The Life of Jesus - Ernest Renan

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mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the small, picturesque group to which are attached the graceful or terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its beautiful rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a depression between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peræa, which form a continuous line from the eastern side. On the north, the mountains of Safed, in inclining toward the sea conceal St. Jean d'Acre, but permit the Gulf of Khaïfa to be distinguished. Such was the horizon of Jesus. This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his world. Even in his later life he departed but little beyond the familial limits of his childhood. For yonder, northward, a glimpse is caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Cæsarea-Philippi, his furthest point of advance into the Gentile world; and here southward, the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a scorching wind of desolation and death.

      If the world, remaining Christian, but attaining to a better idea of the esteem in which the origin of its religion should be held, should ever wish to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal sanctuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is upon this height of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There, at the birthplace of Christianity, and in the centre of the actions of its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all Christians may worship. There, also, on this spot where sleep Joseph, the carpenter, and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes who never passed beyond the horizon of their valley, would be a better station than any in the world beside for the philosopher to contemplate the course of human affairs, to console himself for their uncertainty, and to reassure himself as to the Divine end which the world pursues through countless falterings, and in spite of the universal vanity.

      EDUCATION OF JESUS.

       Table of Contents

      This aspect of Nature, at once smiling and grand, was the whole education of Jesus. He learned to read and to write,[1] doubtless, according to the Eastern method, which consisted in putting in the hands of the child a book, which he repeated in cadence with his little comrades, until he knew it by heart.[2] It is doubtful, however, if he understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him quote them according to the translations in the Aramean tongue;[3] his principles of exegesis, as far as we can judge of them by those of his disciples, much resembled those which were then in vogue, and which form the spirit of the Targums and the Midrashim.[4]

      [Footnote 1: John viii. 6.]

      [Footnote 2: Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs, Levi. 6.]

      [Footnote 3: Matt. xxvii. 46; Mark xv. 34.]

      [Footnote 4: Jewish translations and commentaries of the Talmudic epoch.]

      The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the hazzan, or reader in the synagogues.[1] Jesus frequented little the higher schools of the scribes or sopherim (Nazareth had perhaps none of them), and he had none of those titles which confer, in the eyes of the vulgar, the privileges of knowledge.[2] It would, nevertheless, be a great error to imagine that Jesus was what we call ignorant. Scholastic education among us draws a profound distinction, in respect of personal worth, between those who have received and those who have been deprived of it. It was not so in the East, nor, in general, in the good old times. The state of ignorance in which, among us, owing to our isolated and entirely individual life, those remain who have not passed through the schools, was unknown in those societies where moral culture, and especially the general spirit of the age, was transmitted by the perpetual intercourse of man with man. The Arab, who has never had a teacher, is often, nevertheless, a very superior man; for the tent is a kind of school always open, where, from the contact of well-educated men, there is produced a great intellectual and even literary movement. The refinement of manners and the acuteness of the intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. It is the men from the schools, on the contrary, who are considered badly trained and pedantic. In this social state, ignorance, which, among us, condemns a man to an inferior rank, is the condition of great things and of great originality.

      [Footnote 1: Mishnah, Shabbath, i. 3.]

      [Footnote 2: Matt. xiii. 54, and following; John vii. 15.]

      It is not probable that Jesus knew Greek. This language was very little spread in Judea beyond the classes who participated in the government, and the towns inhabited by pagans, like Cæsarea.[1] The real mother tongue of Jesus was the Syrian dialect mixed with Hebrew, which was then spoken in Palestine.[2] Still less probably had he any knowledge of Greek culture. This culture was proscribed by the doctors of Palestine, who included in the same malediction "he who rears swine, and he who teaches his son Greek science."[3] At all events it had not penetrated into little towns like Nazareth. Notwithstanding the anathema of the doctors, some Jews, it is true, had already embraced the Hellenic culture. Without speaking of the Jewish school of Egypt, in which the attempts to amalgamate Hellenism and Judaism had been in operation nearly two hundred years, a Jew—Nicholas of Damascus—had become, even at this time, one of the most distinguished men, one of the best informed, and one of the most respected of his age. Josephus was destined soon to furnish another example of a Jew completely Grecianized. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus declares that he himself was an exception among his contemporaries;[4] and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a degree from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in the Talmud or in Jewish tradition. Certain it is that Greek was very little studied at Jerusalem, that Greek studies were considered as dangerous, and even servile, that they were regarded, at the best, as a mere womanly accomplishment.[5] The study of the Law was the only one accounted liberal and worthy of a thoughtful man.[6] Questioned as to the time when it would be proper to teach children "Greek wisdom," a learned rabbi had answered, "At the time when it is neither day nor night; since it is written of the Law, Thou shalt study it day and night."[7]

      [Footnote 1: Mishnah, Shekalim, iii. 2; Talmud of Jerusalem, Megilla, halaca xi.; Sota, vii. 1; Talmud of Babylon, Baba Kama, 83 a; Megilla, 8 b, and following.]

      [Footnote 2: Matthew xxvii. 46; Mark iii. 17, v. 41, vii. 34, xiv. 36, xv. 34. The expression [Greek: ê patrios phônê] in the writers of the time, always designates the Semitic dialect, which was spoken in Palestine (II. Macc. vii. 21, 27, xii. 37; Acts xxi. 37, 40, xxii. 2, xxvi. 14; Josephus, Ant., XVIII. vi. 10, xx. sub fin.; B.J., prooem I; V. vi. 3, V. ix. 2, VI. ii. 1: Against Appian, I. 9; De Macc., 12, 16). We shall show, later, that some of the documents which served as the basis for the synoptic Gospels were written in this Semitic dialect. It was the same with many of the Apocrypha (IV. Book of Macc. xvi. ad calcem, &c.). In fine, the sects issuing directly from the first Galilean movement (Nazarenes, Ebionim, &c.), which continued a long time in Batanea and Hauran, spoke a Semitic dialect (Eusebius, De Situ et Nomin. Loc. Hebr., at the word [Greek: Chôba]; Epiph., Adv. Hær., xxix. 7, 9, xxx. 3; St. Jerome, In Matt., xii. 13; Dial. adv. Pelag., iii. 2).]

      [Footnote 3: Mishnah, Sanhedrim, xi. 1; Talmud of Babylon, Baba Kama, 82 b and 83 a; Sota, 49 a and b; Menachoth, 64 b; comp. II. Macc. iv. 10, and following.]

      [Footnote 4: Jos., Ant. XX. xi. 2.]

      [Footnote 5: Talmud of Jerusalem, Peah, i. 1.]

      [Footnote 6: Jos., Ant., loc. cit.; Orig., Contra Celsum, ii. 34.]

      [Footnote 7: Talmud of Jerusalem, Peah, i. 1; Talmud of Babylon, Menachoth, 99 b.]

      Neither directly nor indirectly, then, did any element of Greek culture reach Jesus. He knew nothing beyond Judaism; his mind preserved that free innocence which an extended and varied culture always weakens. In the very bosom of Judaism he remained a stranger to many efforts often parallel to his own. On the one hand, the asceticism of the Essenes or the Therapeutæ;[1] on the other, the fine

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