185
Simon Peter 41, 50, 53, 77, 84-85
176, 260, 275, 284, 300, 302, U
303, 331, 344, 358, 367 ‫״‬
Simon "the Canaanite, see 'Ulla 27
Simon the Zealot
Simon the Leper 32 ‫־ז‬3‫ז‬ ‫ז‬ Uncanonical Gospels 67/?
Simon the Pharisee 312
Simon the Zealot 206, 284
Simons 89
Slousch, Ν 176, 366
Smith, Agnes Lewis 69 Valerius Gratus 162
Smith, Β 101 Venturini, Κ. H 81
Soden, Η . V 71 Vernes, Maurice 7!
Sofer, L 233 Vespasian 270
"Son of David" ‫י‬ 320 Vitellius 164
GENERAL INDEX 421
Volkmar, G. 85 Y
Voltaire 9, 76
"Vonder Aim, Richard" 18, 48, 86 Ya'betz, Z'eb . . . . 129, 150, 164-165
Yalkut Shimeoni 35
Yehoshua, Rabbi 30, 35
W Yehoshua ben Gamala 193
Wagenseil 47 Yehoshua ben Hanania, Rabbi . 122
"Washing of Hands" 288 Yehoshua ben Perachya, Rabbi 24/?
Watzinger and Kohl 261, 273 Yehuda (h) ben Tabbai 25-26
Weiffenbach 90 Yehuda (11) Iskarioto, see Judas
Weinel, H 71, 99, 265 Iscariot
Weinheimer, H 174 Yehuda (h) the Pious, Rabbi . 49
Weinstock, Harris 109 "Yeshu," the form 229
Weiss, Bernhard 90 Yishmael, Rabbi 23
Weiss, I. H 193 Y'lamm'denu 35
Weiss, Johannes 71, 90 Yochanan, Rabbi 72
Weisse, C. H 85 Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi . 38
Wellhausen, J. 66, 71, 72, 94, Yosippon 52
129, 196, 287, 329, 363
Wendland, Ε 397 Ζ
Wernle, Paul 17, 55, 63, 71
Wilke, C. H. 85 Zacchaeus 306
Women, position of 195 Zadok, the Book of 217
Woolston, Thomas 75 Zadok "the Pharisee" 162, 203
"Word" of God 197 Zealots 153, 162, 168, 171, 201.
Wrede, W 43, 71, 91, 255 203-206
Wright, W 71 Ziegler, Τ 265
Wünsche, A. * 388 Zifroni, A 188
INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINICAL PASSAGES
T h e Old T e s t a m e n t I Chronicles
xvi. 22 306
Genesis Psalms
i. ι 252 ii. 2 299, 378
Exodus ii· 7 251, 299, 378
xxl1
iv. 22 377 · 2 235, 354
vi. 4 319 xxii. 19 353
xii. 8 326 lxix. 22 353
xxiii. 4-5 388 lxxxii. 6 377
xxiii. 17 3n cv. 15 306
Leviticus ex. 5 320
xix. 20 396 cxviii. 21-22 317
Numbers cxlvii. 9 374
ix. 11 326 Proverbs
xxi. 27 264 XXX. 8 387
Deuteronomy Ecclesiastes
xiii. 2-12 325 v. 1-2 386
xiii. 7-12 344 Song of Solomon
xiv. I 377 ii. 13 308
xv. 2 396 Isaiah
xvi. 5-6 326 i· 4 321
xvi. 57‫־‬ 327 v. 1-7 317
x\n 16 311 xi. ι 230-231
xvi. 17 330 xi. 2 253
xvii. 2-7 344 xx viii. 15 264
xxi. 6-9 347 xxxv. 5-6 268
xxi. 23 28, 345 liii. 12 353
xxiii. 14-15 207 Jeremiah
xxiii. 9 280 vii. 11 315
Joshua xxxi. 38 352
xix. 15 231 xxxvii. 15 339
xix. 33 287 Ezekiel
Judges xvi. 44 264
vi. 31 388 xlix. 29 247
I Samuel Daniel
ii. 1-10 239 Ü. 34 313
I Kings vii. 2-14 256
iv. 1-44 267 vii. 13 378
xvii. 8-24 294 Hosea
xix. 4 244 vi. 2 301
xix. 13 and 19 244 Joel
II Kings iii. 2 247
i. 2, 6, 16 272 Micah
i. 8 243-244 V. I 231
ii. 2 244 Zechariah
ii. 4-15 244 ix. 9 309
ii. 8 244 xi. 12-13 325
ii. 13-14 244 xiii. 4 243
ii. 13-21 243 Malachi
ix 13 3!0 iii. ι 244
422
INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINICAL PASSAGES 423
Malachi (contd.)— Matthew (contd.)—
iii. 2 247 vi. 16-18 364, 382
iii. 23-24 200 vi. 28-29 235
iii. 33 244 vi. 30-34 44. 386
iv. I 246 vi. 38 385
vii. r 374
Apocrypha vii. 2 385
I V Esdras vii. 3-5 385
vii. 28-29 377 vii. 6 265, 395
xiii. 2-13 313 vii. 29 264
xiii. 25ff 377 viii. 4 363
Tobit viii. 5-13 294, 364
iv. 15 397 viii. 11-12 367
v. 4 181 viii. 20 296
Ecclesiasticus viii. 21-22 381, 383
(Ben Sira) i. 9 273
iv. 10 377 ix. 10-11 187
xxviii. 2-5 387 ix. 16-17 275
xlviii. 10 200 ix. 18-26 267
xlviii. 10-11 244 ix. 20 364
li. 10 377 ix. 34 28
I Maccabees ix. 35 410
v. 23 135 x. 2 30
X. 30 233 x 2-4 283
x. 3 30
T h e New T e s t a m e n t x. 4 206
x. 5-6 285, 364
Matthew x. 6 77
i. 16 69, 232 x. 10 74, 285
i. 25 234 x. 15 394
ii. i f f 152 x. 16 286, 394
ii. 3 230 x. 22 383
ii. 23 230 x. 23 77-78, 404
iii. !off 246 X. 28 383
iii. 10 and 12 246 X. 33 394
iii. 13-15 251 x. 34 394
iv. 1-11 253 x. 37 383
iv. iSff 176 x. 39 383
iv. 21-23 266 x. 42 384
v. 4 375 xi. 2-15 249
v. 7 375 xi. 12 206
v. 17 45 xi. 12-15 403
v. 17-19 366 xi. 18 245
v. 20-28 367 xi. 19 274
v. 23-24 363 xi. 20-22 288
v. 28 385 xi. 20, 24 295
v. 29-30 381, 385 xi. 21-23 174
V. 32 374 xi. 23 262
v. 34 374 xi. 25 300
v. 39 315 xi. 28-30 410
v. 45 379 xi. 30 276
vi. 2 386 xii. 1-5 122
vi. 3 385 xii. 24 28
vi. 5-7 ·· · 364 xii. 27 255
vi. 7 386 xii. 30 284
vi. 9-11 44 xii. 36 383
vi. 9-12 387 xii. 43-45 270
vi. 14-15 382 xii. 45 358
Matthew (contd.)— Matthew (contd.)—
xii. 50 383 xxii. 41-45 42
xiii. 3-34 404 xxiii. i f f 34
xiii. 3-52 404 xxiii. 2-3 366
xiii. 44-52 370, 405 xxiii. 23 322, 367
xiii. 55 235 xxiii· 35 394
xv. 1-20 383 xxiv. 20 323
xv. 5 122 xxiv. 35 411
xv. i i 290 xxiv. 36 377
xv. 11-20 123 xxiv. 37-39 403
xv. 12-20 291 xxiv. 42-44 403
xv. 17 43 xxv. 34-45 384
xv. 21 293 xxvi. 6-13 391
xv. 24 294, 364 xxvi. 11 376
xv. 32 410 xxvi. 15 325
xv. 39 297 xxvi. 18 327
xvi 297 xxvi. 25 327
xvi. 6 299 xxvi. 28 327
xvi. 7 297 xxvi. 36-41 332
xvi. 17-19 300 xxvi. 42-48 332
xvi. 21 300 xxvi. 50 336
xvi. 26 383 xxvi. 51-54 337
xvi. 28 78 xxvi. 52 384
xvii. 13 303 xxvi. 57 340
xvii. 24-27 304 xxvi. 59-60 341
xviii. 1-14 383 xxvi. 61 341
xviii. 8-9 381, 385 xxvi. 63 342
xviii. 10 304 xxvi. 64 197, 342
xviii. 15-17 383 xxvi. 65-66 343
xviii. 17 364 xxvi. 67 344
xviii. 21-35 382 xxvi. 69 344
xix. 3-10 381 xxvi. 73 235
xix. 8 364 xxvi. 75 344
xix. 12 374 xxvii. 1-14 346
xix. 13-15 306 xxvii. 3-10 358
xix. 16-26 384 xxvii. 19 347
xix. 17 398 xxvii. 24-25 347
xix. 20 214 xxvii. 44 352
xix. 28 283, 401 xxvii. 46 354
x i x . 28-29 305 xxvii. 48 353
xx. 1-7 180 xxvii. 57 355
xx. 2-7 276 xxvii. 62-66 357
xx. 8/f 180 xxviii. 8 356
xx. 16 383 xxviii. n-15 357
xx. 20 305 xxviii. 16 358
xx. 23 305 xxviii. 17 359
xx. 28 69 Mark
x x . 29-34 307 ‫ ·נ‬4-5 247
x x . 45-48 384 1. 12-13 253
xxi. 9 310 i. 22 264
xxi. 10-11 310 i· 34-39 271
xxi. 14 325 i. 44 271, 363
xxi. 19-21 268 i· 45 273
x x i . 33-42 181 ii. 2 277
xxii. 1-14 295, 383 ii. 3-7 278
xxii. 22 318 ii. 6-7 187
xxii. 23 218 ii. 14 261
xxii. 35 40‫־‬ 384 ii· 15-17 274
Mark (contd.)— Mark (contd.)—
ii. 18 248 viii. 11 271
ii. 19-20 275 viii. 15 297
ii. 21-22 248, 275, 369 viii. 22-26 297
ii. 23-27 122 viii. 22-23 288
ii. 23-28 278 viii. 26 271
iii· 4 279 viii. 27 298
iii. 6 279 viii. 27-29 299
iii. 7 277 viii. 31 300
iii. 8 277 viii. 34 302
iii. 9 277 ix. ι 302, 404
iii. 12 271 ix· 9 272, 303
iii. 16-19 283 ix. 11-13 303
iii. 18 30, 206 ix. 19 272
iii. 20 277 ix. 30 304
iii. 21 280 ix. 32 301
iii. 21-35 280 χ. ι 306
iii. 22 28, 272 x· 5 364
iii. 30 272 x· 9 374
iv. ι 281 x· 12 374
iv. 11-12 265 x. 13-16 306
iv. 26-32 404 x. 17-21 365
iv. 35-41 269 x· 18 364, 377, 398
v. ι 293 x. 20 401
v. 19 . . r 296 x. 32 306
v. 19-20 271 x. 33 334
v. 22-43 267 x. 45 405
v. 24 277 χ . 46-52 307
v. 31 277 xi. 10 310
v. 34 271 xi. 11 311
v. 39 271 xi. 13-14 268
v. 43 271 xi. 15-16 315
vi. ι 281 xi· 17 315
vi. 3 234, 235, 282 x»· !9 315
vi. 8 74, 285 xi. 20-21 268
vi. 13 286 xii. 1-11 317
vi. 16 286 xii. 17 318
vi. 17-29 242 xii. 18-34 365
vi. 22-28 241 xii. 25 319
vi. 31-33 277 xii. 26-27 319
vi. 34 410 xii. 28-34 319
vi. 34-44 268 xii. 35-37 42
vi. 45 277, 287, 288, 297 xii. 39-40 271
vi. 47-51 269 xii. 40 214
vi. 56 364 xii. 41-44 384
vii. Ii 122, 289 xiii. 2 322
vii. 14-16 290 xiii. 3-8 322
vii. 15-23 123 xiii. 9-27 322
vii. 17-23 291 xiii. 28-29 269
vii. 18-19 43 xiii. 30 404
vii. 24 293 xiii. 31 411
vii. 24-30 364 xiii. 32 403
vii. 27 294 xiii. 57 322
vii. 30 271 xiv. ι 324
vii. 31 295 xiv. 2-9 391
viii. 1-9 268 xiv. 7 376
viii. 9 277 xiv. 10 332
viii. 10 297 xiv. 12 28, 326
426 INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINICAL PASSAGES
Mark (contd.)— Luke (contd.)—
xiv. 13-15 327 v. 27 261
xiv. 15-18 328 v. 30 187
xiv. 18 327 v. 36-39 27s
xiv. 20 328 vi. ι 278
xiv. 22-24 327 vi. 4 69, 196
xiv. 25 329-330, 401 vi. 12 236
xiv. 26 328 vi. 14 30
xiv. 28 331 vi. 14-16 283
xiv. 30 327 vi. 16 206
xiv. 33-34 331 vi. 20-25 375
xiv. 35-38 .... 332 vi. 37 374
xiv. 47 . . . . 336 vii. 1-9 294
xiv. 48 . . . . 337 vii. 2-10 364
xiv. 50-52 . . . . 338 vii. n - 1 7 267
xiv. 54 . . . . 340 vii. 24-28 250
xiv. 56 . . . . 341 vii. 28 403
xiv. 5 8 322, 341 vii. 33 245
xiv. 59 . . . . 341 vii 34 274
xiv. 61 .... 342 vii. 36-59 312
xiv. 62 .... 342 vii. 44-46 312
xiv. 64 .... 343 viii. 2 358
xiv. 65 .... 344 viii. 2-3 276
xiv. 66-72 .... 344 viii. 44 364
xiv. 70 .... 235 jx· 3 74, 285
xv. 1-5 .... 346 ix. 20 299
xv. 6-16 .... 347 ix. 22 300
xv. 7 .... 336 ix. 49-50 284
xv. 17-20 ,... ..·· 351 ix. 51-53 305
xv. 23 . . . . 352 ix. 51-56 284
xv. 34 235, 354 ix. 59 296
xv. 41 276 x. I 29, 283
xv. 42 354 χ · 13-15 295
xv. 43 355 x. 13-16 288
xv. 44-45 336 x. 14 262
xvi. ι 356 x. 21 300
xvi. 9ff 69 xi· 1-4 387
Luke xi. 2 44
i. 5-25 239 xi. 23 284
i. 46-54 239 xi. 29 271
i. 55-80 239 xi. 42 367
ii. 7 234 xii. ι 297
11.
ii. 14 44, 387 xü· 13-14 375
ii.
ü. 41-47 31 xü· 49 394
ii.
ü. 41-52 237 x 51 ·‫״‬ 394
iij. ι . . . 251 xin. ι 153, 164
iii. 1-2 .. 243 xiii. 6-9 268
iii. 9 . . . 246 xiii. 16 413
iii. 10-14 248 xiii. 31-33 ; 305
iii. 17 . · 246 xiii. 32 165, 305
iii. 23 251 xiv. 16-24 295
iv. 1-13 . 253 xiv. 26 383
iv. 16-30 281 xvi. 1-8 180
iv. 17-21 281 xvi. 16 403
iv. 23 . . . 282 xvi. 17 366
iv. 25-26 294 xvi. 19-31 267
iv. 32 . . . 264 xvii. 19 364
363 xvii. 20-21 404
Luke (contd.)— John (contd.)—
xvii. 24 403 xix. 14 28
xviii. 15-17 306 x i x . 39 30
x v i i i . 19 377, 398 xx· 24 359
x v i i i . 29-30 376 xx. 29 359
x v i i i . 35-43 307 chh. xx. and xxi 359
xix. 1-10 306 Acts of the Apostles
xix. 9 413 i. 6 402
x i x . 41-44 3n i• 7 403
x x . 25 318 i. 13 206, 283
x x . 41-44 42 1. 18 358
x x . 47 214 iv. 6 340
x x i . 1-4 384 iv. 13 284
x x i . 29-31 269 iv. 32 375
x x i . 33 411 i v . 36 375
x x i . 37 311 vi. 14 322
x x i i . 19 328 ix· 3 359
x x i i . 29-30 401 x. 11 367
xxii. 35-38 358 x . 16 367
xxii. 36 394 xii. 17 234
x x i i . 36-38 331 xv. 21 263
x x i i . 39-46 332 xviii. 2 61
xxii. 48 336 x v i i i . 24-25 249
xxii. 49-51 337 xix. 1-7 249
x x i i . 54 340 x i x . 33 351
x x i i . 55-63 344 x x · 35 64, 384
x x i i . 66 340 xxi. 18 234
x x i i . 66-70 342 xxii. 24-25 346
xxii. 70 342 x x i i . 35 21
xxiii. 4-16 346 xxiii. 6 216
xxiii. 27-31 352 xxiii. 8 218
xxiii. 34 352 x x v i . 19 359
x x i i i . 39-43 352 Romans
xxiii. 46 354 viii. 29 64, 234
xxiii. 50-51 355 xvi. 13 351
x x i i i · 54 354 I Corinthians
x x i i i . 54-56 356 vii. 10 64
x x i v . 10 356 ix.14 64
x x i v . 12ff 358 xi. 23-26 64
John xv. 5-8 359
i. 28 243 xvï. 22 4ο4
i. 41-43 260 Galatians
i· 45 287 i· 13 367
i· 47 231 i· 16 359
ii· 15 315 i· 1 9 234
ii. 19 322 ii. 4 284
iii. 1 - 1 0 30 »· 9 234
i v . 4-42 294 ii. 10 367
vii. 52-viii. II 69 ii. 11-14 284
viii. 7 384 ii. 12 234
x i . 1-46 267 ii. 12-13 41
x i i . 13 310 iii. 13 28
x i i . 21 288 ι Thessalonians
x i i . 21-24 287 v. 2-3 403
xviii. 13-24 340 James
x v i i i . 28-38 346 ii. 10 367
x v i i i . 31 334 Jude
xviii. 36 405 il 32
Mishna(h) VIII
ι 382
Berachoth I 6 278
1 260 9 378
Berachoth I I Sukka(h) I I
2 and 5 245 ι 184
Berachoth IX Betsah V
5 314 2 ; 341
8 315 Taanith I
Peah VII 4‫־‬5 382
ι 330 6 382
ι and 2 175 III 305
Demai III Megillah I
ι 180 9 340
Kelaim IX Hagiga I
5 187 ι 311
Shebi'ith III III
8 175 6 161, 187
VII Yebamoth I I
4 308 5 184
IX IV
2 261, 306 3 ·: 35
Terumoth X Nedarim I
9 243 1-5 289
Ma'as'roth I I III
5 177 4 161
M a'aser Sheni I I 5 187
4 321 IX
IV ι 290
4 183 Sota(h) I
Shabbath XIV
4 177, 279 n7 385
XXIII 8 227
5 : 356 III
Erubin VIII 4 122, 214
9 ··; 176 IX
Pesahim IV 9 191
ι 326 15 378
5 231, 326 G it ttn I
VI 6 184
1-3 328 IV
VII 7 287
9 327 IX
X 19 374
1-4 328 Kiddushin IV
5-7 328 12 338
6 313 14 177
7 328 Baba Qama IV
Shekalim I
1-3 304 χ5 183
IV I 187
2 164 1-2 161
VI Baba Metzia V
i 386 8 180
Yoma III Baba Bathra V
II 178 I 22
VI Sanhédrin I I
3 189 ι 176
INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND R A B B I N I C A L P A S S A G E S 429
IV Tosefta
ι 340, 341
VI Berachoth (Tosefta) II
ι 133, 351 10 275
2 343 III
4 344 11 44, 387
5 343, 355 VII
IX 19 314, 315
6 203, 204, 205 Peah (Tosefta) IV
X 19 388
ι 199 Shebi'ith (Tosefta) VII
2 32 14 309
Makkoth I Terumoth (Tosefta) II
10 133 11 182
II III
7 340 6 330
Eduyoth I Erubin (Tosefta) VI
8 321 13 ·; 296
V Pesahim (Tosefta) IV
3 321 1 2‫־‬ 328
Pirke Aboth I VIII
5‫־‬9 26 8 308
9 177 17 . 330
II Yomha-Kippur (Tosefta) I
4 393 3 330
5 276 4 340
III 8 218
3 377 12 32I
12 212 Sukka(h) (Tosefta) IV
IV 28 24
16-17 392 Betzah (Tosefta) I
20 370 2 341
V ha-Shana (Tosefta) II
8 266 2 296
19 32 Hagiga (Tosefta) II
20 378 ι 413
Horayoth III 5 252
4 ·· ; 340 III
Zebahim V 35 219
8 327 Yebamoth (Tosefta) I
Menahoth XI 10 339
2 308 III
Arakhim VIII 3 36
5 182 VIII
Tamid III 4 366
8 242 Kethuboth (Tosefta) I
Middoth I I 4 231, 233
4 314 So fa (Α) V
Para(h) I I I 9 22
6 314 Kiddushin (Tosefta) V
7 219 15 374
Nidda(h) V Sanhédrin (Tosefta) VII
7 308 11 225
Yadaim IV IX
6 219 5-6 351
7 219, 220 6-7 345
8 204 11 343
430 INDEX OF BIBLICAL A N D RABBINICAL PASSAGES
X Shabbath (contd.)—
ii 21 112b 256
Aboda Zara (Tosefta) I 116a 72
8 287 116a and b 44
Menahoth (Tosefta) VIII 1166 366
18 308 119fr 306
XIII I2I& 198
21 337 152fr 355
IX 153? 231
2 260 Erubin
Huiin (Tosefta) II 27fr 247
20 72 28fr 309
20-21 47 30a 261
22-23 4°» 286 32σ 386
Kelim (Tosefta Baba Kama) I 47b 287
6 346 53a 231
Kelim (Tosefta Baba Qama) III 53fr 235
8 178 61a 296
Ahiloth (Tosefta) III Pesahim
9 ··. 355 8b 262
Negaim ( Tosefta) VI 26fr 187
2 352 42fr 160
Toharoth (Tosefta) VIII 46a 176, 261
5 187 4Φ 215
5-6 161 53a 309
55a 231
T a l m u d Babli 55 fr 178
57a 337
Berachoth 63fr 308
3a 252 70fr 328
5a 278 75» 350
9b 208, 385 85fr 329
na 27s go b 386
120 36 91a 308
16a 275 98fr 330
16& 184 108a 181
17a 297, 319 118a 198
25fr 395 Yoma
28fr-29a 47 8b 163
29fr 44, 387 19 a 218
34b 380, 401 23J 321, 387
44a 261, 262 30a 395
5ïa 198 39b 242, 266
55b 374 66b 36
60 fr 387 85fr 278
61a 22 86fr 246
Shabbath 87fr 387
15» 334» 339 Sukka(h)
29fr 187 10 fr 338
30 fr 66 25b 27s
31a 122, 388 27a 22, 39
40a 196 27b 298
62fr 189, 196 37a 189
87a 343 52a 301
88fr 343, 388 56fr 24
96fr 181 Rosh ha-Shana
I04fr 20,21, 22 5a 330
109a 296 17a 272
17a and b 387 77b 183
23b 242, 296 90a 22
31« 339 Kiddushin
Taanith 2b 374
7a 379 16a 182
9 *5Ï 20a, 21 b 182
20a 30 25a 182
256 266 52a 287
Megillah 54a 395
6a 160, 296, 72b 375
298 Baba Qama
24& 231 2ya 184
28a 387 32 b 181
31 b 343 5ia 350
Mo'ed Qatan 74b 184
13b 178 826 352
27a 355 1130 187
Hagiga 113b 182
3a 413 116& 173
4b 23 Baba Metzia
5a 385 25 b 261
12b 272 38b 374
13b 198 41a 247
14a 366 49a 393
15® 252 . 58b 343
16 b 172 59b 266
17« 330 80a 120
17b 266 88a 309
25a 305 90a 308
Vebamoth 99a 308
15 b 162, 339 Baba Bathra
22a 247 3b 150, 167
46a 246 9b 385
49a 35 10& 385
63b 366 11 a 386
Kethuboth I2& 3OO
12a 231, 233 15b 385
37b 350 21a 193
46a 287 46fr 182
71b 296 49b 385
104a 346 74b 198, 298
111b 66, 401 75a 401
Nedarim 84a 221
18b 231 I58& 36
48a 231 Sanhédrin
81 b 296 14b 308
Sota(h) 25 b 187
22a 214 32 b 22
22b 122, 214, 215 35b 198, 341
45a 308 43a 27, 28, 133, 189,
4 5b 44 352
4 7b 25 44 a 341
48& 386 45a 350
Gittin 52a 350
36b 388 67a 21, 22
56a 22 62b 247
56b-57a 33 70a 255
60 b 386 82a 203
432 INDEX OF BIBLICAL AND RABBINICAL PASSAGES
90 b 319 IX
94& 198 2 261
97a 200, 322 7 214
97b 246, 403 J. Peak I
98a 261, 404 6 . 309
98b 256 VIII
99a 380 8 214
102a 331 J. Demai II
107a 387 ι 297
107b 25 / . Kelaim IX
108a 296 4 346
Makkoth / . Shebi'ith X
236-240 122 9 385, 393
24a 343 / . Terumoth XI
Shebuoth 7 260
36 a 385 III
3 9a 187 1 176, 261
Aboda Ζ ara / . Ma'aseroth IV
3b 178, 233, 6 309
285 J. Bikkurim III
8
b 339 3 275
13» 287 / . Shabbath II
276 40, 47, 286 ι 260
36a 203 III
Horayoth ι 296
343 X
Menahoth End 40
29a ... 366 XIV
34« ... 366 4 37
55a ... 174 XVI
78b ... 308 5 231
85® ... 260 8 173
Hulin /. Erubin V
ι3a ... 72 7 296
27b ... 255 X
53a . . . 309 ι 184
Bekhoroth / . Pesahim VI
55® .... 298 ι 329
Arak(h)in VII
17b ... 385 11 314
Me'ila(h) / . Shekalim IV
14b ... 395 3 196
Nidda (k) VI
13b ... 385 2 287
156 . . . 198 / . Yoma I
17a . . . 184 5 218
24a . . . 198 II
61 b ... 275 2 32I
V
3 186
Talmud Y e r u s h a l m i VIII
5 278
/ . Berachoth II / . Sukka (Ä) II
9 22 ι 184
Ill 5 275
ι 287 V
V ι 247
ι 33I 7 24
J. Rosh ha-Shana(h) II X
ι 285 ι 343
2 242 7. Aboda Ζara II
7. Taanith I v 2 37, 40, 286
3 261
7 260 5 287
IV 15 296
8 314
7. Megillah I Midrashim
ι 229, 232, 287 Mechilta
7. Hagiga II 47b 386
2 25, 172 55a and b 27
III 55b 298
4 305 68b 351, 378
8 219 105a 341
J. Yebamoth I Mechilta Exodus XIV
6 339 29 22
VIII Sifra
2 178, 233 8, 7 ... 122
/. Kethuboth I 91b 187
ι 231,.233 93b .... 378
III Sifre Zutta
10 184 35, H ·· 178
VII Sifre
3 296 53 ··.· 212
8 178 65 .... 328
VIII 105 .... 309
11 193 134 .·.. 33Ο
XII 135 ···. 4OI
7 287 151 308, 330
7. Nazir VII 161 321
3 287 221 341, 3 4 5
7. Sota(h) III 308 351, 3 7 7
4 214, 321 315 and 317 66
V §323 245
7 214 §355 262
7. Kiddushin II Genesis Rabba
5 178 §5 261
III §9 245
14 296 §13 261
7. Kiddushin IV §19 178
11 287 §23 165
7. Baba Qama VIII §23 282
10 387 §33 379
7. Baba Metzia II §42 22, 160
6 379 §44 388
VII §45 284
9 247 §56 351
7. Baba Bathra III §67 186
3 178 §68 197
7. Sanhédrin I §86 178
1
334 §90 247
2 231 §98 262, 267
II §99 261
1 261 Exodus Rabba
VII 6 366
2 334- 3 4 3 24 343
16 21 33 343
Leinticus Rabba Pesikta Rabbati
§9 184 22 122
§11 160 31 · 351
§13 388 43 375
§19 366 Midrash to Proverbs IX
§23 385 2 22
§27 379 Midrash Tehillim
§32 378 45» 8 ... 351
§34 224 55a 378
Pesikta d'R. Kahana Pirke d'R. Eliezer
9 379 §16 275, 391
Tanhuma Aboth d'Rabbi Nathan
8 178 §5 218
12 388 §6 205
24 178 §26 224
79 320 39, 5 4 a 352
88-89 379 18 319
Via, XIII& 22

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JESUS OF NAZARETH

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

TRANSLATED FROM T H E ORIGINAL HEBREW

H E R B E R T DANBY, D.D. (OXFORD)

Set up and electrotyped.

New ISBN 1-59045-956-3

Printed in the United States of America by

The Messianic Idea in Israel (3 vols.: vol. i, In the Prophets

In 1905 Dr. Klausner succeeded "Ahad ha-Am" as editor of

II. T H E GREEK A N D LATIN SOURCES:

II. J E S U S A T T H E H E I G H T O F H I S SUCCESS: HIS

The sources of the Life of Jesus vary as to their origin, language

(A) Talmud and Midrash

[The accounts of Jesus in Talmud and Midrash are collected in the

It might have been supposed that the earliest mention of Jesus

It is difficult to suppose that all this applies to Jesus. The

There follows this explanation, in Aramaic, about Yehoshua ben

First of all it should be noticed that whatever is here told in

This is at once followed by a late Amoraitic addition, recognizable

All this scriptural gymnastics cannot possibly belong to the

Jesus is never mentioned explicitly in this story nor is there any

" Tractate Kallah, ed. Koronel, p. 18& (Hamishshah Kuntresim, Vienna,

In spite of M. Friedländer's various attempts to persuade us that,

This interesting story occurs nowhere else in Talmud or Midrash,

(B) T H E TOL'DOTH YESHU

[See Schürer, "Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu

Ypseph ben Mattathiah ha-Cohen, or, as he is usually called,

No Christian scholar, even, who has any regard for critical

(B) TACITUS, S U E T O N I U S AND P L I N Y T H E YOUNGER

So far, we have been dealing with Hebrew and Greek Jewish

The Apocryphal Gospels exist in large numbers in the Christian

[A good account of the connexion between the first three Gospels is to

As a result of our examination of the non-Christian sources, and

is explicable from the point of view of current needs: Mark does

A f t e r the "eighties" of last century we find fewer books on the

The first two decades of the twentieth century mark a noticeable

principles of "materialistic history." Jesus became the "saint" and

It still remains to give a brief account of complete works written

Had Schweitzer read "Salvator" carefully he would have found

earliest Christian document and the one genuinely Pauline epistle. 39

[Virtually all the books so f a r cited touch on the political, economic

Before proceeding to the life of Jesus, a general idea must first

Such was the political condition of affairs during Jesus' lifetime

77, 137-139, 144-145; I I I 44-89; S. Krauss, "Qadmoniyoth ha-Talmud," I

( ι ) Though the Jews, in the time of Jesus, were no longer solely

[The literature on the religious and intellectual conditions in the time

" Matt. xi. 12. M

"Rudolf Leszynsky (Die Sadduzäer, Berlin, 1912) regards as Sadducsean

MOp. cit. p. 33· <

The Zealots were a party of hot-headed enthusiasts ; the Essenes

I. T H E CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF JESUS

Jesus (‫ יהושע׳‬,‫ ישוע‬or, in its abbreviated form 1(‫ ישו‬was born in

According to the four Gospels the ministry of Jesus began with

T H E BEGINNING O F JESUS' MINISTRY

T H E PREACHER O F PARABLES AND T H E PERFORMER

The writers of the first Gospels were Jews in spirit. As Jews

HIS ENCOUNTER WITH THE PHARISEES

After his failure in Nazareth, Jesus went out to teach in the

" S e e F . Buhl, Handbuch der Geographie des Alten Palästina, Freiburg,