Читать книгу History of the Jews, Vol. 2 (of 6) - Graetz Heinrich - Страница 6

The Messianic Hope – Various Conceptions of the Expected Messiah – The Essene Idea of the Kingdom of Heaven – John the Baptist, his Work and Imprisonment – Jesus of Nazareth continues John's Labors – Story of his Birth – His Success – His Relations to Judaism and the Sects – His Miraculous Healing of the Sick and Exorcism of Demons – His Secret Appearance as the Messiah – His Journey to Judæa – Accusations against him, and his Condemnation – The First Christian Community and its Chiefs – The Ebionites – Removal of Pilate from Judæa – Vitellius, Governor of Syria, favors the Judæans.

28–37 C. E

While Judæa was still trembling in fear of some new act of violence on the part of the governor, Pontius Pilate, which would again afflict the country with disturbances and troubles, a strange event occurred. At first but little heeded, it soon acquired, through the singularity of its origin and many favorable attendant circumstances, a considerable degree of notoriety. So great were the strides this movement rapidly made to influence and power, that radical changes were produced by it and new paths opened in the history of the world. The time had come when the fundamental truths of Judaism, till then thoroughly known and rightly appreciated only by profound thinkers, were to burst their shackles and go freely forth among all the people of the earth. Sublime and lofty views of God and of holy living for the individual as well as for the state, which form the kernel of Judaism, were now to be disseminated among other nations and to bring them a rich and beneficent harvest. Israel was now to commence in earnest his sacred mission; he was to become the teacher of nations. The ancient teaching about God and religious morality was to be introduced by him unto a godless and immoral world. Judaism, however, could gain admission into the hearts of the heathens only by taking another name and assuming new forms, for with its old designation and distinctive features it was not generally popular.

It was due to the strange movement which arose under the governorship of Pilate that the teachings of Judaism won the sympathy of the heathen world. But this new form of Judaism, altered by foreign elements, became estranged from and placed itself in harsh antagonism to the parent source. Judaism, which had given birth to this new manifestation, could take no pleasure in her offspring, which soon turned coldly from her and struck out into strange, divergent paths. This new power, this old doctrine in a new garb, or rather this Essenism intermingled with foreign elements, is Christianity, whose advent and earliest course belong to the Judæan history of this epoch.

Christianity owed its origin to an overpowering, mysterious feeling which reigned among the better classes of the Judæan nation, and which became daily stronger as their political position became more and more intolerable. The ever-recurring evils brought on them by the rapacity of their Roman rulers, the shamelessness of the Herodian princes, the cowardice and servility of the Judæan aristocracy, the debasement of the high priests and their families, and the dissensions of rival parties, had raised the longing for the deliverer announced in the prophetical writings – the Messiah – to so great a pitch that any highly-gifted individual, possessed of outward charm or imbued with moral and religious grace, would readily have found disciples, and believers in his Messianic mission. The most earnest thinkers of that time had long regarded the political condition of the Judæans since their return from the Babylonian exile as a temporary or preparatory state, which would only continue until the true prophet arose, and Elijah turned the hearts of the fathers to the children, and restored the tribes of Jacob. When the people, with solemn rites, elected the Hasmonæan Simon as their prince, they decreed that he and his descendants should hold that position only until the True Prophet appeared to assume the royal dignity, and it was only to a scion of the House of David, the Anointed that, according to prophecy, this dignity by right belonged.

When, consequent upon the wars undertaken by the three powerful leaders, Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus, ostensibly to punish Cæsar's murderers, in reality to introduce a new form of government, the great political convulsion took place in the Roman Empire, and three divisions of the world were laid waste, a Judæan poet in Egypt was foretelling a far different outcome – the destruction of the whole heathen world and the dawn of the "Kingdom of God." In that kingdom a holy king – the Messiah – would hold the scepter. "When Rome shall vanquish Egypt, and govern her, then shall the greatest in the kingdom, the immortal King, arise in the world, and a holy King will come to rule over all the nations of the earth during all time." The Messiah, so confidently expected, was to bring forth quite a new state of things – a new heaven and a new earth. At the coming of Elijah, who was to be the precursor of the Messiah, the resurrection of the dead would take place, and a future world be revealed.

This ardent longing for the Messiah, and the belief in his advent, swayed all classes of the Judæan nation, excepting the aristocracy and those who clung to Rome. These were satisfied with the present, and anticipated harm rather than benefit from any change. During the short space of thirty years a great number of enthusiastic mystics appeared, who, without any intention to deceive, and bent upon removing the load of care and sorrow that weighed so heavily upon the people, assumed the character of prophet or Messiah, and found disciples, who followed their banner faithfully unto death. But though it appears that every Messiah attracted ready believers, no one was acknowledged as such by the whole nation. The incessant friction between the various communities, and the deep study of the holy books, had awakened a critical spirit difficult to satisfy. The nation was also split into many parties, each entertaining a different idea of the future savior, and rendering it, therefore, impossible that any one aspirant should receive general recognition as the Messiah. The republican zealots, the disciples of Judas of Galilee, pictured the Messiah as delivering Israel from his enemies by the breath of his mouth, destroying the Roman Empire, and restoring the golden era of David's kingdom. The school of Shammai added to this representation of the Messiah the attributes of ardent religious zeal and perfect moral purity. The followers of Hillel, less swayed by fanaticism or political views, expected a prince of peace, who would bring tranquillity to the country itself, and introduce harmony into its relations with all its neighboring states. On one point, however, all agreed: the Messiah must spring from the branch of David; and thus, in the course of time, the expression "Ben David" – the son of David – became identical with the Messiah. According to the prevailing belief, the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies required the return of the scattered tribes of Israel, richly laden with presents, expiatory offerings from the nations by which they had so long been oppressed. Even the most educated classes, who had felt the influence of Grecian culture, and were represented by Philo, the Judæan Plato, fully believed that the Messianic age was to be ushered in, and pictured it as an epoch of miracles. A heavenly apparition, only visible to the righteous, would lead back from Greece and barbarous lands the exiled and repentant Israelites. The latter would be found prepared for the Messianic time, following the holy life of the patriarchs, and imbued with a sublime and pious spirit, which would prevent them from falling into their old sins, and would surely call down upon them the full grace of God. Then would the streams of former happiness be again replenished from the eternal spring of Divine grace: the ruined cities would arise, the desert become a blooming land, and the prayers of the living would have the power of awakening the dead.

It was the sect of Essenes that pictured the Messiah and the Messianic time in the most idealistic manner. The great object of their asceticism was to advance the kingdom of heaven (Malchuth Shamayim) and the coming era (Olam-ha-Ba). Their adherence would be granted alone to him who led a pure and spotless life, who renounced the world and its vanities, and gave proofs that the Holy Spirit (Ruach ha-Kodesh) dwelt within him. He must also have power over demons, reject Mammon, and inaugurate a system of community of goods, in which poverty and self-renunciation would be the ornaments of mankind.

It was from the Essenes that for the first time the cry went forth, "The Messiah is coming! The kingdom of heaven is near!" He who first raised his voice in the desert little thought it would re-echo far away over land and sea, and that it would be answered by the nations of the earth flocking together round the banner of a Messiah. In announcing the kingdom of heaven, he only meant to invite the sinners among the Judæan people to penitence and reformation. The Essene who sent forth this call to the Israelites was John the Baptist (his name doubtless meaning the Essene, he who daily bathed and cleansed both body and soul in spring water). But few accounts have reached us of John the Baptist. He led the same life as the Essenes, fed upon locusts and wild honey, and wore the garb of the prophets of old, a cloak of camel-hair fastened by a leather girdle. John appears to have fully entertained the belief, that if only the whole Judæan nation would bathe in the river Jordan, acknowledge their sins, and adopt the strict rules of the Essenes, the promised Messianic time could be no longer deferred. He therefore called upon the people to come and receive baptism in the Jordan, to confess and renounce their sins, and thus prepare for the advent of the kingdom of heaven.

John dwelt with other Essenes in the desert, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, presumably in order to be ever at hand to teach the repentant sinners the deep moral signification of baptism. Bound up with that rite was doubtless the adoption of the rule of life of the Essenes. There were certainly many, imbued with an enthusiastic spirit, and saddened by the evils and the distress they witnessed, who eagerly responded to the cry of the Essene Baptist. Who would not gladly, were it only in his power to do so, further the great work of the Redemption, and help to advance the kingdom of heaven? Did the baptized persons return improved by their immersion in the waters of the Jordan? Was any great moral influence the result of this symbolical act? History tells us not; but our knowledge of the state of Judæa at that time can easily supply us with an answer to the question. The Judæan people did not as a whole, especially among the middle-class citizens, require this violent shock as a means of improvement; they were neither vicious nor depraved, and their form of public religious worship was sufficient to keep them in the right paths. By two sets of people, however, the call of John to repentance might have been heeded – it might have had a beneficial influence upon the higher and lower classes, upon the aristocracy and wealthy, who had been corrupted by Rome, and upon the miserable peasantry, brutalized by constant warfare. But the rich only laughed at the high-souled enthusiast, who taught that baptism in the water of the Jordan would bring about the miraculous Messianic era, and the sons of the soil were too obtuse and ignorant to heed the Baptist's earnest cry.

His appeal, on the other hand, had nothing in its tenor and character to offend the Pharisees, or arouse any opposition among the ranks of that ruling party. John's disciples, those who were bound closest to him, and who carried out his mode of living, kept strictly to the words of the Law, and observed all its prescribed fasts. If the Pharisees, comprising at that time the schools of Hillel and of Shammai, did not greatly favor the enthusiasm and extravagance of the Essenes, they placed themselves in no direct antagonism to the Baptists.

From their side, John would have met with no hindrance to his work, but the Herodians were suspicious of a man who drew such throngs around him, whose burning words moved the hearts of his hearers in their very depths, and could carry away the multitude to the performance of any enterprise he chose to undertake. Herod Antipas, governor of the province in which the Baptist dwelt, gave his soldiers orders to seize and imprison him. How long a time he was kept in confinement, and whether he was still alive when one of his disciples was being proclaimed as the Messiah, must, on account of the untrustworthiness of the sources from which our information is derived, remain doubtful. It is authentic, however, that he was beheaded by the order of Antipas, whilst the story of the young daughter of Herodias bringing to her mother the bloody head of the Baptist upon a platter is a mere legend.

After the imprisonment of the Baptist, his work was carried on by some of his disciples, among whom no one exerted so powerful an influence as Jesus of Galilee. Jesus (short for Joshua), born in Nazareth, a small town in Lower Galilee, to the south of Sepphoris, was the eldest son of an otherwise unknown carpenter, Joseph, and of his wife Miriam or Mary, who bore him four more sons, Jacob, Josê, Judah, and Simon, and several daughters. Whether Joseph or Mary, the father and mother of Jesus, belonged to the family of David cannot be proved. The measure of his mental culture can only be surmised from that existing in his native province. Galilee, at a distance from the capital and the Temple, was far behind Judæa in mental attainments and knowledge of the Law. The lively interchange of religious thought, and the discussions upon the Law, which made its writings and teachings the common property of all who sought the Temple, were naturally wanting in Galilee. The country, which, at a later period, after the destruction of the Temple, contained the great schools of Uscha, Sepphoris, and Tiberias, was at that time very poor in seats of learning. But, on the other hand, morality was stricter in Galilee, and the observance of laws and customs more rigidly enforced. The slightest infringement was not allowed, and what the Judæans permitted themselves, the Galilæans would by no means consent to. They were also looked upon as fanatical dogmatists.

Through their vicinity to the heathen Syrians, the Galilæans had adopted many superstitions, and, owing to their ignorance of the nature of disease, the sick were often thought to be possessed by demons, and various forms of illness were ascribed to the influence of evil spirits. The language of the Galilæans had also become corrupted by their Syrian neighbors, and was marred by the introduction of Aramaic forms and words. The Galilæans could not pronounce Hebrew with purity. They exchanged, and sometimes omitted, the guttural sounds, and thus often incurred the ridicule of the Judæans, who thought a great deal of correct articulation. The first word he spoke revealed the Galilæan, and, as his language provoked laughter, he was not often allowed to lead in the recital of the prayers. The birthplace of Jesus, Nazareth, offered no particular attraction; it was a small mountain-town, not more fertile than the other parts of Galilee, and bearing no comparison to the richly-watered Shechem.

On account of his Galilæan origin, Jesus could not have stood high in that knowledge of the Law which, through the schools of Shammai and Hillel, had become prevalent in Judæa. His small stock of learning and his corrupt half-Aramaic language pointed unmistakably to his birthplace in Galilee. His deficiency in knowledge, however, was fully compensated for by his intensely sympathetic character. High-minded earnestness and spotless moral purity were his undeniable attributes; they stand out in all the authentic accounts of his life that have reached us, and appear even in those garbled teachings which his followers placed in his mouth. The gentle disposition and the humility of Jesus remind one of Hillel, whom he seems, indeed, to have taken as his particular model, and whose golden rule, "What you wish not to be done to yourself, do not unto others," he adopted as the starting-point of his moral code. Like Hillel, Jesus looked upon the promotion of peace and the forgiveness of injuries as the highest forms of virtue. His whole being was permeated by that deeper religiousness which consecrates to God not only the hour of prayer, a day of penitence, and longer or shorter periods of devotional exercise, but every step in the journey of life, which turns every aspiration of the soul towards Him, subjects everything to His will, and, with child-like trust, commits everything to His keeping. He was filled with tender brotherly love, which Judaism also teaches towards an enemy, and had reached the ideal of the passive virtues which the Pharisees inculcated: "Count yourself among the oppressed and not among the oppressors, receive abuse and return it not; do all from love to God, and rejoice in suffering." Jesus doubtless possessed warm sympathies and a winning manner, which caused his words to produce a deep and lasting effect.

Jesus must, from the idiosyncrasies of his nature, have been powerfully attracted by the Essenes, who led a contemplative life apart from the world and its vanities. When John the Baptist – or more correctly the Essene – invited all to come and receive baptism in the Jordan, to repent and prepare for the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus hastened to obey the call, and was baptized by him. Although it cannot be proved that Jesus was formally admitted into the order of the Essenes, much in his life and work can only be explained by the supposition that he had adopted their fundamental principles. Like the Essenes, Jesus highly esteemed self-inflicted poverty, and despised the mammon of riches. The following proverbs, ascribed to him, appear to bear his stamp: "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven" (Luke vi. 20). "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew xix. 24). "No man can serve two masters, ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew vi. 24). Jesus shared the aversion of the Essenes to marriage: "It is not good to marry" (Matthew xix. 11). Community of goods, a peculiar doctrine of the Essenes, was not only approved of, but positively enjoined by Jesus; like them, he also reprobated every form of oath. "Swear not at all" (so Jesus taught), "neither by heaven nor by the earth, nor by your head – but let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay" (James v. 12). Miraculous cures, said to have been performed by him – such as the exorcism of demons from those who believed themselves to be possessed – were often made by the Essenes, so to say, in a professional capacity.

After John had been taken and imprisoned by Herod Antipas, Jesus thought simply of continuing his master's work; like him, he preached "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," without perhaps having then a suspicion of the part he was afterwards to play in that kingdom of heaven looked forward to in the approaching Messianic time. Jesus apparently felt that if his appeal was not to be lost in the desert like that of the Baptist, but, on the contrary, bring forth lasting results, it must not be addressed to the whole nation, but to a particular class of the Judæans. The middle classes, the inhabitants of towns of greater or lesser importance, were not wanting in godliness, piety and morality, and consequently a call to them to repent and forsake their sins would have been meaningless. The declaration made to Jesus by the young man who was seeking the way of eternal life, "From my youth upwards, I have kept the laws of God; I have not committed murder, nor adultery, nor have I stolen, nor borne false witness; I have honored my father and mother, and loved my neighbor like myself," – this declaration might have been made by the greater number of the middle-class Judæans of that time. The disciples of Shammai and Hillel, the followers of the zealot Judas, the bitter foes of the Herodians and of Rome, were not morally sick, and were not in need of the physician's art. They were ever ready for self-sacrifice, and Jesus wisely refrained from turning to them. Still less was he inclined to attempt to reform the rich, and he was repelled by the higher classes of Judæans. From these, the warning of the simple, unlearned moralist and preacher, his reproof of their pride, their venality and inconstancy, would only have elicited mockery and derision. With right judgment, therefore, Jesus determined upon seeking out those who did not belong to, or had been expelled from the community for their religious offenses, and who had either not been allowed or had not desired to return to it. They were publicans and tax-gatherers, shunned by the patriots, as promoters of Roman interests, who turned their backs upon the Law, and led a wild, unshackled life, heedless alike of the past and of the future. There existed in Judæa many who had no knowledge of the great healing truths of Judaism, who were ignorant of its laws, and indifferent as to the glorious history of its past or its possible future. These were known as transgressors of the Law (Abrianim), or sinners as they were called, the friends of Herod and of Rome. There were also ignorant, poor handicraftsmen and menials (Am ha-Arez), who were seldom able to visit the Judæan capital, or listen to Judæan teachings, which, indeed, they would probably not have understood. It was not for them that Sinai had flamed, or the prophets had uttered their cry of warning; for the teachers of the Law, more intent upon expounding doctrine than upon reforming their hearers, failed to make the Law and the prophets intelligible to those classes, and consequently did not draw them within their fold. It was to these outcasts that Jesus turned, to snatch them out of their torpor, their ignorance and ungodliness. He felt within himself the call to save "the lost sheep of the house of Israel." "They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick" (Matthew ix. 12).

Intent upon the lofty mission which he had undertaken – to turn the ignorant and the godless, the sinner and the publican to repentance, and by virtue of the Essene mode of living to prepare them for the approaching Messianic time – Jesus first sought his native town of Nazareth. But there, where he had been known from his infancy, and where the carpenter's son was not considered to possess superior sanctity but only inferior knowledge, he was met with derision and contempt. When, on the Sabbath, he spoke in the synagogue about repentance, the listeners said to each other, "Is that not the son of Joseph the carpenter, and his mother and sisters, are they not all with us?" and they said to him, "Physician, heal thyself," and listened not to him. The ignominious treatment he received in his own birthplace caused him to utter the proverb, "The preacher is least regarded in his own country." He left Nazareth, never to return.

A better result followed the teaching of Jesus in the town of Capernaum (Kefar Nahum), which was situated on the western coast of the Sea of Tiberias. The inhabitants of that delightfully situated town differed as much from the Nazarenes as their mild, fertile land from a rough and wild mountain gorge. In Capernaum there were doubtless a greater number of men steeped in effeminacy and vice, and there existed, probably, a wider gap between the rich and the poor. But just on that account Jesus had more scope to work there, and an easier access was found for the earnest, penetrating words which he poured forth from the depths of his soul. Many belonging to the lowest classes attached themselves to Jesus and followed him. Among his first disciples in Capernaum were Simon, called Kephas or Petrus (rock), and his brother Andrew, the sons of Jonah, both fishermen, the first, in some degree, a law-breaker, and also the two sons of a certain Zebedee, Jacob and John. He was also followed by a rich publican, called sometimes Matthew, sometimes Levi, in whose house Jesus often tarried, bringing with him companions from the classes then looked down upon with the greatest contempt. Women likewise of doubtful repute were among his followers, the most conspicuous of the number being a native of the town of Magdala, near Tiberias, Mary Magdalene, from whom seven devils (according to the language of the time) had to be driven out. Jesus converted these abandoned sinners into remorseful penitents. It was, doubtless, an unheard-of thing at that time for a teacher of Judaism to hold intercourse with women at all, more especially with any of that description.