CHAPTER II.

INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS—HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

Jesus was born at Nazareth, a small town of Galilee, which until his time had no celebrity. During the whole of his life he was designated by the name of “the Nazarene,” and it is only by a puzzling enough evasion that, in the legends concerning him, it can be shown that he was born at Bethlehem. We shall see later on the motive for this supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence of the Messianic character attributed to Jesus. The precise date of his birth is not known. It took place during the reign of Augustus, about 750 of the Roman year, that is to say, some years before the first of that era which all civilised nations date from—the day on which it is believed he was born.

The name of Jesus, which was given him, is an alteration from Joshua. It was a very common name; but people naturally sought later on to discover some mystery in it, as well as an allusion to his character of Saviour. Perhaps Jesus himself, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect. It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been caused by a name given to a child without premeditation. Ardent natures never can bring themselves to admit chance in anything that concerns them. God has ordained everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme will in the most insignificant circumstances.

The population of Galilee, as the name indicates, was very mixed. This province reckoned amongst its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus, many who 14were not Jews (Phœnicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks). The conversions to Judaism were not rare in mixed countries like this. It is therefore impossible to raise any question of race here, or to try to discover what blood flowed in the veins of him who has most of any contributed to efface the distinctions of blood in humanity.

He sprang from the ranks of the people. His father Joseph and his mother Mary were of humble position, artisans living by their work, in that condition which is so common in the East, and which is neither ease nor poverty. The extreme simplicity of life in such countries, by dispensing with the need of modern comforts, renders the privileges of the wealthy almost useless, and makes every one voluntarily poor. On the other hand, the total absence of taste for art and for that which tends to the elegance of material life, gives a naked aspect to the house of the man who otherwise wants for nothing. If we take into account the sordid and repulsive features which Islamism has carried into the Holy Land, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much differ from what it is to-day. The streets where he played as a child we can see in the stony paths or in the little cross-ways which separate the dwellings. The house of Joseph no doubt closely resembled those poor shops, lighted by the door, which serve at once as workshop, kitchen, and bedroom, the furniture consisting of a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two earthenware pots, and a painted chest.

The family, whether it proceeded from one or several marriages, was rather numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters, of whom he seems to have been the eldest. All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages who are given as his brothers—one of whom at least, James, had acquired great importance in the earliest years. 15of the development of Christianity—were his cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary, who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person), and was the mother of several sons, who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These cousins-german, who adhered to the young Master, while his own brothers opposed him, took the title of “brothers of the Lord.” The real brothers of Jesus, as well as their mother, had no notoriety until after his death. Even then they do not appear to have equalled in importance their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose characters seem to have had more originality. Their names were unknown to the extent that, when the evangelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural relationship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first presented themselves to him.

His sisters were married at Nazareth, and he spent there the first years of his youth. Nazareth was a small town situated in a hollow, opening broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can never have varied much. The cold is keen there in winter, and the climate very healthy. Nazareth, like all the small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without plan, and would exhibit that withered and poor aspect which characterise villages in Semitic countries. The houses, as it would seem, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance, which cover to-day the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which, surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are far from being disagreeable. The 16environs, moreover, are charming; and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of absolute happiness. Even to-day Nazareth is a delightful abode, the only place, perhaps, in Palestine in which the soul feels itself relieved from the burden which oppresses it in the midst of this unequalled desolation. The people are amiable and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, gives an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compares with paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully bear out his description. The fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little town were concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the evening,—that beauty which was already remarked in the sixth century, and which was looked upon as a gift of the Virgin Mary,—is still most strikingly preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its grace, so full of languor. There is no doubt that Mary was there almost every day, and took her place with her jar on her shoulder in the file of her obscure companions. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, usually disdainful to Christians, were here very affable. At the present day religious animosity is less pronounced at Nazareth than elsewhere.

The prospect from the town is limited; but if we ascend a little and reach the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which overlooks the highest houses, the view is splendid. On the west are displayed the fine outlines of Carmel, terminated by an abrupt spur which seems to plunge into the sea. Next are spread out the double summit which dominates Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque 17group to which are attached the graceful or terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a crevice between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peræa, which on the east side form a continuous line. On the north, the mountains of Safed, in inclining towards the sea, conceal St.-Jean-d'Acre, but reveal the outline of the Gulf of Khaifa. Such was the country of Jesus. This enchanted circle, this cradle of the kingdom of God, was the world of Jesus for years. Even in his later life he did not depart much from the familiar scenes of his childhood. For, yonder northwards, a glimpse is caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Cæsarea-Philippi, the furthest point he had reached in the Gentile world; and southwards, the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a scorching wind of desolation and death.

If the world, should it remain Christian, though it should attain to a better idea of the esteem in which the origins of its religion should be held, ever wishes to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal sanctuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is upon this ground of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There, at the spot where Christianity was born, and at the centre of the activity of its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all Christians might worship. There, also, on the spot where sleep Joseph the carpenter and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes, who never passed beyond the outskirts of their valley, would be a better station than any in the world for the philosopher to contemplate the course of human events, to console himself for the disappointments which those inflict 18upon our most cherished instincts, and to reassure himself as to the divine end which the world pursues through endless falterings, and in spite of the universal vanity.