CHAPTER XIII.

FIRST ATTEMPTS ON JERUSALEM.

Jesus went almost every year to Jerusalem for the feast of the passover. The particulars of these journeys are meagre, for the synoptics do not speak of them, and the remarks in the fourth Gospel are on this point very confused. It was, it would seem, in the year 31, and certainly after the death of John, that the most important of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem took place. Several of the disciples followed him. Although Jesus attached at that time little value to the pilgrimage, he conformed himself to it in order not to offend Jewish opinion, with which he had not yet broken. These journeys besides were essential to his design; for he felt already that, in order to play a leading part, he must go from Galilee, and attack Judaism in its stronghold, which was Jerusalem.

The little Galilean community was here by no means at home. Jerusalem was then nearly what it is to-day, a city of pedantry, acrimony, disputes, hatreds, and littleness of mind. Its fanaticism was extreme, and religious seditions were very frequent. The Pharisees were dominant; the study of the Law, pushed to the most insignificant minutiae, and reduced to questions of casuistry, was the only study. This exclusively theological and canonical culture contributed in nowise to refine the intellect. It was something analogous to the barren doctrine of the Mussulman fakir, to that empty science debated round the mosques, which is a great expenditure of time and a pure waste of dialectical skill, without aiding the right discipline of the mind. The theological education of the modern clergy, although very dry, can give us no idea of this, for 121the Renaissance has introduced into all our teachings, even the most extravagant, something of belles lettres and of method, the consequence of which is that scholasticism has taken a taint, more or less, of the humanities. The science of the Jewish doctor, of the sofer, or scribe, was purely barbarous, absurd beyond measure, and stripped of all moral element. To cap the evil, it filled with ridiculous pride those who had wearied themselves in acquiring it. Proud of the pretended knowledge which had cost him so much trouble, the Jewish scribe had the same contempt for Greek culture as the learned Mussulman of our time has for European civilisation, as the old catholic theologian had for the knowledge of men of the world. The tendency of this scholastic culture was to turn the mind against all that was refined, to create esteem only for those childish difficulties on which they had wasted their lives, and which were regarded as the natural occupation of persons making a profession of seriousness.

This odious society could not but weigh very heavily on the tender and susceptible northern mind. The contempt of the Jerusalemites for the Galileans rendered the separation still more complete. In that beautiful temple, the object of all their desires, they often only experienced insult. A verse of the pilgrim's psalm, “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God,” seemed expressly made for them. A contemptuous priest-hood laughed at their simple devotion, just as formerly in Italy the clergy, familiarised with the sanctuaries, witnessed coldly and almost jestingly the fervour of the pilgrim arriving from afar. The Galileans spoke a rather corrupt dialect, their pronunciation was faulty; they confounded diverse aspirates which led to mistakes that were much laughed at. In religion, they were regarded as 122ignorant and not very orthodox; the expression “foolish Galileans” had become proverbial. It was believed (not without reason) that they were not of pure Jewish blood, and it was held, as a matter of course, that Galilee could not produce a prophet. Placed thus on the confines of Judaism, nay almost outside of it, the poor Galileans had only one badly interpreted passage in Isaiah on which to build their hopes. “Land of Zebulon, and land of Naphtali, way of the sea, Galilee of the nations! The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” The reputation of the native city of Jesus was particularly bad. It was a popular proverb, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

The great barrenness of nature in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem must have added to the dislike Jesus had for the place. The valleys are without water; the soil is arid and stony. Casting the eye into the valley of the Dead Sea, the view is somewhat striking; elsewhere it is monotonous. The hill of Mizpeh, around which clusters the most ancient historical remembrances of Israel, alone relieves the eye. The city presented, at the time of Jesus, nearly the same aspect that it does now. It had very few ancient monuments, for until the time of the Asmoneans the Jews had remained strangers to all the arts. John Hyrcanus had begun to embellish it, and Herod the Great had made it one of the most magnificent cities of the East. The Herodian constructions, by their grand character, perfection of execution, and beauty of material, may dispute superiority with the most finished works of antiquity. A great number of superb tombs, displaying original taste, were erected at the same time in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. 123The style of these monuments was Grecian, but appropriate to the customs of the Jews, and considerably modified in accordance with their principles. The ornamental sculptures of the human figure which the Herods had sanctioned, to the great disgust of the purists, were discarded and superseded by floral decorations. The taste of the ancient inhabitants of Phœnicia and Palestine for monoliths cut out of the solid rock seemed to be revived in these singular tombs cut in the rock, and in which Grecian orders are so strangely applied to an architect of troglodytes. Jesus, who regarded works of art as a pompous display of vanity, viewed these monuments with displeasure. His absolute spiritualism, and his settled conviction that the form of the old world was about to pass away, left him only a taste for things belonging to the heart.

The temple, at the time of Jesus, was quite new, while its exterior works were not yet completed. Herod had begun its reconstruction in the year 20 or 21 before the Christian era, in order to make it uniform with his other edifices. The main body of the temple was finished in eighteen months; the porticoes took eight years; and the accessory portions were raised slowly, and were only finished a short time before the taking of Jerusalem. Jesus probably saw the work progressing, not without a degree of secret vexation. These hopes of a long future seemed an insult to his approaching advent. Clearer-sighted than the unbelievers and the fanatics, he foresaw that these superb edifices would have but a short duration.

The temple, nevertheless, formed a marvellously imposing whole, of which the present haram, in spite of its beauty, can scarcely give us any idea. The courts and the porticoes served as the daily rendezvous for a considerable gathering, so much so that this great space was at once temple 124forum, tribunal, and university. All the religious discussions of the Jewish schools, all the canonical instruction, even the legal processes and civil causes, all the activity of the nation, in short, was concentrated there. It was a place where arguments were perpetually clashing, a battle-field of disputes, resounding with sophisms and subtle questions. The temple thus resembled much a Mahometan mosque. At this period the Romans treated all strange religions with the greatest respect, provided they were kept within proper limits, and carefully refrained from entering the sanctuary; Greek and Latin inscriptions marked the point up to which those who were not Jews were permitted to advance. But the tower of Antonia, the headquarters of the Roman forces, commanded the whole enclosure, and enabled them to see all that passed therein. The guarding of the temple belonged to the Jews; its superintendence was entrusted to a captain, who caused the gates to be opened and shut, prohibited any one from crossing the enclosure with a stick in his hand, or with dusty shoes, or when carrying parcels, or to take a near cut. They were especially scrupulous in watching that no one entered within the inner gates in a state of legal impurity. The women had an entirely separate court.

It was in the temple that Jesus passed his days, whilst he remained at Jerusalem. The period of the feasts attracted to the city extraordinary affluence. Lodged in parties of ten to twenty persons in one chamber, the pilgrims invaded every quarter and lived in that huddled state in which Orientals delight. Jesus was lost in the crowd, and his poor Galileans who grouped around him were of small account. He probably felt that there he was in a hostile world which would receive 125him only with disdain. Everything he saw he disapproved of. The temple, like all much-frequented places of devotion, presented a not very edifying spectacle. The service of this entailed a multitude of repulsive enough details, especially of mercantile operations, in consequence of which actual shops were established within the sacred enclosure. There people sold beasts for the sacrifices; there one found tables for the exchange of money; at times it seemed as if one were in a bazaar. The inferior officers of the temple fulfilled, doubtless, their functions with the irreligious vulgarity characteristic of the sacristans of all ages. This profane and indifferent air in the handling of holy things wounded the religious sentiment of Jesus, sometimes leading him to excess. He said that they had made the house of prayer a den of thieves. One day, in fact, it is said, that, carried away by his anger, he scourged the vendors with a “scourge of small cords,” and overturned their tables. In general, he cared little for the temple. The worship that he had conceived for his Father had nothing to do with scenes of butchery. All these old Jewish institutions displeased him, and he was pained in being obliged to conform to them. Thus, neither the temple nor its site inspired pious sentiments in the bosom of Christianity, except in the case of the Judaising Christians. The true proselytes had an aversion to this ancient sanctuary. Constantine and the first Christian emperors left the Pagan constructions of Hadrian standing there. It was the enemies of Christianity, such as Julian, who remembered the temple. When Omar entered Jerusalem, the site of the temple was designedly polluted in hatred of the Jews. It was Islamism, that is to say, a sort of resurrection of Judaism, in its most Semitic form, which rendered it honours The place has always been antichristian.

The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered his sojourn in Jerusalem painful. In proportion as the great ideas of Israel ripened, the priesthood were debased. The institution of synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to entirely ritual functions, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, the sofer or scribe, though the latter was but a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true, a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity had already been degraded by Herod, became more and more a Roman functionary, who was frequently removed in order that others might share the profits of the office. Opposed to the Pharisees, who were important lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say, members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around the temple, lived by the altar, though they saw the vanity of it. The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the national sentiment and from the great religious movement which urged the people on, that the name of “Sadducee” (sadoki), which at first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok, had become synonymous with “Materialist” and with “Epicurean.”

An element worse still had begun, since the reign of Herod the Great, to corrupt the high-priesthood. Herod having fallen in love with Mariamne, daughter of a certain Simon, son of 127Boëthus of Alexandria, and having wished to marry her (about the year 28 J.C.), saw no other means of ennobling his father-in-law and raising him to his own rank than by making him high-priest. This intriguing family remained masters, almost without interruption, of the sovereign pontificate for thirty-five years. Closely allied to the reigning family, it did not lose the office until after the deposition of Archelaus, and recovered it (the year 42 of our era) after Herod Agrippa had for some time recommenced the work of Herod the Great. Under the name of Boëthusim, a new sacerdotal nobility was formed, which was very worldly, being little devotional, and closely allied to the Sadokites. The Boëthusim, in the Talmud and the rabbinical writings, are depicted as a kind of unbelievers, and always reproached as Sadducees. From all this there resulted a kind of “court of Rome” around the temple, living by politics, little carried away by excess of zeal, even rather fearing them, not wishing to hear of holy personages or of innovators, for this “court” derived profit from the established routine. These epicurean priests had not the violence of the Pharisees; they only wished for quietness; it was their moral indifference, their cold irreligion, which revolted Jesus. Although quite distinct, the priests and the Pharisees were thus confounded in his antipathies. But being a stranger, and without influence, he was long compelled to restrain his displeasure within himself, and only to communicate his sentiments to the intimate friends who accompanied him.

Before his last stay, much more protracted than any he had made at Jerusalem, and which was terminated by his death, Jesus endeavoured, however, to make himself heard. He preached; people spoke of him; and they conversed upon certain acts of his which were looked upon as miraculous. 128But from all that there resulted neither an established church at Jerusalem, nor a group of Jerusalemite disciples. The charming lawgiver, who forgave everyone provided they but loved him, could not find much response in this sanctuary of vain disputes and of obsolete sacrifices. The sole result was that he formed some valuable friendships, the advantage of which he reaped afterwards. He does not appear at that time to have made the acquaintance of the family of Bethany, which, amidst the trials of the latter months of his life, brought him so much consolation. But perhaps he had relations with that Mary, mother of Mark (whose house became some years later the rendezvous of the apostles), and with Mark himself. But very early he attracted the attention of a certain Nicodemus, a rich Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrim, and a man highly considered in Jerusalem. This man, who appears to have been upright and sincere, felt himself drawn towards the young Galilean. Not wishing to compromise himself, he came to see Jesus by night, and had a long conversation with him. He undoubtedly preserved a favourable impression of him, for later on he defended Jesus against the prejudices of his colleagues, and, at the death of Jesus, we find him tending with pious care the corpse of the master. Nicodemus did not become a Christian; he had too much regard for his position to take part in a revolutionary movement which as yet numbered no men of note amongst its adherents. But he evidently had much friendship for Jesus, and rendered him service, though powerless to rescue him from a death which even at this period was all but decreed.

As to the celebrated doctors of the time, Jesus does not appear to have had any connection with them. Hillel and Shammai were dead; the greatest authority of the day was Gamaliel, grandson of 129Hillel. He had a liberal mind, was a man of the world, open to secular opinions, and rendered tolerant by his intercourse with good society. Differing from the very strict Pharisees, who walked veiled or with closed eyes, he gazed even upon Pagan women. The sectaries excused this, as well as a knowledge of Greek in him, because he had access to the court. After the death of Jesus he expressed very moderate views in regard to the new sect. St. Paul sat at his feet, but it is highly improbable that Jesus ever entered his school.

One idea, at least, which Jesus carried away from Jerusalem, and which henceforth appeared to be rooted in his mind, was that there was no union possible between him and the ancient Jewish religion. The abolition of the sacrifices, which had caused him so much disgust, the suppression of an impious and haughty priesthood, and, in a general sense, the abrogation of the Law, appeared to him an absolute necessity! From this moment he is no longer a Jewish reformer, but it is as a destroyer of Judaism that he poses. Some advocates of the Messianic notions had already admitted that the Messiah would bring a new law, which should be common to all people. The Essenes, who were scarcely Jews, appear also to have been indifferent to the temple and to the Mosaic observances. But these were only isolated or unavowed instances of boldness. Jesus was the first who dared to say that from his time, or rather from that of John, the Law was abolished. If sometimes he used more guarded terms it was in order not to shock too violently existing prejudices. When he was driven to extremities he lifted the veil entirely, and declared that the Law had no longer any force. On this subject he used striking comparisons. “No man putteth a piece of new cloth into an old garment, neither do men put new wine into old bottles.” 130Herein lies his chief characteristic as teacher and originator. The temple excluded all except Jews from its enclosure by scornful placards. Jesus did not approve this. That narrow, hard, and uncharitable Law was only made for the children of Abraham. Jesus maintained that every well-disposed man, every man who received and loved him, was a son of Abraham. The pride of blood appeared to him the chief enemy that he had to combat. In other words, Jesus was no longer a Jew. He was in the highest degree revolutionary; he called all men to a worship founded solely on the fact of their being children of God. He proclaimed the rights of man, not the rights of the Jew; the religion of man, not the religion of the Jew; the deliverance of man, not the deliverance of the Jew. Ah! how far removed was this from a Gaulonite Judas or a Matthias Margaloth, preaching revolution in the name of the Law! The religion of humanity was thus established, not upon blood, but upon the heart. Moses was superseded, the temple was rendered useless, and was irrevocably condemned.